Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Desired/Desirer.

I got an email the other day offering me "tribute" for my "time" as a dominatrix. A little annoyed and a little amused, I shared this with a male friend. "It must be interesting being a woman," he said.

In other words, to be the desired instead of the desirer. Because he actually is a top, and although he's young and good-looking and lots of fun, ain't no one paying him. There aren't a lot of men who get paid for sexual acts with women, and guys don't spend a lot of time fending off unsolicited offers to get paid for fucking women. (If they did, they'd swiftly realize that "I'm not someone you'd actually like, and I'm not interested in making this good for you, so would it help if I asked you to break the law for me?" is not all that that awesome a proposition.)

I try to not be too sexist in my relationships with boys, but I have to admit, I sometimes fall into the "desired" mode, just because it's available to me and it's so easy. I let myself be picked up more often than I attempt to pick up, I receive more date-requesting emails and phone calls than I send, and although I sometimes go halves on dates and sometimes let the guy pay if he insists, I never insist on paying for him. I should, because in the long run it would help combat the highly damaging "woman has something man wants" sexual paradigm, but I never feel that I have to, and hey, food's not cheap. Taking the pursuer role would even the Great Balance Of Gender Roles, but it just wouldn't make my life any easier.

It's unfortunate, though, because guys do have something I want, something I would pursue and possibly even pay for if I had to. Society just doesn't force me to prove that. I accept the attention of pursuer-mode guys because free food and free sex is too good a deal to pass up, not because the food compensates me for the sex--but it looks the same from the outside.

39 comments:

  1. I don't quibble with your argument (which is fine); I quibble with your word choice. Specifically: desire can be mutual even if one party or another is uninterested in either sex or a particular representative of their gender. One may have desire without taking action on it; the mere lack of action does not indicate a lack of desire.

    Furthermore, I'm also going to assume that even when a man is the initiator, that the female recipient is doing more than DEIGNING to allow this fortunate male access to her -- that she, too, has some desire for sex... as you can attest, I'm sure.

    My major beef with the current Balance of Gender Roles is how.... RESTRICTIVE it is! As a male, I can't just walk up to some woman who seems intelligent and healthy (and is thereby attractive) and say, "Hi; you're attractive. Wanna get coffee?" I'm fine if they say NO -- that's their prerogative. But even though I'm expected to be the initiator, I often feel punished for it -- as though I'm presuming too much by TAKING the initiative.

    I once read an account written by a transman who shuddered at the way he was treated after transitioning. "Now people assume I'm dangerous at first glance; they'll go to the other side of the road if they see me at night. Not because I look any different than my peers, but just because I'm a man."

    Of course, the opposite aspect of the double standard is just as bad, and just as irritating to me. But I haven't experienced it directly, so I'll withhold comment.

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  2. (If they did, they'd swiftly realize that "I'm not someone you'd actually like, and I'm not interested in making this good for you, so would it help if I asked you to break the law for me?" is not all that that awesome a proposition.)

    And this differs that much from working for a large company in corporate America today how? ;)

    try to not be too sexist in my relationships with boys, but I have to admit, I sometimes fall into the "desired" mode, just because it's available to me and it's so easy. I let myself be picked up more often than I attempt to pick up, I receive more date-requesting emails and phone calls than I send, and although I sometimes go halves on dates and sometimes let the guy pay if he insists, I never insist on paying for him. I should, because in the long run it would help combat the highly damaging "woman has something man wants" sexual paradigm, but I never feel that I have to, and hey, food's not cheap. Taking the pursuer role would even the Great Balance Of Gender Roles, but it just wouldn't make my life any easier.

    So in the periodic conflict between doing what you believe to be right, and doing what's simply easier, you usually choose the easier way out?

    Tsk tsk tsk. I'm not sure the pequeninos would countenance such a stance. Do you ever wake up in the dark and hear the vrrting of the meerschweinin, Clarice? :)

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  3. Jack gets points for referencing "Speaker for the Dead" and "Silence of the Lambs" within two sentences. :P

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  4. Of course you don't hit on people as often as they hit on you, Holly. Presuming at least some of your offers are from guys who seem feasible, you don't have much reason to be going out looking for guys - they're coming to you. I don't think this makes you a bad person. If guys had offers from attractive, available chicks all the time, they probably wouldn't make the effort to go out prowling, either.

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  5. What if "woman has something man wants" is just plain true? Then what?

    This is not from the point of view of trying to get you to accept it, this is from the point of view of finding the idea extremely depressing but fearing perhaps life is in fact depressing this way.

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  6. "If guys had offers from attractive, available chicks all the time, they probably wouldn't make the effort to go out prowling, either."


    This pretty much describes my current sex life, to my utter astonishment, and is a very true statement.

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  7. I agree, Jack gets cool points. Though I don't think you're under any obligation to go forth and actively fight heteronormativity--though it might be *fun*. You've been hit on enough times you know what's attractive and whats irritating(and read enough pua lit, b/c not all of their stuff is complete crap, just some aspects and the underlying philosophy('the enemy's gate is down'))

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  8. What if "woman has something man wants" is just plain true? Then what?

    Well, it is, as far as that statement goes. I think the issue is that man has something woman wants too, but the way the traditional paradigm is set up it's not readily apparent if you're NOT a woman that this is true.

    Mostly it makes me flash back to being a teenage girl and being on that end of the hormone surge. The desire for male attention is there and deeply powerful, and the disappointment if they just don't notice and don't pursue is crushing; it's just a more ambiguous and less direct experience of rejection. You WANT boys, even if you're really not altogether sure to do with one, but you're also profoundly conscious that you're supposed to be the pursued rather than the pursuer. Girls who ask are even more pathetically desperate than ones who dress in skimpy outfits and always find a reason to hang out near boys doing boy things.

    Teenagers as a whole are about as socially conservative when it comes to gender roles as the Southern Baptist Convention, really. Just delete all the bits about modesty and a fair amount of chastity.

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  9. Mostly it makes me flash back to being a teenage girl and being on that end of the hormone surge. The desire for male attention is there and deeply powerful...

    OMG yes. When I was in high school if a hot guy walked by I'd swivel my whole head around to watch him go by. I couldn't help it.

    More recently, during those times when I was single but seeing someone promising-but-we're-not-ready-for-naked-stuff-yet, I'd have to get myself off two or three times before every date so I wouldn't get overenthusiastic and jump him before we were ready.

    True story.

    And I did go after the boys I wanted when I was a teenager (is anyone really surprised?), despite being cripplingly shy. Either my assertiveness put the boys off or they really just weren't into me, though, because I didn't have a whole lot of dating success back then.

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  10. You too? I actually did have a male friend tell me at the time that what he'd been told wasn't that I wasn't attractive, but that I was "really scary".

    Teenagers: most ruthless enforcers of gender roles ever.

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  11. PAID for sex? The default average male in this scenario can almost never GIVE IT AWAY, he's too busy competing with others who are trying to be bigger/buffer/skinny jeans-ier, whatever the "in thing" of the moment is, in order to make the offer of their sexuality more attractive. And I do see why Mousie finds it depressing, but to the extent that women's behavior in the aggregate is a pressure for guys to be better, stronger, faster, keener, more attentive to women, and more intuitive, this is a good thing. And it's not like we can change it anyway, because women aren't suddenly going to perform the male role in the mating dance.

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  12. because women aren't suddenly going to perform the male role in the mating dance.

    ...Except two of us just said that we do...

    Perhaps (gasp!) not all women interact with men in the same way?

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  13. Eurosabra - Oh come on, the "default average male" has sex. You (and PUA culture in general) seem to have this wierd belief that 80% of men are rotting in involuntary celibacy, when all my observations of the real world suggest that the majority of men have a long-term partner and/or actually do okay with the ladies.

    Yes, women prefer men who are more attractive given the choice (how dare we), but there's a lot of women out there and Mr. Skinny Jeans is probably taking only one at a time off the market. Unless you play the "well, under an HB8 isn't really a woman" game, there are plenty of sexually available women to go around and in practice they DO go around.

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  14. To add to Holly's statement, I'd also like to say that a) my bf is a skinny little feminine crossdresser (which is what I and most of my peers prefer) so clearly a guy doesn't have to conform to the stereotype of big buff masculinity in order to get laid.

    and b) before I met my darling boy, I had forty-odd male partners who did, somehow, manage to give away their icky icky boysex to me for free. Imagine that...

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  15. Yeah, you might think that "Average Guy with a Girlfriend" is some kind of victory, but 7 median lifetime partners means lots of time alone for over 50% of men unless one's LTR's last DECADES. The CDC data says 10% of men 15-44 y.o. are virgins, 47% had not had sex in the past 12 months, and 18% had two or more female partners in the past 12 months. So sex is endemically rarer for straight men than straight women and men have certain reactions to that and they are right to do so. And the PUA 80/20 rule is true. We know that people sort by sociosexuality, which explains why all of the "Liberated Slut" claims don't really mean much for men of lower-(numbered) sociosexuality.

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  16. BTW, I am one of those 18%. Very strange indeed, but the CDC, in its majestic impartiality, must not be questioned, even if it sets the bar so very, very low.

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  17. Incidentally I don't think it really counts as taking 3 women off the market when the issue was that they, like I, hadn't had sex in (respectively) 9 months (me), 12 months (#1), 4 years (#2), ever (#3). Sociosexuality.

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  18. The hilarious thing about PUAs is that they simultaneously believe that women aren't into sex and that a woman who "gives it up too easily" is a slut (and therefore doesn't count as a "woman" and shouldn't be pursued). PUAs believe women (or at least the kind of women they want to score with) need to be coerced into sex, which means PUAs are specifically targeting women who either aren't into sex or aren't into them. And so they try to coerce the women into sleeping with them, and because they have to coerce them, it clearly means that women don't like sex as much as men do (except for those nasty sluts who obviously don't count) and so the cycle continues.

    All the chicks who love sex - who would shove you up against the wall and snarl "I want your cock NOW" - are busy playing with boys who got over that madonna/whore bullshit in high school.

    Just sayin'.

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  19. perversecowgirl said, my bf is a skinny little feminine crossdresser (which is what I and most of my peers prefer) so clearly a guy doesn't have to conform to the stereotype of big buff masculinity in order to get laid.

    From what I hear, that's the trend; skinny feminine men are currently the ones with the best chances, rather than big buff masculine men. I know many women who appreciate both masculine or the pretty type of feminine men, some who strongly prefer feminine, none who strongly prefer masculine over pretty feminine men.

    Of course, that's just preferences. There are a lot of men who fit neither image and still get play.

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  20. none who strongly prefer masculine over pretty feminine men.

    And now you can strike none and add one. I dislike "pretty" men and all other things being equal go for very masculine features. (Of course, all things are never equal as I can't come up with a single man ever I would have slept with merely because he met my physical ideals and quite a few who I would have that didn't based on other attractive traits.)

    'druther go for a big dude with a gut who was older than me than a skinny young'n with styled hair and abs. And probably still the first dude than a buff one who struck me as a gym bunny. Strange but true.

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  21. LabRat, I admit I like hearing someone say that.

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  22. 7 median lifetime partners

    ... so ... assuming Mr. Sex-Obsessed is, indeed, talking about sexual partners here ... that would be more than me, a person who has never had a monogamous relationship.

    Sorry, a woman who has never had a monogamous relationship, and who actively has pursued all the people she's fucked.

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  23. From what I hear, that's the trend; skinny feminine men are currently the ones with the best chances,

    It does seem like super-pretty Emo kids abound these days. But, just to be clear, I was coercing skinny boys into wearing my panties since high school (late 80s/early 90s) - well before it was any kind of trend. Likewise, I know tons of chicks who go for masculine hairy "teddy bear" types.

    As long as a guy pays suitable attention to grooming and hygiene and has reasonable social skills, someone will probably be attracted to him at some point, is what I'm saying. It's not as dire as Eurosabra seems to think.

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  24. Yes, but you're poly, in a stable set of relationships, which makes you extra-pervy and your partners get to count, I dunno, double or triple. Plus bonuses for multiple-partner play at the same time, plus isn't your "lifestyle just an excuse for orgies"? You have what we want.
    /PUA stereotype of poly people

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  25. The above with /sarc tag intended, tongue-in-cheek.

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  26. I love chasing women. As the old sailor's joke goes, "I spend my money on women and booze, and the rest of it I waste foolishly."

    I can't take it with my after I'm gone, and it's easy enough to make more, so if I can spend it with and on women that I want and admire, then that sounds like a win-win situation to me.

    If attention, free food, and free sex sound like too good a deal to pass up, then it sounds like everything is going great.

    Desire, and acting on it, is fun.

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  27. RLA - The problem with that is:

    -If women are to be "chased," then sometimes it's hard for the ones who really don't want you to distinguish themselves from the ones who are playing hard to get.

    -If you spend money/attention on a woman, you may feel that she "owes" you after a certain point.

    -A woman who wants a guy who isn't chasing her (because he's not interested? or because he thinks he doesn't have a shot? or because he just doesn't hasn't considered it? she can't know) has no good way to approach him.

    -Firm gender roles in general, be they as serious as "men work and women stay home" or as goofy as blue and pink, suck. They create this huge perceived divide between the genders where we should really admit that 98% of our traits overlap.

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  28. You have what we want.

    Then you shouldn't be trying this "dating" bullshit. You don't get what I have that way. :P

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  29. I don't really like "dating", it's really inefficient but sometimes you can't overcome a woman's framing of the process by offering spontaneity as an alternative. And there's no need to "pick-up" someone who is already into you, thus the PUAs developed systems for attracting stereotypically-attractive women, the whole idea is to offer an her an expanded category of "sexually attractive guy" that, mirabile dictu, includes you. It's not that sluts shouldn't be pursued, it's that they should not be disproportionately invested in beyond the "sex for sex's sake" relationship they have pursued with other men. Cow, milk, free, etc. A fair, non-transactional interaction.

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  30. Holly,

    I absolutely agree that gender roles create artificial and harmful divides.

    I think that no matter my gender or gender preference, I'd enjoy pursing the people that I was interested in. I'm not trying to argue that men and women should follow a pursuer/pursued arrangement, but that the pursuer can genuinely enjoy themselves without any sense of resentment towards the situation.

    You make some very good points, and I'd like to offer my views into them.

    - I'm not into hard to get. That reads the same as disinterest to me. I don't want to pursue someone who's not responding with enthusiastic co-operation. Otherwise, as you say, I would risk inflicting myself on a person who's not interested.

    - Attention/money/food/whatever never creates any kind of "owed debt". As you've said, no one owes their body to anybody or anything else. I've had dates that happily ended with a "Good night" and nothing else. C'est la vie. Those dates were still worth it.

    - I like pursuing, but I also enjoy being approached.

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  31. I don't really like "dating", it's really inefficient but sometimes you can't overcome a woman's framing of the process by offering spontaneity as an alternative.

    This "framing" you speak of? It's often women knowing that if they have sex with a guy too soon he'll stop thinking of her as a human being and start thinking of her as just some slut - and then he'll disappear.

    It's not that sluts shouldn't be pursued, it's that they should not be disproportionately invested in beyond the "sex for sex's sake" relationship they have pursued with other men.

    Case in point.

    Now, try to follow me here. Some women...have sex with a guy on the first date...because they like him. They like that particular guy, they see relationship potential with that particular guy, and they're sex-positive enough not to want to make the sex part of the equation into some drawn-out game of cat-and-mouse.

    A lot of the women that guys dismiss as "sluts" aren't sleeping with every guy we meet; we're sleeping only with guys we really like, and it only happens rarely, but we're having the sex sooner than the guys are accustomed to.

    ...Until we realize that being open about our desires is making guys run away and never call again. Then a lot of us give up and conform to the cat-and-mouse standard so we can hear guys whine about how women are always too roundabout and circumspect.

    I've even had to be all cat-and-mousy over finding FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS. Yeah, that's right, even when my clearly stated goal has been to find ongoing casual sex, guys have been spooked by how soon I slept with them and disappeared from my radar - thus denying themselves the opportunity to have regular, fun bed-romps with no coercion involved.

    Eventually I learned to sniff out and avoid the Madonna/whore guys. Then I met my bf, with whom I went to a sex shop on our first date and got naked on our second and we've been inseparable ever since.

    Really, I think the slut-shaming bullshit stems from low self-esteem: the guy doesn't see why a woman could possibly find him appealing, and therefore if she fucks him on the first date she must have low standards and fuck every guy on the first date.

    ...and this is why confidence (true confidence, as opposed to cocky bullshit "PUA confidence") helps guys get laid: a truly confident guy isn't scared off by a girl who fucks him outright, without making him beg and jump through hoops.

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  32. I always thought it was funny that in the metaphor for sex, it's the woman who's the cow. Usually, if anyone has an appendage that gets squeezed and produces a whitish colloidal suspension, it's the guy.

    Also, calling women livestock is pretty terrible if they're not into that kind of thing.

    Besides, what if you're lactose intolerant?

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  33. perversecowgirl, that's really well-said.

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  34. Tee-hee. No, it's just that I'm not going to spend massive amounts of money on a woman who was spontaneously sexual with lots of other men before me, but is nervous about building our relationship for fear of being abandoned because of her past or precipitous sex--she's just going to have to bond with me at a museum. I think a lot of men are really, really upset when so-called "sluts" "get religion" about monogamous dating relationships, because "dating"="man pays" in our culture, so it's automatically a form of being the beta male who pays for a relationship to develop when it was "cow/milk/free" with in her alpha cock-carousel days. That's how it's framed in men's minds and I think it's kind of a respectable male anxiety.

    The rest of the stuff you wrote about is so far beyond my experience, as I have never punished a woman by withdrawing from her, that I can't actually imagine it applying to real people in the real world. I can't think of anyone getting spooky about FWBs' past experiences--that's the POINT. Just because virtually no-one wants to f*ck me (say 1 out of 300 women I approach) doesn't make me sex-hostile.

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  35. I let myself be picked up more often than I attempt to pick up, I receive more date-requesting emails and phone calls than I send, and although I sometimes go halves on dates and sometimes let the guy pay if he insists, I never insist on paying for him. I should, because in the long run it would help combat the highly damaging "woman has something man wants" sexual paradigm, but I never feel that I have to, and hey, food's not cheap.

    This has been stuck in my head. Like perversecowgirl said, it doesn't make you a bad person. I think it would probably be a good idea to suggest going halves every time, except when the guy picked up the last check; then suggest getting it yourself. (This sounds like it's pretty much what you do already.)

    The thing is, the more one accepts the benefits of gender roles, the less convincing they'll be when they oppose other parts of those roles. Not that there's a need to be shrill about it.

    Myself, I get checks, open doors, carry bags. I'm opposed to applying the roles rigidly; I don't think opposition to their existence is empirically realistic.

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  36. No, it's just that I'm not going to spend massive amounts of money on a woman who was spontaneously sexual with lots of other men before me

    ...So these women have specifically told you that they've slept with tons of guys? Or could you be assuming that because they slept with you rather soon?

    I think a lot of men are really, really upset when so-called "sluts" "get religion" about monogamous dating relationships

    Did you even read what I said? I wasn't talking about formerly promiscuous chicks who finish sowing their wild oats and decide it's time to settle down. I said that women you're perceiving as sluts may very well have slept with you quickly but they don't do this with everyone.

    because "dating"="man pays" in our culture

    I'm increasingly feeling like that equation only applies to Madonna/whore culture. If a woman doesn't like sex then of course she's going to feel like she's owed something (gifts, free meals, security, whatever) for doing you a favour. Those of us who like sex obviously feel like the "payment" for us having sex with you is...the fact that you also had sex with us.

    I mean, I haven't taken a scientific poll or anything but I, and all my sex-loving friends, pay our own way on dates and don't see why we should be owed free stuff just for having a vagina.

    Like Mousie said: the more one accepts the benefits of gender roles, the less convincing they'll be when they oppose other parts of those roles. .

    I have never punished a woman by withdrawing from her

    Yeah, instead you punish them by assuming a) that any woman who sleeps with you without a protracted battle must fuck anything that moves and b) that any woman who's ever had casual sex with a guy is now devoid of relationshp potential.

    Frankly, I think women would prefer that you just didn't call them back. :P

    -perversecowgirl

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  37. p.s. looking back on that last comment, it looks like I'm being snooty about sluts who decide to settle down. I'm not; anyone should be free to have whatever kind of relationships suit their life at any given time.

    -perversecowgirl

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  38. Well, besides the charming Brit who had worked as a barmaid/server in a pub and had a plethora of offers, and volunteered her number as "between one and two hundred" and the woman who had tens of partners, no one has volunteered it and I've made no assumptions. And it didn't actually make a difference--the Brit was a platonic friend, and no one has actually slept with me quickly, i.e. first date, in a very long time. The only time I "ran" was in my poly phase, when the scheduling got too difficult the first time and I dropped a woman rudely, and we worked it out later on as friends. I assume that any woman who sleeps with me must be utterly without other offers, but that's because of how life with disability has tweaked me, but I've never made relationship-potential judgements on that basis. A lot of it depends on whether I can "pass" as able-bodied.

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