I read an abridged version of this piece live on air for avfm’s June 28th Radio Show: Meet the Zeta Female.
Here it is again, uncut. 😀 (And, yeah Jim, I know we argued over the whole ‘flashing whites’ being detrimental to predators, but I put it in anyway.) Plus, commentators please remember that this is conjecture on my part, as far as I know it’s not scientific truth. Yet.
On with the show.
Have you ever wondered why society expects men to maintain an ever-ready erection, a simple on/off sexual expression, while shaming them for ‘only thinking about one thing?’ This doublethink makes no sense. If men were sexually simple, they wouldn’t have to be shamed into it, further why shame them for being sexually simple if that’s what society wants from them in the first place?
But in actual fact this double-blind for men makes perfect sense when you look at it the right way.
Recent research has found that rejection is experienced as physical pain. It’s a way of applying pain without damaging the person you’re applying it to, the perfect system of torture, when harnessed correctly.
Society (and when I say society, I’m talking in terms of a social organism that uses men and women like cells to perpetuate itself) Society controls men through rejection. Social and sexual. In particular, men are constantly told their sexuality is depraved, damaging, disturbing, and demonic. Men experience this social drumbeat of sexual rejection as continuous pain. It could be likened to a shock collar wrapped around the neck of every man that delivers a constant electrical shock, varied just enough so the man in question never gets used to it.
The only time the shock collar stops delivering is when the man in question acquires approval from a woman. This approval can be social or sexual, but it is a woman who provides it.
This system really only works when there is a constant flow of electricity to men’s shock collars. This flow is generated by holding men to an ideal of ever-ready sexual desire for women.
Men have to desire in order for it to be rejected, in order for their shock collars to function. This explains why society simultaneously enforces a performing monkey standard of male sexuality, while mocking men for being the very performing monkeys society wants.
In this system of controlling men through rejection, men rejecting women becomes a taboo. Now it’s not that men are incapable of rejecting women, it’s that society takes incredible pains to prevent this rejection. First it elicits the performing monkey ideal of male sexuality via use of the shock collar treatment—only sex with a woman will make the pain stop.
(Quick question. If you had a shock collar around your neck and the only time it turned off was when you were having sex… how often would you think about sex and how desperate would you be to have it? Yeah.)
At that point, society stigmatizes male rejection outright. How many articles have we read that follow the formula: men are rejecting women and that’s because they’re fucked up sexist losers? And how many times have we heard that men always consent to sex with a woman thus can’t be raped?
In fact, society so hates male rejection of women that it has ghettoized men who sexually reject women into a completely separate identity and stigmatizes them by taking away their manhood. No other society has ever thought to separate men who reject women sexually from those who do not. It’s certainly the case that homosexuals have existed in other societies–our society didn’t just discover them one hundred and fifty years ago–it’s just that those societies never felt a compulsion to separate them out. Just like we don’t separate out men who like oranges from men who like apples.
However, if we were a society ruled by apple growers, you damn well better bet we’d be singling out orange loving men and calling them pussies.
Despite society’s deep taboo regarding male rejection there is one lone hero standing up against the tyranny, standing up in defiance of the performing monkey sexual standard, standing up by… well… not standing.
Yes. The limp dick.
Now you’re probably asking yourself, “But typhon, how does a limp dick save the world?”.
To understand that let’s look at why men experience impotence in the first place. Our nearest relatives, having muscular erections rather then ones based on vasocongestion, never experience impotence since, for them, a boner is about as simple as contracting your bicep.
Since impotence, for obvious reasons, can impede intercourse, that makes it reproductively costly. Which makes it evolutionarily costly. So why did human men evolve a system that can even experience impotence. One possible reason is that a highly reactive male sexual system can protect a pair bonder from encroachment by an unsuitable female partner. And this is important since damage to a male pair bonder’s bonding system can be fatal. Four fold increase in men’s suicide following divorce anyone?
But there is another way that a temperamental male sexuality can be adaptive.
Most people don’t realize that our emotions are short cuts to decision making. We can lay new trail through rational arguments, but it’s emotions that allow us to navigate the paralysis of indecision and make choices quickly. Particularly in a social context.
Sex is, by its nature, an emotional experience. Because it’s an emotional experience, it has the potential to carve out new short cuts in our decision-making abilities.
To explain why, let’s talk about theory of mind for a bit. Some researchers are starting to look to the canid species to model how a human theory of mind might develop. When dogs are playing they watch each other for attentional cues to decide if their playmate is engaged and happy. They seem to get more of a thrill out of play if that’s the case and, of course, they want to make sure that the other party desires the play.
But if play is the mechanism by which theory of mind takes root in dogs; what’s the mechanism by which it takes root in humans?
Well, play is a likely culprit as well. But compared to canids, we’re talking about several orders of magnitude more complexity in the human theory of mind. So there’s probably another answer as well.
Now an even more powerful an incentive then an engaged, appreciative playmate is an engaged, appreciative sexual partner.
Sex not only establishes a sense of self and other via our desire for a sexual partner, our sex also establishes a desire to be desired. We want a desirable sexual partner who is also desirous of us. That last bit is tremendously important.
Ever wonder why humans are one of the only species whose eyes signal exactly what they’re looking at with a flash of white? Sort of a handicap for a predatory species, isn’t it? It’s because it assists in developing our theory of mind via sexual desire.
A man once said on a forum: “I’m going to start doing what women do, I’m only going to have an orgasm when my partner gives me one.” He’s not saying that a woman is obligated to give him an orgasm, no. What he was saying is that, up to that point, he had taken responsibility for giving himself an orgasm during sex.
It’s not that it’s easy for men to orgasm during the average act of penis in vagina sex, it’s that they have no choice. In fact, the requirement that men perform is so onerous, multi-billion dollar industries have sprung up to help them out. One of them is the classic ‘blue pill’. The other is the sex industry. Not only does the sex industry offer an outlet for the complexity of male sexual expression that is shamed in community sex, it assists men by offering them a way to emulate performing monkey sexuality. It gives them a fantasy to over lay onto substandard sex; a fantasy of an eager, active sexual partner, so that men can make themselves orgasm.
The comedian Jim Jeffries once said, “…it isn’t you that’s making us cum. It’s the dirty, filthy thoughts in our heads.”
A woman who ever ends up in a sexual relationship with a man who doesn’t have his shock collar on will get a rude awakening to this fact. She’ll also either leave or learn to deal with statements like “That’s not doing anything for me.” or, “Get off you’re hurting me!” or “No, I didn’t actually cum and if you just lie there thinking that lying still is all I require, I probably won’t.” She’ll learn to deal with rejection, that, unlike a female chimp, that passively presenting her genital swellings for servicing just isn’t enough.
And there’s the rub, really. What did our ancestors do without Viagra, porn or elaborate systems of social rejection to maintain the illusion of performing monkey sexuality? The answer? Hominid females learned to work harder for sex.
When we’re talking about our early female hominid ancestors, learning to be able to deal with complex male sexuality represents a potentially huge leap in their cognitive development. Before they just had to show up or maybe beg, after there was a whole bunch more complex social stuff involved. Human male sexuality is insanely difficult and complex because it’s a part of human females developing their understanding of self and other and their perception of their actions having consequences in the greater world.
It’s amazing how much human male sexuality resembles a game. You have immediate feedback when you’re failing or have failed, you have levels of difficulty and you have a reward at the end (the best in the animal kingdom). And games teach valuable experiences. In this case human male sexuality allows women the opportunity to lay down a emotional map of how to deal with rejection: with challenge, with unpredictability.
This is the basis of all achievement. It enables women to liberate themselves from a passive identity defined by being desired, either sexually or socially, and see themselves primarily in terms of how they choose to act.
This makes women immune to social systems that tell them what to do to be desirable or what not to do. This makes women immune to outside forces that very explicitly want to control their behavior. Foot binding, corsetry, victim ideologies that teach women to view themselves as helpless in every situation. Uncontrollable, unpredictable, challenging male sexuality elevates women from passive recipients of whatever life thrusts into them into active participants in creating life.
So if we’re going to talk about human male potency it should be spoken of in terms of the type of sexuality male humans actually have, not the artificial sexuality they are expected to have. In that sense male potency is about its effect on human female psychology, it’s elevation of the human female from livestock to co-creator. That’s human male potency.
And that potency is best represented not by the predictable ever-ready erection, but ironically by the implacable, temperamental, flaccid penis with its challenge to “try harder!”.
So why does a man really need to maintain the façade of being performing monkey? In order to maintain the illusion that all a woman needs to be is passive, so that she’s controllable by society.
Because when women obtain the emotional map that allows them to control their own identities, well those sounds you’re hearing, dear listener, are the stirrings of a prison break. And when women stage a prison break, not only are men along for the ride, but the whole damn prison complex comes crashing to the ground.
And that is how a limp dick can save the world.
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by 
My shock collar was up so high I married the first woman who looked at me twice. Now, seeing how fucked up the world is, I realize I won the fucking lottery. I could have ended up in an absolute nightmare.
It’s not easy to get someone to try the sweet, sweet taste of Agency for the first time. I fought like hell to avoid taking responsibility for most of my life, but it’s become an addiction.
PS I hope your sabbatical is going well.
seems to me, liberation for men will come from two areas-
rejecting male disposability and not being a pussyhound-that is not pursuing game or unhealthy relationships….
I think that whole Nice Guy thing is just a bigoted attempt by feminists to push men into the “risk taker” role and shame men who don’t initiate….
It’s making allot more sense why MGTOW is so threatening to the Futrelle’s and Marcotte’s of the world….
This does a fairly good job of summing up a lot of what has always made our culture’s standard sexual narrative entirely unappealing to me (this was also part of the reason I thought I was asexual until a few years ago). Fortunately, my autism insulates me from a lot of this sort of social pressure because it goes right over my head like those saw blades at the end of Indiana Jones 3.
SWaB:
The thing that always stuck out to me about that version of the “Nice Guy (TM)” (as I’ve said before, their are too entirely different concepts and discussions attached to that label) is that it completely precludes the idea of wanting to get to know someone before becoming romantically involved with them, even if you plan to do the asking out. The idea of dating they espouse seems to be predicated on seeing women in bars or clubs, thinking they look hot, then walking up and asking them out right there on the spot. Basically all the discussions on dating and relationships floating around right now seem to be predicated on the same ideas. I pretty much completely ignored their ideas from the moment I first heard them because that model is completely unappealing to me and entirely at odds with both the way I naturally interact with people and the way I feel attraction. Even if I wanted to initiate a relationship, I cannot conceive of wanting to go out with someone without spending at least a week or two getting to know them and having a few real conversations first, but according to people like them that makes me a creepy stalker abusing women’s trust (also, I cannot go into bars and clubs because that many people moving around and making noise makes me terrified and physically ill, so that’s 90% of everything said about starting relationships out the window).
Typhon, the whole sequence makes sense to me. It explains the real source of homphobia – white knighting and protecting women’s fragile egos – and it explians the Redstockings and others’ searing hatred of gay men.
This also may explain the proverbial mysterious allure that gay men seem to have for young women. It may be the challnege of trying to get someone unobtainable to want you. You do see a lot of flirtaciousness aimed at gay men, playful mostly, but probably with some real intent underneath.
You know that you have described a rape culture in step-by-step detail, don’t you?
This expectation, that Real Men must be ready to screw any womon any time, obviously doesn’t help lesbian or ace womyn. And on the whole I doubt it helps het, bi or pan womyn either.
It’s not like Real Men are simply expected to be available to any womon who expresses an interest in them. That would be wrong too. It’s that Real Men are expected to be aggressive, and try to get some womon to screw them, by hook or by crook. So that some men seem to take walking past or saying hi as a come-on. And other men have brutally raped friends of mine.
I don’t think womyn created the Real Man Myth. I think high-status men created the Real Man Myth to justify their own depredations, and found it useful for controlling womyn [kept in fear] and lower-status men [kept trying to be Real Men], and for war.
@ Marja
“It’s not like Real Men are simply expected to be available to any womon who expresses an interest in them.”
I invite you to peruse this trope at tvtropes.com.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale
Real Men _are_ expected to be available to any women who take an aggressive interest in them. If the women are attractive, what’s the problem? And if they’re unattractive, then it’s just some amusing regret the man should brush off.
“And on the whole I doubt it helps het, bi or pan womyn either.”
Being granted basically unlimited access to male sexuality for women who are attracted to men isn’t a benefit to them?
If you look at the situation in the ‘hook up’ culture, much of it is women being granted access to sex with _more attractive men_.
Further a woman can, literally, chose a man she likes, rape him and generally get off scot free.
This in comparison to a vastly different situation for female victims of rapists. According to the FBI the rate of conviction of rape for women is comparable that of any other violent offence. (According to a survey of prosecutions in Philidelphia, 1 in 4 (male)rapists are convicted; compared to 1 in 5 armed robbers and 1 in 10 gun assaulters.)
“And other men have brutally raped friends of mine.”
And some women have brutally raped men; and those men have experienced a society that expects them to be sexually available to women at all times–and enforces this availability by making female-on-male rape ‘not really rape.’
@Erenthia
” I hope your sabbatical is going well.”
It’s sort of inconsistent at the moment. I’m still on avoiceformen radio on thursdays so I keep getting drawn back into this topic. 🙂
My point was and is that Real Men are expected to be sexually aggressive, rather than merely sexually available, and *that* expectation encourages men to harass womyn, to try to pressure or manipulate womyn into sex, and in some cases to rape womyn [or rape other men, depending on the version of the Real Man myth].
@ Marja
“Real Men are expected to be sexually aggressive […] in some cases to rape women.”
Real Men may be expected to be sexually aggressive, but not more then is acceptable to the female they’re with. The easiest way to make a male character viewed as a villain in a movie is to show him making a woman uncomfortable, particularly by his sexual advances, and him _ignoring her discomfort_.
People rape because they are emotionally damaged. No one anywhere ever raped because someone told them ‘you need to be sexually aggressive’, not unless they were congenital sociopaths to begin with.
Our society does not condone sexual harassment of men by women. Nor rape of men by women.
“to try to pressure or manipulate womyn into sex”
Trying to get the pain of social rejection to end likely does result in men putting pressure on women to have sex, true. And harassing them for sex as well.
But ultimately here’s what’s happening.
Society finds it useful to put these shock collars on men in order to control their behaviour. A negative effect of these shock collars is that they compel men to aggressively seek out sex with women to get the pain to stop.
Society tries to prevent this from happening by heavily stigmatizing ‘boars, cads, creeps, womanizers’ however as long as society keeps putting shock collars on men, it keeps manufacturing men desperate to have sex to end the pain. It keeps manufacturing ‘boars, cads, creeps and womanizers’.
That male desperation is a double edged sword, no doubt about it.
(Here’s a fun exercise. Name all the words for a ‘man who is sexually aggressive towards women’. How many of them are compliments?)
typhon: “No one anywhere ever raped because someone told them ’you need to be sexually aggressive’, not unless they were congenital sociopaths to begin with.”
That covers PUAs then ha ha
As an aside (and not pointing fingers at anybody), I hate when people bring up the existence of “rape villains” as a way of proving how seriously society regards rape. That shit still trivializes rape. It’s like racist propaganda about how those evil hypersexual and aggressive Black and Asian men are going to rape the white women.
@ Embroil
If a man rapes a woman in fictionland, he is considered a villain. The act of rape makes him a villain. Would you prefer that he _not_ be seen as a villain? If men who raped women were not seen as villains for having raped women would that mean society isn’t trivializing rape in your opinion?
“As an aside (and not pointing fingers at anybody)”
Well you are, so own it.
Alright I will own it then. I prefer that the people writing these villains actually put some thought into their shit. One of the worst recent examples if Quantum of Solace, the James Bond movie who was a villain that rapes random people just because. Because he’s evil, you see! It’s not a serious treatment of rape, it’s another box to check off on what makes this dude evil, a trivial plot point.
But don’t think I’m just singling out rape as a convenient signifier of evil here. I like my evil corporations to be complex as well!
Just because rape can be written _badly_ doesn’t mean that society trivializes it when it happens to women.
I will agree that rape is usually never addressed well by western media but that’s because it works so well as a cheap way to create evil male characters and sympathetic female characters and artificial depth.
We hate rapists; we’re sympathetic to rape victims; and suffering == depth, right? But rape could never have become a ‘trivial plot point’ if it didn’t have emotive power.
Society really hates rapists that’s why making a man a rapist(of women) is a quick way to establish him as irredeemable and justify the ass woopin’ the main character will lay down on him.
If you want nuance then we’re going to have to get over ‘a man who rapes a woman is a complete monster whose actions cannot be explained’.
My comments about gendered violence in fiction. It’s true that rape, and more generally violence against a woman, is used as shorthand for evil and as a cheap way to motivate the hero. However, it is also true that rape and violence against women is always wrong, and it always matters that it’s wrong. The classic example is Braveheart, where young Wallace sees his father and several other men murdered by the English and has a traumatic experience in a shed with their hanged bodies, but that doesn’t make him want to fight the English. It’s only when a moustache-twirling English villain kills his wife that he’s motivated to do that. There’s no such thing as female cannon fodder, violence against women is never righteous, and the rape of a man is usually comedy.
This is the problem with gynocentrism. The gynocentric view looks at a culture where male life is cheap and female life and sexual integrity are valued highly, but female sexual integrity is sometimes treated in problematic ways, and only sees that female sexual integrity is treated in problematic ways. It is blind to the ways it gives women high value and men low value.
“It’s not like Real Men are simply expected to be available to any womon who expresses an interest in them.”
My as been exactly my experience.
“…..obviously doesn’t help lesbian or ace womyn. ”
It obviously does. It means that society’s – and that is not only straight men’s – homophobic rage is going to be turned elsewhere.
“I don’t think womyn created the Real Man Myth.”
I think women created it and I know they perpetuate it. That was exactly my expereince. I used to watch them work it like a machine, and if you look in comment sections in daily newspapers where a woman commits some crime or other against a man, you always see the hag brigade come out howling about how any Real Man would just suck it up and stop whining. Self-righteous exist pigs . The Real Man myth is the structure of male sexual competition. It benefits all straight women immediately, and other women indirectly because it turns men into thier beasts of buden on a societal level. It is a cornerstone of female privilege.
“…
\”We hate rapists; we’re sympathetic to rape victims; and suffering == depth, right? But rape could never have become a ‘trivial plot point’ if it didn’t have emotive power. \”
It\’s a form of flag waving to twist applause out of a crowd. Rape is often used like some kind of cheap button to push.
Rape hysteria was the foundation of the racist lynching campaign during Jim Crow. I cannot see how that use somehow trivialized rape, rather it hyped it.
I don’t think that this hyping of rape serves actual rape victims at all. I know they report some pretty bad treatment. I think they get treated like players in someone else’s drama.
The whole idea that enhanced sexual access to men is not a benefit to women inspired me to write an article on the idea of male sexual value! 😀
Incidentally, if the situation was reversed and it was women who had a ‘shock collar’ of social rejection that only stopped inflicting pain when they had sex with men, would those here insisting that the current situation doesn’t benefit women still insist that the reverse situation doesn’t benefit men?
“This expectation, that Real Men must be ready to screw any womon any time, obviously doesn’t help lesbian or ace womyn. And on the whole I doubt it helps het, bi or pan womyn either.”
All women benefit from the self-sacrificing endeavors that men undertake in order to avoid social rejection, it’s not just about some women getting their fill of sex. Lesbian and ace “womyn” (sic) probably benefit from it the most, since there is the smallest downside for them. For heterosexual women, however, it means that their sexual agency is subverted in order to control men.
“It’s not like Real Men are simply expected to be available to any womon who expresses an interest in them. That would be wrong too. It’s that Real Men are expected to be aggressive, and try to get some womon to screw them, by hook or by crook.”
They aren’t taught to pursue sex aggressively, they are simply made to be desperate enough to do just that. Machismo is a thin veneer over a deep fear of abandonment, it is a form of denial of men’s codependency. The pathological condition here being female laziness, lack of sexual agency, complete and utter passivity… Men are deprived of validation over the course of an entire lifetime as part of some sort of sick experiment in Pavlovian fear conditioning. As TyphonBlue stated, rejection is experienced as pain. This trains some men into strong pack animals and completely breaks others.
A man once said on a forum: “I’m going to start doing what women do, I’m only going to have an orgasm when my partner gives me one.” He’s not saying that a woman is obligated to give him an orgasm, no. What he was saying is that, up to that point, he had taken responsibility for giving himself an orgasm during sex.
This was what really struck me. I’d honestly never really thought too deeply about it until now but… damn, but it’s true. Even when being given a beej I’ve always taken care to ensure that I orgasm. I’m always pushing myself to regulate my orgasm, to control when it happens, how it happens, if it happens, etc and so on.
I guess I’ve just realized that I’ve never really asked any of my partners to do the same amount of work I always expected of myself in order to help them orgasm.
Thanks for that.
Very interesting stuff Typhon. Thank you. The world ruled by limp dicks. I like it! lol
I have been thinking about evolution and sexuality and will share some conjectures of my own. I think there is a reason that men and women have different orgasms. I think that a man’s orgasm is stronger and more likely and seemingly more pleasurable for some good reasons. Men need to want sex. They need to really want sex. If men didn’t have a fantastic orgasm in waiting they would likely not jump through the hoops that they do. Women, otoh, speaking from an evolutionary perspective, don’t need to have a super strong orgasm. In fact an argument could be made to support the idea that women are not as stimulated in a positive way by sex as their male counterparts. Why? Because evolution does not want women to really, really like sex. If women liked sex as much as men then they would be far less discriminating and would be more likely to have sex with just about anyone. This counters the important evolutionary role women play in being “choosers.” It is women’s choice of men that helps her have reproductive success with the highest rated man she can find. This in turn of course will insure that the highest rated male and female produce the highest rated offspring. If she had less discrimination and screwed whoever was around then she would be much more likely to reproduce offspring that were not from the highest point on the male hierarchy that her attractiveness and female status would permit.
It’s also interesting to look at the genitalia in regards to these issues. Men’s genitals are built to get excited and find a big release. Their orgasm is directly related to vaginal sex which is of course the important evolutionary act. But what about the women? Their clitoris is generally not built to have regular orgasms from vaginal sex. At least that is what most of the researchers seem to be reporting. Their orgasm is more dependent on direct clitoral stimulation. (being male I realize I am on thin ice here ;>)) It’s interesting to note that the woman’s clitoris originates from the same cells that create the male penis. But it is simply not as big or as sensitive. Reminds me of male nipples. Men have nipples but they simply don’t work. There are indeed reports of male lactation but these are usually under dire oppressive circumstances. Generally, men’s nipples exist but they have little function. I wonder if the clitoris might be similar in some respects.
The whole idea of expecting men to be sexual acrobats is fairly new. I don’t think we have ever seen such expectations and shaming of men for their lack of constant hardness. For crying out loud the purpose of sex it to get the sperm into the vagina, not to stimulate the clitoris. I am guessing that the expectation of men to be sexual giants is simply a stance that women have now found they can take to shame men into doing their will and their bidding.
Yes, I know, I could be very wrong. Will be interested in hearing what you think Typhon.
“It is women’s choice of men that helps her have reproductive success with the highest rated man she can find. This in turn of course will insure that the highest rated male and female produce the highest rated offspring. If she had less discrimination and screwed whoever was around then she would be much more likely to reproduce offspring that were not from the highest point on the male hierarchy that her attractiveness and female status would permit. ”
We made it such as a society. Evolution didn’t, we did.
We decided that men wanted to screw everything that moved, and women preferred not to.
Maybe men on average have more libido, but we’ve killed this nuance of grey in favor of an “all men are this, and all women are the complete opposite” notion that’s “easier to swallow” because it validates your sex membership (something we apparently need more and more, just look at the pinkification and sparkification of all things girly – toys didn’t use to need to be all pink to interest girls).
People are incredibly insecure about their sex membership for some reason. They do not want to look inwardly to how they feel, or anything even remotely close. They want a quick, external fix, based on genital configuration alone. And will be transphobic as all heck to boot because trans people erase their easy-peasy cover-girl validation.
Native Americans and others elsewhere, have accepted trans people as valid, valued, something special and unique. Only the insecure have not. People who apparently need the two sexes to be opposites and never the same on any kind of measure.
The kind of people who think the world would end if men would wear skirts or dresses, because then “men and women would be the same, and we would all be asexual”. Where the fuck is this illogical drivel coming from? Insecurity.
“We made it such as a society. Evolution didn’t, we did.”
False dichotomy. Biology drives culture and then culture becomes one more selective pressure. The four separate mutations that cause lactase persistence arose randomly but they spread so widely in various populations because of a specific cultural practice.
\”Where the fuck is this illogical drivel coming from? Insecurity.\”
Absolutely. And that insecurity is assiduously taught. It is a basic part of ocialization, andpeople rebel when you try to remove it, becasue they experience it as so foundational.
\”Native Americans and others elsewhere, have accepted trans people as valid, valued, something special and unique….\”
Wide range of cultures, so it\’s hard to generalize, but this one sees accurate. In a lot of cultures sexual minorities are considered basically as prodigies with special powers. One instance really stands out, an intersex person named Hastiin Tłʼa, who was Navajo. He is credited with single-handedly saving the liturgical side of the religion and a lot of the weaving traditio, because as an intersex person, he was allowed to learn both.
Oh, and he was not just intersex, he was left-handed as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosteen_Klah
TB:
“Our society does not condone sexual harassment of men by women. Nor rape of men by women.”
This sentence seemed not only incongruous in its placement but actually at odds with the point you appeared to be making. Please elaborate.
As for the use of rape to create villains in fiction, what I hate most about it is that it falls so utterly short of what it takes to make a REAL unambiguously evil monster badguy (Fist of the North Star once featured a villain who built the world’s largest pyramid using only the slave labor of abducted children whose parents he murdered and you were still supposed to feel bad for that guy when he died, so the bar has been set pretty high for this stuff). It’s just incredibly lazy writing from people who are too afraid to flaunt how absurd what their doing actually is.
Someone please tell me what on Earth “ace womyn” means. I assume it has nothing to do with anything to which the word “ace” is usually applied.
I have absolutely no idea who created the “Real Man Myth” and I do not particularly care unless they are still alive and at large. I agree with Ginko that women play a major (quite possibly a primary) role in supporting, spreading and reinforcing it. A quick look at who is writing all the “where have all the real men gone” articles should be enough to shatter anyone’s delusions about that. Marja Erwin’s claims to the contrary strike me as yet another attempt to recast everything so that women (or “womyn”, if it really matters that much to you) are eternal passive victims, such that there could never be something problematic in their treatment of anyone else and they could never be victimizers under any circumstances. It reeks of empty, stereotypical traditionalism which is ultimately antithetical to any kind of real female empowerment or agency (it strikes me that these are probably things Marja Erwin cares about).
I am willing to countenance the idea that the “Real Man Myth” might in some cases encourage persons of certain psychological predispositions or unbalanced mental states to commit rape, but I would want the person making that claim to produce their credentials in criminal psychology and peer-reviewed research on the subject before I would be willing to regard it as a fact. In this instance, it strikes me as a not uncommon attempt to present problems with the expectations society places on men as being primarily problematic for or harmful to women, rather than to the men themselves.
I would add to the discussion on responsibility for sexual pleasure that all the spam email I have ever received for various products or services claiming to improve one’s sex life attempt to sell themselves on the idea that they will improve the experience for one’s (female) partner. I have never received an ad for anything claiming that it will make sex more pleasurable for me. This strikes me as significant.
\”\\\”He is credited with single-handedly saving the liturgical side of the religion and a lot of the weaving traditio, because as an intersex person, he was allowed to learn both.\\\”
The article says that you could have his status if you were born male, female or intersex. It\\\’s essentially a trans status to me. Or its modern equivalent anyways. Such a person might be considered genderqueer in our culture\\\’s 21st century understanding, but since we don\\\’t have such defined roles (only certain restrictions), this means less, and clashes against the conformist society which wants to produce robots who don\\\’t question anything.\”
Would be nice if the anti-spam didnt say I got it wrong when I got it right 5 times.
@Hackberry, just a few days ago, Gingko wrote a post about how some of the foundational science behind the idea that females are more selective hasn’t been reproduced once in the 60 years since it was published, and that it was fundamentally flawed in terms of basic math. Here in this blog post, TyphonBlue points out that it’s the pain of rejection and utter lack of validation that drives male sexuality. Not that it’s a powerful orgasm that drives active male behavior, or the lack thereof that makes females passive (frankly I find such a notion ridiculous). Here’s just a simple observation of why TyphonBlue is correct: unattractive women are probably the most likely to actually approach guys and ask them out themselves. It’s not that unattractive women have stronger libidos, it’s that the lack of sexual validation makes them behave in a similar manner to men. You would think that the attractive women who had the most sex would have the highest libidos and the most confidence to ask out men themselves, but in fact it’s usually the women who experience the greatest amount of rejection and lack confidence who do something about it. Here’s another observation: women rely very heavily on learned behavior such as The Rules, or in general an unwritten pact among women to never, ever, under any circumstances, reward male sexuality with positive attention and validation. This pact is heavily enforced by women themselves and is one of the reasons why women engage in some heavy handed , who enforce female gender roles by slut shaming women who make men feel validated. Notice that while men tend to slut shame women for displaying extremes in passive behavior, women tend to slut shame women for having sexual agency in a way that is validating towards men.
“A man once said on a forum: “I’m going to start doing what women do, I’m only going to have an orgasm when my partner gives me one.” He’s not saying that a woman is obligated to give him an orgasm, no. What he was saying is that, up to that point, he had taken responsibility for giving himself an orgasm during sex.”
I never thought about it that way. but, as has been pointed out already, it’s true. I always thought I was responsible for both the woman’s orgasm AND my own. I wonder how widespread this mindset is amoung men.
Hiding:
I believe “ace” is short for asexual. Less said about “womyn” the better.
@Dungone I don\\’t think I was trying to maintain that the strength of orgasm was a primary factor in sexual choices. Obviously its a complex mess that pulls both men and women in various directions. My observation has been that women are pulled towards status while men are pulled towards attractiveness. What I was trying to say was that if women were highly sexed in a way similar to that of males that they would likely lose their ability to choose the highest ranking male and in so doing would foil the purpose of the mating game of insuring the highest ranking males and females mate with each other.
Are you saying that you don\\’t see much biology in this? I would urge you to check out information on testosterone. Have a listen to this NPR report on testosterone where a transman is interviewed about the impact of testosterone. It is a real eye opener. Same program offers an interview with a man who lost nearly all of his testosterone and shares what he was like without T. Socialization is surely a part of our humanity but biology is likely just as important if not more.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone/
Testosterone is very important to both men and women. I am sure you know that women also have T in their blood but it is simply at much lower levels. Another resource might be a book by a transman named Max Valerio titled the Testosterone Files. Amazing book and well worth the read.
http://www.amazon.com/Testosterone-Files-Hormonal-Social-Transformation/dp/1580051731
@dungone
What would it look like if women did reward male sexuality with positive attention and validation? I’m having a hard time even imagining it, though it seems like a fairly important concept to explore.
American culture definitely expects females to marry up and allows males to marry down. Some other cultures expect males to marry up and allow females to marry down. I’m wondering how kinship systems [it’s not that long since America practiced patrilineage and maternal dowry], economics, and/or demographics [it’s not uncommon for large-scale wars to cause a shortage of men, at least in certain social classes, which may encourage females to marry down and males to marry up, or encourage older veteran males to marry adolescent females, as was common at times in Rome].
I suspect that cultures which expect females to marry up, and allow males to marry down, might be more likely to develop stereotypes about male horniness, while cultures which expect males to marry up, and allow females to marry down, might be more likely to develop stereotypes about female licentiousness. How about early modern Spain, or early modern Germany in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War? I’m not familiar with their literature.
And my comments about the Real Man myth and rape were based on a discussion of gang rape in one of my psych books. I can’t recall which one right now.
P.S. You need to fix the spam filter, it keeps eating my posts. At my best guess, the code changes too quickly, and by the time I’ve typed each comment, the code has changed.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean… is it about what women have to do that they don’t do, or about how men and women would get along if it did happen, or…? I can try to answer you but it won’t be a complete answer, I’m sure.
I can tell you what it wouldn’t look like. It wouldn’t look like a bunch of half naked women making themselves sexually available to every guy who wants to put his penis inside them or any other fear mongering that proponents of The Rulez would have you believe. It would just look like women who don’t follow The Rulez. I don’t know – what does a relationship look like when it’s not a codependent? There’s trust, honesty, reciprocation, happiness, stuff like that.
I know that this is what you were trying to say, but you’re making a lot of assumptions. There’s absolutely no proof that female passivity ensures that the highest ranking females mate with the highest ranking males, that it is any more effective than women actively approaching their mates, or that there’s even any validity to the concept of “highest ranking male.”
@ Erenthia(sorry, got the attribution wrong initially)
“What would it look like if women did reward male sexuality with positive attention and validation?”
This is what I’d imagine it would look like. Women would likely no longer see controlling male sexuality as a way of having agency in the world. Instead of writing lists about ‘what I want in a man’ they would embody those things themselves thus have more to _offer_ a man. They would view having access to male sexuality as a benefit, possibly even a reward for being the best woman they could be.
Rates of casual sex and relationship breakup would probably decline precipitously. As would use of prostitutes, strippers and porn. Men wouldn’t need to have casual sex or use the sex industry to feel sexually desirable; they’d get that feeling in their actual relationships.
As long as men are bringing the same attitude to the table, it would be a goddamn sexual utopia.
@dungone (with apologies for not knowing how to do quotes)
I was actually unaware that *anyone* had addressed concept of treating male sexuality in a positive light so whatever “The Rules” are, I don’t know them. I’m surprised anyone would be afraid of “a bunch of half-naked women running around having sex with any man who wants to put a penis in them” since the PUA have proven that modern feminism has very nearly accomplished this already (IF you’re willing to go the PUA route that is)
And yes, it was an *extremely* open ended question. Western culture is *so* overwhelmingly demonizing of male sexuality that the only place you find positive portrayals of male-sexuality are the ridiculous caricatures of it you find in porn. Beyond that I don’t know *how* to frame the question because I don’t know how to view it positively myself. As a man, that’s a dark place to be in. As the father of a little girl who will one-day grow up and start dating, it’s beyond bewildering.
So I guess the best place to start would be: what does it mean to see male sexuality in positive light?
lol or you know…I guess I could just wait for Typhon to come along, point at her post and say, “Yeah that’s what I meant”
Women would also feel more empowered and confident in their relationships with men. Passive women pay for it in terms of self doubt and a constant nagging feeling that they are a “kept woman” or a “trophy wife” to an undeserving husband. This would lead to similar effects in women – lowered promiscuity, less hypergamy.
I was gonna say that, too, but I don’t think that all feminists would see it that way.
@Erenthia, check out Wikipedia for The Rules. It’s sort of like everything that Cosmo has ever seen fit to Print rolled up into one big list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules This is what female passivity is all about to me – it’s not about being shy or about lacking testosterone, it’s about a conscious, concerted effort to turn dating and relationships into a codependent nightmare for men. We’re at the point where some women worry about accidentally validating a man’s sexuality because they weren’t sure of the best way to make him grovel at their feet by making him feel like shit.
Sorry if my initial response came off snarky. I had thought of what to say on my drive home from work but then I got writer’s block and for some reason came up with that. You’ll have to trust me that it pretty much meant the same thing that Typhon said… lol
@ Dungone
“Women would also feel more empowered and confident in their relationships with men.”
Well, for starters, they’d understand the difference between someone with a spine and an abusive jerk. Because, you know, they’d have earned themselves a spine.
Marja, your whole comment is good, but I wanted to pick up on some things that especially stand out.
“American culture definitely expects females to marry up and allows males to marry down…”
Yes. I remember a trope in popular music in the mid-60s in which a poor boy is in love with a rich girl. “Down In The Boondocks” comes to mind. It wouldn’t have worked if there hadn’t been any pathos to it. Boys didn’tget to marry up under that system.
“I’m wondering how kinship systems [it’s not that long since America practiced patrilineage and maternal dowry], ”
The main reason for a dowry system is to keep mariage within the same socio-economic stratum. It discourages hypergamy and the “confusion of ranks”.
“I suspect that cultures which expect females to marry up, and allow males to marry down, might be more likely to develop stereotypes about male horniness, ”
Yes. Because of the class differential, the male behavior – higher-to-lower – is going to look like predation.
“while cultures which expect males to marry up, and allow females to marry down, might be more likely to develop stereotypes about female licentiousness. ”
Yes. There is a very good and clear historical example of this, in pagan Irish literature. Noble women could command the sexual availability of any man. The figure of Mebd in he tain Bo Cuailgne – she assembles a host by offering her”friendly thighs” to a whole range of chieftains. In other stories there is a standard trope of young women haggling with young warriors for sex. The warriors demand sons in return for sex – apparently sex with these women was not an adequate exchange for sex with the men, so they had to sweeten the deal.
And last but not least, I bet you are right about what’s wrong with the spam filter.That explanation makes sense.
Dungone said: “Hackberry, just a few days ago, Gingko wrote a post about how some of the foundational science behind the idea that females are more selective hasn’t been reproduced once in the 60 years since it was published, and that it was fundamentally flawed in terms of basic math.”
Females not more selective? Not sure what you mean by this. Can you explalin and give some links to what you are referring to?
There’s a book titled “Male Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences” by David Geary. It paints a very convincing picture of male-female mate selection both in mammals and in humans. It’s a fascinating read filled with references to research. About half the book is references. You might want to have a look.
Dungone said: “Hackberry, just a few days ago, Gingko wrote a post about how some of the foundational science behind the idea that females are more selective hasn’t been reproduced once in the 60 years since it was published, and that it was fundamentally flawed in terms of basic math.”
Females not more selective? Not sure what you mean by this. Can you explalin and give some links to what you are referring to?
There’s a book titled “Male Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences” by David Geary. It paints a very convincing picture of male-female mate selection both in mammals and in humans. It’s a fascinating read filled with references to research. About half the book is references. You might want to have a look.
Dungone said: \”Hackberry, just a few days ago, Gingko wrote a post about how some of the foundational science behind the idea that females are more selective hasn’t been reproduced once in the 60 years since it was published, and that it was fundamentally flawed in terms of basic math.\”
Females not more selective? Not sure what you mean by this. Can you explalin and give some links to what you are referring to?
There\’s a book titled \”Male Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences\” by David Geary. It paints a very convincing picture of male-female mate selection both in mammals and in humans. It\’s a fascinating read filled with references to research. About half the book is references. You might want to have a look.
If you want to see what a limp dick world would look like, go back and watch Raise the Red Lantern. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raise_the_Red_Lantern
I did not claim that females are not more selective. I said that the science behind that claim is faulted and has been shown to be erroneous. Gingko wrote a post about it here: http://www.genderratic.com/p/1607/genderitis-%e2%80%93-oops-wrong-all-along/ As far as that book, not to be rude, but I’ll remain skeptical. I found this review of it on Amazon helpful:
The reason I found it helpful is simple: the reviewer actually said something qualitative about the citations that were provided. As opposed to so many of the glowing reviews that cited just how many citations there were. That’s social science for you…
@Dungone – Now that’s pretty funny. 12 reviews, 10 of which are 5 stars and you choose the one that is a one star. Look at the title of the review: “Biological Determinist.” Just from the title of the review you can easily tell this person never read the book. Geary makes great efforts to offer the various sides of almost all of the arguments in the book. He repeats over and over that our differences are a complex interplay of biology and socialization. He gives example after example of how the two can confound each other. But this reviewer misses all of that and is willing to call him names in the title of the review. Weak. Very weak. The review never addressed any specific research but generalized globally about it being deficient. So many ways to distract including throwing in the race card and IQ into the mix. From my point of view this reviewer has an ideological ax to grind and the book, if read and understood, takes that ideology and slam dunks it in the trash can.
Did you see the one comment to the review that you quoted? LMAO. Let’s paste that in too! It says it pretty well.
“The first statement is a complete ad populam. It is also scientifically wrong. Thousands of studies of psychosexual differentiation exist, all of which show that males and females are different in numerous capacities. Indeed, read the case about Bruce/Brenda and the famous John Money experiments and you should realize that the blank slate view has atrocious consequences. The development of gender differences is obviously extremely complex, but biology is involved- of that none but the most ardent blank-slaters would argue. As for your last point, you seem to be confused. I am not sure what “evolution theories” are, nor how they differ from sociobiology, which uses inclusive fitness theory as its grounding principle. Sociobiology is defined as the “scientific study of the biological basis of all social behavior.” (from E.O. Wilson). “evolution theories” do the same.
Finally, the reference to first year psych students is a useful way to deflect attention from the issues, but it is hardly an argument. Yes, it is hard to prove or disprove various hypotheses that have been put forward by sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists, but this does not mean we stick our heads in the sand. Instead, hard empirical work- such as that done by Geary- is necessary.”
The Geary book is a finely researched work that is well written and offers a great deal of information on the research that has been done up to this point. He indeed does offer his theoretical ideas but when he does he frames them as his own and not as fact and also cites competing theories.
@ Hackberry and dungone
Take any further discussion on male/female promiscuity to Ginko’s thread on male/female promiscuity.
@Hackberry, I chose the review because it pointed out what all the glowing reviews seem to have missed: that many citations to weak science doesn’t make for a strong case.
It’s a review, not a rebuttal. The focus of the review is to attack the works cited and express doubt, nothing more.
The comment that was left on the review was misleading and somewhat nonsensical in places. For istance,
This begs the question, if Geary isn’t proving or disproving hypothesis, then what exactly is the hard empirical work that he’s doing?
Sometimes I think that the difference between a hard science and a soft science is that in soft science, citations are counted as proof. They’ve come to be incredibly abused, along with the whole race to publish papers to gain a reputation instead of, you know, doing science.
@TB, I had no idea you left that comment before I posted. Sorry
@ dungone
Move your comment to the other thread by duplicating it there. When you’re done I’ll delete the one on this thread.
“We want a desirable sexual partner who is also desirous of us.”
This is an especially important point… the need to feel desired sexually. It’s something that many men spend their whole lives pursuing, specifically because it’s so hard to obtain. You can satisfy your need for orgasms through masturbation or even sex workers–but it won’t satsify the craving to feel desired.
This, I think, is not only one of the main reasons that men like porn so much, but perhaps even the MAIN reason. For all the complaints that men like porn because “it’s all about degrading and humiliating women,” I note that these complaints always come from people who were predisposed to hate porn and never looked at any (apart from a few handpicked examples that supported their prejudice).
The REAL appeal of porn is, yes, healthy and beautiful young women naked that you can fantasize about having orgasms with… but also that these women are eager and happy to have sex. The “woman who wants it” is the REAL fantasy. And it’s very rare to encounter a feminist or woman who actually gets that, even while it’s depressingly common to meet those who -assume- they understand what’s going on with men when they clearly don’t.
“For all the complaints that men like porn because “it’s all about degrading and humiliating women,”
That trope is mind-reading. Mind-reading is a form of objectification, in this case misandrist objectification. People who say that are therefore sexist pigs.
I’m new here and a bit late to the party. But if I’m interpreting this post correctly, it’s revelatory.
Back in freshman year of college there were several women I pursued aggressively and several that pursued me, but I rejected because I didn’t really like them and didn’t want to take advantage simply because they were there. I felt guilty about the way I behaved with the first group but felt pride at having been a gentleman with the second (many college guys, needless to say, jumped at anything that moved). Many years later, it turned out, every single one of the women I pushed it with tried to friend me on Facebook. And the women I didn’t pursue? Every one of them has behaved beyond nasty to me, even though I was extremely polite in my rejection and many, many years have gone by.
This made no sense to me at first — I assumed the reactions would be the opposite (i.e. the first group saying “You took advantage of me when I was an innocent 18-year-old!!”). Who knew?
DBA, you swallowed the nice guy narrative. The ones who felt rejected – not that they were; they hadn’t made a move and you did not rebuff them, but they were so spoiled that they interpreted your inaction as an negative action, like children demanding a gift – are acting like cads. This is the double standard in the gender roles. A man who acted like them would instantly be laebeled a loser. Do the same with these losers.
@ Ginko
Heh. Recently I was reading a ‘nice guy’ rant by a girl. As I read it I couldn’t help but envision the sheer level of entitlement it required to be seen as legitimate.
In essence it said, ‘guys who passively wait for the object of their affection to make the first move are nasty-ass; they should make their move and then, if they get rejected, should cheerfully remain bosom buddies with their crush.”
Another ridiculous send up of ‘nice guys’ was in a comic… In this comic the ‘nice guy’ was depicted as an asshole for being upset at people who didn’t like him. With great gravitas the author of the comic pointed out that ‘wow, I can see why you’re not a hit with women when you have that attitude that people who don’t like you are bad people.’
That was a definite ‘wtf’ moment for me. What are they expecting from men? That they have the saintly compassion of a Buddha? All people tend to dislike people who don’t like them. All people tend to react badly when they’re rejected.
It’s the nature of the goddamn beast. Are they also saying that women who are rejected by men have to take that rejection with grace and civility and remain staunch friends while allowing not a single shred of resentment to colour their behaviour?
Ridiculous. And another expression of the general expectation that men be more in control of their emotions then women, to ensure that women have a more pleasant social ride through life. (All social ‘progress’ by women can be chalked up to this one dynamic. Men will flatter women just to make them feel better. Women’s liberation is a lie. Women will not be liberated until they break free of this occult prison of pastel ego fluffing.)
Incidentally, from what I’ve seen if being nasty and behaving entitled in the face of rejection was an olympic sport, women would win hands down.
I don’t think any ‘nice guy’ ever levelled a false accusation of rape or abuse against a woman who rejected him.
due to prostate cancer surgery in 2002 i have a limp dick. i thot maybe this site would help, it didn’t.