Category Archives: sexism

Ozy’s Thoughts On Pickup Artistry

[Content note: some discussion of rape later in the post.]

I’m actually less anti-pickup than most sex-positive feminists: I think a lot of pickup tactics probably do work. DHVs (the jargon term for “having cool traits”) work. Congruence (the jargon term for “not passing yourself off as something you’re not”) works. Peacocking (the jargon term for “really awesome clothes”) works. (At least, my ex-girlfriend once said that if Mystery wanted to fuck her, all he’d have to do is not say something so dumb that it outweighed his being a skinny pretty pale gothy dude in eyeliner.)

Even the stuff that probably doesn’t work is decent as a Dumbo’s Magic Feather. If you believe the neg hit works, you’ll go hit on more girls. As long as it doesn’t actively turn off women, you’ll believe it’s the neg hit, rather than the neg hit improving your willingness to hit on women.

I think my biggest complaint is that pick-up artists in general are extremely dishonest about what their systems prove– namely, they believe they have a General Theory of What Women Are Attracted To. However, most pickup artists admit they target twentysomething, conventionally attractive women. In addition, the most common forms of game are “night game” (nightclubs) and “day game” (talking to strange women going about their everyday activities); women who like nightclubs and strangers talking to them on the street are almost certainly more extraverted than average, and probably different on several other personality metrics. Not to mention the filtering effects of PUA techniques themselves: some evidence suggests a correlation between women being attracted to people who use PUA techniques and women being sexist.

You don’t have a general theory of women’s sexuality; you have a general theory of the sexuality of Sexist Outgoing Twentysomething Conventionally Attractive Women Who Like Nightclubs And/Or Street Harassment. Which is fine! That’s what you’re aiming for! But generalizing from that sample to all women is about as plausible as me saying that all women are attracted to dudes who make out with each other because that gets you laid at YaoiCon.

Pickup artists’ ideas of what women like have to stay remotely within the bounds of the plausible; if a tactic gets a drink thrown on you every time, you will eventually stop doing it. On the other hand, as regards men’s preferences they may go on the most wild flights of fancy in the world. Thus we get claims like “[the ugliness of older women] is why you will see older women in porn work the penis like a piston with their mouths and hands– hard, firm, and unrelenting tactile stimulation is the only way they can get a guy off,” which is pretty much the most gloriously self-refuting sentence of all time.

(Seriously, did you think I could get through a whole post about pick-up artistry without picking on Heartiste at least once?)

It gets worse when they start trying to explain why their tactics work, because they will inevitably explain it with Evolution, despite not knowing the first thing about evolution. I’m not even asking that they know gender theory. But seriously, basic anthropology (gatherers provide most of the calories in most cultures, hence no such thing as beta male provider) and biology (r/K selection is on a species level, not an individual level, and hasn’t been a popular theory for twenty years anyway; there’s no such thing as an alpha wolf) are not that hard.

My other major beef with pickup artistry, other than it actively making people have dumb beliefs about gender, is that some pickup artists recommend raping women. This is… a pretty huge beef, to be fair.

I feel like to a certain degree that’s a natural consequence of specifically trying to figure out the best method to fuck the most women possible. After all, raping women is a very effective method of getting your dick wet.

Obviously, I’m not saying that everyone who wants to get laid more will inevitably end up justifying rape. What I am saying is that adopting a particular narrow view– where your goal is to collect notches on your bedpost rather than to engage in mutually satisfactory sexual and/or romantic relationships– is likely to lead some people to think “hey, if I just ignored those stupid women saying ‘no’ I’d get WAY more notches.”

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Steelmanning PIV-Critical Feminism

For those of you don’t know: steelmanning is coming up with better versions of your opponents’ arguments, and PIV-critical feminism is the kind of feminism that comes up with graphics like this: 


[Assuming the following are all true: PIV = sex, oral + PIV = sex, digital + oral + PIV = sex. What is the value of oral? What is the value of digital? They are both zero. If sex = PIV and PIV = female risk and sex = pleasure, them female risk = pleasure.]

PIV is thought of in our society as “real sex.” To pick an example: it regularly happens that I will be naked with a dude, my hands down his pants, when he asks “do you want to have sex?” (which rather makes me wonder what he thought we were doing before). The question “do you want to have sex or just get a blowjob?” makes sense, rather than being an inquiry along the lines of “would you like food or just a pizza?” You lose your virginity the first time you have PIV sex, rather than the first time you share orgasms with someone or have oral sex. Vaginal orgasms are treated by a lot of sex advice as the end-all be-all rather than one more enjoyable activity partners can share. Premature ejaculation is an Enormous Problem rather than an opportunity to explore other sex acts. Et cetera. 

Because of this, PIV is to a degree mandatory. Imagine the general public’s reaction to a woman who chooses not to give blowjobs versus a woman who chooses not to have PIV. Don’t get me wrong, ladies who don’t want to give blowjobs would still be characterized as prudish and unreasonable. But women who don’t want to have PIV? Are their relationships even real? Are they secretly asexual? What’s wrong with her?

(Note: I wrote the rest of this blog post with “uterus-owner” and “penis-owner,” and then with “cis woman” and “cis man,” and it was so clunky I cried on the inside, so now I’m going with the cissexist version. This is all your fault, rest of the trans community, for not giving me a good set of nouns for the different sexes.)

Mandatory PIV is misogynistic because PIV is kind of a shit deal for women. Women are more likely than men to contract STIs from PIV and less likely to have or notice symptoms so they can be treated promptly. Women get pregnant, which even in the modern US leads to a death rate of 11 in 100,000 pregnant women, and historically led to a death rate as high as 1 in 100. Most forms of birth control are solely the woman’s responsibility: they can be expensive and often have physical and mental side effects. (Yes, women’s control of birth control does mean that dudes are at a higher risk of reproductive coercion, but that doesn’t change that side effects are shit. I had vaginal bleeding for three months straight when I was on the pill. Mrer.)

And for what benefit? About three-quarters of women don’t orgasm from intercourse alone. (While I was Googling this, I found this article. Headline: Female Orgasm Eludes Majority Of Women. Study: 70% of women don’t orgasm during intercourse, but 85-90% do orgasm. While 10-15% of women being nonorgasmic is deplorable, it’s only the majority if you think “female orgasm” means “female orgasm during PIV.” Talk about mandatory PIV.) While of course you can enjoy PIV without orgasming, a significant part of that 70% are not particularly enjoying themselves– and besides it’s a bit shitty to have Real Sex be something that reliably results in orgasms for men but not for women.

PIV is more likely to be painful for women than for men. There is no male equivalent of having your cervix bumped, or a too-large cock stretching your pussy out too far, or sex without lube, or being painfully jackhammered, or post-PIV vaginal soreness. Psychologically, being receptive often feels more vulnerable for people than being penetrative does, which can be unpleasant, particularly if you don’t trust your partner (although as with every generalization about How Brains Work During Sex there are a lot a lot a lot of exceptions).

The way PIV itself is constructed is centered around male pleasure rather than female pleasure. A woman is ready for PIV when her vagina is wet, which is at best an unreliable indicator of how turned on she is; clit boners are typically not considered in mainstream sex advice. Many people talk about how hot a tight vagina is, even though vaginal tightness happens when a woman is insufficiently aroused by the sex to relax her vaginal muscles. (Or when she uses her Kegel muscles. Yay Kegels.) PIV typically ends when the man ejaculates; I know I’m not the only person who feels guilty about ending PIV before my partner ejaculates, even when my pussy’s sore and I’m not enjoying the sex anymore. On the other hand, if the guy comes before the woman’s finished, it is generally considered highly emasculating to pull out a dildo and finish up.

The flaw with a lot of PIV-critical feminism, I think, is that they ignore that the problems with PIV are not inherent to PIV itself but to the way we construct PIV. PIV is legitimately enjoyable to a lot of women– whether because they orgasm from it, they don’t orgasm from it but it still feels good, or they enjoy their partner’s pleasure. (Boyfriends, if you read this and decide not to have PIV with me I will be Very Sad.) It is incredibly shitty to those women to say “no, you don’t get to have PIV because these women over here don’t enjoy it but feel like they have to have it anyway.” I mean, the obvious solution here is that people who don’t like PIV shouldn’t have to have it, and people who do should.

So. Here is my list of solutions:

1) If you don’t want PIV, you shouldn’t have PIV. (Although it is wise to communicate this to people you might have sex with early on, in case they prioritize PIV highly in their sex lives.) Anyone who gives you shit about it is a rapey asshole and I hope they fall in love with a Joss Whedon character.
2) If you’re staring at the ceiling going “when will this be over?”, you can stop the PIV, even if your partner hasn’t come yet. While it is usually a good idea to make sure your partner orgasms too, you can give him a blowjob or a handjob or kiss and pet him while he masturbates. (And of course it is not mandatory that you make sure your partner comes if you don’t want to. Consent!)   
3) Orgasms from non-PIV sources are just as valid as PIV orgasms. Orgasms from PIV assisted with a vibrator or a finger are just as valid as unassisted PIV orgasms. STOP CREATING ORGASM HIERARCHIES. ALL ORGASMS ARE EQUAL IN THE EYES OF GOD.
4) If you aren’t enjoying yourself during PIV, you should feel free to talk to your partner about this and figure out ways you can make it more enjoyable.
5) Male birth control! Please!
6) Sex without PIV is still “real” sex. Oral sex is real sex. Manual sex is real sex. Dry-humping is real sex. Kink is real sex. As long as your relationship or sex life is making you happy, you should feel free to select any of those you want and refuse any of those you don’t want, because ultimately it is up to you and your partner to do what makes you happy. 

Ozy’s Current Theory of Gender

[As promised. I would like to acknowledge my debt here to West and Zimmerman's Doing Gender, to Natalie Reed, and to the valiant people who have attempted to explain to me what the fuck Judith Butler is going on about. Also, I'm not saying any of this is how it should work; I'm simply describing how, as far as I can tell, it does work.]

Our culture transmits to us a certain idea of How Gender Is Supposed to Work. Or, well, ideas. People of different races and classes and abilities and sexualities and religions and body types and personalities get different messages about how gender is supposed to work. You get different messages based on where you grew up, what your family’s like, where you went to school, what media you watched, who your friends were, whom you date, where you work. In fact, you can say that no two people get exactly the same gender socialization.

People use the cultural ideas of how gender works as a toolkit to express their own identities and to communicate them to other people. (For some people, gender is not a relevant axis on which they construct their identities. Thus you get cis by default people.) Ways that people express their gender can include clothing, grooming, hygiene, mannerisms, word choice and syntax, the way they pitch their voice, their lifestyle, sexual choices, how they interact with or treat other people, and probably half a dozen other things I can’t think of.

Because gender is a means of communicating facts about one’s identity, people “read” each other’s genders. People slot each other into “male” or “female,” and then into a multitude of gendered subcategories– butch, femme, good girl, slut, dandy, bro, geek, fag, et cetera I’m sure you can think of more. Of course, just because you’re trying to communicate something does not mean other people are able to understand what you’re trying to communicate (the jargon I hear is “illegible gender”); other people bring their own biases and interpretations and Mounds of Gendered Shit to the table.

People end up treating other people differently based on what gender they read the person as having. For instance, I mysteriously get much more respect in intellectual conversations when people read me as male or at least masculine. All this gets Really Important in relationship to sexuality, because for a lot of people what sex or gender they read their partner as is a fundamentally important aspect of attraction. And in turn what gendered subcategories they read their partner as fitting into affects whether they want a sexual relationship and what kind of sexual relationship they want.

People feel more comfortable expressing their genders in some ways than in other ways. In some ways, this is shaped by how people treat them: after all, there are plenty of women who look feminine to get guys without having much connection to femininity at all. But for a lot of people the act of expressing yourself in a certain gendered way feels right: putting on a skirt just feels ineffably better than sweatpants; it just feels right to swish; when you slick back your hair you look in the mirror and see you. I think that’s a lot of what people are getting at with “makeup is empowering!”– it’s not that makeup is empowering, it’s that expressing your gender is empowering, and for some people that involves makeup. (I predict about half my readers are nodding along going “yep” at this point and the other half are like “what the fuck is zie even talking about?” Sorry, other half. Please take it on faith that this Is A Thing I Promise.)

—As for the “hey, if that’s true, why can’t trans women just be men in makeup?” Because they feel comfortable as women, not men. Duh?

Why do people have feelings of gender comfort? Some kind of biopsychosocial nonsense, probably. I’d argue that there’s Probably Some Kind Of Neurobiological Thing Or Things That Affect One’s Gender Somehow, because both gender roles and trans people tend to pop up a lot cross-culturally, and because certainly from the inside it doesn’t feel like my bodily gender dysphoria is a product of the culture I grew up in. But I’m not going to say “it’s the prenatal hormones!” or “we have the brains of the opposite gender!” or anything specific. Wait for neuroscience to become more advanced.

As to the psychological and social factors… I only have one navel to gaze at, my own, so I’m not going to generalize about other people’s experiences. But I use gender-neutral pronouns and call myself “genderqueer” or “nonbinary” and wear a binder because I happened to encounter the trans community and fit my experiences into their framework of what genderqueer people do. I paint my nails and wear makeup because, shit, man, so did David Bowie and Billie Joe Armstrong. I cut my hair to look like Joan Jett and grew it out to look like every gamer guy who can’t be bothered to get a haircut. I’m perfectly fine fucking boys because of my formative experiences reading slash fic and lesbian feminist theory. (Which is kind of the opposite of what lesbian feminism was supposed to do, but c’est la vie.) I choose my outfits based on whether strangers “sir” me or sexually harass me. I joke that my gender identity is bishonen! Either “nature” or “nurture” is an inadequate explanation of how I got my gender: the answer is both.

(Also I really like this list from Natalie Reed’s Twitter of assorted factors that have to do with gender somehow. Gender is coooooomplicated.)

Binary Genders as Umbrella Genders

(For the record: this is a pretty tentative idea and I feel like this post might be a little rambly and incoherent. I am bad at words okay. Gender theory is hard.)

One of the things about being nonbinary/genderqueer is that it’s an umbrella term. True, a lot of nonbinary/genderqueer people have some experiences in common, enough that it makes sense to classify us together: not being recognized as our genders, being accused of special snowflake syndrome, weird pronouns, genderfuckery, dysphoria, formative adolescent Rocky Horror Picture Show experiences.

But you can’t assume that my experience of being genderqueer is the same as any other person’s; in fact, many of our experiences are radically different from each other. I fantasize about waking up one morning with a flat chest while another genderqueer person may love theirs; my gender is stable where another person’s may switch from being male to being female from day to day; I get absolutely nothing out of genderfuck while another person considers it core to their identity. Although it is neat when you meet someone who has the same genderfeels that you do, the vast majority of genderqueer people do not, and that’s okay and doesn’t make you or them any less genderqueer.

The thing is… how is that not true of binary genders too?

Seriously. James Bond is a man. Jack Harkness is a man. Willy Loman is a man. Groucho Marx is a man. Darth Vader is a man. Romeo is a man. Oscar Wilde is a man. The Joker is a man. Sassy Gay Friend is a man. And yet I do not think you can tell me a single thing all those characters have in common other than the fact that people call them “he.”

I think it makes way more sense to think of manhood and womanhood as umbrellas, under which we have a variety of different genders, gender presentations, and gendered experiences.

This is how we resolve the problem of not being prescriptivist or essentialist, while simultaneously acknowledging that people do do things that make them “feel like a woman.” Maybe you feel like a woman when you change your child’s diaper! Maybe you feel like a woman when you put on lipgloss! Maybe you feel like a woman when you kick ass at MMA! Maybe you feel like a woman when you fix a car! Maybe you feel like a woman in a ponytail and yesterday’s blue jeans! Maybe you find the concept of “feeling like a woman” somewhat incomprehensible, since you are a woman always and what behavior you do doesn’t affect it! Maybe you don’t feel much connection to the identity of “woman” at all but *shrug* that’s what the doctor said when he slapped you on the ass as a baby! That’s all good and they are all perfectly valid ways of Being A Woman. “I feel more womanly when I put on lipstick” does not mean that every woman needs to feel more womanly when they put on lipstick.

I think this is much easier to see in genderqueer people, because pretty much all genderqueers have put a lot of thought into gender: first to find out that genderqueer is a thing, then to identify as it, then talking about everyone’s favorite topic (our genders!) with other genderqueer people. So most genderqueer people I know have a pretty good idea of what makes us feel dysphoric, and on the other hand what makes us feel comfortable in our genders. (For instance: I feel best in schlubby geek clothes or very sexualized feminine outfits. Perfume and painted nails lead to All The Awesome Genderfeels. I hate my breasts, bind them or wear baggy shirts whenever possible, and occasionally don’t want them touched during sex. I don’t mind Birth Name because it can also be a nickname for a boy. I have a vast and ridiculous need for straight cis men to treat me as One Of Them, but also to have sex with me. If you call me “she” I will feel like vomiting.)

But the thing is that a cis woman (or for that matter a cis man) might have the same feelings I do about painted nails, but instead of reading the feelings as “aaaaah good genderfeels” they might be more likely to read the feeling as “pretty” or “fierce” or “awesome.” (Or as “I really feel like a woman,” I’m not saying all cis people are totally unaware.)

I feel like I’m eliding the difference between gender presentation and gender identity somewhat. Insofar as I currently think it makes sense as a distinction, it makes sense because for some people nail polish is an important aspect of their gender, and for some people nail polish makes their fingernails funny colors. It is inaccurate to assume that everyone in the second category is in the first category. (Also, it makes sense as a lie-to-cis-people. While things we normally call “gender presentation” are, in fact, deeply connected to things we normally call “gender identity,” they are not connected in the same way for different people, and claiming that they’re completely unrelated is a good way to get people not to decide that someone is Doing Man Wrong because they happen not to be doing it to their personal specifications. There’s no wrong way to Do Man. There’s just ways that make you comfortable, and ways that make you uncomfortable.)

…And this kind of ties in to my Big Crackpot Theory of Gender, but this is long and incoherent enough for today, so I promise I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Prudes’ Progress: Intro to Radical Feminism

Lisa Millbank is a blogger I really respect, because she’s really smart about gender and even when I disagree with her ideas I always have to question my beliefs. Recently, she finished a series called The Prudes’ Progress, which is about developing a radical feminist concept of sexuality and has induced Many of the Thinky Thoughts on my part. So I’ve decided to write a bunch of blog posts responding to it, or talking about the ideas that are more-or-less related to her thoughts. This is the introduction to the series!

First: Millbank is a radical feminist. Most people I know tend to use “radical feminist” as either a synonym for “extreme feminist” or a synonym for “transphobic whorephobic kinkphobic feminist,” neither of which are actually correct. Radical feminism is a distinct theoretical perspective on feminism (which, yes, often happens to be extreme and transphobic/whorephobic/kinkphobic).

Radical feminists believe that gender is a social construct, not a biological reality, formed out of patriarchy. Patriarchy, they believe, is a social structure in which men dominate and oppress women; it seeps into every aspect of our lives, including such apparently apolitical things as appearance and one’s sex life. Radical feminists believe that gender, structures of domination, and patriarchy are bad for women and should be eliminated. (For the curious, I disagree with #1 (gender is both a social construct and a biological reality), agree with #2, and agree with #3 except for the gender bit with caveats.)

In particular, since I’m going to be talking about radical feminist views of sexuality a lot, I should talk about what they are. If patriarchy seeps into every aspect of life, it also seeps into sex; since patriarchy is bad, this leads to sex that hurts one or more of the people involved. How so? Well, obviously sexual violence. But beyond that an ideology of beliefs that wind up promoting sexual violence (the famous “rape culture”)– the treatment of one person as active, powerful, the subject, the one who wants, and another as passive, subordinate, the object, the one who is wanted and does what the subject wants. Through sexuality, patriarchy eroticizes and actively maintains this difference. Lisa Millbank calls patriarchal sex “instrumental sexuality,” which is a phrase I’m going to use.

Radical feminism was originally opposed to liberal feminism, which was the feminism that mostly dealt with legal inequality and job discrimination and reproductive rights. Very few people identify as a liberal feminist anymore because the abortion thing is basically the only part of liberal feminism that’s remotely controversial and if you like abortion rights you can just call yourself pro-choice.

Around about the time liberal feminism became incredibly uncontroversial, feminism decided to have something called the Feminist Sex Wars (not kidding). Radical feminists tended to believe that porn, BDSM, and sex work perpetuate social structures of domination and were violence against women. Sex-positive feminists, on the other hand, were like “wait, no, I get to do what I want with my own vagina, stop telling me what to do.”

(Also in this period huge swathes of radical feminism inexplicably decided that trans people were Public Enemy #1. Which, okay, if you think gender is a product of the patriarchy then trans people probably won’t exist in the post-patriarchy, but I fail to understand how that turns harassing trans women into a feminist practice.)

(Yes I do. The answer is transmisogyny.)

A huge amount of theory that even sex-positive and trans feminists use was developed by radical feminists. The concept of “patriarchy”? Radical feminists. “Rape culture”? Radical feminists. “The personal is political”? Radical feminists. Consciousness-raising groups and their descendant the feminist blog? Radical feminists. I am really sad that radical feminism has all too often devolved into woman-hate, because there are so many radical feminist authors I respect and who have deeply affected my feminism and challenged my thought on gender. Part of the reason I like Millbank’s work a lot is that she’s a modern radical feminist who gives my brain the same workout as, say, Dworkin.

Another reason I particularly like The Prudes’ Progress is that a lot of people, having proved to their satisfaction that such-and-such sexual practice is inherently oppressive, consider their work done. To pick on a non-radical-feminist example… let’s say it’s oppressive to consider trans, disabled, and fat people inherently unattractive, both because it’s a product of a culture that considers trans, disabled, and fat people unattractive, and because it’s shitty to be considered ugly because you’re part of whatever marginalized group. Okay, great. What do you do with that? If you’re someone who’s only attracted to cis, abled, thin people, do you… have sex with trans, disabled, and fat people anyway for anti-oppression points? Self-flagellate about  your oppressive boner? What? Identifying a problem is not the same thing as offering a solution.

Millbank has written an entire really long series of articles about how, if you accept radical feminist beliefs about sexuality, to make your sexuality less patriarchal. I approve of this and wish more people who want to critique sexuality would do similar things.

Obvious Disclaimer: all of this is personal piety, not basic morality. Your moral obligation sexually is discharged by not being an asshole. (You know: don’t rape people, don’t call people ugly because they don’t give you a boner, don’t lie to your sexual partners about how many people you’re fucking or whether you have an STI, use contraception unless you’re prepared to have offspring, that sort of thing.) If you don’t accept radical feminist beliefs about sexuality (which I do with some caveats), you might be able to get something out of The Prudes’ Progress, but it’s primarily targeted at a different audience. If you’re in a place where working on your sexuality is not healthy or fulfilling or the optimal choice for you right now, great! Go build houses for Habitat for Humanity or something. If your feminism involves hating on women who aren’t hurting anyone for being insufficiently feminist, you are bad at feminism.

Further Obvious Disclaimer: The Prudes’ Progress is mostly written for women in erotic relationships with other women. I am a nonbinary but female-presenting person primarily in erotic relationships with men (although I have been in erotic relationships with women in the past). I expect this is going to affect my reactions to shit she talks about.

Probably Non-Obvious Disclaimer: Most of my planned blog posts range from “inspired by The Prudes’ Progress” to “completely unrelated to it but thrown in as an appendix because why not,” so you do not have to read The Prudes’ Progress in order to understand the series.

Rarity is Best Pony

Because this is My Blog and I am allowed to squee about ponies if I want to.

I have to admit, when Rarity was first introduced I was like “oh fuck. It’s The One Who’s Into Fashion.” It is a truth universally acknowledged that every shitty girls’ TV show must have a Girl who is Into Fashion and all of whose character traits revolve around shoe shopping and the need for added closet space. I am pretty much 100% the biggest proponent of femininity you’ll find, and even I am profoundly annoyed by The One Who’s Into Fashion.

I think the thing that separates Rarity from ordinary girls’ TV characters that are Into Fashion is that most of the fashionistas in girls’ TV are primarily consumers of fashion: they like shopping and coordinating outfits. Rarity, on the other hand, is a creator.

A lot of Rarity’s plotlines are about the problems of being an artist. What do you do when a friend becomes more successful than you do? How do you deal with criticism of your work? What about when you’re on deadline but you spend so much time making something absolutely perfect that you don’t have time to finish all the work you’re supposed to do? Or when people keep bothering you when you try to work? Artist problems!

Furthermore, just because Rarity is feminine does not mean that she isn’t made of pure badassery. Which is another of my problems with the Characters that are Into Fashion– they often are kinda dumb and don’t have much going for them beyond awesome outfits. Feminine does not mean dumb or weak, people. If you write all your feminine characters as dumb and weak you are bad and you should feel bad.

I think A Dog and Pony Show shows it off best: Rarity gets kidnapped and the Mane Six decide to stage a rescue! Fortunately, Rarity has maxxed out her Charisma score, so she just Ransom of Red Chiefs the hell out of her kidnappers until they’re cowed into submission. What I particularly like is that it’s not that Rarity is suddenly able to fight: it’s that she’s manipulative and clever and good at people, the same personality traits she’s had throughout the show, and she can fucking destroy you with them. And that is a trope I adore.

In Defense of Disney

A lot of people tend to criticize the Disney princesses as being anti-feminist which, as a mature grown-up adult who is a fan of Disney movies but recognizes that other people may have different opinions and legitimate criticisms, I tend to respond to something like this:

NO NO NO NO DISNEY IS AWESOME STOP SAYING THAT IT’S OKAY DISNEY PRINCESSES I WILL SNUGGLE YOU ALL AND PROTECT YOU FROM THE MEAN PEOPLE :( :( :(

But once I get over my irrational princess love, even I have to admit a lot of feminist criticism of Disney princesses is legitimate. Early Disney princesses didn’t have very much agency. Worryingly, Frozen looks like it’s going to continue Tangled’s focus on the hero in lieu of the princess. Pocahontas is amazingly racist.* Beauty and the Beast depicts an abusive relationship. We’re probably not going to get a lesbian princess, a disabled princess, or a princess who isn’t conventionally attractive. And don’t get me started on the merch. “Sparkling Princess Mulan,” Disney? Really? Really?

So Disney princesses are bad! Instead we should let girls watch all the other coming-of-age stories that feature female protagonists with a wide variety of personalities, about a third of whom are women of color, and which thanks to their variety of female villains and side characters almost always pass the Bechdel test.**

Oh wait.

There aren’t any.

Seriously, look at the diversity here. Merida and Mulan and Rapunzel as your grrrl-power ass-kicking princesses! (And also different kinds of ass-kicking: Rapunzel has more Power of Love, while Mulan has more Power of Passing Grades In Physics.) Belle, the shy intelligent girl who reads all the time! Tiana, who works her ass off to get her restaurant! Pocahontas, who’s a hippie (Jesus, Pocahontas is racist)! Jasmine, who weaponizes her femininity to defeat Jafar!

(And that’s not even getting into subversive readings of the text. Mulan as trans man or Rapunzel as abuse survivor, anyone?)

One of the most common criticisms of “princess culture” is that it teaches girls that their only goals should be being pretty and marrying a handsome prince. Except, uh… have the people who made that criticism seen any of the films post-Disney-Renaissance? Ariel, Rapunzel, and Jasmine all want to explore the world and escape from their overprotective parents. Pocahontas wants an end to colonialism. Belle wants to protect her father. Mulan wants to keep the Huns from invading China. Tiana wants to own a restaurant (and then when she becomes a princess she is like “fuck this princess thing, I’m going to have my restaurant!” and makes Prince Naveen work as a waiter because Tiana is awesome). Personally, I am entirely okay with encouraging girls to love their parents, seek independence, and stop people from invading countries. That sounds like a plan.

Okay, yes, Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora are pretty boring. To be fair, their princes are also really boring. There were a lot of really boring people in those movies. (What? Me? Biased?) Let’s look at this scientific chart of Interesting Characters In Sleeping Beauty, By Gender:

pie chart
[Maleficent and the fairies, people. I'm sorry I gave Maleficent so little of the pie chart, because Maleficent is a BAMF, but the Fairies should get more because there are three of them and they have to share.]

I feel like a lot of people’s hatred of Disney princesses comes less from their being startlingly more anti-feminist than everyone else, and more because they’re girly and pink and focused on romance and ewwwww femininity cooties get them off get them off. (I don’t think it’s an accident that the princesses that usually get the Feminist Pass are also the least feminine ones, either.) There’s this disturbing tendency among a lot of people who fancy themselves feminists to hate feminine things. It’s okay, guys. Hating things conventionally associated with women isn’t misogynistic at all. You are Best Feminists, I’m sure.

*Although they did hire Native American consultants for the film and used mostly Native American voice actors. Which is cool.
**Dammit, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, shape up. 

Sexuality Is Culturally Influenced

Okay, in this blog post I’m going to be talking about “nature” to mean “stuff that happens before you leave the womb, like genetics and epigenetics and womb environment and stuff” and “nurture” to mean “stuff that happens after you leave the womb, like your parents and who your friends are and The Patriarchy and stuff.” I realize this is vastly oversimplified and all the biologists and psychologists in the audience are tearing their hair out.

Given this definition: I think that the kinds of people one is sexually attracted to are primarily the result of nurture, not nature.

As the Internet has shown, people are attracted to a lot of really weird shit. I mean, there exist people who are sexually attracted to cartoon ponies. Lots of them. I find it extremely difficult to figure out how anything even vaguely nature-y would lead a physical attraction to cartoon ponies. Like, sure, you could maybe explain liking humanoid cartoons because they’re heavily caricatured and thus a superstimulus of traits you find attractive because of nature, but what the fuck kind of attractive trait is a cartoon pony stimulating? Mane color? So nurture definitely influences people’s sexuality at least some.

“Well,” you might say, “so a few weirdos have a sexuality that is pretty clearly nurture-related. But surely nurture wouldn’t affect, as a completely random example, an entire society for a thousand years!” To which I say: footbinding. To me– just like to any other modern American– footbinding is less attractive and more incredibly squicky body horror. But men wrote poems about the beauty of lotus feet; for a thousand years families crippled their daughters so they would be beautiful. I mean. That is serious commitment there. Your options here are “sexually is culturally influenced in an enormous way,” “for some reason Chinese people evolved to find footbinding beautiful and no one else did and they’ve mysteriously stopped in the past hundred years,” or “Chinese people spent a thousand years breaking their daughters’ feet for no reason.”

There is also more circumstantial evidence! What people are sexually attracted to changes very quickly. In the 1920s, women wore breast binders to flatten their chests; today, Ask Men heralds their hottest woman of 2012‘s cleavage and “obvious assets.” Within less than a century, in the same country, we went from an ideal woman who had A cups to an ideal woman with F cups, both of which presumably reflect the desires of the average man of the time equally well. (…Seriously? F cups? That poor woman.) Admittedly, while genetics can’t change that fast, some nature-y things could (hi epigenetics), so it isn’t perfect.

Also, people are often attracted to traits that offer no fitness-maximizing benefit at all. The Victorians fetishized the tragically beautiful woman dying of tuberculosis. It is difficult in the extreme to imagine how dying of tuberculosis maximizes one’s ability to have healthy offspring. Or if you want to get closer to home– look at the nigh-universal geek male thing for girls in glasses. Having eye trouble is not obviously fitness-maximizing; on the other hand, glasses are a common signal in Western culture for intelligence, so liking girls with glasses is a logical outgrowth of liking smart girls. Of course, there are a lot of things that are nature-influenced and not fitness-maximizing– genetic drift is a thing– so this is not conclusive evidence.

On the other hand, look at the most proverbially born this way kind of sexual attraction: homosexuality. Twin studies have shown that between 17% and 39% of one’s sexual orientation is explained by genetics. While womb environment (especially prenatal hormone levels), which falls into my “nature” category, is also hypothesized to have an effect, that’s not a great case for the Born This Way side.

So. Here is my Grand Theory of Sexual Attraction: what people are attracted to might be based partially on nature, especially for things like sexual orientation, but it is primarily a result of this miasma of individual psychology, peer group, media, porn, early sexual partners, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of that stuff is influenced by cultural artifacts such as the patriarchy and beauty constructs on a level that might be hard to see on an individual level but is clearly evident on a population level. Women’s attraction to socially dominant men is a result of patriarchy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad or fixable; it just is.

Dominance and Dworkin

There are a fair number of studies in the field of American Undergraduate Looking For Intro Psych Credit Studies (also occasionally known as “psychology”) which purport to establish that (straight) women are more attracted to dominant men. (Here’s one, selected because it’s fairly typical of the genre and not behind a paywall.) Generally whenever these come up in Internet gender discussions it’s because someone wants to talk about how women are chasing after alpha male bad boys and not nice guys like him because women are terrible and therefore sad panda boners.

–I’m going to interrupt myself here to head off two kinds of comments that will make me sad. First, the dominance they’re talking about here isn’t BDSM dominance, it’s the “strong, rugged, competitive, tough, thinks they’re better than other people” kind. Second, blog posts like this always attract somebody who wants to tell us that they/their partner/their best friend/their pet hamster doesn’t like Trait X. Which, okay, but when you average the sexual desires of 3.5 billion women 11 million female American undergraduates, you’re going to inaccurately describe the desires of a lot of people. Maybe the majority of people.

Sad panda boner dude has made the unfortunate mistake of conflating “dominance” and “agreeableness” and “high status.” In all the research I’ve read, women have been fairly consistent about not liking assholes, in the sense of cruel, mean, or aggressive men. (In fact, there’s a whole subsection about that in the article I linked.) Also, I’m not sure what “attracted to high-status men” even means: am I attracted to high-status men because I tend to like guys who are smarter than me? Does this mean that men who like women who are smarter than them are attracted to high-status women? Is there any way of defining “status” so it doesn’t mean “anyone who is awesome in any way whatsoever”? Ugh I hate the word status so much you don’t even know.

Anyway, straight women as a class (or at least straight female American undergraduates) do appear to be more interested in men who are competitive, socially dominant, strong, tough, etc., etc.

…And this doesn’t reflect the predictions of feminist theory how?

I mean, on a very basic level, those results show that straight women as a class tend to be more attracted to men who successfully perform masculinity. Just like cultural influence tends to lead to straight men being interested in women who are conventionally attractive and perform femininity in the socially-approve-of way, cultural influence tends to lead to straight women being interested in men that properly perform masculinity. (Cultural influence has a huge effect on sexuality. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.)

Or wander off to the radical feminism. As Dworkin’s Intercourse talks about, under patriarchy, violence, coercion, and the subordination of women are eroticized and constructed as inherent parts of sexuality (to varying degrees given how patriarchal the situation we’re talking about is). Crucially, those things are eroticized by both men and women.

So of course there are more women than men attracted to a socially dominant person; the entire patriarchy is screaming at them “You! Woman! Your subordination to a dude is totally sexxxeh!” The only surprising part about all of this is that women as a class are only attracted to socially dominant men and not outright assholes. Presumably this is because social conditioning can only go so far before the human urge not to hang out with douchebags triumphs.

The fact that feminist theory can explain this data doesn’t mean that the feminist explanation is necessarily right, of course. But I find it amusing that I can theoretically explain the whole “women like alpha males” meme with Dworkin.

Jezebel Continues To Be Full of Horrible People

Commenting Note: This post is not about how you are unable to get a date and you are sad about that. I sympathize with people who cannot get a date! Really, I do! You are welcome to fill up my inbox or askbox with all of the tragic tales of your inability to find a romantic partner! But if you try to do it in this thread I will delete your comment.

Someday this article will go down in history as the point at which “Nice Guy ™” ceased to mean anything.

I mean, seriously, what do guys who sexually harass you on street corners, your abusive ex, and Hugo Schwyzer Robert Jensen douchey male feminists have in common? Other than being men, interacting romantically/sexually with women, who think that they’re nice people while actually being assholes? I know Nice Guy ™ is confusingly named, but it doesn’t mean that, it has a very specific meaning, it means “men who feel entitled to sex with their female friends because they are nice.” Also, no one wakes up in the morning saying “today I’m going to be a misogynist pig because I enjoy hurting women.” They say “I know! I’m going to brighten some woman’s day by yelling at her to ‘smile’!”

But I’m not actually ranting about the continued misuse of the word “Nice Guy ™.” (That’s what Twitter’s for.) I want to look at this particular item.

The Aspirational Fuck Buddy

It’s just a sex thing and you’re not ready for a relationship. You’ve told him this. But he won’t listen. He doesn’t understand rule number one of taking your pants off is that you can’t fuck your way into a relationship.
Likes: Making you soup when you’re sick.
Dislikes: The fact that you are not his girlfriend and have told him that you should stop sleeping together.
Pop culture muses: The dude from 500 Days of Summer

Okay, maybe I’m missing something… but how the hell is that an example of misogyny? Look, you can genderswap it:

The Fucking Clingy Bitch

It’s just a sex thing and you’re playing the field. You’ve told her this. But she won’t listen. He doesn’t understand rule number one of taking your pants off is that you can’t fuck your way into a relationship.
Likes: Making you soup when you’re sick.
Dislikes: The fact that you are not her boyfriend and have told her that you should stop sleeping together.
Pop culture muses: Bunny boilers.*

See? Now it’s an item in an AskMen.com article.

People of all genders have casual sex with people and fall hopelessly in love with them or have casual sex expecting that this will mysteriously lead to A Relationship. It’s not a girl thing or a guy thing, it’s a people thing.

Which is not to say that it isn’t a gendered phenomenon. For one thing, the girl version does some kind of weird pseudofeminist “he’s in love with me! That misogynist!” thing, while the guy version is blatantly misogynistic.

I also think the whole business is rooted in some deeply toxic assumptions about relationships and sexuality. For one thing, it is incredibly fucked to expect that other people have to date you because you have a crush on them and are non-objectionable. It continues to be fucked if you’ve had sex with that person.

On the other hand, sex produces emotions in lots of people, including feelings of closeness and intimacy. Friendships (even casual friendships) often result in unintended crushes. I have no idea why someone would think “I’m going to have a friendship, and add an activity that results in a lot of people having romantic feelings for people they do it with, and this will mysteriously reduce the chance that someone will end up with romantic feelings.”

There’s this bizarre idea floating around that romantic feelings are a thing under one’s volitional control, and that if other people have feelings you do not like it is their fault somehow. (See also: poly people who open their relationship on the condition that you not fall for anyone else.) But the vast majority of people cannot stop themselves from having crushes when they have them. The label “casual sex” is not a magic salve that makes them able to.

Now, if you were sensible human beings, you would handle an unexpected unrequited crush like this:

Crusher: I have a crush on you!
Crushee: That’s awkward, I don’t have a crush on you.
Crusher: Well, in that case, I will have to stop having casual sex with you, because that would just make me sad that we’re not dating.
Crushee: Cool!

OR

Crusher: I have a crush on you!
Crushee: That’s awkward, I don’t have a crush on you.
Crusher: Okay. I’d like to still have casual sex with you then.
Crushee: Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable having casual sex with someone who has a crush on me.
Crusher: No worries.

OR

Crusher: I have a crush on you!
Crushee: That’s awkward, I don’t have a crush on you.
Crusher: Okay, I’d like to still have casual sex with you then.
Crushee: Neat! I’m free on Wednesday.

This is one of those multiple-choice type situations.

But those models are all based on the assumption that “I don’t want to date you” is sufficient reason not to date someone. Unfortunately, a lot of people are under the impression that you’re not allowed to not date people unless they’re Bad People. If you refuse somebody, then you’re a horrible person grinding their beautiful romantic heart under your heel– unless, of course, they’re an entitled misogynist or a psycho clingy bitch, in which case they’re Bad People and you’re allowed. (This is actually the flip side of the “if I have a crush on you you have to date me!” assumption.)

To sum up:

  • People do not have to date you because you have a crush on them.
  • Most people can’t control whether they have a crush on someone.
  • Not wanting to date someone is a perfectly good reason not to date them.  

*I have BPD, I’m allowed to make bunny boiler jokes.