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Women Rating Men
A new “Lulu” app calls itself the first database of men, built by women, for women. Here’s how Slate’s Amanda Hess says it works:
You sign into Lulu via Facebook to prove you’re a woman (or rather, that you’ve indicated your Facebook gender as “female”). You page through a list of all your male Facebook friends, award them points based on their looks, manners, spending habits, and ambition, then assign them hashtags for their strengths (#SexualPanther, #NotADick) and weaknesses (#NapoleonComplex, #WearsEdHardy). Then, the next time you’re circling a romantic or sexual prospect in real life, just plug his name into Lulu to see what your (totally anonymous) virtual girlfriends have to say about him… Women may then publicly sexualize (#KinkyInTheRightWays) and shame (#BabbyDaddy) the men in their lives without their consent.
The app’s creator, Alexandra Chong, came up with the idea as she talked about a date who wasn’t right for her but might be perfect for someone else.
Maybe it’ll help a few women and men get together. And maybe it’ll help a few good women avoid a few bad men. But I wouldn’t care to be ranked on this sort of forum so I’m guessing that men won’t be thrilled to find themselves on it, either.
As the judge makes her pronouncements from on high, the judged may feel diminished, powerless and at her mercy.
But we women are so used to being judged in that way that it might be hard to resist turning the tables.
Plenty of men, on the other hand, are in a tizzy: “WE are the ones to judge and hold power over how others are defined” some seem to say.
Hess points out the hypocrisy of male Redditors denouncing Lulu as anti-male harassment even as they defend their own right to post and unleash anonymous commentary on unauthorized nude photos of women on the Web. Which sounds a lot worse to me. Yet these guys don’t get that. Probably because they’re so used to being the judges, the ones in power.
How about that Golden Rule: Do unto others as ye would have done unto you. We could all take a lesson in non-judgment.
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It Ain’t Sex Unless It’s Pleasuring
“It isn’t sex unless you’ve had an orgasm” says Jessica Valenti on losing virginity.
I’d take that a step further and apply it to rape: It ain’t sex unless it’s pleasuring. That makes sex and rape two different things.
When words fail to make distinctions things can get fuzzy and merge together. In places like Korea no words distinguish between blue and green, leaving people unable to see a difference.
We may need to distinguish between sex and rape to stop confusing one with the other. Sex is about consensual, mutual pleasure. Rape is not.
The Steubenville rape, and reaction to it, has got me thinking about this.
A semi-conscious, non-responsive 16-year-old girl is digitally penetrated. So what happens? Someone films it. Next she’s photographed naked, gossiped about, joked about, and it’s all passed around on the web as the girl’s former friends, other students and local townsfolk defend the assailants.
Evan Westlake said he didn’t stop the assault, because,
It wasn’t violent. I didn’t know exactly what rape was. I thought it was forcing yourself on someone.
After a guilty verdict a defendant wails that his life is over. CNN, ABC and NBC seem sympathetic to the perpetrators, whose lives are forever ruined. Just sex gone bad? Bad decisions surrounding sex? It’s easy to make a mistake?
If sex were only thought of as consensual, mutual and pleasurable for all involved then maybe more people could see that entering a semi-conscious girl’s vagina is not sex, it is rape.
And if a woman or girl were raped, or lost her virginity through rape, maybe she’d feel a lot better if she redefined “sex” and “virginity loss” in terms of pleasuring sex, not mere penetration.
I’ve always felt uncomfortable thinking of sex and rape as being different forms of the same thing.
It ain’t sex unless it’s consensual.
It ain’t sex unless it’s mutual.
It ain’t sex unless it’s pleasurable.
It ain’t sex unless everyone feels good afterwards.
And real men love sex, but real men don’t rape.
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It Ain’t Sex Unless You Ooooo
By Erica Dalton
When it comes to virginity, Jessica Valenti says, “It isn’t sex unless you’ve had an orgasm.”
How different things would be if virginity were explained to young girls that way. Sex is so much more than the old in-and-out.
I can relate all too well. And I cannot help but reassess the image of virginity that I had created long before I knew that I was creating it. An image that I had been mindlessly guided to by my culture.
To this day a lot of us are taught to wait for that one man or woman who will rock our world. But once you get that not everybody experiences sex the same way, you lose grasp of the image that has been pushed down our throats.
If you believe that staying a virgin until marriage will make your first sexual encounter better, followed by a happier and healthier marriage, you may be disappointed. Virginity is not proven to make marriage any simpler or happier. And your marriage could end up worse. I know unhappy couples who are not sexually well-matched. But this problem of ignorance is kept from youth, who are encouraged to stay abstinent to obtain that ultimate magical moment.
It all keeps people uneducated about their bodies and their sexuality. And that does NOT make for better sex.
Until I saw Valenti’s definition, I had not thought that losing virginity meant anything more than a dull night that carries much more expectation than it delivers. But now that I see virginity differently I understand a little more of who I am.
Losing virginity is so much more than that moment of penetration.
This piece was written by one of my students who gave permission to post it.
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Sex Sells — To Women?
Sex sells, they say.
Last month’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition featured bikinied women and women whose nude bodies were painted to look like they were wearing bikinis. (Swimsuits are related to sports, get it?). The scantily clad ladies sell a lot of magazines.
Now SI wants to appeal to its female audience of 18 million. The ladies will get makeup tips. And after all the lovely swimsuit models, women readers may feel badly enough about themselves to want them – a common advertising trick.
But why no Beckham in the buff for us? We aren’t supposed to enjoy ogling sexy men? Instead, we are supposed to be sexy ourselves, so that men can enjoy ogling us?
But SI is hardly alone.
Cosmo, Glamour, Elle, et al., highlight sexy ladies, and at best, lowlight sexy men. In fact, Cosmo and Maxim look an awful lot alike.
But it’s not just magazines. Nearly nude women, but rarely men, draw our eyes to billboards peddling products. The camera hones in on women’s boobs and butts on TV and film. You don’t see much focus on men’s buns and chests.
Why are sexy women marketed to both men and women?
And why aren’t sexy men marketed to women?
Historically, men have controlled media and they put out what they find attractive. Then, flooded with pretty women, we all drink them in. They sink into our minds, and we unconsciously develop notions that that’s the way the world is and the only way things could be.
But the unsaid message is that women’s sexual needs aren’t primary. Men’s are. We are meant to be beautiful decorations for men. We are there to turn men on. Men need sexual pleasure, and we are the one’s to give it to them.
Not the reverse.
As a result, when men look at nearly-nude women, they love it. But when women look at nearly-nude men they can feel uncomfortable.
Shouldn’t women’s sexual pleasure be as important as men’s? And wouldn’t men and women both enjoy sex more if it were?
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Women, Men Face Opposing Repressions
![hodgins-and-angela-in-jail[1]](https://broadblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/hodgins-and-angela-in-jail1.jpg)
Men and women are both repressed, but sometimes in opposing ways. Too many women feel emotionally open but sexually unresponsive, while too many men easily come even while their emotions lie submerged. Either way, when it comes to sex, they lose.
But should we be surprised when (among other things) buddies push each other to have sex with lots of women who they feel nothing for. Successful “players” are celebrated for “scoring” with the ladies – who may be shamed for “giving it up.”
But as players have sex with women they don’t know and don’t care about, and whose reputations they may destroy, they must check their emotions. But checking emotions goes beyond the bedroom. Boys don’t cry, and shouldn’t express much else, either. When Norah Vincent passed as a man for 18 months, she missed feeling and expressing emotion.
Here’s one man’s response to a post I wrote called “Twilight vs Porn” which contrasts women’s emotionally charged erotica with men’s proclivity for body parts.
It took years for me to untangle the damaging messages I received as a man and to get underneath them to a more genuine understanding of what sex was. I, too, think male sexual modes are primarily culturally reinforced – and exclude men from the best sex within intimacy, leaving them with a series of shallow orgasms and striving egos.
A young woman named Valerie saw it from the other side. She complained about guys gaping at her body and manipulating her into popular porn positions. It’s cold, she says:
I don’t just want to become Body A. I want men to feel like they are with me, Valerie, a particular woman with a particular body and my own unique personality.
Surprisingly, advice to non-orgasmic women may have something in common with helpful advice for non-emotional men.
Sex therapist, Lonnie Barbach encourages women to explore their bodies — without trying to come (because trying to climax just leads to worry that they won’t and keeps them out of the erotic experience). Notice the subtleties of the sensations, she says, feel into them, let them grow.
A guy once told me that he’d had to do the reverse to experience connection. Orgasm was easy. He needed to notice emotional subtleties and center on those as a way to move beyond cold porn sex. And then he couldn’t believe how amazing sex could be — even though he’d thought it was awesome before.
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Are Girls Free to Make Love?
In a recent episode of Girls, non-skinny and not classically beautiful, Hannah, has a short affair with a man who looks exactly like hunky Patrick Wilson. The response? He’s too hot for her!
As Fariha Roisin at Huffington Post put it:
Like, nobody who looks like that would a) Even think about sleeping with Hannah b) Then actually have the impertinence to enjoy it c) Then actually tell her she’s ‘beautiful.’ All he, realistically, would surely feel is remorse/self contempt, but hey sex is sex, right? Even bad sex, with a supposed undesirable.
Roisin then points out that when gender roles are reversed a similar outcry is absent.
- Katherine Heigl would go for Seth Rogen?
- The King of Queens gets the queen of Queens?
- Jon Cryer and Courtney Thorne Smith?
- Gorgeous porn stars with Ron Jeremy?
The list goes on but the outcry does not.
Maybe it’s about who has power over media and ideas – usually, men. And men like the idea of being able to get gorgeous girls even if they, themselves, aren’t so good-looking.
It’s not that men are bad. If women had more power than men it would probably be the reverse. (Lena Dunham gets a little power and look what happens to her character, Hannah. If I were producing, writing and starring in GIRLS I’d write in an affair with Patrick Wilson, too.)
This power over ideas may also affect whose body is shamed and whose is not. Men must be quite obese to garner body shame (if then) but women may be perfectly healthy and be thought too fat. And so Rush Limbaugh says feminism was created to allow unattractive women into mainstream society.
The double standard is reflected yet again as men may make love to many women without censor, but women may not.
In the end it is all about who is free and who is not — to love their bodies, to make love and to love. And it’s all tied to who makes the rules and who does not.
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Women’s Sexuality Is Like Men’s?
Women’s and men’s sexuality are pretty much the same, says Dan Slater in a recent New York Times piece.
He goes on to critique evolutionary psych, which says otherwise: Since women have a small number of eggs they best reproduce by putting great time and effort into each child – and by making sure a dependable dad sticks around to provide resources; hence, women are genetically primed for monogamy. But men are promiscuous because, with lots of sperm, they best reproduce by “spreading their seed,” willy-nilly.
But, says Slater, if kids need a dad to provide resources then “loving and leaving” their mothers is counterproductive. Plus, men can’t be promiscuous if women are monogamous. And, women in tribal societies enjoy many partners. I could go on.
Culture must not create differences in sexuality, either, he says, since men and women behave similarly.
For instance, women claim they want fewer partners than men. But when hooked up to a (fake) lie detector, women and men report the same number of actual partners.
Or, in speed dating women are pickier than men. But when the tables are turned with women approaching men, men become the more selective sex.
Finally, early research had found women — but not men — rejecting sex with both friends and strangers. But when that stranger was Johnny Depp, or when the friend was said to be good in bed, women were just as interested in casual sex as men. (No flesh and blood movie stars were involved in this study.)
So neither evolution nor cultural norms seem to be having an effect, leaving men and women just the same.
I agree that women’s sexuality is like men’s in its natural state. In many tribal societies it seems to be.
But can women be untouched by a culture that celebrates women’s bodies — or bodies that very few women actually have — while ignoring men’s? Or that applauds men’s sexuality while repressing their own? Is women’s sexuality untouched by a society that rapes so many?
We are bombarded by “sexy women” but not “sexy men” on billboards, in movies, on Dancing With The Stars… Even women’s everyday clothing shows off their curves while men stay covered up. Amanda Marcotte says “straight women don’t get nearly the provocation on a daily basis.”
No part of the male body is fetishized, either. Men stare at breasts and butts. What are we supposed to look at?
Meanwhile, the “perfect” images that our partners consume can make women feel bad about themselves — a libido killer as women become obsessed by their “flaws” in bed instead of enjoying sex.
The double standard is loosening but sexual women may still be called: slut, ho’, tramp, skank… the list goes on.
Sexual violence also takes a toll, leaving many women fearful or uninterested in sex.
All that has no effect?
Actually, in his evidence for similarity Slater leaves things out.
When it comes to casual sex, men are very interested in their lady friends. But women will only romp with those rumored to be great lovers. Otherwise, why bother?
On sex with strangers, only gorgeous celebs interest women. They seem safe (no reports of rape) and are mega-attractive, charismatic and sexy. Women expect they’ll be great in bed. Plus, sex with a star sounds heavenly, tantamount to intercourse with the gods — or rock gods. So nabbing a guy like that tells her something pretty great about herself.
Turning to speed dating, when things switch around maybe women begin to fear rejection and want to “win” now that the setup feels like a contest. Research in cognitive dissonance suggests that if you try to get someone to like you, you like them more.
Finally, most women say that ideally they would like just one or two partners, lifetime, but Slater thinks they’re lying since they admit to four real partners under duress of lie detection. With or without a lie detector I would say that I have had 5 partners in real life, but ideally I would like just one true love. And a lot of us women need a strong emotional connection to even get aroused.
Meanwhile, the eroticism women typically seek out – romance – is very different from the endless variety of women and their body parts that men more typically “procure” in porn.
While women’s natural sexuality is likely much like men’s, our differing experiences unfortunately pull us apart. And the root cause appears to be sexism, not nature.
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Men, Women not from Mars, Venus
Men and women aren’t so different, after all.
They have similar levels of interest in sex with multiple partners, willingness to have sex outside of a relationship, closeness with a best friend and interest in science, for instance.
What a surprise!
Harry Reis, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, and Bobbi Carothers, a senior data analyst at Washington University used their own and others’ research to study the characteristics of 13,301 men and women.
They looked at a range of things like physical strength, sexual attitudes, empathy, science inclination, extroversion, relationship interdependence, intimacy, mate selection criteria and personality traits in an attempt to find out which characteristics could reliably predict whether someone was male or female.
Turns out, women and men are much more alike than different.
And even differences may not be biologically based. Stereotypes tend to create social patterns. Boys are told “boys don’t cry,” so they end up repressing their emotions. Or, they get kudos for acting tough. So they are more likely to grow up to be tough guys. Girls, on the other hand, are free to cry and show weakness, and so they are more likely to do both. That’s a social pattern, not a biological one.
But even with socialization, you still get a continuum of behavior. Some guys are sweet and some girls are tough.
The researchers found that the biggest differences were physical, with men being taller and physically stronger. But psychologically, there’s a lot of overlap.
Below, you can find graphs of physical strength and assertiveness. Men are a bit more assertive, but take a look at the overlap.
A variety of other traits show a pattern similar to the bottom graph, like desire for non-committed sex (so much for evolutionary psychology), fear of success, levels of empathy, and how much feeling men and women have for their friends.
Amanda Marcotte points out that,
What’s remarkable about all this is not that men and women have so much in common but that these commonalities persist despite relentless gender policing that usually involves quite a bit of shame.
Men face ridicule if they’re perceived as having female-like levels of empathy and concern for their friends, and yet, according to the study, they overcome it. Women are routinely told there’s something wrong with them if they have “masculine” attitudes towards sex and men are emasculated if they aren’t horny all the time or if they desire intimacy alongside their sexual adventures, and yet both genders tend to have a mix of adventurousness and tenderness when it comes to sex.
Good to know that the humanity within usually wins out.
Simplistic frameworks like the pop psychology book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus can even be harmful in some ways. In relationships, says Reis,
When something goes wrong between partners, people often blame the other partner’s gender immediately. Having gender stereotypes hinders people from looking at their partner as an individual. (Yet) gay and lesbian couples have much the same problems relating to each other that heterosexual couples do. Clearly, it’s not so much sex, but human character that causes difficulties.
Rigid frames can also discourage people from pursuing goals that they think are for the other sex.
If men aren’t really from Mars, nor women from Venus, that gives us all a whole lot of freedom.
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Marcella Learns Sexual Bliss is Shameful Sin
With no sex ed, a squeamish mom and friends who laugh at her naïveté, Marcella grew curiouser and curiouser about her body and its changes.
She seemed to have a secret cavern right inside her body… but where did it end? Exploring, she felt tingles and ripplings … the body’s song… Ohhh, she can’t wait to go to bed each night. And then one night they come,
bigger, and harder and… oh, enormous wind-torn gusts of feeling that… rumbling! …
No part of her felt the same after…
She thought sometimes that what she’d done was wrong, that she shouldn’t do it again, that maybe it was like sinning. But how could it be? … All bliss, and calm, like floating out on soft warm waters afterward, with heavenly music coursing in her ears. God must surely approve.
One day her mom hands her a book called So You’re Growing Up. A chapter entitled “Peeping Through the Keyhole” talks of masturbation. She’s not sure what that word means but by the time she’s done reading she knows it’s bad.
Eventually she learns exactly what the sin of masturbation is. This pleasure, which had once seemed a gift of God, turns out to be evil and perilous.
Desperately, she tries to stop. She just can’t disappoint God and go against her Christian values. She doesn’t want to go to Hell. But as she fights the urge she gets even more obsessed… and guilty and shameful… and more obsessed.
She seeks help from the Minister who brought her to God. And he sexually assaults her.
Seeking sanctity, she wanders into an empty church and eventually finds her way to the church kitchen and its drawer full of knives. If only she could cut off her hands… no, that wouldn’t be enough, she would need to cut off her arms… or just off herself, entirely.
What will happen to Marcella?
Marcella is a coming of age tale written by Marilyn June Coffey, an award-winning poet and author. The ground-breaking novel will be republished this year, 40 years after making literary history as the first English work of fiction to use female autoeroticism as a main theme. I had a chance to interview her. The discussion below was first posted in Ms.
What inspired you to write Marcella?
My psychoanalyst. He asked me, “But have you ever tried to commit suicide?” And I remembered descending to the church basement (as Marcella does), selecting a knife, and sawing at my wrists. That memory provoked the novel.
How did you expect Marcella would be received when you wrote the book in 1973? Were there any surprises?
I thought God might send down a lightning bolt and kill me. But He didn’t.
The biggest surprise was the strong support from feminists. They lauded my controversial novel. Ms. published the menstruation chapter as “Falling Off the Roof.” Gloria Steinem hailed Marcella as “an important part of the truth telling by and for women,” and Alix Kates Shulman praised the book in her New York Times Book Review.
What sort of effect do you think your book has had?
Varied. From a refusal to read it to “Thank you for telling my story.”
What kind of response do you expect for the republication?
Lisa Pelto of Concierge, my specialist in marketing, suggested that we offer Marcella to a Young Adult audience. This surprised me, since in 1973, my audience consisted of adults. Then I considered the sophistication of today’s young adult reader compared to her counterpart forty years ago. I’m sure that today’s young reader is so much more savvy about sexual matters that my book wouldn’t shock her. So I think my audience for Marcella will broaden.
I understand that in 1989 you attempted a public reading which was eventually canceled after public outcry. Since you are once again planning a public reading, I’m wondering how the response has been different and why you think that is.
I think the response to this year’s reading is largely different because of place. Omaha, Nebraska, is a sophisticated city that supports the arts and wouldn’t attempt to ban our marathon reading.
But in 1989, I had agreed to read a marathon in Orleans, Nebraska, population 400 in my home county of 4,000. I love my roots, but sophisticated they are not. My Orleans reading was initially accepted, but when word spread about its descriptions of mas -tur – ba – tion, a brouhaha erupted.
How do you see reactions to your book and to public readings as relating to today’s war on women by the extreme right?
I am appalled by the attacks on women’s rights by the extreme right. I thought we’d settled all that decades ago. I have three recurring elements in Marcella, her Christianity, her masturbation, and her love of music. I expect the first two might give the extreme right reason to dislike my novel.
I’ve heard you describe Marcella as being sexually addicted. What do you think caused that? Do you feel her desire for nightly masturbation was addictive, or did the addiction come more after she began feeling guilty about it?
In my experience, sexual addiction is the result of trauma. Two things traumatized her, her belief that masturbation was sinful and Big Jim’s unexpected sexual attraction to her.
Do you see parallels to Marcella’s pedophile Minister and to pedophile priests of today, and public reaction?
A pedophile is a pedophile whether in Marcella’s day or now. But today children are taught to speak out about behavior that makes them uncomfortable. That has caused, as you know, a tremendous outcry against pedophilia.
However, Marcella thought that the sexual experience with the minister she trusted was her fault, not Big Jim’s. Who could she speak to? No one.
What sorts of letters have you received from those who have read your book – or from those who haven’t?
The Internet has coached us to expect many responses from readers, as I experienced with the recent publication of my Mail-Order Kid: An Orphan Train Rider’s Story and with A JoLt of CoFFeY, my blog. But I received very few letters in response to Marcella. They were laudatory.
The response I valued most was from a woman who saw me in an art gallery. When she read my name tag, she cried out, “Oh, are you the Marilyn Coffey who wrote Marcella?”
Ah, fame! Fleeting but delectable.
Coffey’s new collection of tart poetry from the sixties, Pricksongs, will also be published in 2013. It will include her Pushcart Prize winning poem, “Pricksong.”
Her most recently published book is an adult biography, Mail-Order Kid: An Orphan Train Rider’s Story. It’s a best seller on Amazon and the recipient of The National Orphan Train Complex’s Special President’s Award.
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Overcoming Sex Addiction
By Anonymous
I was a sex addict. My attitude was not one of conquest but feeling I had a duty to satisfy women’s sexual needs.
For thirty-five years I tried to seduce every woman and teenage girl I met. I thought that each one was hitting on me, wanting to go to bed with me, wanting me to satisfy them. My mind, on one side, told me this was not so. But the other was looking for the next lady to bed.
But I grew weary of the constant prowl. And I tired of leading two lives. It was exhausting.
The crisis point came after trying to hit on two of my good friend’s wives. They were both upset and demanded I stop.
Between the shame and the energy it took to constantly convince myself that “all” these women “wanted me,” I was not happy. I was tired and not having fun.
I also had anger issues. I wondered why I did not make friends. Why didn’t people start conversations with me? I always had to take the first step. Some called me abusive. I denied it.
Eventually I saw that I lashed out at anyone who disagreed with me and that I had no patience with my ex-wife, my children or my siblings. Why was I always mad? And what was I mad about?
When my mind decided enough was enough it collapsed into a nervous breakdown and I sought therapy.
In therapy under hypnosis I recovered a memory. From the ages of three to five, four women had me perform various sex acts. One was my mother.
In my addiction, I had sought to satisfy women’s sexual needs. Maybe subconsciously pleasing women sexually seemed to be what a good son does?
The abuse led to mistrust of both men and women. Women, because my mother, who should have had my best interests at heart, had merely used me with no concern for my well-being. But I also mistrusted men from subconsciously wishing my father had rescued me. All these qualms left me angry and unable to form close emotional bonds.
I knew that I needed to trust again. And that I needed to let go the belief that my job was to sexually please women. But since sex is so pleasurable, that was not easy.
In another sense, it was easy: Since I had been so unhappy for decades I just repeated to myself that I never want to return to those times. And if I did relapse, and chose to start up again, I just told myself; look how happy you have been when you don’t relapse. That kept me on track.
But I also met a woman who was a soul mate. Making love to a soul mate is much more satisfying than “fucking” some emotionally detached pussy. I’d had so much pussy over the years I just kept repeating to myself, “Do I want to make love to a soul mate or just a piece of ass?”
My recovery required fifteen years of hard work and weekly meetings with my therapist as I traveled through the stages of progress, relapses, and forward steps again until I took control of my sexual yearnings. Do I still have urges to seduce or to be seduced? Yes, but at least now I am much more selective.
It has not been easy, but as I told my therapist, I do not ever want to return to that lifestyle. These past ten years have been wonderful. I have developed close platonic relationships with women friends. I no longer need to constantly lie to cover my tracks, I laugh more, and for the first time in my life I like myself.
When I told an acquaintance about my blog and what I write about he told me this story. I asked if he would write it up, and here it is.
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