[Discussion] Men talking to men about Feminism

He actually qualifies that his own wife doesn't seem to like that very much.

My own wife sometimes likes that aggressive play, but that's something that's negotiated over a long time and often very explicitly. It's kind of like light S&M at that point. You have to say what you want, and you need to establish how to say you're done with it.

So sometimes I'll be touching her all over and chasing her around the house and she's all like "No, no!" but she's laughing and giggling the whole time and she waits for me to catch up when I have to pause because I'm caught on a railing or something. This isn't something you can do as a pick up game with a stranger.

I didn't watch the clip, but based on the title of the clip I'd say an argument might be made for book Khal Drogo, who never did anything until he got a "yes" and was actually seductive and ended up winning Dani over (the non-consent of the actual marriage notwithstanding), but no way in hell for show Khal Drogo. That portrayal was one of my biggest problems with the translation from book to show. I still get angry about it.

Since my view of the Aziz story is posted here, I do want to say that if more of these stories come up, I will most likely lose any sympathy I have for him and I reserve my right to change my opinion on whether or not he is a monster and a predator. I just think this situation is much less clear than the other assault, abuse, and rape stories that we're hearing. I think the conversation here so far is very good to have among men, and I'll mostly be reading silently.

Well, this thread is off to an interesting start.

Might get weirder if I can manage to figure out how to form some thoughts here.

For now, just this:

Absolutely agreed -- that was one of several major factors in my choice to stop watching the show after the first season.

Given the radically different cultural milieu in which men and women (s)exist, I can't see any answer to this question but "of course men internalize and process it differently", but I also recognize that that's talking in the aggregate, and that I'm also sure that you can find men and women who'll process it identically to one another.

I am the same. That's the reason I never take off anything and I never even suggest that they do so verbally. If they take off my clothes of their own free will, then that's a big sign that they're into it, too. But the conversation thing isn't over by then. By no means.

Basically, this is how I personalize saying that it has to be continuing consent, and you have to set boundaries for yourself that the other party must willing and unequivocally cross for anything to happen. This is your failsafe, but it is also their failsafe as well. Not everyone will come to the same solution I have, but it's important to frame this as a mutual activity with reciprocation in very concrete terms.

This will get weirder, for people who don't like talking about sex, don't click the spoiler.

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Someone brought up the topic of Emotional Workload earlier. This article does a pretty good job of explaining it from a woman's perspective.

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My dad (in his late 60's now) broached this subject with me a few months ago when the Weinstein stuff was in the news everywhere. He was genuinely unsure of how to navigate the dynamic between men and women these days. Mind you, he's been married a very long time and well past looking for female companionship, so it was more in the context of his younger self and the cultural aspects.

He'd say things like "If I was in a bar and I was interested in someone, maybe I'd touch her knee to let her know I was interested. Now it seems like that would be considered harassment."

There was also some of the sort of vague, generalized bullet point stuff like "If they dress like that, why I can't I look? Why do they walk around late at night alone? Why go home with a dude if you don't want to have sex? Why not just say no?" It wouldn't occur to him to force himself on someone anyway so he figures 'no' is good enough for anyone.

Like a lot of men of his generation he's big on personal responsibility and sometimes that gets in the way of empathy or compassionate views. He has a hard time groking things like societal pressure, systemic oppression and rape culture. He grouses that framing the world in those ways makes things seem hopeless and untenable.

It's hard to contextualize an old conversation so I'll ask that you read the above as a general example, not an invitation to psychoanalyze my dad based on this little context.

After talking through that stuff for a while I gave him a hypothetical example based on an experience I had that finally seemed to click a little bit for him.

When I was 19 years old I was living alone in a neighbourhood that, unbeknownst to me, was a hot spot for gay men to cruise for sex. This was long before Grindr and the like. One night I was out for a walk alone and went down to the riverbank to sit on the grass for a bit. It was dark, about 100 feet from the road and out of sight from general traffic. A dude sat behind me and to the left about six feet away. It made my neck hair stand on end.

"Nice night," he said. "How you doing?"

"I'm good, you?"

"Good. Are you gay?"

"No, sorry."

"Have you considered giving it a shot?"

"Naw, I'm good. Thanks though."

He went on his way and that was that, but it still shook me. I could see that the guy was bigger and older than me, it was the first time I'd ever been so directly propositioned like that in a situation where I had zero interest and felt like I didn't have much control. I practically ran home after. Even back then I didn't connect my fleeting, singular experience with what it must be like for women and minorities most of the time. I was dense and slow to learn, still am.

I told my dad the story and asked him to imagine that the man sat beside me instead of a polite distance away. Imagine he put his hand on my knee while he was asking those questions. What if he had booze on his breath? What if he overpowered and raped me despite my saying I was straight and no interest? Would you have said it was my fault for walking alone at night? For sitting by the river? For not fighting back hard enough? How far down the chain would we get before we considered the actual rapist?

That really made him come up short. It could easily have happened, I wasn't a strong or particularly tough dude when I was young, naive and new to the city. I asked my dad to consider that it was like that for women most of the time and it was something they constantly had to be vigilant about. Men are generally bigger, generally in positions of power and generally getting away with this stuff constantly.

Working through this with our male friends and family is really hard but also really important. It's rarely going to be neat, tidy or executed in a way that is even congruent with our own feminist ideals, let alone the exemplars among us like Hypatian and Eleima. I felt like I had to be pretty blunt and vulnerable with my dad to really feel like he was hearing me and not clamming up and feeling defensive. I also had to swallow some frustration that was one part the basic, 101 misunderstandings he had and the other part being he was reflecting views I've held in the past and it was really uncomfortable to see them play out on my father's face.

I'd posit that the existence of grey areas alone constitutes bad faith. You don't put vague wording in a contract unless you're planning to exploit it. You hammer out that beforehand and establish clear boundaries.

My family was and is predominantly female. The men were outnumbered and outdone, by which I mean the women were and are the success stories, the cornerstones of each family cluster.

In two of the three jobs I've held I answered to and worked alongside women, successfully, far more than men.

My job interviews, successful or otherwise, save for one, have been held by women.

When undertaking a learning course it was two women who helped me the most and made the greatest impact.

In one of my places of employment I watched as application forms were sorted based on gender in favour of women. (I found it agreeable.)

My father had little intentional impact on my life, amounted to very little in his time, and left little positive memories when he departed. (I still miss him, though.) My mother on the other hand is Wonder Woman. The greatest. The strongest most caring person I know. My siblings consist of two ace sisters.

I'm part conditioned to view women as leaders, those to aspire to, and men as also-rans. The other part is that we're of the same species, so treat everyone the same. I can't shake that women are simply better, though, made of more.

I've had one sexual partner, my wife, who until recent years I held an unrivalled bond with. (We're working on it.)

I've been told I'm an exception and not a rule. I see it now. I didn't always. It sort of seems to invalidate my opinion, though, as I'm not a woman, nor am I a typical example of a man.

Just thinking about the input about Filipino families earlier up thread. (I'm not Filipino. I am Northern Irish.)

Actually this is one of the problems I saw with the piece, it is not a direct quote. What if she said "Help me relax for a sec?" The piece is littered with these problems that make a lot of her actions ambiguous or just unknown. I have no doubt on her thoughts but most of her actions are made to be too ambiguous (note: I only read it once and don't plan to read it again).

I keep on bringing this up because this entire thing has bothered me a great deal - not because I have any attachment to Ansari (I've never seen his stuff) but because I think that the piece is too poorly written to be a concrete example of much. This attempts to throw someone under the bus while not trying to define what the problem is concretely.

Do we need to confront the variety of pressures on women to act in certain ways - absolutely.

Do we need to teach men how to properly get consent - absolutely.

Does a world where incidents like this are considered "bad experience" and occur often need to change - absolutely.