Letters From An Alien: Postponement

(There is a new drug available-that ‘blocks’ the onset of puberty, that is beeng piloted to use for trans ‘children’ to make transition more practicable and less traumatic)

You: Like all this kind of new technology it will produce new sexualities – and identities. Plenty of kids, trans or otherwise, would be drawn to the idea of forever postponing puberty. It’s like the ultimate form of edging

Me: I hated puberty but I don’t think I’d have tried to postpone it. i just postponed sex which probably wasn’t a terrible idea. Though I did it in quite a S/M way by tormenting my poor boyfriend at the time. I get annoyed with all those ‘sex-positive’ people saying ‘virginity’ should not be a thing, because sex is all number of things and it is sexist to assume a girl in particular has to ‘lose’ her virginity etc. But as a good puritan I got off on all that! If I hadn’t had my purity to lose, I might never have bothered at all.

Me: Sometimes talking to you is how I imagine it’d be talking to Foucault. But Foucault was so much more precious about how his own sexuality informed his ideas. You, whether it is intentional or not, imbue all your words with – what is the phrase- a visceral sense of your own response to them. Or to the idea that led to them. I find it very compelling. And I found Foucault compelling in the first place. I am an alien, who has the good fortune to receive these notes, as brief as they may be, that throb and pulsate with the blood and desire of a real human being. (The desire, as ‘desir’ is, obviously is not aimed at me or anyone in particular, but there it is, waiting…)

Of course, I rarely think what it must be like for you, interacting with me. Tiring? Er…  I just don’t know. On one or two occasions someone has remarked on my intelligence. As if it is something they wish I didn’t possess. Or if I must have it, could I just not leave it in its box sometimes. Instead of constantly bringing it out and haranguing others with it?

The Tyranny of Beauty

Can you have beautiful buff boy fatigue?

Beautiful, buff, hairless chest, pretty young white boy fatigue?

Beautiful, buff, hairless chest, a hint of sensitivity in the expression, pretty young white boy fatigue?

Beautiful buff, hairless chest, a hint of sensitivity in the expression, homogenous homoerotics pretty young white boy fatigue?

Beautiful buff, hairless chest, a hint of sensitivity in the expression, homogenous homoerotics, perfectly coiffed, designer stubble, pretty young white boy fatigue?

Because I do.

h/t @homo_superior http://bigbutchmuscle.com/post/5049552865/cigar

In Defence Of…Sadism?

These are a few thoughts following Mark Simpson’s recent piece (well recently re-posted) on ‘Hazing’.

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/04/28/assume-the-position-a-queer-defence-of-hazing-2/#comments

Posting this on my own blog made me realise I am totally screwed up about ‘sex and violence’. I think I am pretty fine with homosexuality! But when it comes to violence I am completely confused. Part of me really really hates any kind of violence, even in sports etc. And yet I have willingly ‘voluntarily’ chosen to be hurt by people for the sake of sexual arousal.

I can’t make sense of that in the way some ‘masochists’ do, by saying that ‘consent’ and ‘sexual desire’ make all the difference. Because I have felt quite disturbed by some of my S and M sexual experiences. They have left me feeling frightened, vulnerable, freaked out. Indeed, I have been in ‘violent’ relationships that were not overtly ‘S and M’. There was no spoken ‘consent’ for what happened to me. And one of those relationships led to me being properly assaulted and stalked for months.

Many of the ‘rationales’ for S and M are written by ‘masochists’, and often by masochistic women. The role of the ‘sadist’ (and also of the masochist man) goes largely unexplored and undefended. ‘Sexual Sadism’ is still considered a psychiatric disorder.  http://allpsych.com/disorders/paraphilias/sadism.html It is difficult for people, especially men, to be open about the pleasure they get from hurting others.  Partly, I am afraid, because feminists demonise men’s sexuality, and make out that ‘sadists’ are rapists by any other name.  That men are rapists by nature, and they need to learn to curb their ‘sadism’ or else they will be labelled as such and punished.

For me, just as masochism is hard to explain and ‘defend’ solely in terms of consenting sexual relationships between adults, so is sadism difficult to tidy away neatly into the S and M box.

When I read about Hazing rituals, even the ones that don’t involve physical violence but more humiliation or discomfort, I feel conflicted. Part of me is in horror at the thought of being forced, or choosing to participate in such a practice. Another part of me is intrigued and a little turned on.

After I read Mark’s post the last time, I went and looked up ‘hazing’ online. I found some videos. Some of them were pornos and some weren’t. It was all mixed up. I like things mixed up. I find in my own life, pleasure and pain, sex and violence, consent and non-consent are often mixed up.

In The Notebook my first entry read:

‘The line between good violence and bad violence is blurred. I like it like that’.

I think Hazing is part of the blurring of the line between ‘good violence’ and ‘bad violence’. This is what makes it appealing/threatening to many of us if we are honest I should think.

It’s not just about fears around ‘homosexuality’ I believe. It also touches on our ambivalent relationship with sadism (and masochism). I think Mark is brave, not so much for pointing out the inherent homo-ness in all male groups (though he does that so well I’d hate him to stop), but for defending sadism,  even when it is not dressed up in ‘consensual sex’ terminology.

And, like I believe that the best chance we have of dealing with our need for sadism and masochism in a ‘healthy’ way is by openly practising them in our sex lives (or even just our fantasy lives, or our pornography lives, or our talking about sex lives), so I believe that we need to be open and not ashamed about how we enjoy ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’ in other areas. Like sports. And group dynamics. And work. And voyeurism. Sometimes even looking is painful. And sometimes it is kind of sadistic.

The lines are blurred.

Letters From An Alien: *You* need kissing, badly

You really shouldn’t leave the evidence lying round so carelessly. Miss Marple will find it all in the end…

‘I have noticed that when I get very drunk I have a tendency to snog the occasional unfortunate lady. I suspect your’re probably right that some gay men have to maintain their gay identity by resisting confusing messages from the female of the species.’

I always thought if I did meet you, I’d suddenly be overcome by the awkwardness of physical reality. That muscular body of yours that does exist so fully in the world (unlike mine which blows around and disappears and will not secure itself to the deck), would be so very impenetrable. I’d be so aware of its disinterest in me, of its own self-awareness, we’d both be caught, motionless, speechless and lost. Two aliens who found themselves on an unfamiliar planet.

And then I read that. And I wondered.

Some gay men are more comfortable being physical with women, than other men. I find it a little disconcerting myself.  Like they are teasing. Or separating ‘love’ from ‘lust’  by distinguishing between two genders that don’t really exist. But I didn’t think you’d be like that. I imagined your defences were pretty watertight, against any invaders. Maybe especially against women.

My defences are probably stronger than yours. I don’t get drunk and find myself snogging or fucking anyone. I don’t let myself go. Unless I am forced. That’s what I always thought ‘submission’ was. Being forced to let go. Against your will. But I think I am a rare breed. I think I take everything too literally, and forget that everyone else is just playing a game.

some gay men have to maintain their gay identity by resisting confusing messages from the female of the species

Women often think they are the ones who know how to ‘soften’ men up. They are taught to play the role of the ‘needy’ of the ‘affectionate’ of the ‘tender’ of the ‘open’.

Women like me, who are affectionate in their own way, and even tactile, but who hug like men do, with a straight back, and who kiss brusquely on cheeks, who don’t hold hands, who don’t give themselves over easily. We are thought of as ‘cold’. Or ‘independent’.  ‘Masculine’ even. I just think we are alien.

I’d not be the woman that you snogged drunkenly, mistakenly, maybe regretting it the next day. I wouldn’t let myself be. I am never the woman that anyone kisses. I am the one they don’t. That is how I am remembered. It is my USP.

But you. You need kissing badly.

Unruly Girls…

‘QRG is a good example of someone I want to respect because she’s smart and sometimes says interesting things — but her constant grandstanding and insistence on trying to dominate discussions that have nothing to do with what SHE wants to talk about*, always piss me off. She doesn’t listen to moderators, she dismisses attempts at facilitating a calmer discussion, she demands that everyone focus on her at all times, and she refuses to acknowledge that she might ever be at fault when discussions go explodey.

It’s a shame, because I think that if she were more willing to have a real conversation, she might actually be able to do some of what she claims to want to do. I am leaving this comment because there are always tons of lurkers reading these threads, and I want to make it really clear why I think her behavior is bad, because if someone else has the same level of intelligent disagreement she does, she’s a really good example of how NOT to communicate about it.’

-Lady Madame Princess Clarisse Thorn

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/04/26/i-know-i-can-fight-rape-culture-by/#comments

*This comment was made on a discussion about ‘rape culture’ in which I made comments about ‘rape culture’. It was not ‘nothing to do with’ what I wanted to talk about, it was just that I disagreed with the majority view on the subject.

In Defence Of… Hazing – Mark Simpson Takes One For The Team

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2011/04/28/assume-the-position-a-queer-defence-of-hazing-2/#comments

When I joined my local rugby team, I was made to do terrible, awful things. Even now, all these years later, I feel distressed and choked up recounting what happened. I had to stand on a chair as a full pint of beer was shoved in my groin, soaking it. I then had to drink a yard of ale (three pints in a yard-long horn-shaped glass) with a bucket in front of me. Later, several of us had to run around the rugby pitch stark naked. In January.

I was traumatized. I may never recover. This wasn’t what I had signed up for! I want to complain! I’m going to sue! Someone’s gotta pay!

You see, it was a terrible, awful, unforgettable, wounding disappointment. It was just all so…restrained. I had been hoping that we would be performing some of the other bonding and initiation rites that I’d heard about, such as the one where one naked teammate bends over and a pint is poured over his ass, down his crack, and over his sack while another sits underneath him with head back and mouth open. Or the soggy biscuit game: a circle jerk over a cream cracker where the last one to come has to eat it. Or perhaps the carrot game, where a root vegetable is shoved up the rookie’s ass and a pink ribbon tied around his erect penis (something to do with the carrot I suppose), which he has to keep on for two weeks, to be checked at each training session.

Frankly, I would have even been happy with the relatively vanilla hazing that all new recruits to a crack U.K. Army regiment have to participate in: According to a straight soldier pal of mine, the “old-timers” rub their asses and genitals over the faces of the new recruits or “crows”, as they’re called. Sounds like an excellent icebreaker to me. It is just a shame it has to happen only once—why can’t you join every day?

But, alas, none of the really juicy stuff for me at my rugby club—just a wet crotch on my jeans and a frost-shriveled penis. Judging by the excited media reports, things would have been very different if I’d been a college freshman in the United States and joined the football team or one of those kinky fraternities with those Greek names. At the University of Vermont the “elephant walk” is, or was, rather popular: Pledges drink warm beer and walk naked in a line, holding the genitals of the lucky lad in front of them. At Tiffin University in Ohio the soccer team has been known to strip their freshmen players to their underwear, handcuff them together, scrawl vulgarities on their bodies, and make them lick one another’s nipples. Sometimes the fun isn’t just reserved for members of the team. At a Utah high school two wrestlers stripped a male cheerleader in the school locker room and “attempted to shave his pubic hair” with an electric clipper. Attempted? Does that mean they didn’t succeed? That’s some cheerleader.

The truth be told, even in the United States, hazing isn’t what it used to be. This ancient rite is under attack from all sides: the media, feminists, mothers, educational authorities, legislators, police—and also many gays. Hazing is being shamed up and stamped out. The only reason we know about the sordid goings-on in frat houses across the nation is because the authorities were involved, litigation was initiated, criminal charges brought, and the media involved. A big stink, in other words. Most respectable people seem to agree hazing is wrong, sexist, and homophobic and must be stopped.

Now, perhaps it’s because I’m not terribly respectable, or maybe because I enjoy championing lost causes, but I think hazing can be a valuable, venerable masculine institution that is worth defending, particularly by men who are interested in other men. Hazing is the last rite of passage left for boys in a world that doesn’t seem to want boys to grow into men anymore, a very physical form of male bonding in a society that wants us to remain as disconnected as possible, an antidote to individualism, which in this atomized day and age tends to just mean alienated consumerism.

Yes, I realize that hazing can be dangerous. It can turn into abuse and bullying or outright sadism, as in those widely reported instances of boys being sodomized with mop handles and pinecones by other boys. Boys, like men, can be plain dumb and dangerous and occasionally fatal. Jocks can be obnoxious, arrogant little shits, especially to male cheerleaders. But my point would be that this is all we ever hear about. Hazing has been tarred with one self-righteous puritanical brush.

Scandalized media reports and a proliferation of antihazing Web sites such as BadJocks.com and StopHazing.org have helped to decisively turn public opinion against hazing (though in some cases with an admixture of voyeurism for the very thing that they are campaigning against). Hazing is now the subject of a full-fledged moral panic about “our children”. This September sees the First National Conference on High School Hazing—and you can be sure they’re not teaching delegates how to conduct a successful elephant walk. Most states now have antihazing laws, and most universities have draconian antihazing policies. Here’s the University of Vermont’s all-embracing definition of what hazing is and thus what is verboten: “any act, whether physical, mental, emotional, or psychological, which subjects another person, voluntarily or involuntarily, to anything that may abuse, mistreat, degrade, humiliate, harass, or intimidate him/her, or which may in any fashion compromise his/her inherent dignity as a person”. Which sounds to me like a recipe for a very dull Saturday night indeed.

Don’t we all want our “inherent dignity as a person” to be compromised sometimes, especially at university? And why on earth would you join a fraternity, or an ice-hockey team, or in fact any all-male group if you were so concerned about your inherent dignity as a person? Wouldn’t it be wiser just to stay at home knitting? Hazing is used by these groups for precisely that purpose: to put off those who aren’t really serious about putting the group or the team above their own damn preciousness or good sense.

Note how hazing is defined as “voluntarily or involuntarily”: Consent is irrelevant to the powers that be in their zeal to stamp out hazing (just as it used to be with homosexuality). They know best. Nor is it merely extreme cases such as sodomizing with pinecones that the antihazing zealots are against but “any act, whether physical, mental, emotional, or psychological” that might be kind of naughty, kind of dirty, kind of fun. In itself a rather convincing argument for hazing, at least for young people. Mom and the cops and the college dean don’t like it? Great! Bring on the handcuffs, warm beer, and Jell-O!

Which brings me onto the aspect of hazing that, as you may possibly have guessed, I have a fond fascination for, and is a central part of my desire to defend the practice—and probably why my defense will probably succeed in finally killing it off: the homoerotic dimension, the “gayness” of what these mostly straight guys like to do to one another and their private parts. Granted, a lot of hazing, especially with the crackdown going on today, has little or nothing to do with being homoerotic. It may be just Jackass-style craziness involving oncoming traffic, gallons of water, and jumping out of trees. Mind, hazing does, like me, keep returning to men’s butts and penises and testicles (anyone for “tea-bagging”?) even when it tries not to. Obviously, I think this is entirely understandable and requires no explanation whatsoever, let alone pathologizing it and criminalizing it. But clearly plenty of people think otherwise.

So why is hazing so homo? In part because all-male groups, according to Freud, are bound together by barely sublimated homoerotic feelings. It’s what inspires them to such heartwarming loyalty, such passionate self-sacrifice and heroic endeavor—Eros can wrestle the instinct for self-preservation to the ground. The hazing rituals with their simulated homo sex could be seen as a symbolic group fuck that gets the “sex” over with yet turns all the members of the team or fraternity into a band of lovers. Of course, I would prefer that they followed the exemplar of the Theban Band, or the Spartans of ancient Greece, the warrior-lovers who didn’t stop at simulated homo sex (and were widely regarded as invincible). But you can’t have everything.

There are also putatively Darwinian explanations for the homoerotics of male groups. In our prehistoric past the bonding of hunters and warriors was vital to the survival of the tribe. Those tribes that survived and thrived and passed on their genes were those in which men were willing to sacrifice breeding opportunities and comforts of life with the chicks back at camp for weeks and months of intimacy with men and a willingness to serve and take orders. Prehistoric man, in other words, was a bit of a leather queen. This is probably the reason why hypermasculinity is sometimes difficult to separate from homosexuality, especially during Hell Week.

There is also another explanation—one that, like psychological explanations of homosexuality itself, has something to do with Mommy. Boarding school, joining the college football team, or joining the military used to be a sacredly symbolic time for males, an initiation of boys into the world of men—away from the world of Mom into a world where hazing rituals and homoerotic horseplay would be used to masculinize boys into men.

Alas, many gays see hazing as essentially homophobic and appear to buy into the simplistic feminist analysis of power and domination. In an online article Cyd Zeigler Jr. of Outsports.com recognizes that hazing is often deeply homoerotic (and lists some of the same scandals I have), but sees it as essentially homophobic: “Whether it’s sodomizing them or making them wear women’s panties, the notion of forcing younger players to submit to team veterans comes right out of the handbook of antigay stereotypes.” Clinching the matter, homoerotic hazing apparently “emasculates the victim”.

Leaving aside that the out-and-proud gay world isn’t exactly free of power, domination, and humiliation, or for that matter antigay stereotypes, this doesn’t always hold true. While I have some sympathy with this approach, in its attachment to victimhood it seems to be rather more rigidly homophobic than hazing is. The curious paradox of hazing is that while it may well regard “fagginess” and “softness” as undesirable, it actually makes the homoerotic central to membership of the group. Besides, rather than emasculating the new members of group, the veterans wish to masculinize them, and they use homoerotics to that end. Hazing itself is not an act of hostility but of affection: tough love. While hazing can be homoerotic and homophobic, this is not—and it’s difficult for us self-centered homos to realize this—its point.

The famous Sambia tribe of New Guinea (famous because anthropologists won’t leave them alone) don’t simulate homosexuality in their own hazing rituals: they practice it. Adolescent boys are taken from their mothers by the older youths and required to repeatedly give oral sex to them—they are told that the semen will masculinize them. In today’s universities, of course, the semen is replaced by warm Budweiser and protein shakes. From a Sambian point of view, the dominance of the antihazing lobby today would probably represent an insufferable victory of the protected domestic world of Mom, who deep down doesn’t want her cherished baby boy to ever be exposed to anything extreme or distasteful or dangerous or… male.

But then, it sometimes seems that our contemporary culture has less and less use for, or appreciation of, masculinity that isn’t merely decorative or good at DIY. Paradoxically, as the toleration and visibility of newfangled gays and gayness in our culture has risen, intolerance of oldfangled homoerotic masculine rituals has also increased. Very often, society’s preoccupation with hazing is, like mine, a preoccupation with its “gayness.” But in reverse.

When a private video of drunken off-duty U.K. Royal Marines running around naked together in some godforsaken place was sold to the tabloids in 2005, it caused an outcry. Officially, it was because one of the Marines was shown being kicked in the head by a drunken officer, and this was evidence of bullying. But as the repeated printing of the naked pictures showed, it was mostly about the fact that they were fit young marines, naked together, being gay. The (extremely hot) victim, 23-year-old Ray Simmons, came forward to say he didn’t hold the officer (who was now the subject of a military police investigation) responsible, and it was just a bit of fun that got out of hand. However, the host of reader letters that the stories prompted showed the real preoccupation was not the bullying but the gayness. A typically hissy moralistic example from one male reader: “I am utterly disgusted by the behavior of our so-called Marines…. This kind of thing would be better suited to a gay 18–30 holiday on a remote island somewhere. Our enemies across the globe must be laughing at us.”

So society apparently still expects Marines to go and kill and be killed anywhere in the world at the drop of a daisy-cutter to defend our enervated suburban—and voyeuristic—lifestyle but ridicules and condemns them for doing what men have to do and have always done to bond and let off steam. Fortunately, the Marines aren’t taking any notice: “People think a load of men getting naked together is a bit gay,” said Simmons, “but we don’t care what others think. It’s just Marine humor.”

Well said that man. Don’t let the square civvies—or the envious homos like me—try to shame you into being as joyless, lonely, and bereft of real camaraderie and human contact as the rest of us. It’s a sign of our isolated times that most people today could never say the words “we don’t care what people think” because:

(a) they don’t belong to a group, or in fact to anything except a supermarket loyalty scheme; and
(b) they care about what people will think rather more than they do about their buddies.

The homoerotics of hazing are not, in fact, necessarily homophobic or gay. They’re just guy.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m all in favor of guys.

(Mark Simpson, originally published in Out magazine, 2006)

Against Feminisms

When I make my case against feminism, whether it be in a reasonable, rational manner or an exasperated, angry tone, I am challenging the basis of ALL FEMINIST THEORY. People say to me, ‘you can’t generalise like that’ ‘feminism is not a monolithic group’ ‘there are many branches of feminism’ ‘feminism is a broad church’ ‘feminism is not a  club’.

People such as these bloggers have taken offence at my sweeping generalisations about their precious ideology which apparently I am cariacaturing unfairly and simplistically.

http://cubiksrube.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/fem-vs-fem/#comments

http://stavvers.wordpress.com/

http://footstepsinthedarkzine.wordpress.com/

http://toomuchtosayformyself.com/2011/04/20/an-occupational-hazard/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/04/27/racism-is-exhausting/

So here is my rationale for why I oppose ALL and EVERY FEMINIST THEORY.  If you are a feminist but do not subscribe to any of these assumptions/beliefs, then let me know. But I expect there is not one feminist who doesn’t broadly speaking accept these tenets:

1) Feminism is based on an assumption that overall, men as a group hold power in society and this power, damages women as a group.

2) The above assumption, no matter what feminists say, relies on a belief in and a reinforcement of the essentialist binary view of gender (i.e. that male v female men v women masculine v feminine are real and important distinctions. That is how feminists justify their belief that ‘men’ hold power over ‘women’)

3) This means that in order to present these assumptions as ‘fact’, men are demonised by feminism as a whole. Feminism is, by its very nature, misandrist. e.g. concepts such as ‘rape culture’  and ‘patriarchy’ and ‘violence against women and girls’ and  ‘the male gaze’ and ‘objectification’ rely on making out men are not decent people, in general, as a group. To be accepted as decent human beings, the onus is placed by feminists onto men to prove their worth, and to prove why they differ from the (socialised or innate) ‘norm’ of dominant masculinity.

4) The focus on men’s power over women in ‘patriarchal’ society ignores other divisions between people and is essentially, ‘heteronormative’. It makes out the division between heterosexual (cis) men and (cis) women is the one that is dominant in society, and the one that is most important for feminist analysis/critique. So feminist theorists such as bell hooks and Julia Serano and Beverly Skeggs, even when they are referring to other divisions such as ethnicity, class and transgender identities, are still relying on the reification of the man v woman binary to support all their arguments about gender.

5) Feminism does not allow for these above challenges to be made to it without it having a hissy fit or banning its critics from websites/fora or saying ‘but you don’t understand’ or ‘feminism is not monolithic’. Feminism cannot stand up to critique.

6) Feminism is based on self-interest. The adoption of a feminist analysis of women in society is presented by feminists as in women’s interests.  This is why feminists are able to look with contempt and/or pity on non-feminist women. As if they are somehow not valuing themselves as women and as people.  But making a whole political ideology out of self-interest of a particular group in society, is, in my opinion, conservative and selfish.  When feminists mock people who ask about men’s discrimination with their ‘whatabouttehmenz’ taunt, they are mocking women who think and care about others, and men who think about and care about each other and themselves. So feminism expects women to be selfish and men to be self-less. And people who do not or will not fit into the binary, to not exist at all.

Pictures of Dead Women Sell Magazines

This spread for Bello Mag as featured in Oh La La, continues that eerie theme shown to be popular in women’s fashion photography in particular at the moment: the corpse look.

http://www.ohlalamag.com/.a/6a00e54fb7301c8834014e880ca2be970d-pi

I don’t know why this is, apart from the general feeling of ‘end of times’ that pervades our visual culture these days. Vampires, zombies, ghosts,  mannequins, they all convey the ‘post-human’ atmosphere that I think we all experience when we go to the mall, watch television, look at clothes, see films, go to pop concerts.

But also, I wonder if these corpse-like bodies represent the death of women’s fashion in particular, the death of ‘femininity’ as we know it. As the metrosexual man continues his rampage through the (post)modern landscape, isn’t the ‘female body’ just one more thing that he has destroyed and discarded?

I’m looking forwards to a fashion shoot featuring a woman’s carcass being picked at by vultures next.

And you think I’m joking.

The Marabar Caves All Over Again

‘The scene in the Marabar Caves is a good substitute for violence.’ – E.M. Forster

‘Rape culture is the objectification of women, which is part of a dehumanizing process that renders consent irrelevant.’

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html

When a man was jailed and placed on the sex offenders register for life in America, recently, for ejaculating into a woman’s water bottle, the woman whose water it was said: ‘I feel it was a form of rape.’

(Man jailed for ejaculating into a woman’s water bottle)

This really got me thinking about rape and how it can be ‘subjective’. The woman ‘felt’ his act was ‘a form of rape’ and he got punished as if it were. But what he did does not fit the legal definition of rape, which requires penetration of an orafice by a penis or finger or implement.

I then got into a discussion on the Feministe blog, about ‘rape culture’. I said that I did not feel able to state my views on this matter (i.e. that ‘rape culture’ doesn’t exist) as I would get ejected from the blog and/or called various names/insulted.

The response from the moderator was:

‘Asshole runs all the way across the gender spectrum. So there are plenty of women out there who want to contribute to discussions about sexual assault, and who care deeply about those issues, but who believe really incredibly abhorrent things (perhaps “women are asking for it” or “rape is a biological imperative” or “rape is an individual act and there is no such thing as a culture that enables it” etc etc). It’s each woman’s right to believe whatever it is that she believes, but it is not the right of every single woman in the world to spew those beliefs in any space she pleases. This space focuses on feminism, something that I believe is good for all women, but is not something that all women everywhere agree with or support; a lot of women are outright hostile to feminism and to other women. I don’t think I need to let them say whatever they want in a feminist space just because they identify as women. That is counterproductive to the purpose of this blog, which is to discuss issues at least partially through a feminist lens. It’s one thing to challenge that; it’s another to throw out the same shit we’ve all heard before (“rape culture doesn’t exist,” etc) and expect the entire comment thread to cater to the topic that you want to talk about’

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/04/26/i-know-i-can-fight-rape-culture-by/

Previously, I had got into a spot of bother discussing with a woman on her blog, about the way she portrayed men who ‘tried it on’ with her in various ways. How she presented the complex issue of  ‘consent’ only and always as predatory men needing consent from women to conduct a range of sexual acts, or else they would be labelled rapists. Like the woman in the water bottle incident, this blogger said some interactions with men had left her ‘feeling abused’. This feeling seemed to take precedent over any measurement of an ‘objective’ reality. In her blog she made this statement:

‘Aside: If you’re thinking, “that bloke had a sexual abuse problem, not a differing understanding of consent,” stick with me, we’ll get to the point. If you’re thinking, “sheesh! Bloody women with her mixed signals, she deserves all she gets,” you’re in the wrong room, you want, Not Becoming a Rapist 101, down the hall.’

http://notanodalisque.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/consent-non-consent-and-%E2%80%9Cget-the-hell-away-from-me%E2%80%9D/

All these separate but linked occurrences and discussions reminded me of A Passage To India and the unspecified incident that occurs in the Marabar Caves.

Adela accuses Aziz of raping her in the Marabar caves. He always protests his innocence. At the trial, the run up to which has involved much tension between the Indian and British communities, Adela changes her mind and says he didn’t do anything, though someone, or something did hurt her. The Marabar caves represent, among other things, our inability to be omniscient, to know the cause of everything that happens to us. All we are left with is our feelings, and an echo- ‘ou-boum’.

I hear so much about rape and ‘rape culture’. I am told my perception of the world is wrong, ‘abhorrent’ even. That I need to go to ‘room 101- how not to be a rapist’. I have been likened to a ‘rapist’ on more than one occasion, simply for holding certain views, for uttering certain words.

I don’t know what is going on in this world.

All I can hear is an echo-ouboum.

Excerpt from REFUSE By Elliott Deline

This is an excerpt from REFUSE  the debut novel/memoir by Elliott Deline. Mark Simpson has praised the book, saying:

‘All writers are born in the wrong body, but it happens to be the reader’s good fortune that Elliott DeLine was literally born in the wrong body…Funny, cynical, tough, vulnerable, honest, deluded, sagacious, self-loving and self-loathing, Refuse is irresistible.’

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52266

God how sex implores you, 

To let yourself lose yourself

-Morrissey, The Smiths: Stretch Out And Wait         

Dean went back to his room around noon to find Colin sitting at his computer in the dark, still in his plaid pajama pants. Craig had packed up and returned to Brooklyn.

“Hey,” Colin said turning around as Dean locked the door. His eyes were red and his face was puffy. He’d clearly been crying. “Maggie and I talked,” he said. “She told me what happened.”

Dean froze. “At the library?”

“No. About kissing you, when I was away.”

“I’m really sorry Colin,” Dean said, wincing. “I am such an awful friend. Seriously, I understand if you want me to move out. I can start packing right away.”

“No!” Colin said. “No, Dean, relax. I mean, sure, I’m upset, but I’m also a little relieved. Things weren’t working out. And Maggie doesn’t like you like that or anything. She was just drunk, she says, and I believe her. Still, she and I are through. It’s for the best. I’m so over it.” His blood-shot eyes and runny nose said otherwise.

Dean didn’t move. “I’m still awful for not telling you.” He looked at his feet, clinging tightly to his ratty book.

“Dean, seriously, it’s okay,” Colin said. “I don’t blame you at all. You didn’t ask her to come on to you. I realize you were in an awkward situation, and I’m not mad. I swear.”

Dean sighed, cautiously taking a seat on his bed. “Well, I still feel bad. But I’m glad it’s out in the open. I felt so guilty these past weeks.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Colin said, kicking off his slippers and revealing small, porcelain feet. “I know you don’t like her like that. I mean, I was mad at first, but now I just hate Maggie. She’s a fucking tranny chaser.”

“Mm,” Dean said, frowning.

“So yeah, I’m single,” Colin continued, moving to his bed. “I haven’t been in years. I don’t even know what to do with myself.” He let out a nervous laugh, leaning back against a pillow. “Honestly, I’ve been feeling pretty depressed. I might go to this trans support group back home. It usually helps me to vent.”

“Mm,” Dean was tracing the embroidery on his pillow case with his pointer finger.

“So I was thinking I’d go home next weekend,” Colin said. “And I mean, you’re welcome to come with.”

Dean held his breath for several seconds, thinking. “Yeah, I’d go,” he said, attempting to sound indifferent.

“Awesome!” Colin said. “My parents are vacationing, but I should let them know. I’ll email them right now actually.”

Dean exhaled and then stared some more at the embroidery, biting his lip. Colin went back to his computer.

“I used to go to a support group in Syracuse,” Dean said.

Colin turned away from his computer again, surprised. Dean never spoke of his past. “Really?” he said. “Did you like it there?”

“No,” Dean said.

Colin nodded, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, he turned back to his computer.

“I only went a handful of times,” Dean said a half-minute later.

Colin turned back. “Yeah? Anything interesting ever happen.”

Dean grinned mischievously at his pillow. “Yes.” He inflected, so it almost sounded like a question.

“Yeah? Wanna tell me about it?” Colin took a gentle tone, swerving and just missing condescension.

Dean itched his hair with both hand like a beast, scattering dandruff. He was very caffeinated and wanted nothing more than to tell a long story. He looked up from his pillow, his eyes wild, as if brought back from the dead.

“Well, it was me, this older transgender fellow named William, this younger guy named Ethan, and… two transgender women, one named Melissa and… the other woman’s name escapes me. But they were both in their twenties at the time, and Melissa and Ethan had also brought their girlfriends with them. That was the usual crowd I guess. So we were all sitting in this room with this stupid rainbow mural on the wall. Oh God, don’t get me started! I was about eighteen, definitely the youngest person there. We were introducing ourselves when there was a knock at the door.” Dean knocked on the bed-stand, supplying a redundant illustration. “William thought it was the pizza man, who had actually been giving us trouble and acting weird. Even though it was super secretive, we suspected he knew what our meetings were about. In fact, it was so secretive you had to actually call this number to find out where the meetings were located. Syracuse is weird. But anyway, William answers the door and in walks this guy with a leather jacket and a pompadour, but in a cool, rockabilly way that wasn’t sleazy. I think he was Hispanic. He was really handsome, like a model. He was probably in his late thirties. In any case, most people would say he was too old to dress like that, but he pulled it off confidently.” Dean narrowed his eyes, as if daring Colin to challenge this. Colin didn’t.

Dean continued. “So he sat down on a bean bag looking rather out of place. He introduced himself as Hunter and shook all our hands. He had a really big hand. He smiled at me and winked. I think it was because I had this hairstyle. Maybe he was a creep, I don’t know. Everyone else introduced themselves, and then William told Hunter to tell us a bit about himself. Hunter said he was a car mechanic, owned a motorcycle, and recently adopted a border collie. He liked to collect and pin dead butterflies, and really loved Elvis. Everyone nodded politely, as they clearly were expecting him to talk about his transition like everyone else. Someone asked if he preferred male pronouns and he said, Sure.

Melissa then went on to talk about how she had scheduled her vaginoplasty with some surgeon in San Francisco. Hunter waited until she finished talking and then said that was where he went.

Melissa told him that was unlikely because the doctor only did male-to-female surgeries. Hunter said that was what he got.

Everyone looked confused, and someone asked if he was a transgender woman. He said no, that he identified as a transgender man, but that he was born in a male body. I remember William and Ethan’s eyes nearly popped out of their heads.   Hunter went on to explain he never felt comfortable in his body and that he hated his genitalia. He had wondered if he wanted to be a woman, but that wasn’t it. He felt like a man, he just didn’t want his genitalia. He said he read about transgender men in a book, and he related to them instantly. He said he wanted more than anything to be a part of their community. He said everything suddenly made sense; he was a man who was a transgender-man inside. So he had surgery to get female parts and started injecting testosterone, since his body could no longer produce it naturally. He said he finally felt like himself.

So of course everyone just stared, dumbfounded. Someone asked what kind of surgeon would let him do that. And Hunter repeated that it was the same surgeon Melissa mentioned, apparently not realizing it was a rhetorical question. No one spoke for a long time.

Finally Ethan said that he though that was incredibly offensive. Hunter said he didn’t understand. Ethan asked how he could mutilate his body like that. Doesn’t he know that trans men would give anything to have what he had? How could he be so ungrateful? What did he mean he felt like a trans man on the inside? Didn’t he realize how absurd that sounds? He made the rest of us look like jokes, Ethan said.

William said he agreed. He said Hunter could do what he chose with his body, because it was a free country, but that maybe he should have seen a therapist instead and worked out his issues. How did he know he wouldn’t end up regretting this?

The woman who wasn’t Michelle added that Hunter could never truly be a part of the community, because he hadn’t had the same experiences as transgender men. How could he ever relate? He was socialized as a man, grew up a man…How could he know how hard it was for these men who had been denied that?

And then Hunter looked around the room, looking amused. Finally he said that he made it all up, that he didn’t have a vaginoplasty. But he said he thought he should go, and it was nice meeting everyone.

And he just got up and left without saying another word. We heard his motorcycle rev outside. It was incredible. Just like a movie.”

Colin was sitting with his mouth open.  “Wow! What did everyone else do?”

“Well, we sat in silence for awhile. Then, at almost the same moment, Melissa, her girlfriend and I got up and left. What else could we do?”

“Jesus! That’s so weird. Did you ever find out what he really was?”

“No, I never saw him again.”

“Wow,” Colin said again. “Why would he do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what was the point? Seems kind of stupid, doesn’t it? Was he just trying to get a rise out of people?”

Dean stared at Colin. How many nights had he laid awake thinking about Hunter? How could he put into words the myriad of emotions that evening stirred in him? He felt like he grasped something for the first time that he didn’t want to accept: maybe Colin didn’t want to understand those kinds of emotions. And if not Colin, then who did? He felt a pang of loneliness, as if he were the last remaining member of an endangered species.

He didn’t have to wonder if Colin would have walked out of the room.

“Yeah, I guess it was just to get a rise out of people,” Dean said. “I’m going to go take a shower.”