Tag Archives: Male feminists

Talking Past, Present, and Future with the Feminist Theologian

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Last week, I taped an interview with Gina Messina-Dysert, a professor at Loyola Marymount University who has just started the Feminist Theologian podcast series.  Gina also tweets at @femtheologian and serves as an editor for the wonderful Feminism and Religion blog.  As the controversy around my life and work grew over the past month, Gina invited me to participate in an extended discussion about what’s been going on.  When we shot the interview in Universal City last Tuesday I was whacked out on coffee and cold medicine and having a bad hair day, but Gina was very kind and we had a good time.

The approximately 30-minute interview is broken into four parts to accomodate YouTube’s limitations.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part two of my interview with Clarisse Thorn

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Part Two of the interview that Clarisse Thorn did with me is up at Role/Reboot. Part One is here. In this second part, we talk consistent-life ethic feminism and what male feminists can do. It concludes:

The world is rightly suspicious of men. Not because we’re bad or defective, and not because we’re any less capable of compassion and love than women. It’s because we’ve hidden the fullness of our humanity behind the “tough guise” of the rules of manhood. We’ve got to live more open lives, more honest lives, less resentment-filled lives. And we’ve got to start pulling our own emotional weight.

I see more and more guys doing just that. It has me very excited.

I’m very grateful to Clarisse for such provocative and interesting questions.

Defending Sex Work, Celebrating Monogamy

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In her most recent post in our series of exchanges, Meghan Murphy asked me to answer a number of questions. Some of those questions were inspired by a commenter at her place named “Pisaquari”, who wanted to challenge me on my views about pornography and sex work as they related to my own life. I had written:

I reject porn use personally because it is incompatible with how I want to live my sexual life. I want my sexuality to be radically relational, where my arousal is inextricably linked to intimacy and partnership. I also want my sexuality to be congruent with my feminism, and for me personally, that means rejecting porn.

Meghan asked me to clarify, sensing (as did Pisaquari, apparently) a disconnect between my private behavior and my public views. While there are plenty of men who condemn pornography and sex work in public and then indulge in one or both in private, it’s a bit rarer to take the opposite tack I’m taking: affirming sex work and the possibilities of feminist pornography while remaining “personally opposed.” (It sounds a lot like the famous position of Mario Cuomo on abortion, who said he couldn’t countenance abortion personally but was strongly supportive of abortion rights.)

Answering Questions

Meghan asked a number of questions; I’ll tackle the first four here.

1) Why is pornography use incompatible with your sex life? What are the specific lines of impasse between your sex life and using pornography?

I’m a big fan of monogamy. Mind you, I don’t think monogamy is morally superior to all other ways of arranging sexual relationship. As long as we’re talking about mutuality, enthusiastic consent, and radical honesty, I think that there are many equally valid ways of living out one’s sexuality with other people. I want my sexual energy to flow towards my wife and no one else, even in fantasy. Since looking at porn (and presumably masturbating to it) would involve fantasizing about other people, that’s not something I see as compatible with my vision of monogamy.

I’m not a naturally monogamous person. I don’t know if many people are. But I like the discipline of total monogamy, which I find very rewarding and fulfilling. That really is more personal predilection than anything else. I no more expect others to share that same value system than I expect other people to share my fondness for soccer and my dislike of baseball.

2) Is pornography use incongruous with your feminism? What tenets of your feminism are not in line with pornography use?

It’s not incongruous with my feminism. It’s incongruous with my personal value system about sexuality at this point in my life. I used a lot of porn when I was younger, almost all of it before the internet era. (I wrote a tribute of a sort to Bob Guccione last year.)

But I do think that there are many different types of porn, much of which is blatantly anti-feminist. From my perspective, what I find to be the most loathsome genre of porn is the one that follows a deception narrative. A porn actress pretends to be a naive ingenue looking for a modeling gig and then is tricked into having sex with the photographer or his friend. I assume (or hope) that the deceit is only feigned. But I find the idea of being aroused by another person’s manipulation or humiliation to be fundamentally incompatible with feminism. Enthusiastic consent is sacred, or ought to be. And porn that ties the viewer’s arousal to the violation of informed consent — that strikes me as deeply problematic.

So, if the question is “can a heterosexual feminist man look at porn” without being a hypocrite, I think the answer is yes. But we need to ask what kind of porn he’s looking at. Being aroused by the naked body of someone you’ve never met, gazing with desire on another human being — that’s not inherently anti-feminist. The conditions under which those images were created matter. The story line connected to those images matters. And the way in which the use of those images affects the viewers’ relationships (specifically their views of women) matters enormously. Continue reading →

Male feminists, sex work, and SlutWalk: part two of a conversation with Meghan Murphy

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On Monday, I posted the first part of an exchange with Meghan Murphy, a blogger and radio host with the Canadian F Word Feminist Media Collective. I answered five questions she had asked of me, and we each posted the same piece at our respective sites. Predictably, we both attracted critics; some of Meghan’s radical allies were incensed that she would legitimize me by engaging, while some of my liberal/sex-positive friends were equally exasperated with my decision to take part in this dialogue.

In any event, what follows below the cut is the second part of our exchange, in which Meghan responds to five of my questions about male feminists, sex work and SlutWalk. Intercourse and puppy dogs also come up for discussion, though not in the same context. Continue reading →

Unsexed by Eirasexuality

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In a comment below this post on monogamy, Douglas took issue with my decision to identify as “Eira-sexual”, suggesting that it reflected a troubling insularity as well as heterosexual privilege. Gay and lesbian identity, he argued, is built on a sense of same-sex desire — and thus gay and lesbian community requires that desire have a public dimension. It’s an interesting point, one I hadn’t considered.

My “Eirasexuality” (the term comes from my wife’s name) privileges me personally. I wear a physical as well as a spiritual wedding band that others can both see and sense. My public commitment to one person, backed up by my private behavior, means that I’m perceived as more trustworthy by students, mentees, and colleagues. My motives are second-guessed as it is, of course. But my Eirasexuality unsexes me for everyone else, allowing me to appear safer, less potentially predatory.

If I were single, or in an open marriage, I don’t think I could teach or write about sexuality as effectively as I do in the way that I do with the credibility that I have. Whatever other agenda I have for doing the work I do, most people can quickly figure out I’m not working in this field in order to get laid. I’d like to think I could still establish a sense of safety even if I were single. But I think the task would be more difficult.

In a post a year ago called “Male feminists are mostly gay”: more on myths of lust and humanity I pointed out that we often assume gay men are more empathetic towards women because they aren’t blinded by sexual desire. It’s the old myth of the incompatibility of lust and empathy. Pushing back against that lie, I noted the need for “straight male feminists” to live out both their feminism and their heterosexuality in public. What I neglected to acknowledge is that my “available” brothers may have a harder time being trusted when they do that than I do.

If no one hates you, you’re not doing your job: a note on male feminist work

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My friend Karl wrote me on Facebook:

I know the work of pro-feminist men can be a lonely one, and one that makes you the target of a lot of attacks from MRAs.

While I’ve been within the feminist movement for about five or six years now, and while I’ve established myself well with fellow feminists, being able to build trust and relationships at conferences, through activism and such, I am feeling extremely uncomfortable with attacks from the anti-feminist groups.

It’s one of those silly things that I actually care about and worry, because quotes will be taken out of context, accusations of trying to bed all feminist women would start, and character assassination would exist. I am not sure how to deal with it.

I know you’re quite a big target for the MRA community, and I am writing simply to ask how you dealt with it when you first came on their radar. Is this an issue that pro-feminist men need to even worry about?

Certainly if you wade through the comments below my Tuesday column on MRAs at the Good Men Project, you’ll see lots of invective and ad hominem. If you visited this blog during the week I was trying out the Disqus commenting system, you probably saw a lot of hateful remarks that bore the hallmark of some of the more extreme members of the men’s rights movement.

As I’ve said before, we throw three basic charges at male feminists:

1. they’re gay
2. they’re “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, using feminism as a seduction tactic to get women into bed
3. they are filled with self-loathing, and feminism is a kind of ritualized penance or self-abuse.

Since I started taking women’s studies courses a quarter century ago, I’ve been on the receiving end of all three of those accusations countless times. Most of the men I know who do this work have heard the same thing over and over again. We know why we get the first two: in our culture, we don’t believe men can ever do anything in the absence of a sexual agenda. So we preach the lie that only gay men can truly care about women, because heterosexual male lust and empathy are fundamentally incompatible with each other. We preach the lie that in the end, regardless of pretty words, men are dogs and only want “one thing”, and are quite willing to use feminism as a façade to get it. And when those two charges fail, we resort to the third, convinced that only a man who genuinely hated his maleness could possibly hold these views.

I write and teach with the privilege of tenure. My job is not in jeopardy because of my feminist activism, and that inoculates me against a lot of mischief that MRAs and others might do. (Not that they don’t try; my division dean and the vice-president for instruction tell me they get letters and phone calls from time to time from folks complaining about what I’ve said on my blog or in an article somewhere. The administration has my back, and I’m lucky in that.)

I have worried a few times about physical threats. I didn’t worry before I became a father, but as a Dad feel the obvious need to be a little more careful with my person. Three or four times, I’ve gotten emails or phone calls that have threatened harm — and I’ve learned to report those to the campus police. I think most MRAs would repudiate those sorts of threats, and I also think most of those threats are empty talk. But one never knows, and there’s no shame in reporting intimations of personal violence.

In the end, I need to remember that it is so much worse for the women around me who do this work. My female colleagues have been threatened with rape, called “bitches” and “cunts” in postings on their office doors. Look at the racist slut-shaming that’s directed daily at the amazingly brave young feminist writer and sex columnist, Lena Chen; look at the comments that show up even here directed at my old friend and brilliant comrade-in-arms, Amanda Marcotte. No matter how often I get called “mangina”, it doesn’t add up to what folks like Amanda and Lena and countless other female bloggers, scholars and activists deal with every damn day.

I don’t worry about being sexually assaulted in a parking lot after a feminist event. That’s not masculine bravado on my part, it’s statistical probability. Embittered men’s rights activists can call me a “self-loathing faggot” or a “predatory perv prof” until the proverbial cows come home, but those are just words. Like watercolors, they wash off. Continue reading →

Good Men — and MRAs

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Today at Good Men Project Magazine, an issue devoted to covering the Men’s Rights Movement and Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). Senior editor Henry Belanger, who catches my subject-verb agreement problems every week for my column, sets the tone in this piece. And we’ve got articles from staunch anti-feminist MRAs like Paul Elam and Zeta Male. I’m joined this week in presenting the other side by Amanda Marcotte, whom I’m thrilled to have as a guest at GMPM. Amanda’s post is sensibly titled The Solution to MRA Problems? More Feminism.

More articles tomorrow and throughout the week.

I learned from Henry that Dan Moore, the publisher of Menz Magazine, described me as “the Darth Vader of Men’s Issues” in a note to the Good Men Project. There’s something just so perfect about an MRA using a Star Wars reference! In any case, here’s my weekly column: How Men’s Rights Activists Get Feminism Wrong.

A happy International Women’s Day, Feminist Coming Out Day, and Shrove Tuesday to one and all.

A few good men? New research on problems with male “allies”

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I’m home from Denver and the National Women’s Studies Association meeting. It was a great four days in Colorado, with the chance to connect with many wonderful colleagues and the chance to get fresh inspiration for my own writing, teaching, mentoring, and personal growth.

Though my own panel on men (with my colleagues Robert Buelow, Tal Peretz, and Brian Jara) was far less well-attended than last year, I was pleased with the discussion we had. (Our presentation was recorded, and I will have a link to it eventually.) We continued last year’s Atlanta discussion on the problems with and potential for men in feminist spaces and men in anti-violence activism.

Though I’ve got more to say about our panel discussion — including my focus on reconciling male sexual desire and feminism, the subject of so much of our recent debates around here –I want to start with the experience that deeply impacted those of us who presented in Denver.

Three of us were deeply influenced by a panel we’d gone to a day earlier, presented by Chris Linder of Colorado State University and one of her graduate students. Their presentation looked at the experiences of women who had worked with self-described male feminists on college campuses, mostly young men doing anti-violence work. Their research findings were sobering; Linder and her graduate researcher, Rachel Johnson, found that a great many women whom they surveyed reported serious boundary violations (including sexual assault) at the hands of male feminist allies. Anecdotes turned into hard data (the study is unpublished, but we were given a summary of the findings) and that hard data revealed that the problem of misconduct by men who claim to be doing feminist work is far more serious than we had previously imagined. Continue reading →

The pro-feminist pick-up artist: rethinking a blind spot

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Clarisse Thorn, the noted sex-positive writer and blogger, came to speak to my women’s history class today. Clarisse was in Los Angeles on another engagement, and was kind enough to come and talk to my students about sex-positive feminist masculinity. We had a short and very amiable debate, as I challenged some of her positions. (More on that in a future post.) I look forward to getting some good feedback from more of my students, but have already had a few enthusiastic emails and Facebook messages.

UPDATE: Clarisse notes her visit here. Her post lists some links from each of our archives that cover some of the areas where we disagree.

Clarisse’s article on the pathologizing of male desire got a great deal of attention in the blogosphere last month, and there were over 100 comments in the debate about it here on this blog. A follow-up post has a still-active comment thread. Those two posts received more comments than any others I wrote in October. Clarisse is clearly an instigator of good discussion.

I took Clarisse to lunch to thank her, and in our discussion over various vegetarian goodnesses, we returned to this challenging theme of constructive sex-positive feminist masculinity. I talked about how frustrated I’ve been in my exchanges on the topic with many men, who — as my comment threads indicate — find my writing on the topic to be shaming, or unhelpful, or privileged. I’ve been asked before for “pick-up tips for feminist men”, a request I’ve resisted for both ideological and experiential reasons. I haven’t spent much time around the “pick-up artist” (PUA) and “seduction” communities, largely because I find their views to be deeply demeaning to women (as well as men). Clarisse has a more nuanced view, as one of her many interests is focused on “bridging the gap” between the PUA and feminist worlds. I’m leery that that gap can be bridged at all, but I’m open to discussion.

But in talking with Clarisse, I realized how often I’ve been unnecessarily contemptuous of those men who have sought out techniques and strategies for approaching women. I’m married, of course, and devotedly so. I’m obviously not looking for sexual or romantic partners. But even when I was single, I never had trouble “meeting” women, finding sexual partners, or getting into relationships. (I had tremendous problems making relationships work, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) Writing those words makes me uncomfortable; they seem filled with macho swagger. I’m not boasting of my sexual prowess, or at least, I’m trying not to. But though I have had myriad challenges in my life (particularly around drug and alcohol addiction), one problem I haven’t had since I hit college was finding sexual partners. Learning to be celibate was hard; learning how to be monogamous in thought and word as well as in body was hard. Unlearning flirting was hard. Getting laid — and every few years, getting married — was easy. Continue reading →