Category: feminism

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alpha males cannibalism douchebaggery feminism man boobz review misogyny patriarchy violence against men/women

Man Boobz review: Lucky McKee’s The Woman

World-class douchebag

I wrote earlier this year about the controversy swirling around Lucky McKee’s film The Woman. After a midnight showing at Sundance last January, one angry man in the audience stood up and denounced the film as a “disgusting movie” that “degrades women.” Given McKee’s nuanced treatment of gender issues in his previous films May and The Woods, I suspected that this outraged critic had completely missed the point.

Now I’ve finally gotten to see the film and, yep, he did. The Woman isn’t a misogynist film; it’s a film about misogyny. The Woman revolves around a cheerful , self-satisfied and and superficially charming country lawyer who captures a ferocious feral woman he spots on a hunting trip and chains her in the cellar in what he perversely sees as an attempt to “civilize” her. A patriarchal king of his castle, he introduces her to the rest of the family and assigns them all chores relating to her upkeep.

I don’t really want to give away much more than this; suffice it to say that as the film progresses we learn just how much of an odious psychopath this “family man” really is. But while the film offers a savage critique of his cruelty, and his misogyny, none of the women in the film are unambiguously noble victims, and when they begin to fight back the story is no simple tale of feminist empowerment. It’s a bit more subtle and unsettling than that.

While less overtly violent than, say, your typical Saw film, The Woman is a film that’s often, and by design, hard to take.  Yes, there are some grisly deaths, but this isn’t a film that glories in gore for gore’s sake; it’s really about cruelty and complicity and feeling trapped, the ways in which fucked-up families can ensnare even outsiders in their toxic dynamics.

Naturally, the film has drawn sharply mixed reactions from critics. It got a glowing review from Andy Webster in the New York Times, who described the cast as “remarkable” and praised the way McKee invests the film’s “a powerful parable with an abundance of closely observed details.”  Marc Holcomb of the Village Voice, meanwhile, dismissed it as “torture porn for people who’d never admit to liking torture porn.” (He also noted sardonically that the feral woman is “apparently tame enough to shave her armpits.” And her legs too, I might add; under the caked-on-grime, she’s what the PUAs would probably rate a HB10. )

But the strangest review I’ve seen so far is one by Rene Rodriguez in the Miami Herald, who perversely describes the film as, er, fun. While acknowledging the film’s feminist themes, she dismisses them as mere window-dressing:

[C]ome on: You want a feminist movie, go rent Norma Rae. The Woman is the sort of horror picture designed to make you throw popcorn at the screen, groan with disgust and shriek out loud when McKee springs a shock on you. …  Good times.

Really? Were you throwing popcorn at the screen during Antichrist too?

Of course, it doesn’t exactly help – as Rodriguez and a couple of other reviewers have noted – that the film’s publicists sent out the DVD screener  with a barf bag “just in case.” The Woman deserves better than that.

EDITED TO ADD: Regular Man Boobz commenters might want to check out this thread on the IMDb forums, in which a (somewhat oversimplified) discussion of the feminist themes in the film is quickly derailed by a dude who thinks it laughable that a mere woman could possibly overpower the family patriarch:

I feel sorry for you and any other woman who truly believes that they can physically overpower a man.

You know, if women are just as physically capable as men, I’d love to start my own inter-gender boxing league. Sign me up, baby! Equality at its finest. 🙂

The Woman: Official Site

And the trailer:

Categories
douchebaggery feminism idiocy men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny music racism rape rapey that's not funny!

Life Before Feminism: The future inspiration for Austin Powers records the worst song in history.

Peter Wyngarde will not make you horny, baby.

Sorry, folks, no regular post until tomorrow. But to tide you over, might I draw your attention to possibly the most offensively misogynist song in history? (Trigger Warning: I’m about to describe what is possibly the most offensively misogynist song in history.) It’s a song recorded in 1970 by British actor Peter Wyngarde – star of several 60s spy dramas and allegedly an inspiration for Austin Powers.

The music itself is not the problem – it’s peppy and punchy, and sounds like a lot of crime/spy soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. No, the problem comes from, well, it comes from Wyngarde. The star, as Bret at Egg City Radio points out,

chose not to go the easy listening/pop route, instead bizarrely delving into lurid and sometimes flat-out stupid spoken word interludes.

Not just stupid, but offensive. Really offensive. Case in point:

a little three-minute ditty entitled “Rape”, in which Wyngarde not only seems to extolling the virtues of rape, but also executes a handful of wheedling barf-bag racial stereotypes that would make even Jerry Lewis blush. It must be heard to be believed … .

Well, yes and no. The idea that back in 1970 some dude might think it hilarious to do a song that was basically one big rape joke? Not that shocking. That he might add some horrifyingly “funny” racism into the mix? Also not completely shocking. That the record is mixed in such a way that it is nearly impossible to tell what Wyngarde – an actor who presumably knows how to enunciate – is saying? Now that’s a little shocking. I would have thought the record executives behind this cash-in project would have hired a more competent producer.

You can download the whole album at Egg City Radio.

Did I mention that it’s titled “When Sex Leers its Inquisitive Head?”

EDITED TO ADD: Woah, the song is up on YouTube. I didn’t even bother to check, because I assume it violates pretty much all of YouTube’s rules, but here it is. Thanks to Donsie in the comments for the link.

Categories
creepy feminism hypocrisy misogyny oppressed men patriarchy rape reactionary bullshit sexual harassment threats

Two atheists get in an elevator

So here’s a hilarious atheist joke for you all:

Two atheists at a conference get into an elevator at 4 AM. The dude atheist, apropos of nothing, invites the chick atheist to go to his room with him. The chick atheist, who’s never even spoken to the dude before, is creeped out by this. (She says no.) She mentions the incident in a YouTube video. A shitstorm erupts in the atheist-o-sphere because, like, how could she possibly call an atheist dude a creep and aren’t women treated worse in Islamist Theocracies?

Then Richard Dawkins says,

Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard

In a followup comment, Dawkins tops that bit of hilarity with this:

Rebecca’s feeling that the man’s proposition was ‘creepy’ was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.

Damn. That joke didn’t turn out to be really very hilarious at all. Maybe I told it wrong?

In any case, as you might already know (or have gathered), this whole thing actually happened over the past weekend. The atheist chick in question is Rebecca Watson, a popular blogger who calls herself Skepchick. The conference in question was the Center for Inquiry’s Student Leadership Conference. The part of Richard Dawkins was played by, well, Richard Dawkins. (You can find both of his comments quoted here.)

The incident has been hashed and rehashed endlessly in the atheist-o-sphere (and even out of it), but I think it deserves a tiny bit more re-rehashing.  Mainly because it illustrates that some really creepy, backwards attitudes can lurk deep in the hearts of dudes who think of themselves as enlightened, rational dudes fighting the evils of superstition and, yes, religious misogyny.

The strangest thing about the whole incident is how supremely mild Watson’s comments on the creepy elevator dude were.  Here is literally all she said about him, in passing, in her video (transcribed here):

So I walk to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?’

Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don’t do that. You know, I don’t really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I’ll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and–don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You would think that most guys would be well aware that accosting a woman you’ve never met before in an elevator at 4 AM is, you know, kind of a no-no. But, no, Watson’s comments suddenly became an attack on male sexuality and men in general. One critic put up a video lambasting Watson, ending it with the question:

What effect do you think it has on men to be constantly told how sexist and destructive they are?

Never mind that she didn’t, you know, actually do that at all. Nor did she even remotely suggest, despite Dawkins’ weird screed, that creepy dudes on elevators were somehow equivalent to genital mutilation or the general denial of women’s rights in Islamist theocracies.  She merely suggested that guys might want to think twice before hitting on women who are alone with them in an elevator at four in the morning.  Pointing out the creepy behavior of one particular dude is not the same as calling all men creepy.

Now, the atheist movement tends to be a bit of a sausagefest, pervaded by some fairly backwards notions about women. (Prominent atheist  pontificator Christopher Hitchens, you may recall, seems to sincerely believe that women just aren’t funny. Not that he’s exactly a barrel of monkeys himself.) But some of the most vociferous critics of Watson have been other atheist women – including the one I quoted above.

Watson responded to this in the first of several posts she wrote about the whole weird controversy:

I hear a lot of misogyny from skeptics and atheists, but when ancient anti-woman rhetoric like the above is repeated verbatim by a young woman online, it validates that misogyny in a way that goes above and beyond the validation those men get from one another. It also negatively affects the women who are nervous about being in similar situations. Some of them have been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, and some just don’t want to be put in that position. And they read these posts and watch these videos and they think, “If something were to happen to me and these women won’t stand up for me, who will?”

In a followup post, she noted:

When I started this site, I didn’t call myself a feminist. I had a hazy idea that feminism was a good thing, but it was something that other people worried about, not me. I was living in a time and culture that had transcended the need for feminism, because in my world we were all rational atheists who had thrown off our religious indoctrination so that I could freely make rape jokes without fear of hurting someone who had been raped.

And then I would make a comment about how there could really be more women in the community, and the responses from my fellow skeptics and atheists ranged from “No, they’re not logical like us,” to “Yes, so we can fuck them!” That seemed weird.

Watson began hearing from other women in the skeptic/atheist community who’d met far too many of that second sort of male atheist.

They told me about how they were hit on constantly and it drove them away. I didn’t fully get it at the time, because I didn’t mind getting hit on. But I acknowledged their right to feel that way and I started suggesting to the men that maybe they relax a little and not try to get in the pants of every woman who walks through the door.

And then, as her blog garnered more attention, she faced a virtual invasion of creepy dudes being creepy:

I’ve had more and more messages from men who tell me what they’d like to do to me, sexually. More and more men touching me without permission at conferences. More and more threats of rape from those who don’t agree with me, even from those who consider themselves skeptics and atheists. More and more people telling me to shut up and go back to talking about Bigfoot and other topics that really matter.

She didn’t shut up.

So here we are today. I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one. Every time I mention, however delicately, a possible issue of misogyny or objectification in our community, the response I get shows me that the problem is much worse than I thought, and so I grow angrier. I knew that eventually I would reach a sort of feminist singularity where I would explode and in my place would rise some kind of Captain Planet-type superhero but for feminists. I believe that day has nearly arrived.

Go read the rest of her post. Despite the creepy dudes and the misogyny and Richard Fucking Dawkins’ patronizing little screed – which led Watson to a moment of despair much like that of virtually every movie hero(ine) at the end of act two in the story arc — Watson ends it fairly hopeful. It’s kind of inspiring, really.

Categories
disgusting women evil women feminism I am making a joke oppressed men precious bodily fluids vaginas

Aunt Flo: The Great Deceiver

"That time of the month" is actually a time of great joy for the ladies!

CONFIDENTIAL TO ALL GUYS

LADIES DO NOT READ

Guys, I think I may have been wrong about this whole “feminism” thing. It turns out that the ladies use what’s called their “periods” to manipulate men and act like perfect entitled princesses — at least, as perfect as you can be when you’re bleeding from your crotch!

Anyway, one of the ladies just spilled the beans in an interview with Jezebel. Rachel Kauder Nalebuff – that is so obviously a fake name – told Jezebel’s Anna North:

[F]rankly I … see [menstruation] as a free pass when it comes to getting out of a bind. Guys often know so little about menstruation that they assume the absolute worst. Maybe out of a fear of menstruation or, even more likely, a fear of seeming insensitive, guys tend to be incredibly generous when it comes to giving you freedom to tend to your “feminine needs.”

Menstruation? More like Men Ruination!!

I hereby renounce feminism.

Categories
feminism funny MRA reddit

Kate Beaton confuses the Reddit Men's Rightsers

 

From Hark, a vagrant. I photoshopped a little.

Hark, a vagrant, as I may have noted many times already, is pretty much the most hilarious comic in the world at the moment.  So recently the comic’s creator Kate Beaton got together with some of her cartoonist pals and did a bunch of cartoons featuring a gang of superheroines called the “STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS.”

Someone linked to them in Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit. Take a look at the comments.  The cartoons seem to have, well, confused the Men’s Rightsers just a little bit.

 

Categories
evil women feminism I am making a joke I'm totally being sarcastic

Happy Father's Day!

I got it. Run!

This picture depicts the only proper feminist way to celebrate F-Day. One girl covers dad’s eyes while the other steals his present! Ha, ha! More for them! Less for him! Stupid man.

This post was guest-written by NWOslave.*

 

—

*Just kidding.

Categories
bad boys feminism links masculinity misogyny MRA MRA paradox oppressed men

Ozymandias asks: Who cares about Men's Rights?

The Who does not care (about its equipment)

Great post by Ozymandias on her blog on the subject of “Who cares about men’s rights?” (Answer, Ozymandias, for one.) She offers a devastating critique of the Men’s Rights Movement and a critique of feminism I think I half-agree with as well.  (She critiques feminists for not caring enough about men’s issues and responding to them with “but what about the menz” mockery; I think she’s got a point, but the fact is that lots of feminists do in fact work on behalf of men and men’s issues, from feminists involved in fighting for men and women falsely accused of sex crimes to feminist shelter workers who work on a regular basis to help male victims of abuse.)

Anyway, you should pop on over and read it.

It’s being discussed all over Reddit as well.

The post also inspired a debate on the old “chicks only want to date jerks” thing, which she’s broken out into a separate post.

EDITED TO ADD: And now The Spearhead has noticed the post.

Categories
anti-Semitism feminism misandry misogyny MRA racism

The persistence of prejudice

The burning of the Jews in the Black Death pograms

Among those MRAs who are actually willing to acknowledge that women actually suffered oppression in the past, you sometimes find this argument: “Sure, things were bad for women back then – in the 1950s, or 1890, or whenever — but these days women don’t suffer from sexism. It’s men who are the real victims.”

This argument not only flies in the face of, you know, reality; it also reflects a naïve and simplistic understanding of how prejudice works, and why it persists. Misogyny, like other prejudices, is deeply rooted; it’s been around for literally thousands of years, and permeates culture and cultural/social/political institutions. The idea that a couple of decades of feminism have been enough to eradicate centuries-old attitudes and beliefs is, if you know anything at all about history or sociology or psychology, simply absurd.

How persistent is prejudice? A recent article in Slate looks at a historical study of anti-Semitism in Germany. As Ray Fisman notes in the Slate article, the study found that:

Communities that murdered their Jewish populations during the 14th-century Black Death pogroms were more likely to demonstrate a violent hatred of Jews nearly 600 years later. A culture of intolerance can be very persistent indeed.

Let’s just let that sink in for a second: Six. Hundred. Years. The noxious ideas of anti-Semites in the 14th century deeply affected what their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren believed (and did) when the Nazis rolled into town six centuries later. (I’m assuming an average 4 generations per century here; if that’s an incorrect assumption you may need to add or subtract a handful of “greats.”)

Here are more details, from the study’s abstract:

This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

As Fisman notes,

Changing any aspect of culture—the norms, attitudes, and “unwritten rules” of a group—isn’t easy. Beliefs are passed down from parent to child—positions on everything from childbearing to religious beliefs to risk-taking are transmitted across generations.

You can read more about the details of the study on Slate; the actual study is available here.

EDITED TO ADD: And, on a lighter note, here’s what happens when a “white-men-are-the-real-victims” dude (who clearly has been reading about pick-up artistry) goes a-courtin’ on OkCupid.

EDITED AGAIN: Added more details from the study’s abstract.

Categories
feminism life before feminism marriage strike misogyny MRA

Life Before Feminism: Playing "Old Maid"

Damn her and her high IQ!

Sometimes it’s useful to remember just what the early second wave feminists were reacting against. Here, from a comic circa 1970 (judging from the clothing) is a sort of double-whammy of misogyny: hide your smarts, girls, or you’ll end up a wizened old maid at the ripe old age of … twenty?

The MRAs today who prattle on about how declining marriage rates mean that men are wising-up to the evils of feminism need to remind themselves that delaying marriage is a good thing for both men and women (the earlier the marriage, the greater the likelihood of divorce; the later the marriage, the more time for men and women to get decent education, start a career, mature a bit, etc etc). In the fifties, obviously, the pressure for women (and to a lesser degree, men) to marry very young was immense. This comic suggests that these pressures didn’t vanish with the coming of the sixties counterculture or even with the first stirrings of second wave feminism.

Comic from Comically Vintage.

Categories
feminism MGTOW misandry misogyny MRA rape sex

Hating female sexuality: Is it normal?

You'll see why I used this picture in a minute.

So I recently ran across a site called “Is It Normal?” The idea behind it is simple, and kind of wonderful: people confess some possibly odd thing about themselves, and others tell them if it’s normal. Now, normally (as it were) I’m against the too-rigid enforcement of what is considered “normal” behavior, especially when it comes to sexuality and sex roles. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here. Ohhhh, no. We’re talking about grown men and women eating their own boogers; having sexual fantasies about zombies; feeling an urge to jump off of high places;  or wanting to be turned into a doll or manikin. (Hey, whatever floats your boat.)

Naturally, I did a search for “misogyny” just to see what turned up. Is that a normal thing to do? I don’t know, and I don’t care, but I did it and the search pulled up a couple of pretty interesting little discussions.

The one that really grabbed my attention was from a guy who said he hated female sexuality. Which may not be “normal,” though as readers of this blog know it’s not uncommon. But this guy is  no Christopher from Oregon, whose hatred of female sexuality is part of a package deal that includes hatred for pretty much everything female.

No, this guy hates female sexuality in part because, well, he thinks the male body is ugly and so assumes – or at least feels on a gut level —  that any woman having sex with a man is being coerced, bamboozled, or raped. Yep, we’re talking about a rich and toxic stew of misogyny and misandry here. Let’s let him explain:

I Hate Female Sexuality

What little mysogyny I have in me is directed at female sexuality. I can’t stand it that females are attracted to males, ever. I hate them a little for it, just feel it in my gut. I thought for a long time when I was younger that females were basically asexual, not interested in sex, and that romance for them was something far removed from physical love. It didn’t occur to me that anyone might find the male form attractive, and I always suspected males were using some form of deception or raping women in some way when they were with them. I don’t understand this hate and distrust for my own sex. It really bothers me.

I hate that I feel there’s something wrong with a female having an active sexuality when I know intellectually there’s not. I’m a passionate feminist and attracted to females myself. I don’t really understand this feeling.

I think maybe a small part of it is jealousy when I see a couple, and the rest mostly my wierd, incongruous hatred for the male sex.

I don’t think females are doing something wrong but that something wrong is being done to them when they engage in sexual activity, even consentual, with a male, and they’re allowing it to happen, are complicit in it. This is just a feeling I have and can’t shake. It’s not overwhelming, like I’m freaking out whenever I see a couple but it’s there a lot, subtle but persistent. I’m atheist and I’m not someone who belives sexual promiscuity is wrong or even undesirable in male or females. This is just a wierd, lingering emotional problem, like fear of the dark or something like that.

Is it normal?

So, yeah. For what it’s worth, only 14% of those reading this confession rated it normal.  But, as I said, I don’t think it’s uncommon. We grow up, after all, in a society that treats sexuality as a commodity that women possess, and that men try to “get” from women – by charming them into “giving it up,” by buying it directly or indirectly (by going to a prostitute or paying for dinner), or simply taking by force.

This way of thinking about sex is pretty deeply embedded in our culture; as regular readers of this blog know all too well, many MRAs, MGTOWers, and PUAs (especially) seem unable to conceive of sexuality in any other way. Neither does the questioner on Is It Normal (who goes by the name SamuraiPeeper), even though he’s a self-described feminist.

Like a lot of misogynistic ideas, this “women own sex, men must fight to get it” idea contains a heaping helping of misandry as well – suggesting that women basically don’t enjoy or desire sex with men because male bodies and male sexuality are inherently disgusting. It’s only a few small steps from this to SamuraiPeeper’s whole muddled mixture of desire and disgust, hatred and self-hatred.

The biggest difference between SamuraiPeeper and the MGTOWers and other misogynists I write about here is that he’s aware that his views are fucked up, and is trying actively to work through his issues. And he’s actually gotten some good responses to his query on Is It Normal?

PoisonFlowers suggests that some of his hatred and disgust probably stems from a fear of female sexuality:

Is it misogyny? I don’t think it’s as clear cut as that. Perhaps because the image you had of women (almost an idealised impression it seems) when you were younger has been destroyed (instead of having romance that is above sex, it turns out that women can be just as animalistic as men), you feel a sort of resentment and that mixes with the jealousy and then as you say “a weird, incongruous hatred for the male sex.” This then becomes a strong dislike for female sexuality.

Why do you have these feelings about men? Is it the people you’ve been surrounded with throughout your life and their behaviour/attitudes? Have you witnessed a man being abusive towards a woman at any point in your life? …

You say that you feel as though “something wrong is being done to them,” which could point to an urge in you to protect women, or perhaps it is more accurate to say to protect the _idea_ you have of women that stems from the concept you had when you were younger.

randomsensuality offers some similar observations:

It definitely sounds like you want to protect the idea of females as pure, with an almost divine stature. It also sounds like you have been taught or embraced the idea that penetrative sex is inherently degrading or immoral: therefore a woman who enjoys it is equally so.

Another bit on the matter is that many men do not find it attractive when women lead the hunt, as it were. They want to be the ones in control, in the pursuit of the sex and relationships. If a woman is as much “on the prowl” as he is, then he can’t say that it was a full conquest. He wants to know he’s been where others have failed to enter, that it took his prowess to crack the nut, setting him apart and making his mate a trophy and attribute to his stature.

Lets also not forget the angle of loathing the male form, which you say you can’t understand a woman being attracted to. If you are heterosexual male, this makes sense. Of course it’s easier to wrap your brain around lesbian sex, you like women, you understand innately attraction to women. Attraction to men, is scary for more than that reason though. If a woman is attracted to a man, then she could be attracted to any man the way a man can be attracted to any woman: this vision of the situation can induce pre-emptive jealousy and defensiveness.

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old girl calling herself so_damn_unpretty offers a blunter response – and one that might do the questioner as much good as the longer, more thoughtful responses:

I love men… and cock.. and sex… so i really cant relate.

In the end, that’s probably the most important takeaway here, as they like to say in the business world. Women – most women, anyway – genuinely like and enjoy sex as much as men. Sometimes more. When a guy “scores” with a woman — she is also “scoring” with him. Rigid gender roles that define man as the sexual pursuer and women as the sexual prize may make it hard to see this, but it’s true. Not only that, but women – heterosexual women, anyway – actually like and enjoy the male body.

Guys, know this: while you are watching sports, or playing video games, or playing with yourself, or knitting (or whatever your favorite hobby is), there are thousands of women writing, sharing, and reading slash fic about dudes (from various TV shows and movies and books) getting it on with each other. There are no women in these stories, at least not in the dirty parts. Just dudes, and their dude bodies, having dude sex with each other. Freud once asked: what do women want? And to that we have a partial answer: stories about Sam and Dean from Supernatural penetrating one another’s deepest  mysteries.