Just a quick clarification based on an entirely sensible post from Infra at Skin::filter(). The point of my theory of the “no-sex” class as dominant paradigm is to clarify for men that we feel obliged to manage or regulate women’s sexuality. (It’s an extension, not a refutation of the classical feminist theory of women as the sex class.”)
Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I’m staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! Where?
There’s a lady that I used to know
She’s married now or engaged or something
so I am told
The theory binds outright denial — as when classicists (and many contemporaries) insist that women want sex only in order to have children**, or as when doctors around the world spent up to half their time treating women for “hysteria” by masturbating them… and hating it! It also binds the variant wherein women are believed to want sex with anyone else but you. (The latter concern, I think, accounts for an unnerving amount of racism, e.g. fantasies/fears of African American men in American mainstream porn who are invariably depicted as irresistible-to-women “big buck studs.” See also the whole “protect the white women” crap the Ku Klux Klan dished out despite the fact that virtually all miscegenation took place because the human property of slave-owners and their sons had no, zero, none right to say no.)
(Chorus)
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
‘cause if my eyes don’t deceive me,
There’s something going wrong around here
Either way men (it mostly is men) are left believing, again, that women’s sexuality must be managed and/or “channeled,” either to “awaken” their sexuality or to steer it (and keep it steered) their way. And either way the traditional results are a continuum of “leverage” ranging from a “proper” proposal to the woman or (even more traditional!) her father (deemed “appropriate”), to impressing with displays of derring do or accomplishment or wealth, to seduction, to transaction (possibly dinner & roses with “polite” expectation or straight-up cash for sex), to drugging or drunk-ing, to offers of promotion at work or school for sex, to offers of demotion at work or school if sex is not forthcoming, to simple disregard for “no,” to threats, to outright violent criminal sexual assault. And again to the extent men are motivated by a belief that without such intervention the prospective partner would never be interested — either interested at all, or interested “in you.”
Tonight’s the night when I go to all the parties down my street.
I wash my hair and I kid myself I look real smooth
Look over there! (where? )
Here comes jeanie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don’t count for much
If so, there goes your proof
To the extent one believes that the above paragraph exhausts the possibilities, or that some are “better” than others (instead of merely more uncouth, uncivil, or violent), one is still caught up in the paradigm.
I might add that to the extent men believe they have to manage women in order to “get” sex, men are failing to recognize the possibility of their own unembellished desirability.
(Repeat and fade)
Something going wrong around here
Something going wrong around – here
Anyway, the point being that being indoctrinated to believe this is the way it has to be… in fact, just believing that’s the way most women feel about themselves or about men, ought to be reason enough for men to start looking for the exits on the social system that wants us to believe Joe Jackson’s song is the only way it is, or could be.
[** Examine that sometime while looking at “pro-life” assumptions, by the way! —fl]
Submitted by 2112 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-04-28 21:55.
I think that the last paragraph highlights the element regarding which we differ: instead of seeing it as indoctrination, I'm inclined to see it as rationalization and explanation -- as emergent and compensatory rather than constitutive.
Of course, this does relate to my history as an abuse victim, among other things, especially when it comes to dealing with coping mechanisms that, for a time, can allow one to lead a tolerable and even enjoyable life; but which eventually become maladaptive. The "no-sex" class seems, to me, to be one such mechanism, and it is by no means counterproductive to identify its manifestations and deleterious effects.
But it also seems to leave one question unanswered: with what are we trying to cope? This is why "with you" is, I think, so pivotal, so primary. Primordial, even, and the root of the concept's remainder.
I could be wrong, of course. There may be no existential crisis here, no bathos of intimacy and connection, no scrambling effort to recover one's balance; it may only be a matter of addressing the paradigm and trying to replace it, to guide thought and model in a different direction.
But... I see too much pain, too much confusion and uncertainty, too many clasping grasps, too often; so much dancing around instead of dancing with. How that speaks to me is to say: there's something there that desperately wants to be glimpsed, to be acknowledged. Yet it's the doctrine that catches our eyes, and that we attempt to heal.
"All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond. Even let him catch sight of the moon, and still he cannot see its beauty."
Or so the saying goes.
[Yes, we're closing in on something. Here's how I think we're both right: what did my parents's generation teach me; what will my generation teach my children? If my son, for instance, strikes out in his first invitation in his first year of college with he tell himself something different from my daughter when she strikes out identically? A year later will my son remember the strike-out or a later acceptance as the norm, and will my daughter remember the same experiences the same way? What difference will it make if I tell them what my parent's generation told me, that "all men want one thing and all women want another," compared with "all men and women want the same things but not always at the same time or with the same intensity?" Given that I *eventually* figured out that "shit happens sometimes" is as useful and explanation as "...I'm a loser," I'm pretty sure if my parents had taught me that instead I'd have had... exactly the same varied and variable love life only I'd have enjoyed the high spots more and resented the empty ones far less. Thanks, Infra. --fl]
Submitted by 2112 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-04-29 11:30.
Or rather, "with you" is the post-hoc clarification of a system that requires men to initiate while still placing them in the position of those hoping TO BE CHOSEN. Which is why the grand draw of pick-up is phrased by Ross Jeffries as "power and choice rather than 'relationships by default'." What I'm undecided about is whether male empowerment means changing it to "Most women want to have sex with you" as a true statement, i.e. a descriptive, lived-experienced-backed "truth", or as a prescriptive statement for pick-up action, or as hipster-ironic sarcasm. Acting "AS IF" until rejected (while still respecting women's agency) seems to be what is aimed at. A lot of fl's stuff is unpalatable to the men who experience their (lack of) sex lives--"unchosen by anyone" as SnowdropExplodes put it--because it seems to be ratifying female agency at the expense of closing off the pathways of male adaptation*, like pick-up. Part of why the "no-sex" class rankles is because men tend to come to pick-up after watching how often and easily women pair up with other men. It's not specifically an issue for the SC.
*This is also HughRistik's and Daran's objection to feminism's take on mating/pair bonding @www.feministcritics.org
[If agency was an either/or thing then HughRistic and Daran would have more of a point. And "pick-up" as an adaptive avenue often seems to come perilously close to "...because Rohipnol is poor form... and we might get caught." As for the choose/chosen business, looking at it from the other side (as when one enters a used car lot) is very good for perspective. The trick being that the mutual distrust between car buyer and salesperson is *not* the only model for heterosexual dating. Thanks, ES. --fl]
Submitted by 2112 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-04-29 12:30.
Is it (post hoc)? It seems to have a wider scope, to me, one that encompasses sexuality but is by no means contained in it: suggesting that the potential for human contact is closed off by default, whereas a healthier view is likely that the potential is always there, and open. Sex may or may not be involved; but the precursor is generally some sort of interest in the individual, some sort of acceptance of the person in their essence. That's something that "with you" prevents a person from acknowledging, or even considering; and it plays out in an extreme degree when we consider the realm of intimacy -- of which sex is the most obvious, if not the most defining, form.
It creates its own illness; then it categorizes itself as a symptom; and then it tries to treat itself.
I'm not sure that changing it to "most women want to have sex with you" is what's needed, either as a true statement or as a prescriptive one. Maybe more along the lines of this: women's interests are not defined by your preemptive concept of your own value, and you may discover that people find you more worthwhile than you know.
It doesn't flow well as a slogan, but I never was good at those.
["...women's interests are not defined by your preemptive concept of your own value, and you may discover that people find you more worthwhile than you know." That's just such a cool way of putting it, Infra. It really drills down to the mechanism I think we, especially we as hetero men, use to sabotage ourselves. Very nicely put. --fl]
Submitted by 2112 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-04-29 17:30.
Certainly I began to get a grip on my own depression when I began considering the issue as a competition (and hence an incongruity) between different types of connectedness. To wit, the abundance of offers of intimacy is often apprehended by (straight) women as a threat, a denial of their agency, as noise that clutters public life and limits their participation in the public sphere. Meanwhile, (straight) men, denied the intimacy and support networks women take for granted, gamely forge ahead in (one of) the few ways stereotypical masculinity allows: connection for physical intimacy.
The "no SEX with you" is lived experience for men in compulsory heterosexuality; I was never shy, and I doubt most men, even in the pick-up sphere, have logged the number of approaches I have with such erratic results. Many, many more women are willing to "connect" in some form than to have sex, and I have the friends to prove it, for what else is going to be the response to interest from a mid-30s male by a college-age female with no romantic interest in him? On the other hand, I have had very many (very nice) mini-mentoring conversations, a woman on Spring Break is not going to have a fling with me if she'd rather get tips on graduate school. So while I see what you are getting at, the frustration is a lack of intimacy, emotional and physical, not a lack of connection on some other basis.
"Women's interests are not defined by your preemptive concept of your own value, and you may discover that people find you more worthwhile than you know." Actually, the problem was that my cultural/social leverage was in marginal fields that only intellectuals were interested in, and my frustration was trying to get acknowledgement of my value from Yuppies. So I had very high cultural value to a miniscule number of women, and high sexual value qua man-meat to a different (equally miniscule) set of women: those whose physical disabilities (like mine) limited their appeal to mainstream (i.e. able-bodied) potential partners. ("It's not a fetish, dammit, if I'm a crip too!")
[Hi ES. I just remembered commenter "b's" point from another thread that physically disabled people are also perceived as "no-sex." It occurs to me that at least standard PUA "techniques," with their tendency towards indirection, might not be the best way to break that barrier with prospective partners. --fl]
Submitted by 2112 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-05-01 04:31.
As I remarked to someone once about the Berlin Wall, I'm NOT on the "other side". I can intellectually understand the experience of a woman I might date, some years my junior, whose experience is of men constantly pushing for sex and then dropping her (no 2nd date) when they don't get it. Emotionally, I imagine what I would have done when faced with a similar abundance of women as these men are: they are dropping her because they can have fast, easy, NSA sex often enough that even going on a 2nd date as a prelude to an LTR is uneconomic for them, in their economy of desire. But my mental map has been framed by years of frustration and scarcity, and shaking that map up has required not only positive experience, but a serious investment in personal change through NLP. Positive experiences get read back through the past, and may be found wanting. And I am irked somewhat by the Rohypnol bit, because there is no one more patient, more respectful, and more willing to honor a "No" (whether it is "No, not yet" or "No, with you, never") than I. The problem was reading a "Yes" when there was ambiguity, and afraid of offending, I did nothing, and my youth passed without partners. I am Hugh and Daran's poster child for the negation of male agency. I was thoroughly indoctrinated, and spent my university years drifting among women who were not about to become bicycling fish. Nothing I can do with pick-up is going to change a "No" to a "Yes", it is INFLUENCE and not power and certainly not denial of someone else's agency. If you like, I can even discard the red herring of traditional masculinity, an ideal I've never been able to approach or exploit, even lacking that, there were still willing women waiting for me to DO something, once every couple years.
Indeed my youth vanished while I was working on getting to "Yes", and the "Yes"es came only one at a time, every couple of years, and I partly resent the fact that my current relative abundance smacks of powerlessness in a lot of ways, premature aging and health concerns mean that I must physically pull back quite often from a willing partner. Rejection quite often brings RELIEF that I will not be asked, will not force myself to perform. Sorry about the TMI.
"Direct game" is undergoing a bit of a renaissance at the moment, largely because there are a lot of men in the SC who can project the sort of devil-may-care machismo that drives it, for the rest, I am not sure what serves me other than the careful cultivation of rapport with those who seek rapport with me.