By David Futrelle
There are a lot of guys out there who think that women generally don’t enjoy sex. But it’s rare for guys to say this out loud, because they’re afraid of the obvious retort: “Maybe they just don’t enjoy sex with you!”
But apparently Alyssa Milano’s misguided proposal for a #SexStrike has given more than a few men the nudge they needed to stand up and spout nonsense like this:
Aw yeah, fellow straight dudes, don’t you just love that moment during really great sex when she’s checking her messages and whispering “how much longer is this going to take, jesus fucking christ.”
Oh, but Scott wasn’t the only one telling the women of the world that, actually. they hate sex.
That’s not a sex strike, dude; it’s just a really, really, really long dry spell.
I’m hoping Melvin here isn’t suggesting what I think he’s suggesting, because we already hear too much of that crap from incel forums.
And what a lucky woman his alleged wife must be! (Especially since, according to his recent Twitter timeline, he also believes that Martin Luther King Jr. — MLK — was somehow part of an insidious Jewish plot involving the god Moloch.)
Wait, I thought House of Cards came tumbling down because the dude playing Frank Underwood couldn’t stop sexually assaulting dudes.
Hate to break it to you, dude, but not many women besides Alyssa Milano seem to think a sex strike is a good idea or that it would work.
That sounds … familiar. Do I smell a sockpuppet — or some sort of semi-organized MGTOW propaganda campaign?
In fact, a lot of the guys spouting the “women don’t like sex” line — including Scott, way up at the top — are connected in some way with the Men Going Their Own Way movement, or with the “Red Pill” movement more generally, and, like these last two cut-and-paste tweeters, they’re citing the #SexStrike as proof that women are evil manipulators who use sex to get what they want from men.
Not having sex is violence!?
But it wasn’t just angry MGTOWs and other male regressives who jumped aboard this train; some women used the #SexStrike to push their own backwards notions about feminism and feminists.
The fact that the #SexStrike can be so easily used as “proof” of assorted antifeminist and outright misogynst notions makes pretty clear why so many feminists are opposed to it: not only does it reinforce some pretty toxic ideas about female sexuality; it also just makes no damn sense logistically.
So far nothing I’ve seen captures the absurdity of the idea better than this video, so I’m just going to stop writing here and you can hit play:
NOTE: There was another “as a man I can tell you women hate sex” tweet going around that you may have seen; I’ve left it out of this post because it was evidently from a troll or an impersonator account. All the rest of the tweets I’ve featured seem to be utterly sincere, except of course for Eva’s.
H/T — Thanks to Talia Lavin, who posted screenshots of a couple of these tweets on Twitter.
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Dunno, I also think that, for many, women who happen to also meet their exclusively visual standards of attraction didn’t want to have sex with them, which is nothing to feel insulted by, btw, I clarify being careful of splash damage on men who might have not yet had sex whatever their age for whatever reason, but are not incel or toxic, as of course that’s not directed to them. We actually combat virgin shaming, if any lurker is in doubt.
It’s definitely contraddictory. I think an apparently more coherent variation of the them is that sex would be a more physical necessity for men, so women can withdraw it. But if it was for physical necessity alone masturbation would cut it and both reasonable men and women release that way and fantasize, when they fancy it, usually, if they didn’t find one they are comfortable sharing it with and also willing to partake, which is a much different aspect. Or they’s not available at the moment.
I read this protest would in many cases just about refusing Piv sex only, in the Blue Pill thread, is it true?
Others protest that men might not find sex however they lower their standards and that a “Chad” instead would not refuse some sex with what they regard as a 5, but it would be just “pump and dump”, because apparently a man is taught to never say no, but that doesn’t align with their insults to the “below 5”, the obese ones, although others let hint they wouldn’t refuse a pump and dump. Could be “vicious signaling” or “assholery signaling” as other let know instead they’d laugh in her face, still in case she’d dare hitting on them. A power fantasy. In either case it’s about humiliation and degrading, they think one night stands are degrading to women yet it’s what some of them want. Or do they all want the good old days where, in their mind, a partner was guarateed to the hardworking god fearing male? Still confused.
So what exactly was the rationale for Milano to come up with this idea? Did she just figure taking a more extreme approach would be more likely to draw publicity? While contraceptives have never been perfect, they are still legal in the US and I see no reason why she couldn’t have simply called for women to use them more actively.
Assuming my speculation is even remotely rooted in fact, I must pity her naivete in thinking her idea would do anything but rile up the hornet’s nest in the long run. This was doomed from the start.
And let’s not forget that unlike Milano, Lysistrata made sure that the women of Athens were all willing to go along with her sex strike before announcing that it was happening.
@Anonymous
I reckon she was thinking of things like Leymah Gbowee, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who organized a sex strike, or Isabelle Ameganvi in Togo. But your patronizing pity for her poor stupid irrational womanbrain is noted.
Perhaps you might note the similarities between Ms Milano’s stated purpose, to draw extreme attention to the issue (as you so cleverly guessed!), and Gbowee’s in this article. And let us think a moment which statement would garner more attention:
“It’s time for a sex strike! Women of Atlanta, unite!”
or
“Ladies, now that this law has passed, please submit and begin using contraceptives more actively, as if you were not already and were instead using abortion as birth control instead of a fail-safe.”
Hmmmmmmmm… yeah I think it’s the first. And did it work? Oh my yes it did, as we are all talking about it.
@Anonymous:
… so far.
As the Hobby Lobby court case showed (not to mention the number of pharmacy assistants who’ve complained about being required to sell them), the Religious Right types aren’t exactly making a secret of wanting to do away with contraceptives as well.
If they really wanted to reduce the number of abortions, they would be all for contraceptives. They aren’t. This is entirely about policing women’s bodies.
@Not Edward —
Oh, I agree 100%. But I explicitly said that Aristophenes was writing *satire* when he had women using sex as a bargaining chip. That the strike is in constant risk of failing is one of the jokes, and further proof (if any were needed) that he does not actually think women would, or should, engage in such a strike.
Not so, however, with both the “sex strikers” and the incels, who apparently are both 100% serious in their view that women use sex as a commodity, but only disagree about whether it’s a good or bad thing.
What makes this at all coherent? Unless you actually believe that A) sex is a physical necessity and B) that it only affects bepenised folks, there’s no coherency yo speak of.
I think you’re saying people could just masturbate and fantasize? In which case, I agree.
No where have I seen any of the people suggesting this strike say this, and it oy follows if one believes that the only thing that counts as sex is piv, considering all the calls to action have said specifically sex strike, so no, I don’t believe this is true.
@Cat Mara —
I never understood why women should be any more “threatened” by sex robots than men are “threathened” by vibrators, that is to say, not at all. It’s none of my business if anybody uses either, but I don’t think anyone except incels think either can, or are intended to, be a replacement for a relationship with a human being.
@Lurker LXVII
I admit that I was uninformed about Gbowee and Ameganvi, and my own judgements about the sort of people who use Twitter (read: the ones who we see a lot of here) have undoubtedly colored the tone of my previous post.
I still believe some kind of behind-the-scenes coordination to ensure that the #SexStrike had a sufficiently powerful support base would have been prudent, but I can now only assume she was willing to take that risk.
And yes, her call did indeed get attention (which unfortunately includes the wrong attention, but Dave has given a better assessment of that than I can). But I am more inclined to focus more on the practical applications of such things: what good is all that attention if nothing comes of it other than a brief flurry of shitposting? I did note in the article you linked, the sex strike worked in part because it galvanized their husbands to take action against a war they may not have approved of but simply did not wish to act on it. The abortion issue on the other hand is far more divisive, and has a lot more men who will actively and aggressively oppose it.
Call me a cynic or just overly resigned to the status quo, but in cases like these the only viable approach to dealing with throwbacks like the people who passed the law is to wait it out long enough for them to get voted out of office so a new law can be made to override it. Everything else just feels like it would require a small miracle to succeed.
I thought the whole MGTOW movement was meant to be a “relationship strike”, the purported male equivalent of what is being discussed here.
I immediately thought of Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. They ended a war!
@jenninsb
On the other hand, in their case they had the advantage that they could count on the support of the people.
If things in Liberia had been the way they are in Georgia now- where anti-abortion sentiment is common among the public (as opposed to the situation in Liberia where most people regardless of their political beliefs would have the common cause of not wanting to be at constant risk of death)- would it have been as successful?
O/T: This Twitter thread. The poster is not responsible for broken or destroyed sarcasm meters.
I hate the entire “women don’t enjoy sex” narrative, but the sad thing is that I’m not surprised due to how society treats any form of female desire and when it can’t be quashed or forcibly hidden away everyone always has to dress it up as something else or explain it away, like how some people twist themselves in circles to explain that women can’t just enjoy any piece of art or media because the male lead looks hot.
And then it’s the massive homophobia that’s almost eradicated any attempts to show the male body as something desirable from mainstream media, whereas sexualized depictions of female bodies are ubiquitous even to the point even stuff aimed at straight women are chock full of it. Just to give one example, in one episode of Cake Boss, a woman asked the baker to make a cake for her bachelorette party (she was marrying a man) and gave the baker free hands to bake any form of cake he wanted for her, and he baked a cake in the shape of a busty woman’s torso in a revealing corset. Like, could anyone imagine a serious professional suggesting to bake a cake in the shape of a bare male torso with a Chippendale collar or something for the bachelor party of a straight guy?
At least to me, it’s kind of ridiculous that even stuff that’s explicitly made for straight women, like Titanic or the 50 Shades movies, there’s still nude scenes for the female lead, but the male leads never show anything you wouldn’t see in a regular sports magazine, least any potential straight men in the audience get icked out.
And meanwhile, gamer girls making any complaint whatsoever on female video game characters wearing literal lingerie into battle get told to suck it up and deal with it or be labeled puritan shrews, but when the Final Fantasy devs made a revealing costume for a male character, there was so much protests among male gamers that they were forced to change him.
So it’s not that straight women don’t have sexual desires or find male bodies attractive, it’s just that for many women, it takes a great deal longer to find out what they want and an even more time to find the time to admit that they want it at all when basically all of society tells them otherwise, whereas straight men gets catered to with tons of stuff tailored just for them right off the bat.
And as for lesbians, I’ve no idea how the idiots claiming that no women want sex explain their existence.
@Scanisaurus:
To folks like these, lesbians only do it to be hot and more attractive to guys.
(I’m not joking; there was a story on Not Always Right about a woman saying her male co-worker pretty much said exactly that. He apparently didn’t believe lesbians were actually interested in women so much as they were using that to attract other attention.)
@Eddie McNaughton, giver of shitty love advice:
Srsly? I was literally the most ignored girl in my class at school. When I wasn’t the most despised. I was the class brain, go figure. I was a literal, actual female incel, and yet I never shot up my school. At worst, I tried not to cry about it in the bathroom. What is this fucking “erotic capital” nonsense you speak of, and where do I go to get me some?
(she wrote, dripping snark all down her cleavage…)
Whew, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’d so much prefer to just douse the whole suitcase in gasoline and torch that motherfucker. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument (and any lurkers out there who sincerely want to know), here goes:
No, “womanizers” and “players” DON’T know what women want. And no, they WON’T help you. Their “advice” isn’t worth shit. Because those mofos are only out for themselves, and women DON’T want one of those, unless they’re looking for a human dildo to use for a night and then forget in the morning. Never having done that, I can’t say I’d recommend it myself. The risks of pregnancy and STDs are just not worth it (Georgia legislators, are you listening???), and neither is the danger that the mofo might turn out to be another Ted Bundy, or another Green River Killer. So no, NO “advice” from pickup assholes. EVER. Unless you want to fail with women repeatedly, and at life in general. Because those guys are shit-awful people. And who wants to have sex with a shit-awful person?
Women have ideals because we have STANDARDS, guys. We can accept that a potential partner may not match all our criteria, but you’d be amazed what we’re willing to put up with if we actually LIKE the person. Or if the person actually manages to find our sexual sweet spots and cares enough about making those spots happy. Or, holy shit, we both like them enough AND manage to orgasm with them on a regular enough basis to make it worth staying with them.
So, uh, in conclusion, DON’T take Eddie’s “advice”. He’s not Dear Abby, and there’s a reason for that. He sucks.
And not in the sexy way, either.
Kupo: Ok short clarification, no,
I don’t believe that haha, I said “apparently more coherent” as less clearly untrue, but I worded that post bad I realize :).
That is sadly very widely believed.
Yeah, and more, at one level, that even if it was the case, they could just do that, if it was just physical and mechanic, but it isn’t as their post show. And that even women do that, some very often like it used to be only attributed to men.
And a good masturbation is better than a bad partner, especially abusive one. To us that’s captain obvious and a platitude, of course, but not to mysogynist and terpers.
P.s can’t believe such a law passed, I hope the other judges won’t be so fundamentalist as the new two.
@Knitting Cat Lady:
You’re not the only one to have thought so: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/13/a-sex-strike-is-not-enough-women-need-to-down-tools-completely
Eh, I think it’s a good rule of thumb to #sexstrike men who oppose abortion rights.
Not that they were a candidate for sex involving me in the first place, so it’s sort of like my boycotting Walmart.
@Katamount
And notice how this elides by the entire bulk of sexual activity..by one’s self.
Yes, we know they assume this is women withholding sex , specifically from male individuals, but this assumption about women not having sex only works if they, honestly and truly believe women never pleasure themselves. Or that doesn’t count as sex?
IMHO they do not believe this. It’s just another episode or fake outrage manufactured to have an excuse to spread misogyny.
Aside: I had an ex who got extremely bent out of shape whenever I pointed out anyone always had the option of having sex by themselves if they couldn’t find the right person. It was disturbingly irrational, like dude, you are the ONLY person you have a RIGHT to expect sex from. It was as if all he was hearing was, “If I have to masturbate, I am being rejected for all time” or something….
Well, there’s always birth control…….
Until, after anti-abortion laws are in place and some judge decides that all birth control (except barrier methods, like the condom & the diaphragm) are abortifacients, and declares them illegal.
YOU might know they aren’t, but Fundies know better.
A really serious issue is how is “abortion” defined in a states law. Is it banning a specific medical procedure (“abortion”), or any procedure that may terminate the life of a zygote, embryo or fetus, (a d & c)? If a woman has a spontaneous abortion or a miscarriage, how do they determine the pregnancy is over so they can proceed to the d & c? (it happened to me).
Will treating ectopic pregnancies become illegal?
Will these laws become a stepping stone to barring pregnant women from medical treatments that might kill the fetus?
@Hypatia’s Daughter:
Probably. Women have already been criminally charged after miscarriages under less ridiculous laws. This new law focuses on charging the doctor, thus guaranteeing that no legitimate doctor will actually want to risk performing the procedure.
(And, as you probably know, the ‘birth control==abortifacient’ argument was what was used by Hobby Lobby to refuse to pay for birth control as part of a health plan. An argument the court accepted as ‘sincerely believed’, as if that should make a difference.)
Of course, the people who proposed it have also made no secret of the fact that they WANT it to be challenged in the hopes of riding the challenge up to the Supreme Court to attack Roe v. Wade.
@Bina
I can relate, and I think this mindset comes from these idiots literally not seeing any women that don’t fit their arbitrary attractiveness standard. Like, any woman who isn’t thin and have a perfect face (or even just any woman who isn’t actively working on making themselves attractive to random men right there and then) is practically invisible to them, unless they want something to be angry at for not catering to them.
Sex robots may be on the way, but I’m waiting for Dors Venabili.
Not wanting sex with misogynist asswipes is not the same thing as not liking sex. I’m surprised that geniuses like Scott Gurstein and his friends haven’t figured that out yet. (sarcasm)