'Real' Men are not All More Complicated?
(Longtime readers will be aware that the hedjog is of the opinion that there is no such thing as a 'Real -' when applied to any group of humanity.)
Yesterday afternoon I went to the Occasional Seminar thing I rather infrequently manage to get to, and was given the following thoughts to ponder upon.
It was mentioned (though not in tones that suggested the speaker was convinced by the hypothesis) that language evolved, like the peacock's tail, as a courtship device. This might be an EvPsych explanation for mansplaining - it's actually display behaviour. (Ourselves, among the avian kingdom we prefer the crested grebe, which performs a mutual and spectacular courtship dance.)
Apparently it is also a thing for men (and some women) to claim, in the context of online women's advice forums, that All Men Look At Porn, Most of Them Every Day, because EvPsych imperative to Spread Their Seed.
We can only remark
Firstly: that Onan could have been said to have been spreading his seed, however, Doin It Rong, so not a model to emulate. (Apparently similar claims are made for male promiscuity by men who nonetheless deploy condoms.)
Secondly: we wonder how many of these men who are 'all men do this thing' are up in arms and #notallmen when women venture to suggest that all men do a thing.
Thirdly: is this in fact the case even for men who are actually making this claim, or is it the accepted wisdom that this is a thing that Teh Menz do, and even men who don't do it will excuse other men, because testosterone and primeval savanna. Am reminded of remarks made by late Victorian social purity advocate, not I think J Butler, possibly Catherine Booth, deploring the fact that men who were of the highest moral standard in their own personal lives nonetheless seemed to think that prostitution was still necessary because Male Needs.
Fourthly: a point was made from the audience about the 'men are always up for it' scenario from their work looking at forums for women who are trying to get pregnant, and the amount of performance anxiety or resistance from male partners about doing the deed on the critical day, which one would think, in terms of evolving to spread their seed, would not be a problem.
Another point raised from the audience was that, in the context of women expressing concerns about their male partners' use of porn (apart from all the exhortations to Just Get Over It Already and recognise that Men Are Like That, etc etc) that there's never any indication of what exactly kind of porn it is. One can envisage situations in which it could be extremely troubling. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2222746.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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