By David Futrelle
The Relationships subreddit — which thousands of Redditors turn to for relationship advice, and which millions more turn to for creepy vicarious entertainment — has always been a tad, well, asymmetric, gender-wise: the relationship problems that women tend to write in about tend to be exponentially more horrific than the complaints sent in by guys.
A guy will write in complaining that his girlfriend wants to watch something other than The Boondock Saints during their weekly “Netflix and Chill” date — “should I dump her for her lack of appreciation for this cinematic masterpiece?” Meanwhile, some poor woman will ask if they’re really in the wrong for complaining about their boyfriend’s ever-growing accumulation of piss bottles, now taking up half the living room — “after all, he tells me repeatedly, and very loudly, he pays half the rent.”
I made these examples, up, but trust me, they’re no weirder than the real thing. Yesterday, for example, one poor Reddit girlfriend turned to her fellow Redditors for advice on a novel relationship dilemma: Should she take a dump in front of her boyfriend to prove she isn’t cheating on him?
If you’re perplexed by that question, gird your loins, and read on:
I’m sure most of you will agree that the only dumping that should take place is her dumping him. Unless, perhaps, she decides to take the advice of Talia Lavin on Twitter:
Given the circumstances, this seems pretty reasonable to me.
Assuming this is a true story, that is. I mean, this is Reddit; the story was posted by a throwaway account; people have been known to go online and tell lies sometimes; etc. Still, everything I’ve learned about my fellow dudes over the course of my lifetime suggests that it’s at least a plausible story. I want to believe, and so in this case I will.
Note: Sorry to have to resort to screenshots for this one, but the mods of the Relationships subreddit nuked the original post. I borrowed the screenshots from @redditships on Twitter, which posts amazing crap like this on a regular basis.
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@Cat Mara
Interesting info, good to know.
Indeed, I’m really sick of this entire double standard in everything.
When Dormousing_it mentioned the movie Salo I was reminded of the double standard in movies, because I’ve seen tons of movies where horrific violence against women are shown on screen in the name of realism, yet the only movie I could think of that showed both men and women subjected to wartime rape was that, and it’s a movie deliberately made to be the world’s most shocking movie, that also featured the gross scene already mentioned.
Meanwhile, I was looking up some random recent films for different content warnings not long ago, and I came across this description of all the CWs for a recent holocaust drama, where they warned that the movie featured many scenes of people getting horribly killed, including a very explicit scene of women having to strip and be sent to die in the gas chambers, and later a scene where a man has to undo his pants to prove he’s circumcised, but it’s below the frame, and it just struck me how ridiculous it was, that the filmmakers were 100% fine with showing naked women dying horribly on the screen, but a man’s penis? Oh no, wouldn’t want the gritty holocaust movie to be inappropriate to children and sensitive viewers! /s
And this isn’t exclusive to that movie either, because I’ve seen the exact same pattern in nearly all modern adult tv series too, female nude scenes is default, but male frontal nudity is more taboo than even the most horrific violence, and I think it’s very symptomatic of our times that anything that makes your average man uncomfortable is hidden away out of sight, be it male nudity or the fact that women have bodily functions, and we’ll keep seeing guys like the one in the original post as long as society bends over backwards to accommodate them but anything making women uncomfortable is treated as necessary.
@Z&T:
Could be worse. I had some friends who were frying up hot peppers at one point. Somebody jostled the pan and spilled some water in it.
They pretty much tear gassed themselves out of the kitchen.
@Vucodlak:
I’ll admit to being one of those people who could probably sit and eat lasagna while surgeons at the table are talking shop about the weird things that they’d run into. Sounds like you’re the same way.
Back in University I’d become friendly with a young woman who had just moved into the residence building one September. One evening as dinner was ending and only a few people were still in the dining hall, a couple of the freshmen were very obviously playing ‘try to gross out the girl’ and doing somewhat disgusting things at their table. I turned to my friend and said, “They obviously don’t know what your summer job was, do they?”
She just snorted, and said, “Nope.”
(Said summer job was as a nursing assistant at an extended care facility. Yeah, once you’ve emptied bedpans, a couple of idiot teenagers doing inappropriate things with their food doesn’t even register.)
@Scanisaurus:
I agree – it is a double standard. And, it doesn’t seem to have changed much over the past 40 years. Well, that may not be true.
When I was about 8 or 9 years old I asked my mother, with the innocence of a child, why women were seen fully or nearly naked in movies and ads, but men almost never were. My mother answered with something like “Well, women’s bodies are so much prettier.” She wasn’t about to try to explain to me the real reasons why. ..I probably wouldn’t have understood, anyway.
@Cat Mara:
Holy crap. This dude may have made a permanent (I think – I’m not sure – anatomy & biology isn’t my strong suit) change to his genitals, for the sake of a marginal cosmetic alteration. What kind of a doctor would do this.
And yet, pictures of topless men are permissible within the Facebook “community standards” but photos of topless women are considered nudity and are censored. Instagram is also doing the same thing(women have to block out their nipples or they get booted). Prior to the 1920s, women were required to cover everything but their hands and their heads in public. If you google images of 19th century western bathing suits, you’ll find that women’s swimwear was loose fitting by social requirement. There was even a woman arrested in 1922 for wearing a one piece bathing suit. Modesty standards through the centuries were mainly aimed at women and not men. I find that contemporary women who are bothered by female exhibitionism are quite often very insecure about their own bodies and feel envious towards other women with more confidence than themselves.
@Dormousing_it:
Indeed. As far as I know, the suspensory ligament can grow back under some circumstances but again as far as I know, this procedure is normally reserved for men who have genuine problems with the ligament– if it’s too short, for example, and makes erections painful, or the man has a micropenis. Neither was the case here: the guy had a perfectly average endowment but just wanted it “bigger”. The ethics of the surgeons who carried it out were definitely suspect.
Of course, this article appeared in a “lads mag” so the level of discussion was pretty much limited to “big dick lol” and accompanied by edgy (i.e., gross) images of the guy post-operation with drains and other surgical apparatus hanging out of him to control the swelling. ? Very exploitative.
Off Topic, but I couldn’t find the most recent open thread.
I decided to go ahead and make a collection of our sea shanties and other folk songs over on my blog.
If you want yours included, you can post it there or drop a note to me and I’ll post it, but I didn’t want to use others’ work without permission and I also thought some folks might want a chance to do an edit or two. I didn’t change much on mine, but I did tweak each of them a tiny bit.
The post on my blog can be found here.
Obviously new works are just as welcome as anything from that masterful WHTM thread with Desperate Ambrose.
Thanks again to Cat Mara for inspiring the whole thing!
@Dormousing_it
I’d say in some ways, it’s gotten worse, since at least in the 70’s you’d see some movies with an equal amount of male and female nudity, and as Cat Mara said, at least then women were allowed to show body hair.
@BTGG
Are you serious? I made a complaint on how western society is bending over backwards to avoid any situation where straight men might see male private parts, and I’m the puritan?
I may have implied that I thought filming scenes of women being naked while also being humiliated and murdered was a gross and exploitative artistic choice, and that I’m tired of random female nudity in practically every adult TV-series currently produced, but at no point whatsoever did I complain about women choosing to wear revealing swimsuits or skimpy clothing in their daily lives. I was complaining that there is an insane double standard where straight men never have to see other men in a way that makes them uncomfortable, they don’t even have to say it because nearly all mainstream media creators already take it for granted, but women are just supposed to grin and bear it or be labeled puritan harpies, and it’s virtually impossible for an actress to get a good career if she’s not willing to expose her breasts or butt, but men aren’t forced to expose anything that isn’t acceptable at a regular beach if they want to have an acting career. Just look at this song where Seth MacFarlane sings “We saw your boobs” at the Oscars and then proceeds to list a bunch of actresses and the movies where they exposed them, and then look at the facial expressions of those mentioned. Do you honestly think that it’d be acceptable to have a female comedian sing “We saw your dick” and then list a bunch of famous male actors and the movies where they showed them? Would there even be enough famous male actors doing that to fill an entire song?
And the overwhelming amount of female nudity in fiction is not the result of female exhibitionism, it’s the result of straight men writing stories featuring female nudity and then only casting women willing to be naked on camera after the fact, not the other way around.
Now, I do think banning breastfeeding women in public or topless sunbathing at beaches is repressive and idiotic, but pressuring women into uncovering themselves is no less oppressive than pressuring them into covering themselves, just look at the muslim women forced by police to remove clothing at public beaches.
OK, I’ve literally heard the exact same argument from MRAs and misogynists at women complaining at unrealistic beauty standards and objectification of female bodies, it always boils down to arguing that they’re just jealous because they are ugly, or fat, or mentally ill, and they’re the ones that are insecure, not the men feeling entitled to getting to see attractive naked women on demand.
And yes, some women are insecure about their bodies, and guess why? Because while our society pretends to celebrate female sexual liberation, the only female bodies that are allowed to be shown are those of young and slim to the point of anorexia (yet also with big breasts) with flawless skin, and these images are forced onto girls everywhere in their lives, while the bodies of anyone not slim or young or with perfect skin, or even just with regular levels of body hair, are mercilessly ridiculed, treated as renovation projects that must be fixed by any means necessary, or hidden away entirely, and those types of bodies are almost just as taboo now as before the sexual revolution, and not everyone wants to feel forced to expose their bodies in order to be accepted..
If this were a discussion sbout choices women make, you might have a point. But the discussion was about how media portrays women. So you’re comparing the way TV and Film studios objectify and sexualize the female body to the way men and women are policed in their own interactions on social media. Do you not realize that both of these are caused by the same thing? Holy fuck, dude.
@kupo
Thanks, you’ve worded it better than I did.
Women are also encouraged to police each other’s sexuality and many comply in order to prove they’re not slutty. So there’s also that.
I’m someone with a lot of body image issues who is frequently jealous of other women’s looks. Although not in the hateful kind of way. But it’s not like this only activates when a woman is nude or scantily clad. I can tell when a fully clothed woman is thinner or more toned than me.
Anyway. I saw Wild Things in the theater (don’t judge me) and Kevin Bacon has a full frontal nude scene. All the men in the audience cried out in shock and horror. Like it was the most traumatizing thing in the world to see a flacid penis. But that’s how uncommon it is. A year later I saw the movie again in the college dorms with a big group of friends. One of the guys actually warned the other guys when the penis was nigh so they could avert their delicate eyes. That guy later came out. So I expect he was doing some performative toxic masculinity as a cover. He’s from a small conservative town and hadn’t yet realized that his friends at our school would accept him for who he was.
@ crip dyke
If you can make it over you can crash at my place.
https://www.falmouthseashanty.co.uk/
The flaccid penis is a shock, but happens; when are we ever going to see a star with an erection? (I still don’t buy that scene in The Piano when Harvey Keitel comes out naked to announce he wants to lie down next to Holly Hunter, but is as limp as a flag on a windless day.) I suppose the argument there is that female frontal nudity isn’t a naked crotch shot, so we’re not really looking at their genitals…
The weirder aspect, though, is the trend for CGI penises. Is it because male stars don’t want to bare it, or because the filmmakers don’t think they look right? Everyone was quite rightly cheering when American Gods had the gay Muslim sex scene. Except that the dicks weren’t real. Why on earth not? (OK, so maybe they were only CGI in the “Everything is CGI” part of the scene, but it’s definitely happened elsewhere.)
Male stars’ dicks: May be as fake as the women’s boobs, but with less silicone involved.
Tempting, Alan!
Don’t have the money now, but yeah… maybe in a year or two.
Best male nude scene ever in A Fish Called Wanda (though we never to get the penis):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSK3BpSfULo
When I first saw it, I couldn’t imagine an American actor doing that scene.
That is actually what I’m referring to. Bear in mind that these days, it is social media that has a bigger influence on what people do and how they dress than mainstream media(movies, TV, and internet celebrities).
Also, I’ve noticed that MRAs are more focused on slut shaming, jerking off to Anime, and fantasizing about having a virgin bride than chastising modest women.
@BTGG
No, you were replying to a criticism about media. Media that the majority of people making decisions on are male. And you werebeing an ass to a woman and accusing her of being jealous. You’re being a huge fucking ass, and it’s completely uncalled for.
They CGI out Tom Hiddleston bulge in the Thor movies because the pants they had him in were so tight. I still laugh at the fact that someone was hired by marvel to keep Loki hammer under wraps for a pg-13 movie.
Yet the Bowie bulge in Labyrinth remains wild and free.
@WWTH:
And turned more girls straight than you can count.
Maybe they assumed everyone would think it was just another puppet?
@Lainy:
Makes sense. Only Thor’s allowed to have a hammer, right?
@Rabbid Rabbit
I remember reading Naomi Wolf arguing in The beauty myth that media depictions of a limp penis should be treated as on par with a woman’s breasts for this reason, combined with the fact that a man’s bare torso is considered acceptable to show in public and not something inherently sexual (they can certainly be depicted as sexually alluring, but shirtless men aren’t automatically seen as sexual by default).
I also found a great quote by her that felt pretty topical:
Either way, while I can easily come up with tons of movies with lots of female nudity but all men are covered, the only movies I’ve ever seen with the opposite was A room with a view, where the male characters briefly go skinny dipping, and an Icelandic movie called Rams, where we see a dazed old man stumble around in a scene that’s the stark opposite of fan-service.
@BTGG
I second everything kupo said, and your claim that MRA’s don’t chastise women for being modest or think media is important is BS, just look at all the uproar and review bombings of Captain Marvel, or when the Mortal Kombat franchise redesigned their female fighters to wear actual clothing instead of Borat-bikinis.
You replied to a comment where I expressed my frustration on how movie characters were treated on camera, and tried painting me as sexist for not treating figures on screen as real persons with agency, then accused me of being jealous and implied it was because I was less attractive than them. What on earth made you think that was OK?
@Scanisaurus: Naomi Wolf’s recent embarrassment in the media over her latest book reminded me of The Beauty Myth which I read in my teens. Particularly the bit in it about how women’s magazines are in thrall to their advertisers, most of whom are companies selling cosmetics that trade on women’s insecurities about their appearance, and are thus unable to promote any editorial stance that might threaten the status quo. Probably as true today as when she wrote it.
@Scanisaurus
Suddenly I’m reminded of how differently breasts are viewed in some cultures. I remember hearing about one case coming out of Africa (I don’t remember which part, unfortunately) where a woman managed to win a criminal case against her husband, accusing him of being a pervert because he sucked on her breasts. In that culture, breasts weren’t erotic, only there to be suckled by babies; I suspect (but again, I don’t remember which country this was) that this was one of the parts of the continent where women routinely go bare-chested.
Likewise, there are parts of Africa where you might struggle to find a padded or push-up bra, but could definitely find butt falsies, because that’s what’s prized.
Now I’m wondering how The Beauty Myth could be applied to different cultures, and how the much greater prevalence of nudity or near-nudity in some places (i.e. parts of Africa) inflects those societies, which can after all be quite stunningly sexist. How different is the sexism, though?
Anyone know of a good study about this?
@Cat Mara
Indeed, it’s why I don’t read women’s magazines.
@Rabid Rabbit
Well, it’s hard to see the theorethical framework of the book applied to other cultures since it was specifically written about the modern western world, although Naomi Wolf does bring up the fact that in all cultures, who gets to eat first and gets the finest pieces of the meal have the highest status, and thus explain the pressure on women to diet as a form of anti-feminist backlash against women gaining more rights in society. I strongly recommend reading the full book, as it brings up a range of related subjects.
As for nudity, among aboriginal peoples where it is accepted, that generally goes for both genders, but even then many tribes still have their own rules on what constitutes presentable. For example, I’ve read of an Amazonian tribe where they wore nothing but a string around their waists, however, to the tribes-people, as long as you were wearing the sting you were “dressed”, but if they dropped that string they counted as naked, so many people that would be seen as naked by western standards would be considered properly dressed in their native communities.
At any rate, I’d still say that in nearly all older societies where people did wear clothes, someone being naked or wearing less clothes marked lesser status, such as in the middle east where free women wore veils but slaves and prostitutes were forbidden from doing so specifically to mark their lesser status, and slave owners in the antebellum south would deliberately only give their slaves rags to wear while the white people were expected to be fully dressed at all times in public.
For sure, the Final Fantasy 7 remake is happening this year and already there’s incel screeching on YouTube about how the evil feminazis and SJWWWWS are going to “censor Tifa”. Which basically means taking her gag boobs/anime body down to realistic proportions as opposed to how it was presented in the OG game. Which had actually already been done in Advent Children in 2005, featuring a more realistically proportioned, but still beautiful, Tifa.
This example doesn’t prove scanisaurus’ point. Why? Because Tifa is a fictional character created with CGI. She isn’t even real. And that’s the point: When REAL LIFE women show off their bodies their cry foul with resentment. Not because real women are imperfect and don’t meet their standards, but because these real women won’t fuck them. A fantasy character is like an object you can control, but a real person with a physical body has agency and chooses not to share their body with these guys.
Ya’all have heard about #ThotAudit no? Manosphere denizens trying to use the IRS to punish online sex workers for not having sex with them.
I have always been quite befuddled though about the puritanical streak among 2nd wave feminists. Who have allied themselves with misogynistic religious fanatics to eradicate any display of female sexuality in the media or in public. Also, the statistical data used in Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” has been debunked. To the point where she had to retract some of her claims to preserve her credibility.