Friday 12 August 2016

FTFY#2 - Affirmative Consent

Today I ran into this, because I like to use Twitter to torture myself.

Active consent does not work.

Affirmative (aka Active) consent imposes verbal communication upon inherently physical intimacy. Sexual communication is physical communication. Verbal communication in sex is window dressing -- it can be fun, but it is not the substance of the act.

People seek physical communication in sex because shyness and uncertainty often render us unwilling to express what we want out loud, where ambiguity falls away. Ambiguity is a useful tool in sex: its mystery maintains interest, provides adventure and leaves room for experimentation and play. Physical communication is a display of interest, of flirtation, of character and assertiveness, of dominant and submissive roles. Physical communication is what makes sex sexy. Verbal communication, especially when enforced for ideological reasons, spoils the action, deflates the libido, creates barriers and adds complications. The writer's idiom "Show, don't tell," is popular for a reason: the goal is to create an experience, and "telling" distracts from that experience.

Men are generally less verbal than women. Their conscious experience is also more partitioned and less holistic than women's, which means it's harder for them to switch modes quickly between physical and verbal while maintaining performance. Imposing verbal communication upon their physical performance undermines their ability to perform.

It is misandrist of Feminists to impose mandatory verbal communication upon sexuality not only because it forces women's communication styles on men. Affirmative consent is also misandrist in its justifications: the reason men are expected to communicate verbally is because otherwise, they will commit sexual assault. Feminists treat the natural way men communicate in bed -- physically -- as sexual assault. This implies that sexual assault comes naturally to men, that it is in their nature to assault, and that they must fight this nature at all times. This is the original sin Feminism assigns to men. It is hateful.

And along with all this comes a misrepresentation of women: it assumes we are always a hair trigger away from not wanting sex, as if none of us really get turned on by men in the first place. As if we're just putting up with them even as we say we love them. One small error, one disliked touch, and we've been assaulted. One miscommunication, and we're victims. This is a taste of the infantalization Feminism assigns to women. It is degrading.

Religious fanatics, Feminists, Social Justice Warriors, and anyone else with more ego than human decency: stop trying to tell us how we're allowed to have sex. Mind your own business. Stay out of our bedrooms. If we benefited from prioritizing verbal communication in sex, we would want to do it, and thereby we would already be doing it. We do not need to be told by a buch of paternalistic, invasive, sex-negative "personal is political" ninnies how to make our sex lives politically acceptable. Fuck your politics. The next time you feel an urge to fuck with us, please go fuck yourselves instead. The personal is not political. The personal is private.



























FTFY #1

I have many hobbies. One of my hobbies is fixing propaganda graphics.


Tuesday 9 August 2016

This science is gay

In an article titled, "Some anti-gay men have an impulsive attraction toward homosexual imagery, study finds," PsyPost reports that "Some male college students who have negative attitudes towards gay men show an unconscious bias in favor of homosexual imagery."

Is this true? While the gay-friendly public (myself included) enjoys when openly anti-gay figures like Ted Haggard are outed as hypocritical gays themselves, the answer is no. The study itself  (bypass the paywall here),  does not show that men with negative attitudes toward homosexuality show unconscious enjoyment of homosexual imagery. This research is unworthy of publication; its popularity seems solely politically motivated. This is pseudoscientific clickbait. Its clickbaity nature happens to be the reason I ran into it at all.

The study gives its bias away right in the introduction: "Homophobia is typically defined as any negative thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors toward homosexuals as well as an aversion or a fear toward interacting with gay individuals. As such, homophobia includes both cognitive and emotional responses toward homosexuality."

See what they did there? The first sentence describes homophobia as negativity toward gay people, which is fair. But the second sentence magically equates this with negative feelings about homosexuality itself.  Sexual arousal and rejection are feelings. Negative feelings about homosexuality are an inherent part of heterosexuality -- if you didn't have them, you'd be bisexual. Right in the introduction, this study pathologizes male heterosexuality by equating it with homophobia.

1) How did they determine participants were "anti-gay" or had "negative attitudes towards gay men"?

Besides the evident researcher bias painting male heterosexuality as inherently homophobic, they also used a deeply partisan questionnaire to determine whether participants were "anti-gay," called The Modern Homonegativity Scale, which uses the familiar 1-to-5 agree-to-disagree scale. It is also from 2002. Gay rights have progressed significantly since 2002. It is not fair to judge 2016 participants as though they live in the political atmosphere of 2002.

Questions (that is, statements to be rated) include: