Sex Objects
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I’m sure this sentiment comes from a place of cis privilege, but I have never heard of a positive trait attributed to “masculinity” that couldn’t be more honestly attributed to “adulthood.”
There should definitely be distinct physical aesthetics for male bodies; several, in fact. Appreciating male bodies for their forms and functions should not, however, determine anything meaningful about the people living in those bodies. To claim otherwise is to be a gender essentialist, to restrict a person’s potential based on their (singular) sex.
“Toxic masculinity” is really just “limited humanity.”
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@tinyborrower I did the opposite of this with Beast of Bell Island, a jerk who was made a giant against his will and through that experience learned how to be a kinder man. This post has the wheels turning… I may have a crack at this!
@tiny-ivy Yeah it’s a shame what happened to men’s liberation. There were some cool groups. There are still men working on this for sure, and r/menslib is probably one of the biggest communities that uses feminism to heal and interrogate toxic masculinity. But there’s a post there any given week about feeling shame for being a sexual being, and trying not to self-flagellate but unsure how else not to “hurt” women with an “inherently dangerous” male sexuality. (These are scare quotes, I’m not quoting anyone specifically.)
And you’d be surprised! I’ve seen deep discussions about sexuality and gender from the sw community since I first got into it. It’s one of the things I’ve always found really cool.
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Yeah, I’ve read that story before! You’re a fantastic writer. If you ever decide to take a crack at it, I’d love to see it
It is weird trying to attribute positive traits to ‘masculinity’ that don’t feel heavily steeped in gender roles. But I think the same could be said of ‘femininity’.
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@tinyborrower said in Sex Objects:
It is weird trying to attribute positive traits to ‘masculinity’ that don’t feel heavily steeped in gender roles. But I think the same could be said of ‘femininity’.
Exactly. Responsible adults are responsible adults, and it has nothing to do with sex or gender.
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@tiny-ivy
Not really? To agree with what everyone is saying, basically, what I’m saying masculinity, as discussed in the world now, is almost always inherently toxic because there is no other example. The same factors that help inform the dehumanizing view of men in porn, the lack of expressions, or focus on anything that isn’t a dick, ties back to how men, culturally, are still viewed: tough. Or rather, ‘tough’.You can’t show weakness, you can’t be vulnerable, you can’t feel, so you can enjoy sex, because a man is supposed to want to have sex, but not to extent that you show that you enjoy it! It’s messed up, obviously, but honestly the idea that it shouldn’t be a common phrase is bizarre to me because… well, it’s real. It’s common. It’s how I, and probably every other man to some extent, has been raised, even if there is a some focus on fighting the perception of that is how a man should be now compared to how it used to be.
Talking about this, I’m remembering a short story I read as a kid: a samurai where going up a mountain to get something from a snow spirit, and to impress her, they were standing there, enduring the elements to show how manly they were. They do this until they get coated in ice and die, turning into a statue of ice, and the spirit wanders by the newest statue of dozens, musing how stupid they all are that they just try to become like ice.
The ‘ideal’ man, in a nutshell, is a Terminator (It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever) programmed to act like a person with the core directives of memetic Darwin to drive them: ‘EAT FIGHT FUCK’.
@kisupure said in Sex Objects:
feeling shame for being a sexual being,
That is something that honestly bothers me a lot about my enjoyment of the SW fetish, because so much of it revolves around, well, hurting or depowering women. It’s… not a good look, these days, and even if I had a mind to talk about that kind of thing (laughs forever at the idea of doing that) the reception that this would have alone would be enough to scare me off it.
Power is choice.
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@i-am-insane thank you for your perspective.
It’s strange, the way individual men are socialized in the private sphere by most parents and peers really is destructive and dehumanizing to them as people. The private sphere being how we get along with others and ourselves. Our relationships and emotions, that only we and our friends and family see…
But then there’s How men are traditionally seen in the public sphere, in business and politics. Men still are trusted more as business leaders and political leaders. Even today. Just imagine another woman running for president. That probably won’t happen for a while.
Traits associated with masculinity like logic and assertiveness are still positively viewed by most people for leaders, while traits associated with femininity like emotion and collaboration are still seen as negative for leaders.No wonder so many men are so obsessed with status. Running a company or being a senator seem to be the only ways to be valued as a man. Whereas women, who are taught from birth to gain their value in the private sphere, from friends and loved ones, can just live happier lives, even if they don’t become as financially successful.
What a fucking mess. As annoyed as I get by my female body sometimes, I really feel like I dodged a bullet by not going through masculine puberty and male socialization as a kid. It looks hellish in an even worse way than what I went through as a “female”. The only way I would feel comfortable getting past a role like that would be shedding gender norms like, well, like a nonbinary person.
The straight male role looks like a collar buttoned so tight it cuts off circulation at your neck, but without the possibility of taking it off at the end of the work day. You slip for one moment, and you’re mocked and put down, even as an adult. I hope you guys can take that too-tight shirt off, one’s masculinity is one’s own to invent. Whatever you like about yourself is your positive side - traditionally masculine or not.
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@i-am-insane said in Sex Objects:
You can’t show weakness, you can’t be vulnerable, you can’t feel, so you can enjoy sex, because a man is supposed to want to have sex, but not to extent that you show that you enjoy it! It’s messed up, obviously, but honestly the idea that it shouldn’t be a common phrase is bizarre to me because… well, it’s real. It’s common. It’s how I, and probably every other man to some extent, has been raised, even if there is a some focus on fighting the perception of that is how a man should be now compared to how it used to be.
It’s insane how instantly I switched onto this once I finally was able to dislodge myself from the identity of woman. As soon as I stopped trying to fit into femininity and all the consciously learned gender norms I had from that part of my life, it was actually really surprising and kind of scary how much subconscious social male programming I’d absorbed, and how fast it came to the surface. I’ve been spending the past few years playing catch-up and dissociating myself from those norms. They’re insidious.
There’s pockets of healthy masculinity out there, though. You just have to find them. My partner and I have a number of straight dude friends who don’t give a flying fuck about performing masculinity.
I’ll be honest, that’s what I wish the MGTOW movement was really about - men literally just doing their own thing and supporting each other in whatever that own thing is. But alas.
@tiny-ivy To be a man in western society is to essentially be playing russian roulette. Manhood isn’t something that’s ever really in flux, it really is exactly as you described, a collar that slowly starves of blood and oxygen. If a woman falls from grace, it’s possible to be redeemed. She can get married and have kids, she can get an “extreme makeover” and perform normative femininity. But if a dude slips up, he’s generally done for.
http:/sizekink.com
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@kisupure said in Sex Objects:
I’ll be honest, that’s what I wish the MGTOW movement was really about - men literally just doing their own thing and supporting each other in whatever that own thing is. But alas.
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@tiny-ivy
A lot of that, and I say this literally, just goes back to society as a whole. A person, right now more than ever it seems, but probably throughout all of modern history, is seen by the eyes of society as only being worth what they’re worth. If you’re not making money, if you don’t have money, if there’s nothing influential like that about you, to the human race as a whole you’re almost worthless.And for a lot of people, to face the brutal reality of human indifference is a struggle, but with friends and hobbies and interests it’s manageable, to a degree. But, when you’re not allowed self worth, or really a ‘self’, as a man or a woman, you turn to societal worth instead to have a reason to live. For men, that is ‘succeeding’, making the bank, along with the other ‘masculine’ concepts that you’re supposed to follow like being athletic, or tough, or getting chicks or whatever. I think it honestly explains the stereotypical jock: because they succeed at their role, they double down on it and keep going with it for the praise they’re receiving for it, and with all the time they spend being ‘men’ they don’t get as much chance to develop their self like someone who isn’t as lockstep with a stereotype. So they keep doubling down, keep acting out in the same way society tells them they should act (brutally honest here: the reason there’s so many ‘boys will be boys’ moments is we keep telling boys that that’s how boys act) until they reach a point where they built their lives around that role they’ve been acting, and it’s all that they have: the jock, the tough guy, the businessman.
To bring this (ha) temporarily back to the topic of fetishes for a moment, I think that the ‘shirt’ metaphor is why so much giantess stories are kind of dumpster fires. So many go off two main concepts: men losing their rights, or a normal woman who gains power and instantly, and for no apparent reason, just starts killing everything and everyone just because she can now, in whatever ways the author finds sexy. I think… for a lot of guys, that being ‘forcefully’ depowered like that is like getting that shirt taken off, and it’s the only relief from the roles they can find, and allow themselves to find.
(Personally, it makes my skin crawl; in theory I could like GTS content. In practice I find it largely abohorant, even if the pics themselves can be great in isolation (those legs! Those heels! And oh, do I envy the raw power they have in those pictures, that ability to just step on a city, I really do (and there’s so many good ones because they have so many more artists making them, sigh)) which is ironic since when I was a whelp still figuring out the fetish, I mixed them both, but the reality of it, how so much of it seems to focus on what is probably self-hatred of men, much less losing what remains of our agency in a rapidly evolving society that seems to loath people having any real control over their own lives in the first place, has driven me off it almost completely. Seriously, I have enough problems without getting into that. These days I mostly trawl through GTS stuff looking for more SW content that isn’t actually under an SW label.)
It’s interesting you say that, though, because looking at a female from the male perspective, while you’re allowed to be more a person than we are, even if we’re collared robots it seems like we can do more with what limited personhood we have. If we men are wearing collars, and slowly killing ourselves with them, it seems like women are have their ankles chained.
@kisupure said in Sex Objects:
it was actually really surprising and kind of scary how much subconscious social male programming I’d absorbed
Yeah. A lot of the reasons people act like they act, men and women alike, is because that’s how they’re told to act, and that comes from both directions. Moms will tell their sons they have to be tough, that their sisters are too weak to do something physically demanding, just as much as fathers do. A girl can attack a boy and that’s almost amusing, but a boy can’t realiate without being a brute, because they’re strong and girls are weak and they must be protected, even from the consequences of their own actions. It’s frustrating and amusing, almost, that there are so many women who tell boys to be sexist, or distant as a child, and then are startled and horrified that boys grow up to be distant sexists.
