In response to Anthony Weiner’s press conference yesterday in which he admitted using the internet to send semi-nude pictures of himself to young women, Irin Carmon suggests at Jezebel that this latest scandal is — like many others before it — rooted in male narcissism.
All over the Internet, men are photographing their own bodies and sending the shots to women who are maybe not their wives and girlfriends. It’s a risk for most any non-professional, but it’s one that predictably costs male politicians like Anthony Weiner — and the men before him — so much more. So why do they do it?
“Hottttt.” That’s the Facebook comment on a video of Weiner speech that launched Meagan Broussard’s Internet flirtation with the Congressman, complete with cockshots clothed and maybe less so. “You’re so hot,” was Rielle Hunter’s opening line to John Edwards; eventually, he thought it was a good idea to make a sex tape with her.
In the Venn diagram of narcissism, the overlap of men in political office and men whose sexual narcissism verges on self destruction is increasingly visible. If you want to blame the Internet for anything, blame it for manifesting — and giving an outlet to — what surely must have always been present: Men (and they are still overwhelmingly men) who not only want your votes but for you to adore their waxed pecs. And they think they can get away with it.
Carmon isn’t entirely off base. But she misses the key point, though it’s one she hints at. “Hot” has such extraordinary power in these men’s lives not because they are all narcissists (though some may meet the clinical definition of that term) but because they so rarely hear the word. Powerful men who risk everything to send pictures of their penises or pecs to strange women aren’t filled with cocky self-regard. They’re filled with a desperate hunger for a very specific kind of validation.
In a piece I wrote for the Good Men Project in March, I suggested:
So many straight men have no experience of being wanted. So many straight men have no experience of sensing a gaze of outright longing. Even many men who are wise in the world and in relationships, who know that their wives or girlfriends love them, do not know what it is to be admired for their bodies and their looks. They may know what it is to be relied upon, they may know what it is to bring another to ecstasy with their touch, but they don’t know what it is to be found not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but worthy of longing.
I’ll bet Anthony Weiner doesn’t doubt his own intellectual or political abilities. Like many men who are good at what they do (and Weiner has been one of the most able members of the Democratic caucus for years), he exudes a confidence that borders on arrogance. I don’t think that’s feigned. But like so many men sliding towards middle age, there’s an unmet hunger for sexual validation. Men like Weiner know women may be attracted to their power or their status, but they want more — they long for validation that their bodies aren’t gross and disgusting. They want to be “hot.”
Many have asked, why send a picture of his penis? The assumption we make is that few women, if any, would be aroused by a crude snap of a barely concealed cock. That not only underestimates the capacity of many women to be visually aroused, it misses the congressman’s chief motive. He didn’t just want to arouse the young woman to whom he sent the snap, he wanted validation that yes, that part of his body was “hot” too.
We raise boys to believe that their bodies are dirty and gross. The female nude is beautiful, we’re told by our culture, while the male nude is awkward. The penis is an object of fear and derision, disgust and ridicule. And while porn in its ubiquity teaches women that men are aroused by close-ups of female genitalia, men grow up with a sense that their penises are valued only for what they can do (stay hard and get the “job done”) and not for how sexy they look.
We’re all rightly uncomfortable with this apparent epidemic of middle-aged married men sending photos of their unclothed bodies to much younger women. Narcissism and lust surely do play a part in compromising the judgment of men who ought to know better. But the fact that so many of these men were so clearly longing for validation of their desirability suggests that there’s something else involved. Though it’s only an explanation and not an excuse, I suspect that longing wouldn’t be nearly as overwhelming if we didn’t raise so many boys to believe that their bodies are disgusting.
Thanks go to Kerry Cohen, herself a writer on desire, for pointing out the Jezebel article and suggesting I respond.
And yes, there’s no question that this ties into the “older man, younger woman” dynamic. If she’s young and still wants me, I can’t be that old yet — a very ancient equation. What’s different here is that we’re seeing more explicitly (literally) how the longing to be lusted after is almost more powerful than lust itself.
I also wonder if some of this might have to do with age. You mention in your post an “epidemic of middle-aged, married, men” taking and posting these photos. Given that the men in question are predominantly over a certain age, maybe what they are trying to do is convince themselves that they are, not just “hot”, but “still hot”. It seems they are more afraid of what they perceive they are “losing”, not what they currently have.
(repost)
Hugo, I know you have a daughter, not sons. So do I. But I’m wondering if you have any suggestions for how parents or the larger society in general could raise boys to have a healthier view of their bodies. One thing I’ve done with my girls is to not tolerate the “boys are icky/gross” type of talk that is typical of pre-adolescent girls. But I am not really around boys that much, so I was curious if you had any suggestions.
Is there any indication that he initiated these interactions? Likewise, do we know that the alleged women are all young (at least one is reported to be “middle aged”)? Additionally, in one of the supposed exchanges on facebook it was the woman who prompted him for a pic of his cock, and was disappointed when one was not provided. Might that have been the case in these other instances as well? If so, that seems distinctly different than a guy that sends an unsolicited dicpic.
Perhaps chatting with facebook/twitter admirers the new 1-900 number sex lines, only the person on the other end is genuinely hot for you. I can see how that might be intoxicating, to say the least.
“Many have asked, why send a picture of his penis? The assumption we make is that few women, if any, would be aroused by a crude snap of a barely concealed cock. That not only underestimates the capacity of many women to be visually aroused, it misses the congressman’s chief motive.”
While I agree with your suggestion that women have the capacity to be visually aroused, I question whether many women are turned on by pictures of naked penises. (I know I’m not and I’ve heard a number of other women say the same thing.) And that is not a rejection of the penis. It’s more an anesthetic preference for sexually SUGGESTIVE pictures over crude pictures of naked genitals.
Gigi, while many women might prefer sexually suggestive to crude clarity, it’s also true that both men and women can be turned on when they know whose genitals they’re looking at. It’s not just a penis, it’s a particular penis that’s connected to a particular person. I think that’s a different thing when it comes to arousal.
“Powerful men who risk everything to send pictures of their penises or pecs to strange women aren’t filled with cocky self-regard. They’re filled with a desperate hunger for a very specific kind of validation.”
“He didn’t just want to arouse the young woman to whom he sent the snap, he wanted validation that yes, that part of his body was “hot” too.”
Hugo, I’m commenting on this partly because I don’t think there’s anything particularly outlandish or odious about your proffered explanation for Weiner’s actions (seems plausible enough to me), so as to emphasise that the supposed motivation itself is not what bothers me.
But note that in the above you’ve done what seems an unfortunate habit in your blogging: brought up the behaviour of a particular individual, cited your own personal theory on the general motivations of a wide class of people, and then smoothly slid into confidently stating without qualification that this individual had this motivation (your Guardian post on Joel Northrup is another good example).
You do not know why Weiner did what he did. Maybe you think you can make a good guess; sure, it’s a blog, ruminate away. But the insertion of a few “I think”s and “It seems to me likely that”s in the appropriate places would, I think, much improve things, and be less irritating to whose who disagree with you, who do not solely consist of frothing MRAs enraged at any feminist opinion.
Hmm…all this presupposes that he was getting no “hotness” validation from his wife, because if he was, it waters down the strong “poor little him! No Hawtness Validation, look!!” strain that is seeping through this post, doesn’t it?
I was actually involved with someone who did things, let’s say not identical to this, but similar enough, for years–and definitely because he craved the validation, and craved it especially from women younger than himself. However, he got not only lots of validation of his hotness from me, but had gotten it from other female partners in the past–he wanted massive, endless volumes of validation!!! which I’m sorry, Hugo, but I do think that’s narcissism, not normalcy.
I agree very much that men aren’t given “hotness” validation as much as women are. However, craving it from (a) large quantities of your preferred sexual orientation when you (b) are getting it at home already isn’t really due to that imbalance. There are plenty of women like that as well–just buy a set of “Girls Gone Wild” videos–and they aren’t like that because they haven’t gotten lots of “hotness” validation. They’re like that because they’re narcissists. Sorry.
Thank you for being gentle, compassionate and insightful about this. So many people have not been.
People’s need to be desired is a basic part of our humanity. And for guys, that is often denied. I can’t help but wonder if the frustration and weariness that comes from always being the desiring and never the desired isn’t part of the aggrievement of the Men’s Rights movement.
I worked a 1-900 line back in the early 1990′s when we did “sexting” on such primitive things as landlines and while we were still perfecting the wheel. If a guy wasn’t calling for BDSM, he wanted one thing: for me to desire his penis. I would start every call by saying, “Hi, my name is Candy, tell me about yourself.” And every caller, and I do mean every single caller, would respond by telling me about his penis. Some guys would apologize for their penis size; remember this was voice only communication, so there is no possible way that their penis could have been a disappointment to me. Yet they would apologize. It made me want to cry. The BDSM callers mostly wanted me to tell them how bad or dirty or small or otherwise unacceptable their penises were. . I worked the job only about six weeks. (This is completely irrelevant, but I quit the job after a BDSM caller acted out the fantasy of our call and injured himself. I still cannot get his shocked and injured crying out of my mind. It left me with a permanent anti-BDSM bias.)
A friend of mine used to say that everyone should work in fast-food, for at least six weeks. He says that it changes how you see the world. I am tempted to say the same thing about working a virtual sex line. What I learned in six weeks as a 1-900 girl has made me a better person, a better lover and it has given me a world of compassion for men like Weiner.
lisakansas, I don’t think it’s a mutually exclusive proposition here: one can have narcissistic tendencies and also be “validation-deprived.” Again, that’s not an excuse. It’s about explaining why a word like “hot” had such apparent power.
I am with Hugo Schwyzer here, although I would like to go one half-step further than he has. I think that when Mr. Schwyzer says that what men who do this kind of thing (taken as a group and not as individuals and taken in the mass and not piecemeal) are hoping to get out of it is validation, particularly a specific type of physical validation, he’s right. But I would like to add that since (again as a rule) we tend to regard the longing for validation as feminine (self-assurance is masculine according to the modern Western view of how the cosmos is put together because self-assured people, by definition, don’t need the input of others to bolster their love of themselves: they can “go it alone”, and the ability/inclination to travel solo is supposed to be primarily a male one) men who reveal, intentionally or not, that they need validation (particularly with respect to one of their more physically vulnerable attributes) feminize themselves, and therefore become subject to mockery. (Even by women.) This is why the whole world, as of right this minute, is turning against Anthony Weiner, whose actions, though tasteless and stupid, never threatened to harm anyone but himself.
Without a narrative of men being able to be found hot, it’s difficult to process things and construct a worldview where it happens. I definitely fit the “longing to be hot” archetype Hugo describes, but even though I have no recollection of anyone ever describing me as attractive, I have an ex who insists that she did so. Best as I can figure out, my brain just filters it out as delusional, and can’t make a (nonsensical) memory out of it.
Hugo, someone who is narcissistic will always perceive himself or herself as validation-deprived…that’s part of the definition of narcissism. If you agree with the narcissist that he or she is validation-deprived and are basing that agreement on (a) the fact that validation deprivation exists without (b) knowing a single thing about the actual validation status of the specific individual, all you’re doing is enabling and excusing that person’s narcissistic acting-out. Of course there’s nothing wrong with speculative analysis, but the way you’re analyzing Weiner here is rather a lot more autobiographical than dispassionate, I think.
BTW, when I talk about some men’s wanting “a specific type of physical validation”, what I mean is that they want the kind of validation which takes the form of an assurance that their body is attractive in all ways. That’s not something men are officially allowed to want because only women are supposed to care about their looks. (One of the rules men live by, but which few of them can follow to perfection, is the rule that it’s the woman’s job to be toothsome and the man’s job to be hungry and that never the twain shall otherwise meet.) Male genitalia are supposed to be a focus of power, not beauty, and men are supposed to be immune to forms of sexuality which don’t have “a point” (IOW, which don’t support the narrative that John comes in the end). The kind of sexuality which is diffused and which is partly involved in self-contemplation is not foreign to men but it is forbidden to men, so that when men display it, they become subject to ridicule by pretty much everybody–without regard to age, condition, creed, color, or sex.
I agree with Mr. Schwyzer that this is too bad.
JMO.
“This is why the whole world, as of right this minute, is turning against Anthony Weiner, whose actions, though tasteless and stupid, never threatened to harm anyone but himself.” Umm, I think the world is turning against him also because he’s a married man who sent pictures of his penis to women other than his wife and because he initially lied about it. I would also venture that his actions probably did harm his wife.
Again, I’m not excusing the behavior. I’m offering an explanation of why the narcissism manifested itself the way it did. It could indeed be autobiographical on my part. I’m constantly reminding myself how lucky I was that my wild days were mostly back in the pre-Internet days, extending into the era of dial-up and photo scanners. What I would have done with Facebook, Twitter, and an iPhone… I shudder to think.
A little off-topic, but I’d love to see an article from you regarding male sexuality and penis size. As someone that actually very much prefers penises that are considered in the realm of “average”, I’m actually kind of saddened by the fact that socially, men focus so much on the size and not being a good lover for their partners. Sorry if this is off-topic, but I wanted to point that out.
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I implicitly brought up earlier in a different forum, and I’ll mention outright: we have no idea at all what the dispensation was between Weiner and his wife and any suggestion that he acted in a manner inconsistent with their understandings would require more evidence. They’ve been married less than a year. Say what you will about mentioning this fact, but they’re both Clinton disciples, and thus have perhaps been more privy than the rest of us have been to what might very well be the best and most public example of a marriage continued principally out of political convenience. This imbroglio is tawdry and amusing mostly at a grade-school level of understanding: “hee-hee! Look at the wiener!” And the attempt at a cover-up and throwing out reckless accusations of hacking and seeking to discredit the messenger was pretty bush league. But Rep. Weiner has never struck me as any particular exemplar of public decorum and dignity in general, so I don’t think that charges of hypocrisy can really be laid here.
I think that these cheap but humiliating little auto da fes we insist on having every time a public figure is caught in a compromising situation are, among other things, a way of scapegoating to expiate our collective failure to live up to outmoded cultural models of sexual behavior that we seem wedded to (pun intended). We insist that our politicians be “role models” for a country that has a 50% divorce rate and in which, among the rest of us, the sort of thing Rep. Weiner got in trouble for doing would barely raise an eyebrow or, at most, would be a minor embarrassment.
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with speculative analysis, but the way you’re analyzing Weiner here is rather a lot more autobiographical than dispassionate, I think.”
Lisakansas,
I had the exact same thought when I read your posts. You clearly have a painful history with someone who you regarded (and was possibly diagnosed, I have no idea) as narcissistic. You now seem to be determined to paint Weiner that color without having any more insight into Weiner’s actual mechnations than Hugo.
No, he wasn’t diagnosed as narcissistic; he was diagnosed as bipolar with one of the symptoms of that being hypersexuality, and you see I haven’t accused Weiner of being any of those things.
It was a painful interlude, certainly, but also years past at this point, which enables me to see it pretty dispassionately now. I hadn’t really thought about Weiner being narcissistic (okay, hadn’t thought much about him at all one way or another, I confess) til I read both Hugo’s blog post and the Jezebel article he linked to.
After the past involvement and I got to the point where we could be something like friends again, he spoke very openly to me about the feelings that drove him to seek validation from as many other women as possible (regardless of their looks, and regardless of the looks of the woman he was in the “official” relationship with)–I did understand it, and the awful yawning internal emptiness that ultimately drives it when it is compulsive like that. In the case of my past involvement, it was bipolar hypersexuality (both manic and depressive phases, in their different ways)–in the case of Weiner, the narcissism proposal made a lot of sense to me in explaining the stupidity of someone in his political and newly marital position behaving in such a way, once I read up on it.
And that stupidity did seem to me to rule out any normal level of desire for validation because of the extreme destructive potential to his own life of the behavior.
I don’t insist on it, though–I’m definitely not a psychologist, nor do I personally know the dude.
Wait, I thought we’d all agreed that the problem was teenage girls sexting! And teenage girls are hot, we’re told, and they’re told, and everyone is told.
The idea of longing to be in the gaze is interesting and I don’t doubt it’s a part of the equation. Just as women have learned to internalize the male gaze even when there are no men around, it makes sense that men have learned to covet the gaze as a sign of validation. But it’s not a neat equation either: It’s not that men aren’t told they’re hot (though they’re not), because women are told all the fucking time how hot we are, and plenty of women still have exhibitionist impulses. It’s just not seen as being as lewd or pathetic as men’s actions; in fact, it’s rewarded, if then discarded. The difference, I think, is that men *with other forms of power* are being entangled in these webs, whereas it’s easier for a woman to capture some chimera of power with being gazed upon, potentially separating the spheres.
I have known many successful men who were over dedicated to their work. They eventually felt that they were trapped into obtaining a high level of participation in their careers. Once at that level, they cannot reduce their commitment because they fear being called slackers.
Then, they do something that is out of character and certain to destroy what they have worked so hard to achieve.
This self destruction method of escaping from the prison they created for themselves may have a medical description somewhere in the mental disorder section on mental health.
Then again, there are many people that have found sexual freedom in their lives. It becomes a form of recreation and they trust others who are participants to respect confidentiality.
Look at the organized swinging lifestyle groups. They are a very big market segment catered too by cruise lines, resorts and hotels. Then there is an even bigger segment, those that share their sex lives with others, quietly in their homes.
Speak to any massage therapist and they will reveal the many offers they receive from couples for a threesome or more.
America has two separate worlds within its borders. Where ever there are groups meeting there is sexual activity going on from those contacts. Be it churches, country clubs, work places, chamber of commerces, conventions, trade show and etc. In fact the hope for a sexual experience may be the secret motivation for people attending all these functions.
The question is, How long are we, as a people to live in denial.We should accept what is the reality of life or just shut up and stop being a hypocrite.
What person has not had sexual fantasies. Some bury them. Some act them out in secret and don’t get caught. Many hotel’s only profit is from the rented porn that guests pay for through their television sets.
Statistics will show that there are millions of people like Weiner acting out their anonymous sexual fantasies, as we read this, on the internet. And, as soon as they stop, they will immediately start to complain about Weiner.
Welcome to America.
Richard
“Welcome to America.”
Indeed
I’m with you until you suggest that he has unmet sexual validation. Unlike many middle-aged men, he’s only been married several months. Since we’re speculating, I doubt Weiner is having a hard time getting laid this early on in his marriage, and I think we all can admit that he’s a really attractive guy, or at least acknowledge that many people think so, and make it known. I’m betting more on just plain narcissism over the kind of male need to feel “hot” to their partners sexually, which is something I agree with wholeheartedly as an overall trend. I just don’t see Weiner, with his fame and plethora of female and male admirers, feeling that void of sexual validation (same for pop starts, “heartthrob” actors, etc.).
April, I assure you that men whom we perceive as “hot” frequently don’t perceive themselves that way at all. Just as many slender women believe they’re fat despite all evidence to the contrary, just as many beautiful women are incapable of really internalizing compliments, so too many attractive men still believe that secretly, their bodies are repulsive. My life experience and a few decades worth of men’s work has shown me that over and over and over again.
And that explanation is a backhanded insult at his wife. What you’re doing is absolutely no different than excusing the politician who sleeps around because ‘he was probably missing something at home’. Your explanation only works if we assume that Weiner was not getting that validation from his wife. Because, of course, if only she’d tried harder to make it clear that she found him desirable he wouldn’t have turned in desperation to those other woman.
I doubt anyone would argue that women are taught to hate their bodies and find them ugly. I doubt that anyone would be making excuses for a middle-aged women trying to cat around outside of her marriage by saying ‘the poor thing, she just wanted assurance that her butt wasn’t too big.’
TL;DR: you’re not as free of sexist thinking as you’d like to believe, Hugo.
mythago, I’m going to side with Hugo on this one. The idea that Weiner’s behavior somehow reflected badly on his wife literally never crossed my mind. I don’t think it’s at all true — for men OR women — that one’s internalized identity-for-others is ‘healed’* by one’s interactions with one other person (or even a small group of people) no matter how intense or positive those interactions are … at least, not most of the time. The idea that one person could have such a strong impact on one’s internalized identity-for-others actually implies a rather extraordinary level of dependency on that one person, which in most cases I would think would be rather problematic in itself.
* Not quite the right word; hope my meaning is still more or less clear.
I’m not sure that I follow that it’s an “extraordinary level of dependency” to believe that one’s spouse genuinely finds one to be ‘hot’.
Hugo’s entire analysis assumes that Weiner cannot get any real reassurance that he is ‘hot’ absent fooling around with other women. This goes directly against Hugo’s constant assurances that men are perfectly capable of monogamy. He can’t really argue it both ways; either men are so poisoned by our homophobic views of the male body that they can never really be reassured by a wife or long-term partner’s interest (and even if they are, not forever, as someday they will want to be reassured that they have ‘it’), thus it’s unfair to expect monogamy; or men are indeed capable of monogamy, and wanting strangers to find one hot is no more overpowering or normal an urge than wanting to try out a new sex partner.
In other words, I’m really not buying the argument that we should pity Weiner because he’s understandably reacting to the psychic wounds inflicted on men. To do that would be to buy into the misandrist view that men are just dogs and whaddayagonnado.
Mythago, again, I’m offering a possible explanation, not an excuse. One can have a reason for what one did and still be completely wrong to have done it. Rep. Weiner is 100% responsible for his behavior, no one else. The missing narrative of male desirability may help us understand why he acted the way he did and why he so clearly wanted validation for his penis and the rest of him. It doesn’t excuse or even mitigate the action.
Mythago – it’s definitely the case that large swaths of men can never be assured of attractiveness by a wife or other long-term partner’s interest.
It doesn’t follow from that that men can’t be monogamous or be expected to be monogamous, however. They might choose not to be monogamous, or they might choose to. I doubt Weiner (or other men in similar positions) find the validation they’re looking for often anyways; if they can’t hear the message that they’re attractive from their wife, they probably can’t hear it from anyone else, either.
Of course, I may be projecting.
It isn’t, and I didn’t say it was. You might genuinely believe that your SO finds you hot, while still doubting that the ‘world at large’ has a similar appraisal.
The rest of your comment appears predicated on any number of assumptions I don’t share. It seems to me female hypergamy — and not male homophobia — is a far more proximate and plausible explanation for why many men feel insufficiently validated in their desirability by women. Indeed, it’s hard to see how homophobia has anything to do with anything here, outside of it being Something That Can Be Blamed On Men.
I don’t think Weiner wants our pity. I don’t think what he did is Some Great Wrong or is anybody’s business outside of his immediate circle, frankly. AFAICT, this is all a distraction from discussing the need to impeach Clarence Thomas. Aside from an unfortunate obsequiousness towards Israel, Weiner is one of our best people in Congress, and we’ll all be fortunate if he’s successful in his fight to stay there.
Lise Simeone sums up things so much better than I.
ballgame, do you really think only men are homophobic?
Homophobia feeds into the notion that only women’s bodies are desirable; men aren’t supposed to appreciate the male form.
I’m not really sure what hypergamy is supposed to have to do with Weiner. Hugo theorizes that the poor fellow felt undesired. That rather requires thar attention from his wife is not sufficient – so, unless we add in the pathology of “the approval must be from many women”, doesn’t make the need to feel desired plausible as an explanation.
Of course not. I was just assuming that bigotry against lesbians had even less relevance to the Weiner situation than bigotry against gay men (if that’s possible).
I understand the theory, mythago. I just think it stretches the limits of plausibility, considering the alternative, i.e.:
A. “Growing up, I was taught there’s something wrong with me if I think other boys’ bodies are sexy. Therefore my body must not be very sexy. Therefore women must not think my body is very sexy.”
vs.
B. Most women really do appear to think the average man isn’t very sexy.
I think Occam’s razor sez, go with option B here.
I find it kind of intriguing that you appear to genuinely not understand how feminine hypergamy plays into the Weiner situation. If the preceding part of my comment helps you here, great, but I honestly don’t know how to make it any clearer.
As for ‘the approval must be from many women,’ the answer is, yes, in some cases that would logically follow. In some sense, our internalized self identity represents who we believe we are for ‘the world.’ It is often the case that this ‘identity for the world’ is different than our ‘identity for a specific individual.’ A man might appreciate the fact that his young nephew thinks he’s the coolest guy in the world … but his internalized self identity — the way he thinks the world at large sees him — might still be ‘unremarkable guy.’
Similarly, Anthony Weiner may very well have believed that his wife found him to be sexy. That wouldn’t necessarily change his internalized ‘identity for the world,’ which may very well have been ‘unsexy guy.’ However, having women he didn’t know very well give him feedback that they found him sexy probably did reassure him on the issue of his ‘identity for the world,’ in a sense precisely because he didn’t know them very well.
Appear to whom?
And no, “here’s a link about dating sites that explains everything and that’s all there is to it” doesn’t make it any clearer. If that intrigues you, okay.
We actually agree that it’s possible for Weiner to have gotten positive feedback from his wife and to nonetheless want more and more approval from strangers. (I don’t think the ‘nephew’ analogy works. You don’t pick your nephew on the basis that he thinks you’re cool, but “she thinks I’m not” is probably a factor in choosing a wife.)
But Hugo is making two conflicting claims: that men cannot help but seek this approval because of the meme that only women’s bodies are sexy, and that men are easily inclined to monogamy.
“While I agree with your suggestion that women have the capacity to be visually aroused, I question whether many women are turned on by pictures of naked penises.”
Just wanted to reply to this woman’s statement. Simply because her (and her friends) don’t find crude pictures of genitalia attractive, does not mean every woman’s sexuality is that way. I’m sure there are men who would rather see a pin-up style nude as opposed to a close-up of a vagina. Women’s sexualities are diverse and hell yeah, some women want to see a dick. It does not matter how MANY women like this are out there, by saying that they are “not the norm” you are shaming those who fall outside your perceived norm.
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While. Blackjack lady seemed to want dickpics, the college student and 17 year old didn’t. End of story. And they were women who admired his politics turned into nothing but sex objects. Their desire to be treated seriously matters. As a woman with a medical condition and the daily recipient of dirty vagina jokes, bosses saying am I excited about how big their dicks are, and tons of porn that shows the Dick as supreme I don’t buy Hugo argument. If someone’s a jerk with a hole no one can fill then thats it. I don’t expect society to help me with being a woman, thats why I fight. And I refuse to do it in a way that hurts people like Anthony DID hurt some of the women he sent pictures to.