Photo by Flickr user Anne Petersen. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Geekyvamp, commiserating with another woman sex blogger about the number of unsolicited penis photos she gets sent to her Tumblr dashboard, raises and interesting point about how women feel about men's bodies vs. how men feel about our bodies. (Emphasis mine.)

Hah! I often wish I had a dick too, so I could a) not send it to people, and b) have sword fights. I see guys all over my dash playing meat-sword jousty-time, so it must be common, eh?

Source: A Heart Like Crazy Paving

Just because she doesn't like getting unsolicited penis photos doesn't mean GV doesn't like men. Or penises. (The idea that not liking unsolicited penises equals not liking penises at all is, of course, embedded in bogus Rule of Desire #1. Also rape culture. But I repeat myself. And digress...)

Instead GV likes penises, and men, quite a lot. In fact she thinks we can be pretty hot. In ones, and, as in the case of men playfully sword-fighting each other with their penises, in multiples. (See for instance her animated outtakes from Supernatural.)

I'm pretty sure most hetero Anglo/Austro/American men don't spend much time thinking about sword-fighting each other with our penises. (Hmm... there's no doubt about rape culture but I think old 70s-style feminists were mistaken about the part about men routinely regarding our penises as actual weapons. But I'm digressing again...)

As I said before I so rudely interrupted myself (as men evidently do tend to do... Dang it I'm doing it again!)

As I said, again, it's a good bet most hetero men don't think of male/male genital contact as erotic. And it's a sure bet almost no hetero men think such contact would be erotic to women.

There are probably numerous reasons for this -- both Rule 1 (it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for women to have sexual desire) and Rule 2 (it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for men to be sexually desired) play a big role obviously. The accompanying cultural belief (perpetrated not least by Cosmopolitan Magazine) that heterosexuality is all about men's gratification probably contributes to the notion as well.

The biggest reason, I think, is the deep cultural belief that men and women are not just poles apart but whole planets! And so it never occurs to... well... either sex that it stands to reason that if men think female/female contact is erotic, which many men do, then women would be just as likely to be similarly aroused by male/male contact.

And for the same reasons! Especially for hetero men and women! In fact, the more hetero (I'm guessing) the more likely seeing the opposite sexes together is going to seem erotic because sort of by-definition if we're hetero we're not only attracted to the opposite sex we're not particularly attracted to the same sex. Which means that two members of one's opposite rather than one of the opposite and one of your own means not only twice as many of your preferred sex to look at, it also means one less of your non-preferred sex.

Which in turn means less distraction and/or dismay (if you're phobic.) It means less self-conscious comparison. It means no matter how they arrange themselves the view of individuals you want to see aren't obscured by individuals you're indifferent to and/or uncomfortable with (again if you're phobic.) It means no particular source for envy. It means no particular source for competition. It means you can identify with the actions of either partner. And so on.

These are fairly obvious observations. Or would be if we weren't all gendered out the wazoo. When we're gendered, especially when that gendering assigns all sexual focus on one of those genders, then it's not obvious at all.

One area where we are different is plain old anatomy. For this reason in fantasy it's easy to imagine members of the opposite sex doing things actual members of the opposite sex probably wouldn't. Like sword-fighting each other with your erections. Because, gender constructions of brutal, domineering men not withstanding, penises are actually pretty sensitive. And easily sprained or even fractured(!!!)

Should we congratulate conservatives when they correctly say the obvious? I'd say yes. Case in point: Mary Matalin says, correctly, that failed heterosexual marriages are a far greater threat to the institution of marriage than successful gay ones. David Edwards has the scoop:

Republican strategist Mary Matalin, who has previously said that marriage equality is not a civil right, asserted that polls now show Americans support same sex marriage because they know it’s not a “threat to the civil order.”

“Well, because Americans have common sense,” she explained. “There are important constitutional, biological, theological, ontological questions relative to homosexual marriage. People who live in the real world say, the greater threat to the civil order are the heterosexuals who don’t get married and are making babies. That’s an epidemic in crisis proportions. That is irrefutably more problematic for our culture than homosexuals getting married.”

Source: Raw Story

Good for Matalan!

Now one could argue, as I often do, that the tradition of marriage has some violent and alienating elements that make even successful marriage problematic (i.e. Which Husband Would You Stone For Adultery?) And one could argue, as I've also done in the past but Kevin Drum and others have done more recently, that single-parent families aren't as problematic for society as Matalan suggests. And one could argue, as numerous others have argued, that rather than celebrate secular recognition of gay marriage we should stop secularly recognizing marriage at all. But! If you're going to stand up for the institution, as Matalan and others gay and straight choose to, then there's exactly zero question that Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, or Britney Spears' hetero marriages undermine the institution far, far, far more than the gay and lesbian couples who began getting married here in Washington State at 12:01 AM this morning. The heterosexual shotgun marriages of children in Nebraska and elsewhere undermine it far more than the same-sex marriages that will soon take place in Maine. The shaky, fragile, and outright false heterosexual marriages of David Vitters, Elliot Spitzer, Ted Haggard, or Phyllis Gates can't make less of a mockery of the institution any gay marriages that's likely take place in California, Minnesota, Hawaii, Massachusetts and on and on around the country.

Note: this doesn't mean some percentage of same-sex couples won't eventually turn out to have marriages every bit as bogus as current hetero ones can get. In fact, since gay people are exactly like straight people that's both a) inevitable but also b) the whole point! We're not enabling gay marriage because gay people are more noble nor because straight people are more depraved -- we're doing it because if any couple should be able to do it then every should be!

So yeah. Even though it's obvious, good for Matalan!

Photo by Flickr user Jonathan Wilsson. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Gay-rights activist and DailyKos snark-meister "Bill of Portland Maine", commenting on whether he and his partner will marry now that same-sex marriage is legal in his state, touches on one reason why "traditional marriage" advocates are so bitterly defensive: the traditions they defend are... well... indefensible when gender is removed from the equation. Consider:

We want it to be a very traditional marriage -- I insist that his family bequeath him to me as property, and he insists on being able to stone me to death if I ever cheat on him. We'll keep you posted.

Source: Daily Kos

Can you imagine a "traditional marriage" advocate agreeing that men could become custodial property of their marriage partner? Can you imagine them agreeing that women (let alone another man) could ever be a man's custodian? Can you imagine a "traditional marriage" maven applaud approvingly as a woman stoned her husband for adultery?

The answer? No! Of course not! It simply wouldn't occur to them.

Ordinarily I try to frame things in terms of the impact traditional sexist gender roles and sexual stereotypes have on men -- not from an "MRA" perspective but from an, I think, more direct and effective standard-feminist framework. For instance I'll usually point out the ways anti-feminist "traditionalists" think men are stupid, slow, violent, indiscriminately promiscuous, socially and domestically helpless, in need of special dispensations, in need of special supervision, and otherwise unable to compete unless women are held back by "traditional" institutional barriers.

But nope. This time? As with most "marriage traditions" the ones Bill takes his sense of humor to are pretty much pure misogyny.

Photo by Flickr user misocrazy. Used under a Creative Commons license.

According to Polyamory from the Inside Out in polyamory circles "A unicorn is a mythical beast with a horn. It also refers to a pretty and otherwise dateable bi female who is willing to date a couple."  Amanda Marcotte suggests, correctly, that the women conservatives claim are rejecting great guys they're in love with in favor of government assisted single motherhood are equally mythical.

Okay, so this is the theory: Single mothers have plenty of loving men they also adore who are begging for their hands in marriage, but single mothers are choosing “government dependency” (on what, I have no idea, since actual government aid is not enough to live on, if you can get any of it at all) because of their devotion to a mysterious feminist ideology that I have not actually heard any feminists propose. Got it.

Please produce these single mothers. That is all. I want to meet them. They sound like interesting people! I want to ask them about the awesome would-be husbands they rejected. I want to know what mysterious government offices they know about where they can get enough benefits to replace the salary of the great guys they rejected. (Does the government ask you to produce a pay stub from Romeo and agree to match it?) I want to hear about the feminist theorists they read that encouraged them to reject these loving relationships, and I want to know why they found these theorists so much more convincing than other feminists like myself that think that relationships that work for you are awesome. Since these women are, according to conservatives, the reason for the high rates of single motherhood in our country, they should be easy to find.

Source: Pandagon

I'd be curious to meet one of these women too. In the last maybe 50 years I've personally known single mothers -- from embittered 1950s "divorcees" collecting full alimony to desperately poor ones agonizing over whether to spend their last dollars on food or earache medicine -- I've never met one who said "Oh, my ex is such a great guy but, you know, federal assistance is just such a great deal I didn't bother to stay with him.

To be honest I think the clue to conservative outrage lies not so much in the dog-whistle racist "welfare queen" form of "government assistance" but instead in less obvious to normal people but still bitterly resented interventions like the 19th Amendment, Griswold v. Connecticut, EEOC, the Lilly Ledbetter Act and other actions governments have taken over the last century that have made it harder to keep women barefoot, pregnant, and otherwise dependent on male custodians.