Everyone and their mother has decided to make fun of Suzanne Venker, so there is no reason that I shouldn’t jump on the overflowing bandwagon.
According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men… the share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.
Ms. Venker gets off to a roaring start by not seeming to know how statistics work. As it happens, “is having a successful marriage one of the most important things in your life?” and “do you want to get married?” are two different questions, and you cannot answer the first question by answering the second. Similarly, “is having a delicious pizza one of the most important things in your life?” and “do you want a pizza?” are two different questions. Unfortunately, since the Pew Research Study doesn’t have the percentage of Millennials who want to get married broken down by gender (possibly because it’s roughly the same and thus doesn’t say anything interesting), I cannot answer that question. I can, however, point you to her source and point out that the girls seem more enthusiastic about everything than the guys. They’re also more likely to think their career is important. Maybe young women are overachievers in everything?
Of course not! That would be silly.
Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, women have become the majority of the U.S. workforce.
Okay, the first one was during the recession. Men are more likely to have jobs that follow the boom-and-bust cycle, like construction (which was particularly affected by the construction industry falling apart). Women are more likely to have jobs like childcare where the demand is stable. That is not a big social change Proving That Men Are Failing Forever, okay.
I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.
Women aren’t women anymore.
Things I have learned: masculine women who work careers aren’t women anymore. Man, gender transition is way easier than I thought. You don’t have to take hormones or anything.
You know, I really find myself having a hard time getting upset about this. Men are certainly free to marry whomever they want, and if some men haven’t found a woman feminine enough for them they are perfectly free to not get married. I mean, I don’t want them to force themselves to get married to a woman they don’t want to be married to, since that seems like it would end poorly for themselves and the woman in question. And I really don’t think it’s wise to pretend to be someone you’re not so you can marry someone who doesn’t want to get married to you. Everything is, in fact, functioning exactly as it should
Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.
Is the solution going to be “so let’s give men a revolution so they don’t have to adhere to outdated gender norms either”? No? …Hope springs eternal.
(women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise)
But I’m pretty sure most women don’t want to be on a pedestal actually. The problem with a Pretty Princess Pedestal is that people get really upset when you start wanting to do things that aren’t pretty and princessy. What happens if you want to fix a car or fight in the army or get muddy and ruin your flouncy pink princess dress? No one will ever let you tell fart jokes! Won’t someone think of the fart jokes! (Also, go tell poor, queer, and nonwhite women that they got to be on a pedestal, they need a good laugh.)
feminists like Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men
Feminists like… feminists like… like Hanna… Hanna Rosin…
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA.
Okay, see, the whole point is that you don’t have to be self-sufficient in order to support a family. The career ladies can help! You remember the career ladies, a couple of paragraphs ago you were fulminating about how they were taking all the men’s jobs? See, when you have two people working, one person doesn’t have to provide and protect for their families.
You know, I don’t doubt that the desire to provide for and protect one’s family is in the DNA. There’s some obvious selection pressure for it and a special connection to family is a cultural universal or pretty damn close. What I want to know is why that desire is apparently only in men. If there’s only selection pressure on one sex to develop something, the other sex tends to develop it too: that’s why people with XY chromosomes have nipples. You can’t just explain why evolution would men want to protect and provide for their families, you also have to explain why it wouldn’t make women want to protect and provide for their families. And if basically everyone wants to protect and provide for their families, then men who make less than their wives can do the exact same thing that women who make less than their husbands do: channel the urge to protect and provide into something else.
Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.
Weren’t all the guys getting pissed off at feminism literally last paragraph? Do you even have an editor?
No, really, all men can’t have sex at hello. If you want proof, mention the phrase “n*ce g*ys” literally anywhere on the Internet. Feminism isn’t pro-casual-sex, at least not my kind of feminism; it’s pro-people-having-the-kind-of-sex-that-makes-them-happy. No sex? Cool! Wait till marriage to have sex? Awesome! Serial monogamy! Fabulous! One night stand with a dude whose name you don’t know? Great, make sure to stay safe! Adorable poly triad with no sex and lots of love, spiced up with occasional flirtations with hot blog groupies? Wonderful! No sex at all and you’re really fucking horny? Dude, that sucks, but at least we have lots of sex toy sites and ethically produced feminist porn?
I’d say that feminism is actually in favor of guys having responsibilities when they live with their girlfriends, but I feel like by ‘responsibilities’ she doesn’t mean “household chores,” she means “if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it.”
The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.
Or we could give everyone balanced lives because, despite what the Protestant Work Ethic says, most people have better things to do than spend sixty hours a week at a job they don’t love like burning… but, no, that’s crazy talk. This is capitalism! We can’t be having human fulfillment in capitalism! Next thing people will be finding something to enjoy about life other than accumulating cash and then what will happen?
All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.
If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.
I have literally no idea what this conclusion means. Does ‘their femininity’ mean not working a job? Wearing lots of lipstick? Cooking dinner? Not having sex on the first date? Will a marriageable man literally show up in one’s living room if one puts on a skirt? What if a woman’s true nature is scratching her armpits and watching lots of football? What does ‘marriageable’ mean anyway? What’s men’s true nature? Is it being marriageable? Providing and protecting? Using Axe deodorant? What if he wants to wear lipstick and cook dinner? I’M SO CONFUSED.
All of this is basically Messages From Bizarro Land to me. Because seriously, right now, I know two engaged couples and an engaged-to-be-engaged couple and absolutely zero people who have had sex at ‘hello.’ Is this a poly thing? Are poly people riding in to save marriage from the poor monogamuggles? Please tell me that’s true, the look on Venker’s face…
Thing of Things 
Who is this Hanna Rosin person, and why should I laugh at her ?
I mean, yeah, I could find out by googling; but IMO this line makes your post a lot weaker than it could be.
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She’s a journalist, former friend of Stephen Glass when they were both at TNR, and the main inspiration for the character played by Chloe Sevigny in the movie SHATTERED GLASS. She currently writes for the XX Factor blog at Slate. She is somewhat closer to the CH Sommers pole of feminism than the Amanda Marcotte/Jessica Valenti pole, and was name checked by Jon Chait in his instantly notorious PC article as a person who has been subdued by the jeering PC mobs, apparently over some infelicitous(?) remarks about the patriarchy.
She was in the news recently during the UVA Rolling Stone fiasco, wherein she pressed Sabrina Erdely on her reportorial process before the latter disappeared into the digital ether.
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Also she’s one of those people peddling that obnoxious “end of men” narrative.
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Thanks, that’s a very informative summary, but it doesn’t make her sound laugh-worthy. It just sounds like she comes from the opposite ideological pole as compared to mainstream feminism. Am I supposed to laugh at her because she is a low-status person in feminist circles, or what ?
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Bugmaster, no, you can laugh at her because she’s one of those writers who thinks repackaging a paint-by-numbers War of the Sexes yarn is edgy and clever, and who gets pouty on learning that other people are allowed to criticize her theories, even harshly.
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@Bugmaster
Did we read the same post? I thought it was obvious that Ozy was laughing at the claim that Rosin is a feminist.
Personally, I’m not sold on the idea that we should proclaim other people “not feminist” if we disagree with their version of feminism. But some of the commenters here have wished for “good feminists” to distance themselves from “bad feminists” more explicitly. So, enjoy — this is what it looks like.
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N*ce g*ys have been oppressing the Jews for years, and deserve what’s coming to them
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I’m pretty sure you mean n*zi g*ys.
N*ce g*ys spread fabulousness and glitter.
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(I was going for “Nice Goys” in case you didn’t pick up on it. )
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That would be N*ce G*yim.
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Or both, in the case of the Gay Aryan Skinheads mentioned on an SSC link post.
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“Or we could give everyone balanced lives because, despite what the Protestant Work Ethic says, most people have better things to do than spend sixty hours a week at a job they don’t love like burning… but, no, that’s crazy talk. This is capitalism! We can’t be having human fulfillment in capitalism! Next thing people will be finding something to enjoy about life other than accumulating cash and then what will happen?”
Is there a better alternative because I’m not sure there is.
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To clarify, I think the Protestant work ethic doesn’t have a better alternative, not “man focuses on career, woman stays home.”
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Many companies could probably be much more flexible without reducing production. But I do not see any method of encouraging this on a society wide level.
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In the beginning of the twentieth century, people envisioned gains in productivity and efficiency going towards giving people greater leisure time in the future. Instead, they went towards greater consumption, the marginal utility of which, I would argue, is not worth the cost to quality of life. Whether the alternative is feasible in practice is a debate to be had, since things evidently didn’t shake out that way. But there’s no reason to believe that it’s not possible in principle.
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There totally is a better alternative! Plenty of European countries have 40, or, in the case of France, 35-hour workweeks written into law, and they enjoy standards of living which aren’t noticeably different from those in the US.
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Structurally it is much like a market failure — in fact, if I thought enough about it I’m sure I could show it *is* a market failure. But I don’t feel like thinking that much!
Anyway, the work ethic is amazing and we should keep it. However, two things happen. First, for some people things are Gollumized, meaning they become an unhealthy, singular focus. Second, success in “big finance” gives not only the first-order rewards of a high status job, but also many second-and-higher-order rewards, as this class of people not only get a generous salary, but they get to set the terms of the economy itself.
They not only get the bucks, but they get to set the rules regarding how the bucks get got.
And this kinda sucks. But it ain’t easy to fix.
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The main thing (IMO) standing in the way of a “male revolution” that frees us from outdated gender norms is shared parenting by default in the event of a divorce. Men who take on the caregiver role, bond with the child still get “no vagina – sorry, 2 days every other week” in the event of a contentious divorce. Which, as you can imagine, is emotionally devastating. (This is besides the social isolation stay-at-home dads face.)
The bills keep getting defeated (North Dakota during the last mid-term, Bill c-560 in Canada), none of the women’s rights lobby groups are stepping up on this (NOW opposed shared parenting as of the late 90’s and is mum on it now), so…
Also: feminist porn sounds like the least hot thing ever, but I will sincerely give it shot if it makes me a more ethical porn consumer… recommendations?
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Out of curiosity, why do you think feminist porn sounds un-hot?
Perhaps I have a different idea than you do of what counts as feminist porn, but to me feminist porn sounds way hotter than non-feminist porn, or at least than porn which is bad at feminism. (e.g. “storylines” that contain unacknowledged coercion stress me out a lot, and it seems to me that feminist porn would be much more likely to treat female pleasure as a central focus.)
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Ya – this might be a pure prejudice of mine, which is why I’m eager to update.
I take your meaning viz. female-pleasure focused, as one thing that I dislike about conventional porn is that it’s such a volume business and inevitably the performers seem disengaged from what’s going on ie. “another day at the office”.
But… one thing I think conventional feminism gets seriously wrong about sexuality is the subject/object dichotomy – I prefer to think of things on a agent/experiencer axis (see this article for why I think this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-our-brains-turn-women-into-objects/) – and there are certain physical acts – aggressively controlling body by grabbing, hair-pulling, begging to be fucked – that sort of thing – which trigger a breakdown of agency – and is a serious turn-on for me – which (I presume) would be absent from feminist porn because of the subject/object thing. “Surrendering to the experience” is an important facet and (I like to think) hard to fake – if feminist porn is *better* at that, sign me up.
Another trigger for me is slightly transgressive power differentials – like older couple has threesome with naive young women (omg my fantasies are so cliched and transparent) (not necessarily male > female) (and not coercive – kink.com stuff seems ethically produced viz. consent but passes into squicky for me) which, again, I expect to be absent.
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Feminists seem really bad at realizing that porn is fiction. That would likely be a barrier to making good porn.
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JE:
I don’t think that’s true. Note that feminists also complain about sexist tropes in fiction.
That said, of course if you like your fiction or your porn to have elements that feminists consider sexist, you will disagree with them on what the best fiction or porn is.
roe:
I see, that makes some sense. Oddly enough, I agree with you about weird power differentials, probably because often the scenarios are so bizarre that I expect all reasonable people to understand that this is not like real life and you should not try it at home. On the other hand, vague coercion is unfortunately often seen as a normal part of real life, and so storylines containing that (in regular fiction too) stress me out because I feel like the coercion is not acknowledged as a potentially bad thing.
On the other hand, I don’t like the kind of violence-type stuff you describe. (Which doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t like it!)
I have no idea how explicitly feminist porn treats any of this stuff, though.
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Ya, re: porn there’s definitely an element of “things I’d never try in real life but make for good imaginative fodder”.
Just to be clear, my wife & I have experimented with pain play (me receiving) and what I talked about – hair pulling/controlling body parts – is different. Hair pulling, for example, seems intuitively about pain & coercion, but what it’s really about is sensation and control (which admittedly is a fine line) – you typically grab enough hair so it doesn’t hurt, but more feels like a tingle, and the control aspect is more like “this is what I like” and less like “you’re just a sex-doll to me” – just clarifying.
But there is also a sense in which the power/status differential thing isn’t just a weird thing in my imagination but something I’ve fully integrated into my sex life.
(Also, no judgement for actual coercion fantasy in SSC settings &etc.)
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@llamathatducks:
I’ve never seen any feminist complaining that, for exemple Transformers is all fake and that cars don’t turn into giant mecha in real life. Maybe you’ve run into different feminists than me.
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I don’t enjoy the violent stuff, and I am turned on by expressions of female pleasure in porn (as long as they seem even remotely sincere); but still, I have trouble even imagining what feminist porn would look like. As far as I understand, many (if not most) feminists are against porn in general, so my idea of feminist porn is a fully clothed actress reading Dworkin to a fully clothed (and possibly, restrained) actor for about an hour straight. I am sure some people would find it hot, but it’s not my cup of tea…
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Seriously guys, does no one have google? Do you all read this blog exclusively in the workplace? These are solvable questions. Google “feminist porn” and just read the top links.
Short answer- it is exactly, 100%, what you would imagine if you sat down and thought about all the reasons Christian Rock is weird, and then analogized.
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“If you bother to Google you will totally find evidence supporting my argument!” is one of the least convincing arguments ever.
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It was in response to all the people claiming that they don’t have any idea what feminist porn could possibly be like.
People. ON THE INTERNET. Who want to know what porn is like.
There is a solution for this problem.
The second paragraph is my opinion. I’m not going to argue for it. I am satisfied that it is substantiated without the need for validation from others.
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I actually went and googled. Here are some things I found via the Feminist Porn Awards [NSFW]:
http://www.juicypinkbox.com
http://www.welovegoodsex.com/fucking-new-years-eve-away/
http://www.pinklabel.tv/on-demand/all-movies/
http://www.pornographiclove.com/v2/tour-videos.html
Not a lot of Dworkin, that’s for sure. Christian Rock? You decide.
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@JE
Note that machines transforming into other machines is not a sexist trope and in fact generally has nothing to do with gender. The stuff feminists complain about in porn is also stuff they (we) complain about in other media: overrepresentation of thin cis white women and buff cis white men and underrepresentation of everyone else, unrealistic body standards that leave lots of people feeling inadequate, overreliance on one tired narrative… “Realisticness” is absolutely something feminists want in fiction, even scifi and fantasy, except it’s “realisticness” in how people act. Note, for instance, the common complaint that what’s considered “romantic” in much literature and film is stuff that in real life many women consider creepy, and also the complaint that it’s unrealistic for men’s success in battle to necessarily win him the woman of his dreams, and (less seriously) the (minor) complaint that “seriously this is a desert island and all of the men have grown out their beards because presumably there are no razors and yet all the women somehow still have perfectly shaved legs and armpits??”.
Also, personally, I totally want “realistic” porn – I mean, the scenarios can be outlandish, but I absolutely want the actual sex to reflect the kind of sex I may want to have, and the bodies to at least sometimes approximate my body, and both of those things are a little bit hard to find.
@Bugmaster:
….clearly feminists who are anti-porn wouldn’t produce feminist porn?? I am surprised it is not obvious that given that there exist plenty of feminists who are not anti-porn, those would be the ones who might produce feminist porn, and it would be actual porn.
Also, re: expressions of female pleasure, I want to clarify that I don’t think mainstream porn doesn’t sufficiently show women expressing pleasure. It totally does. What it doesn’t have enough of is a focus on sex acts that are particularly likely to bring women pleasure. Mainstream straight porn is typically very very focused on PIV, and everything else is merely foreplay. As Ozy wrote some time ago, many many people with vaginas don’t actually like PIV all that much and prefer other kinds of sexual things. (This includes me.) So showing women without fail enjoying PIV sex strikes me as exactly the kind of “unrealistic” thing that many feminists critique in porn.
@Patrick:
Your comments are really amusing, and point taken, but I just don’t really want to go look at porn at most times of the day…
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I find director Erika Lust’s stuff pretty hot…
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Thanks!
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Briefly delurking to recommend the Crash Pad Series for porn that is both feminist and hot. YMMV, because straight men are not really the target demographic, but it’s possibly worth checking out.
Also: for some reason, my brain wants to interpret Bugmaster’s Dworkin idea as a challenge. Could you do it up as a scene that was legitimately sexy? I bet you could.
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[content warning: explicit description of (hypothetical) kinky pornography, possibly verging on written porn itself; tangential reference to discussion of rape]
It’s basically a femdom/humiliation scenario, so let’s embrace that. Bugmaster said both clothed, but CFNM (Clothed Female, Nude Male) would probably be better, if that doesn’t ruin the scenario too much for him. The Woman is in a siren suit or something similar, very practical, very androgynous. The Man is restrained, facing away from the woman and into a Saint Andrew’s Cross.
The Woman reads from Dworkin (Intercourse seems like the obvious pick) while whipping The Man to punish him for the sins of his sex[1]. The Man is deeply apologetic and groveling, but also a bit . . . awkward sounding. His breathing is a little faster than it should, even for the circumstances. The Woman suddenly notices that he has an erection. Her face wrinkles in shock and revulsion, as she asks, in a tone dripping with disgust “Is this turning you on, you revolting misogynistic pig!?”
The Man whimpers “Yes mistress, I’m very sorry mistress.”
The Woman is enraged, and begins to beat him more savagely. The Man pleads for mercy, while admitting that he doesn’t deserve it. The Woman’s fury stimulates him to greater self-loathing excitement, which in turn makes her more furious. As the beating reaches a crescendo, he groans and ejaculates on the floor[2]. The Woman throws the whip down in disgust, walks to his side, grabs his hair and brutally wrenches his head around to face her[3]. She slaps him across the face, then turns and walks out the room, extinguishing the lights as she goes, leaving him in darkeness, sobbing, restrained, and alone.
[1] If you want to make it really on the nose, maybe replace Dworkin with the “myrmidons” passage from Browmiller’s Against Our Will?
[2] Or in his pants, if we’re doing this with him clothed.
[3] I’m assuming here, as elsewhere, that our actors are well-trained enough to avoid doing permanent damage.
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@ osberend
1. The man is satisfied, the woman frustrated? That’s your idea of feminist porn (according to Bugmaster)?
2. Dworkin probably wouldn’t approve, as she seems to view pain and dominance play as unhealthy no matter who’s whipping who.
3. You didn’t say what she whipped him with! A flogger? A belt? A switch? A riding crop? (I’m no expert, but an actual whip would probably be a bad choice.)
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1. “Satisfied” is not the impression I was going for. I mean, he gets an orgasm, but . . .
But no, this is not my idea of actually feminist porn, or even “what Bugmaster was imagining feminist porn as being.” This is my attempt at “do[ing] it up as a scene that [is] legitimately sexy [for people with the right tastes],” specifically by taking the implicit humiliation aspect and running with it. You could also do it a more playful femdom version where the woman clearly doesn’t buy into what she’s reading, but is merely using it as a tool for expressing her dominance over the man; that version could easily end with her orgasm (with or without his; either way).
Or, I guess you could do something without whips and chains, focusing on understanding and emotional connection. I can see that being sexy with different reading material, but I doubt it would really work for me with Dworkin. Hence my taking it in the direction I did.
2. Of course not.
3. I was thinking flogger, but yeah, I probably should have specified. My (somewhat vague) understanding is that BDSM with bullwhips is a doable thing, but requires a lot more skill to do safely.
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A few of the really kinky porn bloggers I’ve read have done the Dworkin (other radfem text, etc) thing in the opposite direction! Meaning that the woman is reciting passages about how heterosexuality is inevitably misogynistic, patriarchal, etc, and getting off on it in an mdom/fsub scene.
(Of course, you’d probably have to actually sympathize with radfem ideas before you could *really* get off on the taboo of it beyond just the “ordinary” d/s context. I’m not sorry to say that yes, it’s incredibly hot ^-^)
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It’s funny that your “go to” thoughts on feminist porn are explicitly about male humiliation. Which, this says more about you than about us. For example, in the feminist kink spaces I operate, men are sometimes welcomed. Which is to say, we have “women-only” parties sometimes, but we have “all-gender” parties on others. (’Cept trans dudes can come to the women-only parties, which is maybe kinda weird. I dunno.) At the all-gender parties there is some amount of fdom/msub stuff, but it is hardly the prevailing theme. There is likewise plenty of mdom/fsub stuff, and plenty of just-plain-old-fucking.
That said, there is an enormous difference in the social environment. At first it is hard to put your finger on why. It’s not like men are treated badly. They are not. Most of them are the b/f’s of one (or more) of the women and, really, I’ve never witnessed anything slightly anti-male.
The difference is this: In most mixed-sex environment the men will take a dominant role in conversation. This is real and measurable. You can hear it yourself, if you listen to groups at bars and restaurants. The men talk more. They assume their interests trump the interests of women. They interrupt women more than women interrupt men. (The nature of the interruptions is different as well. Women interrupt to support; men interrupt to speak-over.)
(By the way, if you do not notice this, bring a stopwatch and measure. People tend to overestimate the amount of time women speak versus how much men speak. Which is to say, a small amount of forthright speech from a woman is noticeable in a way that the same speech from a man feels natural and blends in.)
At the feminist sex parties I attend, this dynamic does not occur. The reason seems simple: These men are dating feminists. They are with their g/f(s), with some amount of her social status dependent on his behavior. So we expect these men are more sensitive to these issues, plus their g/f’s will set them right if they are fucking up.
I expect this is terribly awkward for the men the first time, but the men who come regularly seem to adjust. After a few parties they seem cool and relaxed, total sweethearts. I find the all-gender parties tons-o-fun.
Plus the sex is HAWT.
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“(’Cept trans dudes can come to the women-only parties, which is maybe kinda weird. I dunno.)”
Of course it’s not weird, we are all quite aware that SJ doesn’t believe trans men to be men.
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(and Veronica, if you think I’m being mean to your friends and comrades, here’s what the literally saintlike Julia Serano has to say: http://juliaserano.blogspot.ru/2014/11/cissexism-and-cis-privilege-revisited.html )
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P.S.: you understand, Veronica, the real reason for me being so frustrated here and snapping at you is that social dysphoria is agony for me and I feel simultaneously threatened by strange men on the street and intrusive, aggressive, etc whenever I am someplace designated a woman’s space.
Like, I’m feeling simultaneously like I’m too confrontational/male-socialization-privileged/whatever and like I’m never being heard enough, that people of any gender don’t care about what I have to say. This is why I always comment so much and so irrationally and emotionally. I just feel like I am the worst of both worlds, you know? (And then I feel transmisogyny/jealously towards all the extremely confrontational trans women on tumblr…)
I am so destructive.
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It’s good, hon. I know you’re carrying a heavy weight.
For the record, though, the particular feminist space I’m talking about isn’t really like the online social justice spaces. I mean, there is *some* of that, particularly among the younger members. But Twitter and Tumblr are their own kinda thing, and not everyone is a graduate student in gender studies. Anyway, it’s a diverse crowd. For example, some of the women are older working class dykes, who care fuck-all about shrill social justice purity.
As to the whole “trans guys are ‘men-lite’ ” thing that seems to pop up a lot, I’m not sure what to think. I’ve met trans men with all kinds of masculine expression, along with all shades of feminist consciousness. I’ve met some who seem to be “try-hards”, working constantly to out-bro each other. I’ve met others who seem to integrate their gender in a really awesome way.
For example, the particular trans men who regularly attend these parties (their are 3 or 4 who come around) are completely awesome guys, totes righteous. So whatever. As a *philosophical* matter, it is a complete mess. As a practical matter, things work pretty well.
Are you saying that Serano is denying the gender of trans men? Cuz I’ve read that article a few times and I’ve never seen her say that, or anything even nearly like that. I don’t get it.
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Veronica: ah, no, no, I admire Serano beyond words, I was pointing to her post that contains a rather snide but heartfelt example of how SJ cannot square the right of trans men to their preferred gender with its own “reverse discourse” tendencies! I.e. either trans men have to be “men lite” or they cannot be welcome in the spaces dominated by reverse discourse. I.e. transmisandry is a real thing, and ~~~ironic~~~ ~~~misandry~~~ can be directly linked to it.
(Also yes, I have no doubt that those real-life feminist spaces of yours have been awesome and lovely and inclusive. I’m just frustrated that I cannot yet be in one, physically.)
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It’s funny that your “go to” thoughts on feminist porn are explicitly about male humiliation.
Uh, no. My “go to” thoughts on making “a fully clothed actress reading Dworkin to a fully clothed (and possibly, restrained) actor for about an hour straight” into “a scene that was legitimately sexy” are explicitly about male humiliation. If the challenge were “do a feminist porn scene that is legitimately hot,” I’d probably take it a rather different direction. But that’s clearly not the goal of DeviantLogic’s musings, given that they explicitly recommended already-existing feminist porn that they find hot.
Which, this says more about you than about us.
And this says that you have an impressive ability to read things into my comments that aren’t actually there. Although that’s not really new information at this point. It’s somewhat frustrating: While I disagree with a lot of what you have to say, you’re pretty good at saying it in a convincing fashion (i.e., you leave less room for further steelmanning than most), and you’re less doctrinaire than some. But you’re often presenting highly convincing arguments against points that I’m not making.
They assume their interests trump the interests of women. They interrupt women more than women interrupt men.
I’m sure this dynamic does exist, in the explicitly gendered way that you describe, but I also think that feminists are often to quick to assume that that’s what’s going on, as opposed to men assuming that their (individual) interests trump everyone’s, and therefore interrupting everyone. Or trying to, anyway. Since other men are likely to interrupt back, or just keep talking, a bit louder. Women don’t do this as much, so men interrupting them “sticks” more than men interrupting other men.
I kinda suspect that there’s also a sort of intermediate phenomenon, where guys learn to pick up the signals of who won’t fight an interruption, and are more likely to interrupt them. Which, yeah, could just be gender itself, but could also be gendered behaviors such as talking softer, framing statements as questions, etc. Or just observably failing to fight previous interruptions.
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osberend: I am such a depraved kinky slut that I can very easily imagine an mdom/fsub scene here that “subversively” uses the attributes of a fdom/msub one (restrained man, woman telling him how men are horrible to women) in a misogyny kink scenario. I.e. a “right-thinking” submissive/masochistic woman forcibly re-educates a feminist man on why feminist theory proves that men are the inherently dominant gender and why he should treat her appropriately.
😀
(“Dynamic-queer”/topping from the bottom scenarios are extremely hot, there’s not enough of them!)
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Consensual vanilla sex with cuddling afterwards?
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[possibly obvious content warning: a fictional character expressing a rape fantasy]
@multiheaded: Yeah, I can see that.
I can dig it.
This reminds me of a question that I’ve been meaning to find a depraved kinky slut to ask (if you don’t mind): Do you know where to find or how to go about finding (existing) porn with the following scenario (which might count as topping from the bottom, I’m not sure):
A restrained (and ideally blindfolded) dominant gives orders to an unrestrained sub (or subs), cooly confident in Their ability to control them through the sheer force of Their superhuman will. Noble-serf dynamics (in either direction) would be a bonus, but are not essential. M/M isn’t really my thing, but mdom, fdom, and lesdom are all fine. MtF and FtM are both neither required nor a problem.
I tried poking around the internet a bit, without success, but I may just not know what to search for.
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@InferentialDistance: That works, if it’s done right. IME, though, vanilla porn is harder to make really hot than kink (under a very broad definition of kink), at least for someone who’s no longer in the linoleum phase. Kink lets you create hot scenarios, which creates a little wiggle room for sub-optimal execution. Vanilla porn doesn’t. It’s like making a restrained pilsner, vs. an over-the-top stout. With both of them, if you really nail it, it’s amazing. But the stout gives you a bit more leeway to fuck up a little, and still have something worth drinking.
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The Success Myth article mentions “the poker-faced stoicism that is our permitted range of emotional expression.” Is this massive hyperbole or have I failed to internalize male socialization to the extent that most men do? I realize Men Aren’t Supposed To Cry but it doesn’t seem to go much further than that.
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Ozy, the “surrender” thing is because Venker is a gender fetishist. As Pat Califia pointed out a while back, these are people who get a romantic and erotic charge out of traditional dichotomized gender roles; the problem is that they have to believe their desires are How The World Is, not simply one set of preferences.
Also, more cynically, you don’t get book deals and speaking engagements by arguing “It really turns me on when men are all Romance Hero Alpha! But of course you may feel different, and that’s okay.”
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“All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”
I hereby choose to interpret this as “Women should surrender to their feminity. Also, men should surrender to their own femininity.”
I can’t endorse this view but it’s at least as sensible as the other possible interpretation.
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Back in the mid 70’s i argued bitterly with my male roommate who was planning on being the kink of the castle while queenie made a nice home, i assume wearing lipstick and dresses all the time like june cleaver. Even at that time i saw how stupid that was and i have been a middle center libertarian all along. 40 years later found out i was right.
The cave man theory of human existence still existed just fine. But now me and my feminine mate need not my physical strength to fend off saber toothed tigers, and hers to keep the fires burning to keep us alive. Nope. We need both incomes to pay the heat and electric and to pay for our suburban cave . All the time i used to spend killing mammoth to eat now is saved to help her with the housework. Seems like a fair trade to me. I have a partner just like my cave bretheren had. I do not have their life, thank goodness. It just looks different. Besides i like my ‘vette. She likes her SUV. We both like as far as it goes grocery shopping. Beats the hell out of mammoth hunting. And she and i still think i’m a manly enough man to get through this. How about that? Wonder what happened to my old roommate?
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I meant king of the castle but perhaps that was Freudian when the spell check said kink of the castle! That works too and cracks me up even More. Lol!!!!
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Personally i think most porn is bullshit. I have seen my fair share of it and the VAST majority of it bores me to tears. Feminist, bondage, whatever is just so much nonsense that it really makes me question the entire premise of who watches this. A friend of mine usef to like to go to syrip clubs every once in awhile. Ok. Fine. But only once in 30 years did i ever see two girls who were actually having fun doing it. The rest simply was a job and man i saw that in 2 seconds of their routine. But those two got my attention and my tips and we had a great conversation too. Still remember those girls who really made my night and no, not in that way. Maybe they were newbies but at least they had smarts and could convey a good time. Rock on.
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