Manboobz blows my mind again. He’s got quotes from MRAs denying the existence of lesbians. Apparently, in their privileged little brains, women can’t possibly be interested in sex, because if they were, they’d be having sex with them. They aren’t, QED.
I was enchanted by one fellow’s vision of a future paradise, though. He’s anxiously awaiting the technology that will allow him to put on some goggles, strap a widget onto his genitals, and let Ray Kurzweil diddle him.
It will be very interesting to see how much sex men have vs. how much sex women have with their virtual reality computer generated men and women in the year 2020. I bet most men get laid everyday while women try it a few times and not bother with sex anymore when she realizes there’s no money in it. Women will use VR men for his virtual money while men will be with virtual women for virtual sex.
I like that future. I see an end to the MRAs and PUAs, when they’ll all mind-meld with their Macs and immerse themselves in World of Whorecraft, where their fantasies of servile mindless females with large breasts can come true. The rest of us will have normal human lives with each other.
It’s the world most of us are already living in, of course.
…uh.
Well, on the plus side, if MRAs are convinced I don’t exist, will they stop annoying me?
Isn’t a vibrator basically a VR boyfriend, and those are certainly not going unused, given the variety at least.
Who needs to wait for 2020 for “virtual reality computer generated men and women,” when we have non-human orgasm produce devices right now? They’re called “sex toys.”
How does this guy explain the fact that women (like me!) buy vibrators? I’ve never, ever, ever had a vibrator give me money. Vibrators reduce my money. But I still buy them. Why? Because orgasms are awesome.
Telling that macs are considered more sexy than pcs.
I guess noöne wants to make sex to Linux – who knows where it’s been.
I doubt I’d try VR sex more than once or twice. But then I have a satisfactory sexual relationship with another person, so using computer-aided wanking is not something that appeals to me.
I am too busy looking confused at their confusion to even be offended.
Huh?
These guys really don’t see how much they give away with that sort of talk. They are frustrated. They keep hitting on total strangers, are told, with varying degrees of ire to fuck off, and decide that women only want sex with rich guys and dont really like sex at all.
The truth is, Mster MRA, Most women like sex a lot. They just don’t like you.
From the MRA quoted on Manboobz:
I never understood that oh-so-earnest “the parts don’t fit!” argument. Just how ignorant are these people? How have you never heard of, say, oral sex?
That’s it!
With that image in my head, I am NOT going to sleep tonight.
The nightmares…
I’ll just re-post what I wrote on TET.
Unfortunately, I’ve run into this attitude a *lot* in day to day life. There’s a terrifying amount of men out there who think what any lesbian (or bisexual in a lesbian relationship) needs is a good fuck to snap ‘em out of it.
These same assholes will maintain that’s there’s no such thing as a bisexual. (More than one has actually argued that with me, face to face.)
As for ‘bed death’, meh. It can happen in any relationship.
I couldn’t find a clip on this online, but about 5 years ago Samantha Bee had a hilarious interview with Ray Kurzweil on The Daily Show. There was an exchange something along the lines of:
Bee: So how soon will we be able to fuck robots?
Kurzweil: How soon do you want to?
Bee: ASAP!
Kurzweil: Well, I think AI will make adequate lovers by the end of the next decade.
Bee: I don’t want them to love me…
“I don’t hate men, I hate assholes! It’s not my fault if you think ‘asshole’ is synonymous with ‘man.'”
–Me
X-posted from Pandagon:
I still remember fondly how Fred Nile (Australian god-botherer) came to our campus back in ancient times when I was a student, and did his schtick on how AIDS was gawd’s punishment on the fags. Someone asked how come then lesbians have the lowest rates of AIDS, and he sputtered and replied that he didn’t think lesbians really existed. At which point a whole lot of women stood up and waved and yelled “Here we are!!!”
I only wish I’d actually been there to join in. A friend from the campus women’s group told me about it afterwards. I had some paltry excuse like physics lab.
They may have.
But they don’t want to inflict oral sex on any woman.
Probably not, at least of the sort performed on women, which might explain some of their general desirability to heterosexual women.
Ugh. Makes me want to buy a ton of copies of Sex at Dawn and parachute-drop them over their website — the “women don’t enjoy sex and they sell access to their genitals as a commodity” model is an artifact of patriarchal society, not something inherent to the human species. (Sex at Dawn proposes that patriarchy arose as part of the transition from immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies, i.e. a mere 10k years ago. But it’s been pretty obvious for quite some time that the “monogamy is natural” model was flawed — see the treatments for “hysteria” a century ago, which are simultaneously hilarious and tragic.)
@10: As a gay man who had a long-term relationship go from a tolerable amount of sex to begging for sex to a sexless 6 month void at the end… I agree, “bed death” is far from limited to lesbians.
Sili@14–Oh, LOL!! I remember that line. I just don’t remember who came up with it. *snortle*
Newsflash, scumbag: Women can get all the sex they want. They can take on numerous men and still keep going.
Or as my friend who tangled with two women said, “I was going and going and going, and then I couldn’t go anymore. Thought I was dead. The women were just warming up.”
Did anyone else think of Roseanne Barr’s line about the differences between men and women when it comes to sex? She said sex is #1 on men’s list of favorite things (although there might be that one guy in the back who says “Power tools!”). However, it’s not even in the top 10 for women, but we still enjoy it more.
You know, MRAs, if you don’t know how true that is–well, there’s your problem with women.
Okay, I’m failing the IQ test here: what are MRAs and PUAs?
FIFY
Men’s Rights Activists and Pick-Up Artists.
Eliot MdD–a PUA is a Pick Up Artist; MRA stands for Men’s Rights Activist, but strangely they often seem more interested in tearing down women than in working for actual men’s rights.
Eliot MdD–a useful website is http://www.urbandictionary.com. It is very useful for odd acronyms and slang expressions.
MRAs: unable to find lesbian porn on the internet. Says it all, really.
*reads some of the quoted posts on manboobz*
I…wha…huh?
People actually believe that stuff? I thought I’d come across some of the more bizarre misogynistic/patriarchy style stuff in anime fandom, but this takes the fucking cake.
Someone in the cartoon “Girls with slingshots” referred to vibrators as “Bob–battery-operated boyfriend.” Which reminds me of the only non-sexist Playboy cartoon–where a guy comes home in the middle of the day saying, “Honey, I was replaced by a little machine.”
In the bedroom his wife is frantically hiding the vibrator.
@#19 Aquaria,
That’s pretty sexist, actually. Claiming that all men are sex-obsessed is roughly the same thing as claiming that women find no joy in sex.
That is, it’s a cultural trope that’s been around for a while, and thinking it makes you ignorant. If you really thought about it, you’d realise it doesn’t even make sense. Men like sex, but our lives would be pretty pathetic if that were our most favorite thing and we had to spend the many necessary hours in between our orgasms doing at the very best our second-favorite thing.
So what do men like better than sex?
Even according to the stereotypes:
Fishing.
Power tools.
Football.
Cars.
Motorcycles.
Booze.
And I’m just getting started. Personally, I’m into video-games. I’ll bet that when VR sex is an option, I’ll be too busy with VR combat to bother.
That’s pretty sexist, actually. Claiming that all men are sex-obsessed is roughly the same thing as claiming that women find no joy in sex.
Having something as a favorite thing doesn’t mean that someone is obsessed with that thing.
Do keep up.
Personally I’m looking forward to combining the two. (Multiplayer, of course.)
Sex isn’t my favorite thing. It’s not even my favorite thing to do with the opposite sex. Then again, I’m weird and avoid male company the way these schmucks avoid women.
Umm… I’m a woman, and I love sex. It feels good, it doesn’t hurt anyone (unless, you know, it’s consensual BDSM stuff), and it’s a natural mood-lifter.
I’m guessing the MRAs are upset because women have, you know, standards, and won’t sleep with pathetic little boys pretending to be men.
“World of Whorecraft” — that was awesome!
So this guy anticipates being in virtual reality, with all the sex he wants available to him, and the thing he figures he will be focusing on then is how much sex the women aren’t having? Because what’s REALLY important to him isn’t actually enjoying all the sex he wants, but instead proving that women are all mercenary bitches who control men by their dicks?
Golly, no clue why he’s alone and lonely —
Like I said over at TET, reminds me of corrective rape in South Africa.
These guys are dangerous and not few enough. All it takes is for a little lawlessness, or a little deniability or hell just a sympathetic cop.
Oh they’re men alright. Self-centered, ego driven bigoted men with zero respect for anyone who isn’t them.
@julian — odd, because they certainly behave like little boys…
I am intrigued. How do they explain women who don’t marry for money?
Oh no, I’m plenty horny, I just want nothing to do with MRA assholes.
@38
They don’t believe they exist, of course.
Well, if I don’t exist…then I don’t have to pay taxes, right? Or obey laws?
WINNING!
Wow. I love that how two women can have sex completely baffles these guys. Really explains a lot about why nobody will go near them.
I have a robot fetish, but goddamn, these assholes remind me of why I tend to avoid the robot fetish communities. I just think cyborgs and androids are cute!
But then, I’m female-assigned, and I assume these guys assume I just wanna hold my lady friend’s hand. I mean, I wanna do that too, but…
But seriously, assholes like this are both scary and dangerous.
What exactly does lesbian porn have to do with real lesbians?
Thread won.
Pete Rooke. (And of course the correction in comment 21 is just that.)
Don’t google for it.
Or, y’know, do. To each their own.
How many little boys do you know?
I mean, I apologize if I’m tearing back the veil here, but…
Somewhat on topic.
There’s this variety of lesbian porn where older lesbians (around 40) seduce younger lesbians (usually late teens.) The body types are almost exclusively of the thin variety but the actual sex seems very intimate (with tons of foreplay) and during the conversations leading to sex they generally appear to be doing realistic things and actually flirting with each other.
Coolest part of it is that there’s much less emphasis on jumping from pose to pose (which is big in most porn) and the film is never cut. You see the entire sexual encounter from start to finish with none of those ridiculous breaks or angling tricks to give the camera a clean view of the penetration.
Almost all of them are around the hour mark and involve very little screaming so I doubt it’d be any MRA’s cup of tea.
Hmmm… as I understand it there has been a good amount of data collected on the topic of sex in long term relationships among sexual minorities since the Schwartz study, and using different questions about sexual practices. The bulk of the evidence points to “bed death” being a problem that is particularly strong in lesbian relationships. There is also good evidence for a sex difference in sex drive, desire for frequency of sex, focus on the physical appearance of the sex partner, and desire for novelty in sex partners.
Generally speaking when talking about social science research it’s a good assumption that researchers have not in fact asserted that a phenomena is restricted to only one group, i.e. the supposed “myth” that has supposedly been debunked. Largely overlapping distributions are the norm, and we describe differences in the extent to which they overlap. If people don’t think understanding how overlapping distributions differ is an interesting question that’s cool, but it’s not a very strong criticism.
“World of Whorecraft” — there’s actually a porn by that name.
Also, sex is no longer my favorite thing. Not having the libido I had at 18 has been a huge relief. HUGE. I can actually think about other things now.
Let me see, women have sex because they want money. I wonder what women had sex for before there was currency.
It is wrong for women to have sex for money. (Never mind that many women have other sources of money,) So why is it not wrong for men to have jobs that gets them money.
Oh. Right. Sex.
Women do not like sex. Except to get money. A woman desiring sex is wrong. Except that women are needed for their holes.
Dammit it all. In their pitch black little world, is it possible for a woman to be a decent person?
Dammit it all.?
You know, I’m really familiar with this MRA group. Demoralizingly. They’re the technology-obsessed, comic book shop, gamer, SCIENCE FICTION MANIAC, sexist, loser-types, and my luck is that I’m perennially reeling them in. Without fail. I smile politely or something, because I’m nice and have no reason to lack courtesy, and they take it for affection. I don’t know, it’s like they didn’t have enough peer pressure growing up or sisters or something so they can’t take a hint and make a joke and light-heartedly resort to being a friend like other guys.
I always feel a little delight when I meet a fellow atheist, because I know I won’t have to eventually do conversational gymnastics and explain I’m not actually the devil incarnate. You know, they’ve been there – I’m encountering a pair of eyes that don’t think I’m off my rocker. But finding it’s an MRA I’m looking at…kills the pleasantness instantaneously.
Inane Janine, OM, Conflater Of Arguments says:
-Dammit it all.?-
Are you sure you don’t mean damitol? (You know, one of those SNL skits that did take offs on real products)
Coming from a woman who likes sex and has been married three times. The first two times to men who were barely making a living wage. So I ended up having to work, whether I wanted to or it was convenient or whatever. The second time I was the breadwinner within 4 years of the marriage. No credit for that it’s just the way it was. What would the MRA brigade make of that?
Yes the third one makes more than me but I would have married him even if he made less. Believe me, the bigger decision here was that he had soon to be teenage sons. The man was worth it and I married him anyway.
What do these MRA’s use for brains. (you really don’t have to answer that)
@benweaver You couldn’t find that clip online? I searched google for “Ray Kurzweil The Daily Show” and the clip is the first suggestion. I must be one of those fuckable, futuristic robots with searching skills like that :)
http://www.singularityweblog.com/ray-kurzweil-at-the-daily-show-with-john-stewart/
> What would the MRA brigade make of that?
You were obviously suppressing your husbands and with female tricks kept them from getting a better paying job so you would have complete control over them.
I don’t think MRAs and PUAs use Macs. It’s too girly/metro an image for them. I’d say windoze for most MRAs, ubuntu or similar for teh gamer/nerd menz, roll your own linux distro for the uber-geekiest subspecies.
@Janine, #49 – bananas? Srsly, they do go there. Evopsych and all.
Speaking of which, have your remarked that sexists clichés tend to exist in some sort of quantum state of mutually exclusive assertions?
Like, say:
• Women are hags who do not enjoy sex and accept to engage in intercourses only for financial gain
• Women are lustful quasi-nymphomaniacal creatures who will always be secretly craving for copulation.
or
•Men are pathetic things with zero stamina congenitaly unable to do better than falling asleep after reaching that paltry shadow of what an orgasm should be
•Men are sex-obsessed rutting dogs who can never take no for an answer, never stop, never aim to do anything else.
or
•Women are frail, weak, fragile creatures who cannot stand on their own without a paragon of virility to protect them.
•Women are evil harpies who will stop at nothing to collectively emasculate men.
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…
***
Someone mentioning the elevatorgate fiasco in three… two… one…
Alethea H. Claw, bananas? Seriously? Why would a woman consent to sex for bananas when it would be easier to get the banana and cut out the middlemanz.
laurentweppe,
Sure they are.
What kind of lame cliché would that be,
“Women usually like sex a lot, although sometimes they are just not in the mood and also, although they need some protection in our society because they have been the victims of abuse, can be strong and assertive.”
I know the feeling. The atheist community was my escape from all the douchebags I have to work with every day. Realizing there’s not much different in how both groups view women and how they respond to women who refuse to take harassment laying down was disappointing, to say the least.
Those people are so very sad. What tragic lives – no love, no companionship, just suspicion and hate and loneliness. Poor lambs.
Rey Fox:
A: more than enough to answer the MRAs’ question about how two women can manage to have sex. In my experience*, pretty much all the options that are popular in RL lesbian sexuality also show up at least moderately often in mainstream ‘lesbian’ porn [excepting maybe trib, which I guess isn’t well suited for visual media], and most of the stuff that appears in mainstream has at least some basis in RL.
If you wanted to make the point that the relative popularity of those options differs somewhat between porn and RL, or that many of the actresses involved are only playing lesbians for the camera – well, both those things are true, but I don’t see that either of them contradicts the point I was making.
*Assumptions would be a bad idea at this point.
Tribadism shows up decently often in drawn Japanese pornography, if you’re into that sort of thing. *cough*
Of course, the list of things that appear in hentai is vast, and…unusual.
This is authentically crazy:
If you see a worldwide conspiracy of gays, secretly serving some kind of Gay Illuminati, you need help.
The “intentionally destroy the birthrate” elevates it from just homophobic to complete paranoid hilarity.
@Lycanthrope:
I’m certain they have, but still think that ‘a damn good fucking’ trumps other forms of sex.
How much porn have you seen that doesn’t involve some kind of penetrative sex, including ‘lesbian’ porn? It exists, but it doesn’t seem to be common. Oral sex (for both sexes) is generally depicted as more ‘sensual’, slower, gentler and – crucially – a warm-up to the ‘main event’ of penetrative sex, which involves screaming and entreaties to deities, giving the clear impression that all sex is fun, but penetrative sex is the acme.
Ergo, according to MRAs, the parts don’t fit because whatever lesbians do can never compare to a damn good fucking, preferably with them.
I suspect that most porn is made primarily for men. I don’t know whether it reflects MRA attitudes or theirs reflect it or both. But it would hardly surprise me if the MRAs and their ilk get their ideas about sex from porn.
“I bet most men get laid..”
Having virtual sex is no more ‘getting laid’ than a direct wank is. And there’s the rub.
I associate misogyny with dude-bro frat types rather than geeks, although from what I understand, the geek scene is a little different on the west coast than flyover territory. It’s more that the ones who are both geek and misogynist usually wear it on their sleeve, as it were, signalling you to avoid them quickly, but that makes them seem more numerous as opposed to the mainstream misogynists, who save it for a time without witnesses.
@Wesley Koster
Not quite. To quote the renowned epistemologist and moral philosopher, Ray Comfort: “Every wank needs a wanker“
Damn. All these years I’ve been doing it all wrong.
All along I’ve been blaming my inability to get laid on MYSELF.
Turns out it’s actually the fault of all the billions of people not fucking me.
LOL, people still think that lesbian porn is actually real!
I have never read an interview where 2 females doing porn were actually lesbians, they always said it’s just more pay for less work.
Also it is a pretty known and researched fact that female homosexuality is completely different than male homosexuality, meaning you can find a LOT of ex lesbians who actually professed their were lesbians but later became completely hetero.
It is really hard to take lesbians seriously.
And I bet it was the ever so awesome and special penis that changed their minds.
My favourite part of that quote was the idea that women would go online to enjoy virtual men with virtual money. Because receiving pixelated gifts paid for with virtual money is just so damn satisfying that it will replace romantic relationships.
julian
That’s not limited to South Africa.
More than one MRA thinks it to be his duty to rape the lesbian out of a woman.
You know, if it’s only the right guy fucking her, she’ll come around and see that she was wrong all those years.*puke*
syggyx
FIFY
Jafafa Hots
And here’s a shiny new internet for you.
@syggyx
Yep, your personal impression of what was revealed in interviews appearing in porn magazines and claims of research results without citation should certainly go down well here.
You’re going to have to do a lot better if you want to be a troll on Pharyngula. We hold trolls to a higher standard here.
@syggyx
You should reevaluate your sources of information. “Peer review” does not mean what you apparently think it means.
And all those straight people who at some point come out as gay! After hearing about that over and over again, I can’t take straight people seriously.
Especially myself, I don’t take myself seriously at all.
Janine, you’re right. I should have said “chunk o’mammoth”. We gurlz are mere gatherers, so we can get our own bananas, and live a terrible horrible no good very sad vegetarian life unless we can persuade a Real Man to give us meatz.
O wait, is syggyx NOT doing a fellow blatant over-the-top poe here? *lolbarf*
Look, MRA scum aside, if holodecks were real I’d just stay there forever.
I mean I wouldn’t be having sex ALL the time, because there’s only so much a person’s genitals can take. Gotta refuel the tanks, you know.
Seriously though, think about it. Ever have a crush on a fictional character? Guess what the holodeck can bring to life?
Just think of the horrible fanfiction made reality. Or don’t. Because I just did and now I regret it. Have you actually read any fanfiction? Because I have. And some of it is like what hell would be.
Or you could have a holodeck where you get your own battlecat and fight Skeletor. I mean it could do ANYTHING. The problem with the Star Trek crew was clearly that they didn’t grow up with movies and cartoons, or Riker would be like, “hey guys if you need me I’ll be in the holodeck BEING A WIZARD. Spoiler alert: I kill Voldemort!”
However I’m not sure why you’d “use VR men for his virtual money” when it’s like, why not just HAVE virtual money. Unless you enjoy heist fantasies like Ocean’s Eleven or something maybe? I mean if you want to just pretend you’re richer than Croesus it’d be pretty easy, just program it so you live in a palace made of platinum or whatever.
In conclusion, these MRA shitheads are too unimaginative to deserve a holodeck and should stick with a vaseline’d tube sock and five minute sample clips of internet porn. If that is ALL you can imagine using serious virtual reality for, you definitely do not deserve any holodeck reservation time.
Imaginary, hm? Somehow, I don’t feel myself disappearing in a puff of logic. Strange…
Female sexuality is more fluid in our culture than male. I’m skeptical of whether this is actually because female sexuality is truly more fluid. Male homosexual behavior is so stigmatized in our culture and masculinity is so rigid that it’s impossible to know if male sexuality really is less fluid than female.
There are plenty of women who identified as lesbian earlier in life who are now in heterosexual relationships and probably even more who identifies as straight when younger who are now in lesbian relationships as that has become more acceptable in our culture. Neither fact makes lesbians any more or less credible, people grow and change throughout their lives and that includes their expression of their sexuality.
@Alukonis
Ah escapism. Sadly my imagination is very weak. Most I could dream up is the boxing scenario from Voyager or the fights Worf did in TNG.
A Holodeck would be wasted on me.
@julian
My holodeck trips would probably end up like Rimmer’s visit to the fantasy planet in Red Dwarf: I’d be unable to let myself have a good time.
Noadi,
I am pretty sure that the perceived small fluidity of male sexuality is also due to stigma, i.e. that in a different environment, men in general would be more interested in experimentation than they are now. Imagine there were no stigma attached at all to same-sex experiences, and a guy could just think – hey, I would like some penis! without automatically being afraid of a whole list of things. There were after all societies like ancient greece where that was more common. I know that what they had back then is not exactly the model for what we would consider acceptable today, especially the uneven relationships that apparently were the norm then between older mentors and younger “apprentices”, but it nevertheless seems to prove the point. Since there is also a stigma associated to female same-sex contacts, I don’t know if this can account for the perceived greater fluidity of female sexuality, though.
@Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis: Yes, there is still a stigma attached to lesbianism but it is not as strong as the stigma towards gay men. I’m not trying to say that lesbians aren’t still faced with a lot of discrimination but that the popular view of lesbians isn’t as virulent as towards gay men. Lesbians are confused and just need the “mighty penis” to fix them whereas gay men are either predators or effeminate traitors to masculinity. Both views are damaging of course but I think the psychological pressure on men against any same-sex experimentation is probably stronger.
@julian – more holodeck time for me, then! Hahaha!
As for female sexual fluidity, I think that a good chunk of that is that women are encouraged to experiment. Because men find it arousing. I mean, there’s this whole thing with straight women kissing each other to attract male attention, and it’s somehow considered okay if that’s why you’re doing it. Except then women get non-hetero experience and maybe think “hey, this is not so bad right here.” There is a certain (probably growing) subculture that is okay with fooling around like that, and while many participants are mostly straight, there’s probably quite a few who realize they are not totally straight via such activities.
On the other hand, men are not given the cultural nod to entice women in an analogous way, so they probably get fewer opportunities to be exposed to it. After all, with some things, you may not realize you like it until you try it.
By the way, as a disclaimer, I think women kissing each other when they don’t actually like it at all, just to attract male attention, should not be encouraged. People should not be pressured to do things that make them uncomfortable just because they’re afraid that they won’t get a date or whatever. It’s too close to the “sleep with me or I’ll dump you” line of thought.
Actually, the way you put it here, it doesn’t really sound like lesbians have it any easier. You have to realize that “just need the “mighty penis” to fix them” actually means anythig from verbal harassment to threats of rape to acual rape.
They point may be that when women kiss each other, men think it is hot, whereas when men kiss, men for the most part think it is repulsive. While women may perceive this differently, in a society still strongly influenced by the patriarchy (TM), it is most important what those think who wield most power, who define what is acceptable.
I know very little about greek history but might that explain why gay male relationships were so popular regardless of sexual orientation? The powers that be had (for whatever reason) deamed young men to be ‘hot,’ therefore everyone wanted to sleep with a young man.
Or did I just say something very stereotypical?
julian
I’m thinking about chocolate. Probably bathing in it. Maybe bathing in it while having sex. And no matter how messi it gets, the chocolate vanishes once you turn the thing off…
*blink*
Oh, sorry, what were we talking about?
julian,
I’m not sure whether Plato is an unbiased source there, but for example in the Symposium it reads like they really had serious man-crushes on each other ;)
@Alex
Plato’s who I was thinking about. It seemed like he couldn’t start an exchange without the speaker pausing so he could admire some young protege or wax about the flame growing underneath his robe.
Hmm.
The fact this guy seems to think that whipping it out and shoving it in is the be-all and end-all of satisfying a woman may be one reason why he’s not all that popular with them. Even if sexual satisfaction could only be achieved by a woman through penetrative sex, as he seems to think, then I guess he’s never heard of a strapon.
I don’t remember it as quite as platitudinous or one-sided as you describe it. There’s this one drunk indignant guy crashing the party to complain about how he once was in Bed with Sokrates the entire night and nothing happened. A lot of fun all around. So it’s not all dirty old men phantasizing about young boys.
Years ago, I was listening to a “shock jock” type radio station, and one of several hosts suggested that any measure of homosexual activity makes a man a gay man* forever, unlike in the case of women. I’m not saying that it was a serious thought seriously advanced; after all, it wasn’t talk radio. It was shtick, even if shtick with a constant rightwing bent.
But still, I think it was a significant expression of the certain set of twin stigmas that’s being discussed in this thread. One side is meaningless, the other is an all or nothing, permanent mark. Both are demeaning notions in diametrally opposed ways.
*I don’t recall if he simply used gay as a slur, or used a different, more unambiguous slur.
Zmidponk,
He gets so many things wrong. First of all, no serious computer which is asked to calculate infinity gets stuck in an infinite loop. Usually, they just say NAN or stack overflow, and get on with their lives.
As for the tropes and memes about men, women and sexuality:
As contradictory as they are, they have all one thing in common:
They always go XXX, therefore women…
Men are uncontrollably horny, therefore women must wear bedsheets.
Women are nymphomanicas, therefore they have to be locked in the house.
Women don’t enjoy sex, therefore they’re whores.
Women need penetrative sex, therefore men are right to give it to them, even if they are saying no.
I also have a problem I don’t know how to solve: If I’m going to have sex all with myself, who’s paying then?
Considering all Mac users are gay, World of Whorecraft wouldn’t sell too well.
Just a note re: man-crushes and the disapproval of male-on-male sexuality, by males.
Bromance. I mean seriously I know quite a few men (young or old) who engage in semi-homo-erotic friendliness, including shoulder slapping, hugging, praising each other’s sexuality, manliness and being flirty together. There’s a very fine line between this and a kind of fluid not-100% hetero sexuality, and that line is I think culturally decided – man-kissing is bad, touching genitals or thighs is bad, behaving efeminately is bad(although in many cases hinting at homoeroticism “as a big joke” is ok).
Anyway just my thoughts. Oh and I have a kind of male friend like that myself btw, while not actually liking penis at all (except mine).
@=8)-DX
Look deep into your soul, are you absolutely 100% sure? :-D
We’ve got one of those crazy people here in the form of syggyx now? Cool. And he cites interviews with porn stars as his source of counter-argument? Cooler.
I’m going to study human sexuality by buying up a bunch of back issues of Penthouse Forum, too. Those things are totally real and honest.
Hm, I could pretend reading fanfiction is a scientific study from which I can draw the conclusion that being gay is the next coolest thing after being a wizard. I’m sure fanfic writers are a good representative sample of the general population.
One more grotesque float in the “It can’t get stupider than ________ parade.”
Oh my God, women who doesn’t need penises! What a threatening idea! No! I’m not listening! LALALALALALALA!
Dumbasses.
Manboobz is just exactly like FSTDT. Hilarious! Horrific! It’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping.
On the other hand, as a heterosexual woman, if I were ever to engage in making porn, and I had the choice between acting as if I enjoyed being a stage-prop for the man to stick his peepee into, or an active part of what is going on with somebody who probably has a bit more experiences about how the female body works, I think I knew what to chose.
@Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis
There’s a much easier way to check that out than “looking deep into my soul”. Porn with women – turnon. Porn with men – turnoff. Thinking of women – turnon. Thinking of men – turnoff.
Believe you me, if it was different I would be the first to leap to the possibility of annoying my fundie Catholic parents with something else than mere atheism.
So I’ll have to side with the lesbians on this one – I don’t think penis is necessary, rather accessory.
As a connoisseur of logical fallacies, I have to admire this spectacular example of affirming the consequent:
Premise 1: If all women were uninterested in sex, then all women would be uninterested in sex with me.
Premise 2: All women are uninterested in sex with me.
Conclusion: All women are uninterested in sex.
It’s nice to see a decent formal fallacy every now and then. The endless mixture of bare assertions and non-sequiturs gets boring after a while.
Said the same thing.
Then I stumbled upon some hentai where a futa screwed a bishounen… still don’t think I’m bi though.
Oh shit, I’m not a man after all! What the heck do I do now ?
@julian,
You stumbled what upon what what? I don’t know what any of those mean, but I’m sure it’s really, really hot ;)
@=8)-DX
I can relate, though looking at some of our primate brethren I begin to wonder whether this is not negative conditioning rather than a default lack of interest.
@sumdum
Me neither! Is there a self-help group or something?
Perpetuating the idea that women don’t like to have sex is furthering a meme that will mean some women will feel ashamed to want sex. And that’s just bad for men that women would want to have sex with. You know, non MRAs. But their egos just have to be that much more important than the happiness of others. Grrr.
Well, as long as you skip all the ones that deal with girl on girl, yeah.
Zugzwang,
since we’re on Pharyngula, I dare to be so a**l and point out that that is illegal anyways.
Goldenfetus, brain dead MRA
I demand to know who my elite master are! I am not getting enough attention or approval for ‘destroying the birthrate’. There must be a way to lodge a complaint once I know who it is I serve. I demand these rewards!
*cough* five pages of NSFW webcomic, start here:
http://oglaf.com/snowbound/
Honestly, an open-minded horny geek could learn a lot from Oglaf.
@Alex:
Futa – woman with a penis, not a transgender tho, those are different
Bishounen – lit. pretty man
@Alex
hentai: Anime/Manga porn, generally refers to those from japan.
Futa: girl/woman w/ penis.
Bishounen: Pretty boy/man
@Alex: “Is there a self-help group or something?”
Well this is a self-hate group, is that close enough? (This is clearly a self-hate group, as there are men here agreeing with all the misandrist feminazis).
@Thomathy: Wait, you weren’t invited to the meetings of the International Gay Conspiracy (you know, the one that sets the Gay Agenda)? I feel a bit less paranoid now – I thought they just weren’t inviting me because I’m straight.
Pft. I recognize this tactic. He just wants a nice lesbian couple to masturbate several times a day in front of him to prove him wrong.
Creep.
Wow. Just… wow.
The lack of self awareness is just astounding.
So… I like sex.. why shouldn’t someone else? Part of the whole fun is that someone else is having fun too.
That said.. there are plenty of things I like as much, or even more, than sex. Things that like are mutable, depending on my mood. Got hold of a nearly complete collection of classic battletech novels, does it make me odd that reading is now number 1? Or working on my portfolio?
I don’t understand the MRA crowd. Instead of actually addressing real issues, they invent ones they perceive because they can’t view women as real people? How about fighting the stigma of being a stay at home dad? With the added difficulty that if the woman is the main breadwinner, that she’s likely to be making a lot less than a man in the same job? No.. that’d involve admitting that inequality exists, and it’s not them who are being oppressed or disadvantaged.
Tangent On cyborg and robot fetish. When I was about 8, I was paralyzed from the waist down. Just woke up one morning and couldn’t walk. Mom moved the tv into my room and my sister and I watched old Dr. Who eps on CBC. Just so happened that there was a few eps about Cybermen. I thought ‘They’re supposed to be villains? New body, unbroken and fixable/replace-able? Sign me up.
“I’m a princess! A pretty princess!”
@Khantron, the alien that only loves:
…is a staple of many, many sitcoms, which I find troubling.
What’s the joke? They include so many tropes that it’s hard to tell:
* Women hate sex
* Men constantly beg for sex
* Men frequently try to manipulate women to get sex
* Women often punish men by withholding sex
* Men feel that sex is a reward or entitlement for working for a living
* Men feel that sex is a reward or entitlement for doing something ‘nice’, which usually means his not being a dick
* Women feel that sex is an appropriate reward for things like that
* Men feel that they’re being trained by women with the lure of sex
* Women and men want different things from sex, which apparently confounds men
* Men have no difficulty talking to any other character about the fact that their wife doesn’t constantly want to have sex with them, indicating that it’s ‘her problem’
* The woman does the housework, regardless of who has a job
* The man is ‘hilariously’ bad at housework
* The woman is under constant pressure to give up work
And so on. My advice is not to try a drinking game with these tropes while you’re watching Everyone Loves Raymond, for example.
@Latsot
But… but…
Getting my stomach pumped is the perfect end to an evening!
Thanks for the explanations! Now who wouldn’t like that…
@JDG
Yeah, I play to lose too :)
@latsot
My liver aches just thinking about it.
@Khantron
Remember: The liver is evil and must be punished.
@Khantron
Perhaps we should stick to bingo instead.
But the prizes would be booze, right?
Wow. Gay Agenda Conspiracy!
Now if someone would just say ‘Won’t someone think of the poor men!” or ‘She was asking for it!’ then I’ll have a line in ‘Internet Asshole Bingo’
At least then there would be a chance of someone remembering the night.
My last comment was supposed to be addressed to latsot.
@Khantron:
Which somehow makes it even more sinister, nice sounds.
One thing I hate about these people saying (“spewing” would probably be a better word here) that all women hate sex is that it implies all members of a given gender have the same attitudes towards sex. As a man who is, frankly, terrified of the idea of sex, it implies I don’t qualify as a man.
I’m sure these idiots would say that I DON’T in fact qualify as a man, but I’m pretty sure my general point is still valid.
On a side note: The idea that women hate sex is, from my experience, ludicrous. I’ve had two relationships in which my partner, after a while, outright DEMANDED I have sex with them, and I am not a particularly attractive man. Which makes me wonder, if someone who actively avoids sex can still clusterfuck himself into having sex on multiple occasions, what the hell are these guys doing so wrong that they’re not getting laid?
@Alt+3
Now that seems pretty obvious in hindsight. I am sure women (anyone, really) appreciates it greatly if one does not take relationship advice from Zapp Brannigan.
I think perhaps we have a different definition of what a ‘man’ is than they do.
And perhaps that’s part of the tragedy, how they hurt and stifle themselves by attempting to oppress others. All the while viewing the push against that oppression as oppression on them.
@ALex:
“Would you like some sham-pag-nee?”
I never understood that oh-so-earnest “the parts don’t fit!” argument. Just how ignorant are these people? How have you never heard of, say, oral sex?
…And that’s just one of the many reasons women don’t want to sleep with these guys.
Katherine,
No. And it’s pronounced /ˌʃæmˈpeɪn/
Marcus Hill, it’s one reason. Perhaps I haven’t been gay enough? Nothing explains it otherwise. I’m wondering if these gay elite masters are analogous to Myers, Dawkins or Hitchens as the heads of atheism? Like, is one of the elite masters Dan Savage? I don’t know if I’d be comfortable having him as a master, never mind as an elite master. Maybe that’s why I’m being excluded from getting the rewards I’m supposed to be getting for slowing the birthrate?
All I want are answers! These are important questions! Surely, there’s an MRA who can answer them? They’re more knowledgeable about the gay conspiracy than I am.
Every time someone says the “parts don’t fit” or something of the sort I think of this video from John Corvino.
Thomathy,
People outside of conspiracy ever know more than those who are involved. It’s a necessary truth.
Thomathy,
Do not put the Gaylord, your God, to the test!
Isn’t destroying the sperm count, eh I mean, the birth rate, reward enough?
In the wake of the invention of the Holodeck the endemic lack of imagination of the casual consumer became strikingly obvious. The resulting panic almost caused a societal collapse until a new group of elites, a new ruling class came to power. They were the story tellers. They were called the Game Masters. Mankind by turning control of their fantasies over to them, turned over control of everything to them. Now Earth has returned from it’s industrial grays and blacks back into a green planet; as mankind sleeps deep under the crust in their pleasure bunkers. They sleep buried deep beneath the earth while their masters walk upon their graves.
I <3 manboobz. Especially the recent post where some dude goes on and on about how women are just toilets for male incontinence (semen). It is something radical feminists have said about the mindset of a typical dude for fucking years, only to be called hysterical upon pointing it out. Manboobz is perfect proof that yes, men do think shit like that, and that they get together in groups and high five each other over it. Hell, there is a big fucking MRA group that meets IRL here in utah, but no feminist groups to speak of. It is fucking crazy.
I don't think any lesbians are shocked over the content of the manboobz post- if they have even a passing familiarity with "lesbian" porn they know that dudes think all sex is dudesex.
@Alex:
♥
@Skeptifem
Let’s not forget though that there are lesbians who do like what some might call “Dude sex”, including penetration or…how can I phrase this…phallus oriented oral sex. Just throwing that out so we don’t get into the “you’re not a real lesbian” bullshit.
The Gay Conspiracy is stalled due to an ongoing competing secret society of the Billuminati
Inane Janine (#49):
Look up Owen Lovejoy. His explanation for bipedality was that early protohuman males carried meat to protohuman females in exchange for sex. Protohuman females evolved hidden ovulation and constant availability to increase their protein supply, protohuman males increased meat-carrying trips.
Do these people know how sad and pathetic they sound?
I think a shitload of them have cluster B personality disorders (namely narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, both are more common in men). People like that either lack insight to such an extent that they cannot contemplate their being wrong or they think right and wrong are made up things that only fools care about. The mark of such people is that they regularly hurt others and then pretend to be victimized by the people they hurt. It has been one of the research topics I have really gotten into this year so that may be affecting my judgement, but once you are familiar with the pattern it is amazing how quickly you can recognize these people in society. The contours of their psyches are so alien to people with insight and morals that good people will often have difficulty drawing an accurate conclusion about these toxic people.
Esteleth,
Except that they do believe you exist, they just think they know you better than you know yourself.
___
Sili,
Groupsex?
___
That’s just a problem of what he thought going had to mean.
___
Geoffrey Brent,
When one considers that the vast majority of that doesn’t feature lesbians having sex, well, I can kind of forgive them for finding confusion when they try to learn from mainstream porn.
___
WMDKitty,
I see the question has been rasied, but seriously they may behave like stunted adults, but that’s not really the same thing as little boys. Go with menz or doodz around here and you will get less flack.
___
Wesley Koster,
Clever.
___
syggyx,
So because an industry devoted to inaccurate depictions of sexuality doesn’t show how lesbians actually relate and because some women are plastic enough in their sexuality to identify as lesbian for a period and hetero later in life all of the women who do find other women attractive and fulfilling aren’t worth taking seriously? Standards, how the hell do those things work, eh?
___
Err, isn’t that sort of the cure though?
___
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis,
Thanks for that too.
___
Marcus Hill,
I would direct you upthread, as I know the point was made that we don’t hate men, we hate assholes. They are not the same thing.
Alex:
Thread won. *swoon!*
#148
I’m pretty sure someone could just as easily make the argument that the reason our distant female ancestors eventually dropped the whole “external genital-area swelling up like a nightmare balloon during estrus”-thing was because walking upright with something like that would be a goddamn pain in the ass.
No pun intended.
ouch!
ouch!
My eye-rolling muscles!
Sili says:
I guess noöne wants to make sex to Linux – who knows where it’s been.
Sex is like software. It’s better if it’s free and done for love.
Yeah, I’ve had lesbian sex with plenty of women, and never once encountered one who got off by sucking on a dildo (which is a staple of faux-lesbian porn)
Well, I have a damned hard time of it too! REAL lesbian sex, that is. And trust me, I’ve spent plenty of time looking ;-) The fake stuff is SO RIDICULOUSLY fake, it is a total turnoff. I have a small cherished collection of video where the women are actually sexually aroused, and and even smaller number where one of them has a real orgasm. And, wow, do I ever get turned on by that! (what would the MRAs make of a lesbian who does like visual porn at all, I wonder? I must be extra-nonexistent!)
It’s so completely obvious (to me at least) whether there’s any true arousal or orgasm, that it is apparent that the *women’s* enjoyment is utterly irrelevant to whether guys find the porn arousing. They couldn’t care less whether the women are truly into it. But since I obviously identify with the women in the scene, their enjoyment is actually kind of necessary for me to find it arousing.
Also, when a women actually does come, she tends to forget to stay positioned for optimal camera angles. And she needs a few moments of recovery time before jumping right into the next activity. So I’m sure it’s “easier” for the men making/watching the porn if the women are just play-acting.
I know very little about greek history but might that explain why gay male relationships were so popular regardless of sexual orientation? The powers that be had (for whatever reason) deamed young men to be ‘hot,’ therefore everyone wanted to sleep with a young man.
Passivity and servility were not honorable in Hellenistic and Greco-Roman culture, and all passions, especially the romantic, were passive, in that one was not master of oneself. Sex with young men was considered “safer” in that the passions beyond the urge to immediate sexual gratification were less in danger of becoming inflamed. We hear a lot in the sources of men who doted on a young man, of course; we hear so much about it precisely because it was considered scandalously servile and unbecoming for a free man to be mastered by base passions in this way.
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis #75
Huh. My urologist said the same thing just last week.
That whole thing about Gay Overlords sounds pretty much exactly like the sort of stuff spouted by the likes of Michelle Bachmann about birth control. It’s the obsession with fertility. There’s some undefined-but-evil them that is trying to reduce our numbers to the point that…
…?…
PROFIT!
FTFY
@Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart OM, liar and scoundrel
:)
as long as we’re on topic, the most heartbreaking goodbye in the history of robot romance:
Bender: I can’t live without you. If you let go, I let go!
Countess: No! You have too much to live for. It may hurt for a while but one day you’ll share your love again. After all, it’s shareware.
Don’t like futae, love strapons. And I’m pretty sure I’m bi(ish). Not bish, though.
Still a refreshing change of pace, I have to say.
The bulk of the evidence points to “bed death” being a problem that is particularly strong in lesbian relationships.
That is my understanding as well. Some other related research:
Lisa Diamond, a newly prominent sexologist of Chivers’s generation, looks at women’s erotic drives in a different way… Among the women in her group who called themselves lesbian, to take one bit of the evidence she assembles to back her ideas, just one-third reported attraction solely to women as her research unfolded. And with the other two-thirds, the explanation for their periodic attraction to men was not a cultural pressure to conform but rather a genuine desire…
Perhaps misogyny isn’t the only reason men have trouble believing that lesbian self-identification implies exclusive sexual attraction to women.
Jadehawk says:
Seriously? I’d never noticed the misspelling.
I deliberately made the change to “any” to stress the universality of these fuckers’ hatred of female pleasure, but now I see how that destroyed the raisin date of the quote.
Lesbian has the implication that I WANT a relationship with another woman.
It’s a great annoyance that someone who is in a RELATIONSHIP with another woman will have trouble if she identifies as bisexual. There’s an inherent bias that a lesbian couple can be committed by a bisexual with another woman is just someone having a fling. To be taken seriously people round up to the lifestyle they are living at the time.
Fun fact, there are TONS of bisexuals who are identifying as heterosexual.
“but a”* not “by a”*
Oh, Alex, don’t get me started on Futurama quotes. Needdless to say my reaction to the Manboobz post is:
I don’t hate nitpicking, so I’ll just out and say that your anecdote constitutes a very poor sample size. Dan Savage recently had a caller who asked if she could find other lesbians who were into sucking on a dildo, and if any could get off on it. She really enjoyed strap-on sucking and sex. Another caller commented that there were in fact and that she had a partner who orgasmed from getting her strap-on sucked. Apparently, these women can be found all over the place -thanks Craigslist. Another anecdote, but it proves the exception to your experience.
I don’t doubt that it’s a staple of faux-lesbian porn, but I wouldn’t knock it as it seems lesbians actually engage in that kind of play and enjoy it. And I can’t imagine why there wouldn’t be considering that people are into all kinds of wackier things when it comes to getting off. (Not that dildos are wacky …okay, some look pretty wacky.)
#165:
Of course, that also highlights the silliness of defining sexual preference by such immovable and discrete categories. As if we also strongly identified our sexual preferences by any other myriad demographics that may influence our choice of sexual partners, or that these attractions are set in stone, inflexible to change over time (mind you, I’m not implying it is a conscious choice).
I, of course, am the exception, and will only have relationships with female Congalese public defense attorneys. Though I am bisexual when it comes to having a family history of vitiligo.
Ing @ 165,
Well, yeah. People round up, lie or are honest about the labels they apply to themselves all time, for a variety of reasons. The language to use for that sort of thing is noun+identified+noun+noun.
For example, straight-identified bisexual man. Or, lesbian-identified trans-woman.
I myself am I gay-identified gay man. I know some bisexual-identified gay men. They’re reason for identifying as such is either part of their transition to being fully out (quite common) or because they think it’s more socially acceptable.
Anyhow, I’m not saying that there isn’t a problem with the fact that to be taken seriously those women need to identify as lesbian (because it is, clearly, a problem), I’m pointing out the language that can be used and the obvious fact that everyone has a reason for so choosing their label. I mean, it’s reasonable to think that there is a bisexual woman out there in a relationship with another woman who identifies as lesbian because she feels more lesbian than straight. I think bisexuals often make distinctions like that based on their feelings.
I think it’s not something often discussed (it may be discouraged in the gay community, actually), but with sexuality being more fluid than not, our labels are to some extent rather more convenient than entirely accurate for a plethora of reasons.
If you want something that portrays realistic lesbian relationships, or accurately represents emotion etc, then sure, the Internet is not likely to meet that need.
OTOH, if you’re a MRA who sincerely* wants to answer the question “how can two women have sex” – which was the context of my comment – then that’s a much lower bar and googling ‘lesbian porn’ will provide all the information needed.
*I know, I know.
Ayup. I remember a female acquaintance’s reaction to a fluffy-bunny assertion that lesbian sex is “inherently egalitarian because it’s non-penetrative”. “Ahahaha! Better not let them see Aveline’s toy collection!”
Different people enjoy different things. Individual experience is not a good way to cover the full range; even if you know a LOT of different people, selection effects tend to make them non-representative.
I do not know about robot sex or virtual sex via computers but I would bet that as soon as that becomes really possible it would be a short step to develop a technology or an application that would be able to directly access the pleasure centers of the brain bypassing all the physical body parts all together and to do so without having to penetrate the skin at all. By using some kind of magnetic field effects possibly. it would probably “cure” drug addiction.
some one reminded me above of Technopriests by Alejandro Jodorowsky
uncle frogy
uncle frogy,
anything like that which works so specific, can be dialed to arbitrary strength, while circumventing the “normal” sensory pathways, I am positive will lead to addiction rather than cure other ones. Of course, there is a difference to substance abuse, but that may be smaller than one thinks.
Will it be horrible or funny when the virtual-robo fleshlights malfunction and get stuck in a perpetual loop leaving their operator to starve to death?
Mick
I don’t know what the hell you are talking about, but I’ll go with “horrible” just to be on the safe side.
blah blah blah. There are people who are into anything you can name. If the majority of lesbians were into the shit in porn then they would be buying it too, wouldn’t they? The people buying the porn are misogynistic men. They walk around expecting lesbians to put on sex shows for them because they figure lesbian sex only exists to turn men on. It isn’t unreasonable to see that a generalization can be made about lesbian attitudes towards lesbian porn produced by men, especially if you seek out lesbian opinion on things like pornography.
Dhorvath @151
No need, my tongue was as firmly in my cheek in the first part of my post @118 as the second where I whine about not being included in the Gay Conspiracy because I’m straight!
Marcus,
My apologies then, I missed that bit. You have, I believe, poed me.
skeptifem,
I’m not disputing anything you say, but that
sounds like an unfair generalization. I’d say misogynistic men see faux lesbian porn and project whatever preconceptions they have about women/lesbians onto it. Non-misogynistic men possibly buy faux lesbian porn merely because they are aroused by it, and may take away some wrong ideas from it, but that does not make them misogynistic. But I may be wrong…
Alex,
If men are taking an idea about how women behave for male benefit away from a product that is incorrect or at best incomplete how are they insuring that they don’t thereby put pressure on women to behave in manners that are solely for male benefit. How do they know the difference? Misogyny is deeper than just active dislike for women.
Why so? Somebody can enjoy an activity IRL and still have minimal interest in watching others do that same activity on screen, ESPECIALLY when non-visual senses are a big part of the fun.
@78 and subsequent remarks.
There is some bad fan fiction. There is a lot of mediocre fan fiction. There is fan fiction that is truly brilliant. Sturgeon’s Law applies: you have to wade through a certain amount of crap to get to the treasures.
And there are treasures. Yes, there are. You have to remember that fan fiction is like seeing a movie star in real life on the way to the grocery store–no makeup, crappy clothes, etc. Fan fiction is written and published, often a chapter at a time, with non-professional people to edit it, or not edited at all. Of course it isn’t as polished as what you buy for light reading at the book store. It is, however, much cheaper, and often shows quite a bit more creativity than either most light fiction that actually gets paid for or the stories originally written for the show (assuming we are talking TV here). In fact, though I am not a Harry Potter fan fiction fan, the one or two I have read were miles above the original in terms of both plot and writing. Not that that is all that hard.
Sorry. I know this is OT, but I think a sneer at fan fiction deserves a response.
@Dhorvath, OM
Fair point. But really simple to resolve – ask the woman what she enjoys and what not so much. If that requirement is met, everything else is a matter of negotiation.
Alex,
I would love to think that your idea works. Sadly I have encountered a lot of people for whom it’s easier to assume the cultural scripts they are presented with are truthful than to bother learning how individuals work. For instance we belong to a subculture where female bisexuality is often encountered and largely encouraged as well, it took some effort on our part to distinguish, at least to some level the difference between what was there due to expectation and what was there due to curiousity. Sadly, not everyone has put that degree of thought into it and we end up with encounters that don’t pan out, the porn narrative was all the attraction that was considered and things just taper. Not every grouping is able to move past these things in an easy and fluid fashion, we have just been lucky.
@Dhorvath, OM
Yes, you’re probably right. Not sure how this relates to the original remark by skeptifem which I “criticized”. Unfortunately I am too tired to think intelligently about this right now, GOTO bed :)
Why the hell do people insist on seeing penetration as non-egalitarian, anyway? Don’t guests and hosts each have their own set of duties and responsibilities?
That’s rather a broad brush, isn’t it? I think it’s kind of problematic to dehumanize (by denying the existence of) portions of already-marginalized groups merely because their experiences don’t fit well with the overarching narrative you personally find emotionally satisfying, so I really hope it only LOOKS like that’s what you’re doing here…
Alex,
Most of what I related was an attempt to put a background example in place. When you suggested that a non misogynist man could just take an incorrect idea away from porn, what I was trying to exhibit is that doing so, taking that incorrect idea away is a problem and as such is a misogynist action. Your notion of non-misogynist is feeling ephemeral.
In any event, have a good sleep, I may be confused as well, home sick and sore.
Certainly.
I would use all my holodeck time as a voyeur rather than a participant.
I love that.
FIFY. See comment 107.
Well, I can tell you what I‘m doing wrong: I simply don’t know enough people. But somehow I don’t think that’s the case for most of “these guys”. They know plenty of people, they just ignore them.
O hai! I found this internetz lying around and thought maybe you lost it.
The goggles, they do nothing!
Full of win.
Alex
I was referring to the early claim I had heard of that Heroin was cure for morphine addiction as was methadone once also touted hence the quotations marks ” ”
it would probably be the worst one of all
uncle frogy
[OT]
@otrame
I didn’t mean to bash all fanfiction, I thought I had enough qualifiers with the “some fanfiction is what hell would be.” So, my bad on that one, I should have been more clear.
But yes you’re right, hell just look at the Star Wars expanded universe. And I’m not about to pretend I’ve never enjoyed slashfic, even the “crack” stuff with completely ridiculous pairings.
But on the other hand, I used to hang out at a fanfiction sporking community, and wow are there some real treasures of shitty writing out there. I mean there was this one that was… you know what, let’s just not even go there.
But if you want some lulz try My Immortal, read aloud. It’s so awful it’s hilarious.
@193
Oh, there is some awful stuff. I usually know within a paragraph or two if it worth going on. I also think that some fandoms tend to attract younger writers with less practice at writing anything and very little experience in real life. Those can be painful. But then, all writers have to start somewhere.
I am now imagining Ernest Hemingway writing incredibly shitty Holmes/Watson fanfic as a child.
Why that popped into my head, I don’t know, but LOL
Hey what’s wrong with Star Wars EU? There’s some good stuff there, especially in comics.
Do you draw any distinction between “misogynistic” and “sexist?”
Sure, sexist is an action which operates to perpetuate the gender disparity in modern society, misogynist is an action which performs sexism by acting to diminish the rights or agency of women. One refers to the cultural system that it upholds, the other to the group put down, much as someone can be racist and anti-black. There is a great deal of overlap, but the words serve different purposes.
No no, pelamun, I was using Star Wars EU as an example of GOOD fanfiction. I was saying otrame was right about there being some awesome fanfic out there. Similarly I was saying that even the more fringe fanfic, like the slash and “crackfic,” can be good.
Please do not throw me to the sarlaac!
I love that a thread about the existence of lesbians and lesbian sex has evolved into a discussion about good fanfic.
There is so, so, so much derp involved whenever the MRAs get to talking about gay women. Even once they get past the whole “they don’t exist because no woman can do without mansausage hurrr!” thing, it’s like, they still define it by what people do with each other.
Being a lesbian is about natural and exclusive love of other women. Period. The sex is incidental. You love another woman, and you two figure out what each of you likes, and do it. Sex develops from the relationship and who the two of you are…and isn’t it like that for straight couples and m/m pairs too?
I have yet to read my Hemmingways, but I understand his style is easy to imitate, so doing H/W in the style of H shouldn’t be hard. Just ask one of the prompt communities.
Mick #175
I take it you’ve never seen the 1983 movie Brainstorm then?
Romance was never Hemmingway’s strength (nor was female characters….surprise. shock. denial) so his slash must have been epically bad.
oh I dunno, Hemingway’s stilted-prose manly-man gay slash would’ve been awesome…
Somewhat off topic, and I apologize in advance for my long-windedness.
I thought it was interesting how Thomathy (@Comment 168) was quick to proclaim that lesbians who aren’t aroused by sucking dildos are “a very poor sample size”, which I interpreted (perhaps incorrectly) that the majority of lesbians (excluding bisexuals) actually are aroused by phallic objects.
On the other hand, I found some interesting polls on several high-traffic lesbian community sites a while back. According to those polls, a majority of participants who identify as lesbians said they found gay male pornography extremely arousing, even though they wouldn’t dream of having sex with the men themselves.
Only a handful of respondents said that they had zero sexual interest in male organs, or found them physically repulsive, even though they were not misandrist (I recall that one said they found the male form “beautiful”, but just not in a sexual way).
In contrast, the numerous gay community sites I googled (out of curiosity, to see if there was a similar quirk in men identifying as gay) were pretty much uniform in their absolute physical lack of interest (or their repulsion) towards women. I also found quite a few of them using very nasty and xenophobic slangs/descriptions of women and female physiology.
So is male and female homosexuality is vastly different to the core then, with male homosexuality permanently fixed/one-sided and female homosexuality fluid/uncertain, like someone mentioned much earlier in the thread? With lesbians likely to turn bisexual (or even heterosexual), while gays remaining gays for the rest of their life? I guess this implies that there’s a good likelihood any lesbian may still change to desire (or even need) a man at some point in her life, while gays will always want/need only men.
I…..read the comments and need a reboot. Go to: happy place.
Dildos and butt plugs and feeldoe vibrators, glass plugs and plastic and double-headed invaders. Pretty submissives, all purring away. Woman on woman porn makes my day.
How the hell do any of those assholes manage to do anything involving being around other people?
Sleeping with a man does not make you heterosexual, any more than carrying a backpack full of papers makes me a library. It would be hard, in a culture which is obsessed with straight relationships, not to have moments of heterosexual desire. Desire is highly, highly conditionable by culture.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN I BELIEVE BEING GAY IS TAUGHT. Queer behaviors exist all over nature. They just do, no moral judgements needed. Water is wet when liquid, the sky Rayleigh scatters to look blue during the day and people are sometimes gay.
Conditioning of desire by experience: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X01916861
Personally, I reckon I’d have had a lot more gay sex than I have if it weren’t for the intense stigma. I was harassed for being gay for five years in junior high and high school (this had nothing to do with my actual sexual behavior and everything to do with my lack of conformity to gender norms), and when I discovered that I actually liked hetero sex, it was such a relief* that I didn’t even consider having sex with women for another ten years after that.
*The prospect of facing a lifetime of alienation and harassment was a terrible thing to bear. This was before the days of “It Gets Better.”
Sally: Yeah. I have dated women in the long term and short term, and I cannot be in public without anxiety and scanning for violent homophobes. I took a gay literature history course a few years ago– it literally made me cry. I spent the whole semester terrified, irrationally, that someone was going to see all of us together, all us queer people, and do something about it.
My childhood was entertaining.
When I date men, the whole social force of acceptance means that my anxiety is lessened. The whole thing is much…. easier. I know what to expect and there is broader social acceptance of expression.
I wonder how many women, if given acceptance and a culture which did not view corrective rape as a possibility, would be dating women, instead.
Also, my last girlfriend did lesbian and fetish porn. There’s a damn good set of reasons why many actresses don’t perform realistically on camera for straight-oriented production companies.
If you think you can’t do anything with two holes, you’ve obviously never been kissed on the lips.
Hazuki @201
For those in healthy relationships, sure. I suspect that MRAs and PUAs tend to see things rather less collaboratively, since they’ll often see their partners as little more than a collection of orifices.
What about virtual sex and marriage to a sapient AI program?
@Pyromancer
WHICH LIPS?
hahaha sorry that’s a terrible joke.
—
[OT]
I think I may have to hunt down a prompt community and get some Hemingway slash now. Because… yes. Same reason I love MST3K, really.
I’d try it myself, but all I can think of is this joke:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Addressing no real point in particular, I couldn’t now watch a porn scene featuring dildo fellatio without being bothered if they’ve chosen a material with an unpleasant kind of taste.
I wasn’t suggesting that *no one* out there likes it (if the internet has taught us anything, it’s that no matter what activity/object you can possibly think of, *some* subset of the population gets off on it). But the fact that women who do like sucking dildos are calling into radio shows seeking reassurance that anyone else does, or advertising on craig’s list to try to find the rare kindred soul, shows it’s not exactly super common (and still just my experience, but at least locally, I’ve never even seen such an ad on craig’s list. Not under women seeking women, that is). But the “lesbian” porn would suggest that something like 95% of lesbians just love it! Although my personal experience may be a “poor sample size,” if something were THAT common in the lesbian population, is it not reasonable to expect that at least one or two of the 50+ women I’ve been with in my lifetime would’ve displayed such a preference? And are you really going to argue that the pervasiveness of that trope in supposedly-lesbian porn is not symbolic of an “it’s all primarily about worshipping the mighty penis” implication there?
Calliopejane, point taken. And thanks, for the explanation. Perhaps it isn’t all that common. I would never for a moment suggest that the porn, and we know exactly who definitely watches the most porn, isn’t largely symbolic of phallus worshipping. Men tend to really like their penises and, in a way that always seemed queer to me, straight men tend really like penis worshipping, even the worshipping of penis-like things*. So, yeah, there’s no questioning the point of the faux-lesbian porn or who it’s being marketed to, or what false impressions it gives of the sex that any given lesbian might engage in.
*Not an odd fixation, considering straight men have penises, but it seems queer to the queer. I’m probably just projecting …and in my mind it’s quite a nice projection.
VP @ 206
I didn’t do that. I stated that the personal experience of one lesbian is ‘a very poor sample size.’ It is, though with obvious caveats (read my post above). I did not infer that the majority of lesbians are aroused by phallic objects. I don’t know how many are. I do know that some are. My point was to show that calliopejane’s personal experience was a bad way to generalise about the kinds of sex play that lesbians might get into, though it turns out that calliopejane wasn’t really trying to make that generalisation exactly.
It would be nice if you could read for comprehension.
Sex is often arousing. Internet polls are awful.
Colour me unsurprised. Humans can be sexy and regarded as such by other humans regardless of their sexuality. Further, it’s kind of rare for a person not to be aroused by other kinds of sex (or genitalia) than they outwardly identify as finding arousing. Everyone’s sexuality is a little hazy. Also, internet polls are awful.
I admit that penis-absent genitalia gross me out sexually. Otherwise, I have no problem with them. However, some penis-present genitalia also gross me out sexually. There’s probably a dichotomy being drawn by a lot of people that doesn’t actually exist, I think.
Gay men can be really awful when talking about the anatomy of women. Not only is the anatomy of women often foreign, it’s often completely unappealing sexually. That’s no excuse for being awful, it’s an excuse to educate; just because you don’t want to have sex with it, doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, even if thinking about it sexually is gross.
No.
I’ve read through PZ’s article and the comments and what I can conclude is this: MRAs can’t grok love. If you don’t have good sex, if not great sex, then it’s not a real relationship. Lesbians can’t be taken seriously since the literature says that they don’t fuck at the same rate that everyone else does (aka “Bed Death”).
Fuck all that, and fuck it with a 10-foot dildo that I don’t use very often because me and my partner of 20 years maybe “do it” once every couple of months. I adore her, I adore our life together and I want to take care of her. My sexual needs are getting fulfilled, thank you very much, and so are hers, miniscule as ours apparently are.
The MRAs and PUAs can’t have a real relationship because they’re pretty much, as a group, incapable of loving the partners they desire because they can’t fathom actually caring or respecting them. Give me a good, old-fashioned so-called “lesbian Bed Death” relationship any time over some asshole of any gender who likes to fuck me but can’t stand me. I’d rather have someone who can hold me and take care of me at my weakest points over someone who treats me with contempt and irritation when I can’t deliver the sexual goods.
Alukonis @199,
ah ok then! Haha, you will be spared the Sarlaac pit :D
Thomathy@217
Actually, I wasn’t able to interpret your initial point any other way, until you and calliopejane clarified it for me with your respective subsequent posts on the matter.
Out of curiosity: does that apply to gay men as well, according to your personal experience? Because as mentioned in my subsequent paragraph in #206, I found your above (the pervasive “haziness” of sexuality) statement seems to apply mostly to only non-hetero women, and not for non-hetero men (i.e. none of the non-hetero men I came across via Google search admitted or implied any sexual “haziness”. They seemed one-sided and fixed with their gender of interest). Otherwise, I probably need to improve my internet search techniques.
For certain topics, I think they’re innocuous and can simply work as a collector of personal anecdotes (at least the ones that allow commenting).
Maybe I’m nitpicking here, but finding non-penis genitalia gross in general versus finding only certain penis-present genitalia gross doesn’t constitute some sort of dichotomy?
I do hope for the most part, for those gay men it is simply the issue of being sexually turned off by female organs, and not genuine misogyny. I’ve seen some gay male commenters trivializing women’s issues just like a lot of clueless privileged straight men do, and in one instance accusing a lesbian complaining about sexism within the homosexual community of “making a non-issue a huge deal”. I’m really hoping that’s not the norm among gay men.
VP @ 220
I used the words ‘humans’ and ‘person’ and ‘everyone’. Which part of those words do you think excludes anyone who is a human? Allow me to reiterate myself: Everyone’s sexuality is a little hazy. Now, stop being obtuse.
Personal anecdotes /= data. Internet polls are awful. You wouldn’t even necessarily know whether the people voting were actually those who were intended to vote, let alone if anyone was even voting honestly. Have you ever heard of Pharyngulating a poll? Internet polls are awful.
You have entirely missed my point and you’re lack of imagination in the variation of genitalia is telling if unfortunate. The false dichotomy I was hinting at is where genitalia are assumed to be either penises or vaginae (I just figured out that vagina can be pluralised like that and it’s great). There’s actually a rather smooth transition (even if the transition between the two extremes can be rare) between the typical genitalia of males and the typical genitalia of females (and significant variation among typical, hence the use of the word). Everyone is going to find some genitalia sexually appealing and some others not and that will include genitals from across the entire range.Further, as an example of the complexity surrounding genitals, there happen to be gay identified trans-men who have ‘female’ genitals (some trans-men prefer to keep their genitals the way they are and enjoy them) who find sexual relationships with gay identified gay men. This illustrates the ‘fluidity’ of sexuality and sexual attraction and also that not everything in sex is reducible to the kind of genitals a person has.
It’s not. It’s just the case that you can find assholes anywhere.