(The photos of the men above and throughout this post are photos men submitted of themselves in response to the Craig’s List ad I described.)
In early September, a Seattle man, Jason Fortuny, began a Craig’s List experiment. His goal was to find out how many responses he could get in 24 hours to an ad purported to have been posted by a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom. Fortuny lifted the text and photo he used for the ad from a sexually explicit part of Craig’s List (which features a warning notice) and posted it to the “Seattle Casual Encounters” section. It reads in part:
i am looking 4 a white or latin only, str8 brutal dom muscular male 30-35 yo who is arrogant, self-centered, nasty, egotistic, sadistic who likes 2 give intense pain and discipline and wants pleasured who is d/d free, safe and sane. i demand an expert muscular man …who demands 2 get serviced by this hot kinky professional woman…
The woman lists the SM tools she has available and says whe wants extreme sex, “on the edge.” The photo is pornographic, taken from the back, and is of a nude woman bending over.
Within 24 hours Fortuny had received 178 responses, many with photos, including multiple photos of the respondents’ turgid members in various states of nonrepose, and including the respondents’ e-mail addresses, work e-mail addresses, IM addresses, phone numbers, audio and full names.
Following are some excerpts of the responses. (Warning, could trigger.) Most of these responses included full names and photos.
You want it? Fine, here I am. I am cruel, sadistic, and meaner than fuck. I will take you down, use you until you’re bleeding and turn you into the disgusting fuck toy you know you really are. But first I will hurt you very VERY badly. I’m the real deal you dumb whore, if you really want a cruel bastard to fuck you up here is your chance. Take it or leave it, your loss if you fuck this up.
***
The real question is, can you handle it if you really find what you are looking for? I am into bondage, pain, control, and slut fucking a sub. I am a horny Dom bastard that likes to whip my subs ass until she cries, and fuck her through her sobs. I am demanding, experienced, and thorough….You will be used for what you are. Nothing more.
****
Your CL add actually bruised my soul. I have never been so intrigued and turned on by something I’ve read. You must be equal parts Pam Anderson, Joan Jett, & Attila the Hun. Where do you get off writing those things in the middle of my work day? Now what the hell am I gonna do? Jerk off in the bathroom or slam my dick in the door a couple of times so it stops getting hard for a while? Yuppy boys - they know nothing of passion. By outward appearances and my resume you would probably mistake me for one. Behind the scenes I’m a lot different. I did own a Harley but got rid of it because there are too many yuppies pretending to be something they’re not riding them now. Just because you get a leather jacket and a Harley tank top from the local dealer does make you bad. None of those homos know how to really raise hell. Heaven doesn’t want me and the Devil is afraid I’ll take over so for now I am in the Seattle area. Would love to pay you a visit.
first of all you don’t need to see my face or know my stats because when I’m done with you you wont care. If you cant tell that I can give you what you want, then you deserve whatever lame ass fucker you get. I can talk nice to you just long enough to get the info I need and then you will find out what it is realy like to be dominated and abused. and I promise that if I come over and you do not give me all I ask for you will be punnished
This one is interesting:
You act sound like you think you make the rules Fuck off
***
Bend over bitch, and take it like a man!
***
listen you fucking cunt you aren’t worth the sauce in my balls. What makes you think a 6′6″ man like me would want to fuck a skanky whore like you…. you are nothing but a human toilet and you need to be spread so I can piss on you.
***
You’re tits better be worth the ride or I’ll bitch slap you till you look like a glazed donut. Don’t even waste my time with reply till you’ve shown me what they look like.
***
Someone definitely needs the anger beat out of her. 33, 5′11, 175 pounds, single.
***
You want it? Fine, here I am. I am cruel, sadistic, and meaner than fuck. I will take you down, use you until you’re bleeding and turn you into the disgusting fuck toy you know you really are. But first I will hurt you very VERY badly. I’m the real deal you dumb whore, if you really want a cruel bastard to fuck you up here is your chance. Take it or leave it, your loss if you fuck this up.
***
Well now…..we have a little gal that thinks she is tough shit. Well, listen you smelly little cunt, I will not tolerate any bullshit from you. You will do exactly as I tell you or you will be punished beyond your comprehension (which won’t take much because of your tiny fucking useless female brain).
Bitch, you will speak when I ask you too and moan when I tell you. If you open your mouth which I consider just another hole I will hold your eyes open and spit into each of them and then use my special cane to provide a little sting to your arm pits.
I am getting pissed off right now thinking about what a bitchy cunt you are and the lessons you need to be taught. …I will use and abuse you in anyway I see necessary to get you to be my submissive cunt slave. How long can you control your urge to use “code blue”? Are you able to go where you have not gone before or are you just another weak bitch that talks a big story?
It is not a question of me handling you, but can you handle going to new limits….probably not!
***
I can be very dominant and nasty but never seem to meet women who are as into receiving pain as I am into giving it… Love to give bruises and welts, pull hair hard and physically and verbally control a woman who’s into it
At the end of the 24-hour experiment, Fortuny posted the ad and all of the responses, e-mail links, phone numbers and photos to a website. (NOTE: Violent content, pornography and pornographic imagery, could trigger.) He also posted this information to his myspace site (which no longer exists).
The 178 men who eagerly responded were not at all pleased. They responded immediately demanding that Fortuny remove their e-mails and photos and close down his site, threatening him in all sorts of ways, including with lawsuits.
I think the results of the experiment are interesting, and I think Fortuny — even though, based on the research I’ve done, he is no pro-feminist — has done something that is valuable to feminists. If you look through the responses, you find that the men who responded were just regular guys, of the type we all encounter every day. Some of them appear to be squeaky-clean, posed smiling with their dogs, fishing up in the mountains, rock climbing, big smiles on their faces. They describe their jobs, where they live. And then they write along the lines of those quotes I posted there, and worse, much worse. Alongside the photos of their smiling faces, they post photos of their erect penises. Some say they are married (and aren’t getting their needs to abuse women met at home.)
If you are the type of person who really wants to believe the best about men, you will be shocked or surprised that that many men, over 24 hours (minus the eight periods of time in which Craig’s List deleted the ad) rushed to e-mail what they did including all of that identifying information, to an address of someone unknown to them. If you are familiar with the way men think and behave, you won’t be surprised. I was not surprised.
But something did surprise me and that is this. Of the publications which have so far reported this news, none faults the men– for anything. The men are not faulted for e-mailing their woman-hating writings together with e-mail addresses and photos to someone they did not know. The men are not faulted for their woman-hating writings at all. The men are not faulted for getting off on descriptions of violence and abuse of women. Nobody faults the woman who actually did place the ad in any way, shape or form. Universally, in the BBC, Wired,UK Metro, and other publications reporting this news, Fortuny was damned for invading these men’s “privacy.” Even Robert Jamieson, a black progressive editorialist for the Seattle P-I, whose writings I usually appreciate, slammed Fortuny for “publicly humiliating” the men and for Fortuny’s lack of “moral decency.” Writers for Wired called Fortuny “despicable,” a “sociopath” and the BCC editorialist said he had doubtless “ruined lives”. All the writers agreed Fortuny should be sued. There is an interesting and lengthy list of comments on Slashdot and there I found one comment I could relate to– it was the only one I found in any of the lists of comments I read. In this comment, Bee Beard says:
So THAT’s why I never got a reply! My self esteem was taking a pretty big hit there, what with my sending pictures of my erect penis to a complete stranger (which is a perfectly reasonable and intelligent thing to do, by the way), and then not getting back a reply. I’m just glad we live in a world where you can do such a thing with absolutely no repercussions, ever.
In the Slashdot comments I found additional information, as well, about an organization which charges for a service similar to the one Jason Fortuny has provided to us:
Most of the personals ads in Women seeking Men on Craigslist are fake. Most of them are spam for dating services, autoresponders for porno sites, or gay guys trolling for pictures of men.
Some of the fake ads are from a commercial service, CatchEmOut.com [catchemout.com]. This company runs fake dating ads, logs the e-mail addresses, and, for only $4.95, you can search their database. “Find out about their secret life before it’s too late” they advertise. “Dating and Escort sites are booming with some genuine people and many people just trawling for an affair or casual sex. If you think, or are just curious if your partner maybe registered on one of these sites, has answered to one or has contacted a prostitute via E-Mail there is now an answer.” “We will look through our available database and let you know INSTANTLY which site they are registered on, or which ads they may have replied to.”
So someone has already been doing this. For money.
I think this CatchEmOut’s information ought to be widely circulated.
What I never found in any of these reports or articles is what I would have found if we lived in a world in which women were respected and viewed as fully human, if we lived in a post-feminist age, as so many say we do, if feminism had even begun to accomplish its goals. I never found the slightest concern, or outrage, or even a mention, of the misogyny in those comments. I found zero analysis of why it might be that random men, in large numbers, get hard-ons just thinking about beating and inflicting pain on women, or why it might be that they would e-mail significant amounts of personal information, together with photos, to a stranger, hoping to have an opportunity to do precisely that. I found no philosophizing over what it might mean that we live in a world in which this kind of ad draws this kind of response from just regular men, all these pleasant-looking smiling guys whose photos I’ve posted here and many more, or of why women might want to be beaten and hurt in sex, or why so many men want to beat and hurt them. We have arrived at a moment in history in which men wanting to beat, and beating women who say they want to be beaten is viewed as healthy sexuality which should not be interrogated or questioned or analyzed at all. Calling women all of those vile names is just healthy sex play, you know. It’s just fantasy. Those men would never use that language otherwise. They don’t get hard-ons just seeing random women getting beaten in, say, pornography– no, no. Neither was there any analysis of the unapologetic homophobia in the comments.
All I found was whining and handwringing and outrage over how these poor men’s privacy had been betrayed and violated, together with calls for Fortuny to be jailed, beaten, sued, silenced by any means necessary.
As I say, Fortuny did us a favor, if only in providing us with yet more stark and sobering evidence of what is true about men.
Heart
Note: I will not be approving pro-sm comments here. I understand sm, I know the rap, I understand the reasoning, and I disagree. I think men who get hard ons hearing descriptions of men, beating women, are men who get off on the subordination of women, including the violent subordination of women. It’s not “play.” It’s not “playing with power.” It is woman hating. I will not approve any defenses of it here.
Heart
[...] Once again, Heart at Women’s Space, The Margins, has posted something very provocative. Called The Truth About Men, she explains: In early September, a Seattle man, Jason Fortuny, began a Craig’s List experiment. His goal was to find out how many responses he could get in 24 hours to an ad purported to have been posted by a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom. Fortuny lifted the text and photo he used for the ad from a sexually explicit part of Craig’s List (which features a warning notice) and posted it to the “Seattle Casual Encounters” section. [...]
Oh my god.
I hope Lucky comments on this. I can’t say anything. Just wtf.
i, too, was surprised by the media response being almost exclusively about these creeps’ precious privacy. that is a concern, and i don’t like what fortuny did. but since he did, let’s see what else we’ve learned.
what struck me is that from their pictures, i would mistake a lot of those men for “nice guys.” some remind me of guys who responded to my very tame, highbrow salon personals ads, back when i was looking. some are nice looking enough that i might go out with them, and i would never know that they’d also responded to a “woman” whose main qualification was a shockingly large rear orifice.
four out of five guys i met on the salon personals were surprisingly sweet, charming, and intelligent (i thought). but if i wind up single again, this incident may make me stay that way rather than wonder what’s really behind that strange man’s gentle demeanour.
Fascinating. My local battered women’s shelter recommends getting full data on anyone you start dating, credit report, rap sheet, etc., etc., but actually, this CatchEmOut service sounds more a propos. And I don’t mean just for men one might meet on personals, which I don’t use–but for men one meets through ’safe’, ‘known’ channels. And I am not saying this because I’m particularly cautious or paranoid–I’m not, and I’m pretty unflappable–but I am just saying.
Yup. I think what Jason did was wrong, but the reaction to what he did from feminist and liberals makes me almost as sick as some of the things the men describe. Without fail, people compare it to outing gay folks - as if wanting to beat and fuck a woman until she cries is as harmless and neutral as BEING ATTRACTED TO THE SAME SEX.
It apparently doesn’t matter that these men are aroused by hurting women, because:
1) those women are asking to be hurt
2) some women are aroused by hurting men, too!
3) it’s consensual in name
So we can no longer judge men who like to beat and torture women, because there exist some women who have already been hurt so much that they can consent to it. Lovely.
OK, I looked at the CatchEmOut site. They search by e-mail address. The question is, then, what e-mail address the person is using. This is something one of the other Slashdot commentators has probably already pointed out.
It is indeed telling that there was a chorus of protest about ‘privacy’ (on behalf of people who had already given up theirs) and no analysis of why this ad would generate such a huge response.
The responders to this ad do not sound as though they would consent to planning a scene in advance and keeping it under some sort of control, as I have been assured the S/M adepts do. Perhaps I’m wrong. But what is so unsettling about the whole thing is to realize that there are that many people out there who will jump at a chance to…torture.
Professor Zero, so true. One reason I am not going to post pro-sm comments is, anybody reading through the men’s responses to the ad will quickly see that what turns them on is getting the woman to allow abuse, violence, pain, beyond the point at which she wants to use her safe word. I mean, the hell. That’s what dominance is all about– dominating! If there is all of this respect and concern for the sub’s safe word, then the dom isn’t dominating at all. Which is again something SM apologists never want to talk about.
Heart. Knows about SM.
Oh, I should mention that I did see a few negative-towards-the-men responses. They were all the same: “These guys deserve it because they were stupid to send their information to a total stranger.”
Somehow, it didn’t make me feel any better.
trellis, so true! I saw that too, but didn’t include it as negative-towards-the-men responses because it wasn’t about what they said, it was about the fact that they allowed themselves to get caught!
And thanks for your great comments– just so right on.
Heart
I’m not surprised by this even though I don’t have a lot of experience with men, thank heavens (and me). I have been turned off by pleasant, smiling everyday type guys all my life because something about them just seems very unloving, cruel, egotistical to me. What men don’t realize is that their precious “privacy” is violated by their very being.
I think the service Fortuny did far outweighs any concern for these guys’ “privacy”. It’s sort of like complaining that you violated a criminal’s “privacy” by exposing his criminality - doesn’t wash.
Fantastic posting, Heart. Chock full of sexual politics and provoking questions most liberals don’t ask anymore because pornography fosters continuing silence more than it sparks meaningful dialogue.
Hey, thanks, Sam, and so true, branjor, about concerns for “privacy” trumping criminality. What those men wrote there *is* imo hate speech that rises to the level of criminality.
Another interesting thing this reveals about men is, in the ad that was published, the woman requested that men send photos of their *faces*. She didn’t ask for photos of their penises. And yet many, many of them sent not just one, but several photos of their penises.
Heart
I have to say that I don’t like how comfortable you are with the conclusion that you’ve learned something about “men.” You’ve learned something about SOME men, but that doesn’t mean you should obviously generalize to all men. If I start a knitting website and get 200 emails from women who love to knit thanking me, should I generalize that all women are knitters at heart?
I’m not talking about the analysis of the media reaction, which is a completely different issue. Just about the language you and your commenters are using. It’s not just wrong on its own, it also hurts you, because a regular guy reading something like this who agrees with every point you’re making is going to feel alienated from you because he will feel lumped in with these people, even though he condemns them and their actions.
LM, I am confused. How does a woman expressing her love of knitting compare with a man expressing that he enjoys abusing women?
Oh, wait, they can’t be compared at all.
If a ‘regular guy’ feels some how lumped in with those men, then there must be a reason for it. Nothing to do with ‘alienation’ (as if feminists could some how alienate men!!) at all.
“All I found was whining and handwringing and outrage over how these poor men’s privacy had been betrayed and violated, together with calls for Fortuny to be jailed, beaten, sued, silenced by any means necessary. ”
If Fortuny had written a post in which he simply played a gay man looking for a relationship with other men, and then effectively outed all the respondents by publishing their information, would you dismiss the privacy concerns this way?
Of course people are in a huff about the privacy issues, because there ARE privacy issues here that go beyond the question of BDSM. Clearly you have a problem with BDSM - fine - but don’t get angry because a lot of people are also concerned about the notion of their privacy being betrayed online.
LM, I hear you. I actually thought quite a while about whether I should title this post “The Truth About Men.” But it kind of gets to one of the points I wanted to make, and something this whole thing illuminates– that on a practical level, women have no way of knowing what kind of a guy they are encountering. I mean, the guys whose pictures I posted there look like really nice guys. They are, in general, pretty cute, and you’d think to look at them, based on how they present, that they are probably progressive as opposed to conservative. None of them, for example, is wearing a suit and tie and corporate-dude looking haircut. In general, women expect misogyny from right-wingers and conservatives, and expect it less from progressives and leftists (although I have long believed there is every bit as much misogyny on the left as on the right; the difference is, the right is proud of its misogyny and the left doesn’t think it is misogynist.) You’ve got the nice outdoorsy guy in the mountains, the Harley kerchief wire-rimmed glasses guy, the kind of long-haired guy with his cute dog.
It is true that not all men would behave as the men who responded to that ad did. The disastrous thing is, there is literally no way for women to know whether a man would behave that way, or whether he thinks that way. That’s really the value of this exercise courtesy of Fortuny. I think one reason there was such outrage over this is, this is the stuff men don’t want women, especially — just in general — to know they think and say. Sure, they’ll e-mail it to a woman they view as prostituted basically and hence deserving of zero respect. But they don’t want their moms, their sisters, their wives, their girlfriends, their bosses, their potential girlfriends to know that this is how they think about women. And this, I believe, is a lot of the reason for the way men circled the wagons around these men, including progressive reporters like Robert Jamieson. This is the stuff men know — about themselves, about other men — that they do not want women to know. Because if women know, then women are not going to want anything to do with them. They are also going to become feminists (the women, that is). And they are also going to realize that what feminists have been saying about male power is true.
Women really have two choices only when it comes to men we don’t know. We can believe the best about them — despite all the statistics we all know about, despite what we see, read, despite our own personal experiences with men, and despite this kind of evidence which I posted up there. Or we can assume, until they prove us wrong, that we are dealing with men like those in that blog post. I believe, in light of all of these many revelations of the past few years, all the mass murders and rape/murders of women, women and girls abducted and imprisoned, tortured, murdered, the rape of the 14 year old by servicemen in Iraq, the popularity of extreme pornography, violent pornography, that it is best for women and girls to assume all men are this way. I think the onus is going to have to be on the men to prove they are otherwise, and to earn each individual woman’s trust.
Because anything else is potentially lethal to a woman. Who in the name of the goddess on high wants to start dating a guy like one of those guys, wants to start caring about him, maybe marry him, move in with him, and THEN, sometime down the line, find out that really, he’s a hater of women? He’s not going to let her know that right up front because he wants her. Hating women doesn’t keep men from wanting them. That’s the hell of all of this.
And that’s the value of Fortuny’s experiment.
Heart
LM wrote: “It’s not just wrong on its own, it also hurts you”
This sounds vaguely, or maybe not so vaguely, threatening to me. “Don’t you feminists dare ever tell the truth about men, or even the ones who might be inclined to agree with you will turn on you.” Telling. Also, not new, the more I think about it.
If Fortuny had written a post in which he simply played a gay man looking for a relationship with other men, and then effectively outed all the respondents by publishing their information, would you dismiss the privacy concerns this way?
No. I think outing gay men would be a homophobic act, pure and simple, meant to harm them. There is nothing hateful or misandrist/misogynist/misanthropic about being gay. Gay men looking for relationships are just human beings, looking for relationships. There is nothing hateful, immoral, dangerous or wrong about what they are doing. But because we live in a homophobic culture, outing them will be dangerous to them. They might lose jobs, families, reputations, their lives.
Men seeking to inflict pain and violence on a woman, as these men describe? Men who *are* as these men describe themselves? These are dangerous men. These are men who need warning labels sewn into, and displayed visibly, on their clothes, so women don’t unwittingly get hooked up with them and find out, as the one man described, that they are with a man who wants to inflict more pain and abuse on women than women want to experience.
Outing these men didn’t subject any of them to any danger. In fact, as I wrote above, in general, men have circled the wagons around them, defending them and urging that Fortuny be punished in all sorts of ways. Outing these men subjected *Fortuny* to danger. Because he violated an important taboo: he told the truth about the way so many men really feel about women. He made that truth public. That is a huge violation of the masculinity codes most men protect and defend without even realizing it.
Outing these men may have resulted in their losing girlfriends and wives. But tell me something. If you were married to a woman who was involved in something comparable, and you didn’t know about it, wouldn’t you want to know? And wouldn’t you want to leave?
This is not information men have a right to keep private about themselves or about other men. This is information they are obligated — obligated — to furnish to women. Otherwise, they are going to be responsible for the women who are hurt by men like this.
Heart
Wow.
A bit of background - rfjason (Fortuny’s lj handle) is a notorious troll, and is banned from my lj (which I choose not to link with this name) for being an assholish anti-feminist. So it is ironic indeed that his “experiment” displays what it does.
And… violated their privacy? How silly. No one made them send those words and pictures. They did it eagerly, of their own free will, hoping they would find a woman to beat and torture. They didn’t consider it a risky act at all - after all, they believed they were just emailing a woman, and who is afraid of women?
Those men deserve having their pictures and private information on the web. Nice work on the pictures throughout. Thank you for sharing and your comments are right on.
As a therapist there’s little that upsets me, seriously. This upset me. I think that says something.
Rape prevention efforts should be reshaping the minds of men,
especially since campus educators pull thousands upon thousands of dollars of federal funds from the Clery Act that have been earmarked for sexual assault prevention and treatment.
It’s clear, however, that we have to start with little boys. We have to talk to them in elementary, middle, and high school, at some point before the magnet of sociopathic draws them in.
It’s clear, however, that we have to start with little boys. We have to talk to them in elementary, middle, and high school, at some point before the magnet of sociopathic draws them in.
This is true, but just telling them assault (etc.) is/are wrong, won’t do it. What would do it is a complete feminist education. And of course, I don’t mean indoctrination, or re-education camp a la Pol Pot, or on the other hand, just training sessions on how not to be ‘misinterpreted’.
Excellent analysis. I do think, however, that Fortuny could have made exactly the same point without posting all of the personal information of the respondants. Granted, the pictures are necessary as they allow the reader to see that the respondants look like “normal people” and not like shady, marginal types. But publishing all the phone numbers and email addresses just allows critics to divert attention away from the feminist issues towards a privacy issue. What’s unfortunate is that this experiment can’t really be repeated. Every subsequent experiment along these lines will generate a knee-jerk “Oh that’s an invasion of privacy” reaction regardless if the methodology is more refined.
As a man, I’d also like to see the same experiment done in reverse with the ad being a submissive man looking for a dominant woman. I’m curious if the same types of “normal looking” people would come out of the woodwork. My hypothesis is that one would get dramatically fewer responses; maybe 17 instead of 178.
As someone who has followed this story closely over the past few days, I would like to agree that most of the comments that have appeared in the media seem to be missing the point. The privacy issue is simply a smokescreen to hide the fact that some sadistic men have been caught red handed. To take things to the bizarre, these abusers are now complaining about being publicly ‘humiliated’. You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
There are important issues coming out of this. I have never read Jason’s site before and have no idea about his past. Whether you agree with him or not, there is general consensus that he has not actually broken any law. Despite this he has been subject to very serious threats, both legal and illegal, and sadists have launched a serious amount of intimidation, character assassination, and threats of violence at him. His site has not been updated for a week, and he seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet. If this is what passes for discussion in the BDSM ‘community’ then Jason’s experiment seems to have exposed something very disturbing which sadism is determined to censor.
Sadism has argued that it is ‘misunderstood’ and the old chestnut, the victim of ‘media manipulation’. Their violent reaction to Jason Fortuny speaks volumes about what they are really about.
As is probably apparent, I have experience of being attacked by sadists for holding an opinion that they do not like. I do get involved in discussions with sadists and recently was attacked by an abuser for being sexist. The reason? I questioned why a ‘sub’ would choose to be abused. I was labelled ‘sexist’ by a sadist because the sub was female I was denying her the right to make her own choice. I don’t claim to have a great experience of feminism, but this seems to me to be a horrendous juxtaposition of what feminism is about and I would welcome any comments from feminists about this.
Finally can I just say that as a man I find that the language sadists use in their replies, and their vilification of women to be equally obnoxious. I find them nauseating, and would like to express my contempt that they consider themselves ‘real men’. They are abusers, no more, no less.
Fantastic post Heart. I am sorry that I am not more shocked, and as usual, the media turn it around so it is the men, who are the victims. Victims in that given not even half a chance they would willingly brutalise women. True colours and everything hanging by a thread…snap! You are nabbed
I’m very confused. I’ve also been afraid to post this question because I was afraid of what response I would get, but I finally managed to get up the gumption to after a day or so of thinking about it.
Why is responding to a submissive’s ad by offering to be dominate anti-feminist?
I’m really confused at it, not because of any thoughts or concerns I have about the BDSM subculture - it confuses me, too, because I don’t get it - but because I’m confused at why answering the ad with what the “woman” posting asked for is wrong.
I think I’m not getting something important, but I don’t know what. I’m sorry, I know I probably sound very antagonistic or something, but I don’t mean to. I’m just not sure what I’ve missed, and if I should be concerned because I’ve missed it.
Cornelius, yes this is all very true. Do you not find it so irritating when BDSM submissive females attack you instantly for trying to inhibit their “choice” to be submissive? When, in actuality, all you are trying to do is expose the fact that the “personal is political”, which means that “choices” (in this case) are not just isolated decisions that are unaffected by one’s environment or society. These sub fems think they are above and beyond anyone else, that they are totally unaffected by patriarchy, thus promoting patriarchy because they are ignoring the problem and consenting to it at the same time. It’s like claiming that your purchasing decisions are not affected by advertising…absolutely ridiculous! And what’s even more irritating is that these sub fems are making an “erotic” joke out of pain and suffering that many women experience in real life everyday. Anyway, I loved everybody’s comments here, and I’m so glad to know that people see beyond the ridiculous way the media reacted to this long-overdue and much-needed study.
Heart, I appreciated your thoughtful response. I agree with just about 95% of the points you’re making. And I am certainly not in favor of closing our eyes to the dangers out there, and to the problems you discuss. What troubles me is your suggestion that men bear the burden of proving to women that they aren’t rapists or whatever else some men may be. It’s not clear to me that that’s a fair way to approach people. I think the important distinction we need to make is in the way we relate to groups as opposed to the way we relate to individuals. We can say various things about how men, as a group, behave, but that shouldn’t become the way we treat individual men. Otherwise, I think we’re engaging in the very sexism and stereotyping that we condemn. I don’t see why we can’t speak forcefully against this despicable behavior and attempt to expose the hidden evils in our culture, and at the same time approach each new male individual we meet with an open mind. This, again, is not to say that we should go into dark alleys with these individual males, but I frankly wouldn’t go into a dark alley with any stranger.
When I say that this kind of rhetoric hurts you, I mean that I assume that you want your cause to be an inclusive one, and that you would welcome men as well as women as champions of it. I think it hurts people to make assumptions about each other anyway, because we close off possible knowledge and experience.
***Do you not find it so irritating when BDSM submissive females attack you instantly for trying to inhibit their “choice” to be submissive? ***
Actually, Corneilius said he was attacked by a *sadist*, that is, a *dom* as a sexist for questioning the woman’s “choice” to be a sub. He did not say he was attacked by the “sub” female.
Why is responding to a submissive’s ad by offering to be dominate anti-feminist?
Anna, we should probably consult Susie Bright on this, or perhaps some actual member of the BDSM community will come here and explain, but it appears to commentators like me that these guys are going far beyond what a dom would in a first response to an ad, and speaking in a different sense. They all seem to be major line-steppers, for one thing, and they sound more into making a snuff film than an SM scene. And they all seem to assume she’ll pick them. Nobody is saying, ‘Yes, I’m into this, let’s talk and see if we’re interested in each other and if so, discuss what we would like to pursue in greater detail.’
Although I don’t know. While on the one hand it’s true, the ad asked for (basically) abuse and elicited some, and on the other, all men are not necessarily scum, I wonder whether there isn’t some kind of continuum going on here. Sure, most men are far less violent than these guys, but even nice ones are often presumptuous towards women in ways / to degrees they would not inflict on other men, or accept for themselves. This, I think, is patriarchy.
***What troubles me is your suggestion that men bear the burden of proving to women that they aren’t rapists or whatever else some men may be. It’s not clear to me that that’s a fair way to approach people.***
Men? Bear the burden? Oh my gosh, isn’t that just the most “unfair” thing ever! Well, you know what? History has amply demonstrated that men will not do squat about a bad situation, such as rape, UNLESS and UNTIL it adversely affects THEM. The men circling the wagons to protect the creeps above is a living demonstration of the truth of that. The “unfairness” of it is what is good about it, what it will take to get them going. I am sorry, but that is the way it is going to have to be until EVERYTHING CHANGES.
***I think the important distinction we need to make is in the way we relate to groups as opposed to the way we relate to individuals.***
I had a therapist once (female) who sat with barely contained indignation because I was slamming men as a group. She finally burst out with her objection to that kind of generalization. So I thought about that over a period of a couple of weeks. The next time I had a complaint to make I was very careful to criticize the individual wrongdoer only. She started to look all flustered and indignant all over again and finally she burst out with an objection to how I “singled out just him”! I learned a big lesson from that - if you (generic you) criticize men as a group you are wrong for “generalizing about a group of people” and if you criticize a man as an individual you are wrong for “singling out” just the poor individual. The moral of the story - You don’t criticize men, period.
I have since concluded that when someone criticizes a woman for telling the truth about men by the criteria of whether (or not) she has generalized to the group, that it is a cynical and manipulative ploy to defuse her truth and testimony and to shield men from the natural consequences of that truth.
“But publishing all the phone numbers and email addresses just allows critics to divert attention away from the feminist issues towards a privacy issue.”
We see what these nice men really are: The nice men who answered the ad and the nice men who are so easily diverted, because well, the sadism just isn’t an issue, is it? Privacy easily pulls their attention, not the safety of women, or the light this shone on the violent misogyny in the boy next door.
The ad responders and the critics are brothers in blood.
Perfect theatre. Perfect journalism. Fortuny should get a Pulitzer.
I have since concluded that when someone criticizes a woman for telling the truth about men by the criteria of whether (or not) she has generalized to the group, that it is a cynical and manipulative ploy to defuse her truth and testimony and to shield men from the natural consequences of that truth.
Yes.
We see what these nice men really are: The nice men who answered the ad and the nice men who are so easily diverted, because well, the sadism just isn’t an issue, is it? Privacy easily pulls their attention, not the safety of women, or the light this shone on the violent misogyny in the boy next door.
Yes.
I might as well admit that one of the reasons I am so fascinated by this post and thread is that I am being harrassed as we speak by an ex. One of those ‘nice’ (or nice-seeming) guys. Yes, it’s the only man I’ve had this experience with, and yes, a woman could do the same things he’s doing. But two things still amaze me: (a) when I was in the relationship, I had no idea he could get this bad … he’s officially against that kind of thing, and (b) what he says (via e-mail and blog post, mostly) is so incredibly standard. It’s down-the-line, textbook verbal abuse, using all the best known tricks for shaming women, etc. It’s as though these people had all been to a training camp together, or something.
To clarify the point, I was attacked by a ‘dom’ for questioning why a ‘sub’ would allow themselves to be abused, and this particular ‘sub’ was female. I was accused by the male ‘dom’ of being sexist for questioning the female ‘sub’s’ right to choose to be abused.
Personally I was questioning the whole sub/dom dynamics, the gender of the people involved had no bearing on my point. I have found however that the overwhelming proportion of these ‘relationships’ that I have encountered are made up of male sadist’s (dom) abusing female ‘subs’.
“Do you not find it so irritating when BDSM submissive females attack you instantly for trying to inhibit their “choice” to be submissive?”
I know of women who have been attacked by female ‘subs’ in the vilest manner for questioning why they do it. I usually find the responses follow the same pattern. I try not to be confrontational and question motives, occasionally a female sub will argue their point, and the ‘master’ will generally appear on the scene to back them up without admitting their ‘relationship’. If I do not accept their position than it is my fault for not being able to ‘understand’ what is so wonderful about sadism. I am not trying to insinuate that I have any greater knowledge; I find most female ‘subs’ erudite and intelligent. However sadism does not accept that any contrary opinion has any validity.
I have spoken to an ex sub who had been seriously hurt, and was already disenchanted with what she described as the cultic aspects of sadism. I have promised confidentiality, but I don’t think it would break that to say that once out of the sadistic milieu, she found it incredibly difficult to comprehend why she had agreed to some of the things she had done. She is trying to rebuild her life, but finds it challenging to deal with some of the baggage left behind by sadism. I found my contact with her was more revealing than any conversation with a ‘sub’ who is under the influence of a ‘dom’.
Lara; I love the analogy of purchasing decisions being unaffected by advertising. I think there are dynamics at work in sadism that affect much of the choices that are made, especially by ‘sub’s’.
Boys will be boys. Men will be men. And men hate women.
Men did not get to rule the planet by “being individuals,” nor by being the most intelligent, strongest or fastest of all species. Or even the meanest. Men got to rule by collectively being the most murderous sociopathic assholes that ever walked the earth and not letting anything stand in their way.
The idea that men are indviduals is absurd. They’re one of the most conformist species on the planet and pretty much share the same collective brain. From early childhood on, they work and play in teams and move as one in armies. Does that sound individualistic to you? Perhaps you haven’t heard then? There is no “I” in team.
Terrorism begins at home. With the family. Men learn their values and attitudes towards women from other men. Predominantly their fathers. These attitudes and vaules are then reinforced by this woman-hating, rape culture a million times a day through their friends and associates, the media, religions, schools, corporations, government, the military, sports, television, video games and porn, to name a few. As Andrea Dworkin put it, ““In the United States, violence against women is a major pastime. It is a sport. It is an amusement. It is a mainstream cultural entertainment. And it is real. It is pervasive. It is epidemic. It saturates the society. It’s very hard to make anyone notice it, because there is so much of it. But the fact of the matter is, that if you live in a society that is saturated with this kind of woman hating, you live in a society that has marked you as a target for rape, for battery, for prostitution or for death.”
We know it’s true. And we need to stop lying to ourselves. It is not just a few men in a dark alley outside a bar in Kansas City that participate in all this woman-hating. All men in this society participate, contribute, and benefit from it. Its an an ancient masculinist cult whose traditions and rituals are passed down from generation to generation. From father/figure to son. All boys are intiated into the brotherhood. Some do the hands on dirty work while others show their support of the brotherhood by excusing the brothers, reversing and/or by minimalizing their actions and pretending that they are the victims, or just by betraying and turning their backs on women and pretending not to see. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” they cry. And even as the words leave their lips, there is a wink and a nod towards the brotherhood. All know their position within it. They are a team.
So does any of this surprise me? Why should it? Women have been subjected to milleniums of it. The newspapers are full of the violent deaths of women at the hands of men every single day. Our senses are blitzkrieged by it every time we turn on the tv or try to watch a movie. So much so that we have become desensitized to it. So that misogyny and violence towards women becomes acceptable and the norm. Once we’re desensitized enough, the envelope then gets pushed again. Farther and farther. And along with it gets pushed the levels of acceptance and normalacy.
When Psycho hit the big screen in 1960, people were shocked by it. For years, women were afraid to take showers. When breasts first appeared on screen, people were again, shocked. When the DeFeo murders occurred in Amityville, it made front page news. As did Charles Manson. By the time Ted Bundy rolled around, he appeared to be a terrifically nice guy to his friends, family, neighbors and associates who could not believe he could do such a thing.
Today, we walk right by these things and don’t even blink an eye. This is now every day normal life for us. Another woman murdered, another serial killer on the loose, T & A and porn is as American as apple pie, and the women and children that make up the 80% of casualties in our wars, don’t even register on our richter scales any more. Women are dropping like flies and we don’t even seem to notice. That, m’dears, is called “densensitization.” The words we heard from Fortuny’s men can be predictably expected to become acceptable and the norm. It already is. And despite the evidence that surrounds us every which way we look, women still hold onto the fairy tales and refuse to believe that men hate women.
Ugh, I finally had computer access that wasn’t from work and I went to the website listed above. Gack.
There’s a thin line of connection running through my mind between this “experiment” and its critics, a post Biting Beaver wrote yesterday about her gut fear reaction spawned by her tremendous difficulties in obtaining EC, and a post from last week at Feministe about rape victims publicly posting the names and photos of the men who raped them. On the surface I know that it all part and parcel of patriarchy’s rape culture, of suffusing sex and women’s bodies with pain and humiliation. But something else is niggling in my mind. I don’t have time this week or the next few to really digest it, which sucks.
Anyone else see/feel the connections?
LM, your use of pronouns and nouns is very interesting. You speak of I, of we, and of men and males. No where do you say women or females. Unless you’re including that under the vague umbrella of “we”.
And that’s part of the problem. Women, again, are subsumed and erased. I don’t mean to pick on you per se, but your concern for what you interpret as judgement of all men (and rightly it is) in a negative light is aparently more important to you than the use, abuse, and erasing of women and women’s bodies. Why shouldn’t the onus be on men to prove they aren’t rapists? Who benefits in having a population of docile, submissive, non-judgemental women who are raped in numbers approximating every one in four? Who benefits by encouraging women to internalize submission and pain as an active role in their sexuality?
Who benefits in telling women to not be so hasty to judge?
“It’s as though these people had all been to a training camp together, or something.”
as Luckynkl points out, it’s not “as though” these people had all been to a training camp; they actually *have* been through a training camp - it’s called men’s culture, and *all* men have been raised within it together. no man is exempt.
the culture must change, or we are doomed to live (and die) by it.
Luckynkl and Nexyjo, I hear you. And the training includes the belief that there will be no consequences, and also techniques to avoid or deflect consequences, and/or strategies for finding spaces in which they can let fly without consequences. One of the things which fascinates me about this story is, these guys let fly because they assumed, erroneously, that they had found a consequence-free zone.
My wims, are you all up to responding to comments from men which are defensive, combative, aggressive? There might be some value in the brilliance of your responses, but maybe you aren’t up for it. I know I’m not. I have some things I want to say in response to all of what you have posted here (tomorrow, I’m a morning person), but I’m not much interested in talking to men about any of this right now, unless they get it. The commenters I’m talking about don’t get it.
I will leave it up to you. Should I approve their posts and are you up for responding? Or not.
I love all of you for your brilliance. How much do women/wimmin/womyn rock.
Heart
Branjor and Q Grrl, you hit on exactly what I was trying to get at in my very short, apparently cryptic post up there (at least what you’ve expounded on is what was in my head at the time I wrote it; looking at it now, it doesn’t come across). Anyway, great posts. I also find LM’s reference to “your cause” (addressing Heart, and I assume feminists in general) as you say, Q Grrl, interesting.
Nods also to Lucky, Pony, Prof Zero, nexyjo, and of course Heart for great insights and a great discussion all around.
I swear I’m the queen of bad timing, or slow thinking and even slower typing. When I started my above post, nexyjo’s was the last one up.
I obviously haven’t contributed much, but if I may answer your question, I wouldn’t want to read or deal with crap from men who don’t get it, here especially, Heart.
And what exactly do we gain from engaging with these men? Oh. Nothing, you say. OK. So, why would we want to engage with these men? Oh, I see. Cos we’s women and coddle them we must.
You know, FUCK Fortuny. And not because he violated the privacy of sadistic men.
I guess that’s not very eloquent, but praiseworthy, my sweet patoot. Pulitzer, phooey.
hi heart, thanks so much for this post and to everyone for their great comments. i’ve been reading and appreciating everyone’s words very much.
that said, i too would like to say that i’d rather not read hostile, ignorant, ridiculous, defensive, combative comments from men who don’t get it. i for one am more than familiar with their usual crap and appreciate this space particularly because it’s not allowed here. we see it, hear it, read about it, day in and day out and i don’t think it’ll add anything new, insightful, or valuable to the conversation.
thanks again for your great words and insights, everyone.
xoxo, jared
No but thanks for asking Heart. I’ve heard it all.
Should add: these guys are sure there’s something we dim-witted wimmin are just missing. You know? Something they can enlighten us about. Something just so brilliance laden we’ll say …. why they’re RIGHT! We hadn’t thought WE of that.
We thought of that.
Yeah, I agree with everybody. One of the guys who commented said, basically, “But what are sadistic men supposed to do? They can’t help themselves. It’s better than rape!”
Jeezus. To me, this whole thing underlines the absurdity of the idea that SM is just some sort of sexual preference or identity. I was reading the paper yesterday, an article about the first guy imprisoned in the special prison we have in Washington for sexual offenders. The guy had raped and tortured two teenagers, a 14 and 15 year old (girls) for hours. He had also raped and assaulted many other girls and women but was never charged (according to him.) He has served his time, gotten all the sexual deviancy treatments, yada. Anyway, what stuck out to me was that the psychologist describes him as a sexual sadist. Well… yeah. So how have we arrived at this time in history where that’s just a valid and legitimate sexual preference instead of something you lock people up and treat them for (even if your treatments don’t work.) Oh, I know, because some people are masochists and they like what sadists do and “consent” to it. And we are not supposed to analyze this latter or talk much about it, just agree that, golly gee whiz, some men like to hurt women and some women like men to hurt them, so don’t judge them, it’s all about consenting adults. Except that if you read through all of that crap, it isn’t about consenting adults at all. It’s about sadistic men feeling free to unload all of their violent feelings towards women, feelings they have all of the time as they walk around in the world and interact with women. I’m not going to even get into all the stuff about consent and all of that– as I’ve already said, people who want to dominate don’t enjoy it unless they actually *do* dominate. If the sub gets to control how things go down, the dom isn’t dominating and it isn’t going to scratch the itch. But I don’t really want to even get into all that.
I think I know where you’re coming from, funnie. I think Fortuny is an asshole and himself enjoyed the hate fest and the humiliation of the woman whose picture he put there and all of that. He didn’t intend to do women or feminism a favor. But I think that he did, despite his intentions.
Heart
…[Y]our concern for what you interpret as judgement of all men (and rightly it is) in a negative light is aparently more important to you than the use, abuse, and erasing of women and women’s bodies. Why shouldn’t the onus be on men to prove they aren’t rapists? Who benefits in having a population of docile, submissive, non-judgemental women who are raped in numbers approximating every one in four? Who benefits by encouraging women to internalize submission and pain as an active role in their sexuality?
Who benefits in telling women to not be so hasty to judge?
This I think is key in dealing with accusations of ‘reverse’ sexism/discrimination from men, racism from white people, etc. They are
much more interested in protecting their own reputations, and finding a way to correct the woman/poc, even if/when they are officially ‘nice’, liberal, and so on.
…Except that if you read through all of that crap, it isn’t about consenting adults at all. It’s about sadistic men feeling free to unload all of their violent feelings towards women, feelings they have all of the time as they walk around in the world and interact with women. I’m not going to even get into all the stuff about consent and all of that–as I’ve already said, people who want to dominate don’t enjoy it unless they actually *do* dominate. If the sub gets to control how things go down, the dom isn’t dominating and it isn’t going to scratch the itch.
Yeah…this is somewhat novel to me as I had always heard that s/m and abuse were not the same, but this post and a few recent observations from daily life indicate otherwise.
On the men. Some, I am sure, are abuse victims themselves, and I feel for them. If I were a trained therapist with that specialty, I might be willing to work with some of them. This not being the case, all I can say is that plain old conversation, empathy, and so on, sound good, but do not apply (a) with people this messed up or (b) with people whose intentions and interests go in a completely different direction.
Thanks Heart, but no thanks, I hear and see enough as it is. They already have too much air space on the lonely planet of ours.
Heart
Spot on, sadism has been trying desperately to gain some acceptance for its abuses and for many years now has been tying itself to the coat tails of the gay community. The reason being to gain the same sort of acceptance that the gay community has been able to achieve in recent years (I know its still not perfect). The argument goes that if gay people can gain acceptance for their sexual orientation, then it’s not a big leap for people to be accepted for their sexual preference.
There is a big difference between an orientation and a preference however, and this highlights the considerable differences between the gay community and sadism. It is generally accepted today that an orientation is something that you are born with; it is intrinsically part of your being. A prefererence however is something you choose to do, and as in any walk of life, choice comes with a little rider called responsibility. If you choose to abuse you are responsible for the consequences of you choice. Sadism does not like this.
Another tactic sadism has used is Blurring the boundaries. When I talk about sadism I am talking specifically about people who enjoy humiliating or hurting another person, be it by tying someone up, assaulting them or controlling them. There are many ways to do this and I can assure you sadism uses them all. However sadism has claimed ‘as there own’ practices which are not specifically sadistic. For example I read a BDSM ‘educator’ recently who ruled authorativly that if anyone has ever use cream as part of their sex life this was proof that they are a sadist.
Why do they do this? If they are able to paint such innocuous practices as being sadistic, then they are able to gain some credence for their particular abuses. It’s a classic double bind situation, ‘how dare you criticise me for my abuse, when you are an abuser yourself’
I don’t know if links are ok to post but there is a article from a couple of years ago entitled ‘The sexual sadism of our culture’ which was written after the infamous photographs of the abuse at Abu Ghrab where first published. It argues that images such as this, and those in sadism are becoming widely available, and that this is having a nefarious effect on society.
The sexual sadist you mentioned reading about in the paper is everyone’s nightmare, it is beyond my comprehension why anyone would do that, and my heart goes out to the victims. Sadists would argue that the difference between what they do and what a violent rapist does is ‘consent’, but whilst not trying to belittle the trauma of the two young girls at the hands of this ‘man’, I think there are numerous connections between the motivations of a sexual sadist like this and the motivations of abusers.
Sadism also claims that what it does is not illegal, but it operates in a grey area where the law is unclear so neither is it legal. There are many cases where sadists have been prosecuted and claimed the consent defence only to be found guilty. Travis Frey was sentenced to 8 years for raping his wife, he claimed it was consensual, she said it wasn’t, but when she produced the ‘contract of wifely expectations’ he had drawn up for her, his consent defence was blown out of the water. Glen Marcus is under investigation at the moment after one of his slaves in his porn business withdrew consent. Most famously Slavemaster (John Robinson) murdered 9 women all of who he met in sadistic Internet chatrooms. The police where on to him quite quickly, but after breaking into a hotel room where he was beating one of his victims he claimed the consent defence, his ‘slave’ backed him up, and the police let him go. That woman was dead within months and he went on to kill several more women before he was eventually arrested.
Well, I don’t necessarily mean I’m anti-Fortuny as an individual, because I don’t know much about him as a person either way (haven’t looked him up online).
What’s interesting to me is that apparently a female friend of his found the ad to be faked and “collaborated” with him on the idea and its execution.
While I can understand her desire to remain anonymous, and while I’m glad she isn’t being personally lambasted by the [right-to-abuse-women-in-utter-]privacy advocates, I guess I’m just plain tired of what women know to be true remaining unheard and unremarkable non-news until we get a suitably male mouthpiece.
Absolutely, in one sense the stuff these men are saying is shocking. But women who have been abused by the S/M scene, women who have been confronted with pornographic materials as a psych-out attempt…really, any woman whom men have aggressively solicited for sex (which is most of us when you count it all up) already get it on some level. And certainly, due to circumstances and repercussions, we’re quiet about it a good deal of the time, but when we do try to talk about it, it’s like shouting into a vacuum.
If Fortuny were a woman, or if his female collaborator received top billing for the idea and execution, I doubt that this would be considered an expose’ at all.
Instead, it would be pitched as a game of chicken: removing the precious neutrality gained by simply POSING as a woman (rather than BEING a woman, much less having one’s own body on the line), I think the popular take would be that the woman posting such a thing MUST have wanted it, she just changed her mind after getting those responses because she wasn’t adult/liberated enough to “handle” what she was asking for.
Alternately, she’d be just another b***h who wanted it and then “cried abuse” because she got mad and uptight after the fact.
Fortuny told men about themselves in a way men have to admit really happened (which is part of what made them so mad). It’s not a bad thing to do that.
But it changes nothing, really. We knew it. We said it. SHE knew it and said it - and specifically helped to reveal it. And still none of what women say has been listened to or acknowledged, much less acted upon.
So, that’s frustrating. Because little as I know about Fortuny, I still would hate to rely upon men like him for the publication of the things women experience and know.
I guess I’m just plain tired of what women know to be true remaining unheard and unremarkable non-news until we get a suitably male mouthpiece.
Yes, good points, funnie.
And Cornelius, I think your most recent comment is a well done essay in its own right. It makes some basic (as in, central, root, key) points which can be hard to grasp sometimes, and it makes them well. I think it would be useful as a full fleged post.
I agree that women aren’t believed, and that we can talk all day and night about what men say and do and we *won’t* be believed. That’s one issue.
But I don’t think Fortuny was a mouthpiece for anything, or was believed because he was a man (because he didn’t really say anything, for one thing) or that what these men said/did/wrote has credibility because it was a man, Fortuny, who devised the “experiment.” I think the results would be the same whether Fortuny was a man or a woman, because what the men wrote and did speak for themselves. They can’t get out of those photos, the e-mail addresses, the audio, the e-mails. I think the main reason men (and women) can get away with not believing women about things like this is that what men say and do to women is done by one man to one woman at a time, and usually not in writing or complete with audio, e-mail addresses and photos. So in each case, if a woman describes what has happened to her, even if the same thing has happened to her repeatedly at the hands of different men, people can get away with calling her a liar (even though they know she isn’t, but the whole game is to get away with it so there is no concern for the fact that what she says is true) because there’s no hard evidence to prove otherwise. Even if a bunch of women get together and describe what has happened to them, they can all be called liars (because again, the goal is to get away with it, not to establish what is and is not true.)
In this case, 178 men, over 24 hours, put it all out there in writing, complete with photographs, audio, e-mail addresses. It’s right there in black and white. So while the experiment is really infuriating in that it does remind us that we are made to be liars, it’s not more or less believable, I don’t think, because a man designed the experiment. It’s believable because men, themselves, memorialized, in ways which can’t be blown off, precisely what they actually do and are capable of doing. And there’s no woman around to be made a liar. It’s all right out there. Which is why the issue du jour then is “privacy”.
I agree that what Fortuny says doesn’t change what women know. But our knowing what we know doesn’t getting us very far if we’re not believed or are straight up made to be liars (even though those making us to be liars know, again, that we aren’t; the goal is getting away with this stuff in the interests of subordinating us). Yeah, it’s aggravating that we have to have evidence in order to back men into a corner this way, but that’s going to be the way things are until there is no more need for feminism. So long as men intend to subjugate us, they will make us out to be liars, even though they know as well as we do what the truth is. And some women will help them in that. A lot of women.
I think it’s hilarious and telling how little male “pro-feminist” bloggers are saying about this.
Heart
So while the experiment is really infuriating in that it does remind us that we are made to be liars, it’s not more or less believable, I don’t think, because a man designed the experiment. It’s believable because men, themselves, memorialized, in ways which can’t be blown off, precisely what they actually do and are capable of doing. And there’s no woman around to be made a liar. It’s all right out there. Which is why the issue du jour then is “privacy”.
Yes–this is key. And privacy is one of the first things abusers think about. It was the primary concern of the older generation in my family, for reasons other than ‘reserve’. And I’ve met a few men (and their female allies) who were a little obsessed with the idea of privacy, and/or were a little too interested in libel law, and/or who put thought into getting information they might need to damage peoples’ credibility, ‘just in case’.
Because, precisely, the goal is to get away with [things].
I think this whole thread is quite brilliant. It may just be my professional (professorial) tic speaking, but I think the original post and comments should be organized somehow into a single piece, for very visible publication. It would become a classic.
***I think this whole thread is quite brilliant. It may just be my professional (professorial) tic speaking, but I think the original post and comments should be organized somehow into a single piece, for very visible publication. It would become a classic.***
YES!
I hadn’t heard of this experiment before reading this entry, but it has quite blown my mind (Oh, the possibilities!).
I’m so glad it happened, and that these fuckers’ photos and mails were published.
Breach of their ‘privacy’ versus the breach of the women they get hold of… Let’s print more of them!
Drat, I will never figure out how to trackback! I posted about this on my blog. I doubt my language would be appropriate here, but basically I am saying to your defensive, combative, aggressive posters you had to moderate, if you dare to try to justify yourselves, sadists, go to my blog. The post Sadism Unmasked is there waiting to shred you. This is the end of my post.
The twisting of consent in the S/M scene is a huge can of worms. This helps men justify their lust for cruelly abusing women. This is what I would like to discuss. How do you justify this form of lust, men? I would also like to discuss why a woman would seek such abuse. I think such women need help, not abuse.
Heart, if you doubt this post is appropriate, feel free to censor it. This subject is so touchy. My techniques of argument are crafty and perhaps unfair. I did not want to say too much upfront. Is that a trap? I think my warning makes it clear, expect harsh scrutiny. I am curious what makes them tick. Maybe they will reveal more than they realize. Maybe none will dare face an angry scientist’s relentless logic. These men are probably not merely fantasizing about this kind of behavior. I hope curiosity does not kill this cat. If any such man jumps in, I expect the thread to get ugly in a hurry, since I really have no sympathy for men taking pleasure in hurting women. I see rape written all over that.
Hey, Angry Scientist, I appreciate what you have to say, even though I get a sort of, mmm, chivalrous vibe from you that makes me a tad nervous. But hey, I’ll encourage any man who is willing to take on the sadism and violence in male sexuality, may your tribe increase.
Trackbacks, heh heh. I see that you have a wordpress blog. To make a trackback to this post on my blog which will show up as a trackback in my comments section, if you go down to the bottom of this post, where it says, “You can leave a comment, trackback, etc.,” and right click on “trackback,” you’ll come up with this link: http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/09/17/the-truth-about-men/trackback/ Just copy that.
Now, if you go to your post on your blog about sadism, into the Admin part where you posted it, and you go down below the text of your post, you’ll see a place to post trackbacks. Just paste the trackback in there. There’s also an optional excerpt section right above the trackback section where you can paste an excerpt of your blog post. If you do that, an excerpt of your blog post and the link will appear as a trackback in my comments section here. This is called “pinging.”
I still have to respond to your thoughts about transgender and will eventually. I have way too many irons in the fire!
Heart
“My techniques of argument are crafty and perhaps unfair.”
Yes, very crafty to tell us you’re being crafty. Some sort of double blind trickery, I guess. That and relentless logic! Might I suggest, ever so humbly, you apply some of that relentless logic to the burdensome trackback problem. I heard it was written on a blackboard at MIT as an unsolvable problem and to this day the only one who gets it is the helpful and clever womensspace.
Heart, thanks for all the tips. One of them stung perhaps more than you intended. You don’t sound like you are that offended, but really, I didn’t intend to come off as chivalrous. I won’t say I understand why you said that. Too many possibilities. I guess in a thread on the truth about men, I could ponder this a bit. I think chivalry might be a topic for discussion, but otherwise not consistent with your intent. IOW chivalrous men do not belong on this blog, from my point of view. I think in a thread about men I might have something to say, but otherwise I am in way over my head here. I don’t have any way of knowing how limited male understanding of feminism has to be; that only goes so far. IOW there is nothing like experience. Feminism is about women; I could never claim to understand much about women. Compared to other men, I may know a fair bit about feminism. I think I know what you meant. I think you nailed me trying to be the knight in shining armor thinking to come to the rescue. I know that is impossible; one man cannot do much to stop other men terrorizing women. I think men can challenge other men, maybe get some to stop, think, question what they do to women. I am sorry if I sound like a knight in shining armor. My feminist understanding of that is a man flaunting his ignorance. Here on this blog, I am ignorant. You have feminist thinkers here, not the general public, or Camp Trans? I think I am still trapped and overreacting, but really Heart, am I that transparent? Yikes! BTW is it pointless to argue with true believers like that Camp Trans defender? Maybe time to shred or chase off that sarcastic clown who thinks the way to win arguments is to ignore the other side, or dismiss it as bigoted, irrelevant, not to be tolerated.
Well, you may as well know, the chivalry I learned growing up is treacherous, shallow, basically a code of honor that says male physical violence is between males, but verbal violence is a free for all. My dad was chivalrous, abusive, but never so out of control as to cause much physical damage. I know words have many meanings, and I sense you were not saying, get off your blog, not yet, anyway. I think you were searching for a rebuke that would not sound quite so harsh. That word I would rather take that other way, as ignorant knight who wants to learn. I will be thinking about this for awhile. The last thing feminism or your blog needs is a man like that. I think I am missing something fundamental about chivalry, but I think I have to figure it out the hard way. I think this lesson is an old one for me, and I had better get it before it wrecks me again. My blog will help me, somehow, write my way through my personal issues. I have already done too much of that here. It is not your responsibility to tell me exactly what bothered you, or to help me out here.
[...] I re-read Kiss my Tiara this weekend and am contemplating it and this old post about wedding culture and fear from Pandagon (and the previous post she references) and this post from Women’s Space about an experiment that untentionally revealed deep misogyny from a lot of seemingly ordinary ‘nice’ and ‘liberal’ men. She writes in the comments: I think the onus is going to have to be on the men to prove they are otherwise, and to earn each individual woman’s trust. [...]
I found zero analysis of why it might be that random men, in large numbers, get hard-ons just thinking about beating and inflicting pain on women, or why it might be that they would e-mail significant amounts of personal information, together with photos, to a stranger, hoping to have an opportunity to do precisely that.
-why then are the largest group of submissives-men?
I linked to this post and I got this doofus whining aout one guy in the bunch who didn’t sound that bad, thus confirming the whole point: “But if one guy is okay or at least has a good alibi, then you just hate men, obviously!”
Jesus fucking christ.
I got sent this blog address through a feminist website via e-mail and i wasn’t told what it was about but when i began to read through it i was absolutly disgusted that other males (i’m an 18 year old male) think that abusing or being violent towards women is acceptable and that they think women are inferiour “You will do exactly as I tell you or you will be punished beyond your comprehension (which won’t take much because of your tiny fucking useless female brain).” Women are not stupid they are just as good as men (if not better at some things) and through what i’ve seen, heard and read about they seem to have alot more common sense than males do.This just makes me wonder what is so hard about treating others with respect, dignity, kindness and compassion and as equals it’s not hard to treat others this way but from the actions, words and behaviour of the majority of males you’d think it was impossible.I’d also like to apologise if i offended any woman through what i’ve written; I’ve only been reading feminist blogs and literature for about 2 1/2 weeks although not everyday and i am truly trying to become a male women would not be offended by or scared of and who will always treat them as equals and talk to them as equals as i really think what you are fighting for is right and i want to support your cause.
Thank you for reading my comment-Aaron
Can we not see trackbacks from sorts like that, please. No need for them to demand links to their crap just by exploiting automated software.
Gee, Hearrt, look—all the Alas trolls have formed themselves a blog and called it feminist critics. Isn’t that cute?
Huh. Spammed.
Yeah, ginmar, they just can’t seem to stay away from us. :p
Heart
I stumbled across this story because I have a friend who recently has been trying to get away from this sort of relationship. I was googling, trying to find some kind of psychological study or anything to explain what in the world drives someone to want to torture someone else, and why anyone would stay in that sort of situation. The closest I could come to any answer was how similar the stories of Stockholm survivors are to the relationships between doms and subs. All I could find were literally thousands of websites trying to explain how BDSM isn’t really as bad as it seems because of blah blah blah. It’s kind of like someone telling you that putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger is a good way to see if it is loaded. I stumbled across this blog when I was about to give up, glad I stuck it out.
As a male I understand how other men think and why they do what they do. I can see how some of the male posters would feel attacked as it were, but I also see how this doesn’t matter. I am reminded of something the Dalai Lama said about the romantic revolution and how it has caused western culture a great deal of harm. On the one side you have a male dominated society, there are only a handful of fortune 500 corporations run by women, very few women in positions of political power etc. On the other hand you have this idealized romantic fantasy that can be used to trick women (and men) into their respective “roles”. Unfortunately, this plays out much better for men than it does women. Men tend to be dominant, chauvinistic, bullying, single-minded, abusive jerks and many women maintain this ideal of romance, trust and “he’s really not all that bad, most of the time…”
I know that every single BDSM website will say “one common myth is that doms are sociopaths.” However, In my study of human psychology I have no knowledge of what else they could be. I understand the lust for power and control. It makes people feel important, but I do not see how someone could feel powerful just because someone is letting them beat them up. If the average person could really enjoy that sort of power, Ghandi’s peaceful revolt in India would never have worked. I hope that the world hasn’t really changed that much in the short amount of time that has passed since then.
178 responses in 24 hours. I wonder how many of these men would be answering like that if they were not raised on pornography.
Yes, men are now be raised on pornography.
Yes, just listen to talk radio host Tom Leykis on FM nationwide, and what he says about women every day for three hours a day is criminal. He calls women sewers, he tells men how to get as much sex as they can from women, and so much obscentiy it’s hard to believe this is allowed on the radio.
Words cannot even capture what this womanhating monster Leykis says in major radio networks nationwide, and he’s been doing this show for years apparently.
No gay male group or straight men’s liberal group has ever raised hell about this program. Very few men call in to protest this show! You get to hear what men really are thinking about women and they are completely open about it on the radio.
Now what I don’t understand is why women call in to grovel and agree with him. I swear to goddess, it is straight women at their most frightening worst, even though he manipulates the phone calls coming in, and is adept at humiliation and contempt for men and women on the aire.
This is so-called mainstream radio.
Now let’s go on to lesbian groups promoting S & M, and sex clubs in big cities also promoting lesbian S & M.
Heart is very good at keeping the creeps out of this space. You don’t want to argue with these men ever, you want to get women to stand up for themselves and expose all the abusers and bruts and sociopaths out there.
You want to give women the tools to wake up and see what goes on with these men, and how normal monsters really are.
I think Hannah Ahrendt proved this decades ago with her brilliant book “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” Remember the banality of evil?
I don’t know what it’s going to take for news commentators to get outraged over MALE behavior and not their precious “free speech” “sexual freedom” or “privacy.” When women have all this, and have air time worldwide and control of radio and T.V., then I’ll begin to believe in free speech.
Right now Heart is showing us what women’s free speech is all about, and the monsters, S & M apologists and goddess knows who else writes unposted evil, will not have access to our minds or ideas. They will be edited out of sacred lesbian feminist space just the way these demons of patriarchy edit women out of herstory.
Don’t debate. That is a male tactic. Unite and serve women, and keep your eyes on the sisterhood. Walk away from male debate tactics, because none of these men are interested in our ideas at all or justice for that matter. They are interested in dominatio