Male Privilege: Slut Shaming

Men are by definition horny beasts, women are precious flowers (at least when it comes to sexuality), hence women have here a morally superior position they can lose, men don’t.
To understand how the Evil Patriarchy works here, consider how you can make a small kid cry: Give the kid an enjoyable toy and then when the kid becomes attached to the toy, take it away.

And the other side of the double-bind is that sex for males is performative in a way that it is not for women. Men have the responsibility of approaching and in relationships of intiating, and in sex of doing all the work – remember how misogynist it is to refuse to give oral sex – and of having all the responisibility for the woman’s orgasm, and for the their own BTW – let’s not forget what a woman-hating insult it is to fail to come.

The other jaw of this nutcracker is virgin-shaming. Men are shamed for wanting and having sex and shamed for not having sex.

Thank you! I think this glimpses at a deeper truth: Gender isn’t something one ‘sexual class’ presses onto another, but something that societies have created that has negative and privileged aspects for both genders, boxing people into roles reinforced by people from both sexes. Sexist things one gender faced are often connected to sexist things another faces. A lot of these see to stem from the idea of men’s sexuality as threatening and women’s as harmless, which is conversely tied to a lot of ideas regarding male strength and female weakness.

By the way, these instances of differences in slut-shaming are clear examples of female privilege.

Ammendment: I don’t even know if female sexuality will even be portrayed on Lifetime or Oxygen. I bet, as far as those channels are concerned, women are asexual, and all reproduction is the result of men raping women and getting them preggers.

I shame sluts. Sluts shame prudes. It’s one big happy dance of incompatible people being incompatible. I don’t see the problem.

“Female Sex Toys are empowering; male sex toys are perverted”

http://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/more-manboobz-misandry/

Hi, first time commenter, long time reader. Yes, I’m YetAnotherCommenter at Reddit and have done some articles at r/GenderEgalitarian/

I think that this post subtly misses something;

Historically, in our culture, male sexuality has always been framed as bestial, violent and conquest-oriented. A “male slut” is hence a “stud” (worthy, virile heroic warrior-conqueror) if we treat “conquest” as a good thing, OR a brutish rapist who victimizes the recipients of his affections (if we take a more realistic view of “conquest”).

This also influences the view of female sexuality; after all, if male sexuality is conquest then female sexuality is defeat/degradation/subjugation. Hence the classic double-standard.

The modern sex-positive view of “yay, women expressing their sexuality!” is, in my view, basically an attempt to get rid of the idea that female sexuality is being conquered/defeated/defiled, hence the emphasis on empowerment.

HOWEVER, the problem is that whilst we’re successfully working on fixing the view of female sexuality, we’re still lumbering under the idea that male sexuality is naturally cruel, violent, nasty, brutish and Hobbesian (and some feminists have unfortunately done their best to reinforce this stereotype about male sexuality…. a lot of rape discourse inadvertently does this).

Hence the double standard that Typhonblue points to. Women are empowering themselves by being sexual, vs. men are being horrible evil oppressive domineering brutes by being sexual.

What we need is to fully extend sex-positivity to our understanding of male sexuality. If our culture broadly didn’t see male sexuality is inherently violent/conquest-oriented/brutish, we wouldn’t have the shaming that Typhonblue points out.

Thanks for an interesting thread Typhon. You and many others have named and described the double standard that existis sometimes going in both directions. The question that lingers in my mind is what is the root cause of this? Is this totally socialized or is there a biological component? Is this sort of thing common around the world in many cultures or is it unique for us?

“I think that when someone’s perceived as female, sexual assertiveness helps undo the degradation narrative; when someone’s perceived as male, sexual assertiveness gets forced right back into the predation narrative.”

Another elegant formulation, Marja. I think this gets to the heart of it.

YAC, welcome and thanks for your comment! I think you and Marja are on the same page.

So when feminsts demonize male sexuality, they are in fact reinforcing patrairchal gender stereotypes.

Hackberry asks a very good question. Is this model universal? Well. let’s look at China. Female sexuality is supposed to be passvie there too, but it is female sxuality that is considered predatory. Vampires are typically female and they suck the sexual force out of hapless men, and in general sex with women is considered a drain on a man’s masculinity. Women are supposedly desperate for men’s yang energy and expected to be in a permanent state of baby rabies. You see stereotype especially clearly in Raise the Red Lantern. So women are supposedly always after men for sex, although actually enjoying it is degrading. What a nasty double-bind that is.

interesting article here…

http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/it-happened-to-me-im-a-college-sugar-baby

I’m not sure if selling sex is inherently unethical or not, however, look how she lies (yes I know part is because it is illegal and if legal and unstigmatized, that’d go away.) She’s in a relationship and doesn’t tell the SO. I guess that’s female empowerment right there….

Interesting Ginkgo. China is a great one to look at given their huge size and their traditionally rigid roles for men and women. China is the one place in the world where women are more likely to suicide then men. Why? Something is surely happening in China that offers a very different data then what we see here in the west. I have wondered about the suicide stat and the only thing I have found that comes close to feeling like it has a chance to be correct is that males are highly valued in the Chinese culture and females not as much. When a sex is devalued could it be that that sex is more likely to suicide? I think maybe so. Could it be that in the US that women have been more highly valued and men not as much? I think a good case could be made for that. Our world revolves around protecting women and that which we protect is what we tend to value highly.

This discussion reminds me of the important point made in Geary’s “Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences” that women from Asia, South America, North America, East Europe, West Europe, Asia, and Africa, all felt considerably more strongly then men that their potential mate needed to make a strong income. That one seems to be fairly universal. Not sure about others but it is an interesting question.

Ginkgo,

Thank you for your reply. However, I am talking in terms of the modern western world exclusively; i.e. societies where there is extensive peace and security already.

Also, I should state I’m not talking about force/violence broadly. Force/violence can be used AGGRESSIVELY or DEFENSIVELY. Culturally, I think we are more or less unanimous on the worthiness of DEFENSIVE force (the contributions of men you bring up are ones based on DEFENSIVE force).

A defender is not a conqueror; a conqueror is by definition an aggressor.

I’m speaking about how our culture has a broad tendency to see male sexuality as AGGRESSIVE force (i.e. an act of conquest).

You guys missed a big one.

Man “dates” an underage girl (even if the age difference is less than a year, even if they met at an adult venue and he had no reason to think that she was underage)

“_statuotory_ R A P I S T!!! He’s a raping raper R A P I S T!!! Rape culture made him think that he was allowed to put his eighteen year old penis in a seventeen year old girl’s innocent vagina!!! Throw him in jail before he tries to rape girls in middle school, or nurseries!!!”

Woman “dates” an underage boy (even if she’s old enough to be his mother, even if the boy is literally pre/pubertal and hairless and she had to get him drunk)

“What? What!? She didn’t really do anything wrong. I mean, he was old enough to get it up! It’s just S T A T U O T O R Y _rape_, he won’t be traumatised if no one makes a big deal about it. And when you really think about it, is it *so bad* if a ten year old boy learns about sex from a mature woman? He’ll be able to use those lessons in the future.”

In my childhood neighbourhood, there are fifteen male sex offenders (stat rape) and five female sex offenders (stat rape). Eleven of the fifteen male offenders were under the drinking age at the time of the offense, three of the four drinking-aged men met their “victims” in bars. Conversely, all five of the female offenders were either teachers or daycare workers, all over the age of 30 when finally arrested. All of the men were considered red-level sex offenders (despite the fact that the average age of their “victims” was sixteen), only one of the women (the one who pursued pre-pubertal girls) was given a yellow-level alert. Although I’ve lived in parts of the country in which every other registrant was a middle-aged man who stalked pre-teen girls (hint: hardcore perverts gravitate towards rural areas, less chance of discovery or persecution), the urban rosters are (IME) a different story.

Or, to simplify this: in a three-zip code area of New York City, over a dozen men who had sex with underage girls (that was mostly initiated by the girls misrepresenting themselves as older women) have been tarred with the “rapist” brush. In that same patch of land, five women were convicted of STATUOTORY (loud yell) _rape_ (whisper), and the accomplices (female) of three of the women didn’t even warrant addition to the roster.

If that isn’t male-oriented slut shaming (19 year old guy gets drunk and hook up with a sixteen year old=violent and predatory rapist, 33 year old woman shaved the groins of her multiple 10-13 year old targets so that they’ll “look pretty” before having sex with them=”What? What!? What’s the big deal!?”), I don’t know what is.

I do believe MaMu has found a big one.

That “got liucky” meme again.

And no punishment at all for the little liars that destroyed however many?

Well after all, laying is a basic right in this society. How would the marketplace function without it?

OperatorOscillation,

I disagree that “sex-positive” is a waste of time. I very strongly disagree.

Women who DO guiltlessly partake in their sexual natures are, and historically have been, shamed and humiliated and socially scorned. The modern “sex-positive” attitude is a very recent development, and one that has to fight against very deeply-ingrained ideas within our culture.

What I am saying is that sex-positivity needs to be extended to men. Just like women who are enthusiastic participants in sex should NOT be seen as degraded, defeated, humiliated, conquered “sluts” (I’m using the term here in view of its traditional connotations, NOT the modern ‘reclaiming” context), MEN who are enthusiastic participants in sex should NOT be seen as brutish, animalistic, defiling, victimizing degraders.

Dungone,

I’m not claiming that feminism sparked the sexual revolution, and I am also aware of where the term “sex-positive” came from (i.e. the feminist sex wars).

What I am talking about when I use the phrase “sex-positive” is the phrase’s literal meaning, i.e. “yes, sex and sexuality are natural and good things and they aren’t awful nasty terrible depraved disgusting things.”

Also, I disagree with the idea that porn is necessarily sex-positive. Indeed, a very very large amount of the porn I have seen (and I’ve looked over a huge number of genres) seems to buy into the exact tendency within our culture that I criticize above; to frame sex as an act where a “conqueror” figure defiles/defeats/violates the recipient. This is NOT a “sex-positive” viewpoint. It is the precise viewpoint which anti-sex ideologues and ascetics (including the anti-porn feminists) operate from.

I would like to make it clear; I am not a “feminist” except in the sense that the Classical Liberal feminists were feminist (i.e. “women are human beings too”). I respect MRA’s like Warren Farrell. I am an advocate of gender equality, not “feminism.”

These intersections of cultural and legal discrimination really scare me more than any angry white knighters or feminists raging on the internet about how I hate women because I am just a pathetic neckbeard (still not seeing how that is a “femmephobic” term).

Its not outside the realm of possibility that any one male statutory rapist deserves to have his life jacked up, or any one female statutory rapist deserves a slap on the wrist, but when it is consistently imbalanced, that’s bullshit.

And here is another example of male sexuality shaming: http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019422231_apusshamingjohns.html?prmid=obinsource

Notice the women aren’t shamed by these movements. The social inequalities that might encourage people to become prostitutes aren’t under the microscope, nope, its simply the evil, ne’er-do-well men with their evil penis power that need to have their faces plastered up on a billboard.

I am also aware of where the term “sex-positive” came from (i.e. the feminist sex wars).

See, that’s not where it came from. It was coined by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Reich who died some 30 years before the “feminist sex wars” ever took place. Please be clear whether you’re referring to “sex positive feminism” or “sex positive.” Two different things.

Ginko,

“Rape culture” seems like a perfectly useful description of the aggressive male/passive female norm, and of its consequences. Maybe it describes too many different things, but at least some of these things are real if in decline. When all womyn are punished for saying yes at any step, then het men and lesbian womyn are expected to read minds about who means yes without saying yes – to conversation, to friendship, or to sex. When that happens, it enables people to push pathological norms, such as the idea that going upstairs to talk always means going upstairs to have sex, or that shouting no and trying to push someone away is just playing hard-to-get. I tend to think of these pathological norms as “rape culture.”

If it depends on norms which keep womyn from communicating interest [which also keeps us from clearly communicating disinterest], and keep men from communicating disinterest [which also keeps them from clearly communicating interest], well, I’m glad we’re at least beginning to change the first set of norms. But until we change the second set of norms, the nonsense about friendship vs. romance, coffee, elevators, and “nice guy syndrome,” we’re going to have a lot of barriers to communication.

I skipped reading the comment thread to say this, since I just wanted to get it out. Apologies in advance if this is covered or off topic.

The statement regarding gendered sex toys has been a pet peeve of mine. I’m not a big sex toy user; I’m more visual and so prefer imagery to a device.

Anyway, I’ve been looking at porn or erotica or whatever you want to call it since I was in my mid teens, at least ( though you could definitely say I appreciated erotic imagery even in childhood – hellooooooo racquel welch! ) And over the course of my experience, I have heard much about how male sexual desires are objectifying, violent, and tend to dissect and reduce women to attractive parts. This was the basis, i think, for “The Sexual Politics Of Meat”. I believe that the real comparison between men and women is visual porn versus sex toys.

Now, this all leads me to ask: Does a dildo have a face? A real name? Which expression of sexuality is actually reducing the object of their desire to a single characteristic? Why does no one point out the ways that female sex toys actually have superhuman capabilities? No male human genitals do all of the shit that female sex toys do, and with a few terrifying exceptions, no woman has such control over a mans genitals as she does this gendered machine.

Just wanted to get that off my chest, back to lurking.

Anony, thanks for speaking up. It’s late to welcome you, but wlecome anyway!.

The business about sex-toy shaming happening only when it’s male sex toys isn’t going to yield to questions about the facelessness of dildos. Don’t be distracvted by smokescreen discussions of “objectification.” The objectification going on here is the dehumanization of men and this specific aspect of our humanity.

This is really about misandry, pure and simple.

I’ll argue that Trans men don’t exactly have everything as a piece of cake. Many feel very fetishized, and hate the pervasive “I date women and trans men”. They don’t want to be treated as some special class of women, they are men. In the end, many are celibate because lack of surgical technology makes them feel wholly uncomfortable with their parts. Granted, I follow a specific set of trans men (Sometimes they’re called “truscum” on tumblr because they believe that people who have clinical gender dysphoria are different than those who don’t, and medical transition is not necessary for the second group) – the different subsects are very unlike each other and have very frequent squabbles. It’s not really a cohesive community. I personally recommend reading Top Lion Cub: http://toplioncub.tumblr.com/tagged/personal – He’s also black (and grew up partially in Africa). Note that FTM community is different from the trans woman community, and the rhetoric is different – many trans men prefer treating their bodies as having a medical issue, and don’t want that taken away from them, for starters.

I will note, I think trans men who completely pass (For example, this fine man: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/FtM/JamisonGreen%20s.jpg ) will be seen as sexual predators until their pants are off.

I’d love to get some trans guys discussing in these sorts of conversations, but I think many of them are caught up in their own battles. And many just want to be as stealth as possible.

Ginkgo,

So what would you call these problems?

One thing that occurred to me on this subject. Do you know who’s been most thoroughly and relentlessly slut-shamed in recent times? Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Even a lot of those who thought the accusation was a set-up felt obliged to point out how vile and loathsome they found him – on the basis of his sex life.

And more recently, a teenage pop singer has felt obliged to defend himself from charges he’s a womaniser, on the basis of being “linked” to two women.

Dungone,

What euphemism for sex?

This is not directed at Marja who I believe is being wholley sincere; but most of the time feminism feels like a giant game of bait and switch. Ask a feminist to define rape culture and she/he would come out with something very similar to what Marja just described, but go anywhere that they actually discuss “rape culture” and it’s used to mean “society lets men rape with impunity.” The same thing goes for patriarchy, ask them and you’ll get the proper anthropological definition, watch them talk and it’s a stand in for “any kind of power held by men.” Misogyny goes from hatred of women to disagreeing with feminists, rape becomes any kind of negative sexual experience (experienced by a woman), and harrasment and activism become interchangable depending on whether it’s being done to them or being done by them.

It’s why, if you’re going to talk about gender, you cannot let feminists/feminism define the terms. They won’t stick to them, and you’ll waste all your energy trying to make them.

Here is a link to an image going around on Facebook that sort of ties in #2 on the slut shaming list above.

It’s supposed to be funny and clever, but it implies that men only care about the sex and not anything else. If they could get pregnant, apparently they’d just go around having thoughtless abortions all the time just like people go out to have a drink at Starbucks to satisfy their coffee addition, and society would totally be okay with that.

The picture is supposed to imply that men’s medical issues and treatment in that regard would be better than women’s*, but it makes a dig about men’s sexuality and how the result is treated (they’d use it and lose it, baby… pun intended), which is significantly different than the way women’s is (motherhood is close to godhood, eh?)

It wants to imply that we’d value men’s sexuality more just because they’re men, but it’s really denigrating it quite nastily.

*Of course, men’s medical issues are back burner in almost every, if not every, regard, so it’s stupid. People can point to Viagra all the like, but prostate cancer doesn’t have pink ribbons and huge organizations. Erectile dysfunction is a somewhat easy to fix, and I’d say sildenafil citrate was made available for that purpose not out of kindness to men, but because the pharmaceutical company thought that men would pay ridiculous sums of money to get wood. And they do, of course, thanks in part to the “if you can’t get hard, you’re not a real man” thing.

@JDCyran

Erectile dysfunction, while I’m sure is sucky for men (orgasms are quite awesome). It’s so often framed in a way that men lack their ability to please women, thus they are useless sexually. And so, to me… The reason why erectile dysfunction is even considered a big deal at all to the public is because it “harms” women. If it were something that only harmed men sexually, we wouldn’t care at all to fix it and we’d possibly even find ways to get more men sexually dysfunctional because we tend to despise male sexuality so much. See: circumcision and it’s original intent to suppress male sexuality and it’s more contemporary intent to appeal to women’s sexual preferences.

I’ve been seeing that image shared a lot on facebook, and it’s just a big pile of horse shit. Men still can get women pregnant, and yet their birth control options consist of: condoms, abstinence, irreversible vasectomy. I don’t know if the people who say this stuff are living in an entirely different universe or what…

re the facebook photo…Nobody cares about any aspect of mens health. The photo is an unwitttingly bad joke.

This is no joke. Our state government doesn’t consider men to be a part of the community nor does it value their health.

@Gingko

I call this the Golden Vulva, the idea that access to vaginas is the summum bonum. Paul Elam calls it pussyism. It’s like the Golden Uterus, but strictly sexual, not reproductive.

You should read, if you haven’t yet, Drew Deveaux talking about the Cotton Ceiling. It’s incredibly instructive on the problematization of CAMAB sexuality… radfems tried to protest when Planned Parenthood in Toronto funded a workshop on the issue… I say tried, because really, at this point, they’re down to duckspeak.