I wonder if men like Jackson Katz and Jonah Mix and Chris Hedges (mentioned in this piece by Meghan Murphy and by me in this post on ABC Lateline and ‘sex work’ know what it means to women to have them speak so strongly and unequivocally – and often condemned for doing so- on issues such as sexual violence, equality and the human rights of women? My colleagues and I share articles by these men and others with much enthusiasm. Perhaps it makes us feel a little less lonely? Men like this refuse to stand by and watch as women are trashed physically and emotionally around the world. (They also happen to write really well – of course not as vital a point to make, but it does have special appeal to those of us who live by putting words together). Today I’m reprinting Jackson Katz in a Huffington Post piece on 50 Shades of Grey and how it sets back relationships education with boys, and Jonah Mix twice because he’s so good, once wasn’t enough.
Much of the commentary about the film’s release has focused on women’s reactions to it, including the message that its mainstream acceptance sends to girls about their sexuality and the lengths of degradation and self-negation that women are sometimes pressured to endure in relations with men to achieve intimacy or great sex.
But my primary concern for now has to do not with girls, but with boys like my son and other young men, who are trying to navigate the rocky shores of heterosexual desire themselves, in a culture that routinely offers them up sexually subordinate, compliant and sometimes self-loathing women at the click of a mouse or the price of a movie ticket.
What do parents of sons say to them about the draw this story has for women? How can we help them make sense of the mixed messages our society sends to them about what women want? That women want men to treat them as equals, even as millions embrace a story that countless battered women’s advocates say more closely resembles an abusive relationship than it does some sort of kinky sex fantasy?…
One of the most important goals of gender violence prevention work is to teach boys and young men that violence is not manly, and abuse is not sexy. To the extent that this movie complicates our efforts, it harms not just women. It also does damage to young heterosexual men, who in the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey’s commercial triumph are left scratching their heads and trying to figure out responsible and healthy ways to relate sexually to women, and themselves.
Jonah Mix
Rapists hiding behind the smokescreen of “rough sex” is nothing new. Jian Ghomeshi tried the same approach last year when his pattern of sexual brutality was revealed. It’s not hard to see why so many abusers utilize this defense; a simple mention of the word “consent” and the question shifts from exactly why a man enjoys punching a woman in the face to whether or not the women enjoyed being punched in the face. It’s a classic abuser tactic in which the spotlight of inquiry is shifted onto the victim so the perpetrator can remain unexamined in the dark.
Once you adopt the consent-as-sole-moral-consideration ideology, a man like Dominique Strauss-Kahn restraining a woman, choking her, and then violently penetrating her becomes immoral simply because she didn’t find it sexy – not because fucking someone with your hands closed tight around their neck just might, you know, not be a good way to relate to another human being. When you say that a man punching, slapping, choking, and bruising a woman is wrong only because she doesn’t “consent,” you’re saying that the only thing wrong with men’s violence is that women haven’t learned to enjoy it yet.
There was a time where rapists insisting their victims “wanted it” was considered the lowest insult one could possibly aim at a victim of sexual violence – thanks to BDSM ideologues, it’s become a meaningful defense.
To those who have publicly attested to their enjoyment of [violent pornography], I ask them to consider the lives of those who have endured the same treatment but without the magic word of consent. Are those women expected to watch and understand as their torture is reenacted as a legitimized means of entertainment? What the popularization of violent pornography is telling these women is that they could and maybe should have enjoyed their rapes. After all, if some women have, why don’t they all?
And I wonder: If male sexual violence becomes immoral only when it fails to arouse a woman, why should we attempt to stop predatory men from cultivating the woman-hating sadism that leads to rape when we could just teach women to find it sexy? Why are our anti-rape campaigns aimed at stopping men from violating women when we could just try encouraging women to develop submissive sexual desires? I can imagine the slogan of an anti-rape organization run by male kinksters: Stop rape – turn it into sex! Read full article
Jonah Mix
Accusations of “moralizing” are by definition vacuous. Considering that morality refers simply to a set of standards we have for what ought and ought not be done, literally any political position is in some way moralistic unless it makes absolutely no demands on behavior. Opposition to police brutality or pipeline construction, for instance, are all acts of moralizing, in that they all make universalized prescriptions – that cops ought not enact violence on citizens, that indigenous land rights ought to be protected, et cetera. Chris Hedges’ condemnation of prostitution as abusive, depraved, and unjust is no more tethered to a moralistic outlook than the anarchist dude who rambles on about the evil of cops and CEOs. Both have beliefs about what behavior is permissible and both hold the belief that certain actions are justified to correct impermissible behavior.
The only reason that condemnations of sexual abuse and exploitation are stuck with the condescending label of “moralizing” while other political stances are not is, of course, because the concerns of women are systematically barred from consideration as political concerns. While the oppression of men is seen as an issue befitting the high ideals of politics and justice, the oppression of women is relegated to “morality” – a category most leftists, stuck as they are in the navel-gazing solipsism of post-modernism, see as contemptibly passé.
But accusations of “moralizing” are but one half of the Inane Leftist Dude Objection Power Duo, joined quickly by even more inscrutable accusations of “paternalism” – which, in this case, means the terrible sin of saying that we should have laws that protect women.
See also: ‘Sadistic abuse is not romantic’, MTR
2 Responses
Woah, thank you so much! It means a lot to hear such kind words 🙂
Jackson Katz once upon a time publicly named the issue of male violence against women as male violence against women but now sadly he too has decided to erase the active male agent and instead claims issue is about ‘gender violence prevention.’ Hmm wonder how it possible that ‘gender’ is responsible for violence perpetrated against whom?
Katz rather than worrying about how teenage boys are somehow ‘scratching their heads and trying to figure out responsible and healthy ways to relate sexually to women, and themselves’ you should be focusing on how and why innumerable teen boys and young men are blithely accepting mens’ centuries old lies that male sexuality is innately about male sexual domination/female sexual submission.
Missing from your article is the powerful misogynistic male created message constantly being perpetuated by malestream media and that vile pornographic film Fifty Shades of Male Sexual Violence that males have the innate right to sexually prey on women and girls with impunity.
Teen boys swiftly learn via social media; male peer pressure and not forgetting mens’ Male Supremacist System that male sexuality is not socially constructed but is a biological given wherein males have the right to eroticise male sexual violence because it accords male sexual pleasure.
I would suggest Katz that you ask your son if he would accept a female subjecting him to sexual violence because it ‘turns her on’ irrespective of his feelings and his right of bodily autonomy. Of course in the real world this doesn’t happen because heterosexuality is hierarchial wherein it is always the males who initiate and control any heterosexual interaction.
There is no symmetry whatsoever between what teen boys are learning is supposedly ‘real male sexuality’ and what girls and young women are being told by men and their male created porn industry is ‘female sexuality.’ It is not teen boys and young men who are the ones being routinely subjected to male sexual violence – rather it is girls and young women.
The reason why so many girls and young women are supposedly blithely accepting mens’ misogynistic lies that females innately want to be subjected to sadistic male sexual violence is because mens’ very powerful malestream media and mens’ malestream pornography industry constantly sends out women-hating propaganda lies that male sexual violence against women is ‘sexy.’ But to whom??? Certainly not to the women and girls who are subjected to male sexual violence but as and when women and girls dare to challenge male sexual violence, the men hurl women-hating insults at them and claim they are ‘prudes/whores’ and should learn to accept male sexual violence as erotic and empowering!
By all means Katz discuss with your son the complex issues of why so many women and girls appear to want to be subjected to male sexual violence but do not forget eroticisation of male sexual violence against women operates to erase the fact women and girls are human not males’ disposable; interchangeable sexual service stations.