Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

all sexual relationships contain an imbalance of power

this is true about virtually everything, not just sexual relationships. but where that power imbalance matters in sexual relationships is how it's used - if power is exercised to take advantage of someone or coerce them, then that's wrong. that's where the predation is.

many xps

my dad can be a huge asshole, is often narcissistic, can be an enormous insensitive bully and a pompous ass when arguing with him but overall i appreciate and respect him and admire many qualities about him. he was a pretty good dad overall but there are times when hate talking with him, because he is often narcissistic it is difficult to approach him about a personal issue because he will end up just talking about himself

Like a father who was actually physically present for all/most of your upbringing.

― the scarest move i ever seen is scary move 4 (Old Lunch)

hahahaha, that's me out

it's kind of a weird one for me, because my dad was always more emotionally present for me than my mom was. i might have actually talked about stuff with him if he wasn't literally hiding from all human contact for most of our overlapping existence.

my dad calls my mom "woman" (just "woman", and sometimes "tiny woman") and has an interpretation of the bible that involves him being the Head of the Household with final authority, literally handed down from God, over all important decisions.

@ mookieproof, I'm of the opinion that all men's actions, and capitalism as a whole, are entirely the result of The Possibility Of A Boner.

Idk, I think there are lots of ego-driven actions in the ambition/'leave a mark' category that don't necessary have anything to do with boners or the possibility thereof. Maybe it comes from the same primal procreative urge but don't have anything to do with actual sex or even the fantasy of it.

my dad can be a huge asshole, is often narcissistic, can be an enormous insensitive bully and a pompous ass when arguing with him but overall i appreciate and respect him and admire many qualities about him. he was a pretty good dad overall but there are times when hate talking with him

replace narcissism with "reactionary contrarianism" and "being a pedant" and this is my precise relationship to my dad also

but where that power imbalance matters in sexual relationships is how it's used - if power is exercised to take advantage of someone or coerce them, then that's wrong. that's where the predation is.

many xps

― Οὖτις, Friday, October 13, 2017 8:05 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'take advantage of' seems fairly hard to define though? if there is a power imbalance then how can the more powerful person know for sure that the other person won't feel taken advantage of, regardless of the former's intentions?

yeah that does get into intent, but the first step in avoiding it is obviously not doing it intentionally.

I think the closest to a conversation I ever had with my dad was:

Me (age 15 or so): I don't understand why money is so important.
Dad: That's just the way it is.

Otherwise, probably the most revealing thing he ever said was that when he died he just wanted to be tossed in a ditch on the side of the road (nb. we did not honor those wishes, sorry dad).

My father and I can happily talk for hours about Flaubert, David Bowie, Mozart, drinking, Cezanne, architecture, Blondie, Proust, or sexual exploits. But we have not ever ever ever talked about my parents' divorce, Vietnam, bullying, my childhood, or his childhood.

as in the kind of scenarios that prompted this whole discussion - rich and powerful man treats younger less powerful women as disposable sexual conquests. don't do that.

xp

lol Morbs I posted those blind items for you, you probably know exactly the crew I'm talking about

And yeah. In the interest in protecting the majority of survivors (female, young), "power" is something that's generally talked about as being in the hands of older, less-fuckable men, who have the money and the agency. But youth and beauty and sexual viability are its own power.

I've felt exploited in a relationship, once, when I realized that my lover (ten years younger) was actually not going to return the money he'd borrowed from me, in fact, he was just going to pocket it and pretend that it wasn't a loan. That guy totally sucked!

Worse than that, a friend of mine has a disability that has rendered him (and I say this as kindly as possible) unfuckable. He was preyed upon by a young man with a heroin addiction, given a blowjob, told he was loved, slept next to, and then squeezed for professional favours and cash for the following year. My friend was so fucked up about this. He couldn't deal with the fact that this man who said he loved him was actually just using him. The dissonance he was experiencing was overwhelming.

And ya @ Οὖτις

I just, again, reject the idea that people even like Harvey Weinstein at all have any idea what they're doing. People who are drugging women's drinks? yes, they know what they're doing. People surfing a power structure to behave in grossly inappropriate ways toward women? I doubt they have any idea.

I have a close relationship with my father.

When I turned 35, and saw my boyfriend-of-many-years start to prioritize his lovers over our relationship, and found myself doing the same, and saw many of my friends' marriages fall apart, usually because one person left the other for a younger lover, leaving behind kids and stability for The Possibility Of A Boner, I started to feel like toxic masculinity was not a side effect of capitalism and patriarchal construct, but actually a biological imperative, perhaps linked to the moment in men's lives when their boners become less possible? I certainly remember the captivating excitement of having a teenage-sized erection when I first hooked up with somebody who wasn't my boyfriend, it felt like "holy shit, I'm not one foot in the grave after all"

So, I decided to ask my father about this, as a man who was married five times. I asked him if he felt that there was some link between a desire for a new relationship with biological function, like, the imperative toward procreation (and thus immortality) was linked toward boner strength, which is why a dude like him would leave four wives and remarry increasingly younger women. I asked him point-blank: was this because your boners were getting less frequent and you felt a biological imperative to have a younger wife? (My father is a scientist.)

He gave me a weird answer that I didn't expect. He said, "all my younger wives and lovers came to me. I've never actively pursued anybody in my life." I wanted to talk about boners, but he gave me this defensive answer. Like, really, Dad? You need to express that to me? Of course these women were drawn to you, you were an eminent scholar, top of your field. Anyway, it wasn't a useful conversation in the end I guess.

But yeah, my father clearly had no idea that his actions may have been exploitive. And if he was carrying any guilt about it? he was creating scenarios in which he was guilt-free. And then extending those scenarios to me with little-to-no provocation. I don't think abusers know what the fuck they're doing.

IDK, it's pretty hard for me to see what he did in these accounts as much different from drugging a woman's drink:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories

e.g. forcing a woman's head down onto you as she is saying "over and over, ‘I don’t want to do this, stop, don’t'"

fgti - sounds like some frog + scorpion "it's just my nature" angle

Right. Weinstein seems like a serial predator who understood he was pushing women into non-consensual encounters. This kind of thing is really different than misreading social cues or being (perhaps wilfully) oblivious to power differentials in one's relationships.

One time I hooked up with a dude who told me he was worth $30 million. I was giving him a blowjob and I really wasn't into it and wanted to stop. The sudden thought "this guy is worth $30 million" crossed my mind, and with that thought in mind, I redoubled my fellatious efforts. (He wasn't worth $30 million, in the end. Who was exploiting who, in that situation? I wonder.)

Not that anyone here is trying to blur that line. I am just saying as a side note that there are true blue abusers out there who knowingly hurt people.

self xp

Who was exploiting who, in that situation?

mutually exploitative relationships can occasionally work out on balance lol

lol Morbs I posted those blind items for you, you probably know exactly the crew I'm talking about

naaah, I'm (almost) never hip to such networks; i'd guess 1 out of 4 suspects there, with luck

One of the bigger revelations I've had in recent years is that, as a straight white dude, the Golden Rule is an insufficient place for me to start from wrt relating to those who aren't white/hetero/male/etc. Like, I long thought that treating everybody equally was enough without taking into account that, for example, just because I'm pretty darn unimposing compared to most guys, I'm still a guy, and some people are always going to see me as a representative of Guyville and relate to me in terms of their past relationships with guys. Trying to recognize and empathize with the larger context through which others might be seeing me has been a big deal, and it's an obstacle I think a lot of people have trouble overcoming (see #notallmen).

Lol @ outic

Yeah, I have said several times in this thread "Harvey Weinstein and people like him" and I gotta retract. I just re-read the Ronan Farrow thing and Weinstein is some next-level monster.

Trying to recognize and empathize with the larger context through which others might be seeing me has been a big deal, and it's an obstacle I think a lot of people have trouble overcoming (see #notallmen).

My very healthy and normal response to this problem has been to not date

Jesus, been reading this thread and Weinstein stuff, then within five minutes saw article about the dude from Real Estate (who I was never a fan of, but know one of the dudes) and then this (who I was definitely a fan of):
https://www.stereogum.com/1967168/the-gaslamp-killer-responds-to-allegations-that-he-drugged-and-raped-two-women/news/

xpost Sad lol. I geddit. The inherent inequality of power dynamics that are much bigger than yourself and about which you yourself have limited ability to change can be paralyzing, for sure.

Gaslamp Killer's response statement is interesting, struck me as possibly the least objectionable one I've seen that still constitutes a denial

Yeah, I can't tell if it's just an unusually well-manicured version of the stock response or if it's a genuinely unusual situation, though I strongly suspect it's the former.

Kind of hard to believe him when it appears that one woman accused him, then he literally went to the other one to say "back me up here," and she was like "what the fuck, you raped both of us!"

The best benefit of doubt I could give him is maybe he was intoxicated and doesn't remember the whole series of events.

i have a question, and please do not feel like you need to respond or talk about it if you don't want to, but have any men posting itt been sexually assaulted before?

i have been, by an older guy, J, when i was a teenager. i think i was 16. J was probably 25 or so. it took me about 10 years to really understand that it was sexual assault, rape? i think so, given his age and mine, and that i was pretty intoxicated. it’s been a hard thing to process, for years i just thought, no, it wasn’t, because i wanted it, too. but looking back it was a fucked up experience.

J was the older cousin of a close friend of mine, and he would often housesit/babysit when my friend's mom was out of town. all of us thought he was a fun, outgoing, and hilarious dude, he would let us throw big parties at the house, buy beer for us, get drunk and smoke weed with us, tell us hilarious jokes. he was openly gay, quite flamboyant, and made frequent jokes about it, and among a bunch of teenage dudes attending a very homophobic catholic boys high school i found it wonderfully refreshing that everybody just loved J and set aside the rampant homophobia. the parties at my friend’s house when J housesat were generally the most fun parties we all went in high school.

at that particular time, a male friend, M, and i had an ongoing sexual relationship that we didn't share or talk about with anyone else. we didn’t even really talk about it between each other, it was always just “you wanna smoke a bowl and mess around a little?”) and that was that. M was possibly the most popular kid in any social circle i was a part of, but we were well aware that if our sexual relationship became public knowledge we would've probably been tortured and alienated. there were no openly gay kids at my high school, the harassment and bullying would've been too intense, all these kids' love for our friend's older gay cousin J notwithstanding. at the time i was not really sure if i was gay or bisexual, i knew that i was really attracted to women but i also really loved being sexual with M and fantasized about it all the time.

anyways during one of these parties when J was housesitting, i was very drunk and high and chatting it up with J. he was pretty drunk, too, i think. he was an opera and men's choir singer and he loved all kinds of music, and we're talking about music that we like. i really loved the pet shop boys at that point and when i mentioned them, J asked me, jokingly, “ha are you suuuuure you're not gay????”

no one to whom i would safely feel responding honestly to that question had ever asked me that before, and my inhibitions were down because i was pretty drunk and high, so i responded “uhhhh yea i’m not really sure” and i started to tell him about M and i, this secret that no one knew and it immediately felt so exciting and refreshing to be able to say it to somebody! and he then says excitedly “oh wow we gotta go talk!” and so we went to an empty room and i start telling him more and more about everything that’s going on.

he then, after i’ve told him this secret about myself and all this stuff i’m going through, says to me, “i really want to kiss you right now.” we kiss, and at that point i’m so excited by the attention. despite really wanting to date girls, i did not have much luck until college, and so to have someone show that attraction to me and seduce me felt really thrilling. he then took me to an empty bedroom upstairs where we spent the night together having sex.

i woke up the next day feeling so hungover, anxious, scared and ashamed. i remember taking a shower but feeling like i couldn’t get clean. mostly i just felt in a daze though. it’s weird, despite being so intoxicated i remember that night very clearly.

i saw J here and there at a number of subsequent parties. i kept kind of a distance and we were never sexual again. he asked me once “how’s the gay thing going?” and i was scared and just told him that, actually, i wasn’t thinking about it much because there was a girl i was crushing on really hard.

i feel like i put the whole thing out of my mind for years, until i was in therapy in my mid-20s and began to think about the whole dynamic. why hadn’t i considered it to be sexual assault/rape? how would i have responded if i heard about a 25-year-old straight dude buying beer for a teenagers party and then fucking a drunk and high 16-year-old girl? i still don’t know what to do with this memory sometimes, and i don’t always know how it fits into my sexuality as a whole or my life as a whole or my ideas about sex, consent, and sexuality as a whole. maybe sometime i will. right now the memory is there and sometimes it feels weirdly erotic and exciting and sometimes it just feels like shit.

marcos <3

wow that's intense

I do not think your story is that unusual as far as young men and early homosexual experiences go tbh

marcos <3

marcos <3

marcos <3

^

sometimes it feels weirdly erotic and exciting and sometimes it just feels like shit.

This is amazing. I don't want to get into the couple times I was assaulted as a child, but one of these men I was like really in love with, and I still feel completely confused by what happened

Thank you marcos for sharing

thank u all <3

Honestly I'm not comfortable disclosing my most upsetting brush with this subject (I was not directly involved; my then-partner was) but suffice to say it still has a profound impact on my life

<3 marcos

yeah I grew up associated w/hippie 70's communes and a guy crept into the room I was sleeping in one night (I was maybe 10?) and tried to molest me, I laid face down w/my hands over my genitals and passively resisted so he went away. for years I thought of this as a victory, and only late-20s therapy revealed the extent of the damage (sleep issues, etc.).

the killer thing back then when I started talking about it (late 20s) was that my mom still wanted to call the guy a friend. I'm not sure how we got over that in our relationship, but we did. there's more but this thread ain't 77.

Marcos <3

love and empathy to everybody here who's been victimized

i look back on my own drunken sexual history and tho i don't think i've ever crossed a hard line there's enough there to make me pretty ashamed of myself

marcos!

I spent a lot of my childhood with a family where the father later turned out to have molested someone I knew, I don't really want to say more than that about the specifics, but with my experience of being around the guy it was so not shocking that my reaction when I was told was pretty much "of course." He had been extremely inappropriate and disgusting with me and touched me in "non-sexual" inappropriate ways many times, hugs, kisses on the cheek, grabs that sort of thing. I was very resistant to it and while I don't want to blame the person who was his victim I think this might have had something to do with why he didn't choose me to prey on further. I can still smell/feel his gross facial hair and it's nauseating me as I type. What was shocking, and still hard for me to get over, was the realization that my parents had let me spend a huge amount of my childhood with this person, him driving me to school sometimes, me sleeping over at their house, etc. For years and years.

don’t always know how it fits into my sexuality as a whole or my life as a whole or my ideas about sex, consent, and sexuality as a whole. maybe sometime i will. right now the memory is there and sometimes it feels weirdly erotic and exciting and sometimes it just feels like shit.

^^^ see, THIS, right here, this is life.

So much of being a man for me is being scared of myself. I don't know, is manhood just a hormonal imbalance? The amount of anger and hatred and desire for cruelty I feel, no idea what to do with it, no idea how to even talk about it. Can I get shots to make me a gay space communist?

aw sleeve that is terrifying xps

man alive too

I don't know that I'm "scared of" myself per se but I do consider my retirement from dating to be a form of public service. (*Not* because I'm worried about trespassing in some way, just because I'm consistently an emotional wreck and too disgusted with dating culture to participate with any enthusiasm.) Disengagement feels like the only dignified option I can execute reliably.

and co-sign on

love and empathy to everybody here who's been victimized

dating isn't dignified, everybody who does it is a needy, fucked-up mess trying to pretend they aren't. but i've spent long periods of time single because i was too fucked up to be in a relationship, and i'm certainly not going to judge.