We Have Brains collab topic: Men Gone Wild

Brigette's post:

I was watching "Best Week Ever" on VH1 a few nights ago and they were discussing the recent release of a male equivalent to the "Girls Gone Wild" series. If equality really is about evening things between men and women, is it a "good" thing that men are being
sexually exploited and objectified more and more in the media? Or, as the suffragists suggested, is the ideal equality men achieving a level or morality comperable to that expected from women. In other words, are men supposed to be as "good" as women, or are men supposed to be as debased as women for things to be equal? This recent trend troubles me greatly, I'd love to see what others think about this topic.

There's a basic difference in men and women that will never allow these situations to be comparable. Women are oppressed in this culture by design. A man in a position of sexual objectification will never be stigmatized the way a woman often is. I'm all in favor of porn as long as everyone is over 18 and agreeable to the situation. The question is whether a woman can really consent when she doesn't have equal economic standing. The need to survive can be seen as a type of force.

There is also a distinct difference in the way men and women view a sexual "object". When a man watches a female stripper, there is always an implied contempt. He may idolize her in some ways, but he sees her as inherently inferior to himself, and often to other women as well. There is always a threat of violence. When women watch male strippers, there is no contempt - it's pure adulation. Boys just don't faint and scream for a female singer the way girls will for a male singer. I personally believe that has its origins in the collective unconscious and that pattern would play out in any culture, no matter the distribution of power between genders. Maybe this will change as we become more equal, but i don't think it will. I've watched the way this played out in the fandoms for Queer As Folk and The L Word. The boys from QAF are idolized by female fans and the girls from TLW were harassed by men to the point that the first fan site had to shut down. (On the flip side, actors don't want to be associated with QAF, but it is considered chic to appear on TLW - in Hollywood, it's only cool to be queer if you're a girl - but that's another rant for another day.)

As for the specific "Girls gone wild" tapes, I think they're horrible because of the way they operate. They go to these spring break hangouts where young girls are on their own probably for the first time. They're feeling free and grown up and are usually intoxicated, courtesy of a party sponsored by the producers of the films. Then they are subtly coerced into flashing and posing for the camera, only to sober up later and realize what they've done. At that point, it's too late - the films are out and there's a signed release to protect the production. It's a sleazy way to operate, and I wish there was a way to stop it. Even if they're doing this with guys, it's not going to have the same effect on their lives. Unless the footage ends up in gay porn, there wouldn't be the same repercussions if friends or family found out. A guy would be seen as a hero, while the girl would be branded a slut, or a victim. Neither label is particularly appealing. It would be nice if we'd grow up about nudity so it wouldn't be a big deal, but we haven't and it is.

Women are only working toward equality. Even if we moved into a completely egalitarian, or even matriarchal, society, men will never be oppressed by violence, shut out from economic opportunity, or treated as inferior in any way. The sexual revolution has so far only worked against women - we've got a generation of men who think it's fine to lie, manipulate, and even drug women to obtain sex; they can videotape themselves gang raping an unconscious girl and get a hung jury if it even makes it into court; There's no stigma - to the contrary, it's sometimes considered a badge of honor- for a man to have children by several different women without marrying any of them, or supporting the kids. Women have access to their own birth control, but it can cause sterility, strokes, and does nothing to prevent STD's or HIV. Abortion is legal, for the moment, but you risk being killed by crazed fundamentalists. There is little or no societal support for single mothers who need child care or aren't getting the child support ordered by the court. Women are still at a disadvantage in child custody cases. We can now work to support ourselves and our kids, but we will only go so far before hitting the glass ceiling, and we'll only be getting 75 cents on the dollar on the way. A guy can skate through life without ever dealing with any of this if he wants to - no lethal elements of birth control, no child care problems, no threat of rape, no ceiling, glass or otherwise. Even the most empathetic, feminist guy will never know what we have to think about as women.

Should men be held to the higher moral standard that women have always been expected to meet? In a way, yes. I think that each of us has a responsibility to improve the culture - to strive to become more open, more fair, more refined and civilized, more connected and whole. So in that way, I'd like to see men raise themselves up rather than women lower their standards. The problem is that some of those standards were about controlling women's sexuality as a commodity to be traded by men. That's got to go. Sex has to become a form of self expression rather than a sport, a commodity or an obligation. We need to see it as an art, not a sin; all forms of sexual abuse have to become anathema if we are going to have any measure of equality. Sexual excellence has to be measured by the quality of the experience rather than the quantity of acts, so that feeling and sharing replace "scoring". That's going to require a cultural shift in people in general, but specifically government and law enforcement need to lead the way. None of this will happen if women don't demand it. We have the numbers to control the public and political agenda - let's get on with it.