Lillie Yifu of 2nd Sex, inspired by Julie Bindel’s column, says

Sexual violence is a pervasive part of almost every woman’s imaginary world, even those who have never expereinced more than the most mild forms of it, because I don’t think any of us can say we’ve never experienced any of it. This is because the threat of it is all around us, and it is a fear that pierces into the core of our most hard won possession. That is, namely, our sense of personal bodily control. Autonomy is won in slow hard steps, and sexual violence, the threat of it, and the imagination of it, destroy hat autonomy.

There is also the other part, and that is that pregnancy and reproduction necessarily involve the loss of this very same thing. As a result, sexual violence stares back at us from our fantasy life. Where and how to draw the line of the push in, is no easy thing.

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The bunker mentality is easy to come by, but I can only imagine what it was like to be part of radical feminism in that time. But the bunker sensation, that sensation where it seems that there are wolves with teeth and fangs in every direction, is common to every time and place I think. Little Red Riding Hood survives as a story, because there are so many woods to travel through.

She said it here.

Yifu’s in an awesomely interesting position. A woman in technology in real life, a virtual sex worker in the commercial virtual reality 2nd Life, she encounters a great deal of… men attempting privileged leverage in not just one but two dimensions.

Anyway her post lays out, in terms that may work really well for a lot of men, how a lot of women experience us. It explains bluntly why notions of “post-feminism” are premature. And it explains very clearly where radical feminists were coming from when they concluded that women are “the sex class.” (This doesn’t change my refinement that actually men imagine themselves the sex class and construct women as the no-sex class. Nor does my articulation of the “no-sex” class paradigm refute the core of radical feminist analysis.)

And finally, while Yifu doesn’t identify as a radical feminist I think her post nicely illustrates the frustration, irritation, and anger “radfems” express when it seems like no matter where they turn they find themselves assessed for suitability as instruments for sexuality before they’re ever acknowledged as humans with their own sexual autonomy.

Yifu is also right about what things were like when the original radical feminists began producing their most incendiary work. For instance when I was a kid, sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s it became a bit of an on-campus “fad” for men to corner and rape students from the nearby nursing school. It went on for nearly a month, helped in very large part by an almost party-like “those whacky college kids” attitude in the press and popular conversation. At least in our (major university) town that seriously radicalized feminism.

Anyway, I completely get what Yifu meant when she say sexual violence is part of every woman’s mental map of the world.

She concludes her post with

I am sorry for her that [Bindel] did not have the ability to have friendships with men until late in life. I am also even more sorry for a world where I understand how it happened.

And could happen tomorrow to a young woman trying to be herself.

Yeah, that too.

If men really wanted a real sexual revolution and not just more of the same old crap with maybe just a new balance of power even further in our favor we could start one tomorrow such that, over time, women didn’t need to map the world in terms of limits on their physical and sexual autonomy. I don’t see it happening, at all, but past a certain point it’s in men’s hands.

The Wise Guys column Em & Lo this week has something from me in it. Here’s the question.

Advice from three of our guy friends. This week they answer the following: “My boyfriend claims it means nothing when he looks at other women, and yet he gets jealous when I look at other men. Why is that?”

Read the quote in context here.

Here’s my answer (which, probably not coincidentally, is fairly closely follows my reactions in Interconnections: Women, Men, Infidelity, Morality, Betrayal, Dignity, “Manhood,” Etc..)

Straight Married Guy (Figleaf): Funny you should mention that. I’ve got a woman friend who flirts shamelessly but almost blacks out with jealousy when her partner so much as asks another woman to pass the salt. Her answer for the double standard is a lot like men’s: She knows she’s not looking to change relationships, so it’s okay for her, but not having the same insider information about what her partner’s thinking, she sees it as a total threat. Something similar is probably going though your partner’s head.

But that’s just the general case — there’s a more specific case related to what we “know” about men and women in relationships. We “know” that women are all “naturally” monogamous and men are just as “naturally” promiscuous, right? And so all your boyfriend’s cultural messages are that it’s really harmless for him to eye other women. He’d at most want a one-night stand, but we all “know” he wouldn’t want an emotional attachment. Meanwhile, though, all the cultural messages about you as a woman say that if you’re looking, it’s because you’d rather be with them. Forever! So he “knows” you’d really “only” want an emotional attachment and not a one-night stand. And as Em & Lo’s survey showed back in September, both men and women feel way more threatened by emotional infidelity than sexual infidelity. Is it fair that women are thought to be “naturally” monogamous and men are thought to be “naturally” promiscuous? No, but a lot of things aren’t fair, and jealousy will probably always be with us. The bigger question is whether it’s true? No, it’s not. Which is a bigger problem, but one that, unlike jealousy, we can get over.

Lot of scare quotes in that response. But then words like “know” and “natural” are scary in declarations about gender differences.

But bottom line I think the bogus Two Rules of Desire, wherein it’s both inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to just think some guy’s good looking, accounts for most of the double standards of gender and jealousy.

Jeff Fecke of Alas, a blog says

[L]ast night I went into the doctor with pain in my…er…boy parts. The doctor sent me directly to the emergency room, where I got an ultrasound, which showed I likely have testicular cancer.

So that’s not fun.

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At any rate, this is of course not the most fabulous news, but it is what it is. The good news — and it is good news — is that testicular cancer is extremely treatable, and the vast majority of men who suffer from it are treated successfully, even if the cancer has metastasized. So the odds are in my favor. And there is still a chance it isn’t cancer at all, but just a painful benign tumor, in which case the gonad has to come out, but treatment afterward won’t include any not-fun things like chemotherapy or radiation.

All that said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared by this; cancer is not something you ever want to get. But something’s going to get all of us in the end. I’m just hoping that something, in my case and yours, is extreme old age.

So please, do forgive me if posting is a bit light over the next few days; I’ll update as I have updates. Oh, and men, since this is something I never bothered to do, let me suggest you listen to Mr. Tom Green here.

He said it here.

The good news is that as cancers go the most common forms of testicular cancer really are pretty treatable. Most of the men I know who’ve had it have gone on to lead productive, even reproductive lives. If it’s caught early. But you won’t catch it early unless you check.

The other good news, for those of you who clicked the YouTube link, is that since testicular cancer often shows up between the late teens and late 20s Mr. Green’s sort of juvenile-sounding message is actually pretty age-appropriate. And accurate.

The only thing I’d add is that it’s very common to find a soft, spongy “lump” on the lower end of your testicles. That’s probably the epididymis, but guess what? A) Your doctor won’t mind (or be embarrassed or dismayed or “turned on”) if you ask him or her to check just in case, and B) keep that in mind if you’re ever asked if your sex education was comprehensive and current. Oh, and C) if you’re a man and you’re not sure what your healthy epididymis feels like it’s a very good idea to check more often.

Anyway, best wishes to Jeff and here’s hoping for a speedy and complete recovery.

In a flirtatious text exchange with a much older-sounding former partner Hedonistic Pleasureseeker finds an interesting reference to the belief in self-imposed sexual scarcity (not to mention acquired privilege) in the gendered-male worthiness trap. (Emphasis mine.)

Misha1: Uhhhh… Hmmmm… I think… that just might be me except I’s want something on a more permanent basis  I took on Tony Montana’s position on life

Me: ?

Misha1: From Scarface… with Al Pacino he said…while at a bar in South Beach… First you getta the money… then you geta the power and THEN... you getta the woman!”

Me: hahahha Now while I’m flattered you felt you had to go make a bazillion before calling me again, that really wasn’t necessary ya know.
(PS: I’m kidding)

She transcribed the conversation here.

All the more reason why I’ll probably never watch Scarface. It didn’t really work that way for me. And for whatever faults I may have in my character, and however many mistakes I’ve learned from and however many more mistakes I’ve yet to make, it’s surely the case that the times I’ve spent trying to accumulate money and power have tended to be the times of greatest loneliness and alienation from potential partners.

In an odd way I think it’s sort of a corollary to the way men hear “there’s nothing sexier than a man doing dishes:” heterosexual relationships in general, and sex in particular, must be earned.

What’s particularly harsh about the entire proposition, aside from that whole transactional/privilege thing, is there’s no room at all in there for, oh, say, love or affection or (human, peer-to-peer) companionship. (To be fair what I think they think is supposed to happen is the old-school sort of idea that love develops from obligation, loyalty, familiarity, proximity, and necessity.)

You know that story that as embryos we all start out as female, with just a couple of genes on the male Y chromosome responsible for modifications that make male embryos develop into actual men?

A classic example might be Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a genetic condition that prevents or inhibits the expression of male sex hormones in XY-chromosome cells. People with AIS often have externally-indistinguishable female genitals and develop breasts at puberty but have no uterus, fallopian tubes or cervix and may have no upper vagina.

This and other similar intersex syndromes are responsible for the conclusion that genetically and developmentally speaking men are just special-case women.

I’m not sure why that’s supposed to matter but it gets buzzed about a lot.

Turns out that while the basic outline of the story remains approximately correct it’s… more complicated than that.

Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent at The Telegraph

Researchers have found that the body is in a constant fight to remain either female or male and the suppression of just one gene could cause it to “flip” from one to the other.

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In mammals, males have XY chromosomes and females XX. The new research shows that another gene is responsible for switching women into men.

If the FOXL2 is switched on then the body grows ovaries, switched off and they are replaced by testicles.

But what really surprised the researchers is that the process continues after birth and the body remains in a constant tussle to either switch on or off the gene – even in adulthood.

Read the quote in context here.

Hard core gender essentialists might find this frustrating. Men aren’t just women with an X-degenerate Y chromosome. Women aren’t “pure” humans. On the other hand male embryos don’t actively make ourselves men, nor do female embryos passively default into women. Instead, at the genetic level anyway, we all take active steps to differentiate, switching on some genes and switching off others, in order to become who we are.

(Via Joanna Cake, Violet Blue, and others.)

Holly of The Pervocracy says

I so often hear sex described in terms of genitals. Sex is all about penis and/or vagina, and everything else is trappings. (Especially for men, because lol men only want warm holes lol.) This is, to me, a bit like saying running is something you do with your feet. Feet are important for running, yes, but if you think your arms and hips and lungs and heart just sit there…

She said it here.

I like this paragraph a lot. Progressive sex educators spend a reasonable amount of time pointing out that there’s more to sex than penis-in-vagina intercourse. And that’s perfectly true. What I like about Holly’s perspective is that penis in vagina intercourse isn’t just about penises and vaginas either.

Summary: The way we construct gender and morality screws both women and men: women for failing to be bastions of virtue, men for having no virtue at all.

It’s a step in the right direction. The staff at Lemondrop.com conclude an article on hetero men’s reaction to their partner’s infidelity with a list of women celebrities who’ve had (publicly acknowledged) affairs.

That’s a good thing because the chronic meme has it that only men are unfaithful to their partners who, invariably are blameless women who wish only to mother children and also, I guess, wear crinolines and eat crustless cucumber sandwiches. Leaving the (cough)Rule #1(cough) question of who, then, they’re being unfaithful with.

Getting across the idea that women are really people, real people, instead of marble fixtures and magazine-cover decoration has to happen sooner or later.

It’s a step in the wrong direction too, though. The main focus of the Lemondrop post was about how men are way less forgiving of their partner’s infidelity than women are.

If I started quoting disappointing paragraphs from the article I might never stop. So go read it yourself.

Here’s one, though:

“Men can forgive themselves for their indiscretions but find it harder to forgive their partners for the same,” therapist Phillip Hodson explained to England’s Daily Mail. “For a betrayed woman, an affair is an offense against her dignity. For a betrayed man, it’s an offense against his manhood. It goes right to the core of his identity.”

They said it here.

Men can “forgive themselves?” Hello? Everybody can forgive themselves for stuff they want to do! From cookie jars to corporate corruption people practically have “just this once won’t hurt” tattooed on their foreheads, backwards, so they can feel reassured every time they look in the mirror.

Screw that.

And Hodson gets his attribution completely backwards. For a betrayed woman an affair is an invitation for everyone else on the planet to impugn her dignity. For a betrayed man an affair is an opportunity for everyone else to question his “manhood.”

Screw that too.

Circling back to my first point, affairs are supposed to be an affront to women’s dignity (as opposed to, say, a simple uprooting of her trust and sense of place in her relationship) because up on those pedestals women are supposed to be dispensing virtue, restraint, and other civilizing influences on the men and children in their lives. In that mindset men’s infidelity is “solvable” by even more virtue and more scolding. That plus, having vested all that corrective authority in women society is likely to stand behind her whether she stays with or separates from him.

Meanwhile, I guess the idea must be, if a woman is unfaithful to a man there really isn’t much corresponding social scripting. Outside of a few very conservative, very patriarchal and primarily religiously-focused subcultures there’s not much tradition of men correcting women’s morality. In fact there’s really not a lot at all men in particular or society in general is supposed to be able to do about a “fallen” woman. Instead in social terms the man who’s hoisted the wrong moral beacon up onto his particular pedestal has no option but to drop her and replace her with someone more reliably stalwart.

Thus the proscriptive “intolerable” clauses in the bogus Two Rules of Desire.

Another step in the right direction, by the way, might be the startling idea that no individual adult is responsible for the morality or the behavior of another, and that therefore no one adult is ever responsible, nor is their dignity or “manhood” injured by the actions of another.

(Note: that this concept of individual responsibility is perpetually overlooked by Bill Bennett, Newt Gingrich, and myriad other social conservatives is yet more evidence of the inconsistency of their positions.)