Questions I Want To Ask Entitled Cis Het Men

[bloodrivendream]

Over the summer, I wrote a 3500-word piece about masculinity. It touched on some themes I’ve messed around with before, most notably in my reviews of the Sex+++ documentaries “Private Dicks: Men Exposed” and “Boy I Am.” I fondly hoped that I might be able to do something “real” with it, but I’ve gotten rather immersed in my work here in Africa -

Comments

[mswyrr]

Rather interesting and thoughtful. I'm on part two right now and enjoying it.

HOWEVER, this is a problem:

All too frequently in radical sex/gender circles, the theme has been blame. Men in particular are excoriated for failing to adequately support feminism - or criticized for failing to join the fight against oppressive sex and gender norms - but few ideas are offered for how men can be supportive and non-oppressive while remaining overtly masculine, especially if their sexuality is normative (e.g., straight/dominant/big-dicked).Couple things

[mswyrr]

*Re: point 2. I see that the paragraph can be read as particularly about instances where individual men are criticized as individuals. But it's often the case that privileged people react to criticisms of the system that grants them privilege as if it were a personal criticism and so I worry that it's a delicate thing to separate out "bad" individual criticisms from systemic criticisms.

IDK

Gotta think about this more later when sleep has been had.

[rumblecake]

I totally agree with you. I sometimes practice the whole "feminism 101" thing, but it's exhausting and it's not something that everyone can/should attempt.

[mybluesunset]

This is fantastic.

I read the title and thought it was going to be a meh article and skip it, but then I saw that it was Clarisse Thorn. Maybe I'll come back with a more substantive comment than "Clarisse Thorn is awesome" later. :)

[bloodrivendream]

I was not familiar with Clarisse Thorn until just now.

Are you familiar with her through her blog? Or otherwise?

[mybluesunset]

found her through another site, LessWrong.com, where she participated for a little bit in a discussion of BDSM and feminism (this is a male dominated site that is often very fantastic but has some sexist strains in it). So I followed her link to her blog and read her article about reconciling her desire to be submissive with her feminism, and a few other articles after that. And then I just kind of... lost track of her. When I saw her name on this article I immediately made a happy :O face because she is so very good with these nuanced issues.

[the following is totally unrelated to your question, feel free to skip]

I'm also reading this article with a view of how people from sites like Feminist Critics would react to it. Not the commenters exactly--some of them are quite blatantly anti-feminist-- but the writer of the blog who is a fairly reasonable person. There really hasn't been enough talk of how the gender binary is the common cause behind the issues both women's rights and the dreaded MRA's talk about, in part because of

[bloodrivendream]

...the advantages and drawbacks associated with being both male and female are intertwined. The two systems reinforce, and cannot function without, each other. The gender binary may not hurt everyone equally, but it hurts everyone.
--I felt that bit was worth quoting here.

Yes, i agree it hasn't been talked about enough.

[mybluesunset]

Here's a response she posted in another blog to a response to her post, which I thought was interesting:

@Richard Newman (sorry for getting your name wrong earlier, by the way): I guess what I am saying-kind of awkwardly, since I am typing fast-is that the questions presupposes that male and female “advantages” within the gender binary are somehow situated equally within that binary despite the fact that men have more advantages than women. In other words, I think the question elides the very nature of male privilege in the first place

[bloodrivendream]

No, I do not think she was
I think she was presenting her perspective. By "perverted" she meant she is into the BDSM scene and that is what she usually writes about. That she approaches questions of sexuality and gender dynamics from that angle.
She is a femme, cis, and straight. And this is the perspective from which she is approaching masculinity.

The article is entitled "Questions I Want to Ask Entitled Cis Het Men" it is relevant.

The article examines a lot of questions beyond that point. I do recommend it.

[snvrz]

what if you're a queer man? I feel like masculinity can be oppressive

[bloodrivendream]

we can't talk about masculinity as separate from oppression and sexist
Agreed. She even touched on how examining gender and sexism and oppression is considered unmasculine; yet, she is glossed over this. Not examining these things for the sake of holding onto masculinity... does not sit well with me at all.

You touched on my main issue. She seems to be quite attached to masculinity and femininity as a dichotomy.

I just read a later article where she touches on that, Gender-hacking and the big picture consequences

Where she says:
The fact that we can work within - and even enjoy - The System does not mean that The System is not fucked up.

Still ….

I’d like to believe that we can hold on to what’s beautiful, surprising, and hot about The System. Can we keep the stereotypes and have justice too? Is that possible? Or does the whole thing have to burn and be reborn?

I am with you in think the answer lies more in the system needing to burn and be reborn.

[barbituratecat]

Because other people find the whole thing vile, and the kinksters need to give the whole thing up and only enjoy those stereotypes under confined situations with a safe word and specific constrains.

I'm confused at what you're saying here, could you please clarify? Because I'm reading it like 'kink is bad and you keep that shit private', and I'm sure that's not the intent. Also, it's not making any differentiations between a small percentage of people with a very specific kink, and 'kinksters' in general.