Spontaneous Musings

Whoa...found this and it shows how different the conversation is now then it was just a year ago at this time. A year ago at this time, we elected a sexual predator as President of the US, a man who openly harassed women, and treated them as sexual objects. And people stated well, he's just being a guy. Now, 12 months later....

I don’t want to see a single comment under this post saying “This is just guys being guys. This is normal. It’s fine,” or ANY VARIATION on that theme. This was not OK. None of it is excusable. Lots of men are not like this. If it’s your idea of what it is to be a man, it shouldn’t be.
#notallmen—are you sure?

I first started thinking back over my past behaviour after reading a comment thread on Pharyngula about #NotAllMen. Of course what men really meant by this hashtag was “not me“. They were more concerned about clearing their own reputation than listening to women about the problem. Most of the Pharyngula thread was about how this hashtag was an irrelevant distraction from women’s reports of sexual harassment, which it is. But one commenter had a different spin. “Can I really say I’ve never harassed a woman?” they mused (I’m paraphrasing from memory). “Never? Not even when I was drunk? Not even when I was a teenager? Not even unintentionally made a woman feel uncomfortable by staring or touching?”

When I first started writing this post, my intention was to make the point that even regular, ‘good’ guys can be harassers. Now I’ve written down 12 of my worst moments, I doubt I’m the best person to make this point. I’m sure (at least I hope) lots of men have read this and gone “Jeeeeeez, I would never do that.” My behaviour went a long way from what most people consider acceptable.

Still: It’s true, there are predators. There are manipulators and those who consciously choose to hurt women. But there are nowhere near enough of them to account for the near-universal experiences of women being harassed and assaulted. Some of the assaults are being done by regular guys. Check it isn’t you.

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2017/10/17/im-reason-women-posting-metoo/#tj8hGfLPWlommY8B.99

This reminds me a lot of what a male friend stated this week...how scared he was that he'd done this. Not being aware of what he was doing.

We're beginning to have an important nation wide discussion about sexual abuse and bullying. Wow. And it's about bloody time. We've had them before of course, but not like this -- not with people actually listening. It gives me hope. I think things are shifting.

[ETA - there's an even better post that is a direct follow up to this one at the same site!

To Stop Sexual Assault We Must Talk About How to Be a Man

When women tell the world that they have been assaulted, they are met with a chorus of disbelief.

You’re just doing it for attention.

If it’s true, why haven’t you told the police?

If it’s true, why aren’t you naming names? [If they don’t]

Why are you trying to ruin this man’s life? [If they do]

That’s not harassment, it’s just a compliment.

Did you do anything to encourage him?

On and on, a sea of disbelief, or of silence, or doing nothing, or worse, of attacking her for having said anything. Meanwhile I come out and say “Hey world, I did some shocking things but I’m not doing them anymore!” and the response has been largely to hail my brilliance. I did start my Facebook post with “I’m scared to post this”, which might be seen as encouraging the “So brave!” reactions. Still, it seems that there are people who are ready to shower men with praise for doing the bare minimum. The women speaking about their assaults are brave. I am (assuming you believe me about having learned and changed) at best an ex-scumbag. Don’t give me a cookie.

The first thing we could learn from the response to my post is that we can make the world better just by supporting victims of assault and harassment the same way we apparently support (reformed) abusers.

AND...

My last post focused on my time as a Pickup Artist (PUA). PUA ideology absolutely needs to be challenged, but it is not the main cause of the harassment epidemic. Most men are not PUAs, and will never be PUAs. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t absorbed some terrible ideas about what it is to be a man.

PUA ideas are really just a turbocharged version of widely-believed ideas about masculinity. Men want sex all the time. Women want men who are traditionally masculine and powerful, even dominant. The number of women you can attract is a measure of your manliness. Women don’t think like men at all, so to ‘understand’ them you need some kind of system. Manliness is embodied by aggressive heterosexuality. PUAs just take these ideas, treat them as though they are objective facts, and claim to make you a Real Man. Lots of men have similar beliefs without getting sucked into the PUA subculture.

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2017/10/19/stop-sexual-assault-must-talk-man/#mLuffqXl7QhOdyml.99

But it's not just the PUA community. It's wider spread than that. My brother was upset about this a while back -- stating that he didn't subscribe to this view of manliness.

Everything on my list is inexcusable. But I still think it’s worth investigating why I did what I did. It wasn’t because I got physical or emotional pleasure from it. I didn’t really enjoy any of those encounters. And that’s not because of casual sex: I’ve since had lovely, mutually satisfying sex that we both knew wasn’t leading to a long-term relationship.

Everything I described in that post happened more than eight years ago. Back then, I was having sex to prove to myself that I could. Real men want a lot of sex, and it’s a measure of your masculinity how successful you are in getting that sex. I was trying to prove to myself that I was a man. It is pathetic, but it is true.

We need to change our ideas about what it is to be a man.

First and most obviously, if you commit sexual assault or harass women, this makes you a worse man.

Also:

Being ‘dominant’ makes you a bully, not a better man.

Your manliness is not determined by the amount of sex you have.

Thank you. I remember a young woman posting in her LJ ages ago that she was a woman now that she'd had sex with a man. Seriously? I was enraged. So if you never have sex with a man, you're not a woman? WTF? That's dumb. Becoming a woman has zip to do with having sex. Just as becoming a man has zip to do with having sex.

People actually think this way? Yes, they do. They think their sex lives define them.
And worse, define those around them.

I do want to say, his use of the word dominant is not used in any way shape or form to condemn the BDSM community, where men and women are in consensual D/S relationships, with both genders taking on both roles, and with safe words. That's not what this is about.

What he also shines a light on is how men are shamed for not being sexually experienced in our culture. Just as women are often shamed for being too sexually experienced.
We virgin-shame men and women, we slut-shame women.

None of that is remotely excusable or kind. It's bullying.

Men and women are guilty of doing this. He's right, we have to change how we talk about sex. This is effecting us all. No one is immune.

It's funny because our media, art, novels, etc have been reflecting these things for some time now. ]

[I'm behind on my television shows again - have 34 hours saved on the DVR. I need a streaming device like I need a hole in the head.]

1. What I just finished reading?

The Most Dangerous Book: the Battle Over James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham

This is an interesting book - it appears to be as much a biography of James Joyce, as it is of his work - and the battles over it. A must read if you are a fan or scholar of Joyce and his work. And a recommended one for anyone remotely interested in the history of obscenity laws, censorship, and the feminist movement in the UK and the US.

I learned quite a few things that I didn't know before:

*. Joyce went blind because of syphillis, and had over 13 eye operations to prevent the blindness. He was in tremendous pain most of his life because of the ailment.

*. Ulysses to this day is amongst the top three best-selling classical novels. It sells over 100,000 books worldwide. The work influenced everyone from Virgina Woolfe to Vladmir Nabokov. And it was the first time anyone had attempted a work of pure stream of consciousness.

*. In most cases, censorship and obscenity laws were in place to suppress women's rights and women's sexuality. In many of the court opinions - the rule of law or test was whether the work would corrupt an innocent woman. And it was up to men to protect her from being corrupted by it. In short, these laws were sexist. Which may explain why Joyce's most devout fans tended to be women, and his most ardent supporters were women.

*. The censorship cases turned on the final chapter, Penelope, which is basically Molly Bloom's thoughts while sitting on her chamber pot during her period. (This, I found interesting - since my undergraduate thesis was on this chapter. And I'd in effect written not one but two college papers on it.) The government used the chapter to prove that the work was "obscene", while the Judges ultimately ruled that while it may be erotic, it was also art particularly when taken into context with the whole.

The book is well written and a bit of a page turner, a rarity for non-fiction. And well researched. Birmingham unlike other non-fiction writers - is thorough, he does not appear to take a personal or emotional stance, and seems to show various points of view - merely interpreting the pattern presented from the documents he's reviewed in substantial depth. The book comes with various photos of Joyce, including one of him sitting in the park in 1922, in pain, with an eye patch, Nora, Hemingway, Ezra Pound, the founder of Random House, founder of ACLU, and various others involved including the ex-pat American who started the world famous Shakespeare & Company in Paris.

2. What you are reading now?

Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf.

This is a rather controversial non-fiction book on Good Reads. Some people really hate it, while others love it to pieces. But then Naomi Wolf, the author of The Beauty Myth, is a bit controversial herself. I saw her speak a few years back at the Brooklyn Book Fair - when the Vagina: a New Biography was first published.

As to what the book is about? It's about how society, medical science, and women, generally speaking, have viewed and currently view the vagina and sexual pleasure via the vagina.

Also, it should be noted that the book concentrates on heterosexual women and heterosexual sex since Ms. Wolf is heterosexual and doesn't know much about lesbian or bisexual or trans. She's up front about this - stating that homosexual or lesbian or bisexual sex deserves a book of its own. And men - aren't really examined that much. The book is not man-hating. Wolf loves men and doesn't have any issues with them.

Wolf is thorough, but rather myopic in her research. By that, I mean, she has a tendency to only use or concentrate on the medical, scientific and scholarly research that supports and validates her own point of view, disregarding the rest. Which makes her a bit unreliable, even if she has valid points. She also has a tendency to generalize - which, I think weakens her novel. She'd have been better off if she pulled back a few steps from the work, at times the work comes across as a tad too personal or autobiographical.

(Sorry, Naomi, but not all women need an orgasm or cocaine to reach a creative high or to be highly creative. Shocking, I know, but there it is. There are actually quite a few highly creative virgins or women who have not experienced insane orgasms out there. Also we do not get depressed just because we haven't had them. You can be in a great creative mood without an orgasm. Seriously.)

That said, there were a few things she's pointed out that I thought were worth sharing and have been validated by medical doctors.

* Women's vaginas are wired differently. Every women experiences sex differently. It's an individual experience.

"For some women, a lot of neural pathways originate in the clitoris, and these women's vaginas will be less "innervated" - less dense with nerves. A woman in this group may like clitoral stimulation a lot, and not get as much from penetration. Some women have lots of innervation in their vaginas, and climax easily from penetration alone. Another woman may have a lot of neural pathway terminations in the perineal or anal area; she may like anal sex and even be able to have an orgasm from it, while it may leave a differently wired woman completely cold, or even in pain. Some women's pelvic neural wiring will be closer to the surface, making it easier for them to reach orgasm; other women's neural wiring may be more submerged in their bodies, driving them and their partners to need to be more patient and inventive, as they must seek a more elusive climax.

( Read more... )

I don't know if this permissible content for all readers or not. So I'll let you figure it out.

3. What I'm reading next?

No clue. Let you know when I figure it out.