Feminism

[Gaizokubanou]

I don't know, I've generally been exposed to more sex positive, kink friendly feminism, so the advice I got is closer to "do whatever funky things you want to do to each other's bodies, so long as you discuss it and agree to it" which, alongside notions of enthusiastic consent (basically the idea that agreeing to sex should be less about the absence of negative answers and more about showing excitement for the things that you do want to happen)

 

Hmm that very elegantly and practically describes and solves lot of issues with "but what is true consent" problem that seem to creep up.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I haven't read the article due to the aforementioned criticism, so if I ought to please correct me on that.

 

I agree that it's not a good idea to presume that you should protect your consenting partner but I think that toxic masculinity is deeply rooted enough that I'm not willing to leave my mind to run unchecked. It's not that I question my partner's agency so much as my own, wondering why I want something and if maybe my desires are informed by harmful ideas and shouldn't be indulged in even if there is a partner willing to indulge.

[Deadpan]

Hmm that very elegantly and practically describes and solves lot of issues with "but what is true consent" problem that seem to creep up.

 

Yep! Having to establish nonconsent instead of making active consent a requirement is obviously crappy because it has lead to arguments about how passed-out drunk folk or people in similarly impaired states technically didn't say they didn't want this, but it's also crappy in more benign contexts for building sex up as something that happens if you wear somebody down and get them to begrudingly accept, vs. various schools of enthusiastic consent or Yes Means Yes, which posit that sex should happen if all people involved agree that they are HYPED for this.

 

(I posted something in the Ethics thread to clear up I didn't want to be a butt which you've hopefully seen by now)

[Gaizokubanou]

Yep! Having to establish nonconsent instead of making active consent a requirement is obviously crappy because it has lead to arguments about how passed-out drunk folk or people in similarly impaired states technically didn't say they didn't want this, but it's also crappy in more benign contexts for building sex up as something that happens if you wear somebody down and get them to begrudingly accept, vs. various schools of enthusiastic consent or Yes Means Yes, which posit that sex should happen if all people involved agree that they are HYPED for this.

 

(I posted something in the Ethics thread to clear up I didn't want to be a butt which you've hopefully seen by now)

 

Just checked, saw it, it's cool and I actually really appreciate you making that gesture explicitly (now I think about it, it oddly relates back to this albeit small and very abstract way lol).

[Patrick R]

I don't know where the desire comes from in any one individual of course, but I think part of this conversation plays into a common misconception about power dynamics in kink, namely that submission is about weakness and dominance about strength. In a lot of ways, it's actually the submissive that's in control of this kind of play, not the dominant partner. They hold all the cards, they determine how far any of this will go. In a sense, it's not about being hurt, or humiliated, or whatever else you're into: it's about allowing yourself to be hurt and humiliated and whatever else. It's about being strong enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable, and secure enough in your own personality that you can take a break from being that person for a while.

 

I mean, you absolutely do get subs who are using this to treat some kind of emotional baggage and doms who think it's a place where they get to be an asshole without consequences, but in the safe and consensual kind of play, it all works differently than you might expect from the surface level expression of power. Which is just an act, never forget.

 

I have found it extremely difficult to contribute to this conversation at all without sharing my experiences and breaking some boundaries, but yeah, this.

 

I'll leave it at this: I've been in dom & sub roles with male, female, and genderqueer partners and the reason for that is that has 100% of the time been because that's what my partner and I wanted. It starts with communication always. You can try to psychoanalyze why someone likes what they like, but it's usually as impossible to prescribe as why someone is like what they are like. As a queer person I find that there's a lot of grey area between what is considered orientation and what is considered fetish (or even proclivities, like "I like bald men" or "I like red-headed women"), and I think trying to determine nature vs. nurture on either is usually a backwards approach. I think most things that define who a person is usually comes down to a messy mixture of both.

 

As long as individuals are expressing their sexuality in safe environments with consenting partners*, I think one kind of sex tends to be as healthy as another.

 

But that's on a micro level. On a macro level you can probably look at porn and draw conclusions about how healthy depictions of power dynamics and kink tend to be. And a study on how that feeds into forming people's ideas of what sex is and their ideas of what their sexuality should be would be fascinating, for sure.

 

*That said, once you put money into the picture I think things become trickier. Would someone who is not into humiliation but desperately needs money signing a contract to appear in a porn like Argobot described be a consenting party, really? I support sex workers 100% but not all sex workers have equal opportunities or that exploitation doesn't happen in those industries. Capitalism: still the ruiner of all things!

[Dewar]

That goofy article makes me want to actually have an intelligent discussion of male sexual desire. There's a trend I've noticed among ostensibly progressive, straight men where their progressivism makes them feel guilty for the kind of sex that their straightness causes them to want. I'm talking about oral sex or any other act that could potentially be seen as demeaning to the woman in the situation. I've had countless personal conversations and read numerous articles with the idea that men internalize feminism to mean that they should feel guilty for wanting their partner to give them a blow job. That guilt, while it comes from a well-intentioned place, feels incredibly insulting to the women involved. It's a case of men wanting to protect women and thereby removing any agency from their independent choices.

 

Anyone have thoughts about this?

 

I'm not sure how much I want to get into it, as it's a bit of a sore spot right now, but this combined with a deep-seated religious upbringing (long lapsed, but still there) have made things difficult for me quite a bit recently. It can be hard to take people (male or female) at face value when they say they're up for something. I always have a doubt that they're doing it just for me and don't really enjoy it. Part of that is rooted in the "expecting from other people what you do yourself" syndrome, where I often agree to do things I'd rather not do (not just sex, more of an overall life thing.) Part of it is that I have a dominant personality at times and have accidentally bullied people into doing things in the past (not sex in those cases, thankfully.)

[Ninety-Three]

*That said, once you put money into the picture I think things become trickier. Would someone who is not into humiliation but desperately needs money signing a contract to appear in a porn like Argobot described be a consenting party, really? I support sex workers 100% but not all sex workers have equal opportunities or that exploitation doesn't happen in those industries. Capitalism: still the ruiner of all things!

 

I think one has to accept that as consensual, or it starts doing weird things to the meaning of consent. Is someone working a shitty job at McDonalds really consenting because they need the money? Is someone dressing a particular way not for themselves, but because their partner will like it, really consenting? Is any party agreeing to anything they're not 100% enthusiastic about really consenting?

[Gormongous]

I think one has to accept that as consensual, or it starts doing weird things to the meaning of consent. Is someone working a shitty job at McDonalds really consenting because they need the money? Is someone dressing a particular way not for themselves, but because their partner will like it, really consenting? Is any party agreeing to anything they're not 100% enthusiastic about really consenting?

 

Hah, introducing the coercive structures of capitalism into this conversation says more about our society's many flaws than about the concept of consent. That's not putting you on blast, just the world in which we live.

[Dewar]

There is a consent spectrum between 100% enthusiastic and holding a gun to someone's head. Money issues can fall in several different areas in that spectrum. "I want money to buy a new iPhone" vs "I will have to pinch pennies to make it this month" vs "I will get thrown out of my house if I can't make rent"

[Ninety-Three]

Hah, introducing the coercive structures of capitalism into this conversation says more about our society's many flaws than about the concept of consent. That's not putting you on blast, just the world in which we live.

 

It's not inherent to capitalism. People often do things because others, for example, their friends want them to, rather than they want to, and that's got nothing to do with economic systems.

 

There is a consent spectrum between 100% enthusiastic and holding a gun to someone's head. Money issues can fall in several different areas in that spectrum. "I want money to buy a new iPhone" vs "I will have to pinch pennies to make it this month" vs "I will get thrown out of my house if I can't make rent"

 

Ah, I think we disagree about the meaning of the word. The way I see it, consent is just a synonym of agree, and you can agree to all kinds of things you don't like. I consider it to be unrelated to circumstances and all about frame of mind. If someone is inebriated, then they start sliding down the consent spectrum. Do other people not use the word this way?

[Gormongous]

It's not inherent to capitalism. People often do things because others, for example, their friends want them to, rather than they want to, and that's got nothing to do with economic systems.

 

I don't know if that's the same as being a sex worker or even working at McDonalds, though. In the realm of non-transactional sex, you can consent to do something that your partner wants to do, even though it's not something you'd want on your own, and that's still consent, by most definitions. If it were something truly objectionable to you, I hope that you wouldn't consent, whatever your partner wanted, and if circumstances made you feel as if you had to consent whether or not it was objectionable to you, then that's not consent, it's coercion. I guess that the dynamic is the same with wearing clothes that your partner or friends like, but there are multiple instances, just off the top of my head, where people are forced by the necessities of life in a capitalist system to work jobs that are truly repugnant to them, either physically or morally, and if it were possible for them to survive by any other means, they would, but they are not offered an opportunity for that by said system. For some people under some circumstances, sex work would be considered among those repugnant jobs. I have extreme difficulty framing that as "consent" in any useful sense of the word.

[Apple Cider]

I am reading all these responses but it's also intensely difficulty for me to actually talk about nitty gritty sex details with men so I'll keep it general but even though a lot of people scoff at second wave "ALL HETERO SEX IS RAPE" reductionist BS, Dworkin's work in that regard has been a good ideological place to start in really doing some soul-searching on consent. Granted, was it very reductive, absolutely. Does it not jive with sex positive feminism? Not in the slightest. But it does make you start thinking about power dynamics on a macroscopic level with regards to sex. It is incredibly difficult sometimes to have sex in a meaningful and healthy way in our society, especially as a woman who has slept with men. I have done quite a many things that I thought I wanted and looking back, not really did but did it because I thought that's "just what you do." Can you give consent? Yes, absolutely. I have been in consenting sexual situations. But I've been in them so little that I know that giving consent to a man as a woman is very hard for me and has to be negotiated in very specific circumstances and a lot of men, no matter how well intentioned, have no idea or have no desire to actually try. This is really what the heart of "all hetero sex is rape" bit is about, that if our society pretty much puts men at the top of the power dynamic food chain, can you really consent? It's not something that has one answer, even for the same person, even in the same time frame. 

 

The part of consent no one seems to really talk about is that long before you get to sex, our society is trained to violate your consent in a billion innocuous ways. Your personal space, any sort of "no" or the fact that there's many situations where you can't even express a no, and none of these things are sexual. Telling a man no in a lot of ways is a dangerous proposition and very few people respect it. Control and consent are two very important things that we deprive many people of on a personal and structural level.

 

As far as "wanting things that seem degrading" and sex positive feminism - I only advocate for sex positive feminism that recognizes that our sexual desires are not beyond the realm of criticism/scrutiny, and that they don't happen in a vacuum. I also do not advocate for sex positive feminism that doesn't recognize that part of sexual behavior is the need to sometimes abstain or be not-sexual. Sex positive feminism runs roughshod sometimes over SA/rape victims or other people like asexuals that do not wish to partake in certain sexual experiences. It also sometimes uncritically posits that all sex is great and good and that's not even close to being true. All sex being great and good ignores quite a few intersections when it isn't or can't be sometimes for many people.

 

It's very hard to also feel like I can express my sexual proclivities safely or publicly when it's very much been used against me in an abusive way for years, no matter how many people tell me that it's okay. As long as people respect that about me, I am fine.

 

Edit: So my post isn't a fucking huge downer - feminism has greatly helped me cope with years of rape and sexual assault. I take it very seriously in this regard but it's given me a lot of methods of coping and seeking help. I really hope everyone else respects it regarding this conversation in particular as much as I do.

[Deadpan]

Going back to the original point of having a discussion about male sexual desire, I think what's at the bottom of a lot of this is that men still aren't really taught how to talk honestly about their emotional or sexual needs. There's a pretty small range of things you're expected to want, and if what you actually want falls outside of that, then working that out can be pretty confusing (and if what you want coincides with what you're told to want, how can you be sure it's really a genuine desire). Especially when you grow up surrounded by peers demonstrating the intended desires, even if merely to hide their own insecurities.

 

Male homosociality is pretty messed up that way, to the point where a special word was apparently needed to describe less dysfunctional bonding (let's be real, a "bromance" is just a friendship, although one much more intimate than men are used to having). A lot of it is about enforcing those accepted needs, so that the group doesn't have to question what few, shaky notions it has established about intimacy so far. Everybody pretends they want the thing they're supposed to want so as not to get in trouble, and that pretense becomes the justification for the stereotype.

 

So when they end up in an relationship, men might have trouble seeing oral sex as a simple act between two people, rather than a part of the big act they've come to despise. Or they might have trouble accepting that they just don't care for it that much, even though they're supposed to. Maybe you don't care for any kind of sex all that much and just want to be cuddled.

 

This is all something that feminism is already helping to address through its questioning of gender roles, so it's pointless as ever for MRAs and ilk to use it as an example of why men supposedly have it worse. But it's also something that's worth talking about, when you're not using it to talk over women. Particularly, it's a conversation that men in general should be having amongst themselves, I think.

 

As far as "wanting things that seem degrading" and sex positive feminism - I only advocate for sex positive feminism that recognizes that our sexual desires are not beyond the realm of criticism/scrutiny, and that they don't happen in a vacuum. I also do not advocate for sex positive feminism that doesn't recognize that part of sexual behavior is the need to sometimes abstain or be not-sexual. Sex positive feminism runs roughshod sometimes over SA/rape victims or other people like asexuals that do not wish to partake in certain sexual experiences. It also sometimes uncritically posits that all sex is great and good and that's not even close to being true. All sex being great and good ignores quite a few intersections when it isn't or can't be sometimes for many people.

 

Yeah, these are important things to keep in mind. Thanks for bringing them up!

[BigJKO]

Haha, someone tagged that guy in a thread and now he's responding to me on Twitter.

 

 

Weeeeeeee

 

Medium does this wonderful (awful) thing of including the author's twitter handle with an @ in the URL, so when you link it the author is automatically tagged in it.

 

EDIT: But ok, he was also just directly tagged in by someone! Yay!

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't know where the desire comes from in any one individual of course, but I think part of this conversation plays into a common misconception about power dynamics in kink, namely that submission is about weakness and dominance about strength. In a lot of ways, it's actually the submissive that's in control of this kind of play, not the dominant partner. They hold all the cards, they determine how far any of this will go. In a sense, it's not about being hurt, or humiliated, or whatever else you're into: it's about allowing yourself to be hurt and humiliated and whatever else. It's about being strong enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable, and secure enough in your own personality that you can take a break from being that person for a while.

 

I mean, you absolutely do get subs who are using this to treat some kind of emotional baggage and doms who think it's a place where they get to be an asshole without consequences, but in the safe and consensual kind of play, it all works differently than you might expect from the surface level expression of power. Which is just an act, never forget.

 

I'm not super knowledgeable about this personally, but from my understanding a large portion is also about trust.  In consensual play you are absolutely allowed to stop at any time, which is why safewords exist.  But ideally you'd never want to use them because you trust your partner enough that it shouldn't be necessary (though it's still good practice).  That level of trust in another person creates intimacy and is very attractive for some people.  Naturally that level of trust changes when money is involved.

[Gaizokubanou]

Hmm lot of interesting ideas here, and one that I had gut feeling about but didn't quite have words to articulate was the difference between macro perception and micro action and their different analysis.  Seems like most of you agree that on micro level it's whatever two or more people agree on, but that the problem is this micro level engagement doesn't happen in vacuum and lot of troublesome macro level perceptions and power imbalances tend to creep in because all of us tend to be a product of our macro surroundings.

[Deadpan]

I'm not super knowledgeable about this personally, but from my understanding a large portion is also about trust.

 

That's definitely a large part of what drew me to it: it's a good way to externalize and make explicit trust issues (by which I don't mean trust problems, just anything related to trust). Giving somebody else that kind of power over you says on a certain level that you trust them not to abuse it and that you feel safe with them, and ebyond everything else, I really like being able to show this some way. It definitely doesn't preclude negotiating in advance or maybe even stopping them at some point if you feel uncomfortable*, but it's still a pretty satisfying gesture to give yourself to somebody else completely, even if just in the mutual fantasy.

 

*: It can be hard to know yourself what you want or how much you can take that day, so not everything that goes wrong is necessarily a gross overstepping of boundaries, often it's a matter of "tone it down a little today, please" or "I thought I wanted this, but I'm not feeling it, can we do something else?"

[Apple Cider]

I know that people scoff at trigger warnings but despite an article having them, and me feeling mentally up to it, reading a Kotaku article on people who make machinima rape porn of some of my favorite video game women protagonists, I had an emotional meltdown and spent most of a bus ride trying not to cry. 

 

Some days it's really a lot harder than other days. They don't give you a handbook on how to cope.

[JonCole]

 

Wonder Woman Has A New Uniform Involving SLEEVES And PANTS

 

Reading the actual post for context, it sucks that the writing for women characters can be bad in DC (I'm looking at WW and Batgirl, specifically) but at least stuff like these outfit changes are continuing the forward march of women being more than sexual objects in comics. 

[Apple Cider]

I really like this costume, feels very in line with other superheroes. 

[Gwardinen]

Sure. Apart from the giant WRIST BLADES. Holy crap.

 

(Actually I kind of like that because they've been focussing much more on Wonder Woman being a warrior the last few years.)

[syntheticgerbil]

I guess the next revolution in this bloated superhero drivel is now the women will have pants. I suppose that is acceptable.

[Merus]

Personally, I'd far prefer the stories to be well-written and interesting than to focus on whether or not Wonder Woman gets pants. It's a very peculiar obsession over whether Wonder Woman is wearing pants that I'm not sure is anywhere near as important as people make it out to be.

[Gormongous]

Personally, I'd far prefer the stories to be well-written and interesting than to focus on whether or not Wonder Woman gets pants. It's a very peculiar obsession over whether Wonder Woman is wearing pants that I'm not sure is anywhere near as important as people make it out to be.

 

Well, it's not a zero-sum game. Wonder Woman can be better-written and wear pants. Or rather, Wonder Woman wearing pants can only make better writing more likely, not less.

[JonCole]

I'd prefer that too, but I think it's clear that DC isn't currently willing to prioritize good, progressive story right now so I'll take what I can get. That won't stop me from complaining every time we get a superhero to basically change their sexuality on the turn of a new writer or something like that. We are seeing good stuff like Catwoman being openly, non-exploitatively bisexual every now and then, so I'm trying to stay optimistic.

 

Frankly though, I'm betting much harder on Marvel. I feel like in practically every conceivable way Marvel is more appealing and tasteful than DC. I'm fairly new to reading comics though, so maybe I'm naively observing more recent moves as indicators of these companies' overall direction.