Some cool shit for you, dudes.
LiveJournal, why are you not emailing me my comments? >:\ >:\ >:\
Dear Bruce Springsteen,
You are awesome. Thank you for that.
Love,
me
P.S. I'm watching you, New Jersey.
Sex Is Not The Enemy is pretty amazing. However, I warn you that it is SUPER NSFW.
This is a super interesting blog entry! I recommend checking out the whole thing, and her other entries, but at least read the following:
...we are used to seeing straight men’s goofy, unrealistic sexual fantasies. They are everywhere, all the time. Beer commercials, magazines, Michael Bay movies, porn obviously. We’re used to having female characters flattened out, falsified, emptied out and filled up again with a boundless desire to satisfy men’s needs for no apparent reason. We’re used to the fact that straight male sexual fantasy scenarios (or, at least, sexual fantasies marketed to straight men: and, hey, a lot of dudes are buying them) are cartoonish, in poor taste, unsophisticated, weird. We’re used to expressions of desire, public expressions, aimed at women [that] the desire-expressers have never met and will never sleep with and will probably never even see in all three dimensions, outside of a movie screen or photograph or TV set - discussions of whether the men in question would, in fact, “hit that” or whatnot - and to the sale of those bodies, or at least images and facsimiles thereof.
...
But this is everywhere. We’re used to it. It’s part of the accepted context of straight male desire - it’s tacky as all hell, aesthetically, and that’s just how they do - and so criticizing it, in an aesthetic way, seems pointless. Congratulations, you went looking for art in a product intended to provide boners and came up empty. Surprise! But when girls do the exact same thing - when they prove themselves capable of the exact same sort of objectification, and the exact same goofiness or tackiness or unrealistic fantasy in the name of getting off - well, it freaks people out. It’s weird. Why are they acting like this? Don’t they know that Robert Pattinson is a person? Why are they treating him like a big chunk of meat? Why doesn’t Edward Cullen act like a real guy would? Etcetera!
Because Edward Cullen is porn. Weird, pre-sexual, socially conservative, deeply repressed and fucked-up porn, but in a world where ladies’ sexy feelings are fenced in with shame and warnings of danger from Day 1, is it any wonder that porn which consistently ties sex to death and fear and the urgent need for repression is selling to the girls? I mean, consider: Edward Cullen has no characteristics, as a person, other than wanting to “protect” Bella and being beautiful and gorgeous and perfect all the time. (And also an insufferable asshole, but that seems more like a mistake than a purposeful effort to give him a personality.) He has no goals in life other than being with Bella. He is over a hundred years old, and he’s never had sex with another person. He’s never wanted to have sex with another person. There is not and will never be a person or a thing or an event that is more important to him than (eventually) having sex with Bella. He is an object designed for the gratification of female desire. He’s the most ridiculous person who’s so amazing at everything, and he’s so beautiful you creamed yourself. And that’s it. And we’re used to dudes writing ladies this way, we’re even used to dudes writing ladies this way and passing it off as “literature,” but the idea of a female author writing a male character in this way, for the pleasure of other ladies, is profoundly disconcerting. Even to me! Because it’s backwards.
We can talk about objectification, as a concept, and whether or not it is good - I know it pisses me off, often - but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that women and men are both capable of it. We just happen to live in a world where straight men are expected to objectify, and given lots of opportunities to do it, and everyone else is supposed to keep it in their pants. On the girl side of things, mostly it is very young ladies and female dorks who break the rules, because they are less inhibited by socialization than the rest of us, but the fact is that sexual fantasy - which is, duh, always only about fulfilling your needs in the long run - looks goofy and weird and dehumanizing for a lot of people, women and men both. And probably we all need to grow up, and deal with the fact that everyone we meet in the world is a person with a complex inner life, and also be open to the fact that people are pretty in different ways and our entertainment only portrays one very limited slice of the vast spectrum that is human prettiness, and etc. But also? Be less weirded out by the fact that ladies are getting all freaky about Robert Pattinson. Or be MORE weirded out by the dudes getting all het up about various lady movie stars. Take your pick. Because ladies are people. And if there is one universal truth about people, it is that lots of us are kind of gross.
[Tiger Beatdown]
Dear Bruce Springsteen,
You are awesome. Thank you for that.
Love,
me
P.S. I'm watching you, New Jersey.
Sex Is Not The Enemy is pretty amazing. However, I warn you that it is SUPER NSFW.
This is a super interesting blog entry! I recommend checking out the whole thing, and her other entries, but at least read the following:
...we are used to seeing straight men’s goofy, unrealistic sexual fantasies. They are everywhere, all the time. Beer commercials, magazines, Michael Bay movies, porn obviously. We’re used to having female characters flattened out, falsified, emptied out and filled up again with a boundless desire to satisfy men’s needs for no apparent reason. We’re used to the fact that straight male sexual fantasy scenarios (or, at least, sexual fantasies marketed to straight men: and, hey, a lot of dudes are buying them) are cartoonish, in poor taste, unsophisticated, weird. We’re used to expressions of desire, public expressions, aimed at women [that] the desire-expressers have never met and will never sleep with and will probably never even see in all three dimensions, outside of a movie screen or photograph or TV set - discussions of whether the men in question would, in fact, “hit that” or whatnot - and to the sale of those bodies, or at least images and facsimiles thereof.
...
But this is everywhere. We’re used to it. It’s part of the accepted context of straight male desire - it’s tacky as all hell, aesthetically, and that’s just how they do - and so criticizing it, in an aesthetic way, seems pointless. Congratulations, you went looking for art in a product intended to provide boners and came up empty. Surprise! But when girls do the exact same thing - when they prove themselves capable of the exact same sort of objectification, and the exact same goofiness or tackiness or unrealistic fantasy in the name of getting off - well, it freaks people out. It’s weird. Why are they acting like this? Don’t they know that Robert Pattinson is a person? Why are they treating him like a big chunk of meat? Why doesn’t Edward Cullen act like a real guy would? Etcetera!
Because Edward Cullen is porn. Weird, pre-sexual, socially conservative, deeply repressed and fucked-up porn, but in a world where ladies’ sexy feelings are fenced in with shame and warnings of danger from Day 1, is it any wonder that porn which consistently ties sex to death and fear and the urgent need for repression is selling to the girls? I mean, consider: Edward Cullen has no characteristics, as a person, other than wanting to “protect” Bella and being beautiful and gorgeous and perfect all the time. (And also an insufferable asshole, but that seems more like a mistake than a purposeful effort to give him a personality.) He has no goals in life other than being with Bella. He is over a hundred years old, and he’s never had sex with another person. He’s never wanted to have sex with another person. There is not and will never be a person or a thing or an event that is more important to him than (eventually) having sex with Bella. He is an object designed for the gratification of female desire. He’s the most ridiculous person who’s so amazing at everything, and he’s so beautiful you creamed yourself. And that’s it. And we’re used to dudes writing ladies this way, we’re even used to dudes writing ladies this way and passing it off as “literature,” but the idea of a female author writing a male character in this way, for the pleasure of other ladies, is profoundly disconcerting. Even to me! Because it’s backwards.
We can talk about objectification, as a concept, and whether or not it is good - I know it pisses me off, often - but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that women and men are both capable of it. We just happen to live in a world where straight men are expected to objectify, and given lots of opportunities to do it, and everyone else is supposed to keep it in their pants. On the girl side of things, mostly it is very young ladies and female dorks who break the rules, because they are less inhibited by socialization than the rest of us, but the fact is that sexual fantasy - which is, duh, always only about fulfilling your needs in the long run - looks goofy and weird and dehumanizing for a lot of people, women and men both. And probably we all need to grow up, and deal with the fact that everyone we meet in the world is a person with a complex inner life, and also be open to the fact that people are pretty in different ways and our entertainment only portrays one very limited slice of the vast spectrum that is human prettiness, and etc. But also? Be less weirded out by the fact that ladies are getting all freaky about Robert Pattinson. Or be MORE weirded out by the dudes getting all het up about various lady movie stars. Take your pick. Because ladies are people. And if there is one universal truth about people, it is that lots of us are kind of gross.
[Tiger Beatdown]