Following on from the more negative conclusions that came out of my last article, it seems as though there is a strong reason to be concerned about the messages that young people, and in particular, young males, are getting about sex from their exposure to porn; and more particularly, from their lack of exposure to any other sources.
As I mentioned, and as Phil BC commented there, it seems that a number of teenage boys are sneaking looks at pornography before they are supposed to be able to buy it (I bought my first porno mag when I was 16, and as soon as I was on the internet I was looking it up, so I know that the fascination is there and impossible to contain); but also, a disturbing number of them are taking pornography as a form of sex education (I'm having trouble finding online references to my original source for this, but googling the terms {teenage sex education porn} I found several male commentators saying things along the lines that porn was their "first sex education").
A few weeks ago, Penny Red wrote a piece referring to the proposals to bring yet more censorship laws into force in the UK, in which she had the following to say on sex education:
What I’d like to see is pornography with a plot: pornography in which grown men and women are equal players, in which sex is joyful, playful, soulful, awkward even, and never abusive. I’d like to put that most dangerous and illicit of things, tenderness, back into scripts, screenplays and directives. I’d like pornography to be beautiful. I’d like it to be made by producers, models and actresses who are enjoying what they are doing and who are union-protected. I’d like my porn to be artistic, I’d like it to play with fantasy and desire whilst keeping within the boundaries of non-harmful sexual and emotional exploration. Then, I’d like this kind of pornography to be government-subsidised, and to be distributed freely online and in schools as part of a validated PHSE curriculum, so that growing children and teenagers can explore enriching, non-abusive sexual desire in an open, positive manner.
Phil BC's comment on my earlier post had a similar vein, that porn should be taught in sex education, so that the dysfunctional version of it (i.e. the type of "degrading" porn that I point out should really not be the norm, but seems to be more prevalent in the mainstream of industrial porn) can be demonstrated as being at odds with what sex is really like.
With the help of that Google search, I also found some other thoughts echoing these ideas.
Given that it's well recognised that teen pregnancy is a large problem in this country, realistic, comprehensive - and yes, sometimes necessarily explicit - sex education can be a meaningful step toward reducing and moderating these influences and addressing the issue.
(Having a look through the TDK blog, I suspect that I would probably get into a fight with the writer on account of him apparently being right-wing bigoted scum, but that just demonstrates the political breadth and importance of the thinking on sex education).
I also found a BBC News article from February (11 months ago now, practically) which references some of the same concerns I outlined above. It also has the following statement from Petra Boynton:
sex and relationship psychologist Petra Boynton says the porn "problem" among teenagers is often exaggerated and many young people are without their own internet access. And using extreme cases as examples does not help the debate.
For boys, exposure to porn can lead to anxiety about their bodies and their sexual performance, she says, while girls are "denied" access to it under the misconception they are not interested.
"It's expected from puberty that porn is a rite of passage for boys. They hit 12, get randy and look at boobs.
"For girls the introduction to puberty is to lecture them about getting pregnant. There's no expectation that they will be aroused - it's a passive sexuality that just isn't true."
This obviously references back yet again to Figleaf's "sex class"/"no-sex class" dichotomy, and he's done a lot more work than I have about how sex education is differently-targeted depending on whether the recipient is a boy or a girl.
The fact of the matter is that British society remains essentially prudish about sexuality, and that this means that the only way for young people to feel that they are getting the "full story" about sex, is to go looking for it in the most explicit content they can find: pornography. While the official guidelines sound good, with phrases like:
The objective of sex and relationship education is to help and support young people through their physical, emotional and moral development. A successful programme, firmly embedded in PSHE, will help young people learn to respect themselves and others and move with confidence from childhood through adolescence into adulthood.
In practice, "moral development" can translate to "prudishness" and leads to that feeling that there are secrets being kept.
And if so many young men are growing up believing porn to be "educational", then there is something missing in sex education, and that something has to be education about what actually happens in a sexual relationship when two (or more!) people have sex.
For plenty more posts by wonderful people on this subject, please see Blogging For Sex Education Day and all the posts that were made on or around June 5th.
I'll close with the summarising remark that it isn't porn itself that causes the problem, but rather that sex education in this country doesn't give enough of a framework with which porn can be seen clearly for what it is (i.e. fantasy and fiction).
After reading many of the insightful and intelligent writings by m'learned friend Figleaf, and discovering more about sex blogs and porn and so on from other sources too, I feel it is time to re-examine one of my earliest posts in which I started working out ideas about why I felt so much more perturbed by mainstream erotica and softcore pornography, than I did by hardcore porn.
My basic thesis in that post was that the messages sent out by pornography became less harmful the more "extreme" or "obscene" the pornography appeared to be, by conventional moral standards, because the nature of what was being sold changed, and the nature of the viewer's and the models' status also changed. I argued that softcore porn (in the terms of the definitions I used in that article) and "lads' mags" spreads (e.g. The Sun's Page 3), tended to sell women as commodities, available to anyone and everyone who could meet the asking price. I then suggested that in hardcore pornography, where the models are depicted as having sex together, presented a different ideal: by showing the act of sexual intercourse rather than just a promise of it, I argued, it invited the viewer to seek a partner rather than a possession. Finally, I suggested that the more extreme pornography of bondage and sadomasochism tended to show much more of a relationship between the partners and therefore presented an ideal of not only of having a partner, but of caring about that partner's responses. As the porn becomes more "extreme", I argued, the message becomes more strongly about the connection between two sexual partners and much less about possessing or using them as status objects.
I can now add another step into this thesis, which is "gonzo" porn, which is defined as:
gonzo pornography puts the camera right into the action — often with one or more of the participants both filming and performing sexual acts — without the usual separation characteristic of conventional porn and cinema.
The term "gonzo" in pornography has also come to be associated with more "extreme" and "degrading" practices. At first glance, this would seem to combine the worst elements (by my earlier analysis) of the softcore/lads' mags on the one hand, and hardcore pornography on the other hand. By my earlier thesis, it would appear to suggest that by the breaking down of separation, it once again renders the performers as commodities to be attained, while at the same time, it revels in the worst kind of objectification and use.
But the opposite is the case. In my analysis of softcore, I said that the viewer is invited to partake of the woman on display, if he can afford her. In gonzo pornography, it is not the viewer but the camera, who partakes. Instead of being a passive observer as in ordinary hardcore pornography, however, the viewer is now allowed to experience more directly the relationship and interaction of the participants, by being given a point of view within the action and not merely observing it. The result of which is to place the observer not at one step further, a viewer of a commodity to be desired, but at one step closer, no longer utterly divorced from the objects he sees, but a participant with them, eroding (but not, I would suggest, completely removing - the barrier of the video screen remains) the sense of objectification in the message.
Here, I must admit to a serious error in my original post; I wrote of "storyline" versus "short-scene" pornography, and dismissed the latter as having less evidence of connection, and therefore presenting a more objectified/commodified image. However, some of what I was referring to with that would, I feel, fall under the description of "gonzo"; and the rest, I feel, is not as bad as I suggested before either. I had simply projected my own preferences and made them the basis of a moral judgement that was in fact unsound. (I would however still reject the accusation that my entire thesis was built on such a projection).
(for a review of the very best of what gonzo can be, here's Amber Rhea)
The next issue I wanted to take up, is still on the level of the "message" of pornography, but is a different dimension not covered by my earlier article, and it also extends the dimension I've already discussed further in the direction of "acceptable but more damaging".
I have read with fascination Figleaf's "semi-live blogging review" of Robert Jensen's book, Getting Off, and Figleaf's answers to Jensen's points seem to me to be very well-reasoned (more so, shall we say, than Jensen's points are!) But one point always bugs me about so much debate on pornography, and it is the idea that porn sells an image of the way the world could be, that men take on board. Figleaf quotes Jensen, "Pornography seems to shout out at us, crudely. ... But in reality, pornography speaks to men in a whisper. [saying] "...'if you come into my world it will all be there, and it will all be easy.'" This notion is also repeated in other areas of debate, such as "hyperreality", "For example, a viewer watching pornography begins to live in the non-existent world of the pornography, and even though pornography is not an accurate depiction of sex, for the viewer, the reality of "sex" becomes something non-existent."
I cannot disagree strongly enough with these statements. The closest evidence to any of them that I have ever seen was in a television documentary about teenagers and porn (and we're talking teenagers below the legal age of consent), with teenage boys talking about their sex education, and how they snuck onto their parents' computers to download pornography, because "it teaches you how to have sex". Now, that obviously sounds like the "hyperreality" statement, but it is very unlikely that, even if those boys truly believed it themselves deep down, that they would be unable to distinguish between the reality of sex and the fantasy once they had actually had real adult sex. And certainly, contrary to Jensen's apparent belief, none of them seemed to believe that pornography told them how to go about getting sex, only about what to do once you've got it.
In fact, the idea that porn really sells an idea of how the world could be, the "if you step into my world, it will all be there, it will all be easy" idea, is inherently laughable, to the point that the "what if" suggestion of "if we really believed porn's version" is a staple of comedy, perhaps best expressed by the Friends episode in which Joey and Chandler find free porn on their television. I have at least one other post to make referencing the ideas covered in that episode, but for now the part to focus on is the part where they've been watching porn non-stop for ages:
(time reference 8'10" in the above clip)
The point being that the version of the world presented by porn is so far removed from what we know really happens, that to mistake one for the other is blatantly absurd. Porn has about as much relationship to the real world as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and, while there may be a few people out there who believe hobbits really exist (just as there are a few people out there who really can't tell the difference between porn and real sex) to base any decisions about how to deal with books on those people would be absurd. Likewise with pornography.
A brief diversion here: Figleaf has written at length about the sex class/no-sex class dichotomy, in which society assumes that men are the "sex class", who have an uncontrolled desire for sex, whereas women are the "no-sex class", who have no innate sexual desire but must be persuaded to "give" themselves to men. I would like to suggest that one of the main reasons why pornography does not succeed in whispering anything to us, is because in the world according to (heterosexual) porn, the sex class/no-sex class dichotomy is almost turned on its head. While it is far from universal in pornography, I would say that the vast majority tends to depict women as having huge libidos that leave them moaning and tossing uncontrollably and begging for more. Even in the most "degrading" and "extreme" porn, very often, it is the woman who appears to suggest and plead for the activities involved. While the male is rarely if ever depicted as an unwilling or coerced participant who needs persuading to have sex, he very often appears to be aloof, self-controlled, and the object of desire for the woman. His role is to call her names, ask her (often aggressively), "do you like that?" and make the occasional suggestion of his own for what activity to do next. Although he is often directing, even demanding, performance from his partner, she is the one who initiates and who takes the most evident pleasure in proceedings. It is not inconceivable that in the world according to porn, women orgasm several times before their male partner orgasms once. And the scene usually ends when the man orgasms (the money-shot), and he thus becomes much less useful for a woman's pleasure. While it is definitely presented as being about the man reaching his orgasm as the point of the exercise, the image presented is still often one in which women get more pleasure out of the whole experience.
That version of the world is completely at odds with everything that we are programmed to believe about the sexes by every other influence. Any woman who in the real world expresses availability and desire even half as openly as the women in pornography do, is viewed less with desire and more with disgust because she is not "proper". She is a slut, a tart, a slag, a "village bicycle". I find it absurd to suggest that pornography makes any invitation to men along the lines suggested by Jensen. That invitation, as Figleaf then points out, is made much more by mainstream advertising:
Because I hate to break it to you but the *whole point* of his analysis heretofore is that the problem with the "manliness" fetish is that *everything* fucking whispers... shouts even, that we're not man enough. And not to put too fine a point on it, but everything out there from porn down to the lawnmower selection in the local Sears garden shop says "if you come into my world [manliness] will all be there and it will all be easy." That's the whole fucking point of advertising.
In fact, mainstream advertising is the ultimate, the extreme, of the line that I drew through BDSM porn to hardcore porn to softcore and then lads' mags - it ends at... mainstream advertising. The ultimate in acceptable portrayal of sex and desire, and the ultimate in selling harmful notions thereof, that serve to promote a culture that is harmful to men and downright destructive of women. (NB I have another post brewing on the harm in advertising).
However, just in case you thought I was going to be unequivocally positive about pornography, I do have one major caveat to all this, and it feeds back into that line I recalled from the teen sex documentary. While porn doesn't have a lot to do with how we go about getting sex, it can, I think, have an effect on how we view what is normal when it comes to the activities involved in sexual intercourse itself. That is, "what we do once we've actually got it".
I'm a sadist, and a sexual Dominant, and largely heterosexual, and these things run to the very core of my being: it's who I am. Therefore, I love pornography that shows women being humiliated, "degraded", called names, "forced" to perform sexual acts on men or on each other. I like my porn brutal, painful and hard. Most of all, I like extreme BDSM that shows pretend non-consent, severe punishment, and the like. The BDSM porn is a niche market for people like me. But the brutal, hard, painful, humiliating, "degrading", name-calling stuff is just a little bit too common in mainstream pornography these days. I like it in mainstream porn, because it means it is easier for me to get what I like. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it is good for it to be there.
The thing is, there's a difference between how I watch that brutal porn, and how someone who was not born with my sexual orientation might view it. I watch brutal porn like that, because what turns me on is the humiliation, degradation, suffering. To some extent, that it is heterosexual porn is beside the point. I'm getting off on the emotional relationship that's going on, and the woman's reaction to being "used" is all-important. However, to someone who is watching porn mainly because it is heterosexual and shows a man having sex with a woman, there is (I suspect) a different emphasis placed on that emotional relationship. To me, "heterosexual sex" is the context of my main desire; but to the heteronormative viewer, it is the other way around: "humiliate her and degrade her" is the context of "heterosexual sex". The result is a reinforcement of the idea that a woman should be forced, and it strengthens the idea explained by Figleaf in his post, "Demanding no for an answer".
What I'm trying to say is that, for me, the emotional reaction is central, and explicitly visible. It's what I desire, and when a woman says "yes" to sex with me, there's some understanding between us that she is saying a joyous and gladly willing "yes" to being humiliated, tortured and the rest of it - because she knows I'm a sadist and we've agreed how it's going to go down and how far I am allowed to go before I stop. But to someone who watches the same porn for the heterosexual fucking, it isn't explicit or openly visible. It's still there, but it's implicit and assumed instead. And it forms a part of the "normal" image of "this is how good sex happens", regardless of the willingness of a real-life partner for it to happen that way.
While I would definitely oppose moves to stop this kind of porn being made, I do think that it is harmful that it is viewed as mainstream, and "normal". Good, hot, exciting, passionate, aggressive sex doesn't have to be hurtful sex, and the humiliation/degradation porn ought to be a niche category just like my favoured BDSM porn.
In short: porn is not in and of itself harmful, but at present sometimes the content can be.
This has been the first proper holiday I've had all year, and boy I needed a chance to unwind and let all the stress dissipate. For that reason, I decided not to spend it with family and friends, but just to be on my own. It has definitely been the right choice, although (because I'm part of a tight-knit extended family) I did miss seeing everyone.
Still, I've been in contact with them in their big gathering, by telephone; and they're all cheered by the fact that I am getting mentally better again now, by avoiding the stress of big gatherings.
I did have some contact with friends, because I attended the midnight communion service at my local church, where I am well-known even though these days I rarely get there except for the major feasts of Christianity: Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas.
The sermon by the new vicar there was excellent, and a reminder to all the smug and self-satisfied out there, that Christ was never about the righteous, well-off or secure; he came to the outcast, the lonely, the despised, and invited them in. The vicar reminded us of just how unpleasant the surroundings were that saw the King of Kings enter the world; he reminded us that, although a lot of the Victorian carols sing of "mild, obedient, good", actually the young Jesus was an awkward child, who on at least one occasion, ran off and caused his parents a lot of worry.
Jesus hung out with members of just about every despised group in Judah, spoke up on behalf of many of the lowliest and most detested.
Christmas may be known in capitalism's great temples as "peak buying time", but as a Christian myself, I feel a strong sense of what it is we're remembering: the birth of a man who stood up on behalf of women, the racially-abused, the poor, the excluded. And, if you're a Christian like me, it's the fact that this wasn't just a man, but our God, who entered the world and shared in that exclusion.
Figleaf has some other excellent thoughts about the messages behind the Christmas story, here. That post is just beautiful, and well worth checking out.
from my poll: the vast majority of visitors didn't bother to answer it!
According to sitemeter, I had well over 100 visits in the period the poll was up; but only 8 responses.
Those 8 were kind of encouraging: 4 said they would come again, and one of the 4 who said they had me bookmarked, didn't say they would come again (which I thought was odd, but I figured that made at least 5 in total who were impressed!) That's over 50% like what I have to say, I think.
The majority of referrals came from feminist spaces, which may have had something to do with my post about the Metro's cartoon being posted in a carnival against sexual violence, and thus getting a lot of attention. Or it may be that currently I am more active in feminist spaces than BDSM spaces (or other spaces) and so more visible there at the moment in general.
Thank you all (all 8 of you) for participating, and I hope to see you commenting on some of my posts soon, too!
A slightly-late post for International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I want to pass along this story from Toronto that someone else picked up:
Toronto police unit strive to build trust with sex-workers
**UPDATE** The link I had here now leads only to a message, "this story is no longer available". I've tried to find other stories that carry the same information, but have been unsuccessful. The story was about the Toronto "Bad dates unit" that works with prostitutes to enable them to report, anonymously if they prefer, incidents of rape, violence or abuse. Other stories about the unit do exist, and can be found on Google.
It strikes me that this is a model that could be taken up everywhere to good effect. It would also make an excellent precursor to decriminalising sex-work, by making it clear that (contrary to the anti-sex work campaigners' claims) regarding sex-work as work does not "legitimise abuse" but quite the opposite: where abusiveness happens, this approach says, the police will ignore irregularities in a woman's conduct and focus on catching the abusers.
Coupled with a decent hand-up scheme to get those women who really don't want to do it but have to, another option and therefore a way out of doing it, this would seem to me to erode the objections of the "anti" folk pretty effectively.
Nothing could put it more succinctly or more effectively than this quote from Detective Wendy Leaver:
I say to people, they provide a service. The service is for sale. Not the body.
That's an attitude that we need to spread, all too urgently. It's the cure to events like this. And if we can finally get the law enforcement community onside with spreading this view, then just maybe one day judgements like this will not happen.
And it's what points out the difference between sex-work and this. No matter how degrading I felt my work as a cleaner to be (for me, personally), it was always a service that I was attempting to sell, nobody would ever assume a right over my body because of it. But if the attitude of Det. Leaver becomes more widely understood and accepted by society, then at last sex workers could have the same workers' rights as other people.
This is a phrase that I use a lot in mythoughts about sex, sexuality and what underlies attractiveness, and if I haven't already used it here, it's only a matter of time before I do, so I feel like I should explain what I mean by it.
The common meaning of the term "own" these days is associated with possession, or taking control, of something. The first interpretation that follows from this is that one's sexuality is not the possession of someone else, that sex is something that you control, and not someone else taking it from you. Equally, that it is not something that others proscribe or enforce upon you, demanding that it fit their mould and their vision of what sex and sexual expression "should" be.
That much, of course, should be recognised as one of the most basic human rights. Both women and men, in differing degrees and differing ways, are denied this right and have to fight to be allowed it on a daily basis, in some cases and some areas of the world. Progressive gender politics is constantly addressing the issues around this fact.
The second interpretation that follows from the most common meaning of "own" is the "gatekeeper" interpretation. Inasmuch as the first interpretation is about others not controlling, the "gatekeeper" interpretation" is the complementary. This says, "I control my sexuality, I decide for myself whether or not I fuck, and whom I fuck." This is not a simple, "see, want, take" attitude, however, a "What Wanda wants, Wanda must have" approach to sex. The emphasis is on "I decide". Not "I'm a man so I must fuck", not "raging hormones", not "nymphomania". If the sex urge is untempered by some semblance of self-control, it isn't owned: it owns you.
So far, we haven't really stepped outside of the patriarchal social norms, and everything I've said can still be interpreted as consistent with, and even supportive of, the "sex class"/"no-sex class" dichotomy. The man is still a wild beast who wants it all the time, it is just that he has been tamed just enough that (mostly) he is in control of himself when it matters; and the woman, of course, has no trouble keeping her urges under control (in essence, she just advertises the fruit, and then picks and chooses to whom she will sell her wares).
That "sex/no sex" interpretation, though, has to be undermined, because in both cases, the social structure is in control and not the individuals. It is in fact a violation of the first interpretation, because in assigning these class roles to men and women based on their gender, their behaviour and sexuality is defined by outside influence only, and not by the people themselves. the right of men to be "cool" (to use Figleaf's terminology) is essential to this, as is the right of women to be sexually active without being labelled sluts.
Even so, I think the most important part of owning one's sexuality, the part that makes a person attractive, comes from a more archaic usage of "own", which carries connotations of recognising, acknowledging and accepting. I use the phrase "own one's sexuality" not merely to indicate possession and control, as though a person's sexuality is something apart from and other than their true self (a classic example of this is the archetype of the woman who uses her sexiness to control others), but to recognise, acknowledge and accept it as a part of one's intrinsic self. Once that much is done, I think the expression of this ownership is effortless and unconscious, and radiates throughout a person's appearance. Someone who owns his or her sexuality in this deeper sense appears sexy without any effort, without any adornments, because it is not artificially kept separate. For those whose sexuality differs from the social norms (e.g. fetish/BDSM/kink) it is a recognition that it is normal for me to feel in this way. That it is not something strange, weird or dangerous but a natural part of my selfhood.
I recall reading Shulamith Firestone on how in childhood, sexuality becomes divorced from other forms of self and pleasure, as adult values start to be imposed on childhood behaviours. I think her analysis is spot-on, and it is one of the reasons why owning one's sexuality is not as common or natural as we might suppose, given how effortless and joyous I've made it sound. There is a strong indoctrination almost from the moment we acquire the ability to speak, to view sex as something other, that must be given its own distinct categories of dealing with it (or avoiding dealing with it). It starts with subtle changes in the way adults respond, and it continues all the way through childhood to adolescence and then to our full participation in society as adults. The perpetuated notion that "sex sells" is just one aspect of the programming that goes on to make us believe that sex controls men, and that women have to "sell" it, an idea that it is somehow a dangerous substance.
I want to mention here that I believe to identify as asexual, as opposed to (making a vow of) chastity, is also a form of owning one's sexuality. I find asexual women attractive for the same reason as I find other women who own their sexuality, attractive; that they don't do sex is neither here nor there (I believe I own my sexuality, so there's no need for me to do sex to feel sexy about someone). I wouldn't be in a long-term relationship with an asexual woman because I would miss sex; but there is an undeniable attractiveness about a woman who is aware of and open to sexuality, but has determined about herself, "that's not for me, thanks". It's different from "chastity" because that is a deliberate control and limitation of one's sexual nature, whereas to be asexual is an open acknowledgement and expression of a sexual nature (albeit a sexual nature that says "no thanks").
Finally, you'll notice that in the very basis, the "first interpretation", I spoke of others not controlling one's sexuality. As with so many things, BDSM seems to violate this explicitly. In my relationship with Julie, it was explicitly stated that I owned her sex, I controlled her sexual expression and pleasure. However, as so often with these issues for BDSM, it is possible to take a step further back and look at a bigger picture. What actually happens is that Julie gives her sexuality to me, and gives me control over it; for Julie to be able to do that, she must first own it herself, at least in the first and second interpretations. With Julie, I feel that when she and I first met, there was still some work to do on all three levels, but also, she had taken some steps herself in each, which enabled her to choose me as an equal partner in a BDSM relationship in the first place, and I proudly claim that thanks to my involvement, she came to full ownership of her sexuality. And you know that she owned it, because in the end, it was she who was in control of whether or not I owned it! I am fond of quoting Brian Bedford's song, "If you give your love its freedom it may stay a while, if it leaves you it was never yours to own". Even though I had control and owned Julie's sexuality, she always had the freedom and the ability to take it back for herself, and eventually she did so, and is very happy.
As one last note: I don't know if anyone can ever fully own their sexuality in our current world; the guilt complex that is associated with that division between "sex" and "everything else" will never be fully erased. But knowing it and acknowledging it means that we can treat it for what it is, an artefact of a fucked-up system, and not a real indicator of "wrongness".
So following up on this post and this one about men with "lower" or just in-control libidos, and considering that in both cases I used the word "cool" to describe such men, *and* considering how generally relegated they are to the "weirdo" closet, *AND* considering what a blow to some really stupid stereotypes about men and women it would be if they felt more comfortable entering the conversation I hereby coin the phrase "cool men" to describe them.
And I'm proud hereby to identify myself as an occasionally cool man.
For me, sex is one of the great joys there is, and I have a high sex drive, but sometimes I'm just "not in the mood", and at those times, yeah - I'm a "cool man". Don't need any other explanation, any more than a woman should have to explain why she's not interested.
I've been thinking for a long while about how to devise a name for the movement that seems slowly to be forming of men taking the ideas of feminism and relating them to the experience of being male, and the recognition that the patriarchal systems oppress men, too. The idea that maybe feminism has a lot to offer us, as men. There doesn't seem to be a word out there to describe the movement yet, so I felt like I should have a go at inventing one.
Most of the directly comparable words that could be coined seemed to reek of "Men's Rights Activist" type sentiments, when the movement I'm describing is the antithesis of the reactionary MRA attitude.
As the title of this post indicates, the word I invented is "manefism"
It's a simple anagram of "femanist" (which term already existed to indicate "male follower of feminism", and which I used in the title of my blog).
The idea was to start the word with "man" to indicate that it is a men's movement, not a mere adjunct to feminism; it's about men and how men are encased and disempowered by current gendered society. Inasmuch as feminism is "all about the women" and "not about the men", manefism is the mirror of that. However, there's a lot of common ground where we're about both genders.
There was also nother play on words to be had in this structure, because where you have "manefism", there are people who presumably are "manefists".
And "manefist" is very similar indeed to "manifest" (in fact, it's a common typo on the internet, Google reports nearly 500 pages with that typo!)
I feel that to identify as "manifest" is a good thing. My dictionary defines "manifest" as:
adj that may be easily seen by the eye or perceived by the mind; in Freudian psychoanalysis, applied to those parts of a dream remembered on waking (opposite of latent). - vt to make clear or easily seen; to put beyond doubt; to reveal or declare.
This connection, I think, carries some underlying subtleties of masculinity which can help to sell the idea to the men who can gain so much from understanding the concepts that are being gradually worked out by male thinkers at the moment. The idea of making things tangible, and perceptible to the mind, is something that keys into the archetype of men as practical and logical. We can talk, perhaps, of the aim of manefism being to identify our selves as manifest, instead of the self being obscured and restricted by the patriarchal system.
Feminism has been doing this manfesting of women's selves, for several decades now, so it's nothing unique to what men are struggling to do now, but it is perhaps a "manly" way of identifying it, the idea of seizing our self-identity.
(Perhaps the more macho people who need persuading can also be encouraged by the fact that the word ends in "fist" - but maybe that would be not such a good thing to emphasise!)
So, I humbly present to the world, for acceptance or rejection, the words:
Manefism
Manefist
(I suppose I ought to change the title of my blog now to include the new word, but somehow I've got used to it being the way it is - I'll just change the tagline)
I've decided I'd like to know more about the people who come and read my utterances here, so I've created a poll asking what leads my readers to, erm, read.
I already signed up for "SiteMeter", so I know that a lot of people come here searching for info about BDSM, and a lot of people come here searching for feminism (or "femanist"), and many seem to come looking for info about both. But SiteMeter doesn't seem to be very well set up for assessing how many of each.
Nor does it tell me anything much really about why you people drop by.
So, please, click an option or two on the poll in the sidebar (maybe even the one that says you liked what you found here!), and hey, maybe even add a comment on this post about why you came here rather than anywhere else (and if my writings have been entertaining or useful to you!).
Oh yeah, and if you choose one of the "other search" or "other website" type options, please do leave a comment to let me know what sort of site it was!
Penny Red lays into a Times Women article written by a USAian man who thinks that British women should spend more time and money making themselves look the way he wants them to, just like women in the USA do.
He thinks Britain's self-confident women look like "orcs out of Lord of the Rings" and that they should be more willing to shame one another into compliance with his wishes by telling each other they "look like crap, or have put on weight, or are dressed like a bag-lady".
He compounds his error by concluding:
British women are, without a doubt, the best to have a pint and a laugh with. They are the most self-reliant, uncomplicated and unflappable. That they are neither obsessed with their looks, nor insecurely competitive, are wonderful qualities.
...
But when it comes to making the all-important first impression, do you really want it to be, “I’ll bet she was really hot ten years ago”?
I mean, call me "New Man", call me biassed, (heck, call me fat and ugly too, if you think it explains away my attitude!) - but... didn't he just list all the qualities that make any human being (male or female) sexy and "really hot" right now, never mind 10 years ago? (NB: actually, he didn't - he left out "confident" and "owning one's own sexuality", but those things tend to come when you have those he did mention). Strange as it may sound to someone like Mr. Tad Safran, I absolutely and firmly believe that the most vital sexual organ in the human body is the brain (and mind) - and if the mind is mangled by the insecurity, naked competition and sheer neediness that seems to be required by Mr. Safran, no amount of beauty treatment will make that person pleasant to have sex with**. (And, I suspect, no amount of beauty treatment will make Mr. Safran pleasant to have sex with, either).
So, yeah - as the title of this post says, which do you think is a more disgusting look: the ungilded but confident women described above, or Mr. Safran's attitudes getting printed?
**I'm not implying by this that people with "issues" are necessarily unsexy: for example, Julie had problems of neediness and insecurity but she and I worked together so that her confidence and sexuality are no longer affected: as I explained before, when we first got together, I knew all these things and still loved her and found her attractive; and effectively we put the work in on her issues, that Mr. Safran would have women put in on their appearance.
Hot on the heels of this morning's post about Scarleteen's mostly-excellent piece about how men can take responsibility for preventing rape, I saw an evil cartoon in today's "Metro" newspaper (for non-Brits, the "Metro" is a freebie daily tabloid often found lying on the seats in public transport. I wouldn't normally read it, but I was bored this morning).
The cartoon was called "This Life", and was drawn by Rick Brookes.
It shows a woman at the perfume counter in a store. The sales assistant is saying, "a hint of this at the Christmas party and you'll find men swarming around you". The label on the bottle beside the sales assistant reads "DRUNK".
Quite apart from the insult to men everywhere, and the insult to women everywhere, this clearly validates and enables the rapist script of plying a woman with drink until she either loses her inhibitions or else loses her ability to say no. It also validates the "excuse" that if she gets drunk, she must secretly really want it, and it's Her Fault if she gets raped.
Looking at the paper's website, I've decided to contact the editor directly; according to the Metro website's "contact us" web page, the editor's name is Kenny Campbell, and email addresses for staff members are of the form firstname.lastname@ukmetro.co.uk . I think it would be worthwhile if other people could also email him (especially if you've seen the cartoon too) and let him know what sort of message his paper is sending out.
*****
UPDATE:
I've just received a reply to my email to Kenny Campbell. It's not particularly enlightening, but at least it suggests that my comments might be taken seriously:
Many thanks for your email. I have passed your comments on to our cartoonist, and am sorry if you were offended by the strip.
Whether it actually has any effect at all, is something else entirely!
It's from a site called Scarleteen, which is a US-based sex education website, aimed largely at teenagers but they talk about a "model for lifelong sexual education" on the "about" page, and explicitly state that sex-ed is for everyone regardless of age. It looks like a pretty cool resource, overall.
The above link is absolutely vital reading, it really is. A lot of the messages in it were a part of the sex education that I received while growing up, and I am glad of that in many ways. It should definitely be a part of sex-ed in general.
In other ways, though, I am much less glad. Because the above article (and the sex ed that I received while growing up) is very 'nilla-normative in my view.
I grew up convinced that I would become a serial-killer/rapist, because all my sexual fantasies, almost from the very first time I actually understood about sex beyond the biological purpose of it, were violent, about hurting women, about tying them up and forcing them. And the whole time I was being told things like "Yes is yes. No is not yes. And neither is maybe". That principle is, of course, vital to understanding about consent, but it left me with no way to process my desires except as evil. It seemed as though I had no choice, I must be evil to have those thoughts.
Nowadays, I can pick out of that article what is useful to someone like me, and recognise, where my form of BDSM differs from their 'nilla-normative text, how to understand how the two fit together. Back when I was 15, 16, 17, I did not have those tools. I did not have the understanding and reading and self-examination that I have done in the subsequent dozen years or so.
Back then, what happened was, I had a very powerful sex drive (still do!) but I was terrified of it. I masturbated every night, and felt guilty and sick and ashamed because the fantasies I had were of forcing, tying, torturing...
Guilt, shame, self-loathing: not healthy emotions to have when you're grappling with your newly-developing sexuality.
At this point, I want to flag up that here, here and here, Scarleteen does have some excellent resources about BDSM, and the last one in particular covers rape fantasy (the author dislikes that term). My problem is not with Scarleteen (as I said, I think it's a fantastic resource) but only with the fact that the article in question, doesn't reference those resources, and does nothing to help deal with early fantasies of the type that I had. In fact, the only time it's mentioned in the article is as a "risk factor" that might indicate a person will become a rapist!
Instead of helping to process how those fantasies can be played out in a fully consensual way, or how they can be completely separate from the way we conduct ourselves sexually in real life (concepts that are introduced by those other articles I linked in the last paragraph), this article would just leave a teenager dangling, full of guilt and worry about himself.
So many of the things that are supposed to mean that you stop, can be in BDSM signs of pleasure. Sometimes it is just not the case that "no means no", and if you take it as such, you'll get an angry submissive saying, "why did you stop!?" If a partner becomes non-verbal and seems spaced, it might mean that she has entered a zone of pleasure known as "sub-space" and, sometimes, breaking off to ask if she's still into what's happening, is the last thing she wants in that situation! And, if my submissive says "no" to something I want, my reaction is never "okay", but rather, "no?" in a threatening manner - the expectation is that I will enforce my will when she reacts like that!
It all makes sense when you take a step further back and understand that there is always a different word, the safeword, that really does mean "no", but the advice, the lessons we're given, on how to avoid raping someone, somehow never talks about that kind of situation, never talks about how you can have someone begging you to stop, but that if you do, they'll be disappointed. Never talks about the negotiation beforehand that can change the language of the situation, that can make sure you both know what's going on, that means that it's expected that one person will impose her or his will. Even this comment by the author, "when we want to engage in any kind of sex where we only really want to think of ourselves, that kind of sex should be masturbation, the kind where we are the only people involved and sex IS be completely about us" can, in the context of a negotiated and loving D/s or M/s relationship, not always be true - where it is negotiated and understood, that sometimes she wants or even needs to serve her partner's pleasure with no thought for her own, then sometimes it is not true. I would hasten to add to this, though: that even with the most willing submissive in the world, it is not acceptable to use her in this way frequently, because eventually that will become abuse as the relationship loses the essential two-way flow.
So, in general, the theme of the article does hold true in BDSM - sex is about a shared experience, whereas rape/abuse is about only one person. If you understand that concept, then BDSM makes a lot more sense in the terms of the article's other points. It;s just that, with the fantasies I was having, the desires I had, I had no way of understanding that it ever could be a two-way thing. And articles, lectures, lessons, etc. like the one on Scarleteen, reinforced my lack of understanding until I had nowhere to go except inwards (which I chose, becoming withdrawn and extremely shy about sex) or outwards (to rape).
The really stupid thing is that I took on board all the points, all the lessons, and learned not to be a rapist, but the very media by which I learned it, was convincing me that it was inevitable that I would!
For every woman who is tired of acting weak when she knows she is strong, there is a man who is tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable.
For every woman who is tired of acting dumb, there is a man who is burdened with the constant expectation of “knowing everything.”
For every woman who is tired of being called “an emotional female,” there is a man who is denied the right to weep and to be gentle.
For every woman who is called unfeminine when she competes, there is a man for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity.
For every woman who is tired of being a sex object, there is a man who must worry about his potency.
For every woman who feels “tied down” by her children, there is a man who is denied the full pleasures of shared parenthood.
For every woman who is denied meaningful employment or equal pay, there is a man who must bear full financial responsibility for another human being.
For every woman who was not taught the intricacies of an automobile, there is a man who was not taught the satisfactions of cooking.
For every woman who takes a step toward her own liberation, there is a man who finds the way to freedom has been made a little easier.
This is why I'm a feminist and a feminist ally. It's why I write about feminist issues, it's why I care what happens to women (of every shape, skin colour, sexual preference, age, and occupation - including sex workers), it's why I want equality. For me, even though it is about the women, I'm in it because for me it's about men as well.
Your average MRA thinks that teh wimminz and teh feministz are to blame for the problems of men that Nancy R. Smith identifies. I draw a somewhat different conclusion - the same one that Ms. Smith uses to conclude her poem.
As promised, a couple of weeks ago when I drew a parallel between BDSM and lesbianism based on a passage in the introduction of this book, I am now writing a book review of it. Because lesbianism is something I've never experienced, this obviously comes from a male, privileged, perspective and I have undoubtedly missed some of what is intended in here. I can't talk about how it reflects women's experiences. I can talk about the things that seem similar, and why they seem similar. I can talk about the things that seem different, and why they seem different, and I can talk about the things that just completely lost me.
The first thing that caught my attention: as near as I can figure, all of them wrote as British residents. For some reason, I'd expected it to be a North American publication and display a bias towards USAian (and Canadian) writers. Make what you will of that piece of cultural prejudice! It surprised me to realise that I had felt it, given that I know there are plenty of lesbians in Britain. Reading the biographical notes in the back, I see that there was one woman born in New Jersey, one in Egypt, one in County Dublin, Ireland, one who lists her childhood main language as French (but doesn't say where she was brought up), and two women who originally came from Australia.
For me, the stories fell into categories roughly covered by what I've said I can talk about here. There were stories that were on some level recognisable as similar to my own experience, or that were familiar me from some other source; there were stories where I could get what was being talked about, but it was something outside of my own experience or knowledge; and there were stories that I just didn't understand at all.
Perhaps the most interesting story, in terms of my reaction, was "The Two Spinster Ladies" by Kate Hall. Because I had a vague recollection of having read the story a long time ago, in my teens or earlier (so, 15-20 years ago, not that long after this book was published), certainly before I knew about lesbianism or homosexuality, and making the same false assumption as the "straight" character makes (that the spinsters are in fact witches!). I was, however, very amused that first time by how the spinsters explained away their activities, and that amusement remained this time, when I actually understood what was really going on! My younger self had some idea that witches were actually quite cool and there were good witches as well as the made-up "evil ones" at Hallowe'en, so I was never opposed to the "other". As I say, reading it as an adult and with a better appreciation of what was being suggested as the true nature of the spinsters' activities, the whole story had a very different light cast on it, but the emotional journey was surprisingly similar. It's just that the denouement has a slight extra twist, and there is one more layer to the whole episode.
Needless to say, as a kinky person, I feel very strongly a sense of the familiar, in trying to explain away something of a "deviant" sexual nature, to those who wouldn't really understand...
Perhaps oddly, or perhaps not, some of the stories I found easiest to understand were those given a science fiction spin, two of which were near-future dystopian visions, the other involved an alien visitor. The first one was a world in which the authorities sought to "cure" lesbians of their "disease", and in particular, targeted those who tried to "spread" the disease, by campaigning for homosexual rights. Quite apart from there being plenty of parts of the world where they do that sort of thing to LGBT folks anyway, the current British government (which is one of the best for LGBT rights in Europe, so I'm told) certainly seems to think that they can do the same for people with other "deviant" sexualities such as BDSM.
And that leads to the second dystopian vision - lesbians (and other "deviants" are fleeing Britain as it becomes an island fortress against "perversion", with anyone deviating from the norm beign arrested and locked up. The story itself could be familiar to anyone who's read novels about Jews escaping Nazi Germany, or any other escape story you like. The sexuality reason is, alas, simply an extension of the attitudes already displayed in too many supposedly free democracies. Some days, I genuinely fear that what is described in "Distance", is what is actually going to happen to Britain.
The visiting alien story, "Stranger in the City" was curiouss, because it gave me what seemed to be a crystal clear picture of what it was like to be a woman in 1980s London nightlife (I have no idea if anything has changed). It also showed me a picture of what feminism looked like back then, and that opened my eyes a little as to how prejudices have developed both among feminists and about feminists, since then. That's a lot to claim for a short story, but a dim candle is better than no light at all!
I think maybe each of these stories showed lesbianism in a more abstract way than would have been possible setting them in "the real world", and I do deal with abstraction quite well, when I have something concrete to show me the relationships described. That may be why I felt I grasped these ones so easily.
Some of the stories struck me as being basic romance stories, and if there was supposed to be some subtlety that made it different from the emotions and feelings I have felt, or seen described in "straight" romances, then I failed to see it.
Several talked about the importance of hiding what one was, or of the emotional damage done by being "different", and how it can lead to all sorts of problems ("If One Green Bottle..." by Sue Sanders talks about how it led to alcoholism, the story being also about how hard it can be to break the emotional dependency, and how it messes up other relationships). I think the most interesting of these was a "holiday fling" story about a lesbian away on a conference with some workmates ("Breakfast in Bed" by Amanda Russell): the usual relaxation of inhibitions of being away from home - and one of her straight workmates comes on to her, and they end up spending the night together. it ends, of course, with the "I was drunk, oh God, what have I done!" moment from the straight workmate, and the emotional hurt all round that that causes. While it sounds like a "standard, straight" romance, I felt that there was a particular edge to it, because for the workmate it wasn't just "I slept with someone I never normally would have done", there was a total rejection, "Oh my God, I CAN'T be a lesbian, and I can't be SEEN to be a lesbian!" (The story has straight-workmate pull a waiter at the hotel, presumably to prove to herself that she's not lesbian). To me, it was this thing of it being not the act itself (i.e. "I had sex on holiday, I feel so dirty") but the person it was done with (i.e. "I had sex with a same-sex partner, I feel so dirty" on a par with "I had sex with a black guy, I feel so dirty") - the same kind of prejudice, and the same kind of effect on the partner, which you wouldn't have if it was just the fact of having sex.
Finally, there was "Reunited" by Rosemary Auchtumy, which I found perhaps the most beautiful of all the love stories in this book. It told of a researcher looking into the history of a pioneering woman principal at one of the classic university colleges; the romance was that between the principal and a pupil (who later became principal of the same college). A hidden romance (in the 1920s) and later, hidden by the college librarian until the researcher proves that she is not going to treat it salaciously (there is a hint that the librarian and the researcher may end up being lesbian lovers themselves). I have a soft spot for that kind of history, and that way of discovering a story.
The stories I didn't recognise but I understood them, were those that seemed to me to be explicitly about the experience of escaping patriarchal control in marriage, and rediscovering oneself outside of that. Obviously, something I will never experience. I could understand the emotions described, but I will never be in those situations myself, and to me, the male figures seem alien because I am not like them at all (although, sadly, I suspect I may have met a few of them). The feminist rhetoric in these stories also seemed the most alienating to me (as a man).
The story that fits this mould that I did identify with, was "Country Dance" by Mary Dorcey. In it, two lesbians are hassled (to the point of a physical assault at one point) and eventually feel forced to flee the nightclub in which this occurs. The explanation of fearing difference (and indifference) has a haunting familiarity to me. My choice to have long hair, and to be uncowed by bullies, has attracted similar violence. The predatory men in that story were horribly familiar to me, and as long-time readers of this blog will know, in a rather similar fashion as the lesbians in this story had to fear.
Finally, there were the stories that I just didn't "get" at all. These were mostly ones where I didn't "get" the social setting: "Went to a Marvellous Party" described a party I've never been to, I had no way of connecting with the characters, and wouldn't have even if they'd been straight, possibly even if they'd been talking about BDSM instead of lesbianism. In "Strange Connie from Two Doors Down" by Pearlie McNeill, however, I just had no waay of relating to the story, because the narrator (unusually, first-person from a straight woman's perspective) was so totally self-obsessed that I had no idea what it was all about. It was as if this character allowed other people's emotions to wash over her like water off a duck's back, making no difference to her own serene idiocy. Maybe that is how the author viewed straight women, I don't know. But I had no idea of what the story really was supposed to be.
The really interesting one for me was "Not What I Mean By It" by Gillian E. Hanscombe. This one had the idea expressed by the woman with whom the first-person protagonist is in love:
"I'm a lesbian," said Karen, "Au naturel. A real one, I mean. I mean, I've always been a lesbian. It makes a difference. You can't understand that. Your history is too different. I worked that out in the end. You can't have the same reactions."
April felt insulted. "I regret my history," she said, "But ever since I've been a lesbian, I've never once wanted a man. It's never occurred to me. I'm just as much a lesbian as you are."
"You can't be," said Karen, "When you grow up lesbian, there are hundreds of things not the same. Fine shades of feeling. This girl's face, that one's; teachers, other people's mothers; gestures, looks, going places, being excited the entire time. It's the emotional air we live in. Interchange between women is highly charged, all the time. Nearly all the time, anyway. It isn't a direct pathway from intensity to orgasm, like it is for heterosexuals. Like it must have been for you."
...
"I don't wish you any harm, but I'm not tangling with heterosexual habits of feeling. I'd get hurt again. You didn't even notice what happened between us, but a real lesbian would have. Sex is just a part of it, that's what you can't see."
I can't get my head around the philosophy that's expressed there (maybe because I am a heterosexual man and not a lesbian!) There's all sorts of arguments I want to have with these view, but partly those arguments are just to try to figure out what it is that's supposedly impossible to learn. (One argument that isn't is the "you didn't even notice what happened" point - plenty of straight romances have had a line similar to that in them, where one character has a profound experience but their partner didn't, and therefore "didn't notice what happened between us"). And, I want to claim that in BDSM "sex is just a part of it" for some people (while for others it is all of it), so it isn't about lesbianism (or BDSM orientation, or anything else), it's about personal preference - but not being a lesbian, and certainly not a lesbian au naturel, I'm on very shaky ground making any claim about what it has to do with lesbianism!
Why is this familiar? Because I have read r/l stories by BDSM folks, and one of them ran like this:
Teen: These people are disgusting, there should be a law against it
Mum: Do you want me to go to jail!?
Teen: Well, no. But you deserve to!
Partly that far too-familiar disapproval is the reason I liked this story the best, but also, the way it was written gave such a wonderful sense of warmth to the two lovers at its heart, it felt like a real depiction of romance and love, where some of the others felt quite 2-d to me - there to make a point.
All-in-all, a fascinating read, and definitely a part of the documentation of sexuality in this country. I can't imagine what it must have been like as a lesbian in 1985, when these stories were written (it's difficult enough for me to imagine it now). There are some wonderfully well-written stories, some that I found difficult to read because of the writing style, and some that passed me by totally (I never got around to reading the story set in Ancient Greece, because that type of setting so rarely engages me regardless of the topic of the story!).
Well worth the 10p it cost me at the Hospital Fete!
Been listening to this a lot this evening as kind of an antidote to some very yucky stuff that has been left in my head by a very emotional week in which a woman (hereafter 'S') for whom I am her first experience of BDSM, who is also a friend of Julie's, found herself faced with something she wasn't quite ready for (namely, the fact that sometimes I see myself as, and dress myself as, a woman). After wrangles with Julie over this unintended revelation at such an early stage, and after much soul-searching already by both S and me, there is still a lot of badness going around, and it's affected me deeply: I never thought I would feel this bad again about being who I am, but suddenly it felt wrong to be CD and to be BDSM.
Then I put this song on, and I guess for me it's an anthem for BDSM:
It takes courage / to enjoy it / the hardcore, and the gentle / big time sensuality
BDSM: for me, it's hardcore and gentle big-time sensuality.
And that reminded me that I accept the emotional risks that go with this stuff, and have the courage to know those risks, and yet know that they are worth taking. Damn, it hurts at times like these, but if the pain can be endured, the pleasure that follows will be exquisite.
