Photo by Flickr user Uncle Shoe. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Kind of funny how many of the bitterly anti-male slanders, slurs, and stereotypes commonly attributed to "radical feminism" predate feminism. Sometimes by centuries. Occasionally by millennia!

They were already highly common in American and English male-only dance halls and similar entertainment venues back when "mainstream feminism" meant the possibility of women owning property and "radical feminism" was the crazy idea that women might someday be allowed to vote.

I bring this up in no small part due to allegations that these are feminist in nature. And I bring that up in no small part because those allegedly feminist characterizations of men are nettlesome to men in general and extremely nettlesome to men's rights activists and their allies.

M'kay, and now, confronted with that sort of incontrovertible proof that sexist and/or "reverse sexist" stereotypes about men predate feminism and, indeed, often originate with men themselves, a lot of guys who are still nettled will say things like "yeah, well, some feminists still propagate those stereotypes so feminism is still all about hating men.

Now it might surprise you to hear me say this but... that would actually be a pretty fair point! Some feminists really do perpetuate long, deep, ancient and... male-originated stereotypes about how awful men are.

And to the extent that subset of feminists allow themselves to be informed by patriarchal standards?  Eh, when folks like Twisty Faster talk about the inescapability of "the patriarchy" I'm not positive that's what they're thinking about... but the shoe does fit.  But why would anyone who was even remotely bothered by the dissimilarity between their own lived experience and the cultural stereotypes about how she was <em>supposed</em> to be feel any more confident that the messages cradle-sung, nursery-rhymed, and spoon fed to them about men were any more authentic?

There's certainly an idea in one of the older factions of essentialist feminist that we men are so incredibly ruled by our dicks that women can have a "sex strike," refusing to have sex with us until we accede to their demands. There's also, in a similar strand of feminism, the idea that most men are so horny that we'll willingly have sex with pumpkins, goats, and dead bodies. In terms of a coherent theory of gender these two ideas seem irreconcilable. (Which indeed they are.) But at the end of the day the genesis of the "sex strike" idea originated 2,400 years ago this year in the play Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes, a man, and performed by an all-male cast for an all-male audience in 411 B.C. And the idea that men will have sex with animals or dead bodies (but not, conspicuously absently, with themselves or each other) has been a common accusation in decidedly male military organizations from time out of mind.

And, of course, getting really down to brass tacks, if those feminists who believe it are suckers of the patriarchy what should we make of other men who blame those same feminists, who at least are trying to wrench themselves free, instead of the real fucking man-haters who cooked up nearly every so-called "feminist man-hater" tropes?

My vote would be we think of them the same way we think of the bull who sees the matador's cape as a bigger enemy than them matador himself.

A follow-up on my “Quitcher Bitchin“ post from yesterday since I think I may not have clearly reflected my concern. Turns out last week Kimberlly of of The Errant Wife found herself subjected to a rash of insults that possibly better reflect the point I was trying to make.

Well, who doesn’t love a torrent of abuse on a Thursday?

...

So far I have been called despicable, a urinal, a whore, a cunt, a bad mother a bad wife, a swine: and that is just what they are calling me on my comments, you should see what they are saying over there. By a day in it had degenerated completely: apparently I should be killed and I should have AIDS – if the world were fair that is. Interestingly, the comments got uglier as time went on. “Group think” as my husband put it. Much as we bloggers legitimize ourselves via our similar leanings – they draw strength from their numbers.

The use the perceived worst things of femininity: I have my period, I am a bad wife, a bad mother, I am ugly, I am fat, I am rapidly aging, I have a big vagina, I am (god forbid) saggy – they judge me based on a view of what it is to be a woman that I have long since rejected.

It fascinates me that in crafting their insults they see only the female – I am not a terrible person, I am a terrible woman – most of what they hurl at me from their safe anonymity are gendered insults. Because I am not a person, you see, I am an object to be possessed.

Read the quote in context here.

Yes, I’m aware of various etymological and linguistic support for the inevitability, and even, I guess, desirability, of using attribute-denigrating language. That plus various “recovering meaning” initiatives for words like “slut” and “queer.” And the whole “but you n-words say ‘n-word’ all the time” business.

I don’t think Kimberly’s interlocutors have any of that in mind when they call her the words they call her. Instead they call her those things because they believe it specifically, descriptively identifies her as precisely those things. Which, they believe, are the shittiest, crappiest, lowest, most worthless, things they’re capable of imagining: characteristics “of or peculiar to” something with a vagina.

My point in saying it’s hard to be sex-positive and still use those words wasn’t because I thought it’s just naughty to use un-PC words because they might hurt someone else’s feelings. Nor was it because I think there’s a real problem with people using dead metaphors without considering their once-living implications.

Instead I mean what I said, in my usual starchy way, in my first post ever on this site: “it’s hard to use cock-sucker as an epithet once you’ve met someone who knows how to do it.”

It’s not that calling someone a cunt, a cocksucker, or a slut might hurt their feelings. If you want to hurt their feelings go for it — if you pick a really scummy degrading one maybe it will hit home and they’ll feel really bad and you’ll win! It’s just… it’s hard to use those words as insults once you have an actual sexually positive understanding of their “technical” meaning.

Call me naive but I’m pretty sure none of Kimberly’s comments come from particularly sex-positive individuals.

So roughly once a year, on my blog anniversary, I link to my first ever post, which asks how anyone who’s received fellatio could use “cocksucker” as an insult.

And wow is it ever a wide-ranging insult! Misogynists use it. Fictional immigrant TV characters use it. Utterly clueless elementary-school kids use it. And I’m pretty sure there are other, possibly surprising subsets of nominally progressive culture that may deplore the word itself somewhat less than they deplore the practice itself.

I dunno. I’ve never understood it. And I could still be mistaken. But as sort of side-effect of all my agitated cogitation about agency, initiative, and the no-sex class recently I think I’ve figured it out.

“Cocksucker” has to be an insult. Because any other way would be to acknowledge the implicit agency in the act. And to allow agency for something enacted on a man just breaks everything!

If a man’s doing it to another man that’s a problem for some people because the whole point of gay homophobia, as opposed to “lesbian” homo-philia, is thanks to the limited constructions the public has to work with, when two men have sex one of them has to play “the woman” and receive from the guy in “the man” role. Which, as we all know, real menz are always supposed to be doing sex, not receiving it. So a man giving a blowjob just kind of mixes everything up especially since the active man is the receiving man and the receiving man isn’t the active man and… hey, stop snickering, I’m not the first person to observe that this stupid word game is a fundamental tolerance blocker for millions and millions and millions of homophobes.

And meanwhile, if it’s a woman giving the blowjob it’s even worse! First of all there’s still that problem with the men being receivers, yeah, but holy macaroni mosta tha time tha womanz tha active party and the dominant paradigm says even if that was possible, which it’s not, it would be wrong.

And the possibility that fellatio would ever be something women enjoyed learning and doing with all the same ecstatic gusto with which men learn and perform cunnilingus? Uh huh, when pigs fly. Whatever you do don’t leave comments saying you actually like to put Teh Cock anywhere near your mouth because, you know, experts from all over say even if you did, which you don’t, the idea that you take such an active role at all, let alone enjoy it, look forward to it, look back fondly on it, exactly the same way your partners look forward to eating you… well, you’re not just deceiving yourself, you’re not just degrading yourself, you’re not just lowering the bar for “good” women who don’t, you’re probably also oppressing yourself. In other words…

You’d

be

a

cocksucker!

That same notion that cocksucking really unhinges the universe is part of why I think there’s no comparable epithet — call someone a pussylicker and they’re almost certain to look question-marks at you not daggers. I think I’ve heard the term “cunt lapper” used derogatorily but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the “lapper” part that was meant to cut most. But nope. Cunnilingus involves women receiving and either a man giving (and so “proper”) or another woman (but harmlessly so and therefore “hawtt”) so I guess no foul.

Oh, am I going to have to say it? No, of course not but I will anyway: of course nobody is supposed to love oral, either giving or receiving, either male or female, either straight or gay, either right or left handed, either weekdays or weekends.

Update: Ok the comments so far have been just great with both intelligent agreement and disagreement. One point that’s emerged from remarks by, especially, sungold, nightfall, and m, is that a better way of putting it would be that whereas on paper the words for fellatio and cunnilingus ought to have equal connotations as actions taken by the giver, the connotations are instead not quite but close to opposite. For instance to the extent fellatio is an act at all it’s a service with the value highly weighted towards the man receiving the service whereas the actor in cunnilingus tends to receive equal or even higher value than the recipient, especially if the actor is a man. The point being that “cocksuckers” rarely get any credit because, in my view, to do so would upset people’s understanding of the nature of gendered roles.