Nine thousand, five hundred and seventy-six pages of everyday sexism.

This essay argues that feminism is impossible. After examining a recent #MeToo episode—a bad sexual encounter between actor Aziz Ansari and a woman named Grace—as a case study in feminist disappointment, the essay turns to several key seventies feminist texts to reconstruct their theories of bad sex. By taking bad sex as the model for women’s oppression, seventies feminists crafted a culturalist theory of patriarchy logically culminating in lesbian separatism. This theory, while containing the essence of all feminisms, proved unactionable: feminism could not outlaw women’s stubborn desires for men. Hence, by the eighties, some feminists had reframed bad sex as rape, calling upon the state to police sex in lieu of changing women’s minds.

Friggin’ awesome piece.

via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmutjUfrpQQ

Are the straights okay? In episode 44 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into “heteropessimism,” the sense of disillusionment or even shame associated with heterosexuality. From viral TikTok videos to studies showing that women are less dissatisfied than men in heterosexual relationships, post #metoo society is reckoning with the everyday sexism of many relationships. Ellie and David explore the reasons for heteropessimism, consider alternatives such as political lesbianism and boys’ education, and ask: how can we be attracted to things that are bad for us, and how can we break out of a heteropessimistic approach to love?

One that actually brings men and women together.

Featuring Louise Perry.

I was surprised to find myself nodding along with pretty much everything the host and guest said. They were both cooking. So many good quotes to chew on in here.

One criticism I have of the more individualistic feminist position is that if you think that rape is a product of propaganda, shall we say, consent workshops are no match for pornography. Just think of the hundreds of hours that a typical teenage boy might be exposed to pornography, compared with 30 minutes of a consent workshop. I mean, there’s no match. / Just on that basis, we’re at a disadvantage, and Dworkin and MacKinnon’s position on banning pornography makes a lot more sense.

It’s perfectly normal and natural for people to have mostly homosocial kinds of friendships and to say vulgar or unkind things in private. But now, of course, the internet blasts this out into the public domain. I think that is part of the problem.

Regarding the feminist concept of sexual objectification, Bauer explains that it was coined as part of a feminist shift in how to understand the world and one’s experience in it. According to the shift in question, in a context in which women experience widespread, systematic, diachronic, and structural disadvantages, certain ways of perceiving and representing women tend to cause them material and psychological harm. Bauer argues that once someone participates in this shift, the term ‘sexual objectification’ will ‘light up’ the relevant phenomena, and the person in question will see objectification everywhere she looks in contemporary culture. This is the case even if she is not in a position to specify exactly its marks and features.

Finally, I have read my first SEP entry in full. This reading has definitely strengthened my understanding of common positions, but no real illumination was had with respect to what to do about this whole thing. Sigh.

Compound that with a hypervigilance from the trauma of transmisogyny, the negative stereotypes and attitudes about male entitlement or anti-feminism projected onto trans men, the normalized dismissal of our voices and our treatment as self-centered and attention seeking from misogyny, the attitude it is unimportant to listen and center us that these important texts contribute to, a very simplified understanding on man/masc=easy and woman/fem=hard (ideas left unchallenged because of a lack of transmasculine and masc gnc voices), and the general strain of anti-transmasculine prejudice within society and our communities which has not been properly analyzed or addressed, and therefore no one is expected to be held accountable for.

But I will also in many ways be a man – for once the term has meaning and distinguishes me from the feminist women with whom I politically identify – and sometimes that will mean that my eyes will see you, woman, and there will be sensations and emotions, lust and eroticized longings, and this will be true even though I don’t want to be your colonizer and your oppressor. / What I will also be feeling is my own defenseless sensitivity to those very feelings. I’d like it if women understood that. It’s a bit scary when women I’m attracted to hold it against me.

Fragile Masculinity (a.k.a. Precarious Manhood) is an academic theory about the nature of “masculinity” in patriarchal societies. From here on out, I’m talking like the theory, so I don’t have to say “according to…” 100 times. / Masculinity isn’t an innate aspect of a person in this conception; it’s a status or identity conferred on certain people (i.e., people who look like “men”) by their culture or community. / Your culture gave you masculinity, and it can take it away. Easily. “Fragile Masculinity” means that masculinity, as a concept or identity or social status is hard to achieve and easy to lose. It’s fragile, get it?

The sissy must behave against a patriarchal backdrop, not in a vacuum. Sexually assertive behaviors which would not be considered oppressive otherwise are open to being interpreted that way precisely because other men, in general, have behaved as they have. Nowhere does this have greater impact than in the matter of the simple, honest declaration of sexual attraction. Surrounded by females complaining of the exploitative, insensitive nature of men’s raw sexuality, and often confronted head-on with the generic automatic female response to all male expressions of immediate sexual interest, the sensitive young male who identifies with and respects women is likely to be rapidly polarized. He ends up being driven towards a masculinizing track of ceasing to feel hurt by such interpretations of his sexuality, or else towards complete cessation of expressing appetite for women in order to avoid being accused of, to put it tritely, “being only after one thing.”

see: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353592023005

‘Sexed bodies’ reviews how sexed bodies have been classified historically, which provides useful insights into cultural perceptions of men and women. If social prejudices and practices can shape physical development, amplifying or creating differences between the sexes, recent developments in neuroscience suggest that the brain is also likely to be affected by these processes. Advances in endocrinology have also promoted a significantly different view of the relationship between the body and sex. It concludes with the views of the contemporary feminist, Judith Butler, who has argued that the sexed body attains its social significance and appearance of substance as a result of the performances people engage in.

Gender socialization is terrifying, bro.

This video fucking ripped. So many links to crawl.

see: https://garfieldkermit.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/why-arent-games-sexualising-men-sources/

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But persistent gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled.

Very convincing, depressingly so.

The next time a woman reaches down and compliments my approximation of a female gaze, I’ll probably act differently. I’ll meet it as I should, without thrill. I’ll tell myself an idealization can grow to be nine-tenths fetish and still call itself respect. I will resist a yowl—and know that I am gracious.

via: https://nottoby.substack.com/p/on-the-pedro-stal-the-pede-scal

The Not-Toby posts to end all Not-Toby posts.

The patriarchal masculine narrative, “he’s gotta have it,” tells us in effect that “young men are naturally predatory and must be disciplined into compliance.” This sense of a disgusting thing inside of me made me afraid of my masculinity, my self, for a very long time. I’m still afraid. How could I not be?

Just give me my ticket to hell already. I literally can’t win.

Should religion be able to answer the problem at the heart of the second wave?

What feminists have to ask is, are we responding to this threat in the direction of greater meaning and deeper human flourishing for everyone? Or are we shutting down the articulation of meaning out of fear that we might be excluded from it? The right way to respond to this situation is to rediscover our ability to advocate positively for our own complex human nature, our own search for meaning, our own need for purpose in life.

via: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/linkpost-for-may-3ac

In this chapter, we review an impressive body of research conducted during the past 20 years on sexual objectification, self-objectification, and their attendant consequences. We start with a description of how sexual objectification comes to be internalized as self-objectification in many girls and women. We then highlight exemplary research on the facets of sexual objectification and the deficits incurred by self-objectification. We review theories to explain the functions of sexual and self-objectification as a psychic defense against mortality concerns, as a bolster for justification of the patriarchal system, and as a vehicle for oppression by the powerful. Finally, we spotlight exciting directions in which the study of sexual objectification and self-objectification is forging ahead.

see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tomi-Ann-Roberts/publication/365409232_Objectification_Theory_Continuing_Contributions_to_Feminist_Psychology/

Academic and writer Amia Srinivasan’s revolutionary debut text, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, questions the ways in which we discuss or avoid the problems and politics of sex. Examining the complexities and interconnections between sex, consent, gender, class, race and power, the stunning narrative unravels the nuances of discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, to name a few. In conversation with Bee Rowlatt, Srinivasan discusses these urgent political debates and what it means to be free.

This woman is cracked.

Paper abortion, also known as a financial abortion, male abortion or a statutory abortion,[1] is the proposed ability of the biological father, before the birth of the child, to opt out of any rights, privileges, and responsibilities toward the child, including financial support. By this means, before a child is born, a man would be able to absolve himself of both the privileges and demands of fatherhood.

Interesting.

As [per] usual with gender issues, this can be best explained through a story from ancient Chinese military history.

What I propose is not for feminism to stop advocating against sexism towards women. I propose for feminists to look for ways to do so that don’t needlessly cause lasting sexual repression or guilt in a subset of men most sympathetic to feminist concerns. However, this would require considering men’s interests, perspectives, and experiences, not just women’s.

see: https://web.archive.org/web/20200217134031/http://home.earthlink.net/~ahunter/Same_Closet_Diff_Door/hpsissy.html

via: https://nottoby.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-training-boys-and/comment/149005099