Your Cleavage is Harassing Me, and Other Dumb Ideas about Male Weakness

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

My Genderal Interest column today looks at the risible claim made by many men’s rights activists that scantily-clad women are sexually harassing men. See Your Cleavage Is Guilty of ‘Biological Sexual Harassment,’ and Other Dumb Ideas. Excerpt:

The traditional arguments for women’s modesty have been that concealing dress was necessary to protect men from lustful thoughts and to protect women from being raped. But Arndt and the MRAs have a different rationale. They’re not offended by skimpy clothing on religious grounds, nor do they all buy into the myth of male weakness that says that bare female skin invariably causes otherwise nice guys to commit sexual assault. Rather, they seem to be arguing that by tempting all straight men while only being willing to sleep with a few, flirtatious or scantily-clad women are engaged in a particularly cruel form of sexualized discrimination. That, the MRAs insist, ought to be seen as sexual harassment.

For Arndt and her ideological fellow travelers, it’s sexually unsuccessful straight men (“betas”) that suffer the most from a culture in which women are free to display their bodies. Asking women to cover up isn’t about protecting purity; for the MRAs it’s about protecting betas from humiliation and from self-esteem-destroying reminders that they can look but never touch the bodies for which they long. All of that pent-up male resentment is women’s fault, Arndt implies, and it is women’s responsibility to consider the soul-scarring cost of the mixed messages their revealing clothing sends.

The kind of particularly male pain that Arndt and her allies describe isn’t rooted in women’s flirtatiousness, sexy clothing, or presumed preference for “alpha” males. Whether they’re genuinely hurting or just petulantly sulking, the confusion and hurt with which men cope is based largely on their own sense of entitlement. The calculus of entitlement works like this: if women don’t want to turn men on, they need to cover up. If they don’t cover up, they’ll turn men on. If they turn men on, women are obligated to do something to assuage that lust. Having turned them on, if women don’t give men what they want, then women are cruel teases who have no right to complain if men lash out in justified rage at being denied what they’ve been taught is rightfully theirs.

Valentine Memories at Role/Reboot

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

We’re running a series of Valentine-themed posts over at Role/Reboot today. Check out Clarisse Thorn’s piece and one from Michelle Rabil.

My offering is Valentine’s Day: A Personal History.

Excerpt:

Things got worse in junior high school, even without the compulsory card exchanges. By seventh grade, it was clear that a privileged few had boyfriends and girlfriends; February 14th was now about them and them alone. For most of my teens, I loathed this day, as the absence of my very own “Valentine” just seemed to reinforce my predictably adolescent sense of being uniquely unlovable. (It was only years later that I realized how many of my classmates probably felt exactly the same way.) I remember that once, perhaps when I was 15, Valentine’s Day fell on a weekend, and I was intensely relieved. Of course, the popular couples in my high school simply marked the holiday on the previous Friday, and my sense of alienation and loneliness was as great as ever.

But things changed for me. I got into my first romantic relationship just before Christmas break my senior year of high school. When February 14th rolled around, I leapt enthusiastically into all the rituals I’d both disdained and envied for so long. I bought that first girlfriend a rose and a card, making sure to give them to her right before her first class so she’d be able to display them all day long. I’d joined the ranks of the romantic exhibitionists who make Valentine’s Day insufferable for so many. Participating in public displays of partnered affection can be an especially unkind and especially irresistible way of proving you’ve at last joined the relationship “haves.”

Exile in Girlville? UPDATED

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

The Atlantic Magazine’s online edition covers the controversy swirling around me and around the larger issue of men in feminist spaces: Exile in Girlville: How a Male Feminist Alienated His Community (That’s an updated title; check the URL for the original one.)

The quotes from me are accurate. I told the reporter, Raphael Magarik, that I couldn’t discuss my past but was willing to discuss other aspects of the story, and we chatted for over an hour during an interview two weeks ago.

I’ll leave it to others to decide whether they agree with Magarik’s characterization of all of this as a “poignant turn of events.” I link to it only because it’s the closest thing available to a summary of this complicated story.

UPDATE: The new title for Magarik’s piece is Exile in Gal-Ville. It’s not the only article on the controversy and related issues to appear this week; Elissa Strauss has a piece up at Alternet today: Do Men Belong in the Women’s Movement? She quotes Shira Tarrant, Michael Kaufman, Michael Kimmel, and many others in a lengthy and thoughtful examination of the topic.

The Salad Days of Barely Legal Porn at Jezebel

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

My Genderal Interest column this week at Jezebel: Why Do Men Love ‘Barely Legal’ Porn? Excerpt:

The extraordinary popularity of the barely legal genre (Flynt couldn’t trademark the catchphrase) raises an obvious question: Why are so many straight adult men so turned on by women at or below the age of consent? The answer for many — across the ideological spectrum — takes some form of an appeal to “nature.” The well-known right-wing columnist John Derbyshire wrote in The National Review in 2005 that “beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman’s salad days are shorter than a man’s — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20.” That half or more of a woman’s sexual “salad days” would pass before she was a legal adult was, for Derbyshire and nearly all of his entirely un-outraged fellow columnists at America’s best-known conservative magazine, just “a sad truth about human life.”

Beyond Derbyshire, the most common explanation given for adult men’s particularly intense attraction to teen girls is reproduction. But on closer scrutiny that theory falls apart. Women’s fertility peaks between 22 and 26, well after their “salad days” have come to a close. Barely and not-yet legal teens alike have statistically higher rates of complications in pregnancy than women in their twenties. From a medical historical perspective, there has never been a time when 17 year-olds were more fertile than women just five or six years older. The argument that men in their 30s, 40s, and beyond are evolutionarily hardwired to lust after girls just above or below the adulthood threshold has less merit than we think.

One alternative answer has much more to do with adult men’s anxiety than with their reproductive longings. In the fantasy world of “barely legal” pornography, the teen girl is an ingénue longing for sexual initiation at the hands and body of an experienced older man. For an older man (the average male porn user is over 30) perhaps intimidated by the erotic and emotional demands of his own female peers, the imagined naïveté of a much-younger woman is a source of comfort. The less experience she has, the less likely she’ll mock his clumsiness and the more likely she’ll appreciate whatever savoir-faire he does possess.

LEGO’s Friends Line Selling Well, but the PR is Komenesque

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

I’ve got a short piece up at Jezebel today, looking at the controversy over LEGO’s new “Friends” line for girls. Excerpt:

In the six weeks since Lego launched their controversial (and pink) Friends line aimed at young girls, pushback has been strong. But sales are strong as well, and the company’s response to criticism has been consistently clumsy, exacerbating rather than calming the problem — a problem, of course, that they fail to see. Sales are sales!

Featuring a Butterfly Beauty Shop and a Fashion Designer Workshop, the 14 Friends sets are built around girl-figurines who live in what pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian calls the “pastel-colored, gender-segregated, stereotypically female suburban paradise” of Heartlake City. Taller and curvier than the traditional Lego “mini-figs,” Mia, Emma, Andrea, Stephanie and Olivia represent a different species from anything the company has created before.

Lego Friends has also brought an unprecedented degree of criticism for the venerable toy firm, particularly from advocates for women troubled by the way the set reinforces traditional female roles. SPARK, the campaign against the sexualization of girls, sent an open letter to Lego in late January, accusing the company of a “lack of faith… in girls’ skills and interests.” More than 51,000 signatures accompanied the statement.

The article includes links to two great videos from Anita Sarkeesian, better known as the principal force behind Feminist Frequency, home of the web’s premier commentary on pop culture. (Anita is also a terrific web designer, and created this site for me last year.) Here’s part one and here’s part two.

Romeo and Juliet laws at Role/Reboot

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

Happy Groundhog Day! 25 years ago this morning, I tumbled down a flight of stairs after leaving a German literature class in Dwinelle Hall on the Berkeley campus and ended up in the hospital with a severe concussion. Any February 2 since that doesn’t involve an ambulance ride is a fine one, regardless of what that groundhog sees.

I have a column up at Role/Reboot today on statutory rape and age-of-consent rules: Is Age Ever Just a Number? Teens, Sex, and Romeo & Juliet Laws. It was inspired by this piece by my Jezebel colleague, Erin Gloria Ryan.

Excerpt:

It’s impossible to write age-of-consent laws in such a way that they take into account the maturity and experience of every individual adolescent. As with legislation about drinking and voting, society needs to set a cut-off point—even if that point seems arbitrary and unfair. Where we draw those points shifts as cultural mores shift. (When I was born in 1967, the drinking age was 18 and the voting age was 21. The reverse is true today.)

Though the law cannot be written to meet every individual situation, Romeo and Juliet laws do reflect an evolving and increasingly nuanced approach to teen sexuality. These laws are enforced by police, prosecutors, and judges, all of whom can use their own discretion when it comes to deciding whether real harm has been done. Even when the law says, as it must, that 14 is 14 and 18 is 18, those who apply it should do so with both common sense and an appreciation for the very real complexities of teen sexuality.

Our Pasts, Our Kids, and Google — plus a conversation with Timaree

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

At Role/Reboot this morning, I answer a question I’ve been asked quite a few times over the years, especially in the past month: What are you going to do when Heloise is old enough to Google your name? Excerpt:

“You should be the first to bring it up”, says “Ella,” an actress in her late 40s with two teenage boys. Three decades ago, Ella was a troubled teen star with a much-publicized cocaine addiction; at 19, she had a well-documented affair with a married movie executive nearly three times her age. Sober many years and happily married, Ella prepared early to help her sons come to terms with the inconcealable details of their mother’s past.

“When my older son was 11, I mentioned in passing that ‘mom did some really foolish things when she was young.’ I didn’t go into detail because I knew that too much detail could be traumatizing. I just told him that if he ever heard anything from friends at school or anyone else, he could come to me and I would answer any questions.” As her sons got older, Ella gradually disclosed more. But she resisted the urge to share too much too soon.

Ella, Carré, and I share one thing in common: We’re well-known enough that our past indiscretions are matters of public record. In one sense, we have it easier than many other parents whose pasts are more easily hidden. We don’t have a choice about whether to reveal or conceal what we’ve done and who we were; our only choices revolve around how and when. We have one less decision to make than do most of our peers.

Read the whole thing.

On MLK day, I recorded a podcast for the Sex with Timaree show, hosted by the terrific Timaree Leigh. Check out her short article here, and listen here.

Humiliation and affirmation at Jezebel

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

My weekly Genderal Interest column at Jezebel looks at “facials” (the sex act, not the beauty treatment). He Wants to Jizz on Your Face, but Not Why You Think features interviews with my friends Charlie Glickman and Megan Andelloux, two wonderful sex educators on opposite sides of the country. Excerpt:

A few years ago, in a humanities course on the body, my class was discussing one of the most famous selections from the now-iconic Vagina Monologues, “Because He Liked to Look at It”. The monologue tells the story of a woman who thought her vagina was “incredibly ugly” until she meets a man named Bob, who loves to stare at —and taste — her vulva with delight and wonder. Bob’s embrace of her body is the key to her self-acceptance. During our discussion of the monologue, a male student noted bravely that he thought many men felt the same way about their penises. Perhaps, he suggested, the intense appeal of facials in porn (and real life) was about men’s desire for that same experience of being validated as desirable, as good, as “not dirty.” For a young man raised with the sense that his body – and especially his penis – is “disgusting”, a woman’s willingness to accept a facial is an intensely powerful source of affirmation.

In my conversations with Glickman and Andelloux, I shared this anecdote. Both agreed that rather than seeing the facial as rooted in the impulse to denigrate, it might indeed be better to view it as longing for approval. Andelloux pointed out that in her experience, many women (often with good reason) have a difficult time believing that degradation isn’t at the root of straight men’s fascination with facials. In any case, humiliation and affirmation aren’t incompatible reactions to the same act; a feeling of indignity when your partner ejaculates on your face isn’t contingent on his intending to demean you. No one should be obligated to endure humiliation for the sake of someone else’s longing for validation.

New Year’s Resolutions and Social Media

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Hugo Schwyzer

My weekly Genderal Interest column is up at Jezebel: The Downside to Taking Your Resolutions Online. Excerpt:

Among the college students I teach and mentor, highly structured and progressive exercise programs like P90X and Insanity have become wildly popular, thanks to their promise to get users lean and ripped in two or three months. Though both programs are designed to be done at home, the companies behind both products understand the power of peer pressure. Both urge customers to join online groups to provide support; P90X even has a Facebook app that allows users to update their social network with data from their workouts. And of course, both programs encourage users to post photos before, during, and after the program to illustrate their amazing transformations.

Several of my students mentioned the allure of P90X and its rivals. Young men in particular reported the pressure to buy the program and embark on the intense daily workout regimen. That push didn’t just come in the form of photos of muscled friends with remade bodies. It came wrapped in the classically American masculine language of relentless self-improvement. “I kept seeing what Insanity did for my friends,” wrote Caleb, 20. “It was almost like they’d joined the Marines, just without the danger and the commitment.” In a world where so many young men are accused, perhaps unfairly, of being un-launched couch surfers, P90X and Insanity offer a chance to prove one’s ability to stick to something difficult without ever leaving the house. That proof, of course, comes through as much from the Facebook updates about doing the daily workouts as it comes from displaying the six-pack abs on the “after” body.

Clarisse Thorn on Change and Accountability

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

I’ve managed to get myself into two separate internet controversies this past week. In a very thoughtful post at Role/Reboot, Clarisse Thorn responds to the one that didn’t involve the Good Men Project. Here’s On Change and Accountability.

Excerpt:

Have you thought about these questions in your own life? I don’t mean abstractly, as an intellectual exercise. Concretely, and with intention. What would you do if, tomorrow, you found out that your best friend was a rapist? Your lover? What would you do if your sibling came to you to confess a terrible crime? To request absolution? To request accountability?

These questions are not just applicable to an individual like Hugo. They’re applicable to all of us, in all kinds of situations. And I think it’s wise for us to give them some thought before they come up … because in the heat of the moment, we can be overwhelmed by questions we could have thought our way around if we addressed them beforehand.

Do you believe people can change? And if you do believe it, then how would you help someone change?

I’m very grateful for Clarisse, and am sorry that she (and Jill Filipovic of Feministe) have endured so much calumny on my behalf this week.

Meanwhile,some folks think I’m the Ginsu Knife Set of Wrongness in Human Form. Some people’s answer to Clarisse’s first and penultimate questions is a clear and simple “no.”