"i like masculine men"

We live in a world of opposites, a world that defines X as the exclusion of everything that is Y, and vice versa. White is “not black”. On is “not off”. This paradigm allows no room for flow or mutability or change. To be one thing is to necessarily reject everything contained by it’s “opposite”.

This is the basis upon which the masculine-feminine dichotomy rests.

So what does it mean to be “feminine” or “masculine” (read: in the US/the Western World)? Typical feminine qualities include sensitive, submissive, gentle, supportive, delicate, soft, weak. Masculine qualities are things like aggression, dominance, insensitivity, ambition, hardness, physical fitness, strength, power.

Looking at these lists, they appear fairly mutually exclusive. The problem is that human beings are not distinct programs; we are not lists. We are full of contradictions and quirks and things that just do not make sense. You cannot contain a human being within “ons” and “offs”.

So even though submissive and dominant are defined as opposites it is completely possible that an individual be both. Perhaps not at the same time, sure, but both these qualities can be present in the same personality without that person being a paradox.

Or maybe that’s the point. We are paradoxes; we can be both delicate and powerful, both empathetic and insensitive, both powerful and weak.

But.

As a culture (the US), we blanket deny this mutability. What else spawned the “crisis of masculinity” but 70s feminist taking on “masculine” traits? Feminists are, to this day, shamed for not being “feminine” enough, while men become “pussies” and “bitches” and “gay” for not beating their chests loudly enough.

This is ultimately hurtful for everyone. How can you possibly be emotionally healthy if, by virtue of gender, you are required to deny one half of the emotional spectrum? How can you be a full, rounded, interesting, productive human being if you are constantly policing yourself for signs that you might be behaving like the wrong sex?

It is absurd that we socialize our children so thoroughly that many people are not even aware of this paradigm of opposites, rather than teaching them that sometimes you need to be strong but other times it’s okay to cry. We are finally working to break down the laws that told us pink/purple is a girl’s color, and blue a boy’s, but we are not looking at the paradigm that spawned these rules. Six states have legalized gay marriage, but even in those that haven’t more and more people are learning to respect the blurriness that is inherent in identity, no matter what your gender or whom you choose to have sex with.

But this shift cannot be completed until we acknowledge that men sometimes feel weak, while women sometime feel strong; that women can be dominant without being safely packaged within the “dominatrix” trop, and men can be gentle, supportive friends and lovers. Only when we have embraced this truth, with the war truly be won.

harrassment.

i am a moderator on a dating website. every day i see dozens of women flagging men for catcall-y messages. these are not the sorts of flame messages i discuss in "men, women and rejection"; they are not explicitly hostile or hateful but they reveal a sexism that is perhaps more insidious.

some examples include [sic]:

"Didn't I tell you that I think you got a fatty down there?​"
"I bet you've heard it before, but you have great breasts! I'd love to see you naked! Do you want to fuck? :)"
"I'd stick it in your_butthole"


i did not blacklist these men. perhaps i should have, but i didn't.


when i first started this job, i firmly agreed with the dominant cultural attitude about sexual harassment: "get over it" "it's not worth getting upset" "you're on the internet; you need a thick skin". this was before i started doing research, before i began actively cultivating an awareness of sexual politics, gender relationships and, feminist ideologies about sexism.

now i am left with a conundrum:

if i were to remove every entitled son of a bitch who sends a woman a disrespectful message, i would have to blacklist somewhere in the area of 75% of the male users.

but telling the women to get over it is not the right answer either. how can i not stand up for women in this rampantly disrespectful environment? how can i feel okay about having let all three of those guys continue using the site when those messages clearly made women users uncomfortable? sure, it's hardly more disrespectful than the real world but here i have some power: i can decide who deserves the privilege of usership. and who doesn't.

and what does sexual harassment even mean online? if the third commenter doesn't follow up when the woman doesn't answer, can it be written off as an idle query? just a guy looking for fun. "boys will be boys" it's not threatening. she is using a dating website one purpose of which is to facilitate sex. anal sex is not inherently disrespectful or threatening.

should it be written off? or should i have blacklisted him for simply having the gall to say that in his first message?

and what about the women who are open to these sorts of things? plenty of people use the site who are looking for sex, women and men. and what about sexual conservatism in this country? i am much less likely to be offended if someone propositions me about a threesome or anal sex or anything, really than some of my friends because, even if i am not personally interested, i know there are others who are and i respect that.

and then there's a problem of connotation. i'm almost positive the man who wrote the second comment thought it was a compliment. but the woman who flagged him was offended.

how the hell is anyone supposed to navigate these waters?



ps. what about boob shots. should those be deleted? men's chest shots?

aggression and male powerlessness before a "sexual" woman.

in May I was on a fourth or fifth date with a guy I’d been casually seeing for a few months (we didn’t hang out very often due to the fact that he lived in Jersey, an hour away on NJ Transit, which suited me and my desires for dating perfectly). We’d both had a few drinks by this point and the conversation turned toward feminism (on which I’d just started doing some really in-depth research in the last month or so), and my views on what I’d been calling “Closet Sexism” in Western society for years and would periodically rail against, despite my lack of vocabulary and rounded out knowledge.

            However, just a few days earlier I had started reading a book by second-wave feminist Susan Douglas in which she attacks that same idea (she calls it “Enlightened Sexism”) and so it was a bit of an inevitability that the topic would come up.

            My date listened to my arguments quite respectfully, asked a few questions, and challenged some of my ideas, which I sometimes had to concede due to lack of knowledge or to avoid getting into any serious fight. It was altogether a very egalitarian discussion, until we got to the issue of jobs. He pointed out that more women are employed than men (in retrospect I’m sorry I didn’t site this, and ask if there was a more legitimate reason for this fall in male employment than laziness.) Instead I pointed out that in 2009 the top five jobs for women were secretaries, registered nurses, elementary & middle school teachers, cashiers, and retail sales persons.

            It was at this point that my date said something that left me speechless. He suggested that when a woman enters a group of men, the dynamic changes and the men start competing for the woman sexually, which undermines the productivity of the group.

            Although it is true that adding a member of the opposite sex to a previously single-sex situation does change the dynamic, I was furious at the idea that this should be an excuse— to suggest that women should be excluded from jobs because men cannot control themselves is deeply insulting to me. We are all adults here and yes we all have a sex drive (to some degree or another) but this is the 21st century. We have put people on the moon, for fuck's sake. I'm sorry you're horny, deal with it.
            Additionally, it implicitly legitimizes sexual harassment in the workplace. "Boys will be boys, right? They can't help themselves when in the presence of a woman, poor dears; they're just powerless."
            I sputtered and shouted about this for several minutes but we were seeing a show and had to leave so I stopped in the bathroom while he went outside to smoke. When I rejoined him, I apologized for my outburst, for the possibility that I might have come on too strong.

            This brings me to my punch line in the story: in spite of what I saw (and still see) as my legitimate outrage, I felt compelled to apologize for perhaps being too aggressive. I can’t tell you when I learned that in our society an “aggressive” woman (one who exhibits strong emotions of any sort) is quickly labeled a “bitch” but the conditioning is there; even while I hate getting called “sweet” or any variation on that theme, I could not escape the conditioning that said that such an outburst was not kosher, for which I must therefore apologize.