Masculinity Interviews
There's honestly something about this that bothers me a little. I feel odd about that, especially as I submitted my own answers. (I don't know if Lumpesse will take them, as she may only intend the project to be for men. I'm wondering if I ought to post them here.)
I don't like the idea of judging or condemning anyone for lack of deviance any more. Or even the idea of presuming that someone got his sexual preferences/desires from society, despite that this guy matches them to a tee.
But there's something that makes me uneasy in the way that he talks about having a matched set of women, for example, here:
Part of what it is to be a Guy is to be constantly… not quite “on the prowl”, but always having my antenna up. I notice women like crazy. I probably fall in love with some random woman on the street five or six times a week. And I seem to have a “type”-which you would identify right off if you saw a picture of my lady loves. Cute, dark-haired, geek girls. There was a girl working the counter at a bowling alley one night that I nearly invited home with us on the spot, and you could have laid her down next to my other two and had a matched set. (Which was, in fact, exactly my plan.) A woman I’m attracted to has to be my intellectual equal, but have a vulnerability or softness for me to protect. And she needs to be tough enough to take care of me when I need it too.
Just the way he talks about "collecting" women. I mean, I can understand that feeling to a certain degree as well; I've had my own fantasies of having harems. But I can't say that I've ever been "Oh, I'm going to ask you home at random because you look like my other partners."
But then, I've been told that I just don't understand polyamory and/or polyfuckery more than a few times. I don't know. There's just something about it -- the sense of collecting, the sense of wanting everyone to be similar, to "go," to be "matched" that makes me feel uneasy. And also the bit about falling "in love" six times a week. It just seems that he's either confusing sex and love, or saying he gets romantic feelings right away... and there's something about that that I'm just not groovin' on, somehow. On the prowl = falling in love? What?
I don't think everyone has to fall in love and be intimate, and never have. I just think that if you're not going to be (which sounds a lot like what he's talking about with the matching and collecting -- love tends to not go at all with being choosy, IMHX) you need to make sure you're careful not to conflate them and hurt someone who is convinced you're in love and thinks more goes with that than being "laid next to" some dude's other girlfriends.
I also have some confusion about this:
I don’t know… I’m not a Big Macho guy, despite how this likely sounds. I’m fairly enlightened regarding my emotions and needs (I’m poly! Hello!). But there’s still an aspect of my masculinity that somehow never quite emerged from the cave. There’s definitely something primitive inside me that wants to howl at the moon and dominate others with force and sleep with every woman I see. I keep that fairly well contained, and generally manage to express it only in socially acceptable ways (with the exception of: I’m poly! Hello!). But it’s there.
I guess it's because I'm uncomfortable with the idea that masculinity is something bad, something oddly antisocial that needs to be contained.
I mean, obviously if for you, your masculinity includes fantasizing frequently about nonconsent, you have to handle that in some way. But, well, as someone who has those fantasies too, I'm really not so sure that I experience understanding the difference between reality and fantasy as a tamping down or a containing.
I feel that I can think about any damn thing I want, and still be responsible. I don't feel that thinking about things leads me to aggress, at all (which is probably why the Pavlovian, porn-makes-you-objectify-women theories seem so intuitively unconvincing). In fact, I feel that not thinking about them, that thinking of myself as a violent powder keg, is what makes me aggressive and nasty when I am. Telling myself that I can be trusted, that my thoughts can be valuable and make sense and inform my life even when they're dark, helps me to feel better. Because for me, those thoughts aren't something I really feel I can "slip into" and not come out of. They're things that I engage with consenting people, and... they don't really WANT to come out with random people I don't know, so much.
I don't want to say this guy's experience isn't real, though. Maybe for someone like him, something like the Pavlovian theory is true, and he needs to keep himself contained. I don't know. I just know that for ME it's been infinitely more healthy to understand that just because I think something doesn't mean I will act on that thought, especially not in a destructive way. I don't see giving myself healthy outlets as "containing" myself, so much as I see it as sensible, responsible behavior.
I don't like the idea of judging or condemning anyone for lack of deviance any more. Or even the idea of presuming that someone got his sexual preferences/desires from society, despite that this guy matches them to a tee.
But there's something that makes me uneasy in the way that he talks about having a matched set of women, for example, here:
Part of what it is to be a Guy is to be constantly… not quite “on the prowl”, but always having my antenna up. I notice women like crazy. I probably fall in love with some random woman on the street five or six times a week. And I seem to have a “type”-which you would identify right off if you saw a picture of my lady loves. Cute, dark-haired, geek girls. There was a girl working the counter at a bowling alley one night that I nearly invited home with us on the spot, and you could have laid her down next to my other two and had a matched set. (Which was, in fact, exactly my plan.) A woman I’m attracted to has to be my intellectual equal, but have a vulnerability or softness for me to protect. And she needs to be tough enough to take care of me when I need it too.
Just the way he talks about "collecting" women. I mean, I can understand that feeling to a certain degree as well; I've had my own fantasies of having harems. But I can't say that I've ever been "Oh, I'm going to ask you home at random because you look like my other partners."
But then, I've been told that I just don't understand polyamory and/or polyfuckery more than a few times. I don't know. There's just something about it -- the sense of collecting, the sense of wanting everyone to be similar, to "go," to be "matched" that makes me feel uneasy. And also the bit about falling "in love" six times a week. It just seems that he's either confusing sex and love, or saying he gets romantic feelings right away... and there's something about that that I'm just not groovin' on, somehow. On the prowl = falling in love? What?
I don't think everyone has to fall in love and be intimate, and never have. I just think that if you're not going to be (which sounds a lot like what he's talking about with the matching and collecting -- love tends to not go at all with being choosy, IMHX) you need to make sure you're careful not to conflate them and hurt someone who is convinced you're in love and thinks more goes with that than being "laid next to" some dude's other girlfriends.
I also have some confusion about this:
I don’t know… I’m not a Big Macho guy, despite how this likely sounds. I’m fairly enlightened regarding my emotions and needs (I’m poly! Hello!). But there’s still an aspect of my masculinity that somehow never quite emerged from the cave. There’s definitely something primitive inside me that wants to howl at the moon and dominate others with force and sleep with every woman I see. I keep that fairly well contained, and generally manage to express it only in socially acceptable ways (with the exception of: I’m poly! Hello!). But it’s there.
I guess it's because I'm uncomfortable with the idea that masculinity is something bad, something oddly antisocial that needs to be contained.
I mean, obviously if for you, your masculinity includes fantasizing frequently about nonconsent, you have to handle that in some way. But, well, as someone who has those fantasies too, I'm really not so sure that I experience understanding the difference between reality and fantasy as a tamping down or a containing.
I feel that I can think about any damn thing I want, and still be responsible. I don't feel that thinking about things leads me to aggress, at all (which is probably why the Pavlovian, porn-makes-you-objectify-women theories seem so intuitively unconvincing). In fact, I feel that not thinking about them, that thinking of myself as a violent powder keg, is what makes me aggressive and nasty when I am. Telling myself that I can be trusted, that my thoughts can be valuable and make sense and inform my life even when they're dark, helps me to feel better. Because for me, those thoughts aren't something I really feel I can "slip into" and not come out of. They're things that I engage with consenting people, and... they don't really WANT to come out with random people I don't know, so much.
I don't want to say this guy's experience isn't real, though. Maybe for someone like him, something like the Pavlovian theory is true, and he needs to keep himself contained. I don't know. I just know that for ME it's been infinitely more healthy to understand that just because I think something doesn't mean I will act on that thought, especially not in a destructive way. I don't see giving myself healthy outlets as "containing" myself, so much as I see it as sensible, responsible behavior.