How to Tell the Bad Men From the Good Men

September 3, 2018 6:48 AM

Our tabula is still rasa | The fantastic Caitlin Moran talks about sex, baby.

"Despite living in a world of every kind of niche pornography, strip clubs, Brazilians, sex toys, Fifty Shades of Grey, blow-job tips, sex education, contraception, anal-bleaching, designer vaginas, Viagra, pussy-grabbing scandals, and #MeToo; despite there being 6,500 spoken languages in the world allowed the infinite space of the internet; despite sex happening all the time, everywhere, we still — still! — haven’t found a way to talk about it that is truthful, open, informative, and not scaring the living daylights out of our young people."

posted by I_Love_Bananas (14 comments total)

"This kind of performative, public sexism I knew how to counter: You just treated the men like you would a younger brother. You shamed them in front of their peers. The cure for flamboyant public sexism was flamboyant public shaming."
posted by mit5urugi at 7:08 AM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

because sex is about, somehow, winning, rather than a collaboration between two people who delight in each other.

There are no men blogging honestly about sex. Women’s magazines have endless sex tips; men are informed how to buy watches and suits. Men can’t sit in the pub and have chortling, confessional conversations about the mechanics of sex — it has to be “legendary shagging anecdotes” or nothing. There is no men’s movement constructively analyzing the politics of sex to everyone’s benefit... Hollywood would rather show a half dozen planets being blown up than a single, memorable kiss.

Dudes who want to make things better listen to this woman.
posted by straight at 9:46 AM on September 3, 2018 [20 favorites]

"There are some men who simply desire to see unease and fear in a woman’s face."

This really struck me. I had been thinking about Louis C.K. after the thread here. And two days ago, I tried to sort of imagine his thoughts and feelings at the moment of unzipping. But when I tried to imagine a cartoon stick figure of him, the thought bubble bubbled up with these words: "You know what would make me feel better tonight -- making a woman feel worse."
posted by puddledork at 10:18 AM on September 3, 2018 [12 favorites]

> straight:"Men can’t sit in the pub and have chortling, confessional conversations about the mechanics of sex"

This. I don't think I've ever talked about sex with a fellow male person. About women, about relationships, about who you want to have sex with, or who you had it with, sure. But actually about sex? Nope.
posted by signal at 10:51 AM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am unthrilled to see Caitlin Moran put forth as a bold voice on much of anything. She says some neat stuff, but she is known for being nasty about women of color and trans women.
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 12:47 PM on September 3, 2018 [17 favorites]

Between the repeated, "there are no" and the Mars/Venus pop culture spit, this feels off. It's not like only women can engage in feminist lit and musicals.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:01 PM on September 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I dunno, from thirteen on, my guy friends talk(ed) about sex and how it felt all the time. After all, men are expected to know everything, at the least we need(ed) to share notes and tips. What do you think we re talking about on the fishing trip?

These are not the things you want to put into print, or even discuss with women, because it s skewed and unfair. Hetero dudes swim in a whole society of emotional validation. I even feel gross typing this all out. You don't want men blogging honestly about sex. It would be like having to hear rich people describe their vacations. Didn t the MRA bullshit come out of a gender studies type theory about men needing to be validated? That wasn't a good road to travel, it puts things out of proportion with their consequences.

But I dunno, it was conversations with men about sex with women that lead me to stop dating for a while, I had been on too many dates after 30 where I changed a woman s position on something just by stating my position. They would always cave. Individually, it was consent. Observed broadly, it looked nothing like consent. I even felt, at one point, that there was so such thing as consent, heterowise. Like the Adam Smith saying about never do businessesmen meet but in a conspiracy to fix prices on the workers, never do bros share a beer without getting one over on the ladies. The women who do study men's emotional validation and "figure men out" are yeah, better in bed, but also not generally considered well by men, or society, in my experience. There are different stakes in the game.

So yeah, sorry this is too long. I don't think a lack of male voices is the problem, I think it would only encourage the bad ones to get more validation than I think we want. That might seem good, because then the bad ones are outed, but no, I don't think blogs work that way. Men need to do a lot of listening.
posted by eustatic at 5:07 PM on September 3, 2018 [7 favorites]

I think there's a somewhat false dichotomy here. Men's magazines, for example do generally have heaps of sex tips nestled amongst exhortations to eat and buy right, much like women's magazines. And likewise, Where can a man ask an honest, open, scared question about sex? - I know a lot of women who don't necessarily have a space like that either.

This is not, of course, to say "it's all the same", false equivalency is just as bad as false dichotomy. I think they key point: despite sex happening all the time, everywhere, we still — still! — haven’t found a way to talk about it that is truthful, open, informative, and not scaring the living daylights out of our young people. We seem not to have told them, at any point, how lovely it all should be. - is generally a good one at a social level.

But I do think this piece is coming at it from a very monocultural viewpoint, and also that there are places where those conversations are happening, even if they are often crowded out of the popular discourse. Even the sex tips she derides from cosmo and the like, I would argue they are generally only semi-serious in tone, and often seem to approach sex in a the way you might a slightly competitive team sport.

One unquestioned assumption in the piece is that the primacy of sex in our media (ie we should change the discourse, rather than question its presence). People in general have way less sex than we think. Perhaps we should not just change the tone of how we discuss sex, but also the emphasis on it.
posted by smoke at 5:28 PM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

I believe that it will be a long time, if ever, for this kind of thing to start. If you want honest discussions about sex they need to start in early adolescence as many attitudes about sex and sexuality are being formed. The giggling schoolchild needs to be informed of what being an adult is really going to be like before they start acting like sexist fools. (That last one is an audio link.) They need to have a structure provided that allows them to be honest with others without it becoming just one more way of becoming open to attack. Parents need to accept that the future happiness of the children as adults depends on the acquisition of interpersonal skills that previous generations have thought should wait until college. By which point they will already have patterns of thought and behavior that make take years to change (see above), if ever.

For some remedial adult education let me recommend The Guide to Getting it On.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 11:01 PM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Catilin Moran was the reason I became enthusiastic about feminism and proud to call myself a feminist. Yup, she's said some highly problematic things that I don't agree with.

I feel the same as when that Lena Dunham article re: her hysterectomy came out (previously) and admire this article whilst holding complicated feelings about the author.
posted by like_neon at 2:22 AM on September 4, 2018 [3 favorites]

At least as I encounter it, "sex-tips" in publishing assume tacit consent or at least ggg, because who doesn't want to hear pornographic pillow talk while twisted into a yoga-inspired position after getting citrus-enhanced oral and manual foreplay while wearing painfully gendered costume?
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:23 AM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why would anyone talk with men about how best to have sex with women? Why would anyone talk with anyone but the particular woman you want to please?
posted by ckridge at 2:52 PM on September 4, 2018

ckridge: because you’re curious, nervous, don’t know her that well yet, or there’s a huge amount of cultural assumption that men are more experienced and supposed to lead? We’ll need a lot of cultural growth before that last stops being true for a lot of people at some point in their lives.
posted by adamsc at 3:54 PM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, young guys. Absolutely everything sucks about being a young guy except the young part.

They are all so different though. I don't see how anything could work but close study of the one at hand.
posted by ckridge at 6:17 PM on September 4, 2018