This Open Thread has been brought to you by Truth.

This is just my excuse to do a quickie post linking to Dandy Portraits, a blog by a woman named Rose Callahan, dedicated to visually chronicling men who dress “exquisitely”, and she makes a strong case.

I’m just enjoying scrolling through it all, myself. No clever commentary this time.

Enjoy!

The domestication narrative is the idea that men are intrinsically wild, anarchic, uncivilized creatures, and women are intrinsically nurturing, organized, settled beings, and the nature of heterosexual relationships is for women to “civilize” men through marriage, a process that men resist but eventually surrender to, which is a sign that they’ve “grown up”.

When you state it baldly like that, it sounds a bit stupid, but there’s evidently a lot of people who don’t fear looking foolish in the public sphere. People who expect to be taken seriously will state this narrative as bald fact and look startled when you call them on it. Hell, I’ve heard academics cite this narrative as the intrinsic underlying conceptual structure of Westerns, and while, okay, it’s a decent fit on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, that doesn’t make it objectively true.

That’s the thing about narratives. Our minds are hardwired to make sense of the world through stories, so the stories we tell about the world become the way we understand it. If we think we’re the hero of a story about a person who makes everyone laugh, we become funny. If we think we’re hero of a story about a person who does the right thing against widespread opposition, we become self-righteous. If we think we’re the hero of a Neil Gaiman story, we become a bit of a wanker.

Narratives like this are the stories we tell ourselves as a culture, the stories that make up and support that culture. None of them are exactly true in any literal sense, but some are more toxic than others. “The United States rebelled against an oppressive monarchy to replace it with a democracy, which is totally better” is, yeah, not actually true per se, but it’s a basically healthy narrative. “American culture used to be racist until we fixed it in the early 60s and now there’s no more racism” is another popular narrative, but one that’s a lot more harmful.

The domestication narrative is one of those ones so deeply encoded that people often don’t even see it. It’s just one of those things people take for granted. Guys are wild and troublesome and live like pigs until they get married and settle down, everyone just kind of knows that. Otherwise all those jokes and magazine articles and movie plotlines wouldn’t make any sense. Since they make sense, the domestication narrative must be true. Don’t laugh: that’s literally how human minds rationalize the world.

You can see the pervasiveness of this narrative every day; even putting aside the direct references, there’s all the concepts and advice that, like the jokes, simply don’t make sense if one doesn’t assume the validity of the domestication narrative. All the constructions about guys who “sow their wild oats” before “settling down”. All the movies about men choosing between a life of hijinks and adventures or a life of stable domesticity, with the moral being that the latter is the “mature” choice. Kay Hymowitz’s ugly, misandrist stereotypes of “rooms decorated with Star Wars posters and crushed beer cans”, these rooms belonging to unmarried men, and her explicit prescription for fixing them being marriage.

Further proof: recently there’ve been a few movies and TV shows about female characters who drink, sleep around, party, and cuss. I know there have been such things because I’ve seen half a dozen articles absolutely pissing their pants with amazement at this bold new frontier in comedy, the idea that some women might be as “immature” and raunchy as all men are assumed to be! Holy fucking shit, some gals are neither housewives nor housewives-in-training, doesn’t that blow your freakin’ mind? Seriously, Ozy’s Law has more predictive value than betting against the Washington Generals.

And yes, let’s take a moment to look at how this despicable narrative harms women. Ladies: you are apparently against fun. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. By virtue of having a uterus, you are opposed to video games, sexual promiscuity, wild parties, and basically anything that you want to do but some old white man in a tie once said you’re not supposed to do. What you’re into is neatness, blandness, and predictability. Please disregard any observed females who like beer or random party hookups, or who have giant piles of junk all over their room. They are statistical outliers and may be safely eliminated from the dataset.

This is a manifestation of hegemonic heterosexuality, of course, because it implies, as do all such assumptions, that heterosexual relationships are necessarily antagonistic. Men all, by definition, want to wallow in lint-encrusted bacon grease, orgies, and Batman. Women all, by definition, want to force men against their will to be Ward Cleaver. Endless comedic hijinks ensue! Non-heterosexual people don’t exist!

I’m sure that there are couples out there for whom this narrative is a great fit. That’s great, and I wish them all the best. There are also couples out there whose sex life is based around DPing a plush wolf with two masturbation sleeves sewn into it, and you know what? I wish them all the best too. In fact, I kind of like the second couple better, because at least their weird-ass dynamic isn’t sold to me a hundred times a day as an ideal to which I should aspire. I’m sure if I’d had to sit through ten years of sitcom jokes about “Oh my god, you used MY end of Wolfy? It’s like I don’t even know you any more!” then I’d be equally sick of them.

What’s odd is that most people’s real lives don’t actually resemble the domestication narrative, especially if you correct for folks who are trying to live up to it because they think they’re supposed to. Men are frequently low-libido, women are frequently slobs, everyone can like video games, Star Wars, and whatever else is supposed to be immature this week. What we need to do is generalize the non-generalizability of our experiences. To remind ourselves that not only do we not fit this convenient cultural storyline, but neither does (almost) anyone else. We may be women who actively prefer internet porn to a physical boyfriend, we may be couples who fuck around with open consent, we may be single men who hope to find a woman as organized as we are, we may even, goodness gracious, not be cis het people at all. And we need to stand up and say that this is our culture too, and stop thinking it’s just us who aren’t Doing It Right.

Because seriously, men as unhappy children and women as unhappy nannies? Let me be clear here: fuck that noise.

One overlap, though, between prison rape of men and non-prison rape of women is the way American society views both as an inevitability. That plays out in different ways, but there’s a sense that incarceration must naturally lead to rape (see, e.g., “don’t drop the soap!” jokes), and that femaleness is inherently sexually tempting and therefore also leads to rape if you’re not vigilant about preventing it (see, e.g., every rape prevention tactic that focuses on what women should or should not do — don’t walk home alone, don’t wear revealing clothing, etc etc). At the same time, inevitability is tempered by the perceived ability to prevent rape if you just do things “right” — don’t commit a crime so that you end up in jail, don’t break any of the Rape Avoidance Rules For Ladies. It’s a convenient way to conceptualize assault — if you just behave yourself, you won’t be a victim.

Now, I think she could maybe take a little more time to look at rape of men in the general population, but the point she’s making is about prison rape and its function in the culture, so that’s what she focuses on. Also, as much as I’ve sometimes griped about intersectionality issues, it’s nice to see someone nail it with a heavy-hitting paragraph like this:

It’s also impossible to separate this issue out from racism, classism, ableism and homophobia. The U.S. prison population (including ICE immigration holding facilities) is disproportionately black and Latin@. Prisoners disproportionately come from low-income backgrounds. Prison populations also include many individuals with intellectual disabilities and untreated mental health issues, as well as histories of violent victimization which can lead to mental and physical health issues. And we’re imprisoning millions of people who are not actually violent and aren’t actually dangerous. Among non-incarcerated victims of sexual violence, women with disabilities are far more likely to be targeted for sexual abuse than women who are able-bodied and/or don’t have developmental disabilities. Native women have the highest sexual assault rates of any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. Stats for trans women and men are slightly more difficult to come by, since as far as I can tell they aren’t noted in the DOJ surveys, but every reputable study I’ve seen indicates that trans people experience sexual assault at significantly higher rates that cis people. Black trans folks in the prison system are assaulted at particularly astounding rates — around 30% report being assaulted while in jail or police custody.

I’ve known a couple trans folks who’ve been arrested in their time, and… yeah, it ain’t good.

Anyway, go read the whole thing. It’s worth a good long look.

So! There is this school district in Virginia with an innovative plan to prevent gender- and sexuality-based bullying! Are they going to encourage acceptance of all genders and sexual orientations? Provide counselling and other support for bullied kids? Provide diversity and sensitivity training for people accused of bullying?

No, of course not, that would be logical, nondiscriminatory, and (gasp) possibly effective.

Instead, they’re going to ban people wearing “cross-gender clothing.”

What pile of victim-blaming bullshit is this? Let us go back and review Decent Human Being 101: if Pat is treating Robin like shit because of Robin’s clothing, is this the fault of:

a) The clothing, for provoking Pat?
b) Robin, for asking for it via choosing that particular outfit?
c) The school, for not forbidding Robin from deviating from the path of cissexist heteronormative conformity?
d) Pat, for treating people like shit?

Ready, Virginia school district? YOU LOSE.

And, let’s be honest, this is pretty much going to affect dudes. No one would stop my female-assigned, nonbinary-in-denial, high-school self from wearing blue jeans and buttondowns. On the other hand, a person in a perfectly masculine kilt– much less an actual skirt– would probably end up being sent to the principal’s office and made to take it off.

Hell, this dress code was specifically created because some male students were dressing like girls (the article does not state whether they were actually trans women) and other students were complaining. Personally, I think that the proper reaction to that is “I’m sorry your cissexist femmephobic ass is so threatened by their fabulosity,” but what do I know, I’m just a queer. Also, because a crossdressing boy/trans girl was murdered! Because the clear problem here is the crossdressing/transness and not the FUCKING MURDERER.

Look. Bullies ARE BULLIES. If you take away the skirts, they’ll still bully the dudes with earrings. If you take away the earrings, they’ll still bully the dudes who came out of the closet. If you forbid dudes from coming out of the closet, they’ll still bully any dude who swishes. If you forbid boys from being femme in public, they’ll still bully the ones who are skinny and small. If you give everyone mandatory steroids, they’ll still fucking find someone to bully because they are bullies and that is what they do. The only thing this law achieves is taking trans and gender-non-conforming people and telling them that the school district doesn’t care about them and just wants them to shut up and go away and stop making trouble to the school.

If you would like to make your feelings known, you may contact the district here or call them at (757) 925-6750 or fax them at (757) 925-6751. In addition, you may donate to the ACLU of Virginia, which is fighting this case, here.

From this lovely post about one of the odder trends from the Decade Aesthetics Forgot. I think this ad speaks volumes about weird images of masculinity. I mean, also it’s kind of hilarious, but bear with me.

The overwritten horniness of the copy absolutely blows my mind. Advertising companies get informed of trends and proceed to turn them into cartoons, so today we’ve got advertisements addressing this “crisis of masculinity” trend they’ve heard about by doing hyper-masculinized ads for ridiculous manbranded products. In the 70s, clearly, they’d been informed there was this Sexual Revolution thing going on, and therefore phrases like “the ultimate fashion climax” made sense now, instead of being stupid.

There’s also the presentation of the model, who as far as we can tell consists entirely of sunglasses and hair. For a guy selling a sexy, revealing outfit, he’s showing less actual skin area than a Carmelite nun. Though, to be fair, relatively few nuns have large beards. Some of the other jumpsuit ads in the linked post are more revealing, but the ad is still selling Mr. Sexy Jumpsuit here in a curiously contradictory way.

The presumed reader of the ad is, they could not make more explicit, a heterosexual man. The copy says that wearing this jumpsuit will result, more or less automatically, in women climbing all over you like a hairy jungle gym. But what we see in the ad is a guy who’s almost completely covered up. We can’t even see his eyes. There is no hint of vulnerability at any point. I’ve talked before about the urge to find a way of approaching or attracting women without becoming vulnerable. (Of course, I’ve also talked about how male vulnerability is a massively popular fantasy among women, but let’s not get too sidetracked.) What this ad is trying to sell, essentially, is a suit that makes you attractive without ever making you even slightly vulnerable.

The presentation of female sexuality in the copy is intriguing as well. It talks endlessly about how women will be unable to resist your hirsute charms in this contraption, but there’s this one amazingly telling sentence. “Designed with your desires in mind… she’ll eat you alive in it.” (Ellipsis in original.) Even in an ad that’s trying to be all about male desirability, they can’t quite make themselves believe it. They can’t violate the two rules of desire unless they somehow define female desire as a SUBSET of male desire. It’s okay for her to want you if that’s what YOU want. She is allowed to fulfill your fantasy of being wanted. Like all the best creepy implications, I’m pretty sure they don’t know they’re doing it.

Lastly, and fucking typically, there are TWO blatant penis-size references in here. “Fits so tight it shows all you’ve got” and “Are you man enough to fill it?” They are LITERALLY SAYING that if you don’t buy this fuck-ugly jumpsuit, you’ve got a little dick. You know, ads like this are why Mad Men is all about how everyone in advertising kind of wants to kill themselves.

Oh, and this almost feels redundant considering we’re talking about a fashion ad, but jumpsuits look fucking AWFUL on fat guys, so thanks for that too.

I linked this in one of my roundups of information about rape a few days ago, but I think it’s interesting enough that I want to delve into it a little deeper. The article addresses the rape of men (unfortunately, it seems to be only rape by penetration, not rape by envelopment) from an international perspective and discusses gender bias within the UN and other human rights groups working on rape.

The single most fascinating line, to me, is when the author said that at time of writing (February 2009) not a single human rights instrument explicitly addressed rape of men; my cursory research appears to suggest that this has not been rectified. A few used boy-inclusive language (“women and families,” “women and children,” etc); however, when discussing sexual violence, even these barely inclusive terms often were replaced with “women and girls” or similar phrases. Within the context of rape, men were generally discussed as perpetrators, not as victims, and mostly in terms of preventing rape through early intervention with potential perpetrators. I am in support of early intervention and creating a rape-negative culture, of course; however, women can rape people too.

The author highlights a few kinds of rape of men as being of particular concern for humans rights advocates: prison rape, rape in conflict situations, rape of boys, and rape of queer men.

Prison rape survivors are generally “nonviolent, first-time offenders who are small, weak, shy, effeminate, and inexperienced in the ways of prison life”; they are disproportionately likely to be queer (the author mentions homosexual and bisexual men; trans people of all genders are also very likely to be raped in prison). Sometimes (in, for instance, South African and American prisons), vulnerable inmates will choose to engage in “protective pairing,” where they agree to be raped by one dominant inmate in exchange for that inmate’s protection against other inmates; these arrangements may also require the inmate to do domestic chores and sex work. Internationally, there is a tragic lack of data on the prevalence of prison rape: the countries where we have available information, including Australia and the USA, show ridiculously high prevalence rates– 25% of Australian inmates have been raped, and 8% of Australian inmates are raped weekly or daily; 4.5% of American inmates have been raped every year.

Women have usually been presented as most likely to be raped in armed conflict situations: men tend to be shown as perpetrators and aggressors, with women as peacekeepers and victims. Within our cultural consciousness, a man dead in war is a hero; a woman dead in war is a victim. Of course, this isn’t true: many women encourage war and are combatants; many men are victimized and their victimhood erased.

Sexualized torture is common: 76% of 1980s El Salvadorian political prisoners report having been sexually tortured; roughly a fifth of Tamil males at one torture treatment center reported being sexually abused; 80% of male Sarajevo concentration camp inmates had been raped, with some reports including genital mutilation, men forced to rape other men, and forced incest; Sudanese slave boys have been violently gang raped; and, of course, the tragedies at Abu Ghraib often involved the sexualized abuse of men. Many of those so abused do not report their abuse, because they were too ashamed. Shame and degradation actually plays a large role in the sexual and sexualized torture of men: humiliating sexualized torture is meant to attack the very masculine identity of the men themselves.

1 in 6 men have had an abusive sexual experience before the age of 18. Having been sexually abused increases one’s risk of PTSD, depression, suicide, poor academic performance, and sexual perpetration. Yes, that’s right, having been abused makes one more likely to be a rapist; sexual abuse, in a way, is a self-perpetrating problem. If you want to end rape, one of the most important factors is providing adequate support for young sexually abused people– including boys.

Finally, queer men suffer unique problems with regards to rape by penetration. According to researchers, people are more likely to blame queer men for their rape through penetration, assume that queer men experience less stress and more pleasure, and think that queer men “secretly” wanted their rape. (Someone needs to do further studies to see if this is people believing queer men are more likely to want rape in general, or people believing that all men would like to be raped but that straight men would not like to be penetrated.) Men having sex with men is illegal in seventy countries worldwide; a queer man reporting his rape may risk being arrested for sodomy. Some people in the queer community (and in other marginalized communities) may not report their rape or abuse for fear of encouraging negative stereotypes of their community.

I think the most important thing to notice, here, is the gendered nature of the rape of men. Saying that rape happens to everyone does not mean erasing the gendered nature of rape. In fact, gender is a thread running through all of these examples: femmephobia, homophobia, the inconceivability of male victimhood, punishment of male weakness, male hypersexuality. In a way, rape is a twisted, dark mirror reflecting our gender roles, our toxic ideas of masculinity, back at us.

Hey, everyone! My friend Philip Rice has a website full of his art! Like this! You should check it out. There are Victorian vampires.

Edit: It’s not appearing in the top bar very reliably, for reasons I presume are ridiculous. In the meantime, this link ought to work.