Having sex with Pickup Artists will leave you feeling shitty afterwards, says Pickup Artist
All PUAs are equally douchey, but some PUAs are more equally douchey than others. Wait, wrong Orwell book.
Over on PUA dirtbag Roosh V’s Return of Kings blog, a guest poster calling himself Emmanuel Goldstein (oh, how clever) offers a rather revealing take on the psychology of “players” and pickup artists like himself.
After justifiably mocking “nice guys” for assuming that “girls choose men like people buy houses” – that is, by carefully weighing pros and cons and looking for the best deal – he suggests that
[p]layers … are more like that sweet old lady with saggy arms wearing a hairnet at your local supermarket, handing out free, tasty samples.
Stay with him; it will all make sense, sort of, in a moment.
You’re not even looking at her, and she beckons you over to have a taste. Even though it’s junk food, you can’t resist. You avoid sweets, and here you are eating a tiny cinnabon. And really, she won’t mind if you take just the
tiptaste.Regardless, minutes later, you’re going home with a 96-pack of cinnabons – and you don’t even eat pastries! To be completely honest, the first time it happens, you’re a little jarred and confused about how the whole thing went down so fast. …
Now, imagine that that sweet old lady is actually a funny, strapping young man, and you buying those cinnabons is a woman agreeing to sex with him the night she met him. That confusion you felt after you bought a huge package of junk food? That’s how a girl might feel after her first one-night stand.
Yes, that’s right: Mr. Goldstein is comparing himself and his fellow “players” to supermarket pastry-pushers who cajole people into eating things they know they shouldn’t eat, and that they later regret eating.
And, oh yes, that are really bad for them:
If you remain unconvinced, just remember that our economy is in shambles because tens of millions of people bought homes they cannot afford, and that half of us are comically obese from eating too much junk food. That granny sample lady is looking pretty formidable right now.
Now, there are all sorts of things wrong with Mr. Goldstein’s analogy here. Sex isn’t pastry, for one thing, and for another, women (and everyone else) should be able to indulge in either of these pleasures without having assholes on the internet getting up in their business. (And, yes, PUAs, I’m saying that as a fat fatty.) I’m just trying to point out that by the terms of his own analogy, Mr. Goldstein is saying that sex with him is a shitty thing that’s bad for you.
This isn’t someone attacking PUAs for being miserable, self-centered sexual users who are only able to convince women to have sex with them through manipulation, leaving these women feeling shitty afterwards.
This is a PUA who ASPIRES to be such a miserable, self-centered sexual user he’s only able to convince women to have sex with him through manipulation, leaving these women feeling shitty afterwards.
In other words, PUAs are devoting their lives to making women feel bad about themselves. As a life goal, this seems a bit lacking.
Like this:
Posted on February 8, 2013, in creepy, douchebaggery, evil fat fatties, irony alert, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, nice guys, PUA, rhymes with roosh and tagged misogyny, pick-up artists, pickup artists, PUA. Bookmark the permalink. 265 Comments.
(caught up at last)
Cassandra - ick doesn’t begin to describe that scuzzbucket! He sounds rapey-plus. I side-eye the sex-positive business when it seems to be so much about “you SHOULD be out fucking whoever” whatever the gender of the person saying/implying it, but especially when it’s coming from a straight man. How does that attitude differ from all the standard sexist messages that we’re supposed to be complying with men’s wishes, supposed to be available to them (I’ve had a lot of that shit implied over the years) whether we want to or not? I know that’s not what sex-positive feminism is supposed to be about at all, but it is so easy for it to reflect the whole not being allowed to say no attitude, which is just as poisonous as not being allowed to say yes.
Which, sort of related, is what really left a sour taste with those two sex-work threads on feministe. There was a heavy implication from some people that there’s no reason anyone should think of sex differently from any other activity, or find being forced into sex work any worse than forced to take a crappy job at McDonald’s. Mind you the whole “We shouldn’t have to work! It’s coercion!” line was la-la land, as if food falls from the sky for anyone not in a capitalist economy, or for any other species, for that matter.
I am fine. Had to work. Muscles ache. Will be resting tomorrow and Mon.
Yeah, I’ve run into that attitude before, and not just on Feministe. Older pseudo-feminist dude used that logic - if you support sex workers then you have to believe that sex work is just like any other job, which means that you have to be willing to do it, and if you’re not willing to do it yourself that means you don’t really support sex workers or see them as good people. Perfect circular logic designed to manipulate women into having sex they don’t want.
I think we need to support both people who want to have lots of sex and people who’d rather not have any at all, or who’d like to have sex but only in very specific circumstances. Basically our job as feminists is to support people in having choices, not to tell them which choices they ought to make and shame them for “setting back” feminism if they make choices that aren’t the ones we ourselves would make (or the ones that benefit some dude’s boner, but that he’d never in a million years be willing to make himself).
I think that’s all our New England posters?
Pecunium — I’d offer to deliver ben-gay or similar but we’ve been not plowed by a not plow >.< feel better!
There’s nearly four feet of snow in the road here, and the emergency vehicles are getting stuck (one perk of having a police radio, got to spend the day laughing at things like “rescue 2 stuck” … “rescue 2 and shop truck now stuck” XD )
Some one please send a bucket loader! (Seriously, that’s wtf they’re [not] using)
And yes, that whole discussion around sex work is just weird, and rather off putting.
QFT
I live in ~Boston, we dug ourselves out this morning (well, my partner did - I’m still kinda sick), not much to report. We’re housesitting this week and we moved the car back to our place ’cause there’s a driveway there and only street parking here, but it means that tomorrow we have to dig out a space for the car to occupy when we bring it back. So that’s fun. At least the dogs we’re sitting for are loving the snow. One’s an elderly corgi, and one is a golden retriever puppy - he’s got way too much energy but he’s brain-meltingly cute.
Every time I see the “we should stop thinking of sex as hearts and flowers and rainbows/stop putting it on a pedestal” line I want to scream. Fine, I get it, lots of people don’t see it that way and have a great time with casual sex or friends with benefits or whatever’s their preference, and have every right to do so and conduct their lives as they want! I agree that putting sex as equivalent to love or romance is what society does a lot, and it’s harmful. I don’t think the mirror-image idea of it being about as memorable and important as a sneeze is one that should replace it.
And that’s what comes out of so much of this stuff on Feministe (I haven’t read other sites where this is happening). Half the time it doesn’t seem to be about fun or pleasure or (gods forbid) affection; it’s like the wish to make it less emotionally loaded has lost all perspective. They’re even arguing about whether enthusiastic consent is a good term, now, talking as if enthusiastic means instant arousal and nothing else, ffs.
Plenty of people see sex as entirely about love for them and are are that 1) it isn’t the only way (much less the only valid way) of seeing it and 2) that there are all sorts of influences at play in their feelings. Plenty of people aren’t interested in sex at all (that’d be me if Mr K wasn’t on the scene). It’d be nice to see “sex positive” including those feelings for a change.
emilygoddess - a corgi in snow would be interesting! How does zie manage it?
Golden retriever puppy, d’awwwwww! They’re brain-meltingly cute even as adults.
The corgi sticks to the shoveled areas, mostly, but the piles made by the plow and/or neighborhood kids are dense enough to hold her if she tries to climb them. Mostly she just races along, since three-foot-tall tunnels = completely new world for a corgi to explore.
The funny thing is, in my experience and those of people I’ve known, the impetus to have sex not have anything to do with emotion usually comes from fear, at least when people are being so militant about it. People who just happen to like casual sex usually just…have casual sex, enjoy it, and move on, rather than going around yelling at other people about how there’s something wrong with them for not being interested in casual sex.
Corgi in snow tunnels - d’awwww again! (My last dog was a corgi and my sister’s are *cough*corgi*cough* crosses.)
Cassandra - yeah, I haven’t any personal experience with this sort of thing, but that sure chimes in with the whole “sex doesn’t mean anything!” bollocks being spouted over there. Dunno if it’s people trying to convince themselves or what.
The problem with labels and groups is there will always be people who disagree within them, and people who are evahl fucknuts in them, and it can be difficult to decide when to fight for a label and when to give up on it. And there always seem to be gray areas, you know? I also think people like to claim the ally label too quickly, for example, when they’re still at the “please give me cookies” stage of social justice awareness, instead of waiting for the “Yes I can argue you under the table and take my lumps appropriately” stage. I’m only now beginning to consider myself a racial justice ally, for example, as a white woman because the gods know I fuck up enough in my thinking to not be able to act without making more work for the people who know better than I.
There’s also this mental bug some of us privileged people get where we want to be the expert on everything? And so we’re an “ally” but we don’t actually know much, or want to acknowledge that an intellectual appreciation of prejudice is really different from a lived experience? I haven’t been able to nail the phenomena down too my satisfaction.
OMG I WANT A FEMINIST SPACESHIP!!! MISOGYNY!
Sex work is both fraught and…. not, depending on who. The trafficing issue is a real one, but the trafficking numbers for non-sex work actually are worse if I remember the figures right - people trafficked to be cleaners and actory workers and the like (which may include sexual exploitation as well, but that isn’t the primary purpose for wanting to own people), and it often seems in the US as if people get distracted by PROSTITUTION BAD instead of PEOPLE CANNOT BE BOUGHT AND SOLD ASSHOLES. For sex workers who want to do it, enjoy it, etc… I think they should get legal protections. I think those protections most likely will help people who don’t want to do it, or are ambivalent, but I don’t know. I tend to defer to the people who are sex workers, but I think we’re working with a serious derth of data which will make actual raitonal conclusions difficult. Emotionally, I want to set it up so that anyone who is hurt or abused has recourse for protection and prosecution of their tormentor.
I’ve always maintained that if Sex Positive Feminism doesn’t include support for virgins and celibate people than it isn’t actually Sex Positive.
I think sex work is different from “regular work” the way being a therapist/care giver is different from “regular work”. The ideal of psychological caregiving is that you are essentially loaning out your mind and feelings in order to help someone else; it has it’s own demands and challenges which should not be demanded of everyone. McDonalds can be exhausting and demoralizing, but it shouldn’t involve extending your emotions or body in an intimate manner.
Does that make sense? I feel like I didn’t explain it well.
*pokes her name to see if it links now*
Yay I link!
There’s also the fact that there are some jobs that some people just can’t deal with, while others might be fine with them. I have OCD that focuses on the idea of cleanliness - I can’t handle jobs that require me to deal with trash or anything dirty, and hospitals freak me out because my brain goes right to “holy shit flesh eating bacteria”. I’ve done customer service work and been fine with it, whereas for some people who just don’t have any spoons to spare that would be far more draining and emotionally fraught then a cleaning job.
Lots of people find the idea of doing sex work themselves viscerally horrifying, and that has to be respected. I don’t think it has to mean that you can’t support sex workers and want them to have rights, any more than the fact that I could never, ever handle a job working in a hospital means that I don’t support medical workers.
No more missing links!
You made perfect sense there, Deoridhe. To me the physical intimacy of sex work - if we’re looking at the majority which involves women being fucked by men - puts it totally outside the realm of any other sort of work. What other job requires you to allow someone else inside your body? This is where the whole “it’s no different from flipping hamburgers” thing becomes ridiculous, unless you’ve got a very strange way of flpping hamburgers. In fact the psychological work you mention is the only thing I can think of that could compare, and it’s specialised, trained work.
Hear Fucking Hear.
Sex work regulation is a bit of a mess in my state (Victoria). There are legal, licensed brothels, but they’re way outnumbered by illegal ones, and street work remains illegal. The situation varies from state to state here.
Kitteh’s interrogation has some of that too. To be good at it you have to get inside other people’s heads. To teach it you have to let them into yours.
Good point, Pecunium. Though again, like psychological support work, interrogation isn’t a job that anyone’s going to shrug off as being no different from flipping burgers. It’s the whole “letting someone into your body is so insignificant” subtext that was squicking me out in the Feministe arglebargle, especially when there was a shitstorm at one poster who expressed concern that the normalisation/legalisation of sex work could lead to added pressure on the unemployed (specifically the disabled in zir comments) to undertake it. Whether that fear was realistic or not (I don’t think it was), zie was treated as if zie was TOTES HATING ON SEX WORKERS. It was just ridiculous.
So sex work, therapeutic work, and interrogation.
Somehow I feel like I’m in exalted, if frightening, company!
LOL!
I suppose one could combine them in a really niche domination role, too.
But I’ll refrain from telling my psych he’s in a line of work akin to sex work. I freaked him out enough last time when he came back into the office and there was a cat on my lap.
kitteh’s: I got some of that from the, “Oh, a soldier” comments. As if being a soldier was something which needed no brains.
Gawd. You’d think we were in the days of the press gangs (okay, that’s navy not army, but still). Even then they had lots of skills to learn.
Guess what!
Baby tree kangaroo!
Kitteh: You grow cats? That is AWESOME!
Depending on his perspective he may have a wide variety of responses. I am now tempted to taunt my school chums with our similarities to sex work! Also, around the office we sometimes talk about how we are professional friends who answer loosely to the Federal Government, which is somewhat apt - though it’s a very one sided friendship (and has to be, given our current paradigms).
Personally, despite being for universal draft, I think I’d make a crappy soldier - because I don’t think I have the mad skillz. Psych is really my home; I’m perfect for it.
DON’T
I
JUST
WISH!
She was a neighbour kitty who’s apparently taken over the clinic (it’s a general practice) since they made the mistake of giving her tuna one time. First time I’ve seen her and of course I went SQUEEEEEE. The psych freaked a bit - even though he knows her - because I’d just told him about how my Katie, who passed over four years ago, had spent her anniversary hanging around with me at work.
Good thing Clinic Kitty doesn’t look like Katie!
Now I’m all disappointed… you just lure cats with your catnip and tuna infested lap. 8(
Re non-sexual trafficking: Here in Sweden we’ve had trafficking of blueberry-pickers. Which also proves wrong a claim I’ve seen sometimes, according to which trafficking would disappear if sex work were legal. Blueberry-picking is legal.
Re sex-work compared to other jobs: I’m coming around to the view that it should be legal, but for a LONG time I was put off by the pro-sex-work side, since their main argument seemed to be “it’s totally just a stupid myth that sex would be any different from any other activity, a myth propagated by people who think it’s morally wrong to have sex unless it’s true love”. Like I used to be a real slut, I had tons of sex with people I wasn’t the least bit in love with - but I was picky in the sense that I’d only sleep with people I was sexually attracted to. The thought of sleeping with just anyone (well, who isn’t dangerous and so on, but anyone who seems okay and safe and pays you) makes my skin crawl. And I know for a fact that the “people who think sex work should be illegal think true love is necessary for sex” is a total straw-man.
I started to change my mind when someone pointed out the much better argument that people should be allowed to make the decisions they want to make about sex as long as it’s consensual - including exchanging money.
Deoridhe - ROFL! You’ll love this tale (no pun intended): I told my opthamologist the Cat On Lap story and he told me one about his SiL, who’s scared of cats. They were on holiday in France once, walking out in the countryside somewhere, and passed a rather ramshackle farmhouse. A mob of cats - my doc said nearly twenty but he could be exaggerating - came out and made a beeline for SiL, tails in the air and obviously wanting pats. SiL took off, walking faster and faster, with the cats hurrying after him, and totally unsympathetic family laughing and taking photos.
I told opthamologist his SiL would have to give up on the tuna-scented cologne.
Dvärghundspossen - yes, it’s bollocks that legal sex work eliminates sex trafficking. We have legal, or at least decriminalised, sex work in Australia and that most definitely hasn’t stopped it.
“it’s totally just a stupid myth that sex would be any different from any other activity, a myth propagated by people who think it’s morally wrong to have sex unless it’s true love” - that whole line sounds like someone totally alienated (if I’m using the right word) from themselves. Alienation? Dissociation? I’m not sure but it just reads like sex is something remote, and that doesn’t sound like a particularly happy place to be. Am I coming off as judgemental in saying that? I sure hope not, I don’t want to be mirroring the “what are you making sex to be something so important for?” judgementalism, much less suggesting that someone saying it has psychological problems. I just wonder why anyone would insist on their feelings (or lack of feelings) about it being applicable to everyone, or fail to see that such physical intimacy has all sorts of emotional connotations for a great many people.
Haa haaa! That is hysterical!
Yeah, re: trafficking, a chunk of it is for domestic servants, and that is legal, too. The issue is in not wanting to pay the person to do the work, not in whether the work is legal or not. The problem with criminalization, imo, is that it sets even women doing it against their will up as criminals, not victims, which means it’s harder to help them. Criminalization of sex work just tacitly legalizes anything people do to sex workers (up to and including rape and murder), and that’s why I’m pro-legalization. (It’s also why I’m pro-cops-not-being-ICE; just because someone is in a country illegally doesn’t mean we should set up a situation where they are vulnerable to abuse because they can’t go to the police to report what I would consider “real” crime - abuse, rape, murder, etc…)
Legalization seems to have actually increased trafficking in The Netherlands.
Just to clarify - I am totally not in favour of sex work being illegal. All that does is victimise the sex workers, whether they are doing the work from a genuine free choice or whether they’ve been forced into it (trafficked, pimped, trying to maintain a drug habit, whatever).
I should add though that Sweden has legalised SELLING sex, but not buying it. The idea is that trafficking victims and other vulnerable sex workers should be able to go to the police with no risk of being convicted themselves. So technically, you don’t have to legalise sex work period if you only want to fix the problem that sex workers can’t go to the police and report crimes committed against them.
Wouldn’t legalising the selling but not the buying of sex force prostitutes to do unsafe things to protect the anonymity of their clients?
@Lowquacks: Yeah, that’s an argument against this kind of law; although prostitutes can go to the police and report if they’ve been raped or the like without fearing being charged themselves, the entire business tend to go more “underground” than in countries where it’s legal full stop.
The most common argument voiced though is that this law treats prostitutes as children who’re not responsible for their own actions, while only their clients are treated as responsible adults. Like, either prostitution is fine and we legalise it full stop, or it’s bad and ought to be criminalised full stop, but merely criminalising the buyers makes it seem as if it’s bad BUT only the buyers are responsible for what they do.
It’s also kind of pointless in another way; it’s saying “it’s legal for you to sell product X, but illegal for anyone to buy it” - which means there’s no use being in the business of selling product X. Unless that was the idea, to make sex work disappear that way? I hope not, because we know the likelihood of that happening.
I think the idea was based on how drugs have been decriminalized in certain places, but in reverse to indicate who the lawmakers see as being at fault in this case (ie the buyers, not the sellers).
Wouldn’t legalising the selling but not the buying of sex force prostitutes to do unsafe things to protect the anonymity of their clients?
the buying of sex force prostitutes
sex force prostitutes
SEX FORCE PROSTITUTES
I am totally calling dibs on this for the name of a band, comic book or TV show.
@Kitten: Yeah, that was the idea. Obviously no one was naive enough to think it would completely vanish, but the idea was basically “Sex work is bad, there should be as little of it as possible, therefore it should be illegal - but on the other hand, for all kinds of reasons it’s bad to criminalise sex workers - SO let’s just criminalise the johns!”. That was sort of the idea.
Basically, most people supporting this law tend to think that nobody really likes doing sex work, but it’s something you do to feed your drug habit, or as a self destructive thing because you’re somehow psychologically messed up… So sex workers should be encouraged to seek help for their drug habits or psychological problems or whatever it is that makes them prostitute themselves. But if what they were doing were illegal, it would be much harder for them to seek help. On the other hand, johns are EVIL PEOPLE who are taking advantage of the poor sex workers.
And you know, it’s not like the above is NEVER an accurate picture of things. It wasn’t that long ago that a couple of seventeen-year-old prostitutes, who were pretty clearly self-destructive and psychologically messed-up, came forward to the police, which eventually lead to their johns (bunch of rich middle-aged men who’d been hiring them for big gang-bangs) being imprisoned. It’s not like people invented the above scenario, the messed-up poor sex workers and the evil johns, completely out of the blue. I mean, I do think that sex work should be legalised and one should try to get at the problems that obviously exist within sex work in different ways than criminalisation. But saying, as I’ve seen many legalisation-advocates do, that everyone who opposes a legalisation thinks sex is morally wrong unless it’s true love, is arguing against a complete straw-man, everyone who says sex is NO DIFFERENT from other activities is being a moron, and everyone who suggests that sex work is always some kind of rational choice the sex worker made and NEVER something one does because one his somehow messed up is, well, a moron as well.
“Any kind of sex should be legal as long as it’s consensual” is really a sufficient argument.
@Dvärghundspossen
Someone should tell that to Nevada, the Netherlands, and pretty much everywhere else where prostitution is legal, since that legalization has come with an increase in human trafficking, particularly of children. Sex trafficking happens everywhere, but places with legalized prostitution provide a much more lucrative market.
RE: Argenti
You summed up my feelings on the intersections of trans and feminist identity great. I’m in the weird place of identifying strongly as a feminist (it got me through the raping days) but also feeling uncomfortable with the idea that only trans men can be feminists. (Because that implies I’m like, what? Some super-special okay hybrid man or something?)
Also, regarding middle of the road stuff. That’s pretty much what we’re doing. And my hormones are covered by our low-income state insurance. (Much to my shock.) If you want any pointers, I’d be happy to supply; we seem to be doing pretty successful now. (Or were; since lowering my mones dose, I seem to be getting read overwhelmingly female again.)
RE: sex work and sex-positive feminism
Oh god, those guys sound so fucking SKEEZY! D: I mean, I’m a guy, but I could NEVER do sex work. Like, it has the dubious distinction of “fastest job to mental collapse.” (And yeah, I thought about it; it was legal when I was in NZ, and the sex worker I knew was making money that made me weep with envy.) WTF. Just because I can’t DO something doesn’t mean I can’t support sex workers. Hell, I give them mad props because, like soldiers, they can do things I CAN’T.
Feministe, from what I’ve heard, is a transphobic skuzzhole.
As for the snow, Sneak and I unearthed the trash cans and recycling yesterday. Zie then climbed atop the recyling bin (which is larger than the trash cans) and bellyflopped into a snowdrift.
Stonerwithaboner…
Wasn’t that an AL sock? Or have I confused them?
Nah, pecunium, pretty sure stoner was his own boring beast.
Stoner was suspected of being an Al sock, primarily because of the handle I think, but I’m of the opinion that he’s someone else.
Honestly, I’m still not positive about Steele. It could have been an IP address coincidence.
It was some other one. Bro something? I forget. He had several, and admitted to a few.
That idiot “feminzm rulez bro” or whatever his name is? Mind you they’re all morons and a lot of them are interchangable. Is there a troll cloning program somewhere?
LBT — I may have to email you on that! Stuck living with transphobic, homophobic, racist asshole relatives currently, so I’m kind of stuck bio-gender = obvious, but you certainly have my interest!
I couldn’t do sex work either (hi PTSD triggers!) but this seems perfect —
RE: Argenti
Yeah, it can be a bit tricky (especially with hormone levels), but we were managing pretty well for a while. (What changed, I couldn’t tell you.)
I think the idea was not to alienate men who may have direct experience with misogyny, but it (1) assumes that all trans men identify as women or take misogyny personally before they transition, and (2) ends up sounding like trans men are “lite” men, both of which are hella transphobic.
That was part of what bothered me about mansplainey older feminist dude too. Prostitution in particular (as opposed to other forms of sex work that are legal in most places and done mostly in public, like stripping) is one of the most dangerous jobs around, because it often involves being alone in an enclosed space with a person who you don’t know. I can’t remember the exact stat, but in terms of death rates per profession it’s near the top of the list. So to blithely go “oh, if you’re not willing to do that you don’t get to call yourself a feminist”…thanks for insisting that I take risks that you have no intention of taking yourself before you bestow your seal of manly approval, dude.
On the issue of men being feminists I’m actually OK with cis men calling themselves feminists, I’m just inclined to look a lot more closely at their motives when I first encounter them than I might for a woman. If they don’t set off any red flags then I don’t mind them calling themselves feminists.
(Note that red flags would include an insistence on being Boss Feminist.)
This.
RE: emilygoddess
I think the idea was not to alienate men who may have direct experience with misogyny, but it (1) assumes that all trans men identify as women or take misogyny personally before they transition, and (2) ends up sounding like trans men are “lite” men, both of which are hella transphobic.
Yeah, the whole thing just makes me uncomfortable. For me, rape culture and the purity myth in particular really worked me over, which feminism pretty much single-handedly saved my mind. So I’m a yellow dog feminist. The thought that I can’t be a feminist because I’m male just… it hurts. Feminism saved my life, no exaggeration. If it hadn’t given me the foundation to understand what happened to me… I don’t know that I would’ve survived it. Never mind overcome it. I realize that I am bound to butt heads with male privilege and my own misconceptions… but feminism gives me what religion gives my husband.
Also, I didn’t know you were a fellow Boston-area Boobzer! *wave*
RE: CassandraSays
Yeah, what you said. Hell, would HE be totally okay doing sex work with people who are overwhelmingly larger and stronger than him, and alone in enclosed spaces with him? I’d be petrified! D:
Yeah, the idea that men can’t be feminists seems positively weird to me. It would be just like saying that you can’t be a socialist politically unless you’re working class. What makes you a feminist is the views you hold, and these views can be held by men and women alike.
If I look at my job and the men I know outside of job (husband included) most of them call themselves feminists, because they believe there’s gender oppression and that it’s a bad thing (although it’s not something they go around talking about all the time, and definitely not something they BRAG about à la Schwyzer). I can just picture myself gathering them all up to a meeting and womensplain to them that they actually must refer to themselves as mere “allies” because of their gender.
And re sex-work, as already stated, one doesn’t even have to drag safety in to the mix. Even if prostitution is mostly really unsafe, it’s not difficult to picture, say, a brothel with great safety arrangements. I would still never do it, and the same apparently goes for lots of people here. It’s really just enough to say
a) sex ISN’T like any other activity - for some people it’s really important only to have it with people you’re in love with, or merely people you’re in lust with
BUT
b) as long as sex is consensual there’s nothing wrong with it; SOME people are fine with doing it with anyone safe and okay and paying, and we can support them even if we don’t belong to their group.
That’s it. Although safety IS an issue, one doesn’t need to appeal to safety arguments to explain why one wouldn’t want to be a sex worker. It’s enough to state that people are different when it comes to sex, and many people just aren’t okay personally with doing sex work, but others are, and we can support those who are.
Which pretty much sums it up, Dvärghundspossen!