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Ogling: Boys Will Be Boys?
“Boys will be boys,” suggested one third of the women who answered my survey on ogling, which asked why some men stare at women’s body parts. Most of these women said their partner’s lingering eyes bothered them at least a little. But if men are “just that way,” maybe they’re less annoyed?
Is it true? Does the male sex drive include an imperative to stare at breasts and bottoms?
Maybe not. Only half of the women I surveyed had dated these distracted lovers. Others said they would be offended if their significant other behaved that way. I never experienced an ogling boyfriend, myself, until my last semester in college.
No. They don’t all do it.
I’m not saying non-oglers never notice feminine charms. Just not in the staring mode that so many of us find rude.
The New York Times reported on a series of studies that might shed some light on the matter.
In one, Florida State University men were asked to assemble a puzzle of Lego blocks. A 21-year-old woman was asked to assist. She wore jeans, a T-shirt, a ponytail and no makeup. Flirting was off limits and she kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum.
Later, the men rated her attractiveness. Single men found her most attractive at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle, a finding replicated in other studies. Lap dancers, for
instance, get higher tips that time of the month.
But men in relationships found her least attractive while ovulating. Why?
They were relationship guarding. It seems they unconsciously saw the young assistant as more threatening to their relationships when she was most attractive. To resist temptation, they told themselves, “She’s not that hot.”
Another Florida State study found a similar phenomenon. After words like “lust” or “kiss” were quickly flashed, men and women were shown a sequence of photographs and images. Singles gazed longer at attractive pictures of the opposite sex, and they lingered when asked to look at new images.
But those in relationships behaved differently. They looked more quickly away from attractive faces, using subtle mechanisms to rein in a wandering eye. As if to say, “Tempt me not!”
On the other hand, when University of Kentucky researchers made it difficult to focus on good-looking faces, people tried harder to see the forbidden fruit. And afterward, they felt less satisfied with their partners and found cheating more appealing.
Or as Dr. Maner, the lead researcher put it, “We shouldn’t want our partner to be looking at lots of other people, because that’s bad for the relationship. At the same time,” he continued, “preventing them from looking doesn’t help either, and can backfire.”
Self-policing works. Policing your mate may not.
Ogling is not simply a “boys will be boys” phenomenon. Many men are more centered on relationship-guarding than eyeballing the curves that pass by.
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Polygamy is Heavenly says Pedophile Prophet
Warren Jeffs, 55-year-old “Prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for assaulting two girls, ages 12 and 15, whom he had recently added to his harem of nearly 90 “plural wives.”
When Texas Rangers raided his compound in 2008, many were outraged at the infringement on his sect’s religious rights. And Jeffs repeatedly insisted his religious freedom was violated at trial.
Yet the raid, prompted by a prank call to an abuse hotline, provided evidence that more than one-quarter of Jeffs’ “wives” were underage. And in several journal entries, Jeffs said God told him to take more and more young girls as brides “who can be worked with and easily taught.” And, since 105 males are born for every 100 females, you do have to marry younger to do polygamy.
Yet Jeffs claims it the highest form of marriage, bringing exaltation in heaven.
As if pedophilia weren’t problem enough, there’s more trouble in paradise.
Girls and women are basically property. Jeffs writes of summoning the parents of one 14-year-old and informing them “of their girl belonging to me.” He describes wives as “honorable vessels, property of your husband’s kingdom and the Kingdom of God on Earth.” Fathers gave their daughters to him and were rewarded with young brides of their own.
Wives were expected to serve him. Much evidence against Jeffs came from a wife-training tape instructing girls how to please him sexually and win favor with the Lord. He quoted revelations from God as he instructed wives on becoming comfortable nude, grooming their body hair, and group sex.
You have to know how to be excited sexually and to be excited to administer that comfort and strength. And you have to be able to assist each other. No one sits around, everyone assists each other.
On assisting each other, it might help if roughly ninety-five percent of women weren’t straight.
While Jeffs was “appointed” by God to engage in this behavior, other FLDS men were not. “If another man, not appointed, were to do this,” he said, “they would lose priesthood.” He warned his wives to tell no one of this “higher order.”
The wife-training tape seems to include sounds of sobbing. Were the girls less pleased at their call to sexual service than their husband was?
Girls reluctant to have sex with Jeffs were sent away.
But young men were driven out of the community, as well, on trivial charges like watching “inappropriate movies.” If you’re going to be polygamous in a world with equal numbers of women and men, you’ve got to subtract a few men.
Jeffs also reassigned the property and families of men he found threatening, breaking up around 300 families. Ross Chatwin had been fine with polygamy, until this happened to him. “Polygamy is not the problem here,” Chatwin insisted, “It’s the dictatorship.”
Interesting that Chatwin had no problem so long as he had plenty of wives and possessions. He remains blind to the troubles of girls, women, and boys sent away.
Here we find patriarchy in the old sense: older, powerful men wielding control over women and younger and more powerless males.
All-powerful and living without limits, Jeffs seems never satisfied. On the wife-training
tape he says, “OK, six ladies. I wish I had a seventh.” At another point he exclaims, “I need more than one wife to be with me at a time.” Ninety wives and counting… Monogamous men may wish they had more. Apparently, nothing’s enough for polygamous men, either.
Meanwhile, his wives must share just one man, and not one they’re necessarily attracted
to. His pleasure at their expense. A friend of mine wrote a book on 19th century Mormon polygamy. Any wonder he titled it In Sacred Loneliness?
Jeffs indulges his ravenous appetite, ultimately unquenchable, as his wives gain little gratification.
Is polygamy really so heavenly, Mr. Jeffs?
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Norway Terrorist is also Misogynist. What’s the Connection?
The Norwegian terrorist who killed scores of people in late July was motivated by racism, particularly Islamophobia. But he is also a misogynist. It’s not unusual for racism and sexism to go hand in hand. But why?
David Futrelle, who blogs about misogyny on Manboobz.com, points out Anders Behring Breivik’s deep sexism on the Ms. Magazine Blog, highlighting quotes like this:
It’s the destructive and suicidal Sex and the City lifestyle (modern feminism, sexual revolution) [that] we are taught to revere as the truth. In that setting, men are not men anymore, but metrosexual and emotional beings that are there to serve the purpose as a never-criticizing soul mate to the new age feminist woman goddess.
Futrelle says Breivik’s rants are typical of “manosphere” blogs, which his manifesto
plagiarizes in part. When a prankster posted his quotes anonymously, they got the “thumbs-up” – at least until his identity was revealed.
Other obsessions of Breivik/the manopshere include no-fault divorce, STDs, and women
manipulating men with their feminine charms. Worried that Islam will out-breed Westerners, Breivik advocates limiting contraception, banning abortion, and discouraging women from education and full-time careers, which “will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate.”
In his video, “Call to Arms” Breivik displays big-breasted women in tight T-shirts wielding assault weapons. Reduced to sex-object parts plus firearms, she’s the sexist terrorist’s dream girl.
Breivik’s misogyny doesn’t surprise Michael Kimmel, a feminist who studies men, and who says that racist and sexist right-wing movements are largely about manhood. Men who are drawn to them feel emasculated by “Nanny States” that demand equal rights for everyone and whose taxes prevent people from making a free and independent living, as they see it.
These same men also feel that feminism makes men “wimpy, more pacifist, less authoritarian, more ‘sensitive’, less competitive, more androgynous, (and) less possessive.” The merging of masculine and feminine is a problem because how can men be superior if women and men are similar, or equal?
They add racism to further inflate their self-worth. As Kimmel describes it:
White Protestants are set against various “others” who aren’t men the way they are – blacks, Jews, gay men, other non-white immigrants – who are variously depicted as either “too” masculine (rapacious beasts, avariciously cunning, voracious) or not masculine “enough” (feminine, dependent, effeminate).
Bringing sexism and racism together, “real men” can feel “better-than” everyone else.
And by “protecting” white women from (so-called) non-white beasts, they may earn
women’s love and admiration, and further reclaim their manhood.
Breivik and men like him are desperate to feel like they are better than everyone else.
Even when they so clearly are not.
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Why Some Guys Want to Screw You
It’s really confusing. Every week you have some dorm seminar on sexual assault, and
a constant buzz about what’s appropriate. Then you go to a party on the weekend and it’s everything they said to avoid. Get girls drunk so they’ll have sex with you. Lying to them or telling them how interested you are in them and how much you like them, when it’s completely not true. All you really want to do is have sex with them and then get the hell out of there.
– One man’s take on male/female relations on college campuses
While there are a lot of really great guys out there, unfortunately for women today, some guys still want to screw you.
Take hookup culture. Women and men play the same game. But by different rules. Intercourse means the man wins, or “scores,” and the woman loses. He gains status. His reputation is enhanced. But “sluts,” as they’re called, “give it up,” meaning both sex and reputation. Hence, the vague meaning of “hookup” – ranging from “we kissed” to intercourse, so that she’ll keep playing the game.
Still, after sex she may beg, “Don’t tell.” But telling is the main goal. As one guy put it:
When I’ve just got laid, the first thing I think about – before I’ve even like “finished” – is that I can’t wait to tell my crew who I just did.
Why would a guy screw a girl just so he can brag? And why’s that more important than sexual pleasure?
All of the quotes above are from Guyland by sociologist, Michael Kimmel, one of the leading experts on men and masculinity. What’s his take on why some men treat women so poorly?
As Kimmel sees it, it boils down to personal identity. A preoccupation with proving “manhood.”
In America, as elsewhere, men are still thought superior. So they must constantly prove they deserve the high status.
Has anyone ever heard of “proving womanhood”? But then, why put effort into demonstrating you are lesser-than (as the culture sees it)?
Seeking to demonstrate manhood, men must be aware of what they wear or drive, or how they walk, talk, eat, stand, sit… Some meet stupidly dangerous challenges. A few may act cruelly, showing no fear or vulnerability.
Those who don’t conform may be named:
Sissy, wimp, faggot, dork, pussy, loser, wuss, nerd, queer, homo, girl, gay, skirt, mama’s boy, pussy-whipped.
Yet women aren’t afraid of being called tomboy or daddy’s girl. And when women are told, “You the man!” that’s good!
But then, when men act like women they are seen as lowering themselves. Women are not seen as putting themselves down by taking on masculine traits.
Unfortunately, some men think that f’ing women is a means of displaying “manhood” – or certain notions of what that means.
When manhood is seen as powerful, dominant, aggressive, violent, and potent, screwing women – whether they want it or not – can make men feel “they are all that” as they conquer women, getting them to submit sexually, as in competition, or war. These men aren’t vulnerable to women. They don’t have “girly” emotion-filled relationships, or experience emotional dependence. No. They are REAL men.
Even words that some men use for sex can sound violent. Here’s a list some young men in my classes made: Screw, f-, bang, nail, ram, smash, smack that, beat those, cut, boning, git-in-em-guts.
Really, when guys try so hard to be tough, they are probably bellowing to hide insecurity. So busy figuring out who they are and wanting to believe they are men, the drive for basic self-worth looms larger than sex, safety or shame in cruelty.
Michael Kimmel says guys can feel torn between proving manhood and expressing their humanity, but says they don’t need to choose. Real manhood, he says, is marked by honor, respect, integrity, emotional resilience, and doing the right thing despite the costs.
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Woman, Not the Sum of Flawed Parts
By Linda Bakke
Star Magazine. Full of faces covered by question marks, bodies sliced up. Women diminished to the details of their flaws, circled in bold. A dissection of celebrities’ body parts.
I was working as a receptionist at a hair salon when I discovered Star. I picked it up and paged through. It was awful. I could not put it down.
One article divulged a star’s “hairy secret,” detailing the frequency of her waxing regimen and suggesting her pubic area was overly hairy. A two page spread highlighted shameful “sausage fingers.” Another asked who had the worst toes.
It all oddly evoked the serial killers who keep articles – or worse, dismembered body parts – as trophies.
And what is the triumph here? A sensed superiority over the goddess’ faults as we lie in judgment?
And who can blame us? Their supposedly error-free bodies stress us out! Destroying them and their presumed perfection just might lift our spirits.
But maybe scrutinizing them only returns scrutiny to us, as the judgments tell us we must correct our own “blemishes,” whether buttocks, breasts, fingers or toes.
The message: women’s imperfections cannot be tolerated.
As we eat it up, we fail to see how we become victims, too, unconsciously nodding agreement that this treatment of women is acceptable.
While the pictures and text underline our preoccupation with facade over character, men’s bodily foibles are untouched by these tabloids. Who can imagine placing a man in such light?
Hopefully one day we will take on realistic and healthy expectations so that women will no longer be seen as the sum of flawed parts.
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Should Women Give Men The Porn Star Experience?
A lot of guys have come to expect P.S.E. [the “Porn-Star Experience”] … and plenty of women are more than happy to provide. A few might enjoy it, but for most it’s harrowing. I think there’s a fear that if they can’t make it happen, their boyfriend will retreat online.
That’s from Sadie, a real estate agent, talking about what women do for men who find “normal” sex dull after extreme online porn.
Davy Rothbart blames porn for his own difficulties enjoying real sex with real women:
For a lot of guys, switching gears from porn’s fireworks and whiz-bangs to the comparatively mundane calm of ordinary sex is like leaving halfway through an Imax 3-D movie to check out a flipbook… (So women) willingly play along by a new set of rules in order to keep their men interested.
Should women give men the porn star experience?
If they’re both loving it, why not?
But should women undergo pain to supply their men over-the-top pleasure?
Robert Jensen, a University of Texas professor and feminist who speaks on pornography, says women frequently ask him whether they should fulfill their guys’ disturbing requests. Or they ask why men want them to perform acts that they find upsetting, whether
ejaculating on her face, anal sex, a threesome with another man or woman, rough sex or role-playing that feels inauthentic to her.
“I love him,” they say, “and I want to be a good partner. Should I do it?”
Here’s the perspective of this thoughtful feminist man.
Some women are game, he recognizes, but those who are not are under no obligation, no matter the level of commitment, to participate in any sexual activity that causes pain, discomfort or distress.
It’s great to honestly discuss desires and be open, he adds, but partners should also be clear about what crosses the line.
Asked, “Why does he want to do that to me?” Jensen points out that, “In patriarchy, men are socialized to understand sex in the context of men’s domination and women’s submission.” Pornography, he says, isn’t “images of ‘just sex,’ but sex in the context of male dominance” that includes “little recognition by men of the potential for pain, discomfort or distress in their women partners.”
Ejaculating on a woman’s face is largely about humiliation. Rough sex often enacts male dominance, and threesomes can be seen as male ownership of sex-object women who fawn over him.
Next, women wonder why their men can’t understand that they don’t want to do certain things.
Jensen says strong sexual desire plays a role. But so does an absence of empathy – the ability to imagine what another person is feeling. These men think the acts sound exciting and they can’t envision their partners not feeling the same way.
A lack of empathy may be a warning sign when people are unwilling to grow, for healthy relationships require it.
Jensen recommends a vision of equality and moving away from objectifying women to overcome these problems.
Bottom line for women: Stay true to your values and to who you are.
Men and women might also want to have a conversation about what they want in their relationship and how these sort of experiences fit into that – or don’t.
And, I’m guessing that most men are into sex enough to be able to enjoy things that their partners also enjoy, even if that doesn’t include threesomes, facials, etc.
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12-Year-Olds Wanted Rape, Judge Says
Six British soccer players confessed to gang-raping two 12-year-old girls last March. But an Appeals Court recently freed the men because, “The girls wanted to have sex,” explained Lord Justice Moses.
They wanted sex? Even Moses admitted, “They had pretty miserable, fleeting sex in a
freezing cold park.” Now that sounds like what girls want.
Apparently one of the 12-year-olds had been texting the players, and she and her friend agreed to meet them in a park. There, five of the men gang raped one girl while a sixth assaulted the other. When they didn’t return home, one of their mothers called the police, who found them wandering alone in the early morning hours.
At the least this looks like statutory rape. The girls were only twelve after all. They claimed to be sixteen, but shouldn’t adults use some judgment?
Most importantly, the men admitted to rape.
Yet those “frank confessions” convinced the judges of the soccer players’ “positive good character,” suggesting they had been duped into sex.
Huh?
Colin Horgan, a regular contributor to The Guardian, looks to Men’s Studies professor, Michael Kimmel to consider why men sometimes side with rapists over victims.
In some men’s eyes a girl is seen as offering herself for a sexual encounter just by “being there.” The men feel entitled to sex because, deep down, they all “know” that’s what she wants. So gang rapes end up being seen as something the victim actively did or encouraged, and not something done to her.
Horgan says porn plays a role, not as an instruction manual but as a projection of the fantasies and validation of the feelings of men who consume it. Some studies do suggest that certain types of porn promote the myth that women secretly want to be raped.
Meanwhile, Stephanie Hallett, over at Ms., observes that rapists are continually let off the hook because, “The girls were dressed provocatively, the women were drinking, women lie about rape, there was “sex in the air,” yet:
Research has shown that most rapists are serial rapists–and those serial rapists commit 90 to 95 percent of all rapes. What’s more likely–that these repeat perpetrators just happen to get “tricked” by underage women or receive “mixed messages” from unconsenting women, again and again–or that the overwhelming majority of rapes aren’t really committed “by accident”?
She makes a good point.
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You Are “Less Than”?
How could anyone ever tell you
you were anything less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you
you were less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice
that your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you’re connected to my soul.
The song “How Could Anyone,” has had a worldwide healing impact. The lyrics have touched AIDS orphans, cancer survivors, disabled teens, and women and girls redefining beauty.
These words by Libby Roderick have touched me, too.
I first heard them soon after I’d broken up with a boyfriend. This man had said nothing outright about my being “less than,” but sent heavy cues by his occasional gaping at women who took up all the space of his vision while I disappeared.
When I asked about it, he said, “Well, yeah, other women are more attractive than you.” And added, “There’s an archetypal image that men are just naturally drawn to.” Archetypal Playmate, that is.
Men are naturally drawn to something unnatural? Plastic-chested, unnaturally starving and airbrushed? The current ideal is actually both new and strange.
In his eyes I felt less than beautiful. And less than whole.
But this song made me reflect on whether I wasn’t whole or whether he simply had a partial view.
Just what is whole, really? What is beautiful?
False, synthetic, shallow?
Genuine, sincere, heartfelt, deep connection?
When we meet those who dwell on the surface, living with limited sight – whether ourselves or others – forgiveness begs. For blocked vision brings suffering to the seer.
And remember:
Every loving thought is true
Everything else is an appeal for healing or help
From Accept This Gift
It’s not that we’re not whole. But in obstructed vision, we aren’t entirely seen.
How Could Anyone http://www.libbyroderick.com/cd_new.html
Words and music by Libby Roderick c 1988
From the recordings “How Could Anyone” and “If You See a Dream”
Turtle Island Records Anchorage Alaska
www.libbyroderick.com libbyroderick@gmail.com
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Men Are Naturally Attracted To Unnatural Women
Ask a guy why he looks at porn and he’s likely to say that men are just naturally attracted to women. But the women in porn don’t look too natural.
Actually, women in fashion magazines and billboards don’t look too natural, either.
Women and men both learn to admire a feminine ideal that ends up frustrating both men and women.
Most women have to starve themselves to be ideally skinny. Many models are so thin that they have stopped menstruating. Isn’t the natural instinct to stay alive and well?
And how about fake breasts? If men are naturally drawn to breasts, why do so many women go under the knife and mutilate themselves so that men – and society – will find them attractive?
Then there’s the preference for blondes. Few women past puberty are true blondes. But unnaturally bleached hair is the top color of choice, both for men and for women who want to look beautiful. Well, at least peroxide doesn’t require enormous amounts of money or risk much bodily harm.
So models go through all their pain and suffering, but it’s not quite enough. Next, the malnourished, plastic-chested, bleached out images go to be photoshopped and airbrushed to look even more fake than they already are.
So women try in vain to match ridiculous notions of beauty. Then get depressed because nothing they do seems to work.
But the models don’t look like “themselves,” either!
At the same time, male students have told me that all this hurts them, too. “What’s wrong with me?” they wonder. “Why can’t I get women who look like THAT?”
Well, those “picture perfect” women don’t actually exist.
So women can never achieve the ideal. And men can never have the ideal woman.
Meanwhile, men are left feeling “naturally” attracted to something that isn’t natural.
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Why Did Nancy Garrido Help Kidnap Jaycee Dugard?
Jaycee Dugard told Diane Sawyer in an ABC interview that after kidnapping her, Nancy Garrido was intensely jealous. So why did she do it? Beyond the question of how she could commit such an atrocious crime, I’d like to focus on why Nancy Garrido made herself miserable by actively acquiring a sexual rival.
I don’t know the specifics of why. Nancy clearly wanted to please her spouse, even if that entailed personal anguish. But in asking why Garrido assisted in her own torment, we might as well ask why women too often stay in distressing, and even abusive relationships, in some ways imitating her – if on a lesser scale.
Everyday women mimicking Garrido?
In one section of Why Women Have Sex, psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss talk of women reluctantly agreeing to bring other women into their relationships in order to keep their men. As one put it:
Right now, the guy I am with is into swinging. I am not comfortable with that lifestyle… I just pretend he is my master and I am to follow his every command and it makes it easier for me to get through the night… He keeps asking me to have a threesome with my best friend and I keep acting like it is okay, but I am dreading it.
Others tolerate the incest that partners inflict upon their children. Some endure marital or relationship rape and battering.
That’s quite a range. But all of these women are allowing their hearts and souls to be hurt, and sometimes they are letting others be harmed, as well.
Why?
They may feel they love these men. More than they love themselves – or anyone else for that matter. A sick sort of love swimming in injury.
They may think they have no better options. They don’t deserve much and can’t expect better. They aren’t lovable or attractive enough, or they can’t survive on their own. They can’t find a better man. And their partners willingly prop up the downbeat assessments. And so they desperately try to please, and appease, their men in hopes of gaining love.
Poor self-esteem anchors their submission.
But they also hold their own sex in low regard. Women who endure pain to give their men pleasure see men as better-than and more deserving than women. And so they sacrifice so their men may have all.
Some stay in relationships due to “sunk costs.” Having invested so much – emotion, all of the work gone through to create only small changes in partners, resources – they can’t bear to give it all up with nothing to show.
But if we’ve learned something is the cost really sunk? We could take what we’ve learned and move on.
For whatever reason, too many women don’t realize they don’t have to put up with crap.
Too bad Nancy Garrido never figured that out.
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