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(!!!)

Note: The enclosed erotic male image is considered perfectly "safe for work" since it only shows body parts that straight men don't realize are sexy.  All links, however, lead to other NSFW posts.

Note to Rep. Weiner and... pretty much every other man who thinks it's the height of creativity to snap a pixie of their peepee and call it erotic, here's how you do it.

Australian sex-blogger and frequent erotic self-photographer GeekyVamp reposts another woman sex-blogger, Musingsandmischief's repost of a male self-photographer, Isinpi's photo.

Photo by Tumblr user Isinpi.

Oh wow, mr Isinpi,

this pic deserves to be reblogged the shit out of. Well played sir, well played…

musingsandmischief:

Beautiful picture, no wonder I keep seeing reblogs with you getting tumblr ladies weak at the knees.

isinpi:

I can’t decide which one, so fuck it I’ll post two. Hands, clavicle, lips, and scruff in one photo.

Source: There May Be Tits There May Be Banter

It's not that women don't think penises are sexy.  Or that penis bulges veiled behind athlete-gray underpants are sexy.  A surprising number do.  But what seems to be an even more surprising number of women prefer a bit more context -- as, in fact, would most men if they too were regularly innundated with random unsolicited closeups of solicitous women's vulvas.  Once context is established (and believe it or not, intentionally visiting a porn site establishes some kind of context) then one has a great deal more latitude.

But for out of the blue imagery?  Even when you want to preserve your anonymity?  Well.  If you follow the link to his Tumblr post and check out who's already followed and/or liked the photo you'll find that as of this morning (the photo was posted this morning) fifteen women (and no men) have indicated their approval and several, like GV and MAM have reposted it to their own erotic-photography blogs.

Hint, maybe?  Clue perhaps?

The funniest thing?  I could be mistaken but I'm guessing that Rep. Weiner could post and tweet photos like this all day long and the likes of Andrew Brietbart would never register it.  Or if they did they wouldn't register it as anything but some kind of artsy-fartsy east-coast liberal noodlings.  Because, you see, it wouldn't be porn for men.

Now I don't happen to think there's anything wrong with porn for men per se. And of course there are plenty of women who are downright cheerful about consuming it (and of course men who aren't.)  But that's not the point.

The point is, it seems to me, that if you're interested in women, and if you're going to go around sending random, unsolicited photos of yourself to women, then maybe you should take, oh, five or ten minutes to find out what women find most eye-catching about men.  And try sending that instead.

Especially if you're going to send them via Twitter.  Because, you see, while in the ancient history that was the world before Twitter (i.e. July, 2006) and before Tumblr (i.e. 2007) it was quite a bit harder to find out what sort of erotic images of heterosexual men women preferred.  But nowadays?  If you were interested you could find out pretty quickly.  But you would have to be interested.

Update: While watering the planter boxes just now it occurred to me that I might sound like I'm claiming I know this photo but not that one will work as "porn for women."  I'm just saying that if you want to know what works, look at what women are saying works!  Same's true, obviously, about all manner of other kinds of decisions, sex-related or not, about what works for all kinds of people.  Even when you think you know what should work for other people.

Also, this post obviously isn't supposed to be an enlightening tract on how people, in Congress, in power, or otherwise, should and should not impose themselves sexually on those who have not indicated it would be appreciated. 

 1    2    3

So today on a whim I was looking through my old "not safe for work" Half-Nekkid Thursday posts (which you now sort of have to know to look for.)  I sort of forget how much time and effort I used to put into those photos (even the nominally spontaneous ones) and I also forget that considering what I had to work with (i.e. my physique and almost zero input on non-cliche-porn depictions of hetero men) some of them came out really, really well.

Anyway, one in particular caught my eye (item #1,above) because I really, really liked the light and shadows, the lines, and my behind and just for the heck of it I installed it in place of my old gravatiar image (Item #2, above.)

But then I immediately got cold feet.

I'm not sure why.  My site's already pretty much hopelessly branded as "nsfw" even though it's been years since I've actually been that "unsafe" (again you have to know where to look for my HNT and other photos, and many of the old photos are no longer there at all.*)  And I actually think it's really important to push for more casual acceptance of erotic imagery of heterosexual men.  And in a lot of ways the old image isn't any less "erotic" than the new one.  (Also, while we don't usually think of it that way, item #3 even more directly implies heterosexual activity.)

But just for the heck of it, rather than just guess I thought I'd ask you which of the three candidate gravatars you'd rather see at the top of my page.  Feel free to chime in in comments.  Also feel free to explain why.

Thanks!

* For the record, since I stopped posting a photo a day my traffic has declined nearly 85% from its peak.  !!!  Since my posts had become mostly about politics, sociology, and gender long before I stopped posting photos I'm pretty sure not doing photos has a lot to do with the dropoff.)