In, much later, reading the quoted passage again, it occurred to me of its similarity to the speech about men - just in tone - by Adrienne Barbeau's warrior-queen character Dr. Kurtz in Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094834/ - it's the dialogue with Shannon Tweed's Dr. Margo Hunt over whether or not it was morally correct to kill and consume men. Academic feminism argued over a man strapped to an altar in order to preserve the correct rule of the species or whatever. Finally it came down to violence, of course....

Also in regard to the standards in our society concerning

, it's a bit of a truism that in the Roman Empire male slaves were bought and sold -and prized as well as used, and often shared around - on the basis of their, um assets; and they were used by both men and women of the upper classes, by modern standards way too freely, and this goes down to the certain classes and the merchants and others who also had slaves; bisexuality was rather the norm than the exception, and that goes for the imperial court; it was all a bit more tactful/tasteful in most of the Greek cities (but not all the time). The Romans were rank, and while the Greeks had their kinadoi and other whoring aspects of male life in ancient Greece (cf. [I]Aeschines I: Against Timarchos]] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0002%3Ahead%3D%231 . But overall the Greeks were, while sexually open, civilized and actually more or less sane about the whole affair, in one way or another. The Romans were after booty, and liked to hand it out. Although it's a bit lurid an interesting book on all this is [[Divine Carnage:Atrocities of the Roman Emperors]], which might as well be further subtitled "a sexual history of imperial Rome". The book covers the personal peculiarites of the Julians, Commodus, Heliogabulus, and the foibles and customs of the barracks and streets, and the nature of sexual slavery; including the very high price set on well-endowed males. Or, on the other hand, on a well-educated and properly bred eunuch, cut young or old, who could have no heirs of legacy to contrive against their master....(the church continued the practice for centuries, though censuring it early on; and of course if I recall there were self-castrated eremetics (monks in retreat), or guys like that Abelard fellow who got de-balled by his enemies and became a monk, or other monks who had been castrated in war; gotta get those sopranos somewhere...). Finally eunuchs were only kept around as singers - castrati - but in the ancient past and into the Renaissance they were often powerful and rich, and in the East (meant in the old way, meaning the Ottoman Empire, particularly Constantinople itself), they were rich and politically powerful, ifalso willingly at instance sufferance of death for the smallest scandal, or because of some public/religious outrage.

Then there's the male gardeners of the palaces, and the boatmen of the kayiks (the old water limousines, in the grand old style, which were the stylish way to get around the city and its various shoreline's burbs and villas. were hired for their looks and builds, and were often prey to members of the court, although it was death to transgress the harem; but while sultans and princes exalted their men, the sultanas were notable for devouring them; it was said among the kayik crews that it was a man's doom if the eyes of a certain princess, a sultan's sister, fell upon him; for she was too powerful - and beautiful - to resist, and she would use him until he was done, and then because he might talk would have him put to death; he was only a slave...

but then so was the grand vizier, as also nearly all high public officials (brother-princes were not allowed power, and until a certain year regularly executed upon the heir's accession in order to prevent succesion disputes).
; the gardeners were more or less exempt from this exploitation because they were military, more or less the palace bodyguard/regiment as well as the tenders of the rich flowerbeds favoured by the Ottoman court; not the same thing as a slave, although all Ottoman lives were forfeit at the whim of the dynasty or its other servants; but lovers especially so in some cases...(it was nastier in some eras of the harem, with women being dumped in sacks into the Bosporus to dispose of them...).

Another point about the prejudice spoken of in the quote is partly rooted in Christianity's persecution of paganism (where the gods fooled around prolifically, with each other and with human), the suppression of pagan-style life and society and moral and cultural values. But also in the ending of the market for slaves, at least at the mass-market and very public level that it once was.

Not meaning to be lurid, but it's always interesting to me how interesting modern people are of the different ways of the past; this especially including moral extermists who point to a non-existing order in the past re sexual conduct/mores; there was no such thing, and for most of humanity's history men were just as exploited as women, especially as regards slavery. And often far more valuable.

It was even worse in Babylon and Persia (and eunuchdom far more powerful, but in consideration just now it's likely that it's a very ancient practice, dating to the leading male of a tribe castrating othe males young to prevent their challenging him; and also as handy submissives, for errands and if so inclined, some what-not. The usual practice by the time civilization rolled around seemed to be that parents might castrate a kid young to give him opportunity in the world; many of the powerful came from the slums and slave families of the ancient cities as well as from its countryside, and as captives in war; at one time castrations were almost as common as circumcision, if not much moreso - without the lavish ceremony and celebrations conferred on circumcisions in some cultures.

The rider to this is that, in many cultures, not all eunuchs turned out to be sexual dysfunctional or to have lost their appetites for sex because of the castration; some did not bloat or necessarily become effeminate; and some were apparently able to have erections. This known because of controversies over members of the harem servant-staff were involved in various scandals (and repeatedly over the years) with imperial concubines as well as (sometimes) wives.

As servants in the all-female harem, where only the Sultan of all full-bodied males could go (after a certain age, as children were raised in the harem), some eunuchs had a field day until they were caught out, it seems.

Brings to mind various tidbits of the Decameron - the guy who played deaf and stupid to get a job as gardener in a nunnery, who let himself be used and abused by all the girls/women until caught out my the Mother Superior, who he had over a barrel rather than risk him scandalizing the name of the monastery if he were to expel them, and so winds up getting to stay, as well as the Mother Superior as well as all the rest of them.

The Decameron may sound exploitational to a woman's ears; I'm just reciting one of the many lurid stories in the Decameron (well, 80% or more are lurid in some way, by modern standards). I believe the particular argument of the day this one was told on had to do with getting the most impossible thing in the world, and everyone being satisfied in the end (he was a good gardener, big and strong and other than being a skank a hard worker around the place, and also well-endowed....and super-smart as well, cleverly point out to the Mother Superior that it was he had been exploited, even though he pretended to be nothing more than a handsome, and well-built, young oaf/stud. Oh, by the way, he'd seduced them by letting his tunic rise up above his waist while he was sleeping, though he wasn't sleeping, in order to display his penis size. He didn't rape them, he let them seduce him, by a bit more than a full monty (a full monty doesn't include erection, even if they are tied off); that a whole convent full of nuns would eagerly partake of a well-equipped servant would reflect poorly on the reputation of the convent, as he pointed out to the Mother Superior....

Hope that was fun, but then so's the whole Decameron...I should read it again one day; it's a reminder of all those vicissitudes of life and all that, and also about how crazy the world has always been, and a reminder that life in the Middle Ages wasn't all Gregorian chant and plagues and people sitting around in fancy duds with funny-looking hats.... Going to bed (4:17am).

Re a code typo which amused me when I saw it:

Sorry for the screwed up code on some i/q bits; this one makes me laugh because it's Wikipedia code for linking; I'd meant to do the italics thing from here (Wiki's is two single apostrophes on each side of the italized section; it's funny that I would confuse the two; but I use the double-square bracket so often now it's second nature, like Ctrl-I and the < and > way of doing it in raw html; been hanging on Wikipedia way too much lately, but to hopefully productive ends in the long run, but that's a story for another time...and of a wholly different nature...

That's not what I meant at all; accidental word repeat in fast-type/thought mode; I meant "unawares" or something to that effect. The point is that this is such a repressed time that even the educated often do not know much about the past, especially about moral history; they have instead a fabrication they are fed by their various religions, ideologies, whatever. And that includes feminist analyses of male behaviour, or such phenomena as female exploitation of male slaves, or of husbands for that matter, while subjected to whole collections of magazine either objectifying men in the visuals or discussing what's wrong and how to get what you want from and/or with them in the columns (money, sex, the house, the kids, whatever); yet this is, somehow, exempted from critique because it's only men who are being exploited. As if, by the way, it were something new.

Which it's not, and which is why all the contents of the above histories were served up to remind that men have long been exploited, at one time much more widely, than the bucks who are currently pulling in the bucks doing ladies' night (the article is prurient, I noted, also, in not discussing their work in gay bars, although maybe I scanned over some parts to quickly to bother noticing...).

Anyway, there's an argument to be made that ongoing deconstruction of men by women writers, whether in the non-feminist mode of that genre of women's media/thought/culture, or in the aggressive academic ideological front-of-attack (kategoria, more or less meaning to indict or to charge in ancient Greek legal terminology, comes to mind; feminist analyses of history makes me think of a legal proceeding, every bit as much as out of touch with actual reality as the moralist campaigns by the religions which smack to me of presumptions of the Final Judgement, as if history was a divine court of law, and "prison" in the afterlife was this place called hell. Feminism's approach, on the other hand, seems to prefer a living hell...

Or then there's Marlowe, I think it was:[QUOTEE]Everywhere that is not heaven is hell.

...in Doctor Faustus somewhere; pretty sure it's that version and not Goethe.

Once again, as so often in the past, Skookum1's exegesis so exceeds the quality of the original text that one is left, as it were, speechless.

That the text was produced, as it were, as a bracket to an evening’s musical performance, is even more extraordinary.

Wanted to qualify that by who I meant as "young" - I mean university age well into their late 20s and beyond, not anything younger; thought afterwards it might sound like I was hanging out in community centres "looking for trade". But no, sorry to disappoint those who want to find the dirtiest possibility in everything, that's not what I meant; in fact, the desire/willingness of Vancouverites to read worst-case sexual paranoias into even a simple "hello" or "so what do you do? is one of the most annoying things about the place; nowhere else is this screwed up about sex, no matter what Dan Savage says about us being "sexy" and such. It's a strange mix of titillation and condemnation that goes on around here, whether in print (as with the article) or in socializing.

That said, what was also meant but not included in the quoted bit was that wearing your ginch in a sauna is highly unsanitary; wearing them when you're showering is just downright silly. I think the reason is there's such a more heightened awareness of the existence of homosexuality in the general population that kids are much more self-conscious about their bodies, and about what they're taught other people want from them or to do to them, than there was before AIDS, hyped-up gay lib, and that guy Dahmer. Also, here in BC, there's the "don't talk to strangers" back-of-the-milk-carton mentality arisen from the Clifford Olson and Michael Dunahee and other fear-instilling media darlings of the '80s; those kids are all in their 20s and 30s now. And from what I've seen of them, looking sideways at people is now an inculcated, socially endemic trait.

"Why are you being friendly? What are you after? Are you a sex maniac?" is the subtext to far too many conversations in Vancouver....

That "liberated women" are also often the ones to hound guys over their friends, as if male friendship was necessarily gay, or should be or something, is an arrogance, an emasculation, a titillation; in other words, to encourage homophobic behaviour by men towards other men in order to either prove their masculinity, or because the woman doing the hounding finds such friendships a threat to her own control of her chosen mating partner.

noticed a couple of incomplete thoughts and misdirected sentence-closings that need a bit of fixing:

"and that goes for the imperial court and right down through the military to the poor and the slaves."Celts were, by the way, highly prized....

that should have had a close-bracket after "comes to mind) and then, in the contet of "there's an argument to be made that...etc...is simply more objectification and emasculation of men by women who are threatened by male masculinity...." (etc).

Gotta run for a while. I was going to post something on the history of eunuchs but it'll have to wait.

Seemed to me there was interesting stuff about eunuchs that might add a bit of 'colour' to this debate. Originally, as far as I remember they were usually valued 'slaves' and played a role in many cultures from Ming Dynasty China to Ottoman Turkey.

The name itself in Greek meant 'bed guard' but they also played important roles outside the boudoir as soldiers, administrators, personal retainers and entertainers.

The eunuch-making procedure was generally done to pre-pubescent boys - and although the surgeons doing the operation were often experienced hands it seems the consequence of the procedure was death between 75 and 90 percent of the time - "success" being more likely in younger subjects.

I won't bother with the details of the operation except to say that it frequently involved hot oil, hot sand and other grotesque methods of cauterization.

As you mentioned, some eunuchs retained their sexual potency. They were also an integral part of a system of elite slavery and achieved a high degree of power in the court as police, administrators, tax collectors and official representatives of the sovereign. Their liminal status as beings with ‘no sex’ seems to have given them an ability to move past the normal barriers that would have restricted them as ordinary slaves.

In a way, the eunuch provided one of the first examples of an individual moving from a system of outright exploitation and powerlessness to a status with a certain amount of authority and esteem - and even some upward mobility in slave states.

It was, however, quite a price to pay.

Yeah, talk about transgender politics, huh? Anyway, there's a quote from one of the grand viziers or other high Ottoman officials - himself a eunuch and also, as mentioned, inherently a slave - who waxed poetic/ironic on there being no better life, despite the inevitable price and bizarre risks that came with high position; it's quite pithy so I'll try and dig it out of Mansel's book if I can remember where it is and who it was; a reminder that fate is what you make it, and there were far worse fates in the world than great power and exalted wealth in service of the Sublime Sovereign, living in a palace in the greatest city in the world; so what if the price was that part of the job was their head, eventually (few died of natural causes), is the guy's sensibility on the subject. Politics was bloodsport in Constantinople, perhaps more than anywhere else except Julian Rome...those about to die as part of state policy, or even mob or Janissary onslaght, usually let them have a last meal, and the right to make last words (usually witty epithets, if they weren't inchoate or babbling with fear, though that applied to Sultans more than to anyone else), or in one case of a certain about-to-be-deposed/strangled Sultan, was allowed to finish his meal while.

Then there's the Sultanate of the Woman; the mad succession of puppet sultans following Suleiman the Magnificent I think, a time of sultans and caged princes used as pawns by warring mothers, who were the de facto rulers. And, not trying to be men one little bit these ladies were, it should also be said that this is regarded as one of the most bloodthirsty sequences of the Ottoman succession, as well as one of the worst eras of government. So much for more enlightened rule by women...I recommend both Mansel's Constantinople: City of the World's Desire and this other thing whose author escapes me at the moment Lords of the Horizons. Both lush and fascinating, although the latter is more pointillistic, the former almost extravagant in its detail, as if it were a lush historical novel.

And speaking of eunuchs: Mary Renault's The Persian Boy is, although only fiction, a masterful portrayal of the power and psychology of eunuchdom; the protagonist Bagoas being born of noble blood but castrated when his enemies killed his father; winds up as a castrated sextoy to some low-class merchants, then gets "sold up" to the court and bedside of Darius II, then - when Darius is assassinated - is acquired by Alexander. His deep relationship with Alexander as portrayed by Renault is entirely fictional, except for stray references in the sources (laid out in her The Nature of Alexander, which is a history rather than a work of fiction), but it's very powerful and the device allows a "fly on the wall" perspective on famous episodes of Alexander's life and ancient life (or, to Bagoas, "modern times") in general....

...while the executioners waited, politely (since until he was dead he was still Sultan...). There was something special about what he was eating, too. Figs perhaps, I can't quite recall.

Didn't mean to repeat lush; "as if it wee a lavish historical novel".

All Renault's books are excellent, although classical historians turn their noses up them (as also at Graves' Claudius books, which he himself describes as "potboilers").

Like that Wilbur Smith stuff on ancient Egypt, too; as I recall the first in the series, concerning the hidden tomb, is also told in the first person by a high-ranking court eunuch/architect (as, I believe, it happens that Imhotep was, speaking of architecture from the other thread in Tyee Books).

Good potboilers, in my view. Graves had an interesting life - d'you ever read Goodbye to all that? And of course there's his translations/versions of the Greek Myths.

No, I should read Goodbye To All That....did read Kenneth Clark's Another Part of the Wood, his autobiography (part 1), which was fascinating; like a novel, but it was his life. In the same vein, sort of, is Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, which is a marvel of style and intrigue, and some of the most beautiful writing I've seen.

Absolutely agree about Lawrence Durrell - my copies are all so used they've fallen apart- the four identical Faber paper editions - red, brown, green, blue.

There's a passage from Mountolive I always think of whenever I read something evocative or learn something new -

"He felt as one always feels in such a case, namely the vertiginous pleasure of losing an old self and growing a new one to replace it. He felt he was slipping, losing so to speak the contours of himself. Is this the real meaning of education? He had begun transplanting a whole huge intact world from his imagination into the soul of his new life...."

Very interesting stuff. Nice history. I love this stuff. But I have a question, if anybody has an answer.

Why do women laugh and play while they grope a goodlooking guy and bite him on the ass, when they would certainly call the police and insist on permanent public humiliation for men who would behave similarly toward female strippers?

Good question Bailey. I'll give you my take on it, for what it's worth - not much obviously.

I think women like the idea of controlling the action - as regards their own behavior - and think it's fine and dandy in one on one situations. In a strip club, I don't think they like seeing a demonstration of exactly the same behavior they practice individually acted out by another strong woman relative to a whole room-full-o-men

I think it cuts too close to the bone. My personal observations only. Having been to just one strip club I've never been back - not all that keen on seeing my own kind lose self-control….and surrender it to anyone.

Just me.

I commented on this towards the beginning of my ramble: the double-standard. Male-bashing is perfectly acceptable in Cosmo just like it is in Ms. or in any Woman's Studies course or other feminist-influenced academic doctrine-set. "What's wrong with men", as if simply having a penis and testicles were a crime, and as in Shannon Rupp's current article she immediately trots out rape as if all men did it or were capable of it. That's more than a gross generalization, it's an outright lie, especially because Rupp was rejoindering there being any possibility of male grievances aboug women having any validity.

I just made a stab at trying to find a weblink somebody sent me quite a while ago and can't find it; it was a man's guide to handling/dating women, in the most sexist of all contexts. So frank it must have been written, in fact, by someone with a lot of experience with Vancouver women (e.g. be an ******* and they'll flock like flies, be a nice guy and they'll treat you like shit). When I find it it'll be worth posting here: what it really is constitutes a parody of the "how to get what you want from you man" content in Cosmo-type women's rags, and "what men are really thinking" and "why men are so screwed up" stuff in the same and in Ms. etc.

How strange that ******* would be censored by the posting filter here and shit would not. I wonder if shithead is? Strange to see censorship in a forum on an article raising issues of repression and puritanism, prurience etc.

Skookum et al, I agree the topic of male vs female strippers deserved more space, other than my allusion to it with "everything is ass-backwards." Interesting that men aren't allowed entry to male stripper shows unless they're at gay bars while women can and do spend entire evenings at the cecil etc. But Skookum, I write quite extensively about the double-standard and it's one of the reason I focus so much on the various physical and psychological abuses these male strippers have to contend with. And I think it's very interesting that almost every single woman at Au Bar veiled their sexual curiosity with laughter, giggling, pointing and clutching.

I agree with you that typically women and men seem equally petrified about gay or bisexual men or men acting out being gay. Why can straight women have sex or simulate it with other women and nobody feels the need to doubt their heterosexuality. Yet when a man even glances sideways at a penis, nevermind two in close proximity, he must be gay? (or wears a bathing suit that stops above the knee!) I don't think this needs to be that way but it is mostly this way and I really doubt that 1970s feminists in ivory towers created this perception!

Re: penis versus cock, maybe wee-wee or pee-pee would suit you better?

I would also like to add that it's interesting that the meninist movement hasn't really picked up, though Fathers4justice are doing some work in that respect, mostly around family courts and child custody. Why is that, given that, as Skookum says, men have been long exploited? Why is a woman sex offender generally considered a victim of a male-dominated society by cops, psychologists and judges? I spent three days hanging out with male and female sex offenders in court-ordered "group therapy" and in my books they were all the same, particularly since they were mostly child abusers and groom their victims without using physical violence. I met teen girl babysitters charged with sex crimes (though women tend to do less time and are more likely to do no time at all in prison) who looked like the picture of innocence, so perhaps they were even more dangerous since they were considered to be much safer around kids.
Stats show that less than 2% of rapists are women, yet other polls of male prisoners or school-age kids show that up to 50% of rapists are women.

No, I just know strippers and the kind of guys they are, and that even around a woman they're going to use "their" word, instead of the quasi-medical one they might use. Who knows, maybe they were being polite with D. Egan; given that ******* is censored here it seems that prurient inhibitions are still at play, so it's reasonable guess to say "huge cock" instead of "penis of impressive dimensions" (I know that's not a quote; it's meant as an example of the difference in tone). And depending on who and when and what we're talking about, "schlong" is much more expressive than "wee-wee", especially for strippers. "Wee-wee" is also, while mildly humourous, an emasculatory term usually only used by and for little boys. At least among men, that is.

...was a soft-core bit of polite-language censorship; obviously not excised by the filter here (which is really weird because cock is a way dirtier word than *******....a-hole if you were wondering what the asterisks were for).

Danielle E

You’re a thoughtful and considered writer; still, would it be fair to say you’re trying to change the subject? The question Bailey posed was this:

In addition, I think doctrinaire feminism does have some questions to answer in that debate. Double standards don't only exist relative to the status of women v men as child abusers and the nominal subject of your essay seems attuned to the double standard Bailey is remarking.

What's your view? It has always rather puzzled me too. Is it just an aberrant collective behavior when the gals go wild on the weekend? Alternatively, what?

On the other hand, you may simply be ignoring all this and addressing a more fundamental question about male/female characteristics and the nature of homoerotic perceptions, which, it’s true, Skookum1 has addressed.

If so, I’d still like to hear your reply to Bailey’s question because it is something I’ve wondered about, as a guy who has considered himself a ‘feminist’, for some time.

No, but "liberated" women who suddenly found it OK to discuss and confront male sexuality found it titillating to point out, gossip about, ask about, and so on. The same women who demand the right to still have sex with other women in the course of a relationship with a guy (granted, with most/lots of guys partaking willingly and eagerly in the results) will also slam their boyfriend with "what are you so close to that guy for? Are you guys gay?". Partly as an emasculation (as in, "prove it to me otherwise later") and partly from sheer, brutal discriminatory homophobia. Which in my experience has often been more vicious, more close-minded, more cliched from women than from men. Men often/usually "act out" homophobia to prove something to someone else, very typically their girlfriend than their guy friends, and a lot of stuff I've heard starts with "my girlfriend thinks..."

And this just relates to being friendly, working out together, hanging. Not holding hands, or doing Jerry Springer-style mash kisses or hanging in the bathhouses. Regular male friendships here are regularly challenged by "liberated" (mouthy and opinionated) women; I use quotes on the "liberated" because it's not (necessarily) academically-trained feminists, here but women who have embraced the idea of superiority rather than equality; the ass-over-teakettle reversal of roles that's noted about the difference in stripper-show audiences. Men sit there like zombies (gyno row in particular is often pathetic, and when it's rowdy it's still no touchy-touchy and NEVER insult the girls....), women turn into maenads....

Interesting observation about the prison/schools poll about womea and rape. Bullying and sexual intimidation by girls against boys is a big problem, largely unresearched, and when you stop to think of the consequences to male psyche/egos of such (girls being sexually mature/aware long before boys, also, and therefore "with an advantage" at that age as far as mental warfare goes) it's a wonder that it's not researched more. One comment about why "meninism" hasn't taken off is that men don't like to talk about their problems in the same way women do; they don't like to admit they have any. And when they do, they want to discuss them on their own terms, not in group-think. It's more complex than that, but it boils down to a difference in sexual/mental culture/psychology.

My point about systemic abuse of males in history was not about that kind of thing anyway; it was meant as a reminder that men, either as eunuchs and/or as slaves, have been brutalized and abused sexually since the earliest days of civilization, admittedly in once-far-greater numbers than today. As I said on the Rupp thread, "circumcision (was) the least of our problems"....

I meant to expand on that a bit but got tangentized. There's a mean-ness in the character assassinations against men, gay or not, when a woman slags them for being gay, possibly gay, secretly gay, or just "gay" in that negative derisive sense "that's so gay!", which by the way I hear more coming from the mouths of young girls (and women in general) than I do from guys. Women also tend to see gay-ness in terms of stereotypes, and in the same way LGBT treat it as an either/or thing (either you're gay or they're straight, and in LG-think all B's are misguided/unresolved, which is yet another "prejudice from the polarities imposed on the centre"); and once they've tagged a guy as gay woe betide any of their straight male friends who're buddies with the target/victim; they'll never hear the end of it, so long as they're still friends with the victim. And so long as the victim "acts gay" for his the women, they'll treat him accordingly and have him as a pet/friend; if he defies the stereotype and doesn't talk about fashion and design or behave effeminately, he's a threat.

But in this town the simple act of expressing greetings or asking what someone is doing after work/the gym/the movie is interpreted as a sexual come-on. And part of the reason for that is the obsession with sexual analyses that's built into our curriculum and media here; sexual tagging I call it, where everything and anything boils down to sex, as if it were somehow intellectual to categorize the world that way because Mr. Freud did, or Ms. Steinem perhaps. It's always a shock to go to the States or even old repressed England and have perfect strangers befriend you; always takes a few days/weeks to get out of Vancouver where you can respond to someone's friendliness without averting your eyes, or wondering if they want to get their hands up your ass/crotch, or wondering if they think that's what you want from them even if you don't.

If you want an interesting book/article topic, try female psychological/sexual violence against or social victimization of men, of the sort Shannon R. unfairly satirized in her article. There's serious meat there for anyone willing to shrug off their ideological chains....

Parting comment for now: after I lived in Mexico for a while I came back here and realized a number of things. And one was "the reason there's so many gay guys here is because of the way the women are". Partly because it's always easier to get a guy into the sack, and a lot less purchazsing of food and drink is involved; and partly because of the emasculatory culture of Vancouver women, the leash-and-whip culture of "who were you with, was he gay? Where are you going, why can't I come? I don't like those friends of yours? I need you to do this, to do that, no I know I wanted you for your body but I'm tired of you going to the gym without me etc.". Women in relationships want a symbiote; men want.....well, hell, what DO men want? I can guarantee you neither feminists nor the gossip rags have the correct answer....

...even if the guy is not gay, that is. Just being seen to be gay, or condemned/harangued as such, by a girlfriend or a girl you're trying to get with, has been the end of countless friendships I've seen. Women insist on having their girlfriends and the guy can't say squat; but the guy's friends the woman has to approve of, and warm emotions or displays of empathy beteen men are immediately suspect/threatening and treated as such (often loudly and stridently).

I'm scrambling my posts's syntax...need more coffee....in the second sentence above the object being seen was meant to be the friend of the boyfriend/guy, although at the end of the day it's both. "I'm sorry, my girlfriend thinks...." is a common refrain here when I guy has to kiss off a pal, or cancel an arrangement to go to the show/bar/whatever...the conclusion of the sentence could be anything - not just the are-you-guys-gay accusation, but simply "I should stay at home and watch TV with her" or "she needs me to go shopping with her".

Men walking around with their testicles firmly snapped shut into their girlfriend's purses, or nailed decoratively above the mantle, are a too-common site in this city.....the theme here is whip or be whipped, and most often it's the guys who are whipped. Those that aren't are branded as assholes and disrespectful of women. Branded that way by women, that is.

got tangentized again there; another tag line is "I think you're gay" as in "I've just judged you as gay and there's no appeal"; most often she'll say it to her girlfriends or other guys rather than to the victim; but when she does it to the victim it's to cut off his cojones and take away his confidence; an on adolescents and younger boys that's not a good thing, and I submit that a lot of guys wind up crossing the street who didn't need to, and who eventually come back. In fact, an MD told me long ago that it's just as common, proportionately, for people to "come out" as hetero as it is to go the other way; once they resolve all the psychosexual crap inflicted on them by society/the opposite sex/their family in earlier days, if they ever resolve it. The high rates of accoholism and drug use and promiscuity in gay culture do, though, point to there being something dysfunctional going on there, for sure, and likely most of all it is rooted in bullying and other forms of sexual/psychological/physical abuse/misdirection. So there's that article theme I suggested again, or a chapter of it: homophobia in women instead of just talking abouy homophobia in men. As I've also put it to gay ideologues and male homophobes - remember, they're often victims of bullying and abuse themselves and deserve compassion/understanding instead of outright condemnation. Because, if they're in the closet (as many are), then they're really queer, right? And if they are, and they've been abused and repressed, shouldn't that be appreciated and understood, instead of speaking of them as though they were ignorant animals? Which is also, by the way, how women's ideologies generally portrays men in general.....

(the Gill Deacon show was on in the background a while ago; the female guest happened to be taling about this - the "what's wrong with men" culture of writing in the very magazines owned/run by women which exploit and hurt women with fashion, the false "you go, girl" empowerment stuff, diet fads etc; I didn't get a quote but maybe there's something on her website about who it was or what the book was...)

Don't normally watch much TV. The other night I happened across an ABC News (I guess that's what it was) program which did an interesting series of vignettes or plays in various public spaces in some US city.

I missed the intro and set up so I don't know the details. Essentially, they hired actors (men, women and children) to portray certain set scenarios and film the reactions of more than a hundred passers-by. These situations included: a drunk man just about to get in his car and drive away; a drunk woman doing the same thing; then they used a drunk man with a child/children and a drunk woman in similar circumstances.

That part was mostly interesting in a positive way and didn't seem to reveal any huge anomalies between the response of men v women.

The next set of vignettes were filmed in a park and portrayed a man getting angry (almost to the point - but not quite - of violence) with a woman; and then vice-versa - a woman yelling and abusing her 'man' - including some mild (slapping) physical violence and a lot of verbal abuse.

Well. There was no comparison. Now I don't know if they showed representative reactions, and like most shows of this type, I'd like to see the actual data. However, while most passers-by would seem to be ready to interfere (whether they were male or female) to assist the woman in jeopardy, virtually no one (out of more than a hundred passers by - many or whom were interviewed) was willing to step in to defend the man who was being abused.

In fact, many of the women's comments amounted to actually and visibly cheering the aggressive lady on with a good deal of personal relish.

Cultural conditioning? Alternatively, just plain anti-male prejudice?

Bit of a stretch, maybe, to think of sexuality in terms of abuse, or abuse in terms of sexuality, if that's what you're doing.

Culturally, our sexual expressions seem to be getting both more public and more, um, engaging? I don't quite know what word to use. Stronger, maybe.

Since the pill, women have been freer to express themselves, of course, so that might be part of it. And women have usually been the ones who choreograph this part of life.

If you look at the young, you see huge changes in sexual behaviour generally, over just a few decades. Sex is more and more done at parties, at clubs, in groups, with friends, rather than as part of a big 1 to 1 committment. Acceptably, I mean. This stripper phenomenon seems all of a piece with this trend.

It's hard to give a single reason for such a profound attitude shift over such a large social spectrum.

How about this?

Sex connects humans to the central forces of life. For bonding, for making new life. It's the big magic in the middle of everything. How we send our hearts into the world.

It has a chemical basis. Pheromones specific to each gender attract the other in ways so pervasive we don't even see them. Men kept away from the presence of women change. Their physical functions alter and their general health suffers. I think this is true for women too.

We are sometimes randomly attracted to the wrong people, violently so, so quickly that the only reasonable explanation is that it's airborne. A study I saw applied pheromone from a young man to one stall door in a large ladies room, and that stall got chosen a lot more after that, completely without any consciousness of why.

Maybe what's happening here is chemical. We get in the presence of the opposite gender, rampant with overt sexuality and permissions, and our usually covert reactions suddenly surface. The air fills with the essence of life, and we cast ourselves into it.

You think? It's a theory.

Interesting.
Dunno, on the face of it I'd have thought we'd be, as social beings, far less subject to that kind of, ummmm Robert Ardrey sort of naked ape dynamic in the more or less distant historical past.

I'd have thought we'd overlaid much of that with different cultural norms but...maybe not. Maybe in those kinds of environments - strip clubs say of either kind - that we're reverting to killer apes.

I think Skookum1 was implying that this was more or less a 'Vancouver' phenomenon but I'd be interested to hear what he has to say.

For my own part, my single experience in such a place was uncomfortable and, thankfully, short...and certainly didn't create any kind of desire for anything except the door.

I'm not sure which phenomenon you're referring to as being purely Vancouver; certainly not strip club behaviour; women do that at ladies' nights everywhere, according to the guys I know. They're animals, as the guys put it. If nothing else, the group frenzy, the glimpses of it I've seen and of course the way the women in audiences howl when a beefcake or male stripper is trotted out on a TV talkshow or Springer or whatever - the adrenal fear/revulsion you describe is no doubt pheromonal; it's also ingrained culturally because of, I'd say, the memory of the mother cults and feminine orgiasty, and the taboos on any man but the ceremonial victim who might behold the unleashing of group sexual emotion...yeah, scary no doubt.

Pheremones are just a mechanistic explanation, a symptom, of the forces of love and lust; I dispute that they are causative, that there is no magic, no "chemistry" involved; there's a reason this person phero-smells good to that person and that their pheromones match is just kismet/destiny (you do know about the vomeronasal organ, doncha? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomeronasal_organ, the very real sixth sense on top of the traditional five...).

That passion, sex, love, lust, anger, sadness, elation, pride and more than a few others of the seven deadly sins are now looked for as mechanistic functions, rather than as emotions, I'd say we've lost somethin, or are blind to it because of the siren-call of science and its sense of self-mandating authority over reality; Goethe's ideas of the Urpflänze as explored in Erich Heller's [I]The Disinherited Mind[/I} come to mind - the Urpflänze is not a plant that exists, it is an ideal plant, a plant representative of the concept of a plant, rather than one that actually existed. Goethe was opposed to overly analyzing everything in terms of the Age of Reason; there was still mystery, still faith, still transcendence, still mercy. That's what Goethe and much of his poetry are about, in fact....that life can't be reduced to number or molecules (well, Goethe didn't know about molecules, much less atoms...)..

As for reverting to our sexuality and the whiff from across the room thing - [QUOTE}We get in the presence of the opposite gender, rampant with overt sexuality and permissions, and our usually covert reactions suddenly surface. The air fills with the essence of life, and we cast ourselves into it.
."

- this is so much more the norm in places like Latin America, Central/Southern Europe and Southeast Asia and the South Seas and Australasia, and more places besides; it is not the norm here at all; and if followed "naturally", reacting to pheromonal chemistry, you'll probably wind up with stalking charges and a restraining order....unless you've got dough; here the game is pretending you're not interested, or if you're a girl deliberately trying to piss off the guy to get him to react to you; I gotta find that manual for men I was talking about; if ONLY Vancouver were more like Bailey is talking about. Looking at someone, making eye contact and smiling here is a risky business...unless you have a perfect body, have a perfect car, and are so fucking special etc (however those lyrics go).

I suppose there's no call in criticizing the matriarchy, is there? - it being a motherhood issue at all. Cast off your chains and you're likely to hear about it from your mother, if not your wife....

Gotta dig out that bit about Strindberg's analysis of the problem....

it being a motherhood issue after all....(italics not for emphasis, only to highlight difference from typotext).

The Vancouver thing was in reference to the female manipulation of image and the use of a pseudo-gay ‘Vancouver’ meme as a way of exercising control over males doing what is, from a female point of view, perfectly acceptable same sex behavior.

Such as going out on the town with the boys v. the same kind of thing when it's the gals involved.

No female, after a night out with her 'girlfriends', would be expecting a slap down for marginal 'gay' behavior. I actually haven't seen that much of this sort of neuroses outside of the lower mainland so I hope it IS localized. It’s sad because it tends to support the idea that the only thing guys might legitimately want to do together is go to a hockey game. Since ‘Brokeback Mountain’ I suppose all forms of outdoor recreation, fishing, hunting, riding &etc. are now beyond the pale for Vancouver femmes too.

Maybe Danielle will re-appear. I was hoping she'd come back and post another comment.

The self-conscious concentation of gayness in Vancouver has a complete opposite effect in the suburbs, where "not being gay" is a major male meme, and the cultivation of choices of truck, clothes, behaviour is so affected I mock one of my metrosexual buddies as being "gayer than gay" because of the attention to detail he applies to making sure he "dresses like a guy, not a queer".

And yeah, I'd agree that the pseudo-gay meme IS a way of women exercising contol over male behaviour. If you're going to be a fag, you're expected to act like one "and be one of the girls". That's why women aren't threatened by effeminate homosexuals; a guy who doesn't look, walk or talk gay, on the other hand, is suspect as dishonest or "on the prowl" and so on; especially if they're handsome/built/macho, which as we all know women, upon finding such a man prefers other men, will say "what a waste". Of what? It's not his DNA they'e interested in...

No female, after a night out with her 'girlfriends', would be expecting a slap down for marginal 'gay' behavior. I actually haven't seen that much of this sort of neuroses outside of the lower mainland so I hope it IS localized.

It's pretty much localized, as far as I can tell; there are traces of it in Victoria and hte Okanagan, but unheard of in the smaller towns (where most women recognize the right/need of men to socialize with other men as completely normal).

But between style of speech, the way they walk and even dress, even drop-dead pretty women here often come across far more like men relative to women in other places (this isn't just Vancouver); the contrast between the trucker-jock walk a Canadian woman has vs. the sensual slide/bounce of a Mexican or Brazilian can now be seen on our own sidewalks regularly; in many cases this affectation of male traits is self-seen as a demonstration of equality, or actual superiority....penis-envy maybe but something much more like "wanting to be Daddy" (and sure enough, a lot are Daddy's girls...).

Funny you should mention Brokeback Mountain - the title of which is now a catchphrase jeered by people (usually women) when they see two guys hugging, or there are suggestions that they might go camping - because it's adapted from a book by a woman, Annie Proulx. And that the whole romance gets down to the flesh, and nothing but the flesh, is (to me) typically of the skewed perspective on macho bonding, including the portrayal of one of the two protagonists as a sloe-eyed effeminate (Jake Gyllenyaal's character); and the whole idea of wanting to set up shop toghether and "play house" was a bit nauseating. Sure, she researched queer ideology/life as conceived of by urban gay culture, but the reality of the latter is it doesn't embrace a whole range of men who don't wany any part of the outed, feather-and-boa decorated ideological parade of fully outed gayness, and dread the anathema of being branded and derided because of the excesses of gay culture (e.g. bathhhouses, "park sex" and all that).

Male bonding, as noted by an older Diotima-like friend (cf [I}The Symposium[/I}), now passed from this Earth, and I've heard it from other women, too - that male bonding involves something deep and mystical that is different and deeper than what woman have with a man, and often envy (brutally, as she noted); men are often the soul-mates for each other, she explained, that women's romance literature enfancies as what should be between a man and a woman. Those women who want to own the whole of their man - every thought, every emotion, every trip to the corner store; if there are emotions and bonds he has that seem greater than their own bond, they can't help but be threatened by it.

This fear, as one of my friend's wives put it to me in a drunken ramble one night, is that their guy - already suspect, like all men, of really being gay - is going to leave them for another man [I]for love[/I} just drives them nuts. A little "gaysex" on the side is not as bad by comparison....the rejoinder, which I didn't deliver to her, is that if she thinks he should or will turn gay, what the hell did she get married to him? The corollary to all this is that she prefers women to men, and throughout their marriage insisted on her right to see women as well; to assuage her "guilt" at betraying her marriage, she'd usually bring them home and "share" them; my friend commented that, while it was fun it was disconcerting at times because it's obvious the wife enjoyed sex with a female stranger more than she did with him....yet she's the one worried about HIM being gay.... ???!!! ???

Yeah, I know, it's fucked-up, but she's not the only case like this I've heard of; female bisexuality is very common in Vancouver, and even expected as a norm in many cases....male bisexuality is not, and if it occurs it's seen as cheating on the girlfriend....macho bisexuals "never let on" and often, as one told me, are forced to behave homophobically even to casual friendship in order to shore up their appearance to wife/friends/co-workers/families...

So Brokeback Mtn was just another trotting-out of stereotypes cultivated by feminine and feminist/gaylib conceptions of male sexuality; although Heath Ledger's performance was amazing, and managed to avoid the gay stereotype not so shily lurking beneath Gyllenhaal's character and the goateed guy he wound up playing house with. I submit that Proulx and/or the screenwriters (one of whom was female) should have looked into Australian "mate-hood" and other non-gay models of male bonding. Two shepherds "accidentally" jumping each other in the middle a rained-out drunk isn't exactly "romance", is it?

G West, I’m certainly not trying to change the subject. The article is primarily about this topic. Much of the article discusses the various physical and psychological things these men have to contend with, primarily the groping, pointing and laughing from women. As for the women, I ask the same question myself many times, especially with the following: At any rate, the women at Au Bar Ladies Night seem to have reverted to a pubescent state of repressed sexuality, cheering on demand when the MC says, 'Ladies, you're gonna see some peepees!" At some Ladies Nights, there are even prize-winning games between sets like Throw The Hoop on the Giant Inflatable Penis! Yet, for brief moments, usually as the "meat-puppet show" begins, I can see this glimmer of wanton lust sweep across the women's disco-ball speckled faces. The tension in the air becomes palpable, much like any stripper club. Then, they typically lapse back into giggling, pointing and letting Hunter tuck pink "Stripper Bucks" into their cleavage then remove them with his teeth while mugging for their friend's camera.
The article ends with the mention that these men need more security like women strippers and finally me wondering why women need door prizes, as if seeing naked men somehow isn’t enough.

I’m still trying to figure out why women respond this way, but repressed sexuality seems to be a part of it, as is this notion that the male body is ugly, or at least that form follows function! Once I went to see male strippers then right after that, female strippers. With the male strippers the MC kept saying that eventually the guys would take it all off. That never happened. (One guy even put his clothes on as his routine! It was a business suit.) I felt like we should have gotten our money back. Imagine if this same thing happened at the cecil? While I certainly can’t step into the minds of the men watching women strippers, I felt that at the very least, the tense vibe that seemed to wash over the crowd when the pants came off seemed much more realistic. Yet I think that there could be a bit more balance since women strippers are obviously way up on a pedestal. Who has more power in this balance? Does power always have to be the key issue? Of course, women strippers tend to be less coy about exposing their genitals. There’s a lot of time to have a good look. Yet with male strippers it’s hard to get a decent look. I think that’s very weird. I also think it’s a very strange reaction for women to laugh and point when they see a cock. The costumes and the gong show nature of the event didn’t help, but I assume it’s based at least partly on demand.

As for domestic violence, women are more likely to use weapons so can be even more dangerous.
continued next post...

Skookum, I completely agree on the gay/bi double standard and that women perpetuate it and that probably starts as soon as a person is born. But I don’t see women doing it more than men. Another weapon a few women I know seem to think they have a right to launch, particularly after a breakup, is the he has a small penis, faked all my orgasms thing. (Curb Your Enthusiasm did an interesting piece on this topic.) I’ve never heard a man say, she had a huge vagina and I faked every orgasm! Men usually attack a woman’s psychological state: she was too needy etc. One certainly isn’t better than the other but a person can change their personality (if indeed it needs work and whose doesn’t?!), in general, they can’t change the size of their genitals (without expensive and dangerous surgery).

I think it’s interesting that I’m supposed to know what women want, yet Skookum it’s okay for you to remain unaware of what men want. What gives with that? And I would say that the kind of women/friends etc you are describing are a-holes and you should dump them and find some new friends. I’ve seen just as many men try to isolate women from their friends as women who do the same.

Bailey, I love your post and I agree that love is pretty much the start of good things and so it’s dangerous to the powers that be. But what if the chemical signals are products of the psychological?

Bailey, I didn’t mean to imply a primary link between sexual behaviours and abuse of some sort. I think it’s just part of the growing up package. We all have such unique sexual personalities, yet like all other aspects of our personalities, they are forced into stereotypical norms early on.

I think the bisexuality playing field can never be level for one reason and maybe this is where some trouble crops up (at the risk of getting too Freudian here): men can be penetrated, it’s different than vaginal penetration of course, but at least they can know what it feels like to an extent. Women can never know what it feels like to have a penis, they can only strap on a piece of silicon.

Ultimately a sexual double standard still exists in our culture. These teen oral sex parties don’t usually involve carpet munching, they’re typically about blow jobs. Girls are still sluts if they have sex. This has a profound impact on a woman’s emerging sexuality and it confuses physiologically alongside the psychological. How do boys suffer from the opposite basic belief that they should grab sex wherever and whenever they can get it?

Oh the men suffer Danielle - they suffer! It ain’t just women who have their problems with the status quo. You'd be very surprised at how many men just aren't interested in that prospect or the roads it tends to lead one down.

And this,

while it is undoubtedly true is only a small part of the story. I other words, while descriptive, it is not very analytical.

Simply because 'growing up' implies some kind of end state that seems to me both ill-defined and almost never reached.

I'm still troubled by the 'power' aspects of the ways otherwise seemingly normal women use sex. Ways which seem far more self-interested, manipulative and mercenary than the generally-disordered and often still childish way that most grown men approach the subject and their own role in the dance of life.

first, what is seemingly normal?

doesn't "self-interested" simply mean a person's thoughts? and any interpretation of those thoughts is based almost completely on self-interest as well. so we go in circles.

but why do you think boys have fallen through the cracks and are conspicuously absent from most cultural discussions?

You're right. I suppose terms need defining. By 'seemingly normal' I'm referring to what Skookum1 has described as a kind of Vancouver phenomenon - what I called a Vancouver meme of women's ideas about male behavior - the aspect of things being seen as pseudo-gay when they are actually nothing of the sort. Moreover, making such assumptions in a manipulative way toward human beings fits into what I’d call a materialistic view of sexual relations.

You're a perceptive writer and observer and I bet you haven't missed the way women often now treat men - what amounts to the same kind of male behavior that gave rise to the ‘women’s movement’ and classical feminism itself. SO that’s where I’m coming from at least.

By ‘self-interested’ I mean selfish; lacking in empathy if you prefer and not fully cognizant of what men and women share and what brings them together – or ought to - in working toward shared goals.

I admit that if you want to analyze human relations that way it’s a perfectly plausible mechanistic behavioral method. Nevertheless, I’d prefer to think that what makes us truly human is a kind of unselfish altruism. Moreover, I think the source of that instinct – or what’s left of it – was always (or at least tended to be rooted in) the feminine. Therefore, we surrender it – for pleasure, reward or other selfish reasons – at our peril.

I’m not sure your last comment is accurate. I see few indications that, on average, women are any more likely to engage in what I’d call real (as opposed to artificial or stylistic) arguments about cultural norms than men are. I do see men, in the light of the kinds of behavior (which I suppose you’d say isn’t typical) as being in rather a bind though.

If they behave in an aggressive (sexual) way toward women they create conflicts with their own altruistic spirit and if they express the more ‘feminine’ ( I use that term for obvious reasons) side of their nature they risk being labelled ‘gay’. I think that’s a sad and unfortunate state of affairs….

And, jokingly of course, at least in this case, the male participants appear to outnumber the female by 2:1.

G West, my last comment was not about males but about boys falling through the cracks in general discussions about teenagers and children. We discuss whether girls now grow up in a hypersexualized pop culture, the effects of that on them in various respects, but not the effects this has on the behaviour of boys. (And by excluding them from discussions about personal responsibility, we put far too much onus on girls to modify their behaviours, actions and even their thoughts.) We talk about school, grades, sports and stats about boys having lower grades or more young men signing up for the military are too often footnotes. We seem to generally go by an assumption that since positions of power are still mostly assigned to men, they will somehow grow up fine thanks.

As Adrian points out, nobody attempts to “rescue” these male strippers and you could say the same for boys in general and if you look at say something like domestic abuse, the cards are generally stacked against men. So much for altruism and I think it’s perilous to assume that women are or should be more altruistic by nature. And by making such an assumption, you’re bound to be disappointed in any woman. I think we are socialized to be that way which is incredibly demanding, utterly unreasonable and dangerous. But of course, society relies on altruism from everyone. And no relationships would work without it, particularly the most intimate relationships. (By the way, I’ve seen cats act unselfishly so I don’t think we’re the only kind animals on the planet.)

I think it’s interesting that the feminist movement has been so vilified that today’s women’s studies profs continue to contend with the stereotype of the male-hating feminist even from young women enrolled in their classes. Feminism was and is primarily about wanting the same basic human rights that men have. I certainly don’t think it’s been a perfect ride so far and indeed there are all kinds of feminists in the world. But, I wouldn’t want to go back in time even a couple of decades and I primarily credit the feminist movement for that. (I was also incredibly lucky to have parents who were very progressive in that respect.)

You’re right, I have met some crazy bitches out there for sure but I don’t peg them as feminists or products of feminism any more than I peg every crazy bastard I’ve ever met as a chauvinist pig, including tyee posters who wildly critique an article that they seem to have skimmed quickly (or read with their blinders on) in a big rush to brand it “feminist hogwash.” Talk about your double standards!

Danielle:
Certainly can't disagree much with that. And I absolutely agree with you about what feminism is, and ought to be and how important (and incomplete in terms of realiizing its objectiives) it is.

I still think there are a lot of double standards walking around - on both sides of the gender divide - who are more than willing to ignore the need for continuing work on that equality project.

I noticed Tillie Olsen's Obit in the Times this morning. I wonder how many people of your generation even know who she was.

I still do think young boys (and young men) are either forgotten, or given some pretty mixed messages about what they 'ought' to be these days. But maybe young girls are just as confused.

Will Skookum1 be back to make another contribution? I wonder.

Kinda busy with certain more important matters ;-) But I'll be back (Ed. - don't close this discussion quite yet!)