sex

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Are Men “Visual Creatures”?: A Discussion on Porn & Bioessentialism

TW//mentions of SA, porn addiction, objectification

One thing that really stood out to me in Throwing Like a Girl is how Iris Marion Young criticizes bioessentialism, which is the idea that men and women behave a certain way because it’s just “biology”. She shows how people explain things like throwing differences as natural, when they’re really learned through social expectations. It is similar to how people perform worse due to the stereotype threat, which is when minority groups tend to underperform on tests because they believe that they are not capable of performing well, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

I think that same logic of “inherent” or “biological” behaviors can be applied to how men justify watching porn by saying “men are visual creatures”, which is not based in fact at all. That phrase is so harmful because it makes it seem like objectifying women is unavoidable, instead of something that men are choosing to participate in. 

Read more: Are Men “Visual Creatures”?: A Discussion on Porn & Bioessentialism

Porn is extremely dehumanizing because it turns people, often women, into objects meant to be looked at, not individuals with complex life experiences who have their own agency. Young talks about how women are taught to experience their bodies as something to be watched and judged, rather than as something they fully control. Porn takes that even further by reducing women to their body parts and presenting sex as something women exist to provide. It trains people to see women’s bodies as products rather than as a part of an intimate and sacred human interaction.

The idea that porn allows people to “buy” consent is disturbing on its own as well. Consent in porn is always available and detached from real emotional or physical consequences. Sometimes consent can even be depicted as NOT freely given, and disrespected, as part of r*pe fetishes. Humans were never meant to have instant and unlimited access to sex like this, and pretending that it’s just “natural male sexuality” ignores how artificial and extreme this level of access actually is. The harm doesn’t just affect the person consuming porn, it impacts the women in it, who are often exploted, and women in the modern dating world that have to deal with unrealistic expectations and porn-driven violence and entitlement.

Just like Young argues, bioessentialism isn’t harmless. It is used to excuse behavior that causes real harm by making it seem inevitable, and vanishing accountability for those who are engaging in them. Saying “men are visual creatures” works the same way as saying “girls throw like that”. It hides socialization behind biology.

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When My Body Wasn’t My Own

TW: mentions of SA, dissociation

Growing up in a conservative household, I was constantly told to cover up because of men’s “wandering eyes”. I was taught that if I were to be sexually assaulted, it would have been my fault, instead of the person who sexually assaulted me. Out of fear, I obliged, wearing modest clothes throughout my childhood, convinced that I could never be safe. My mother also told me to speak properly, to never talk back to elders or men, and to hold my tounge if I was uncomfortable. In Throwing Like a Girl, Iris Marion Young describes how women move with “inhibited intentionality”, we know we can act, but we feel like we shouldn’t. That was my childhood: constantly silencing and covering myself to make myself more palatable for men. These habits became ingrained in me, because for so long, they were all I knew to do.

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Sex, Sexuality, and Signing

In my ASL lecture this week, we learned the sign for “signing” – a backward twirling of the fingers, sort of. It looks a lot like you’re winding yarn towards you. After our instructor demonstrated the sign and the class followed suit, he turned and wrote on the board.

gender differences
woman
male

He pointed to “male” and repeated the sign as he had signed it before: rapidly moving his fingers in clean circles, with his hands pointing directly at one another and his palms facing the floor. He then pointed to “woman” and began to sign a variation on this – he tilted his hands so that his fingers were in more of a triangle and angled his hands forward so his palms were facing the class. This time, rather than rolling his wrists to spin his hands, he moved his arms using his elbows.
If the “male” sign was a gallop, this was a prance.

He paused and turned back to the board. He added “gay” following woman and “lesbian” following man –

gender differences
woman/gay
male/lesbian

– and repeated his demonstration, while shaking his head and implying “No, not me!” for the “woman/gay” sign and “See, this one!” for the “male/lesbian” one – he put women and gay men in the same bucket, and men and lesbians in another.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this – no other sign we’d learned had been gendered in any way. I’m still not entirely sure what he meant, it’s somewhat difficult to Google ASL questions – I’ll have to ask next week.

It reminded me, though, of the embodiment of “feminine” and “masculine” we discussed, and how they apply to queer people – as well as how that embodiment is perceived by others. It reminded me of how women are expected and conditioned to use their bodies, as opposed to men. The “woman” sign was dainty and cumbersome, the “male” sign was fluid and practical. I was very conscious of his reaction as well – how awful would it be if he used the “woman” version of “signing”? How humiliating.

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Disabled people and pleasure

I had a conversation with people I was close with about nurses who help disabled people find sexual pleasure. Someone brought up a documentary about the nurses who do this and I offered that I heard a little about it in my Unruly Bodies class. I told them briefly about our section on disabled bodies and the things we’ve discussed in class. Continue reading →

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Things We’re All Too Young to Know

I read a lot of fanfiction. (Like, a lot.) I even write some. For those who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon, it can seem a strange and alien landscape. Some authors and actors welcome it, others revile it, but most would rather not know what their characters get up to in their readers’ and viewers’ heads. There’s even fanfiction written about real people—even if they’re in an alternate universe where magic works and the boys in that one band are firefighters or werewolves instead.

One fanfic trope that fascinates me and is particularly relevant to this class is that of mpreg, or male pregnancy. Continue reading →

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Empowerment, Doing Sex Right and Terrible Doctors

When I think critically about why I decided to visit the doctors a few years ago, if I really am honest with myself, I realize I was seeking sympathy more then a cure. That’s not to say I wasn’t looking for a solution. I just wanted someone to reassure me that I would be okay and tell me there was some sort of several-step program that could “fix” my body effortlessly. This was not the case (could you guess?).

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