Why reform the porn industry?

(Found via Feministe's Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday comments)

Natalie Dzerins @ Forty Shades of Grey writes a post titled, "Why Oppose the Porn industry?"

She says that she identifies as "a pro-sex, anti-porn socialist feminist." Pro-sex meaning, "I think that the act of sex is a wonderful, natural thing, and encourage everyone to do what makes them happy (within obvious boundaries)." Socialist (or Marxist) feminist meaning discussing empowerment of women through widespread social change, and not "liberal" feminism's focus on individual empowerment.

She writes:

With this post, I hope to set out the reasons why my political philosophies mean I cannot accept pornography, and I hope to also answer the most common counter-arguments I encounter when espousing these views. This post was written with the invaluable help of Georgie (AKA @mortari), to whom I am eternally grateful. I will denote the parts she wrote in italics.

I want to get into these, and if her responses are counter-counter-arguments, then mine must be counter-counter-counter-arguments (or something).

She starts by quoting Dines and Jensen, which is always going to get on my bad side. I take nothing they say to have any validity. They are despised by the people they claim to want to help (sex workers) and they do not try to engage with the lived realities of those people - or, indeed, the men whom they appear to despise.

I'll draw out only one thing, which is Natalie Dzerin's own extraction. She writes:

I also oppose pornography for the body fascism that is endemic to the culture and the way that it seeps over into the mainstream as a ‘norm’.

Esxcept that in the porn I've seen, bodies have tended to be much less conforming to contemporary beauty standards than in women's magazines, or Lads' mags. In general, the more mainstream the media, the more misogynist it is - hardcore porn, for all its surface problems, arguably has fewer bad messages about women than stuff you can buy in your supermarket.

The post's co-author Georgie writes:

In a culture of gender inequality it is impossible to make porn which isn't oppressive.

However, I was of the impression that feminist analysis (particularly of a Marxist type such as that described by Ms Dzerin) says that all media suffers the same problems. It isn't porn per se, but media in general.

This sounds like a reason to be opposed to any form of writing, television, movie-making, or whatever!

She starts with the "choice" canard, as a common challenge to her position. I am not a fan of discussing this, because (as Dzerin points out) choices are not made in a vacuum, and it is also quite possible to say "I support your right to make that choice, but I think it is a poor choice to make" (or, as Dzerin puts it, "I do not oppose the womens’ right to be in the films, I oppose the films themselves.")

The question about choice and sex work, though, should be on choosing how to make the rent. Some people will be happier working in a shitty waitressing job, and others are happier to make their money by spreading their legs (either on camera, or for paying customers - porn or prostitution). Both are equally exploitative of poverty and, according to the socialist feminist position that Dzerin seems to take, it would appear that we should also be opposed to restaurants and diners for their exploitation of women who need to earn the rent.

Which brings us onto the next argument that Dzerin uses:

Well, they make good money. Surely that’s empowering?

Without willing to sound glib, there are plenty of things people do for money. Just because you enjoy the things they do does not make it empowering for them. Imagine if I paid you a million pounds to eat elephant shit. Would you consider that empowering because you were paid such a high amount?

I do not look at sex work as being about "empowering". It can be an empowered choice, or it can be a forced choice (see remarks above), but in itself it is not empowering. It is "empaychecking", as Renegade Evolution (porn performer, stripper and all-round sex worker) puts it, and as noted above, that is sometimes very important from the point of view of keeping a roof over one's head and food in the belly, and all those essentials of life. It can also provide the dosh to get nice things. Is we are to be opposed to the commercial porn industry, then a lefty person really ought to consider how the men and women who earn their living from it should go about filling those gaps in future. As I wrote several years ago now, mining is a terrible job, but when the Thatcher government tried to close the mines, the miners fought tooth and nail for over a year to keep their jobs, despite how disgusting and dangerous and degrading the work could be. While the money may not be empowering, having it taken away certainly would be disempowering.

But women produce female-friendly porn!

Yes, they do. I still find this objectionable because of my anti-capitalist views. I also feel that the fact that ‘female-friendly’ porn is a thing, and such a tiny proportion of the pornography market rather reinforces my opinion of the industry as generally misogynist. If porn were truly equal to the sexes, it would not need to exist.

I struggle with the concept of "female-friendly" porn, because I don't know what that means. There is something very clear that needs to be pointed out here: Dzerin 's position, going from this answer and from her post title, is about the current state of the industry. But many of her arguments are about the concept of pornography. The implication from Dzerin is that "female-friendly" means "non-misogynistic", but I think that usually it means "intended to appeal to women's sexual fantasies". The problem with the latter position is that plenty of women I know happen to like the fantasies portrayed in other porn, and find "female-friendly" porn to be boring. other women don't like either, and other women like both, and some like the "female-friendly" stuff.

I'll skip past the "porn degrades men too" argument, because I don't accept the premise that porn is necessarily degrading to anybody (some of it can be, for sure, but I don't accept the premise that most or all of it is).

What if the women like being submissive during sex?

I have no problem with women enjoying submission during consensual sexual encounters which take place with the knowledge that the submission only belongs in the bedroom.

Well, gee, how magnanimous of you! D/s and M/s relationships do not always have scene-delineated premises. Sometimes the consensual power-exchange operates throughout the whole relationship. I suppose I could be generous and assume Dzerin means "the submission only belongs between her and her partner", and BDSMers (especially subs) usually know very strongly the distinction between "I submit to you" and "I submit to no one else".

But here's the question that you haven't answered: how that relates to men and women's desire for BDSM porn (which is different from rough sex porn and so on, but might fall into the category "depicts violence against women" if you're not on the same page regarding BDSM). Is your case that the moment a couple video themselves and share that video, that they are suddenly corrupting and destroying women's rights everywhere?

I/a friend of mine worked in porn and enjoyed it.

My answer (inspired by Meaghan Murphy) would be: I am glad that you enjoyed your experience, really.

...

However, whatever the feelings of the performers involved might be, selling images of women as sexual objects which exist for the titillation of men only reinforces sexist attitudes.

I just don't accept the premise that that is what porn is. I think if men (or women) see that in porn, then it is more to do with those internalised attitudes about women that they bring to their experience of the porn.

What about if it isn’t a capitalist venture?

I feel that consensual pornography made for users by users with no capitalist aspects would tend to have less misogyny and therefore be ultimately preferable to any output from the porn industry.

It's pretty clear to me by now that on my Sliding Scale post, asking which element it is that makes porn bad but sex okay, it is at step 6, the introduction of profit as a motive, that Dzerin finds unacceptable. (Arguably, it might be step 8, where an explicitly capitalist business model is brought in.)

But I think this answer is based in prejudice. Because of Dzerin's political views, she appears to assume "commercial = bad" and interprets things in a way to preserve that suspicion, rather than accepting the diversity of both relationships and porn.

Skipping past a couple of points that are not actually about porn per se, we get to: "So do you want to censor/ban porn?" This is answered by the co-author, Georgie:

No. I am not a proponent of censorship, and even if I were, a ban on pornography would be practically unworkable. Making pornography illegal would make it harder to regulate the industry, which could be dangerous for the women working in it. I would like to live in a world in which pornography was eradicated because there was no market for it. My desire is to persaude people that they do not need to see images of objectification and degredation to satisfy themselves sexually.

I'm sorry, but actually I do need to see images of humiliation, "violence" and (in some people's interpretation) objectification and degradation, because that is my kink. I am a sadist and a Dominant, and wishing my sexuality away won't make it change (Lord knows, I tried, and suffered because of trying - like trying not to be gay, I guess). To me, vanilla sex is not sex. If it hadn't been for sex education at school I might never have figured it out - sex to me involves pain and domination and bondage and stuff. The gender of my partner is secondary (although I go mostly for women, male subs interest me as well).

I also find it hard to imagine a world where there is no demand for images intended to provoke sexual arousal (which is what "porn" means; "erotica" in most usage that I've seen appears to be simply "porn that I like", as opposed to the disgusting stuff other people like). The simple fact is, sexual desire is not evenly distributed, and simply doing away with the capitalist economic system is not actually going to change this (although the basis by which people are found sexually desirable might change, the fact that people will be varied in sexual desirability will not; and the variation in how much people desire sex will also be similar to what it is today). So there is always going to be a market for pornography (and for prostitution) regardless of the economic system under which we operate.

I am all for doing away with capitalism, and changing the way that businesses operate, which includes but is not limited to, pornography industry. But being opposed to the industry model does not mean we must destroy porn, and doesn't make us anti-porn.

Georgie also fields the last question:

But all men watch porn! How could this ever change?

It is important to question men who use porn, and to challenge them on its sexism. It should not be socially acceptable to use porn. Like the use of racial epithets or other hate speech, sexist attitudes and the use of porn can be denounced by social peers. If porn were not so tolerated, people would think more carefully about its social consequences and would be less likely to use it.

Again, singling out porn for sexism is hypocritical. All of society is sexist, because that's how Patriarchy works (in conjunction with capitalism, etc). Porn is not different from the rest of society, so why does it get special criticism for not being post-sexism?

How do you distinguish in using peer pressure to make porn unacceptable, between "porn is not okay, but sex is"? Unfortunately, the same pressures that could be used to attack porn use in this way, would also work very strongly to attack women, because they would serve to make "slut" an even stronger assault. To make being openly interested in sexual material into a source of shame, one cannot avoid generating a sense of shame about interest in sex. And who already receives the most attack for being interested in sex? Women. That's why "slut" is such a nasty word in most usage. If the rest of the world weren't so sexist, this plan might work, but unfortunately, it is. And that's how come porn tends to be sexist too. Just to be clear - I think peer pressure against sexist attitudes should be used; but I think that peer pressure against porn would be a bad move.

The "social consequences" of porn are, as far as I know, non-existent, or at most, comparable to the social consequences of any other media form. There have been no studies with proper controls that show any proof of negative social consequences. Whenever government studies have been carried out of the data and research, the answer has always come back "inconclusive".

As for the original question, I think it is false that "all men watch porn", and besides, women watch porn too. The problem is that sexist attitudes mean that women are conditioned not to watch porn as much as they might like to (and there isn't much porn made with women-as-viewers in mind).

I suspect that Dzerin and I are not as far apart as it seems from her conclusions, and from my position here. I am very critical of the porn industry - even, or especially, those who claim to do a better job than most (for example, the criticism of Kink.com). We also apparently agree about the problems with the capitalist economic system, of which the porn industry is a sample and fairly representative of the problems in the whole. We differ on what to do about it. Dzerin herself says as much when writing about pro-porn and anti-porn feminists, "even though we may disagree on the fine details of how to practice it, we all have the same central objective," but I disagree with her optimistic assessment that, "Of course we can coexist peacefully." Too often the initiatives of the anti-porn group (especially Dines, Jensen and so on) seem to be directly harmful to women, and indeed, to getting anything positive done.

Sliding Scale of Sex to Porn

Something that always puzzles me about anti-porn feminists who baulk at being described as sex-negative is that I find it hard to work out what it is about porn that makes it wrong for them. Even when they seem to be clear that it is not porn per se that is the issue, but the state of the industry (and Lord knows, there are plenty of pro-porn activists who have a lot to say in criticism of the porn industry), so many of their arguments seem to be based on the idea that porn must be intrinsically bad.
So I want to describe a series of scenarios, and I would love to know where anti-porn feminists think the line on this sliding scale should be drawn to distinguish between "sex" (which, if they are not sex-negative, they do not oppose) and "porn" (which they do oppose).

1. Two (or more) people having sex that they enjoy with each other.
2. As above, but now they video it for their own personal use.
3. They decide to show the video to a few friends.   (Is there a maximum number of friends they show before it becomes "porn" and not "sex"?)
4. They decide to share the video on the internet, for free
5. They ask their friends for a small amount of money to cover the video costs
6. They decide to sell the video for a profit
7. They decide to have sex that they think people will want to pay money to watch, and that they are okay having but it isn't done for their own enjoyment particularly
8. Someone else wants to pay them to do step 7
9. They decide to have sex with different people, as requested by the person in step 8, for the purposes of making videos for profit

Step 9 is obviously commercially-produced pornography, and presumably is opposed by anti-porn feminists.   Step 1 is obviously consensual sex.

So which point, which added element between 1 and 9, is the crucial element?

I have deliberately stopped short of direct coercion, and drawn a continuum that has volition (choice) as an assumed element to it.   Pro-porn and anti-porn feminists are, I think, agreed that coercion is not acceptable.   I have also stopped short of discussing here arguments about the coercion that "needs the cash" introduces (and, if we want rid of the commercial porn industry, the question arises, where else do these women go to get the cash they need so desperately?)

To my mind, all the above are acceptable in and of themselves.   There are a great many issues I have with the way commercial porn is produced and the type of product it produces.   However, these are concerns that I also have about just about every other industry, not just the porn industry.

Back from my break

I have returned, and abnormal service will be resumed shortly.

Pictures of the kitty I was looking after are at my Tumblr (tomorrow I will add some of the sights where I was visiting).

Bindel, Feminism and Femininity - oh, and I ask, "What About Teh Menz?"

At the Guardian newspaper website, I found a "sneak preview" of Julie Bindel's speech tomorrow to mark World Femininity Day.

Lord knows, I am not a fan of Bindel. Her philosophy appears to be an old-fashioned fear-based definition of womanhood, that hates women almost as much as it does men: in the speech text published by the Guardian, this screams through loud and clear in remarks such as:

...the definition of feminism has recently broadened somewhat and can now include celebrating the misogynist male invention of "slut"; the practice of women changing their second name to that of their husband; to baking cupcakes. How things change! When I cut my feminist teeth it was clearly understood that the women's liberation movement (WLM) existed in order to overthrow male supremacy and bring about equality and freedom for women.

She appears to fear women making choices independently of her agenda!

Be that as it may, there are some points on which I agree with Ms Bindel, at least a little. For example, she and I agree that, "femininity is nothing but a social construct." Attitudes towards femininity certainly do construct it socially as a measure by which, "women can be seen as the 'fairer' sex and be judged as less capable and rational than men." I would not agree that this is the sole reason why femininity exists (as Bindel implies), but I am not altogether opposed to her view of the social construction of femininity and its role as a dimension of oppression.

Bindel views femininity as the enemy, as being only ever possibly a site of oppression and that any willingness to engage in feminine behaviour or display apparently makes a woman a collaborator (why else would SlutWalk be such a threat to her?) By contrast, the WFD organisers want to cast it as being central to the liberation of women:

We believe it is vitally important as women to be encouraged to feel powerful through our femininity as opposed to matching or competing with masculine ways of being to achieve power in our lives whether that be socially, in relationships, family or career.

We believe that the more women feel connected to and inspired by their femininity in all cultures across the world the harder it will be to exploit women. We are standing for a world where it is safe to be feminine.

We are saying YES to women worldwide feeling fabulous, being fully self expressed and loving their lives.

Bindel's answer to this was, in my not-so-humble opinion, facile, weak and indicative of a failure to engage with gendered liberation or with the beliefs of the organisers.

Here's my answer.

Why do women have to be feminine to "feel fabulous", or be "fully self expressed", or to "love their lives"? Can't we say "YES" to that independently of celebrating femininity?

While having it be safe top be feminine is a laudable goal (and, incidentally, closely related to the message of SlutWalk, as I understood it), I am at a loss to see how being feminine in and of itself has anything to do with making it harder to exploit women. The fact is, femininity is currently used to exploit women, and many of the standards that define some cultures' perceptions of femininity are pretty restrictive and enable exploitation.

The question arises again and again, of what precisely makes femininity a source of power, rather than something that can be an expression of power or of weakness depending on its wide personal and social context? I am at a loss to understand what power can be obtained without competing for it on some level, and the implication that being feminine will somehow disarm the masculine power bases all by itself seems highly implausible to me.

But that's not what I really wanted to talk about.

What gets me is that both WFD and Julie Bindel accept without question that femininity is something that only belongs to, or is displayed or practised, by women. The unspoken assumption is that there are no feminine men.

WFD want it to be safe to be feminine. I would like to believe that that means every camp gay man, every M-to-F transgendered person and (being cynical about their likely acceptance of trans women as women) every trans woman is also to have their femininity made safe by the WFD campaign. But I doubt it. WFD are pretty clear that they are talking about women only. I only saw cis, TAB women on their site; and on a gallery page sporting maybe a couple of dozen women in the images, only one apparent WoC. Like I said, my issue, as a man, is that I am excluded as a man from feeling fabulous through feeling feminine. Feminine women get to feel powerful (according to WFD), but what do feminine men get? Do I, as a feminine man, get to, "feel powerful through our femininity as opposed to matching or competing with masculine ways of being to achieve power in our lives whether that be socially, in relationships, family or career."? If not, why not?

And to Bindel, I say the same: Bindel says that femininity "exists in order that women can be seen as the "fairer" sex and be judged as less capable and rational than men," but I ask, is it not also the case that femininity exists so that men can be judged as less capable and rational than (other) men? Is this not the reason for homophobia, for violence against trans women, for brutality against the slight, the weak, the less physical, the more academic, the more emotional, boys and men in this world? Is this not a big part of how men learn to be violent, and learn to take out their violence on those more feminine than themselves - that is, on women?

If, as Bindel claims, femininity is a social construct and distinct from biological sex then why should she exclude men's femininity from her understanding?

ETA: Maggie Mayhem makes a similar point here:

Let’s be clear- gender policing is not the same as choosing a color scheme that everyone will appreciate, especially when it is often femininity that is attacked with violence rather than femaleness. Gender policing is a form of violence, by the way.

It is vital to support any and all victims of sexual violence, assault, and rape. It is also important to help promote the power of consent and to acknowledge firmly that sexual assault is not a man v. woman issue.

It is telling that WFD do not actually define femininity on their website (we might draw some tentative conclusions from the fact that the creator of the movement also coaches burlesque, but I will make no assumptions about that), except to say that it can be this source of power and really groovy for women to have. Bindel at least indicates what she thinks femininity means: "nails, hair, makeup and dress... taking deportment lessons, and... speak[ing] a little more hesitantly and softly" and "look[ing] pretty, demure and soft", and "deferring to [men]". Without knowing what WFD mean by it, it's impossible to say whether they are even talking about the same thing.

Femininity is great, and can feel great (I know, because I've tried it). But it is not something that is ever going to give power to women, except on an illusory level. Equally, it need not necessarily be kowtowing to sexist power dynamics. An empowered woman or man can choose to be feminine, or not. A powerless woman (or man) cannot choose and her or his femininity is precisely a mark of her (or his) powerlessness and used to keep her or him) in that powerless position. SlutWalk could not exist without the feminism of which Bindel is the intellectual offspring, but equally, is not fighting on the same terms as Second Wave feminism had to fight. The WFD movement makes the mistake of thinking that the freedom to do something automatically makes doing that thing liberating.

You can't liberate women by telling them what to be (WFD) or what not to do (Bindel). You can only liberate people by breaking down the barriers that limit what they can be and can do, and letting them choose which side of the torn down barrier they want to be on. And that goes for men who want to be feminine, women who want to be masculine, women who want to feminine and men who want to be masculine, and people of either gender who want to be something different or in between.

Best Laid Plans of a Snowdrop

It ought to have been easy. I allowed plenty of time to get ready this morning for my journey. I allowed for the possibility I might miss my bus from home, and there was a better than even chance that if I missed my train to London then I would still get to Paddington with a minute or two to spare to catch my train to Somerset. If there was one worry, it was that I was leaving a few things to the last minute: I planned to visit the letting agency to pay my rent on the way to catch the bus. But I had factored in a generous (so I thought) window fr that little job as well.

Ha!

My troubles started at the letting agency. (Well, technically they started before I left home, but more on that later.) At the letting agency, first there was only one person in the office, and she was having what sounded like a very difficult phone call from a prospective customer. Eventually, she asked the person for a name and number and said she would phone back. Now it was my turn. Then, the card payment machine wouldn't work. This turned out to be because it had run out of paper for printing receipts, meaning it had taken my money but refused to accept that it had done so because it couldn't print out the proof. Then the letting agency representative could not find any replacement rolls. After a few attempts to convince the machine to accept a strip torn off the bottom of a piece of A4 plain paper, we abandoned it and the rep simply made a note that the rent had been paid and that the machine was playing up.

Guess what? I missed the bus I was aiming for.

Then the bus after that (the one I needed to get) ran late. As so often happens.

Arriving at the station, I then realised that I had neglected to pick up my booking details for my pre-ordered tickets, meaning I would not be able to collect them. Fortunately, I knew I had an email receipt that had al;l the details on it. The question was, would I be able to access the email? After several wasted minutes trying to find a wireless hotspot that I could access, I remembered that I had an internet account at the local library. If a computer was free, I might be able to access the details in time to catch my train.

Access the details, was possible. In time to catch the planned train? Not so much. So, armed with my booking code, I returned to the station in the hope that the next train would, in fact, arrive in London soon enough for me to get to Paddington on time. The man at the information booth thought it would be tight but possible. I agreed, and felt fairly confident that I would, in fact, catch the booked train form Paddington.

Ha!

The train was running late when it arrived at the station, but only a little. At the next station, however, it was delayed by quite a lot more. The guard who was spposed to join the train there, wasn't there. He was held up by a signalling equipment failure further up the line, having come with a train from the opposite direction to my travel. That added a lot to the delay, and I was starting to panic a bit now. THEN it was announced that those same signal failures meant the train would have to take a detour route, adding yet more time to the journey's length. As we reached the point where the detour would have been made, however, the signals had been fixed and we could proceed as normal. However, by this time we were already nearly a quarter of an hour behind schedule. By the time we reached London, I had 5 minutes to get to the tube train, travel to Paddington, and then catch my train. It wasn't going to happen.

I resigned myself to having to plead my case at the Paddington ticket office tat I should be allowed to travel on my original ticket and not buy a new one, because this was down to failures of the train service itself, and not down to my own cock-ups earlier.

Now, if the man at the ticket office had said, "Sorry, even if your train had been on time, you would not have arrived at Paddington in time to catch your pre-booked journey," then I would have accepted that, bought a new ticket, and planned to seek a refund for my missed journey, on the off-chance that I might get it.

He did not say that. What he said was, "Our records show your train from [redacted] ran on time, and arrived in London when it was supposed to."

This was bollocks, as I knew very well, because I was watching the clock on my mobile and, wherever possible, comparing it to the clocks at train stations as the train stopped at them. I knew perfectly well when it arrived in London, and I was not going to accept this flimflammery. I explained to the ticket office person the times I had observed, and how late the train had been form particular stations. Off he went and called those stations, and insisted that they said it was "roughly on time." I insisted that my observations were accurate, and the ticket office person relented, without conceding that the train companies were inaccurate. I think he just wanted to get rid of me! With the journeys in question (the booked one and the one I ended up catching) both being far from rush-hour and with plenty of vacant seats, it was probably easier to say, "Oh, alright then, you can HAVE your free go on the later train!" than to carry on arguing the toss with me.

So, now a full hour behind schedule, I caught my train out of London Paddington, and headed west.

Arriving in Bath Spa, I discovered that the connection to my final destination only ran every 2 hours. Fortunately, the people for whom I am now catsitting were easily able to pick me up. There were a number of different car parks.

Guess what? Yup, I got directed to the wrong one, and (as it turned out) the hardest to find or to describe where, in fact, I was. And, the rain had started to fall.

So, it took another half hour for me to get my ride. And then there was a traffic jam on the way back to the house where now I am residing, in charge of keeping a kitty alive for the next week.

And finally, when we got here I realised I had left my washbag with all my medication in it back in my own bathroom. My allopurinol will just have to stay where it is and I will have to hope I don't get crippling gout while I am here (I did bring a walking stick just in case, before I knew I had forgotten the meds) My vitamins can be replaced at the local supermarket, I hope.

But then - what's life without a little adventure!?

The "evil=sexy" trope

Anyone who has read this blog for a while will be aware that I did not have a very happy relationship with my own sexuality as I was growing up - I was convinced that my sadist Dominant desires meant I was an evil person who end up torturing, raping and murdering people, and I did not want that to happen. There's plenty of people who still want me to believe that shit, but I'm older and wiser now, and know that the "didn't want that to happen" was the real test of who I am. My sadism and Dominance are of the consensual, risk-aware and competent variety.

But there is an idea in society that almost seems to send the opposite message from the one I absorbed when I was growing up. It could even be seen as discouraging me form being the decent guy I know I really am.

This is what might be termed the "evil=sexy" trope.

It appears a HUGE amount in science fiction movies and (especially) television. Its usual presentation is that you have a real good guy, who is all nice and caring, and then his evil twin, doppelganger or parallel-universe self turns up and starts fucking up his life.

And also starts fucking his wife/girlfriend. Who suddenly is completely blown away by how much better in bed her man has just become. (A variation is the wonderfully sadistic/Domme portrayal of parallel-reality evil Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it still pretty much sends the same message, with the added trope that overtly sexual/dominant women are evil. The (NSFW!) "Erotic Adventures of Buffy and Evil Vampire Willow" do not have quite the same message...)

The notion isn't limited to science fiction and television, though. It is a common belief in society that women prefer the bad guy and there is a belief that there is an inverse relationship between how good a person is and how hot and passionate and "OMGOMGOMG YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!" the sex with that person will be - especially if we're talking about a male-identified person. The conception is that nice guys might win her as a friend, but when she wants an Earth-shattering orgasm she looks for the guy who's a hardass, a jerk, but she believes will fuck her so good. In other words, nasty guys win and nice guys finish last.

What a choice! Evil and sexy, or good and celibate. Is it any wonder that when I felt as teenager that men were being told they were going to be bad anyway, abandoning goodness might have seemed tempting?

And of course, when it comes to fucking, I am pretty much the Dominant, take-what-I-want, evil, glint-in-his-eye sexy villain that we're sold. Just, with some pretty strict personal rules about consent and all that good stuff going on. And when I am not fucking, I remain a nice, decent boy, most of the time (except for when that sadistic glint shows through in my eye, or my dirty laugh!)

Even when good guys are portrayed as being exceptional in bed (that is, they not only bed lots of girls, but they are seen as exciting and, well, highly sexual) then it is often on the basis of them being anti-heroes of some kind. The classic example might be James Bond who, by any objective measure is portrayed in the earlier movies as a rapist whose victims just end up enjoying it far more than they did with any other man. While he's the "goodie", he's also a pretty nasty and violent person, and that somehow is linked with his being such a powerful lover.

And many of those heroes who aren't portrayed as particularly sexual, but lusted after by many women, are perceived both as being highly sexual, even if they';re not written/played that way (and, in many cases, as needing a "Good Girl" to set him straight) and also "rough at the edges", "mean", "tough", and a bit "nasty". Of course, if those women met a man like that in real life, most of them would do best to run a mile and hope he doesn't take into his mind to give chase (see, for example, those links to Ren Ev's blog in this paragraph!).

As I have probably already made clear, this "evil=sexy" idea is one that I absolutely loathe. For obvious reasons (obvious if you've actually read this post, that is!), it has played a bad role in my own developing awareness of my sexuality. It also creates this whole "Nice Guy" and "Girls Like Jerks" script that is harmful to women, and also fucks up a lot of men's heads as well. And, of course, it means that people don't get what I am actually like, particularly in bed. Because I do have this thing of being pleasant, generous and giving in general; but also have this sadism - this rough, vigorous, energetic, "evil" sexuality. I don't "make love" as such. I fuck. I shag. I screw. In bed, I have all those things that supposedly make the bad boy, the evil doppelganger, the rough diamond, so good. Except that I also have the ethical framework that real life evil people tend not to; the thing that says, "You have to want this, lots, before I will do it to or with you."

Imperatives on "looking good"

When I go to dance classes, and everyone seems to have got the hang of the new steps for that week, the teacher will tell us, "Looking good!" And then we all know that we're making progress.

But "looking good" is usually more about a state of being than a fact of doing: it's not about how well we do something but literally about how we appear.

My most comfortable and "natural" mode of dress is, pretty much, tending towards the slovenly and even slobby. A scruffy t-shirt and a pair of jogging trousers and I'm satisfied. It's good for exercising in, and it's good for lounging around in. What it is not good for, is impressing people!

When I have a reason to dress smartly (suit-and-tie job), people tell me that I "look so much more confident", and smart, and so on. I don't feel it. I feel like a performing monkey in a bow tie and bowler hat being made to perform tricks. Paradoxically, it feels as though for people to see me as I see myself, I have to make myself feel like I am not myself. However, there are positives that come out of that: I tend to be quite "other-oriented", so I do feel good about they way they see me, and about being better positioned to please them. Often, the emotional payoff is enough to justify the emotional expense.

Even so, as soon as I get home, I strip off the suit and tie, and change into something slobby - or let it all hang out, naturist stylee - to get back to feeling like myself. I need some "downtime" from being social and sociable.

Well, as regular readers will know, the past couple of months I have embarked on a project to experiment with using some of the bits of pick-up artist advice that don't seem to me to be sleazy and misogynistic. I have, to put it bluntly, been setting out to pull.

Step 1, obviously, is to dress well (or as well as my budget allows, anyway). My joggers tend to stay in the wardrobe and it's chinos or neat jeans instead, and no more scruffy t-shirts (only the nice-looking ones, or smart-casual shirts). It involves making an effort and not just dragging on whatever falls into my hand first when I reach into the wardrobe, and there are definitely benefits to this, that go with the expenditure of effort. As well as making me pay more attention to my hygiene routine (so that I do more than just maintain a basic standard), there is a certain boost to knowing that I feel good. As long as I can still feel casual, it doesn't end up in the "performing monkey" territory and, although I feel a little outside my comfort zone, I am able to experience myself as congruent - I can perceive my better appearance as a physical projection of confidence. That leads to a cost in turn, because it may be genuine confidence, but it may also be an attempt to conjure confidence when I am not feeling it. At the basis is, "I may not stand much chance if I'm wearing this, but I know that my usual stuff gives me no chance at all." I don't feel like "me" as such, but then, to feel like "me" I would be naked; the reason I choose joggers and t-shirt is because they feel soft and easiest to move in.

One thing that I have seen a lot is the idea that opportunities always come when you aren't expecting them. It's supposedly true, not just of dating, but of life in general, and therefore we must always be ready to seize the moment.

A lot of the time, I like dressing in my smarter-but-still-casual outfits - I like that projection of confidence that I believe they give me, and I like feeling like I look good. However, my "pick-up project" has left me feeling like every time I step out of my home, I have to be dressed up. I have to look my best, or at least "good enough", to pass the gaze of potential women I might approach. I have to be on show, all the time. I have to dress up even when I don't feel like it, even when I would much rather not.

Thinking about this, I also thought about the beauty imperative that women typically feel from the earliest age, from "pretty as a princess" up to airbrushed supermodels. Failure to perform beauty and femininity meets with ridicule and policing, even on the streets. When I go out in my joggers and t-shirt, no one is going to out-and-out shame me for failing to live up to a standard. With women, it can even be one's facial expression that is policed ("Smile, love, it might never happen!"). Terms of abuse and ridicule are sufficiently common, and male entitlement sufficiently strong in some parts of society at least, that verbalising their disapproval of failure to live up to beauty standards is considered normal.

The other day, I decided not to dress up to go out. I would dress in a way that felt comfortable (it helped that my smarter trousers weren't yet dry from the washing machine!) and head into town like that. I would go to the shops and I would not worry about my appearance, I would have a day off from it instead. It was a much-needed break from the pressure I had been feeling. To slip out of that pick-up mindset and get back into my own way of being a little. I still like dressing up to go out, but I need to make it something I can choose, not something I feel I have to do, not an obligation.

Which, let's face it, is pretty much all that feminists demand for women's adherence to beauty.

More Pick-up Progress Updates

I have had a frustrating week in my attempts to put into practice some of the less dodgy stuff that I have learned about pick-up artistry and the surrounding industry (some, like Mark Manson and the Authentic Man Program, seem not to identify with PUA, since they both are critical of the "usual" PUA "methods").

I decided a week ago that I was feeling much more confident with myself; the few successful (as in, an actual conversation developed, rather than "I got to shag her") approaches I had under my belt seemed good warm-up, and the number of other approaches I had made, all seemed like good practice.   It was time to up my game a little bit if I could.   Time to find a comfortable venue to give myself a chance at really going for it.

As it happened, I saw a local "singles quiz night" advertised on a dating website and thought, "What the fuck, it's £10, it's a 20 minute walk from home, and it's presumably a given that everyone there is actively seeking so there's much less need to worry about approaching!"   Mark Manson reckons that you have a realistic chance with about 1 in 10 people you approach, and the night was advertised as having "spaces for" 10 boys and 10 girls; with a good attendance then I would have roughly a 60% chance of meeting someone I have a chance with, and the others would be good practice anyway.

Out of a possible (advertised) 20, exactly 4 people attended, of which I was the only male.   "Ho-ho!" I hear you cry, "Target-rich environment!   No competition!"   Except that one woman (we'll call her P) wore an extremely sour-looking expression and was a veteran of singles events, and seemed more interested in the events than in meeting people.   The next (call her Q) appeared to be in her 50s and, while ore pleasant than P, was also more interested in talking about other events than in talking to people, it seemed.   Only person 'R' seemed like a reasonable chance of a chat-up (and I even learned that she lived closest to me - roughly 27% chance of that in a field of 3 people, using the 10% rule above).   She was very attractive, looked to be in her mid-30s and was, like me, fairly new to this whole scene.   I was looking forward to my chance to chat with her and try out my stuff!

Fat chance.

The organiser of the event said we would do the quiz anyway, even with so few turned up, and divided us into two teams - P and R on one team, myself and Q on the other.   With three rounds, I naturally assumed we would swap over team-mates after each round so that we would all get a chance to work together and get to know each other by doing the quiz, but apparently that just made an ass out of U and me.   What actually happened was, we barrelled through the quiz, with the same teams throughout (and with the best will in the world, I just did not have any interest in dating person Q, sorry).   Even had I been interested in my team mate, we had no time for any kind of chat or getting to know each other: there was only time to say "Do you know the answer?   I think it might be Les Miserables*, what do you think? Yeah, we'll put that." And then on to the next question.

So I never did get to try out my game.   I hoped that afterwards I might get a chance to go for it with R as we left, but somehow we both ended up bitching about how poorly-planned the evening had been.   Which probably shows that my pick-up skillz are still pretty shaky, but hey - I'll keep going.

I have noticed that after the early successes (of actually approaching a few women) I have slid back a bit.   I am more open to the idea that I was when I started this, but I remain crippled by one thing, and one thing only.   "What should I say after I say hello?"   A number of sources say that simply introducing yourself is the way to go, but I can't see it personally.   In my head, there is just no reason for her to care that my name is ["real" name here].   All I can see is her saying in her mind, "So the fuck what?" and walking off.   In my world, if someone says hello (and/or introduces themselves) then it generally means they have something they want to say, so you wait a couple of seconds to find out what it is, and if they don't say it, you start to turn away and then you leave.   That means that I need something to say after I say hello, otherwise nothing is going to happen.   The approaches I've made have all been when some chance has offered an opening line that I could use.   Otherwise, in the few seconds for which an opportunity typically exists, I do not have time to devise one.   This is an issue I have mentioned before in my updates**.

This frustrates me.   Yesterday at the supermarket, I saw several attractive women whom I wanted to approach but I just could not conjure an opening line for any of them, and that was even when I cycled back around looking for a second opportunity, and used the intervening time to try to decide on one (a risky strategy anyway, because it can look or feel creepy, or just insecure and uncertain - which is in a way what it is!)

It's not right to call it "anxiety" about approaching (although I do get that as well, I think I am overcoming it much better), and I haven't yet seen any really useful advice on how to overcome this hump.   Most of it is either "what you say doesn't matter at all" (which is absolutely no help in choosing something to say) or else so generic that it can't help but sound cheesy in my mind (which means I can't find a way to deliver it with confidence).   I think I might just try going for the ultimate generic line, "Are you having a good day?" a few times and see what happens.   (Of course, if I have a more specific line that I can use, I'll go with that instead. The point here is to have a standard fall-back line to open a conversation.)

Tonight, it's the social games evening at the local pub again. Hopefully more people will be there this time, and hopefully one or more will be single women whom I can chat up (or if not, maybe I will see some women in the bar and try an approach on them instead).

* One of the quiz rounds was about theatre, and a lot of the answers were musicals.   Les Mis came up more than once!

** it may be the case that what I'm looking for here is a placebo effect (or at least, what Mark Manson would consider to be a placebo effect), but I think that it is actually based on the different way that an introverted brain works, as discussed in those links to my previous mentions of the problem.

My Fairytale

I've given up reading Eric Berne's "What Do You Say After You Say Hello?" because he comes across as rather smug, and rarely bothers to justify his arguments except by outlining a theory, and then giving an example that fits it. While a lot of his transactional analysis work clearly is very powerful as a tool for understanding human behaviour, his claim that his version explains everything and everyone everywhere just doesn't seem supportable (and in fact, it seemed to me that a lot of his claims ended up being "if you work at it hard enough, you can make anything fit into the theory" rather than "this theory is based on the evidence and can be adapted as necessary if new evidence arises"). I found it quite interesting that Shulamith Firestone's "Dialectic of Sex" actually has several similar ideas to those in Berne's work, and they were roughly contemporary (and both influenced by Freud). However, Berne was very much not feminist (and in many ways pretty much counter-feminism), whereas Firestone was, of course, a radical feminist.

However, his discussion of how fairy tales capture or express common human life scripts was intriguing to me (though his discussion of "Little Red Riding hood" and "Little Miss Muffet" both seemed redolent of rape apologism and victim-blaming). Later in the book he talks about asking patients (as he calls his clients) to describe their lives using the language of fairy tales - frogs as losers, princes as winners, and all that sport of thing.

All of which preamble brings me to my own version of "my life as fairy tale". I have edited this slightly, because there are some aspects of my history that I do not discuss publicly and that therefore I have not included in this rendition either.

My story, then:

The Half-Fairy Boy

There was once a boy called Fay, who was the son of a woodcutter's son and a fairy princess. That made him half-fairy himself, of course. But the fairy princess had left the world of fairies to live with her man, and because they believed in their love and in what they could be, they prospered.

They made sure their baby son knew he was special, that he was half-prince, and half-fairy, and could do anything he wanted. And he knew he was special, too. He could feel it in himself.

And when he started to go to school with all the other human boys and girls, at first they could see he was special and different, too, and they liked him for it because his stories were so vibrant and colourful, the way only fairies can tell them.

But as the other children grew up, it became more important to them to know who and what you were, and where you belonged. Being special and different was a bad thing now, and they lost interest in the fairy-boy except to blame him for being different from the rest.

And Fay did not understand why he was hated. He was special, wasn't he? Hadn't he been popular once? Why no longer? He did not know how to be like the other boys, because he had never needed to learn it before, and now no one wanted to teach him.

So he just kept on trying with how special he was, but people didn't see "special", they just saw "different", and they did not know how to understand him. He couldn't be a boy any more, and he couldn't be a fairy either, because he was only ever half-fairy to begin with. So he turned into a frog instead.

And that was how he stayed, always believing he was special (though now, a special frog), but nobody seeing it but him.

But then he learned to look past the specialness and see himself as he truly was inside, beneath the frog, and the special, and see just himself. And then he knew that the specialness, though real, was never going to be enough on its own. And he stopped being a frog, and worked on being himself. Not special, but different in other ways that were also a part of being half-fairy, and that he couldn't leave behind or change, even if he wanted to. It did not make it easier, but now he knew what he had to do to cope with not being a real boy. So he got on with living without being special, but knowing he was beautiful and not a frog after all.

Help the Cheerleader (trigger warning for mention of rape/rape apologism)

I feel as though I should have heard about this before, since it's been up nearly a month now, but since I only just learned about it via Danielle Corsetto's blog post @ Girls with Slingshots, I am going to post the link now.

And also a big WTF and FYTP and OMG (and whatever other abbreviations might be suitable) to the court that refused even to hear the lawsuit.

Support the cheerleader kicked off her squad for refusing to cheer her rapist. They are asking for donations to help towards the $45,000 legal fees being demanded from her family, after they tried to sue the school over the incident.

(NB: don't read the comments - there's quite a few with variations of the standard rape-apologist line, "if he wasn't actually convicted of the rape then he can't possibly have committed any rape!" in there.)

Weather and Wasps

I am having a bloody awful day today.

It started with having a disturbed night of sleep, which always puts me on the wrong foot.

Then I checked the weather, saw that showers were forecast but the skies looked bright and clear to me, so I hung my washing out anyway - within two minutes it was tipping it down and I had to bring the clothes and bedsheets and everything straight back in again, and I am running out of clean and dry things to wear; so that means I have to turn the heater on and burn loads of electricity in order to have stuff to put on.

As I settled back down from the hurried recovery of the washing (now wetter than it started) and hanging it in the airing cupboard and on the airer in front of the heater, I heard a loud buzzing noise. A quick glance around revealed a wasp trapped inside the window. I opened the window to let the insect escape, and thought nothing of it. Until about 30 seconds later, when I heard more buzzing.

There were now two wasps trapped inside the window.

And then a third, banging around inside the lightshade.

A minute later, a fourth joined the ones at the window.

I retreated from the living room and went to get my walking stick, which I used to lift the catch and prod the window open to allow these now rather annoying insects to get out without them harming me.

By this time, the thought had occurred to me that there may be a wasp nest in the cavity of the wall in the living room, so I decided to google to see if it would tell me what to look and listen for. Listening was a key factor here, because the last few days I have been hearing strange scrit-scrit-scrit noises from just the area that I now believe to be infested with wasps. I had wondered if there might be a pest of some kind there, but dismissed it as being sounds from upstairs, or the building settling. It turns out, that this noise is a classic indicator of wasps nests.

I also found some videos of what to look for, and they showed this orderly "one in, one out" flight pattern; I couldn't see that happening inside the flat, but when I inspected the outside of the building I found exactly that behaviour happening, and classic structures - there's a few gaps in the brickwork just like the gaps that this video shows:



So, with sinking heart, I concluded that the blighters have indeed set up home in my home, and that is not acceptable. I can see where they appear to have chewed a tiny little hole in the top corner of the room, which is presumably how they got directly into the living room (I haven't seen them coming or going, and after those first five, I haven't seen any more inside - but on the outside they are coming and going very regularly). There are also young children living next door, so I can use that as my righteous-indignation justification for wanting the wasps dead and gone.

To which end, I am having to cough up nearly £40 to the council's pest control division (which as best I can tell is the going rate anyway - the "reasonable" price range quoted on the link above, is £35-£60, so I think the council's fee is pretty good value on that basis).

[While typing this, I did find another one inside, and let that one out as well]

Which means that, so far, today I have been tired, frustrated, soaked, scared (of the wasps), and out of pocket.

Virginity *is* a thing, just not that thing...

This video seems to have become really popular in the big feminist group blogs (I've seen it on both Feministe and Feministing now). I am not as wowed or impressed by it as they are. You see, I think virginity is definitely a something; inasmuch as the word has any meaning, then it is precisely to talk about a feeling of something.



The lyrics (copy-pasted from the Feministing version):

I made it through the awfulness
Somehow I made it through
Didn’t know how fucked up it was
Until I fucked you

I was made to feel
Incomplete
Like sex could make
A piece of me go missing

But you made me think
Yeah you made me think
What can sex really do?

I’m not a virgin
Because virginity isn’t even real
Not a virgin
It’s just a heteropatriarchal construct
Designed to police how you feel

Gonna get all your consent, love
And give all mine too
There’s no reason to “save” our bodies
By denying what we want to do

We won’t lose
If we choose
That something new
I want to do with you

Our bodies are our own
Our bodies are our own
And that’s always true

I’m not a virgin
Virginity is pretty much arbitrary
Not a virgin
It gets used to justify violence
And that’s really scary

Yeah that’s really scary
Violence is the worst
Really, really bad

We won’t lose
If we choose
That something new
I want to do with you

It doesn’t need ending
And it doesn’t need defending
Virginity isn’t even a thing

We’re not virgins
There’s no virginity to steal
We’re not virgins
It creates a hierarchy of sex acts
Where only the top one is “real”

We’re not virgins
Oh, we’re not virgins
It feels so fine to say
Virginity
Is such bullshit
Oh yeah, we’re not virgins
Oh oh oh, we’re not virgins

Now, that first verse, I really like. The idea that sex either makes person (it "makes a man out of you") or destroys a person (makes you a "ruined woman"), is totally fucked up and worthless. But the concept of virginity in and of itself is not those ideas; those are ideas that have been bolted on later (as the lyrics say, "Designed to police how you feel").

The second verse starts out well, too - enthusiastic, mutual consent is good stuff, we like that.

However, then we get to this bit:

There’s no reason to “save” our bodies
By denying what we want to do

Alright, I guess I know what he's getting at, but to me, this is wrong-headed. Because, you know, chlamydia, HIV, thrush, and all those nasty things, are probably something you want to save your body from (in the long run, I'm thinking), so there are some things you might want to do but not be equipped for, or that are just a bad idea in general (unless you're both long-term one-partnered and have recent clean STI tests).

Not to mention, you might really want to do something but not be ready to do it. For example, from a post about prejudice towards teenagers, here's my personal example:

In my teenage years, ready at the drop of a hat? I wouldn't have been ready if I'd spent the entire 24hrs beforehand on a therapist's couch! When Vanessa P. (a girl in my class at school, when we were both 14) offered to have sex with me, I panicked and fled.

And yes, I did want sex - a lot! But ready? No way! Saving myself for when I was ready was exactly the right thing for me to do, no question. Admittedly, that's not saving my body per se, but it is saving myself, and it is a VERY BIG reason why not to go ahead and do it just because we want to. This is not saying people have to be prevented from doing it because others think they shouldn't yet; but rather, I think desire and being self-aware of one's own capacity to deal with stuff have to be balanced.

We won’t lose
If we choose
That something new
I want to do with you

The thing is, doing something new is a thing. Depending on what that new thing is, it might be a BIG thing or a small thing, and mostly we don't have special words for the small things so much. Maybe for some people, having sex for the first time is a small thing, but for me and lots of others, it's a big thing and depending on the person that may have a lot or very little to do with the policing of feelings mentioned in the first chorus.

Virginity is pretty much arbitrary

Inasmuch as what constitutes [a type of] virginity is personal to each individual, then I suppose you could call it arbitrary. But there's nothing arbitrary about what you feel about it (unless you want to make all feelings "arbitrary", in which case does that mean other people's feelings aren't real and I can ignore them?)

It gets used to justify violence
And that’s really scary

Yes it is. But that's not a problem with the concept of virginity, but with the importance and associations people attach to it.

It doesn’t need ending
And it doesn’t need defending

I agree with this part, with the caveat re: defending that I already mentioned (namely, that if you're not yet ready emotionally/spiritually then it probably is a good idea to defend it for a little bit longer!) Indeed, that is the whole reason why feeling like you need to end your virginity (by a certain age) is Very Bad Indeed.

We’re not virgins
There’s no virginity to steal
We’re not virgins
It creates a hierarchy of sex acts
Where only the top one is “real”

These lines are really awkward for me. I agree that one cannot steal virginity as such, since virginity and losing it is experienced as a transition from one state to another (as far as I can see). It's like saying "you stole my formerly red car's redness!" which I hope sounds as nonsensical to you, dear reader, as it does to me. Sure, you can sort of make sense of it if the red car got painted green, but you wouldn't ever actually say "you stole my car's redness", and the concept would be just absurd. You say, "You imposed greenness on my car!" (Or, more likely, "Hey! You painted my car green!") So, virginity is not something that can be stolen, unless squareness or redness or some abstract concept like that can be stolen. But of course, redness and squareness and so on are things, they are just not items but rather qualities of items.

As for creating a hierarchy of sex acts - again, that is not intrinsic to the concept of virginity, but rather is a part of the cultural associations that get bolted onto it. I am as critical as anyone of the fetishisation in heteronormative patriarchal society of vaginal virginity (especially as relating to the hymen/vaginal corona) - just look at my ire over the Nikki Blue "live deflowering" stunt. But, in thinking about the issues raised by that story, I also thought a lot about what virginity means to me, and came up with a list of over 30 different types of virginity (and then another blogger added still more, bringing the total over 50).

And now we get the fundamental reason why I feel virginity is something.

I basically took the loss of a virginity as being some activity (sexual, in the link above) that felt like some physical or psychological (or both) boundary had been crossed, and could not be uncrossed (like Caesar and the Rubicon, in the famous saying!) As I wrote above, that makes virginity something personal to each individual depending on the significance and impact that they attach to an experience.

In the original lyrics (I never actually listened to anything more than the famous line!) the following words carry for me a powerful image of emotional intensity:

Like a virgin
Touched for the very first time

It's an image of a powerful emotional boundary being crossed, an explosion of new feelings, sensations and experience, with nothing to compare it to. Now, I don't think losing one's virginity is very often like that, especially nowadays. But the point is, that bigness of new experience is what "losing my virginity" means to me. As I discussed on that list of virginities, for each event there either the experience was something big and new, that felt like I had crossed a boundary (even if it wasn't breaking through a barrier but absolutely and enthusiastically embraced) - or else, I feel as though it would be like that when/if I get to experience it for the first time.

And this understanding of the term has a use in figurative speech already. For all kinds of activities, people talk about losing one's virginity. For example, if you google the terms [parachuting virginity] then you find that there are loads of colloquial uses to describe one's first jump as losing one's virginity or as being like losing one's virginity. And I imagine that taking one's first ever jump out of an aeroplane at X thousand feet would feel like a really big boundary had been crossed!

Now, it is fair to say that this would really be an example of adding something (or a quality) rather than removing a quality (e.g. turning something green instead of taking away its redness, as with the car analogy above!) However, while I have never felt any of those virginities I've lost was something being taken away from me, it could certainly be described as feeling like a veil had been lifted from my senses. The newness and powerfulness of the new emotions and sensations tends to give that sense.

To me, those sensations, those emotions, those experiences, are very big, very real, and very important. The language we have to talk about them is imperfect for sure, but for me, my virginities (both the ones I've given up and the ones I still have) are very real, for that reason. I kind of want to add here that, for me anyway, every first time with a new partner feels like a new loss of virginity.

I can understand if someone feels like having sex (of any kind) for the first time was no biggie, it didn't have a big effect, wasn't something that changed how they understood their body (or their partner's), or anything like that - then I would say that you were never a virgin (because that wasn't something where virginity existed to start with). That's okay. But I cannot understand why the specialness of sharing sex with someone should be diminished for others on that basis. (Equally, the way that specialness gets totally overblown by the usual heteronormative social construct of virginity seems totally unnecessary: it's special enough without that!)

So, I kind of feel like my emotional experiences have been dismissed or belittled here. I get that the song is really about attacking the social constructs that are built up around feelings of virginity and losing it, and not really intended to diminish the importance of those feelings, but collateral damage happened anyway, and that's why I disagree with the song.

Chocolate or diva?

Via Yahoo's suggestions at login, a story about Naomi Campbell being cross with chocolate giant Cadbury after Cadbury advertised a new chocolate bar by comparing it to the supermodel.

The advert consists of the slogan "Move over Naomi, there's a new diva in town", with a picture of the chocolate bar propped in a heap of diamonds.

As we might expect, comments over there immediately start in on the whole, "It's not about chocolate, it's about being a diva" line. There are also plenty of Black folks commenting to say that they personally don't feel offended, so that means it's not racist (and on the first page, which is all I looked at, there is one Black dude asking other PoC not to complain about this sort of thing because, "this type of reaction just dilutes things when real racism occurs").

There's also lots of people saying, "It wasn't intended to offend, therefore it's not offensive," or variations on that line. A few added variations of, "Nobody gets upset by "milky white skin" (one variation of this was comparing White folks' skin colour to that of semen, and claiming that was inoffensive, so this should be, too)

So, here's the questions that bother me about all that:

1. If it's about being a diva (and not about being a brown diva), then why not a White diva?
2. How many PoC does it take saying they're not offended by something, for it to stop being racist? To quote from one of my favourite movies, "Is it, like, three or more?" [/sarcasm]
3. What's the difference between "real racism" and comparisons that make a person's skin colour their most relevant feature?

Racism is sometimes described as "prejudice + power". Inasmuch as White folks in Western Europe and North America usually do not have to fear that prejudices about their skin colour alone could negatively affect their life prospects in many ways both large and small, it is possible for us to overlook the occasional reference to us purely by skin colour. When large numbers choose not to overlook them, but describe them as potentially heralding race-war apocalypse (or something!) that is usually not about fearing actual destruction, but rather about fearing loss of privilege.

When a person of colour hears hirself referred to purely by a skin-colour reference (e.g. "She's a chocolate-coloured diva, our new chocolate bar is also a diva!" - the subtext in the advert) then that is much more of a threat, because skin colour is still a basis on which PoC find themselves being disadvantaged by others in practical ways. And, for those who argued in the comments @ the linked article that being compared to chocolate was a compliment, I am pretty sure that the "chocolate" comparison for Black women especially carries other stereotypical assumptions with it, and being falsely assumed to be something based on one's skin colour (or hair colour, or eye colour) is not pleasant, and not a compliment.

Something doesn't have to be "offensive" to be racist, and it doesn't have to be intended to offend to be be offensive, either. A classic example is "Linford Christie's lunchbox":

The famous Black British athlete Linford Christie was competing just as the super-tight lycra running suits were being introduced. Suddenly, everyone could see the bulges in male athletes' crotches and Mr Christie's bulge was perceived as being bigger than most - his "meat-and-two-veg"/"lunchbox" (penis and testicles) were very noticeable and quickly became a byword for a large anything (but especially, a large penis and testicles). So far, so good. No offence intended, and no racism there, surely?

Eventually (although it seems at least a decade after the term "Linford Christie's lunchbox" came into common usage) Mr Christie decided to sue someone for using the term in print, on the basis that it was a racist slur. The reason being that there has for a very long time been a racial stereotype that Black men have large penises, and by saying that Linford Christie's lunchbox is large, and Linford Christie is a Black man, that racist stereotype is brought into play. And it doesn't matter how many White folks protest that, "it's not about Blackness, it's about penises", the fact remains that the phrase keys into a racial stereotype and some White folks may very well view it as "evidence" for the stereotype, thus perpetuating the racist attitudes behind it.

The point of which being, that Naomi Campbell has every right to be pissed off at being compared to a bar of chocolate, based on the fact that it keys into racist culture, regardless of whether this particular reference was actually intended to have anything to do with race.