Undesired vs. Disliked

I've been thinking about some implications of a point from the Confessions post, that men don't feel desired even when we are. So that means we men can't see desire for what it is. Men must either miss it entirely or see it as something else; like being valued for our usefulness. And this makes me wonder if, perhaps, when we men are not desired we percieve that as being less valued, we feel that the woman feels that we are not useful, we feel disliked? Usually I have more weight of personal observation than this when I bring something up; I'm really guessing here. But I think there may be a meaningful overlap between "women who I thought disliked me on first sight" and "women who were not attracted to my type." Maybe some of the time I've confused simple lack of attraction for dislike.

I'm sure that overlap is not all misperception, though. People pick up signals from one's looks about one's views, attitudes, subcultural affiliations, and there's obviously another big overlap between not liking those things about a person and not being physically attracted. I've been told that to women in general, nobody is attractive if the woman dislikes the person, regardless of their looks. Lots of men separate the two to some extent; e.g. when a man was asked about his admiration for the beautiful, scheming, manipulative, amoral and comic-violent character Shampoo in the anime Ranma 1/2, he replied, "I don't want to DATE her." (There's a whole lot of correspondence in me between not liking something about someone and not finding them attractive, but I admit I made sure Google Safe Search was off when I went looking for a Shampoo picture.)

I also suspect there's some wrong-way feedback in there, in terms of automatic extra dislike when we (everybody, not just men) look at people who would be really attractive except for whatever. I think of a certain gorgeous young woman at my last workplace, who was not very competent at her work and also tended to give orders outside her sphere of responsibility. During the time I was there she became even more disliked than her behavior accounted for. A young male friend burst out at one point, "She doesn't get to do this just because she's got big boobs!" Frankly, I think if she had been totally unattractive, she wouldn't have gotten as strong a reaction. I've observed the same reaction in women discussing a conventionally attractive man who was the wrong type.

Fits and spurts

Like so many bloggers, I get inspiration in fits and spurts. I try to smooth it out by putting off the last inspirations in the queue, but then by the time I get to them I'm no longer inspired to write about them.

Also blogging related, my email address is now visible in my profile. I thought it was there all along.

Glass houses

Kinky people, I think, are pretty reluctant in general to criticise other people's kinks. That's probably a good thing most of the time. I personally think kinks are really only open to criticism when they leak or overlap into the rest of life; when they don't, I think it's generally a matter of taste. Often, however, it seems to me that people give something a pass just because it's flying a kink flag; e.g. sexual assault goes unrecognized because the genders are the same, and being upset would be homophobic. I've been pretty vocal here about my objections to some kinds of dommes.

Two kinks which I do not object to, but have little or no taste for, are sadism and forced feminization (little and no, respectively). I've just been reading Bitchy Jones's take on forced feminization. She's really fun to read. She correctly recognizes that we shouldn't give something a pass just because it's identified as kink, and makes a pretty ironclad case about why forced feminization is wrong, including this summary:

* Doing housework is humiliating for men
* Men doing housework is exceptional and surely only the domain of exotic sex play
* It's humiliating for a man to be made to do something most women do every damn day. To make it even more humiliating for this MAN he can dress as a WOMAN as well. Well, yes &mdash how humiliating. *For* *me*.
* Femdom is full of misogynistic, archaic, fifties gender role inspired shit.
* No consideration is being given to female sexuality &mdash instead we are supposed to enjoy femdom because it means we don?t have to do all the housework (like other women *do*, apparently) rather than because it TURNS US ON.

OK, this sums up pretty well why forced feminization is not one of my submissive kinks; these things don't resonate with me for exactly the listed reasons. (And also the result would be just plain comical in my case, something like what you'd get with Macho Man Randy Savage in a dress. With apologies to all crossdressers who aren't built for it.)

However, I'm going to defend the practice here. I think the problem with turning this kind of analysis on kink can be quickly summed up by comparing it with BJ's main kink, sadism:

* Doing housework is humiliating for men
- You're hurting people
* Men doing housework is exceptional and surely only the domain of exotic sex play
- You get off on hurting people
* It's humiliating for a man to be made to do something most women do every damn day. To make it even more humiliating for this MAN he can dress as a WOMAN as well. Well, yes &mdash how humiliating. *For* *me*.
- Hurting people is your whole kink
* Femdom is full of misogynistic, archaic, fifties gender role inspired shit.
- Pain hurts
* No consideration is being given to female sexuality &mdash instead we are supposed to enjoy femdom because it means we don't have to do all the housework (like other women *do*, apparently) rather than because it TURNS US ON.
- You are just directly, immediately, unequivocally, obviously, not subtly, not by-implication, not if-this-has-the-stereotype-reinforcing-effect-I-predict, hurting people

Most kink that I've heard of is based on stuff that is inherently unacceptable in ordinary life; and a whole lot of it has roots in some pretty fucked-up stereotypes. Kinks including housework and wearing dresses stand up a hell of a lot better to real-life analysis than, say, BJ's

I want to *decimate* his masculinity (Hey Latin freaks – leave it! I *know*. I’ve fucking masturbated about what decimate *really* means). But I want to be able to see his masculinity as I take it apart.

Neither of them should be subjected to that unless they become real life.

A Man Pole Dancing

Since virtually all my commenters are women, I thought I'd share this video I happened across. Dude's got grace.

Male Pole Dance at Pole Divas -- Training clip # 2

Sorry about the music.

Intimate pictures of Venus - the planet

OK, does anyone else think that the lower right picture looks like the planet's hoo-hah? Or have I just been alone too long?

Lost Dog Returned

My wife took me out to dinner tonight as a thank-you for running down to move the bedframe for her. I always feel a little down after seeing her, kind of a reminder of my failings and loss. On the way home I saw a tiny little dog wandering around a parking lot in the center of town, and pulled in. The dog was a pudgy, scared little Silky Terrier soaked with rain. She had a collar with a phone number, so I called the owner and returned the dog. Now I feel much better.

One-upmanship

Holly said,

Last night I masturbated to orgasm while receiving a backrub.
I have the best possible life.

I can resist mentioning this at Holly's, but I can't resist mentioning it: I bought my wife a wearable "hummingbird" vibrator for her use while I was giving her Swedish massage.

Note-I published a much longer post a few hours before this one; I'm driving my own "big" post off the top.