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See also my post from 2007: What the Hard-Core Anti-Choice Crowd Jacks Off to

Yikes! Check out this week's "wise guys" question from (justifiably) anonymous Em & Lo reader

Advice from three of EMandLO.com’s guy friends. This week they answer the following: “Do guys know when they’re in love?“

Source: Today on EMandLO.com

Do we know when we’re in love?

Is this a trick question?

There’s sort of a difference between feeling something and admitting it. But that’s not the same thing, at all, at all, as not knowing it at all.

So. Short answer? Um. Yeah.

More could and probably has been written about why men might be so reluctant to admit it. Even more could and should be written, preferably focusing on outside social, economic, and gender-convention pressures that overload such admissions with all manner of social expectations.

But actual love? Yeah, men know what that is, we know when we feel it. We definitely know what it’s like to feel it and worry that it might not be reciprocated.

I will say that one thing men, and women, don’t seem to know very well is that “love” is not the same thing as “validation.” You know that really, really over-the-top-stupid Eagles lyric from the 1970s that goes “I want to know if your sweet love is going to save me?” The one sung to a complete stranger in a truck? The one the singer would like to have become the eighth woman on his “mind?” At least in western civilization that little rascal’s the source of all kinds of interpersonal anguish, humiliation, and alienation from “bridezillas” to “no-strings” sex. But validation doesn’t really have anything to do with love.

Let’s put it this way. Pretty much all human beings, not just men, not just women, know when they’re in love. What we’re missing is knowing what to do about it when we feel it.

Note: See the corresponding, and equally goofy question "do women know when they're horny?" Some times you get the feeling it's gender construction all the way down. "No-sex" class much? (Remember, in the dominant paradigm of the "no-sex" class, men are assumed to be only about sex while women are assumed to be only about love or romance.)

The nasty thing about "male" or "female" libido is that individuals never have a "high" libido.  Nor do they have "low" one.  In fact individual people don't even have average libidos.  Not even the average ones!

Instead all individuals ever have are... libidos.

Ok, actually, they have libidos and partners.

Partners who may (in fact probably) don't have libidos identical to theirs.

See, the problem we have is looking at individuals as if we were in the aggregate.  Which of course is fine in the aggregate!  Except, of course, again, we're individuals rather than aggregates.

This lack of absolute high or low libido isn't particularly a problem.  I mean, sure, if one does have a partner, or maybe a prospective one, there can be negotiation and frustration or satisfaction or whatever.  But left to our own devices we're pretty much horny now or we're not.  Unless maybe we're Samuel Pepys we don't really chart it.

This, as I say, isn't particularly a problem.  Except, of course, in the context of partnership.  But for the most part we have a lot of social scripting and narratives for coping.

Until we reach somewhere a little north of middle age, anyway.

After middle age a certain problem can arise.

It arises out of the confirmation-bias-leaning phenomenon of individuals when left to their own devices only saying "gee, I'm horny" when they are.  But never really "wow, I'm sure not thinking about having sex right now."

The problem being that up until slightly north of middle age, men are defined -- by themselves, by society, and often by their partners, as the baseline-normal of libido. 

Again, he grows up never really having to think about being horny when he's not because, in the normal order of things he's ususally horny before his female partner so a) she pretty much never has to wait for him and b) he pretty much never thinks "I'd better get up to speed here, she's putting the moves on me."  (You probably remember hearng narratives about men thinking about baseball statistics and great aunts to slow themselves down.  Remember all those narratives of men urgently skimming fantasies in order to get themselves caught up with their partners?  No, I didn't think so.  It might happen but there's not a lot of social scripting for it.)

Anyway.

Somewhere between, say, ages 55 and 65... maybe a decade earlier, maybe a decade later... men stop being horny as frequently as they were in, say, their teens or even their 30s.

Very often, at some point, their partner's libidos -- the ones which might have been "lower" for the first few decades of their relationship -- can become higher.

Sometimes considerably higher.

Which, if you only notice when you're horny, and especially when you've grown up thinking sex only happens when you're horny...

Friction can arise for which there's not a lot of social scripting for coping.

If you're conscious about such things... about recognizing it when it happens, and acknowledging it... then you're probably going to be fine in your relationships.  Maybe not great, maybe still a little frustrated or a little harried in ways you didn't grow up expecting to be.  But still, if the possibility is on your horizon you'll still probably be fine.

If not?

Look out.  Not all unexpected surprises are pleasant ones.

On the one hand they say men are "naturally" attracted to younger women.
On the other hand they say men are "naturally" attracted to women with big boobs.
On the third hand, however, almost all women's boobs continue to get bigger as they grow older.

Discuss?

Photo of military participants in a the 2012 Knox Pridefest parade by Flickr user Wyoming_Jackrabbit.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

At least here in the West, homophobia-phobia has long been of the most oppressive, coercive, corrosive, behavior-distorting blights on human male behavior. Homophobia-phobia being the (sometimes well-founded) fear of being mistakenly identified as a gay man when you're straight. My favorite example is men being paralyzed when asked to carry their wife or girlfriend's purse.

Because, you know, touching a purse might make you gay. Or, worse, look gay.

Because, you know, all gay men carry purses.

Or something.

Anyway, I say homophobia-phobia is a well-founded fear for straight men because... of the verbal and too-often physical bashing actual gay men have too-often had to face.

Too often at the hands of...

Straight men who themselves were...

Terrified of themselves being identified as...

Gay.

As George Carlin (in)famously put it while discussing macho in the tough ethnic-Irish neighborhood he grew up in, "A fag was a guy who wouldn't go downtown with you beatin' up queers."

Bingo! Nobody wanted to be the "fag" who wouldn't beat up "queers" because, well, then the guys wouldn't have to go downtown to find someone to beat up. If you weren't willing to go they could save a bunch of time by just beating you up instead.

So?

So, kudos to DailyKOS founder Markos Moulitsas for nailing this little sea change:

Marines and Navy personnel march in last year's Gay Pride Parade in San Diego. If wingnuts want to confuse me with these guys, why would I get upset?

One of these days, dumbass conservatives will figure out that calling me gay is not an insult. It's a compliment.

And no, they'll never really figure that out.

Source: Daily Kos

I think that's about as good as it gets.

Aside: This is a bit off topic but I didn't use Markos's original photo. Instead I used one from a recent Pride parade in my hometown of Knoxville, TN. Because another consequence of the decline of both homophobia and homophobia-phobia? The main street of town, the named in the 1890s, the one that's been blighted since the early 1970s by its name to a point where nearly all the business on the streets moved out and the ones that couldn't move started using the street addresses of the alleys behind them in a veritable orgy of homophobia-phobia? That street? Gay Street? It's having a renaissance like you wouldn't believe. The beautiful old stores, banks, and office buildings are being restored. The preserved-through-neglect nearby old city is awash in night clubs, coffee shops, and startups. And the nearby Market Square is alive at night -- verged with restaurants, ice-cream shops, boutiques, and fountains and filled with students, families with their children, the young hip and alive as well as the old and crusty -- in a way I've only seen in plazas in Greece. There aren't a lot of places more genteely homophobic or homophobia-phobic than east Tennessee so I'm thinking if it can start there -- even in a tiny area, even in a tiny way, then it can happen anywhere.

Finally!

Mark Simpson, coiner of the term "metrosexual." Photo from marksimpson.com.

Masculinity writer and approving coiner of the term "metrosexual" Mark Simpson takes a solid swipe at bogus Rule of Desire #2: It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

Today’s Guardian carries a piece by an Olly Richards pegged to the new stripper movie Magic Mike, ostensibly about male nudity in the movies.

At the top of the piece he announces:

‘We all know the nude male form is essentially ridiculous, built only for floppy comedy.’

Speak for yourself, Mary.

This assertion of the writer’s contempt for the male body — and de facto dismissal of anyone who thinks differently — is the only thing the article has to say. An article on male nudity in the movies has nothing to say about male nudity in movies – because if it did then the author would have to be interested in the male body.

Source: marksimpson.com

Simpson points out that Richards reserves his snorting only for male grooming.  (Richards evidently has no comment on... and likely no problem with... women plucking, using "hair product," tanning, dieting, wearing makeup, etc.)

The gap in Richards' logic, as with all gaps caused by the bogus Two Rules of Desire, is that contrary to the dominant paradigm straight men are not the sole determiners of what's hot and what's not.  Nor are we straight men the entire target demographic for all things sexy.

The funny thing is that of course it's perfectly fine for straight men to be indifferent to or unimpressed by the grooming efforts of other men.  If you're a straight man other men aren't for you!  Sort of by-definition if you're straight you're attracted to women.

Trick for straight men is it's not all about us.

Not anymore.

Even worse better?  It never has been.

And that's a good thing, Sampson.  Know why?

Because it means the only person who thinks there's no chance a woman would ever fall for a lunk, jock, dork, nerd, "beta," "loser," non-George-Clooney like you is probably...

...you!

For every Jack there's a Jill, Jackson.  You or any other guy may not be your own cup of tea.  But then if you're straight?  You're not supposed to be!

But just because you're not your cup of tea doesn't mean you're not someone else's tall drink o' water.

Photo by Flickr user Sharon Drummond. Used under a Creative Commons license. />

So. Was the crucial fallacy of early 2nd-wave feminism in the 1970s the idea that women could somehow possibly live in the public world with the same social, economic, political, and personal rights as men? No, we might still not be there but it's still self-evidently true. Was it that "when women were equal to men" we'd all wear unisex clothes, use unisex bathrooms, be apathetically/indifferently bisexual, and, I dunno, have special cigarettes for women? No, that was mostly about insufficient imagination in a culture just a couple of years removed from the world of Mad Men. Was it that women would become the dominant sex and give up men, shave their heads, braid their armpit hair, and wear nothing but Birkenstocks, wool socks, and purple mu-mus? And definitely no bras because they'd all been burned? No, and besides, that possibility existed mostly in the fevered imaginations of (male) sitcoms and late-night comedy sketches.

So what was the crucial fallacy of early 2nd-wave feminism? Via DailyKOS, Laurie Penny says, I think correctly, it was the meme that feminism meant women could "have it all."

Without wishing to sound like a conspiracy theorist, if I had to invent a way to undermine feminism as a socially useful movement, here's what I'd do. I'd set up a ridiculous standard of personal and professional attainment, one that would be unachievable for the vast majority of women who weren't independently wealthy, white and upper-middle class and I'd call it "having it all". After I'd set up this impossible standard, I'd be sure to make women feel like failures for not attaining it.

Source: The Independent

 Yeah, about that "having it all" business?  Where you can simultaneously have a great education, a brilliant career, a fulfilling social life, a rich and complex family life, feed your family fabulous, balanced meals that you cook from scratch yourself, completely immerse yourselves in your children's upbringing, keep your house spotless, have a wild and tireless sex life with your spouse (or, if a single mother, with an enviable stable of beaux that includes Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, George Clooney, and Ryan Gosling) and, I guess, never ever grab the wrong remote control while using the tv/cable/x-box/dvr/stereo?

Yeah, that?

Folks, if anyone knows anybody, male or female, who ever could or ever can "have it all" I'll kiss my own behind! So why on this big blue marble would anyone think the benchmark for the success of feminism would be "having it all?

To paraphrase my very successful, accomplished, and well-rounded cousin (who came pretty close) when you see someone and think he or she "has it all" it means you just don't know them very well.

Sweet mother of pearl!  Have you gotten a load of Anne-Marie Slaughter's life lately?  That woman's hella accomplished!  She's got a lot!  She's a former dean and current endowed-chair professor at a prestigious university! She had a great 2-year stint as a crucial policy maker for the United States State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton!  She's a darn good mom.  Sounds like she's got a pretty good marriage.  And she's deft enough, well-connected enough, accomplished enough, and talented enough to contribute to cover articles in The Atlantic Monthly!  That's admirable!  Enviable!  By any measure an amazingly long string of successes!

The only fault I can really pin on her is an incredible gullibility when it comes to what someone, somewhere decided had to be the core promise of feminism back in the 1970s.  And her credulity on that point turns out to be a pretty significant fault.

Because instead of swinging from the Princeton and/or State Department and/or Atlantic Monthly headquarters flagpole hollering "I'm top of the world" she sees herself as such a miserable failure that she... got another cover story complaining about it!

Listen, gang, nobody has it all.  But guess what?  Nobody needs to have it all in order either to be a happy, healthy, well-rounded person or... for feminism to be working just fine.

Instead the only real promise of feminism, for women and men, is that there aren't going to be any bullshit social, economic, political, or domestic barriers to being whoever you actually really are.  All the rest? The ordinary constraints we face in the actual physical world, like the numbers of hours in a day, the number of years in a lifetime, the demands on our immune systems, the forces of gravity and atmospheric pressure?  Only a propagandist or his dupes would think feminism, or any other manner of -ism, ought to let us transcend that.

Sheesh! 

So here's a little gap missing from the narrative of men who'd "stick it in anything that moves."

You know how there's all this anxiety out there about "ugly" vulvas?  I mean, of course you do! Look at all the articles about labioplasty! Look at all the very-real anxious questions sent to sex-advice columnists.  And... and...

Why is there no comparable frenzy trying to help men "cure" their "ugly" penises?  I mean, yeah, men get anxious about penis size, but even though there's at least as much variation in penis appearance as there is in vulva and labia appearance you just don't see guys worrying that, say, a large glans or a loose foreskin or the other veins are so "abnormal" their partners won't want to... well... be partners with them.

Which is funny because, again, there's the common narrative that women are so picky about their male partners they'll fall over themselves looking for excuses to say no, while men on the other hand are supposed to be so desperate for any kind of partner at all that we'll have sex with sheep!

And yet.

And yet.

Who exactly is it worrying about turning their partners off with the sheer lippiness of their "forbidden treasures?"

This is so not an indictment of women's alleged vanity.  Or men's alleged callousness.  Or allegations about women's indifference or men's squeamishness.  Or anything having to do with any single individual's decisions with their actual individual partners.  Instead it's a question about the difference between the stories we tell each other about what men and women care about, and what men and women actually care about.

Image reposted from Geekyvamp.tumblr.com.

Ever notice how almost all mainstream/medical/social discussions of women with multiple male partners the women are always assumed to be objects, passive participants, or even unwilling or duped victims?

And hey, sometimes they are! But the reflex assumption that they must be? That no woman in her right mind would choose to be with, let alone enjoy being with, let alone desire to be with two men at once? That’s the bogus Two Rules of Desire talking.

See also the persistent narrative that all two-women-one-man three-ways are also for the benefit of the man.  Yes, again, sometimes it is.  But heaven forfend that a woman ever was interested in, let alone desired, let alone might invite, orchestrate, or otherwise initiate such a thing for her own benefit.

That might not be intolerable, for once, but... only because it's so socially inconceivable that a woman would ever want such a thing that 99 out of 100 observers would say either "woo-hoo, dudes love girl-on-girl 'action'" or else "eww-boo, straight girls playing it up to keep the man interested." 

Note: For the longest time I focused this blog on the women's side of feminism -- posting in defense of women's sexuality and autonomy and alternating between anger and mockery of men (but it's not all men!) who denied such a thing.  Lately I'm trying to turn that around and actually, you know, take it to men instead.  Because it's as much a gender trap for men to assume any kind of hetro-leaning sex is always about the man.  The social scripts and narratives are overwhelmingly strong... but 50 years ago the narrative was still strong that any man who wanted a blowjob was a "latent homosexual" (look that one up in your granparent's psychology books sometime!) and 100 years ago the equally strong narrative was that any man having "as many as" ten ejaculations a year would be insane or dead by age 40.  If you're a man alive today you're better off than men from 100 years ago.  And of 50 years ago. And, trust me, if you can help get it out of your heads that all of hetero sex is, one way or another, "in service" to men you'll be even better off.  But I digress...

Anyway, in porn?  Yeah, it's still almost exclusively about the men, even though an amazing amount of porn is consumed by women.  But from talking to a wide array of candid, sexually active people over the last seven years, in real life it's not as sure a thing that a woman in a threesome sees herself only as "servicing" her two partners.

Colour photographs of a Square Dance, Oklahoma, 1940 by Russel Lee, found on Retronaut.com.

A lot of people seem to misunderstand that sex education isn't the same as sex instruction.

Based on the awful memories most people have of getting ballroom or square dancing instructions in school I suspect the threat of getting sex instruction in school would put more people off sex forever than would 10,000 moron "abstinence only" classes involving tape, gum, sweater lint, or rose petals.