Wait. Gay men? All-male pr0n? Who? wha?

Back on the urgent question of DP or not DP for a sec (as in, Dickheads, Patronizing), this just in: some men actually like being penetrated, too. Who knew? Via monotonous.net, a refreshing break from the relentless heteronormativity informing the Sex/Pr0n Wars:

I consider myself lucky to have grown up in a household where sex and porn were looked at with a generally laissez faire attitude....

Because of my upbringing and my own experience with sex as a gay man, I’m always left baffled by arguments like the one my friend Amber is currently involved in–where some guy has made the following statement about heterosexual double-penetration scenes in porn:

When he mentioned a type of sex he liked to watch in pornography called a DP — double penetration, in which a woman is penetrated vaginally and anally at the same time — it really started to dawn on him: In these scenes, the sex was defined by men’s sense of control over, and domination of, women. […] the pornography he had been consuming is not just sex, but sex in which men act out contempt for women.

Some other male professor, defending the statement above, argued that “men’s ability to achieve sexual pleasure by masturbating as they watch DP scenes in pornographic movies [is] an example of a failure of empathy.”

I don’t really agree, since I’m coming at this from a different angle. When I watch porn, it’s almost always with an all-male cast. A lot of times, the guys in these porn videos engage in the so-called “misogynistic” behavior described by anti-porn feminists. There are cumshot facials, double-anal pentration scenes, and plenty of dirty talking. I like it all, and tend to identify with all parties in the videos. Is it degrading when I am actively imagining myself in both the role of the so-called “degraded” and also as the “degrader?”

If I can watch porn and enjoy identifying with the bottom-role, why do these anti-porn feminist guys think that’s impossible for a woman?...


Well, clearly they can't imagine such a thing; this is because they are simply stuffed full of empathy. Empathy, as we know, means staking out an ideological position and grimly clinging to it no matter what, even if it means having to stick your fingers in your ears and go LALALALALALA when someone reasonable comes along and challenges your preconceptions. Just like feminism means men speaking on behalf of women to other men, and patronizing/shutting down women what don't agree with them.

***

evening update:

elsewhere, Anthony dug this up:

That brings me to one of the most delicious ironies of Bob Jensen's ranting about male heterosexuality: he is, in fact, an outed gay man.

Here is an exerpt from an interview he did for a gay ezine called OutSmart.com:

...First, a note about the rather complicated position from which I speak. I am a gay guy who has had a girlfriend. Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m a straight man who sometimes has been sexual with men, at one point closeted and later openly. Or maybe I’m bisexual. Or maybe I’m making it up as I go along. Because I have crossed lines often, maybe I have shaky standing to speak about gay male sexuality. Or because I cross lines, maybe my vantage point provides a valuable view. Readers can make their own decisions about how, or whether, to listen to me...

...Because the object of gay male desire is the male body, not the female, it is tempting to dismiss this feminist critique as having no relevance for gay men. Yet in many ways, gay and straight men are not all that different in the way they are trained in our culture to understand and practice sex: sex as the acquisition of physical pleasure from another, sex as the exercise of power over another, sex disconnected from intimacy and affection toward another. That doesn’t mean every man, gay or straight, is locked into those values, but simply that typically we are raised with them. Those values are one part of what we can call "patriarchy"; it’s the water in which we swim...

Which, well, kind of puts the whole business about really wanting to tell the boy who wanted to know what was wrong with het DP porn to strip and spread 'em for a bunch of guys in a rather new light, doesn't it?

Well, actually, no, for me; it just makes the light i already was looking at it a bit brighter and more well-defined.

Yet in many ways, gay and straight men are not all that different in the way they are trained in our culture...

goddamit. And again: this is -exactly- why a serious mens' movement is needed; because see if he'd stuck to talking about THIS shit, I'd have no problem with him. In fact, I'd be really interested in what he has to say.

but no; instead he gloms onto one of the few relatively available critiques of the normative system, radical feminism, because i guess for -some- reason he doesn't feel entirely comfortable with queer or gay this or that.

oh, I don't even know...