Masculinism 101

As usual, my complaint remains that the men’s movement in this culture seems to only care about being forced to pay child support.  If I made a post about dead-beat dads, you’d see them descend on this blog like flies on shit.

But you’ve have a thread at Music City Bloggers so misandrous that the only word to describe it is vile, and not a hoot from men so wronged by society.  In fact, you have a bunch of men piling on about how much men suck and can’t help but be monsters.

Gentlemen, please, don’t make me take up this cause.  My plate is full and you all are grown-ass men.  You should be doing this shit yourself.

But, in this case, because it overlaps with my feminist concerns, I’m going to give you some talking points.

1.  When conversations about rape look to ascribe some level of responsibility to the victim of the rape, it negates some of the responsibility of the rapist.  There’s only 100% responsibility and if you’re saying that the girl has some, let’s say 30%, responsibility, you’re saying that the rapist has only 70% responsibility.  Is the rapist brain damaged or developmentally disabled in such a way that he does not know right from wrong?  If not, then he’s just a regular guy.  If he’s just a regular guy, but he’s not fully responsible for his actions, what’s that say about all regular guys?  That none of y’all are fully responsible for your actions.  And why?

The implication seems to be that it’s just something inherent to being a man.  Y’all cannot help it because you are such fucked up, broken, evil messes.

(On a side note, my deepest fear for y’all is that you believe this.  I sometimes wonder if this is not why you put such emphasis on being needed–you fear that, because you are such broken, fucked up, evil messes no one would choose to be with you if they didn’t feel in some way forced to, in most cases, by necessity.)

2.  If someone generalized about any other group that way–that they were monsters who couldn’t be held wholly responsible if they raped a girl–you would recognize it for the bigotry it is.  Why are you letting this shit slide?  Speak up!

3.  It’s crucial, not just for y’all, but for us, that you speak up when you hear anyone spouting this shit.  And why?  Because rape is an act of misogyny.  It’s about showing your victim that you hate or fear her so much that you’ll use an act (sticking your penis in her vagina) that should be one of the most pleasurable experiences she has to hurt her, that you hate or fear her so much you have to get inside her to show it.

By virtue of the fact that rapists hate or fear women, the likelihood that we’ll be effective when we tell them not to rape us or other women is slim and none.

So, who are rapists or potential rapists going to listen to?  Y’all.  And there are a lot more of you than there are of them.  The peer pressure you should be able to exert is enormous.  If you decided that, instead of talking about the importance of scoring and how many partners you’ve had and whether you managed to get laid at the party of Friday, you were going to talk about how great it was when that hot girl asked you if you wanted to fuck or how big a man you are because you made her come multiple times or how it proves you’re a real man if you have sex with one girl multiple times instead of multiple girls only once, your peers would change their behavior.

You could tell yourselves a different story about what it means to be men.  That way, when a guy and a girl start drinking at a party and they’re both digging each other, he says, long before she’s drunk, “Should we go up to my room?” or, if he passes by a room and sees a girl asleep in a bed, he doesn’t think “Ooh, easy score!  Won’t my brothers think I’m hot shit for nailing her,” he’ll think, “I should go find someone whose going to scream ‘yes’ loud enough to wake the whole house.”  That way, when guys see their friend with a girl who they all know is too drunk to give consent, they don’t laugh and high-five him as he drunkenly stumbles with her to his room; instead, they send him off in search of a more sober parnter and find her friends to walk her home.

You all have to make rape seem socially unacceptable and good consensual sex the stuff of bragging rights.

I mean, please.  I know how much you love to razz each other.  Think of the opportunities this presents:

You: So, how’d it go with that girl last night?

Him: Great. 

You: Really?  That’s funny, because I didn’t hear a thing.  Maybe you suck in bed.

Him: No way, dude.  She was totally into it. [Ha, I guess you have a surfer fraternity brother.]

You: I’m just saying.  I thought we’d hear her enjoying herself if you were really all that.

See how that works?  You get to give your buddy shit and reinforce the notion that good sex is sex that’s pleasurable for both partners and it kind of makes you a loser if that’s not your goal when you’re fucking.

If all normal guys had that attitude, things would be a lot better for us girls.

And, when things are better for us girls, those of us who like to fuck boys go out looking for boys to fuck.  So, it’s like a great circle of happiness for everyone.

So, don’t sit idly by when this crap is being spouted.  Stand up for yourselves!

Just a Dog-looking Dog

My favorite thing about the pit bull breeds (aside from the fact that you can play “I got your nose!” with Mrs. Wigglebottom and she seems to think you may have indeed taken something from her) is how much they just look “doggy.”

Look at that dog and tell me there’s any question about why we own pets.

I know they say dogs don’t have any sense of time, but I think they must.  Maybe not a sense of minutes or hours, but a concept of, say, “a short time,” “a medium time,” and “a long time.”  This morning, for instance, when I came back home with my suitcase, the dog seemed genuinely surprised to see me, like “Usually, when you take a bag, you are gone for a long time.  Nice to have you back.”

Either that or she was surprised that the Butcher remembered to come get me.

If You Had Told Me I Would Have Slept That Well Connected to Wires, I Would Have Never Believed You

So, I went in last night for my sleep test last night.  I should have brought my crochetting, because, like all medical stuff, there’s just a lot of sitting around waiting.  But, eventually, I had a dozen or so wires hooked up to my head and another dozen attached to various body parts and I tried to sleep in a strange room with a dude watching me on a camera.

I was dreading a little the inevitable multiple trips to the bathroom and it was kind of weird.  They had this box all the wires went in to and I had to wear it around my neck and then keep everything swung forward while I did my business.

And trying to sleep with a bunch of wires on your face is not an easy task, especially because I normally sleep on my side and stomach.

But, after determining that I was having about 100 episodes an hour, the technician came in and stuck a mask that forces air into you on me and, after I got used to breathing with it and used to the constant noise and resolving to try to stay sleeping on my back.

I’m going to tell you that, even though I knew I was snoring up a storm and waking up enough that I noticed it every two hours and even though I was always tired and napped like it was a luxury I’d been long denied, in the back of my mind, I was convinced this whole thing was kind of silly and I was resolved that I was not going to spend the rest of my life “hooked up to a machine.”

Well, world, fuck that.

I would pay money to sleep that well.  I would try to smuggle in a machine like that if they were illegal.  I would encourage my friends to use it just as a recreational experience.  If I had to wear that mask all day in order to sleep like that, I would gladly do it.

Sign me up.

The only weird thing is that I dreamed all night that the Butcher and I had to get jobs at Starbucks where we just stocked and restocked and restocked all night.  But, even that, I haven’t dreamed that vividly in ages.