Does anyone have the right to sex?
March 15, 2018 6:30 PM   Subscribe

The question, then, is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.
Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex? A piece by philosopher Amia Srinivasan in the London Review of Books. posted by painquale (95 comments total) 76 users marked this as a favorite


 
I read this earlier and I thought of bringing it here but decided not to. Opening with Elliot Rodger is a bit too spicy of a take, I think, for someone who is arguing that we have the moral duty to try to desire people that we do not desire. But then, I have recently seen a very crude and apparently popular Facebook meme ordering high school girls to put out for weird kids in order to save everybody from school shootings. So maybe I have had enough of that angle.

And yet I appreciate her analysis. It has a lot of historical background of which I was not specifically aware, and I don't disagree with her about the politicization of beauty standards and the possibilities of desire. I am just given to believe that "the human heart is an invisible and dreadful being," in the words of Murasaki, and the best we can do is to do our best not to let it destroy anyone.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:53 PM on March 15, 2018 [27 favorites]


Excellent piece. If you don't want to read the whole thing, the last two paragraphs are fantastic.
posted by Lutoslawski at 6:53 PM on March 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


someone who is arguing that we have the moral duty to try to desire people that we do not desire

that is not her argument
posted by Lutoslawski at 6:55 PM on March 15, 2018 [15 favorites]


Does anyone have the right to sex. Sure. I believe the government has no business stepping in between two (or more) informed consenting adults. Does everyone deserve sex? No.

These incel kids are basically trying to engage in an activity (casual sex) that's based mostly on innate and mutual physical attraction while trying to punch well above their weight grade. I'm not skinny. I'm not a hunk. I'm not even conventionally attractive. I'm heavily introverted and very independent. I still found a wife. It just took a while and building a relationship on common interests and goals not on putting in friendship tokens until a relationship fell out.
Yet simply to say to a trans woman, or a disabled woman, or an Asian man, ‘No one is required to have sex with you,’ is to skate over something crucial. There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want, but personal preferences – NO DICKS, NO FEMS, NO FATS, NO BLACKS, NO ARABS, NO RICE NO SPICE, MASC-FOR-MASC – are never just personal.

So this person you think you'd like to sleep with, turns out they're a shitty person. Do you really want to sleep with a shitty person? No. Then where's the problem? Yes? Then aren't you basically objectifying them?

I don't really see this as a civil rights issue. It's not like they're the only motel within 30 miles who won't serve you and it doesn't really matter who you are so long as you pay for your room. You truly dodged a bullet here and you're probably better off without that person in your life. People find people. Some just may not have as many options with both shitty and non-shitty people. That's the shitty part of life.
posted by Talez at 6:56 PM on March 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


Lutoslawski, I take that to be what she means by "the very idea of fixed sexual preference is political, not metaphysical." I don't think she's suggesting it in a harsh or demanding way, or saying that it is something we all could do if we really tried our best, but I see it there.

These incel kids are basically trying to engage in an activity (casual sex) that's based mostly on innate and mutual physical attraction while trying to punch well above their weight grade.

Yes, it's all about seeing women as people. Incel guys feel entitled to a woman who shows all the signifiers of a status object -- blond hair, thigh gap, the works. The nerd girls who might genuinely share their interests in life aren't usually given to investing as much time and money into a high-status appearance. So they don't count. They're failures as women. The incel could not hate us so much if he did not hate himself more.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:04 PM on March 15, 2018 [60 favorites]


The nerd girls who might genuinely share their interests in life aren't usually given to investing as much time and money into a high-status appearance. So they don't count. They're failures as women. The incel could not hate us so much if he did not hate himself more.

Exactly. The fact that my wife and I play video games together and watch nerdy movies together is worth more to me than any thigh gap or flat stomach. Some people may feel the opposite, bully for them. But if you live by the sword you also die by it.
posted by Talez at 7:08 PM on March 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


@ Countess Elena, just to give you some context, that meme "ordering high school girls to put out for weird kids in order to save everybody from school shootings" is an ironic take on responses to the student walkouts that claim that it's disingenuous for the students to show sympathy for shooting victims when they wouldn't stick up for "the weird kids" in day-to-day life.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 7:12 PM on March 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Perhaps people don't have a right to sex, but they also have a right (or something like a right) not to be sexually libeled. What I mean by sexual libel is irrelevant traits being portrayed as disgusting/low status in a way which makes a person or a group less likely to get partners.

This is off the top of my head-- there might be a better phrase.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:38 PM on March 15, 2018 [19 favorites]


The nerd girls who might genuinely share their interests in life aren't usually given to investing as much time and money into a high-status appearance.

Well, then you get this

(from the author of Ready Player One)
posted by airmail at 7:50 PM on March 15, 2018 [12 favorites]


Pieces like this are always interesting to me as a disabled asexual woman with 0 libido. I have been visibly disabled my entire adult life, and as a teenager I was not necessarily visibly physically disabled but I was very easily coded as autistic. Both of those facts mean I have never, in my life, been sexually harassed or catcalled or had any man express the slightest sexual desire towards me. The closest I got was once in high school a boy in the hall called "hey beautiful!" in a sarcastic voice and then laughed about it because I was a dirty autistic teenager who wore hoodies and baggy jeans and didn't brush my hair. But I'm pretty sure that's a different phenomenon.

On the other hand I also do not want to be sexually desired, definitely not by men. I am okay with women/nonbinary people sexually desiring me but so far (to my knowledge) that's only happened with my current partner and I'm essentially neutral towards it. It's definitely not something I would seek out/feel deprived of if it didn't happen. So it's weird for me, because there's a lot of discussion in the disabled community about the desexualization of disabled people, and I have difficulty finding a place in that discussion because I'm like, "Yeah, and it's working super great for me." On the other hand I often feel excluded from discussions about womanhood because the assumption is that every woman has been catcalled or sexually harassed, and like... I'm not saying it's a BAD thing I've never experienced this, I'm so glad I haven't. But it is a weird place to be.
posted by brook horse at 8:03 PM on March 15, 2018 [35 favorites]


something something life, liberty and the pursuit of a penis
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 8:06 PM on March 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, but I find it interesting that the conversation hasn’t talked at all about the prohibition of sex work. How would this be different if one could buy and sell sex? Would this soothe the incel hoardes? Would they discard the idea as much as they discard the humanity of not hot women?
posted by advicepig at 8:07 PM on March 15, 2018 [11 favorites]


I thought that trying to connect it all into incel ideology was a bit of a stretch too far. On a more prosaic level, I thought the piece was about trying to question to what degree sexism, racism, and homophobia are influencing sexual desire. One tension where I see this is in having classes of people (black, asian, and queer among others) who are "sexy" from the safe remove of highly stylized photography or fiction but treated as not worthy of a relationship.

The prejudices that a majority of straight people (and a significant number of gay and bi people) use to justify how I'm unfuckable, except maybe to fulfill a kink, are not apolitical preferences, and they don't stay safely in the bedroom either.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:08 PM on March 15, 2018 [29 favorites]


We have a longstanding Puritan notion that sex is only supposed to happen inside a marriage, and anyone else is "getting away with it." End result: "what did she think, going to that bar dressed like that?" -- some people's "getting away with it" is more tolerated than others.

The racist transphobic fatphobic misogynistic and other vile personal ads for sex are tolerated because sex is considered so tainted that there's no expectation that people be decent to each other while seeking it. The reaction to "he killed people because he couldn't get laid" is closer to "well, he shouldn't have wanted sex that badly - it made him deranged" rather than, "well, he should've realized that the sex he wants involves another person and he'd have to negotiate with one of those, just like he'd have to negotiate with people if he wanted a party."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:12 PM on March 15, 2018 [13 favorites]


I really enjoyed the rollercoaster that the article took me on. On reflection two factors came to mind that might have been folded into the complex tableau: The Harlow Experiments along with the value of massage and the boundaries between it and sex work.
posted by CheapB at 8:17 PM on March 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


@ Countess Elena, just to give you some context, that meme "ordering high school girls to put out for weird kids in order to save everybody from school shootings" is an ironic take on responses to the student walkouts that claim that it's disingenuous for the students to show sympathy for shooting victims when they wouldn't stick up for "the weird kids" in day-to-day life.

I think this is relevant to the article. I got into an argument with a man after someone pointed out that the meme is dangerous. The counterpoint to the meme was basically "Yeah, be kind, but have boundaries because it's not your job to fix other people." And this man got all grar about people shunning "the weird kids." In the case of Nikolas Cruz, would I be okay with my Jewish daughter shunning him? Yes, absolutely. Why should she go out of her way to be kind to the anti-Semitic abuser?

And then you have incels. I'm not going to insist that my daughter go out of her way to be kind to someone who sees her only as an object of undeserved sexual gratification. It reinforces the incel way of thinking, sure, but the onus is not on my daughter, or any other woman, to break that cycle.
posted by Ruki at 8:27 PM on March 15, 2018 [75 favorites]


What will stick with me is the idea that we have to take sex "on its own terms" -- as the article so hilariously put it, "sex is not a sandwich". It made a convincing point, I think, that trying to make analogies between sex and other things is likely to go wrong. Not that it must be forbidden or anything, just any analogy you can come up with is inevitably going to be really flawed.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:28 PM on March 15, 2018 [8 favorites]


The nerd girls who might genuinely share their interests in life aren't usually given to investing as much time and money into a high-status appearance.

The idea that there's a division between "pretty girls" and "nerd girls" is one that's often driven by some pretty toxic ideas about femininity - namely, the more feminine you are, the more vapid you are. Even in this thread people are assuming that someone who has a "high status appearance" doesn't have other interests in life. (Side note: I'll point out that some popular "nerd" looks, like multicolored hair, are extremely high maintenance.)

When you start dividing girls based on body type (e.g. whether you have a thigh gap), it's even worse.

Let's not keep judging women's personalities based on how they look. The poem that airmail shared sums up pretty well why that's gross - unintentionally, but still.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:31 PM on March 15, 2018 [152 favorites]


The sex-positive feminists I follow absolutely do question stereotypes of desirability; most of them have certainly experienced being rejected as desirable before. I don't think they are ok with the bullshit on Grindr or elsewhere.
posted by emjaybee at 8:39 PM on March 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


These incel kids are basically trying to engage in an activity (casual sex) that's based mostly on innate and mutual physical attraction while trying to punch well above their weight grade. I'm not skinny. I'm not a hunk. I'm not even conventionally attractive. I'm heavily introverted and very independent. I still found a wife. It just took a while and building a relationship on common interests and goals not on putting in friendship tokens until a relationship fell out.

I think the difference between you and the incel kids is not that you were willing to settle for someone less attractive than Angelina Jolie but that you like your wife. You love her. They are not interested in that.

as much as they discard the humanity of not hot women?

They discard the humanity of hot women too. Life is not a competition between women to see who can be treated less badly by the men.
posted by fshgrl at 8:43 PM on March 15, 2018 [48 favorites]


How would this be different if one could buy and sell sex? Would this soothe the incel hoardes?

No - the incel hordes want sex, but they also want what sex signifies in their imaginations and in the wider cultural consciousness - i.e. that you're attractive and high-status enough to get someone to want to have sex with you. You can buy sex, but you can't buy what sex signifies. (I mean, you can pay a hot woman to hang off your arm and impress other people, but if you know she doesn't actually want to do that outside of a paycheck, it's not doing anything for your ego.)

There's also the idea (from Men's Work by Paul Kivel) that "The myth of romantic love enforces a system where men feel incapable of looking after their emotional needs, but are promised that one day a woman will love them and take care of that for them. A woman's fundamental inability to unfuck her partner's head is the source of a lot of entitled rage in relationships."

And I think a lot of incels buy into this myth of romantic love that if only they had a girlfriend, their emotional needs would be taken care of and their heads would be unfucked, maybe even that all the other problems in their lives are rooted in their inability to get a girlfriend and/or whatever factors make it hard for them to get a girlfriend. Taking anti-depressants or getting therapy, or even having close male friends, is seen as failure because it's only a bad patch on the real problem, the not-having-a-girlfriend.

This is the flip side of the expectation that women will take on all the emotional labor in a relationship - that emotional labor is so expected and so invisible that a lot of young men don't pick up these skills and don't even realize these are skills that they need to pick up, emotional work happens like magic the same way that laundry does.
posted by Jeanne at 9:00 PM on March 15, 2018 [124 favorites]


Good to know I was right to dislike Ernest Cline.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 9:00 PM on March 15, 2018 [15 favorites]


I’m still trying to wrap my head around this, but I find it interesting that the conversation hasn’t talked at all about the prohibition of sex work. How would this be different if one could buy and sell sex? Would this soothe the incel hoardes?

I don't think it would, because I don't think a lack of sex is what they're pissed off about. I think it's a mix of two things:

1. Men are taught they are entitled to women's bodies. Everything in society tells them so (the objectification in media and the culture at large). Porn fuels that, celebrity lookalike and deep fake porn especially. (I'm not in any way anti-porn, per se, the problem is that we're a misogynist culture so we have misogynist porn, it's a vicious circle).

2. People want approval from the sex they are attracted to. Straight men are told approval is "the woman is willing to have sex with you." Straight women are told approval is "the man wants to marry you." People absorb these standards whether they're personally true for them or not, they feel bad if they think they're not getting that approval. The combination of that bad feeling and sense of entitlement for some men = anger.

Part of the reason I believe all this to be true is because, 1. although many women are less sexually attractive to men than they would like to be, there's no female incel culture and, 2. as far as I know, there's no gay male incel culture.

So I think they key thing that turns unhappiness about not having as much sex as you'd like into raaaaage is that sense of entitlement. And that's something that men feel toward women, but not something women feel toward anyone, and not something men feel toward men.
posted by mrmurbles at 9:13 PM on March 15, 2018 [30 favorites]


And then you have incels. I'm not going to insist that my daughter go out of her way to be kind to someone who sees her only as an object of undeserved sexual gratification. It reinforces the incel way of thinking, sure, but the onus is not on my daughter, or any other woman, to break that cycle.

And if she did go out of her way to be kind, she'd end up seeming like some manic pixie dream girl (to him), again, reinforcing the incel way of thinking. There's no way the individual object of this sort of fixation can fix this, nor is it her responsibility to. It's lose-lose.
posted by klanawa at 9:40 PM on March 15, 2018 [18 favorites]


Cpt The Mango: @ Countess Elena, just to give you some context, that meme "ordering high school girls to put out for weird kids in order to save everybody from school shootings" is an ironic take on responses to the student walkouts that claim that it's disingenuous for the students to show sympathy for shooting victims when they wouldn't stick up for "the weird kids" in day-to-day life.

If it’s the same meme with Morgan Freeman as the principal from Stand & Deliver, I’ve seen it. As I recall, it calls on “blowjob barbies and teen thots” to give some ass to the weird kids to dissuade whatever shooting plans they may dream up, ending with the rather catchy phrase “use your cooter and stop a shooter”.

I love irony and irreverent piss-taking probably more than the average Mefite, but this didn’t come off as an ironic sendup of the “walk-up-not-walk-out-please-leave-my-guns-alone” stance to me.
posted by dr_dank at 9:48 PM on March 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


I'm not skinny. I'm not a hunk. I'm not even conventionally attractive. I'm heavily introverted and very independent. I still found a wife. It just took a while

You're educated, probably able to muster some empathy, and probably don't smell bad. You probably can muster a witty comeback occasionally.

I'm just saying, the problem is not solvable by patience for everybody.

Definitely not saying anybody owes anybody else undesired physical closeness.

Just, you know, maybe each person is different and helping them might involve individual attention by a group of helpful other people, followed by educated analysis and problem solving. For every single person in the world.
posted by amtho at 10:03 PM on March 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


There's also the idea (from Men's Work by Paul Kivel) that "The myth of romantic love enforces a system where men feel incapable of looking after their emotional needs, but are promised that one day a woman will love them and take care of that for them. A woman's fundamental inability to unfuck her partner's head is the source of a lot of entitled rage in relationships."

That just perfectly encapsulates something I've never been able to articulate. But yes, I resent the fact than men think I will magically fix all their problems and always have.
posted by fshgrl at 10:07 PM on March 15, 2018 [32 favorites]


There's also the idea (from Men's Work by Paul Kivel) that "The myth of romantic love enforces a system where men feel incapable of looking after their emotional needs, but are promised that one day a woman will love them and take care of that for them. A woman's fundamental inability to unfuck her partner's head is the source of a lot of entitled rage in relationships."
[...]
This is the flip side of the expectation that women will take on all the emotional labor in a relationship - that emotional labor is so expected and so invisible that a lot of young men don't pick up these skills and don't even realize these are skills that they need to pick up, emotional work happens like magic the same way that laundry does.


Pretty much this. There's an undercurrent in popular culture for men not to use, or even show, their emotions (except anger) and that doing so makes one "weak".
As a result of that, men don't know how to use their emotions properly, and they sure can't debug their heads properly... and then we get all of the above.
posted by Quackles at 10:14 PM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


I thought the core of the piece was this:
Yet simply to say to a trans woman, or a disabled woman, or an Asian man, ‘No one is required to have sex with you,’ is to skate over something crucial. There is no entitlement to sex, and everyone is entitled to want what they want, but personal preferences – NO DICKS, NO FEMS, NO FATS, NO BLACKS, NO ARABS, NO RICE NO SPICE, MASC-FOR-MASC – are never just personal.
I don't think the question posed by the article is not about whether incels have a right to sex. Of course they don't. The question is how do we balance sexual autonomy vs. criticism of the kinds of prejudices expressed as "NO FEMS, NO FATS, NO BLACKS, NO ARABS, NO RICE NO SPICE, MASC-FOR-MASC."

The call to action isn't, "Go out and have sex with a ___ person." It's, "Do some honest reflection as to why ___ is one of your dealbreakers. Is that a bias that might pop up outside of the bedroom?"

I think as Srinivasan notes, incels do not face discrimination as a class, and neither do their idealized sexual partners, so that's a weak case on which to build a blanket injunction that sexual choices can't be subject to feminist analysis.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:15 PM on March 15, 2018 [43 favorites]


This was a peculiar essay IMHO. Great topic. But curiously, there was no discussion of relating to the person you would like to have sex with, in any form. Seems kind of essential to the topic, no? I thought it was understood that purely physical desire was a form of adolescent immaturity that some never grow out of.

The essay promised to interrogate the sources of desire -- cool, let's hear it! -- and then only discussed toxic patriarchy causing problems, end of story. Huh? Is no one happy or in a good relationship? What might desire look like in a different culture? Doesn't anything else influence desire? After a lot of words, it seemed to come down to:

-- "Can't order someone to desire you. But desires are really fucked up cause of patriarchy, it sucks. Can't really do anything about that though. But I wish we could! {sigh}"
posted by msalt at 10:24 PM on March 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


1.) How would this be different if one could buy and sell sex? Would this soothe the incel hoardes? No. Like PUAs, incels knew how to operate backpage and know how to find sex workers. The prohibitive factor there isn't that paying for it is illegal, it's that it doesn't give them the ego validation that a girlfriend or hookup would. Their grievance isn't being denied physical activity, it's being unwanted. They're also completely fucking terrified of women, and approaching women, and that extends to women who will have sex with them as a business transaction.

2.) "The answer to that question is complicated by two things. First, Rodger was a creep, and it was at least partly his insistence on his own aesthetic, moral and racial superiority, and whatever it was in him that made him capable of stabbing his housemates and his friend a total of 134 times, not his failure to meet the demands of heteromasculinity, that kept women away." Oh my god this essay is so profoundly irresponsible. Why is an Oxford educated woman trying to draw any kind of real comparison to Elliot Rodger and marginalized groups of people speaking out about "no fats no fems" grindr assholery? She's giving Catherine McKinnon a lot more neutral air time than she deserves, and the section on trans women towards the end... IDK. I'm waiting for this one to publicly align herself with terfs. Super unfortunate.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 10:37 PM on March 15, 2018 [14 favorites]


How would this be different if one could buy and sell sex? Would this soothe the incel hoardes?

I suspect it's not that simple, but I don't know the answer. But since prostitution is legal in many parts of the world, and even socially acceptable in many, wouldn't this be a pretty simple thing to investigate?
posted by rokusan at 10:42 PM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Having read the article, I do find it interesting, but it's weird to me that she seems to worry whether feminists are capable of questioning the politics of sexual desire while at the same time preserving the idea of individual consent. Feminists have been doing that for the last 40 years. She did it in this very article. I've never met a feminist that thought it might be ok for someone who is fat or Asian or disabled or trans to have non-consensual sex with someone else just because they are often "unjustly sexually marginalised", to use her phrase. She also seems to worry that if feminists do/did question the politics of desire more openly than they do now, that it would then be twisted and co-opted by misogynists like the Reddit Incel community to justify rape. To which the answer is, of fucking course they would. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still do it. To men who hate women, there will always be a justification for rape, and arranging our philosophy so as to not give them something to twist into a justification for rape is an entirely pointless exercise. We can interrogate the way our culture informs who's considered "desirable" or "undesirable" without renouncing the idea of sexual consent.
posted by katyggls at 10:47 PM on March 15, 2018 [21 favorites]


I skipped to the last couple paragraphs as suggested, and wanted to read more. Then I pushed through the Elliot Rodger stuff--and I really mean pushed--and now I feel like I just don't want to read anymore.

Two things on the whole appearance and preference thing:
1) I can't remember who pointed this out, but when we complain about how "hot" people don't date "not hot" people, it's worth considering how there may well be legitimate clashes of interest here at work. Laying aside all the genetic lottery stuff: People who enjoy fitness and are interested in their appearance will reasonably want the same in a partner. Why do we immediately view that as shallow? Is that any different from a gamer type hoping to find another gamer?

2) As for the "No X, no Y" shouting... I really feel like everyone is justified in having their wants, particularly with something as personal and intimate as romance and/or sex. It's one thing to have preferences or desires. It's another to shout them out into a world where these things are loaded with social and political meanings.

If either of those points are in the article and I missed them, well... ugh. I don't know. The Elliot Rodger stuff really shut down my interest. I'm left wondering whether that was a bad call on the writer's part or if it's some failing on my part for not being able to get past that. I don't know where the burden lies.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:47 PM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


I don't really see this as a civil rights issue. It's not like they're the only motel within 30 miles who won't serve you and it doesn't really matter who you are so long as you pay for your room. You truly dodged a bullet here and you're probably better off without that person in your life. People find people. Some just may not have as many options with both shitty and non-shitty people. That's the shitty part of life.

I wouldn't call it a "civil rights issue," because that implies a specific legal framework that's categorically irrelevant here. But it does matter that those ideas are constantly expressed within some communities.

Let me introduce you to minority stress theory. Constant exposure to those stressors, oh, let's call them microaggressions, is reasonably correlated with negative long-term health outcomes. And maybe you're not aware but those statements are constantly expressed and argued in LGBTQ circles. Often they're coded directly into mass media as well.

In fact, many of those statements are brought up in non-sexual contexts as a way to marginalize minorities. TERFs use discussions about the "cotton ceiling" to derail conversations about workplace and education accommodations for trans people. Gender-policing in the gay community is, in part, about establishing "straight acting" gay and lesbian individuals as more authoritative than GNC gay and lesbian people.

Also many people are not explicit about these dealbreakers up front, they often come out during relationships in the form of intimate partner violence. Not surprisingly, most of the groups on that list are disproportionately likely to experience intimate partner violence (including emotional and verbal abuse) in relationships.

Usually "NO FEMS, NO FATS, etc., etc." is personal-ad shorthand for a whole pack of stereotypes, many of which we end up having to deal with in education, employment, health care, and the legal system. Which brings us back to minority stress theory in that there's good reasons to believe that minorities of minorities don't equally benefit from community-building interventions. Part of that is being told constantly that we're undesirable minorities of minorities.

When I see that tomorrow, or the next day--since that's about how often I see this kind of thing--I don't think I've dodged a bullet. I'm not dating anyway. I'm reminded that one of my communities still has a problem with systemic oppression and tolerates open expression of that, as long as key stakeholders don't take personal offense.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:59 PM on March 15, 2018 [26 favorites]


The sex-positive feminists I follow absolutely do question stereotypes of desirability; most of them have certainly experienced being rejected as desirable before. I don't think they are ok with the bullshit on Grindr or elsewhere.

Yeah, the ones I know do a lot of questioning too, but in practice they enact the same or very similar prejudices as everyone else when the rubber actually meets the road of dating. Same deal for all the woke men.
posted by Dysk at 2:13 AM on March 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


In fact, that's needlessly specific. They all enact the same prejudices when it comes to even any kind of socialising outside their existing circles. The stark difference in how the conventionally (or conventionally-for-queer-spaces) attractive bandmates and my not conventionally attractive bandmates are treated at gigs (in self-described intersectional feminist queer spaces) is hard to overstate.
posted by Dysk at 2:22 AM on March 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Which is one of the problems I have with the article. It's conclusion is, please!; transfigure yourselves so your preferences align with your woke duty for justice! As if that literally would make an ounce of difference?

I also didn't get the whole 'axiomatic' insistence that 'right to sex' is invalid: whatever that meant, as the author never even defined these terms, and at one point the word 'right' is simply italicized as if changing the font is supposed to persuade the reader.

Also with the otherwise brilliant takedown of Solnit's explanation, I'm kinda tempted to point out on the author's own terms (as the piece summons 'capitalist free exchange'), that a sandwich is not a sandwich, either. Like, the theory of sex as personally violent communion could apply to social aspects of food as well; I don't know, trying to sort all this out is rather mind-melting.

Other than those problems, I thought it was a nice article that not only connects at a personal level i.e. my own experiences as a gay PoC, but also expands into big questions about sexual freedom and emancipation.
posted by polymodus at 2:49 AM on March 16, 2018


I'm going to just quote a small paragraph that perfectly illustrates what I was saying above:
"In other words, the sex-positive gaze risks covering not only for misogyny, but for racism, ableism, transphobia, and every other oppressive system that makes its way into the bedroom through the seemingly innocuous mechanism of ‘personal preference’."
Yup. Preferences are holy and cannot be critiqued, so be same old prejudices just get enacted in an environment where even mentioning that is met with hostility.
posted by Dysk at 2:58 AM on March 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


I think... maybe... this article is just not long enough to say what the author is trying to get at. I feel that Srinivasan is trying to look at how the apparently simple idea “everyone deserves to be desired in the way they want” plays out in different contexts, but there is not room to really dig into, say, why solipsistic incel rage is different from gay Asian men being systemically limited in the dating world. So the article feels like a hasty jumble on noncongruent examples. So we are left with a vague sense that there must be a way to reconcile “everyone deserves desire” with “no one is owed sex,” but no way to get there in the space allowed.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:23 AM on March 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


"It's just my personal preference" is frequently used by self-described "gold star" gay men and lesbians to deflect criticisms of very public biphobia and transphobia. And there also, we don't want for gold stars to fuck anyone out of political principle, we want form them to dial down the trash talk about how we don't really have a stake in addressing heterosexism.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:34 AM on March 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


How would this be different if one could buy and sell sex? Would this soothe the incel hoardes?

This has already been covered by several people, but I just wanted to mention that, based on perusing certain subreddits*, it is not deemed a satisfactory solution. The general tone in these places is a combination of self-pity and rage, often expressed as not just misogyny but gynephobia, that they were (in their eyes**) dealt a shit hand by genetics and life. The echo chamber effect strongly prejudices them against considering that societally-influenced excessive expectations and/or a bad self-image might be fooling them into believing that they could never find a partner.

* /r/incels got banned for, I think, threatening violence against someone; the incels' reaction was to migrate to another subreddit and make it just as bad.

** One of the recurring tropes on the incel subreddit(s) is to publish a picture of some allegedly terminally homely guy and say, look, how can anyone say that it's his attitude or if he improves his fitness or grooming that he'll find someone? And they strongly resist suggestions that people like that find partners all the time.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:43 AM on March 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


I wonder whether there is a common anti-pattern of elevating one individual to excessive significance being pathological (i.e., an organisation/political system where one executive figure has dictatorial power, or a model of wellbeing that depends on The Love Of That One Special Guy/Girl In The World to redeem one). In the latter case, it's the whole quasi-religious fetishisation of the redemptive power of Romantic Love, and the reduction of other forms of human relations (friendship, camaraderie, social bonds) to something like a tedious bureaucracy entirely lacking in life-enhancing pixie dust.

(And a Martian arriving on Earth would, after listening to the radio and seeing a few TV shows, be convinced that Romantic Love is the god that humans worship, singing the praises of half in awe of its power, and half in terror of the destructive potential when it turns bad, like mediaeval peasants hushedly praising the “fair folk” that hide in the woods and wield power over human fate.)
posted by acb at 4:59 AM on March 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


All of this has got me wondering how much I’m missing not having a subscription to LRB.
posted by newdaddy at 5:13 AM on March 16, 2018


I also think that when someone says or writes, "I don't date ___ people because..." it's really worthwhile to examine what forms of systemic prejudice the rest of the sentence might support. I often find that dating preferences are an area where people feel safe to express prejudices that would be clearly identified as discrimination if we changed the verb from "date" to "employ" or "teach."
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 5:33 AM on March 16, 2018 [18 favorites]


So these emotional skills that many men lack and expect (sometimes correctly) for women in their lives to perform for them: what would it take to make those part of a school curriculum and teach them well? Would a semester every other year from grades 6-12 (class time, grades, etc) do it?
posted by Easy problem of consciousness at 5:55 AM on March 16, 2018


I found this piece a little frustrating, because I think the central contradiction she's identifying is real and crucial, but I think the incel thing kind of distracts from it.

So basically, as I see it her point is this. Sex-positive feminists have asserted, rightly, that people need sexual autonomy to be truly liberated. People need to be able to own their desires, without shame or coercion. But on the other hand, our desires aren't formed in a vacuum. They are often shaped by oppressive hierarchies, and they often reinforce those hierarchies. And because people's desires are shaped by oppression, marginalized people are often prevented from acting on their sexual desire, because other people have been trained by an oppressive society not to desire marginalized people. So in a hierarchical society, you can't have true sexual liberation: if people act on their desires, without shame or coercion, they're going to be reinforcing the non-liberation of others. This is a problem. There's no easy solution for it. She's not the first person to identify this problem, but she's right that it's a problem. And I really appreciate that she doesn't try to gloss over that difficulty.

(The solution, of course, is to get rid of hierarchies, and come the Revolution, that will certainly happen. But we're all living our lives now, and some of us can't or don't want to wait for utopia.)

But I think it was a real mistake to frame this around the incel stuff. I get that it's a good hook: here are people arguing something patently oppressive and ridiculous, but if we step back, we can see an actual point there. The thing is, I don't believe that Elliot Rodger's problem was that he was on the wrong end of oppressive hierarchies. (As a half-Asian man, he was on the wrong end of oppressive hierarchies, but I don't think that caused him to become a mass murderer.) I think his problem was that he saw women as trophies, rather than people, and he hated them because he thought he'd been denied a prize to which he was entitled. And women do not need to retrain their desires to get over their sexual aversion to murderous misogynists. If anything, straight women need to get better at recognizing and avoiding the Elliot Rodgerses of the world, because men like Elliot Rodgers are dangerous.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:45 AM on March 16, 2018 [41 favorites]


I think this article touched upon a lot of interesting aspects, and turning the article on it's head a bit, I see the failure mode is our focus on desire for another to desire us back, and the way we pick and choose who we desire and for what.

I believe an extended analysis may reveal that the success mode is for all of us to be allowed to feel desirable no matter how we are bodied and to be allowed to desire ourselves in spite of the patriarchy.

As usual the way the world is constructed around patriarchy is pretty much fucking that up for everyone and the question is how the fuck do we even feel desirable.

I can tell you as someone who live along several independent fault lines between feminism and patriarchy my answer is to give as few fucks as possible to either side of the two continents of feminism and patriarchy that are grinding me to a pulp in the middle, opting instead just get on with my baeddel self.
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:49 AM on March 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


I appreciated the inclusion of the incels not as an example of those "at the wrong end of oppressive hierarchies," but rather as an example of sexual entitlement. One part of the discussion is about desire and the (im)possibility of experiencing sexual desire unmitigated (or less mitigated) by patriarchy. Another part of the discussion is about entitlement and the way patriarchy breeds a sense of entitlement (and its reverse: disqualification) across all domains. The incels are not conventionally attractive, and thus feel a sense of disqualification from the dating world, yet they demand mainstream attractiveness because they believe that is what they're owed. (Whereas most of us simply feel disqualified in some sense or another and leave it at that.) Our societal brainwashing makes us believe—from one end of the hierarchy to another—that we 'get what we deserve' with regard to the level of attractiveness of our partners. And that's interesting.
posted by materialgirl at 8:36 AM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


I don't really have anything to add, but I want to thank GenderNullPointerException for really expanding this thread well beyond where it could've easily gone.
posted by tclark at 8:38 AM on March 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


Incels aren’t seeking sexual gratification so much as they’re seeking status among other men. They don’t want to have a fulfilling relationship with a woman, because that isn’t a status builder among other men, who rag on guys who genuinely enjoy the company of a woman for not being masculine enough. They also don’t want to pay for sex because anyone can do that, and the Best Men have women volunteering for sex, not requiring payment. Incels want to be seen among men as being desired by hot women and having a wealth of desirability, as it were. They want to be rich in women the same way a billionaire is rich in currency, to the point where they can surround themselves with the most beautiful and expensive things that exist entirely to provide them pleasure. They want to be seen as wealthy the way Trump wants to be seen as wealthy, they want to be admired by other men as the most accomplished man exactly the same way Trump wants to be admired by other men.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:41 AM on March 16, 2018 [35 favorites]


The common wisdom that frustrated desire for sex turns incels into hateful whiners gets it backwards. The misogyny comes first. The incel doesn't want sex for pleasure, or connection, but to gain a sort of "masculinity points" that they believe are the sole measure of male success. In that equation, women are not fellow humans, but means to obtain the end of being elevated to a respectable form of masculinity. The incel's sexually active counterpart is the "player" or Pick Up Artist, who, while frequently sexually active, is still a misogynist jerk. I think we should stop accepting incels' self-framing of victimhood and insist that the primary cause of their isolation is their comfort with dehumanizing the ones they desire, not loneliness that understandably leads to frustration and anger.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 8:48 AM on March 16, 2018 [39 favorites]


Thanks to everyone who helped me better understand this. I really appreciate it. I hadn’t really disentangled access to sex from entitlement to sex as far as the incel mindset sees it. That was eye opening and sad.

The comments here did a lot more for me than the linked work, but I struggled through the essay because of my extraordinary deference to academia. It must be that I was missing something, right?
posted by advicepig at 8:51 AM on March 16, 2018


I think the central contradiction she's identifying is real and crucial, but I think the incel thing kind of distracts from it

I agree with you that the central contradiction she’s defining is real and crucial, but disagree slightly with you on where precisely it lies.

Because the problem isn’t specifically people who aren’t being desired and thus are unable to act on sexual desire - because in the article itself, she touches upon both the nature of and the dissatisfaction with transgressive desire. Just as people don’t want to be considered undesirable for their skin color, race, or other factors, they also don’t want to be fetishized for those factors, especially when the desire specifically lies in the fact that most others would not want the target object.

To put it more concretely, I wish, as a fat woman, that I were considered more desirable. But at no point in my life would I have been satisfied with a conventionally fit guy having sex with me out of pity or, or to fulfill a quota, And I would’ve been especially horrified by a guy who wanted to have sex with me because he thought that fat girls were low status and he was turned on by violating norms, or because he was trying to desire me and wanted to learn how.

The issue I see is that sexual and human connection are absolutely a human need, but that most of us are also trying to get some of the other needs met when we have sex and it’s difficult to achieve. And we don’t actually understand how much of human sexuality is genetic and inborn, and how much is culturally acquired. We know from the extreme failure of conversion therapy that attempting to change human desire significantly around gender does not work. We don’t know how much it would work around other factors, and I’m not sure we know how much it should work - ie, how much of the frustration with sex preferences that mirror oppressive dynamics are because it lessens sexual opportunities for those individuals, and how much it’s because it reproduces oppressive dynamics elsewhere and makes people feel “even here”, even in the most intimate spaces, they can’t escape that oppression.
posted by corb at 8:52 AM on March 16, 2018 [17 favorites]


Maybe a derail, but can we take a moment to bask in the glory of this author bio?

Amia Srinivasan, author of the immortal piece about octopuses, teaches philosophy at University College London and is thinking a lot about genealogy.

We discussed the "immortal piece about octopuses" on the Blue last fall.

Now then: I'm with GenjiandProust that Srinivasan's piece feels like the beginning of an argument, not the end of one. (I'd love to see it expanded into a book.) To the extent that I have a criticism, it's that it's not clear who is the intended audience for what she's counseling here. That is, much of her piece takes up feminists and queer theorists and people of color as interlocutors; but in the end, it's really white cis straight men (like me) who need to interrogate their desires, to move them out of metaphysics and into politics. For the aforementioned groups, that there is a political dimension to desire is a given; for white cis straight men, it's not -- and that's the problem.

That's why beginning the piece with the Elliot Rodger case felt appropriate (although I understand why some were uncomfortable with it): he was fucked up in all sorts of ways, but he also brought into relief a lot of assumptions about what men think they are owed sexually in a way that should prompt men to consider the ways in which they buy into those assumptions, even without meaning to.

At the same time, it's clear that Srinivasan is going for something bigger than just getting white dudes to own up to their own sense of sexual entitlement. But it's difficult, I think, to craft an argument that speaks to both white dudes on the one hand and women, POC, LGBTQ folk, et al. on the other, without causing some confusion.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:13 AM on March 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Opening with Elliot Rodger is a bit too spicy of a take, I think, for someone who is arguing that we have the moral duty to try to desire people that we do not desire.

And women do not need to retrain their desires to get over their sexual aversion to murderous misogynists. If anything, straight women need to get better at recognizing and avoiding the Elliot Rodgerses of the world, because men like Elliot Rodgers are dangerous.

she strongly refutes, in plain language, that this is her point:
Talk of people who are unjustly sexually marginalised or excluded can pave the way to the thought that these people have a right to sex, a right that is being violated by those who refuse to have sex with them. That view is galling: no one is under an obligation to have sex with anyone else. This too is axiomatic. [...] Some men are excluded from the sexual sphere for politically suspect reasons but the moment their unhappiness is transmuted into a rage at the women ‘denying’ them sex, rather than at the systems that shape desire (their own and others’), they have crossed a line into something morally ugly and confused.
her point instead is
The question, then, is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion. [...] The radical self-love movements among black, fat and disabled women do ask us to treat our sexual preferences as less than perfectly fixed. ‘Black is beautiful’ and ‘Big is beautiful’ are not just slogans of empowerment, but proposals for a revaluation of our values.
which is to say, you're not supposed to go out and fuck Elliott Rodger. the point is that Elliott Rodger thought he was entitled to being fucked by a certain type of woman (ie a 'hot blonde') and the sociocultural norms defining his desire and our own are left unquestioned in a sex-positive feminism. this is something that I saw, as an Asian-American male, when the criticism focused intensely on Rodger as a male shod of why he desired the things he did, and how those desires are reflected, all the time, in our very ordinary life, and how his identity may have played a part in that matrix

when you make desire a sacred thing, it removes any need for personal accountability, for any reckoning with the fact that you, less the progressive ubermensch with a gleamingly perfect praxis, is in actuality an individual whose agency and desires are thrown and tossed around by the very sociocultural forces that you seek to criticize. that you're imperfect. that you've done shitty things. that you've seen chances to get away with not caring about intersectionality and you've taken them. as we say in anti-racist circles - the point is to be uncomfortable and to move that discomfort into active change. it is extremely uncomfortable to admit that your praxis has sucked and sucks, especially when you tie so much of your identity to being one of the 'good ones'

I man, don't go out and seek to date the oppressed - that is, in fact, tokenization. but in the complicated matrix of influences that is your desire, allow room for people that you know are widely discriminated against, to see for yourself that those socially ingrained principles don't hold water
posted by runt at 9:17 AM on March 16, 2018 [30 favorites]


So this person you think you'd like to sleep with, turns out they're a shitty person. Do you really want to sleep with a shitty person? No

isms aren't personal failings, they are systemic.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:55 AM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


They're kind of both, really.
posted by Dysk at 9:56 AM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Something that I find interesting in her argument that I wish had been examined more is that straight white men are stuck in this "women should desire me" place of entitlement where as those who are not straight, white, and male are charged with changing the frame of what is desirable. It's the point of the second to last paragraph, where she says "It is striking, though unsurprising, that while men tend to respond to sexual marginalisation with a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, women who experience sexual marginalisation typically respond with talk not of entitlement but empowerment. Or, insofar as they do speak of entitlement, it is entitlement to respect, not to other people’s bodies."

It speaks directly to something that I've felt frustrated about in the larger conversations around desirability and toxic masculinity and double standards. As a mildly fat female bodied person, I haven't been in a lot of positions where I have been the desired party. I've received a decent amount of messaging that if I just tried harder to be thinner, this would magically change. I've also received a decent amount of messaging that I'm beautiful as I am and someday some magical person will see that and I will also see that about them. But that seems to be completely different than the messaging that the Eliot Rodgers of the world are internalizing. I'd love more insight in teasing out why that is. The simple answer is patriarchy, but the way we approach the same issue (no one finds me desirable) seems to be completely different depending on what type of body you live in. I could be missing something. Maybe there are folks telling the incel types to focus more inwardly, but it seems to me that straight white men get the messaging that everyone else is wrong, while others get the messaging that they need work -- either to change the larger perception of what is beautiful or to make themselves fit better within that paradigm.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 10:07 AM on March 16, 2018 [28 favorites]


The incels are not conventionally attractive

I really don't think we can take that as given.

the point is that Elliott Rodger thought he was entitled to being fucked by a certain type of woman (ie a 'hot blonde') and the sociocultural norms defining his desire and our own are left unquestioned in a sex-positive feminism.

Is it though? I don't think "why Elliott Rodger chose a sorority as his target" was unquestioned or unexplored. Or perhaps "sex-positive feminism" has a narrow definition and I consume feminism from many different sources.

I know that for me, as a middle-class cis hetero white woman with brown hair and blue eyes, I have many times questioned and puzzled at myself for ending up married to a middle-class cis hetero white man with brown hair and blue eyes. It's not a puzzle I can solve but I always acknowledge to myself that many more social forces than just a pure sexual desire sui generis led me to this person as my life partner.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:34 AM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Is it though?

speaking as a person of color and with respect to many of the white feminists I know, emphatically yes. and while it doesn't make me mad and I've gone far out of my way to avoid criticizing anyone about it because of how inherently problematic it is, the fact is that feminism, in the sex-positive, white way that it exists for many people, is far louder and better at preaching about self-empowerment (ie Lean In) while leaving PoC to advocate for our own cause

I have many times questioned and puzzled at myself for ending up married to a middle-class cis hetero white man with brown hair and blue eyes.

so do you admit that this is white supremacy? that this is, very likely, a consequence of cishetero hegemony? and then: what are you doing about it? are you friends and family the same? is this reflective of the place where you live and the establishments that you frequent?

what are the terms by which you hold your own values accountable?
posted by runt at 11:43 AM on March 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm in the minority here in that I actually really liked this piece and thought she provided a really comprehensive, complex view of the issue. I think it was right to address the incel thing--both because it would inevitably be brought up by critics (or "supporters"), and because by analyzing the movement she was able to provide a good example of how one interrogates the nature of desire without falling into sexual authoritarianism. That is, interrogating desire from an intersectional perspective: asking someone to give incels a chance is as fucked-up as the arguments of Trump supporters complaining about a lack of dates. Her point is that people should consider how personal biases influence desire, not that everyone should date assholes in hopes they become less assholeish.

"Can't order someone to desire you. But desires are really fucked up cause of patriarchy, it sucks. Can't really do anything about that though. But I wish we could! {sigh}"

Well, she does talk a bit about this:
That said, the radical self-love movements among black, fat and disabled women do ask us to treat our sexual preferences as less than perfectly fixed. ‘Black is beautiful’ and ‘Big is beautiful’ are not just slogans of empowerment, but proposals for a revaluation of our values. . . . The question posed by radical self-love movements is not whether there is a right to sex (there isn’t), but whether there is a duty to transfigure, as best we can, our desires.
The work of transfiguring personal desire to a less -ism-driven form is the same work that goes into addressing biases in other areas of one's life: it requires ongoing evaluation of the expectations you put on other people, the expectations you put on yourself, of how your behavior can be and is affected by your personal prejudices, etc. If we're going to pretend our desire can't be transfigured then we're painting a pretty hopeless picture about the ability of humans to change at all.

Re: sex-positive feminists--I would guess that Srinivasan's experience with sex-positivity comes from the White Feminism branch, i.e. the branch of "feminism" wherein intersectionality does not exist and attempts to address it are seen as a direct threat to the concern of whatever the White Feminist activist happens to be interested in.
posted by Anonymous at 11:43 AM on March 16, 2018


(I should also point out that White Feminism in general tends to dominate the mainstream conversation about whatever topic is put forth, and sex positivity is no exception.)
posted by Anonymous at 11:55 AM on March 16, 2018


In the same way that physics works differently at the scale of individual atoms than it does on the scale of a baseball, I think it's probably fine to have a different set of normative guidelines when you are talking about individual people versus societies en masse.

Individuals are like the quantum scale. If you take the "rules" that work there, and just extrapolate naively upwards, you'd expect baseballs to mysteriously tunnel from the pitcher's mound to the plate, and for the batter to never be able to know where the ball is except as a vague probability cloud. Of course, that's not how it works; you can get from the quantum scale to the real-world scale, but it's a complex exercise.

Analogously, we can say that nonconsensual sex is never okay, and that socially pressuring someone into having sex with someone else that they're not interested in sexually, as a sort of political pity fuck, is gross and wrong.

But that doesn't mean that when we scale up to the whole-society scale that gently pulling some lever—early education perhaps, or looking critically at media representations—which results in people having fewer kneejerk, categorial biases about who they will and won't sleep with, is necessarily bad. The change in scale from an individual preference, which is a full-stop not to be questioned in the moment of decision, to a group's preference and elevation of one set of characteristics over others, is not trivial and not equivalent.

Or maybe put more simply, asking or pressuring or guilting someone to have sex with someone else they're not attracted to or interested in, at that moment, having sex with, is not the same as asking—as a general question—why they have the preferences they have, and encouraging people—again, in general and in the abstract; not as some skeezeball trying to talk someone into going home with them—to examine the basis for their own preferences rather than treating them as fixed stars in their personal universe.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:12 PM on March 16, 2018 [15 favorites]


so do you admit that this is white supremacy? that this is, very likely, a consequence of cishetero hegemony

Yes, that's what I meant. My choices, my preferences and my social circle were and still are all shaped by those social forces. What I'm doing about it is to try to read and learn and listen beyond white feminism and white social causes, and listen to those voices and support where and when I can. I try to keep oppressive hierarchies in the forefront of people's minds in my workplace from lower-rung position I have.

Due to some moderate to severe health conditions I have, as well as family medical circumstances, I am not as politically active as my wishful self would be. There are many areas of my life that are neglected that way from exhaustion and depression.

I don't have plans to do anything about my husband or my family. I'm not sure what you meant by that.
posted by Squeak Attack at 12:57 PM on March 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


I think the examples of trans women and asian men in LGBTQ spaces are significant. Those spaces are often defined or envisioned as networks of MSM and WSW. Perceptions of sexual desirability often color perceptions of legitimacy and credibility as well. (I think that's also true in straight culture.) So publicly declaring that some groups are less desirable than others supports non-sexual hierarchies. And the rationalizations for that preference usually end up supporting prejudices and stereotypes.

It's one thing to find bisexuality a turn-off, it's another to declaim at length that's because we're straight-identified, disgusting, promiscuous, confused, neurotic, ignorant, dillitants, impossible to understand, etc., etc.. And that's just what I've experienced.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:57 PM on March 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yeah I think the differential between needs and rights is one the author completely missed. People don't have a right to friendship but it is a basic psychological need. The author says not to extend this to sex because even talking about it risks being too dangerous. Hence the disconnect between the title and the essay.

To her credit, I read her conclusion to be that the task of de-internalising everybody's oppression isnt symmetric. The onus falls on the less-intersectional group members to do more of the soul-searching--or, emotional labor--in the collective search for justice.

The incel phenomenon as the author says is a divergence in reactions to unfreedoms. The incels' internalized patriarchy leads to psychological decompensation and thus violent externalization. They sense injustice, yet hold onto the same winning conditions of the toxic, patriarchal value system, instead of alternatives such as diverting or recreating by a) 'self-improvement' I.e. get fit, get wealthy, get socioeconomic capital (which also is why advice to do these things very problematic, including the argument that 'Well I surmounted arbitrary rejection, so there must be something wrong with them if they can't and they should clean their rooms so to speak before complaining'), or b) get woke and get critical about the patriarchy and adopt a different value system that serves your sense of justice . It's a case of people losing out on an ideology and not being adaptive, recognizing that they have the power to change the rules and criteria, rather than succumb to its violence.
posted by polymodus at 1:06 PM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Also it would be nice for trans women to be able to exist outside feminist discourse and let us choose to opt into feminism as opposed to being used as props within feminism to justify a position.

I’m tired of feeling like feminism the only space in the world where I actually get to exist and that I should be grateful for that. Feminism is full of arguments, points, counterpoints and pile-ons and dense language and academic controversies. Like, can I just go to a fucking movie and enjoy it without wondering what someone on twitter has to say about that? I decided that yes, yes I can. I can give less fucks about how feminism will judge me, exactly in the same way I have no fucks to give about how the patriarchy will judge (or perpetrate violence against) me. So that is what I do now. As a trans woman my body does not automatically belong to feminism

I’m a feminist not because I’m trans, but because the patriarchy needs to die. My experiences as a trans woman don’t automatically mean that feminism can score discourse points off my body and discuss my body as some abstract thing. I’m a real person first.

It’s hard to explain. I can only ask you to take me at good faith when I bring this up and say things like “I exist outside feminism”.
posted by Annika Cicada at 1:17 PM on March 16, 2018 [19 favorites]


I don't have plans to do anything about my husband or my family. I'm not sure what you meant by that.

nah, I didn't mean in specific relation to your family, just your praxis. I think admitting to being complicit in white supremacy is a good first step and so too is keeping it in the back of your mind. actions after that hits a morally murky area of 'is that enough?' vs a kind of radical sainthood, a balance which I think is ultimately measured by capacity and agency. the more power you have, the higher the onus, and all of that backed by an accountability to others about how much you're throwing down
posted by runt at 1:21 PM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


The incels are not conventionally attractive

I really don't think we can take that as given.


Re-emphasizing this.

Elliot Rodger himself is actually good looking. Seriously, steel yourself and try a google image search for his name and try to ignore anything you know. He's practically male model material if you put him in good clothes and polished him up like any other celebrity.

If, perhaps, his soul and countenance were lighter there would be an easy physical beauty there.

I knew someone in HS who would have likely been radicalized into an incel. He was actually dashingly, startlingly good looking. Think David Bowie, but perhaps even more Teutonic.

His problem was that his personality was really... difficult and uptight. And often just deeply unpleasant, selfish, rude and cold. Very short temper. He wasn't ever even overtly misogynistic at all that I can recall, just really brittle and difficult to even approach or try to love and really torn up about insecurities and doubts.

His looks weren't his problem meeting dates or finding intimacy. It was his toxic attitude and self-loathing and readily apparent methods of engaging with other people and life that were the problem.


And somehow here we are 20-30 years later still figuring this shit out. And it's complicated.

Intimacy and human sexuality are complicated. Loneliness is very complicated. Human sexuality, for better or worse, seems to create a lot of the problems we face, too. Behind money and power most often lies sex, and access to it.

And not to get all "sex is sacred!" or "desire is suffering!" Buddhist about sex, it's pretty clear humanity has a problem with treating sex and intimacy itself as a drug and object - not to mention a cultural validation or status symbol - which then necessarily treats other people as disposable objects through intent.

I'm... not sure if things are actually per-capita worse and more sexist, more misogynistic or if it's just more exposed and in the light, or if we're going through growing pains of the last hold outs of this kind of sexual entitlement are being painfully, slowly confronted and dealt with or all of the above.

I like to try to comfort myself and think that things are slowly getting better, that these terrible things have been going on for so long.

I do know I have a unique perspective in that I've spent most of my life unwillingly placed in the "male" bin and I've overheard a lot of alarming, disgusting shit, and not just from the usual people you'd expect.

There's a lot of times I wish I could go back and speak up and say something, but even now it's difficult to do. Because I have, and it's really fucked up how many times I've been talked over or ignored by men I would have thought would have known better when I have.


I do think normalizing and legalizing sex work would solve some of these problems. Safe, supportive human touch can be very healing, transformative and powerful.

I have known enough real world sex workers to know that a whole lot of their job seems to be talk therapy combined with touch therapy. I've heard way too many stories about stoic, hyper-masculine men breaking down and crying and basically just looking to be held and touched during a session.
posted by loquacious at 1:47 PM on March 16, 2018 [13 favorites]


I really connected with the article. Over the past few years, I've been coming to terms with my asexuality.

And in a free and open society, that shouldn't really be a thing to reckon with. You don't want sex, you don't have sex. But in a patriarchal society, it leads to making a lot of choices that I now realize were socialized and political, rather than innate.

I got wrapped up in sex-positivity, thinking I could work past my anxiety about sex. Great for society, but terrible for me. Lately, I've been surprised how much anti-sex feminism is speaking to me. Or cautious, rather. Because it does sour easily and become authoritarian or neo-victorian or transphobic.

And it's not that sex-positivity doesn't make space for Not Sex or questioning sexual preferences being influenced by society. But because it was an intellectual reaction, the common feminist thread between both was something that I've underappreciated. It's too easy to see Willis as a repudiation of MacKinnon, rather than an evolution - that just because sexual desire is mediated by society doesn't mean women should do without.
posted by politikitty at 2:13 PM on March 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


Cruz had had a gf to whom he was abusive.
posted by brujita at 2:55 PM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


As I recall from reading Rodger's own writing in the aftermath of his crimes, he was traumatized by porn, quite clearly because he didn't, in his own eyes, measure up, and I think that was a major part of his problem, and at the root of his belief that women would never really desire him.

I grew up in the age when Masters and Johnson were more or less the absolute gurus of sex, and they claimed very explicitly and publicly that differences in the size of non erect penises largely evened out in erection.

And people bought that, though Masters and Johnson themselves must have known it simply was not the case, I guess because most people back then did not have access to porn which featured a lot of erect penises, and wishful thinking did the rest.

But I bet within 10 years males will be able to chose their own penis size, though at first probably only if the treatment takes place in conjunction with going through puberty, and will have a bunch of side effects.

Parents of boys will have some extremely difficult and uncomfortable decisions to make at that point, and if the hep C cures seem expensive, imagine how much real penis enhancement will run.
posted by jamjam at 3:04 PM on March 16, 2018


'Rodger', that should be.
posted by jamjam at 3:13 PM on March 16, 2018


And is.
posted by jamjam at 3:14 PM on March 16, 2018


It was a shock to me, the first time I looked at a model on a fashion runway and thought, she needs another forty pounds to pull off that outfit. (Something steampunky with a corset, and of course she was shaped mostly like a stick.) Years of attending RenFaire had taught me that "sexy woman in corset" had an expected shape, and it didn't matter how much I was indoctrinated by the patriarchy to believe that "beautiful women" were 5'9" or taller and weighed less than 120 lbs.

Representation matters.

Our notions of "what is attractive to me" can be flexible, and they're shaped not only by the oppressive regimes we live in, but also our real-life experiences. We learn to see beauty through practice , not (just) mental consideration.

There is no way to persuade the guys who think "if I am smart and have a good job, the world OWES ME a submissive female, beautiful to the standards that I have been trained to accept." But for those of us who are aware that we're shaped by our environment, we can change how we react to it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:21 PM on March 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


The whole do people have a right to sex, force yourself to be nice to the creeps for the sake of the rest of us discussion shook lose a disturbing memory.

Like years ago. Lots of years. I stumbled into a forum talking about Japanese horror manga and what the stories represented. And I clicked through some of the links and read the discussion and all the weird demons and stuff were interesting.

Then I saw this one that... man, I just shuddered. It still disturbs me on a visceral level. I can't remember the name or who wrote it, and like a lot of details are just locked away in the nope box. But iirc, it was like a jail where the worst of the worst were and they were trying to figure out why the jail had such a low occurrence of violence inside or escapes. The guy running it talks about sacrificing a little innocence to appease the horrible.

Then a little girl, so young and dressed adorably was led into room of convicts and left. Then at night they fetched her out, patched her up, and let her rest. Then the next morning she goes back.

Over the course of the story you see this child falling apart. First just bruises and cuts. Then a missing hand. They just patch her up and send her back until there's nothing left. Ripped apart. Then in the end another adorable, elementary aged kid comes in to be next. I was upset for days after.

It feels like that, women expected to just sacrifice their good to hold back the horrible.

It all just makes my stomach hurt.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 4:34 PM on March 16, 2018 [12 favorites]


that doesn't mean that when we scale up to the whole-society scale that gently pulling some lever—early education perhaps, or looking critically at media representations—which results in people having fewer kneejerk, categorial biases about who they will and won't sleep with, is necessarily bad.

You are 1000% right - that is absolutely so important, and has a real chance of working. Representation matters, and education matters, and those things have a chance of building a better world and a better world around sex.

I think the problem comes with the realization that change is incremental. People realize that while change is coming, it may take decades, and they will still have to live through those decades, and that by the time the change comes they will have themselves changed and aged and not be able to realize the benefits themselves. And so people get angry, and sometimes start trying to force change on an individual level: by trying to shame individuals for making their personal sexual choices, in an attempt to shift everything faster. And when that happens you do get ugliness. You do get demands that people “just try” to change their desires. And when that happens, a lot of times it’s happening to people who have already struggled with feeling like their desires are valid, with other people flat out telling them they aren’t.

The experience of being a woman who is perceived as traditionally desirable is the experience of people, largely men, trying to deny or mock their reasons for not wanting to have sex with them. When women have said “I’m not attracted to you”, the usual male response has been arguing, “but why not”, or “but here’s reasons you should be.”

And I think just as you can’t separate easily physical desire from social constructions, you also can’t separate the experience of women being told that they should be attracted to people who would like to have sex with them from people telling women on an individual level that they should examine their desires.
posted by corb at 4:37 PM on March 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


This essay argues that online dating heightens shallow physical attraction as the driver behind desire. As if looks were unimportant when people met at bars and dance clubs, where it's harder to talk than even on Tinder.

To me it's the opposite. Online dating emphasizes communication, and is a godsend for those of us who are more comfortable bantering than dancing with strangers. Two of the most attractive people I ever met dating -- one a professional model -- were on Craiglist, of all places, with no photo offered. They wanted to email for a while before sharing that, because reactions to their looks overwhelmed more important personal stuff. They couldn't get honest responses otherwise.

If anything, one possible solution might be the online dating equivalent of those blind auditions that orchestras now often use -- a Bumble-like app that bans photos and discussions of appearance, race, etc. until both parties right-swipe.
posted by msalt at 4:49 PM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


I sure don't want to sleep with anyone who doesn't want to enthusiastically sleep with me. But, in my opinion, the sexual prejudice against trans men (I'm not going to speak for women) doesn't come from a lack of attraction. Laith Ashley, for example, is about as cisnormative as one can get and has a more conventionally masculine body than most cis men. I have no idea what's in his pants, but he wasn't born with a penis, so some people will always consider him to be a woman and thus unattractive. Transphobia always has its roots in misogyny. And of course, as GenderNullPointerException notes, this continues past the sexual/dating sphere into the political sphere, where I'm not the gender I say I am so why should I deserve "special" rights? Many (most?) gays and lesbians see their sexual orientation as inborn and immutable, while trans people are making a choice. In dating, trans people are often seen as deceptive, as tricksters. I'm a "straight woman" sneaking in to fuck the gays because... why? It's not as if it's easier! It's been quite the experience to have my desirability drop precipitously after transition.

I love penises as much as any gay guy. But if you're drawn to a masculine person with their clothes on, you can't know whether they have one or not. Even trans men, because surgery exists. Surely you don't ask everyone to disrobe before talking to them. If genitalia is the dealbreaker, then I'm sorry, you're uncreative and boring in bed because there's a lot you can do without a penis.
posted by AFABulous at 9:45 AM on March 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


oh, I should state - I have no experience with straight cis women and why they reject trans men, although the rejection rate seems a lot lower. I don't know any trans men in serious relationships with cis men; I know a few in LTRs with cis women. Mostly we just date each other.
posted by AFABulous at 9:50 AM on March 17, 2018


This is not a sufficient response, but I think it is a necessary one and something that can begin at the individual level.

We have to treat people like individuals. We need to stop saying things like, "I prefer blondes," or "I'm not attracted to that color of skin," or "I want a person with this shape."

Have you met everyone who isn't blonde? How do you know you aren't attracted to any of them? Maybe correlation is not causation.

If at the end of your life you look back and all of your lovers were blonde, I don't think that's any failing on your part (it might be a failing of the culture that shaped you). Everyone has the right to not find anyone attractive for any reason. But you are impoverishing yourself if you tell yourself, "I could only ever be attracted to a blonde" and you are making the world a worse place if you say it out loud.

I think for most people, a sexual relationship begins with a friendship or acquaintance. And I definitely think it is blameworthy to shun an acquaintance or possible friendship based on someone's looks (which is not saying you shouldn't shun someone for their actions). So stop putting people into boxes. Wait and see what happens when you meet them. Attraction might surprise you. Or maybe not. Friendship and acquaintance are worthwhile for their own sake.

On a macro level, we need to continue to insist that the arts and media are mistaken when they make narrow artistic decisions based on these broad categories we put people into based on their looks. "There will never be an audience for a superhero movie with a majority dark-skinned cast." SO INCREDIBLY WRONG! There are people with talent and charisma and humor who come in all shapes and colors. There are multiple audiences who already deviate in multiple ways from the conventional norms of who they are supposed to find attractive--right now--even before we can do anything to change the social pressures that cause us to internalize those norms. I think that's a wedge of hope for change.
posted by straight at 2:28 PM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Don't make comments about who you don't find attractive and why. You may not have created the norms that shaped your preferences, but you can do your part not to reinforce them and pass them on.
posted by straight at 2:37 PM on March 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


If anything, one possible solution might be the online dating equivalent of those blind auditions that orchestras now often use -- a Bumble-like app that bans photos and discussions of appearance, race, etc. until both parties right-swipe.

That works great if the person being hidden and uncovered is a privileged person. Hiding that you’re an attractive cis white person until a big reveal is safe and no big deal. But GOOD GOD the shit that people get if they’re not forthcoming about being fat/differently abled/of perceived minority/trans/not “conventionally” attractive. How many people get defensive and angry and VIOLENT when they discover they’re hot for someone who doesn’t fit the societal ideal? How many (more) brutally abusive emails and threats do you expect non-privileged folks to sign up for in this experiment? How many trans women are MURDERED every year in this exact situation, and how many of their murderers successfully use a “gay panic” defense to avoid jail?

This is a cute solution for thin pretty cis white straight folks. It’s not so great for literally anyone else. And the rest of us do plenty to make life easy for that group already, thanks all the same.
posted by amelioration at 8:43 AM on March 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


If anything, one possible solution might be the online dating equivalent of those blind auditions that orchestras now often use -- a Bumble-like app that bans photos and discussions of appearance, race, etc. until both parties right-swipe.

This is more or less what internet chatrooms used to be like before it was easy and common to send photos. You had to have a digital camera or access to a scanner and both parties needed the bandwidth to upload/download pictures. It ended up exactly like amelioration says - if you weren't thin/pretty/white/cis and didn't disclose any possible strike against you, you were a liar.
posted by AFABulous at 10:56 AM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Don't make comments about who you don't find attractive and why. You may not have created the norms that shaped your preferences, but you can do your part not to reinforce them and pass them on.

There's a corollary to that, which is just as important: don't make blanket or categorical statements about what you do do attractive, either. It's all well and good not saying "I'm not attracted to fat people" but it kind of makes no bones if you're just saying "I really love thin, athletic people" instead.
posted by Dysk at 12:58 AM on March 19, 2018


Coming full circle, AFABulous' comment reminded me painfully about how privileged people co-opt the language of the marginalized, and why it's important to constantly remind ourselves why the experience of incel men and people with marginalized bodies is very different.

Back in my early teen years, I was active in IRC. And I was more open about the fact that I was a 14 year old girl from the suburbs than maybe I should have been. Most of the creepers were in far off lands like New Jersey, so it seemed harmless. But there were a few instances where I'd slowly get to know someone who just lived an hour or so away. And 'really connected' with them about how we didn't like the things other teenagers liked, and our parents didn't understand how mature we really were.

And one time, it actually got to the point we were talking about hanging out one day. They could pick me up at the Starbucks within walking distance from my house. So we traded pictures to recognize each other. And I immediately realized that 'a bit older' was much closer to his thirties.

I can still feel the knot in my chest of guilt telling me to go through with it. Believing his lines that I was being petty and discriminatory while my brain told me I couldn't be follow through with it. I'm still not sure what would have happened if I had that realization in person and not safely at home a few days before. And I'm not sure what decision I'd make, if I didn't have a lifetime of media stories telling me that white girls from the suburbs are valuable deserve not being in risk.

It's a false equivalence - that predators use that anonymity in a similar way that people with marginalized bodies trick privileged people into caring for them. But maybe it's also reminder that institutionalized changes will cut both ways until we tackle our internalized bias so we can feel the difference in the moment.
posted by politikitty at 12:27 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


reminded me painfully about how privileged people co-opt the language of the marginalized, and why it's important to constantly remind ourselves why the experience of incel men and people with marginalized bodies is very different.

I think - your experience has kind of helped me coalesce one of the things percolating in my head - it's one of the things impacting these experiences, but it's also a thing that's really difficult to separate.

I remember dating on OKCupid back in my early twenties, and getting a lot of guys who would message and get really, really angry at me that I wasn't willing to consider someone older, or what have you. But each and every time, it was someone who was very much older trying to pick me up - and what I didn't realize then beyond a vague uncomfortable feeling, but realize now, is that there are LOTS of women on OKCupid in the age groups these men were coming from - that these men who were talking about age discrimination were at the same time practicing it themselves. The standards did not go both ways, and while it's possible that men in their forties could just happen to be attracted to young women in their twenties, something about the dynamic therein was really unhealthy.

Similarly, I have a few unpartnered male friends who I offered to help with their profiles because they weren't having much luck on OKCupid. It turned out that they had a lot of similar 'fine for me but not for thee' prejudices, along with indignation that women wouldn't consider them, supposedly for the various filters they themselves were using. One guy looked only for thinner women while being positively furious that the thin, extremely fit women he was interested in had no interest in dating him. One friend of mine got angry and said it was racially discriminatory that white women weren't interested in dating a POC who put on his profile that he was looking only for white women and didn't want to hear from POC.

And like - both of those guys were correct, I know full well from personal experience that there are dating prejudices against both heavier folks and people of color. But also, how many of the women they were trying to date could also read that anger and entitlement through the early interactions? So much of their anger seems to come less from anger that prejudice exists, and more that this prejudice might potentially impact them, because after all, aren't they men, and isn't the mark of a man that they get to pick and choose and women will be grateful for the attention or somehow are 'stuck up/prejudiced'?

And that's kind of the clarion call of the incels, honestly - that every man is entitled to a woman of his choosing, for...just kind of existing, I guess. That men get to choose, and women don't, and if they dare to, they're somehow being discriminatory, as if all women were open-access sex parlors required by law to provide men with sex for paying the admission fee. And - that can absolutely not be tolerated.
posted by corb at 1:37 PM on March 19, 2018 [12 favorites]


Hiding that you’re an attractive cis white person until a big reveal is safe and no big deal. But GOOD GOD the shit that people get if they’re not forthcoming about being fat/differently abled/of perceived minority/trans/not “conventionally” attractive. How many people get defensive and angry and VIOLENT when they discover they’re hot for someone who doesn’t fit the societal ideal?

Good point. To clarify: I'm suggesting an app where not revealing physical details is the starting point for online contact, the default, so it does not read as hiding. I'm certainly not suggesting a "blind date" app, just one where both parties need to sign off to move forward, where talking as people is the default starting point and appearances come later.

I suspect that angry transphobes &c would be less likely to sign up for this, but I could well be wrong. I just don't see how it would be worse in any way that OK Cupid or Tinder or Grindr or meeting physically in a bar are now.
posted by msalt at 3:20 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


To clarify: I'm suggesting an app where not revealing physical details is the starting point for online contact, the default, so it does not read as hiding.

That's the thing with dominant identities though - they are assumed by default an awful lot of the time, and it's only those who differ from it who are perceived as deceptive for being anonymous.
posted by Dysk at 4:03 PM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I don't want to beat a dead horse. But the precise point is that, if the app mandated non-disclosure as a starting point - say the first two weeks? -- for everybody, then it wouldn't be an individual choice that could be read as deceptive. Especially if everything IS then revealed after people have had time to connect as individuals. But maybe haters gonna hate, no matter what you do.

I still don't see how it would be any worse than current online dating, or meeting in bars.
posted by msalt at 7:08 PM on March 21, 2018


Because the "NO TRANS FATS" wankers leave me alone out the gate in those two situations. In your imagined utopia, they don't, then get angry about having been "lead on" and "deceived" and "you're not a real woman how dare you" and on and on and on. You can mandate whatever you like, people are still going to imagine they're talking to someone normative, and will blame you for the ways in which you're not when fantasy and reality collide.
posted by Dysk at 1:50 AM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah. The thing is, in addition to the totally valid stuff expressed above, that idea just pushes off the painful confrontation between wants and reality for two weeks, and that doesn’t make it any better for the person receiving the “nope”. I was fortunate back in the age of “pics after talk” to be conventionally attractive at the time, without a kid, with no “dealbreakers”. But it doesn’t make a rejection easier if it happens after you’ve already started to care about someone and dream dreams.
posted by corb at 12:01 PM on March 22, 2018


I'll agree that we need a generation without the myth of trans catfishing, including multiple attempts to justify murder based on the myth, before endorsing such a scheme.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:11 PM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the man behind the idea that eventually grew into Black History Month, also wrote a book called The Mis-Education of the Negro (.pdf). The book has been around for eighty-five years now, so the premise that "When you control a [person's] thinking you do not have to worry about his [or her] actions" (4) is not an especially controversial one.

By my read, it seems that Dr. Srinivasan is asking here whether there is a feminist analogue to The Mis-Education of the Negro. (With the baked-in assumption that if there isn't, there really needs to be.) I think that's an interesting question! (It's really late in the thread to expect an answer, but I'll have to start checking...) The idea that an oppressed group needs to interrogate its own motives is not at all controversial in the black community as far as I know. Is it uncommon elsewhere? The idea does pop up from time to time in MetaFilter threads (e.g. "I'm just not attracted to Asian men"). Sometimes there's pushback, sometimes there's acceptance, and sometimes there's no hint that anyone in the thread sees a problem at all.

I'd never thought about it before, but I'll definitely try to keep it in mind going forward.
posted by tyro urge at 6:54 PM on April 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


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