It might be the timeframe in which I came of age but it seems like I’ve always kind of known that all the male-side experiences that the article’s author writes about are the flip side of the female experience that women, especially feminist women, have written about and indicted as unfair. And also as not inevitable, by the way. There are enormous societal pressures on women to market sexual access to themselves or at least to see themselves as a sexual commodity with less or more value and to wish to market themselves as a desirable package. Which is all about male appetite and female desirability and totally not about female appetite and male desirability.
Things have gotten substantially better, perhaps in part simply with age but also I think better for everyone in our culture. More women are cheerfully nonapologetically matter-of-fact about being sluts (and reclaim the word) and consider it healthy and natural, and more men like women that way with less and less of that weird bitter hatred and jealousy.
The thing that’s wrong is not having sexual desire for a woman inside your own head and acknowledging it to yourself. That’s just a part of normal sexuality.
Re-read what I quoted from post number 4. What I was objecting to was the idea that this attractive woman is tempting you (and by extension taunting you) just by existing, and you are reacting to her the way a starving person would to food. Do you not see how that mentality is treating her body as an object?
You are right that if someone treats another human being in exactly the same way they treat foood or money, it is objectionable. I think that in nearly all cases, it deserves prison.
I think Haunted Pasta was saying that women’s bodies, food and money share an effect on those who are horny/hungry/poor. The fact that they* share an effect does not mean that they are the same in all morally relevant aspects*.
For example, if I am hungry and see food, I just reach for it and eat it. I do not concern myself in the least if the food consents because it doesn’t make sense to say that food consents or doesn’t consent; it is merely an object.
On the other hand, if I see a woman I want to have sex with, she may have a similar effect on me that food does in terms of appetite or frustration of that appetite. If I sexually assaulted or raped her, that would be treating her in the exact same way I do food; just like food I would do with her as I wish without concerning myself with her consent or lack thereof. But as long as I do not do that second part, I am not treating her* merely * as I do food.
So if 1) a man found himself stimulated by a woman’s body in the same way he is stimulated by food and 2) did what he wanted with her body without her consent, he would be treating her merely as food and that would be one of the most immoral acts. I think Haunted Pasta was talking about cases where element 1 is present but not element 2.
Well, I think the reality is somewhat between these two extremes.
It’s not that men “win” love; but certainly they can make themselves more attractive through achievement and/or status. A lot more attractive.
Skimming back over this thread, there are a lot of posts that boil down to these to reactions:
“That article is complete garbage. Well, okay, except for {this one pertinent part}.” Only it’s not the same part each time!
~ or ~
“That article is complete garbage because it overgeneralises. But, I’ve known people like that, so the article describes that sub-set of men pretty accurately.”
Mr. Wong (or whatever his real name is) is waaaaay off the mark. Right off the bat, he makes an idiotic assertion.
“We Were Told Society Owed Us a Hot Girl”? Give me a break! If anything, pop culture tells WOMEN they deserve THE perfect male.
Think of a movie like “Sleepless in Seattle.” Meg Ryan is engaged to a “nice guy.” The movie, however, tells women that they deserve someone MUCH better. A stable, ordinary male who loves Meg isn’t good enough for her- she deserves MAGIC! Hence, it’s cute (rather than psychotic) when she stalks a guy she doesn’t even know halfway across the country.
What about “Sweet Home Alabama”? Reese Witherspoon dumps her perfectly nice fiance right before the wedding, and he’s supposed to take with with grace and a smile… because she’s entitled to her TRUE soulmate.
Pop culture doesn’t tell ordinary males that they deserve a princess, but it HAS historically told women they’re entitled to a prince. And that’s not a new development. Cyrano de Bergerac didn’t end up with a beautiful girl centuries ago (she married the handsome dope), and Napoleon Dynamite didn’t end up with one, either.
TV and movies sure didn’t teach ME that I was entitled to a hot women. TV and movies taught me that handsome, cool, macho hero-types are entitled to (and get!) hot women! Those of us who DIDN’T fit that mold sure didn’t come away thinking gorgeous actresses were going to fall for US.
As I’d expect with a generalizing rant.
If I were just to write a lengthy article that boiled down to “Life is suffering and everyone is evil”, people would relate to parts of it at various levels, even though most would agree that overall it’s too sweeping and/or basically someone’s tantrum.
I agree. We’re all familiar with people who think the world owes them something, and in other contexts, we recognize that attitude as immature, unattractive, and unjustifiable. It doesn’t get any less so in the context of sex partners, even if one tries to blame the attitude on society.
I thought the point was that men were taught they were “owed” a beautiful woman. That’s what the article actually said. This isn’t borne out by the examples the article presented. (The idea that people don’t “earn” or “win” love is just semantics. People routinely say that someone “won” their heart.)
Contrast this with movies where the protagonist really does obtain an attractive mate not through any action, but merely by existing: Disney’s “Snow White” and “Cinderella”.
It didn’t originate with TVs and movies though, rather they’re reflecting that aspect of our popular culture that already exists. It wasn’t all that long ago that women were still seen more as property than human beings, and that still exists in many cultures and even in the minds of many men in societies that have moved on. But even where we’ve moved on, its still something that comes up often in our fiction because its still a part of our collective consciousness. Even for men who realize this and believe it shouldn’t be the case, its not like we can just forget about the idea.
Another part of it is that there’s a certain amount of that expectation burdened on men, that we aren’t really successful as a man. That is, as an extension that heroes win the girl, that men who don’t have them haven’t done enough, and they’ll feel bitter about it or somehow believe if they just do more they’ll eventually win one. Why am I not attracting a mate? Maybe if I make more money, dress better, am more manly, or whatever. It creates that resentment.
It’s not that every man thinks that way, but there are certainly some men who feel this way.
This is dead on. Women are judged much more on their physical aspects than men are. And it’s often somehow acceptable to disqualify a woman for failure in her physical appearance, or reward women with complements on their appearance. Even people who realize this will often try to justify it “oh, well if she doesn’t take care of her appearance, how could she possibly be expected to take care of that.” Ugly guys are just ugly but ugly women, it is like she’s just failed as a woman. The worst part is, this seems to only be getting worse with so much of our popular culture focusing on it.
I have seen guys sort of act like this and it is very much the “she was asking for it” rapist defense. It’s always easier to blame someone else rather than ourselves, it takes a strong person to accept blame for what he’s done rather than blame his coworker or teammate or whatever. Yeah, the guy is ruined because he’s so weak, but its an unfortunate consequence that when it comes to sex, that means men will often see it as women’s fault rather than their own. Even if a guy realizes that it’s just biology, it’ll still affect his emotions. I do think this is one of the weaker points.
If there’s something we want to do that we think of as manly and it’s looked down upon, it’s easy to blame women. It’s not just wanting to fight with swords and guns or do risky sports. If there’s anything you do with your guy friends but not with your girlfriend or around women or places where women might be, like at work, then “obviously”, its not the men stopping us from doing these things, since they’re manly things, it must be the women.
This is the big one. Again, we naturally want to blame someone else for our problems because we feel powerless over them. And we see this in other areas all the time. Our economy is in the toilet, blame immigrants for taking our jobs. If we have conflicts with other nations, its they’re fault since we’re right and they just don’t see it. It’s all a problem of perspective, but its difficult to really realize that often both people feel like the other person has the upperhand. If you always feel like the underdog, of course you’re going to get resentful.
First off, I’m not sure why women are so upset about this, or why men feel the need to argue the whole thing is wrong. The premise is that men are taught to feel this way, not that all men feel this way. Just because someone thinks it contains insight doesn’t mean they agree that women have overpowered men and they need to fight to get that power back.
That said, there are problems. The first three headlines seem to be right. Number 2 is somewhat true, I guess. Number one is ridiculous. I’ll take them each in turn:
We are taught that we are owed a woman:
If this wasn’t true, then why are single men, or, worse, virgins, looked down upon? The implication is obviously that we must have done something wrong, and not gotten what we were entitled to get.
We’re trained to see you as decoration:
How can you look at society and not thing that women are objectified often? And do you not think that objectification teaches us that it’s okay?
And, for those of you confusing objectification with recognizing beauty, let me ask you how often you’ve dressed yourself up, put on makeup, spent significant time on your hair, etc. in order to look good. Or how often have you noticed that some guy is attractive? That’s not objectification.
Conspiring with our boners against us:
Poorly phrased, but obvious. Men talk about all the time how an attractive woman can get them to do things they normally wouldn’t do. And there’s no way you can deny that we’ve been taught about the unscrupulous women who uses her attractiveness to take advantage of us: there are stories of people being tied up and robbed, stories of women who flirt all the time to get their way, etc.
We feel like our manhood was stolen from us:
Shaky, but maybe I can see a point in there. There are definitely certain things that we are taught are manly, but are also now told are unacceptable. Those things he mentions really are things we are taught are manly. The problem is, I think he goes too far in implying that every man feels this way, or in assuming that these feelings are natural and not just societal. Instead of getting off into how we all feel like this, he should stick with the idea that we are told we all should feel like this. We are told those male characters he mentioned are the male ideal. When, in reality, they are just the selfish ideal that lurks in every person, male or female, and that we’ve always had to try to overcome to be able to function in a society.
We feel powerless.
No, just no. The statement is I guess technically true, but the text claims that we seek power solely to win women, and that this is why we feel powerless. No, if there’s any sense of powerlessness, it’s simply because we constantly see these men who have everything and are compared with them. And, guess what? It applies to women, too. Of course both of us are insecure. The only annoying thing is that insecurity is considered a much more negative trait in men for some reason, so we have to hide it from anyone but the people we truly care about, or at least people we don’t care if they like us. In fact, that contradicts number two: it’s not manly to admit how insecure you feel. And it’s actually a good thing that that is fading.
That’s not to say there isn’t a hypothesis in evolutionary psychology that men really do engage in risky behaviors to attract women. But, even if this is true, it’s a far cry from that to all attempts at acquiring power are attempts at seduction, and an even bigger leap to thinking that we feel powerless because of this.
BigT, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but there were one or two things I thought warranted comment.
Done something wrong, maybe, but that doesn’t imply entitlement.
Society also looks down on people who are poor, fat, unsuccessful, didn’t go to the “right” college etc. But most people would say that we must work for these things (and/or luck is involved) rather than we’re all entitled to them.
I can’t quite parse your argument here – I don’t think effort to look good or liking how others look in itself means we are treating others as objects.
And sure, as a guy, I spend plenty of time trying to look good e.g. I work out 3 times a week and how it affects my appearance is a significant part of the motivation.
But in any case, I agree with others on the Dope that have argued that objectification is something we all do often. When I buy something in a shop, I may not bother to converse with the person at the till and essentially treat them like a machine. It doesn’t mean I don’t think that they are real people, it’s just that, right now, there’s only one thing about them that interests me.
Objectification in a sexual context is only a dirty word because, like much of male sexuality, women can find it quite unpleasant. That men can often look at a woman and be attracted merely based on physical attributes.
I’m quote Shodan so I can use the main points. (thanks)
5 I agree that entertainment and real life are very different. I’ve seen a lot of movies, more than average for sure and no, I don’t think that when I accomplish a goal, I get a woman.
4 I can see some of this. The female form in art is well, done more but only a little more. Not all art. Look at the David. Does that mean men are decorative as well? Of course a man would simply walk by the David and hardly take a look so people wouldn’t think he was gay.
3 Nope, not at all. I do think that all women are crazy, self-destructive, and are willing to take me down with them. OK, only the ones I’ve dated.
2 I don’t think ever had “manhood” to have it stolen. I’m not sure what this even means. I know Hemingway had a definition of manhood and when I heard it I thought, “A man defines himself”.
1 EVERYONE FEELS POWERLESS YOU FUCKING MORON! So you can’t rip your shirt off and reveal a a big red S on your blue undershirt? Guess what? NOBODY CAN!
I think your explanation negates the point, rather than illustrates it. As someone said above, the message isn’t that we’re owed a woman, but that we must earn one. If single men and virgins were owed a woman, they’d be pitied for not getting what they deserved. That they’re looked down on implies that it’s their own failing, that they have not done what is required to get one.
See, this right here is where the major problem with this thread is. Do you really have to nitpick whether society tells us we’re “owed” a woman or that we have to “earn” one? Either way, it sets us up with the mentality that women’s affections are something we can either “buy” in one way or another. Either way, the mentality is damaging to women and sets men up to view them in less than equal terms. You can earn people’s respect and you can win over their overall affection but nothing “earns” you a spot in their life unless they want you there.
And that’s what the article is pointing out. Lots of men get mad because they think doing this or that will entitle them to sex or a relationship with a woman. That is the essence of "Nice Guy"ism and you can say “not all men are like that!” all you like, but every last one of us has known guys like that.
Since the thread exists for discussion of this particular article, yes, I would say the distinction is important. Some of us may dismiss it entirely as based on a false premise and a distorted view of the world; some may choose to find inconsistencies within it, where his own evidence does not support his conclusions. I don’t think that represents an insurmountable disagreement.
What the hell is this? Are you saying that women don’t look at men and feel attraction based solely on physical attributes? Uh, I don’t want to speak for the ladies but if you are that is patently false.
Also, dude, I don’t know what straight women you deal with, but most of the ones I’ve known are not horrified by male sexuality. Being straight, they kind of, uh, appreciate it.
It sounds like you are suggesting that there’s something wrong with a woman being put off by receiving unwanted sexual attention. :dubious: