This month’s Sinful Sunday prompt is “Unedited”. Behold this straight-out-of-the-camera shot of my leggy wife.
This was admittedly a challenge. When editing a photo I enjoy playing around with lighting and color as it can completely alter the tone in a variety of ways. Knowing I couldn’t do so this week, I had to be certain the shot was lit and framed properly when I released the shutter.
See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!
If you missed part one of this three-part series, read it here.
If you missed part two of this three-part series, read it here.
Mansplaining. Fake fangirling. “You’d look nicer if you smiled.” Catcalling. Negging. Gaslighting. Gender bias. The wage gap. The glass ceiling. The casting couch. Unsolicited dick pics. Slut-shaming. Revenge porn. Rape threats. Domestic violence. Sexual assault.
I planned on following the previous paragraph with something to the effect of “In what bizarro world are these things even remotely acceptable?” But they are acceptable because we are collectively willing to accept them. We are willing – perhaps even eager – to sell out women in order to maintain the status quo. That society works hard to normalize such offenses tells me all I need to know about how we value – or more accurately, don’t value – women. Admitting to sexual assault over a live mic not only doesn’t immediately lead to arrest and prosecution, it doesn’t even disqualify you from being President. On a smaller scale, if you sexually assault someone there’s a good chance a fellow misogynist with a gavel will see that you’re acquitted because you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.
That Roy Moore almost won the 2017 special election in Alabama, and the fact that we were all shocked when he didn’t, is abhorrent to me and it should be abhorrent to you as well. In a perfect world he’d be in prison, but I’d have settled for him being defeated by a landslide. What does it say about us that we don’t demand more of our politicians, if not the average person we pass on the street?
Is it that we see ourselves in such imperfect leaders – sorry, “leaders” – and that we take comfort in the idea of being governed by someone who doesn’t lord their moral superiority over us in much the same way I prefer Spider-Man to Superman because Peter Parker got bullied in high school while Superman is literally bulletproof? I’m sure there are some who would claim that this is the case, but what self-righteous, Bible-beating, fundamentalist-ass-kissing politician didn’t expect their constituents to do as they say, not as they do?
More likely these politicians justify our own worst instincts. A sizable portion of the American public loves it when a bloviating dickhead like Donald Trump* disrespects women because it gives them license to openly behave in the same fashion. I almost can’t blame Trump; sure, he’s cancer given semi-human form, broiled in a tanning booth, and stuffed into a tacky suit, but without an army of racist, misogynist acolytes he’d be powerless. In a perfect world he would have been driven from the stage in a hail of rotten tomatoes and other garbage when he announced his candidacy.
*Trump is the most prominent example of a politician** disrespecting women, but there are countless others throughout the history of this country, from the Jefferson-Hemmings controversy to John F. Kennedy’s womanizing to Gary Hart and “Monkey Business” to the Clarence Thomas hearings to Bob Packwood’s resignation from the U.S. Senate over allegations of sexual harrassment and assault to Newt Gingrich’s endless monsoon of hypocrisy to Bill Clinton and Monicagate to Anthony Weiner’s multiple sexting scandals to literally every single member of the GOP who has failed to remove an unrepentant sex offender from the Oval Office.
**Politician my ass. Trump is a glorified carnival barker and snake oil salesman who was installed via Russian malfeasance. The only thing he’s capable of leading is a business venture into bankruptcy.
I digress. How can we fix this? Well, I’m not sure it can be fixed. Or maybe it can, but I don’t think it’s likely. Because that would take effort that the entire male collective is probably not willing to make. And while I am not one to victim-blame, I can’t help but point a finger at all the women who bristle at the “feminist” label, who hesitate to believe other women and who parrot that “What were you wearing?” bullshit, who badmouth other women arbitrarily, and who are so desperate for male approval that they are willing to potentially harm every woman including themselves.
Anyway, the first thing we need to do is eradicate male entitlement, particularly cishet white male entitlement. As someone who was raised to believe the universe was going to hand me everything I wanted, I know the damage this does, not only to the people we might hurt but to ourselves. And when I say I was raised that way, I don’t necessarily mean by my parents; the damage was done largely by the entitled males around me, and the media as well.
Think about it: How many times have you seen a movie or television series where a physically-average-at-best male character is romantically linked to a woman who’s out of his league? Take Kevin James, for example; on screen he’s been paired up with Leah Remini, Erinn Hayes, and Maria Bello. I’m not trying to body-shame Kevin James, or any such actor, but beyond the fact that it’s disappointing to see a schlub held to a lower standard than his female counterpart it also sends the message that men are entitled to beautiful women without putting in much effort themselves.
Beyond that, we can raise our sons not to be shitty kids who grow up into shitty adults. That includes enforcing rules and levying consequences for bad behavior, teaching empathy and respect for consent, and never uttering the phrase “boys will be boys”, because the behavior that usually precedes such a statement should not be tolerated. And while I agree that we must raise our daughters not to accept abuse from men, and to fight when it’s necessary to do so – largely because many of the parents raising those men are doing a poor job – I posit that it shouldn’t be their burden to bear. That said, if you are raising a son in a responsible manner, you have my everlasting gratitude.
Better sex education would help, too. If we teach kids, or at least teenagers, what sex really is rather than presenting it in the context of reproduction – because I know that when I got my first sex ed lesson in the eighth grade I was disappointed that the only thing that was discussed was genetics – it would help to remove the stigma and the shame that surrounds sex, especially for women. Taking away the shame might lessen the tendency to victim-blame, as well as the hesitation to report sexual assault. Which could in theory reduce the number of such assaults overall. Or at least, one can hope.
(I realize that the aforementioned societal shame is part of the reason why comprehensive sex education doesn’t exist, at least in the United States; and much of this shame is the work of organized religion. So how about we revoke the tax-exempt status of any religious institution that contributes to it? And just to drive home the point, have their tax dollars go toward funding Planned Parenthood.)
When rape does occur, give the perpetrators hard time, and get judges who aren’t on board with this the fuck off the bench. Hell, charge them with obstruction of justice and lock them up too. It should go without saying that we need to stop giving attention to attention-seeking assholes who seek prominence through their misogyny. Don’t even share memes that talk about how stupid they are, because they thrive on that. And definitely don’t vote for these miscreant fucks when they emerge from their rat-holes to run for office.
If you don’t feel capable of enacting systemic reform, just do your part as an individual. Guys: Recognize that women don’t owe us anything. Don’t slide into a woman’s DMs if you don’t know her or have any reason to believe that she wants to hear from you. Assume that she doesn’t want to see your dick; the number of people who do want to see it is infinitesimal, and the odds of her being one of them is even smaller. In all things, obtain consent or back off.
And women: Stick together, because consistent solidarity is the one thing that I believe will fix this. Guys have that stupid “bros before hos” adage, so may I suggest “sisters before misters”? (Actually scratch that; it’s so obvious I’m sure someone else coined it years ago.) And I know it’s the responsibility of men to be decent people and not the responsibility of women to constantly be vigilant, but do be vigilant, and don’t take any shit.
Stop trivializing the issues that concern women, whether it’s the availability of birth control, societal double standards, or sexual assault. Stop laughing at rape jokes – and more to the point, understand why they aren’t funny – even when the person telling them is our best friend. In fact, stop holding your male friends and relatives to such a low standard. By giving a misogynist the comfort of your love and friendship, you give him no reason to ever alter his behavior. But by taking a step away, and letting him know why, you force him to reflect and perhaps clearly see the harm he’s causing.
We must strive to do better than we’re already doing. Listen to the survivors of sexual assault and harassment. Believe them. Understand that women by and large do not fabricate such accusations for the purposes of money or fame, especially when the abuse that is subsequently heaped upon them negates any such reward. Show women respect, and call out anyone who doesn’t. It’s not easy, I know; most of my guy friends are long gone. But it’s necessary.
I’m going to close with a verse from one of my favorite hip-hop songs, “Keep Ya Head Up”. To a musical genre rife with sexism, Tupac Shakur’s 1993 tribute to women was a refreshing counterpoint. And although Shakur would be charged with sexual assault later that year, I cannot refrain from using the lyrics of this feminist anthem – a label he might well have rejected – to further my point.
And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman
And our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women
Do we hate our women?
I think it’s time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women
Be real to our women
And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies
That’ll hate the ladies
That make the babies
And since a man can’t make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
If you missed part one of this three-part series, read it here.
Just as I didn’t understand that racism can and does exist in a form less overt than racial slurs and lynching, I didn’t always grasp that a man doesn’t have to put his hands on somebody, or even be in the same room with them, in order to violate their consent. And that’s pretty disappointing in retrospect; for someone who’d rather hurt himself than another person, it can be difficult and even shameful to acknowledge that your idea of harm doesn’t align perfectly with that of the person at risk.
And that’s not to say that these violations were the sort to drive a person to see a therapist, join a support group, or take anti-anxiety meds. But just because something isn’t on the more extreme or offensive side of the spectrum doesn’t make it right. Not to mention that even if the only side effect is the other person thinking you’re just another clueless, entitled male, that’s still pretty hard to live down, at least for me.
There’s been much said about unsolicited cock shots, certainly by individuals more qualified to speak about them than myself. To my credit, I’ve never been one to lead with a photograph of my penis, glorious though it may be. I’ve always been a fan of more traditional greetings along the lines of “Hello”, at least when opening communication with someone for the first time. So the thought of someone springing such a picture on an unsuspecting person who has given them no reason to think such a thing is welcome is abhorrent to me. At best, it is ignorance born of entitlement and apathy, and at worst it is malicious visual assault; either way, it sucks.
These days it’s rare that I send a cock shot to a woman, but when it happens I treat the transaction like a drug dealer who’s wary of entrapment: The recipient needs to state in no uncertain terms what they want me to send, even if we’ve spent the last two hours mutually masturbating via private message and trading dirty talk and sexy photos. Departing from the drug dealer parallel, this is not because I want to cover my own ass from a legal perspective but because I would feel like shit if I misinterpreted the rhythm of the conversation and sent the other person something they didn’t want to see. But I don’t think I was always this conscientious.
In the past I might have sent a cock shot on the assumption that, based on the steamy conversation we were having, the other person must have wanted to see it: “She’s mentioned my cock half a dozen times in the last four messages and has talked about putting it in multiple places on her body. I’d better show her what she’s dealing with.” I might have sent a cock shot if I’d done so by request in a previous conversation: “She’s seen it before and liked it, so she’s fine seeing it again.” I’d like to think I never sent one out of the blue to a person who’d seen it before, i.e. outside of an ongoing conversation without verifying that it was a good time to do so, to say nothing of whether she even wanted to see it again; however, I can’t guarantee that this is true. Hell, I’m pretty sure I once sent someone a cock shot in the midst of several non-sexual photos in a misguided attempt to be cheeky or flirty or whatever.
On a completely different tact – though still related to consent – over the last few years I’ve noticed many bloggers and Twitter users, especially those who write about sex and relationships or who share sexual photos, decrying the use of terms of endearment such as “babe”, “sweetheart”, “sweetie”, “dear”, and “honey” by random men who don’t know them well enough to address them in such a fashion. It is a perfectly understandable perspective; using any of these pet names suggests familiarity where none actually exists. And while I’m sure many men who are guilty of doing so consider it complimentary, it’s actually pretty disrespectful.
Anyway, I wish I’d noticed many bloggers and Twitter users decrying this practice a decade ago because it’s definitely something of which I have been guilty. The following may sound like responsibility-dodging at its worst, but it literally never occurred to me that this sort of thing could be seen as disrespectful until I noticed a groundswell of opposition amongst the women I follow on Twitter (and the women those women follow and retweet). Call me a typical ignorant male, but I just figured it was a pleasant way of referring to someone whose actual name I don’t know. The idea that it wasn’t my place to do so, or even that any given woman might not like any possible form of address I might use, was something I unfortunately needed to be told.
When I asked for the thoughts of my Twitter friends, BeingBella said, “It’s a total turnoff to have someone I don’t know well call me ‘babe’, ‘hun’, ‘doll’, etc.”
DearSweetSub offered, “I’m not a fan. I feel like pet names are earned.”
“I dislike it,” said Miss Scarlet. “Especially babe. Terms like that make my skin crawl.”
And according to Sophic Siren: “To me there’s a difference between using a pet name and using those terms, which a lot of people raised rural and/or southern use routinely, generally indicating being warm / friendly / welcoming/ nonthreatening. It can create unintential friction based in cultural differences. Case in point: Not long ago I got upset someone I didn’t know was calling me sis. I finally asked them to stop. Later, I realized it was a cultural thing. To them it was generally nice, like I use sweetie etc. To me sis is special. But fine if I’d understood cultural context. I try to remember but I was raised rural midwestern and it’s just such an ingrained thing in my everyday language I often don’t realize I’m doing it. I do make a point of not doing it with men I want to go stop bothering me, because I don’t want to convey being open or friendly.”
As I was wrapping my head around this revelation I considered that none of the women I’d addressed in a familiar way had ever told me that they prefer I not do so. I remembered the mea culpa I’d use as a much younger man when the woman I was dating expected me to know exactly what I was doing wrong without being told: “I’m not a mind reader!” And it’s true that without admonishment bad behavior is not likely to change, but I had to consider the position of the woman being addressed: A man who feels sufficiently entitled to use an impersonal pet name when speaking to a woman is likely to feel sufficiently entitled to call that woman a cunt when she politely corrects him, or maybe even do worse in retaliation for damaging his fragile ego.
I have apologized to women to whom I’ve done this. Generally speaking the apology is brushed off as though it’s no big deal, but I still feel retroactively foolish for the social faux pas. It’s not unlike the time I accidentally stepped on the tail of my friend’s dog. That was twenty years ago, and every time I see my friend or even drive down his street I can’t help but remember poor Fido yelping in pain.
These days I see the responses to the average sexy photo posted by a woman, whether on Twitter or some other platform, and it’s enough to make me wince. Beyond the expected grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, all the instances of “baby”, “darling”, and “love” come off as exceedingly creepy, the digital equivalent of being pawed by a locker room’s worth of men who believe it’s their right. At best it’s clueless, while at worst it’s an insidious attempt to imply possession: “My use of this word to address you is an assertion that you exist to titillate me.” It’s just gross.
The woman being addressed in this way is often sharing something sexual, often involving her body. This is risky enough given how willing we as a society are to respond to a woman’s sexual agency with slut-shaming and rape threats; having a bunch of throwback miscreants crawl out of the sludge to pelt her with presumptuous expressions of unwarranted intimacy is just adding insult to injury.
Throughout my life I’ve had no trouble acknowledging that I’m not perfect. However, it’s always been my intention to come close. In my single days I used to tell the women I dated that I wasn’t perfect, but that I’d do my best to convince them otherwise. And generally-speaking, I think I did well. Not always great. Maybe not always good, even, but I never deliberately caused harm, and when I did so inadvertently I always tried to make amends. Still, it can be humbling to come face-to-face with the reality that you were sometimes way off the mark, especially after decades of the world kissing your ass just because of the societal cohort to which you belong.
If I was this clueless then, it stands to reason that I’m similarly misguided about other things now. Sometimes I wonder what views or actions I might regret in a few years. What everyday behaviors might be seen as microaggressions in the future. But given my self-awareness I can’t foresee anything specific that is part of my life today being undesirable in five years. I’m not saying there won’t be anything, only that I can’t predict it. So I remain facing forward. I can only strive to do my best, and hopefully be better than I was the day before.
On Twitter I think I’ve managed to cultivate a pretty good reputation. If asked to talk about me, I suspect that those on the platform who know me best would speak of my kind, generous heart and my unwillingness to judge others or even speak unkindly, a general attitude of “live and let live”. Granted, I’d love to be known for my charm and sense of humor, my sexual prowess including but not limited to my skill at locating and pleasuring the G-spot, and my cock; however, I’m more than happy to be thought of simply as a good person, especially given the woeful state of the world in 2020. If I can bring some light to the darkness that’s fine with me.
In addition to being a geeky font of interesting pop culture knowledge and an advocate for mental health who always tries his hardest to see the positive, I’m a die-hard leftist, and an unabashed feminist who acknowledges that such values have probably cost him his guy friends. I’m very pro-representation in entertainment despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that I’m a cishet white male who grew up in the 1980s very accustomed to seeing people who looked like myself on screen and on the printed page. I’m empathetic to a fault and I try my best to always be self-aware because nothing pisses me off like a person who’s managed to convince themselves that they are the only person on the planet who matters.
Beyond that, I talk about the importance of consent so often that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s overcompensation or even just an act, but it isn’t. Obviously there are many women in my life who I love dearly and who I don’t want to imagine being victimized. But that’s not why consent is so important to me; I’ve felt this way since long before I was the father of a daughter, or even married to a woman.
All that is not to say that I’ve always been as decent as I’d like to think I am now. I have benefited from my while male privilege, and I probably continue to do so even without always realizing it. Being part of the dominant cohort on the planet, or at least in this country, has not only paid off for me on a personal level but as also perhaps taken away some of the urgency with which I resist, and in fact actively battle against, the rapidly encroaching fascism that threatens the United States.
I was largely unaware of the concept of institutional racism, and less aware of more covert forms of discrimination (as well as the likelihood that I had benefited from it, if not actively participated in it outright), until perhaps a decade ago. Until then, the only racism I really understood as such was the sort that manifests itself in hate speech and cross-burning. Don’t judge me too harshly for this; the default societal attitude seems to be that white people shouldn’t feel bad about treating people of color like shit as long as they’re not using ethnic slurs or wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods while they do it.
But less obvious forms of racism such as banning dreadlocks in the workplace, assuming Black shoppers are shoplifters, calling the police on children of color selling lemonade and families of colors barbecuing in the park – hell, even gentrification? All of that is probably akin to self-preservation in the minds of the white collective.
On a similar note, I’ve always bristled at toxic masculinity, even before I was aware that it was a thing that had a name. I sometimes wonder why I’ve so easily and willingly adopted the “feminist” label and why most of my friends are women. Is it because of the close relationship I had with my mom growing up? Is it because I consider it a necessary part of my far-left persona or a fundamental aspect of being – pardon the expression – woke? Most alarming of all, could it be because my overactive sexual appetite draws me to individuals I might view as potential partners? Upon closer reflection the reason is because while I’ve had unhealthy romantic relationships with women over the course of my life- abusive, even – the ratio of women who’ve victimized me to men who’ve done so is skewed toward men, and it’s not even close.
As a child I was short, soft-spoken, often overweight, and probably overly sensitive, something that was definitely viewed as feminine back then. I wasn’t particularly into sports, cars, or any of the things a boy was expected to like in the 1980s. I was an easy mark for bullies, and even just for boys who were threatened by non-conformity.
However, there have been times in my life when I exhibited behaviors that came too close to toxicity to align with my current values, or even my values at the time. When I have erred in this fashion I don’t think I did so with malicious intent; more likely it was the result of entitlement, laziness, or acquiescence to gender roles with which, despite their reinforcement throughout my childhood and early adulthood, I never felt comfortable. When the only examples you have to follow walk a very traditional, mainstream path, it can be difficult to ignore what you think is expected of you in favor of what you actually want.
One thing I’d like to believe is that I was always conscious and respectful of consent. I am reminded of a date I went on in my late twenties: Dinner, a movie, and then a drive to Ocean Beach in San Francisco. We didn’t waste much time watching the autumn moonlight reflecting off of the crashing waves before the groping and making out began. We hadn’t been dating long, and while there had been some very basic intimacy, we hadn’t yet had sex. I was looking forward to it happening eventually, but I was never one to rush or force things.
When my hands ventured from her breasts down to the insides of her thighs she asked me to slow it down a little. I did, of course. And while I may have felt bad for trying to take it further than she wanted, I respected her feelings, I appreciated her taking care of herself, and I admired her for not letting me move things outside of her comfort zone. I didn’t get angry. I didn’t try to manipulate or guilt her into letting me do whatever I wanted. That’s never been something I was okay with. As entitled as I may have felt to various things throughout my life, and for that matter as focused as I’ve always been on sex, I will say without hesitation that I’ve never been one to disregard another person’s “no”, certainly not in a sexual context.
For a long time I assumed that most women were annoyed by my propensity for checking in. After all, the sudden focus on consent in the form of the “No Means No” acquaintance rape awareness campaign around the time that I came of age in the early 1990s was met with ridicule from certain corners; as I wrote in 2014:
“I remember my college days in the mid-1990s, when women didn’t seem quite as marginalized as they do today. In this much more politically-correct time, it was drummed into the collective brain of my generation that getting explicit consent was vital, so much so that the phenomenon was frequently satirized in the form of crude cartoons and comedy sketches depicting amorous couples stopping just long enough to have a formal contract notarized allowing sex to take place without legal or criminal ramifications.”
I knew some of the women I dated or even slept with casually were relieved by my attentiveness and appreciated my check-ins, so I didn’t worry too much. However, in the wake of #metoo, and given all that I now know about sexual assault being a near-universal experience among women, I think far more appreciated it than were annoyed by it, even if they acted put off at the time, likely out of a sense of propriety or a desire to reassure my male ego. I hope they felt safe with me.
All of the above is not to say that I’m perfect. I try to be, of course, maybe even harder than I should. It is my intention to always be self-aware and to consider how my words and actions might affect others. And while I think I do a pretty good job, I know I’m not always successful. While I haven’t had sex with someone who didn’t want to (as far as I know), I admit I’ve violated women’s boundaries in other ways. Ways that were perhaps not as traumatic as physical sexual assault might have been, but ways that I should have been more conscious of nonetheless.
I hate to leave you in suspense; Part 2 will look closely at how I’ve failed to respect the consent of others. Please don’t think poorly of me until you’ve read it.
This isn’t actually an advertisement for a specific brand of faucet but if it was I’d probably buy said faucet.
See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!
As soon as I’m done washing my hair I’d love to wash yours.
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Happy Holidays! Wishing you much happiness in 2020 and beyond.
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“I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes. The Devil’s eyes.” – Halloween (1978)
As Thursday was Halloween, this is Prompt Week at Sinful Sunday. “Quote Me a Halloween” is the prompt, and I have chosen to interpret a quote from my favorite horror movie, John Carpenter’s Halloween.
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As I dry off, I’m imagining your hands playfully tugging down my towel. You know I wouldn’t stop you.
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