Feminism Friday: How can men express sexual interest in a feminist way?

It’s a question a lot of men have – they see themselves as feminist allies, they don’t want to be objectifying or creepy, but they still want to be able to express their sexual attraction to women whom they find appealing and ask them out on dates with a view to an eventual sexual relationship. And so they should – men and women enjoying sex together is a good thing! But I can understand why some of the things one learns as a feminist ally could make one reticent, because of the possibility of putting one’s foot in it and being perceived as one of the bad guys, or even worse: appearing to be one of those predatory faux-feminist men who’s only parroting glib sound-bites in order to get laid.

What I see as the major problem for many men who are relatively recent feminist allies is that of re-educating oneself away from the traditional “what do women want?” view (as if all women want exactly the same things and if some man perfects The Universal Formula it will work on any of us) towards a “how can I appeal to this woman right here and now?” view where you acknowledge that each woman has her own unique set of tastes and preferences and priorities, with which your own attributes may or may not mesh.

No matter how charming and/or forthright you attempt to be, you may just not be her “cup of tea” – perhaps never, perhaps just not right now. No matter how much you like somebody, there’s nothing you can do to make them like you just as much. That’s just how life is – there are many women out there pining for men who don’t find them appealing too – being a decent person is not enough on its own to guarantee anyone a fulfilling sexual partnership.

Sometimes people simply don’t put their best foot forward in terms of letting others discover what they have to offer, so yes – they can get overlooked. How to highlight one’s best qualities without appearing to brag or to beg is the challenge.

So, feminists: what are some dos and don’ts in your own personal experience of what you’ve found a turn-on and what you’ve found a turn-off? Also, so that this isn’t a purely heteronormative exercise, what do our LGBTQ readers have to share about cultural differences and whether non-het sexual approaches manage to minimise offputting sexist tropes?

What will Twitter will make of a #feminismfriday hashtag?

Update 2010/06/04: Week 2!

I’ve just sent out a tweet calling for submissions. Some of you may have been around long enough to recall that Feminism Friday used to be at least a semi-regular thing around here – l decided to get all Web 3.0 with the old idea.

If you’re on Twitter, and you’ve read some terrific feminist/womanist op-ed style blogging this week (it doesn’t have to have been published this week, that’s just what’s likely to be fresh in your mind), please tweet the link and hashtag it as #feminismfriday. For an extra dollop of helpful goodness, if it’s a great Feminism 101 post, please also tag it as #FF101.

If you’re not on Twitter, please drop a link to a post that meets the general Feminism Friday guidelines in comments on this page.

No doubt, if this #feminismfriday hashtag trends highly enough, there will be some pushback from the usual suspects. I suggest treating it as an excellent opportunity to get out the anti-feminist bingo cards for your own amusement, and also to perhaps pre-emptively block some arsehats on Twitter who had previously flown under your radar.

Feminism Friday on Tuesday: Echidne’s “Need For Feminism” series

I know the site’s been a bit quiet lately – other things in life have been keeping me busy. Luckily, there’s still plenty of other strong feminist writing around, including this great series from Echidne of the Snakes:

If you somehow missed my six-part (so far) series on the need for feminism, you can still read it!

1. The Right to Go Out

2. Planet of the Guys

3. Our Father Who Art in Heaven

4. The Invisible Women

5. The Female Body as Property

6. The Longest Revolution

Feminism Friday: Why, if you think women should be flattered by your harassment, you are stupid

Guest Post: Today’s Feminism Friday opinion piece is by Jennifer Kesler, crossposted from The Hathor Legacy

I recently wrote a post to explain the difference between street harassment and sincere flirtation. Unthinkingly, I wrote it to an audience of women. I guess I unconsciously assumed any man who would yell sexual remarks at strange women would not come to this site in an attempt to figure out why “that uptight bitch” glared at him, told him off or called his boss and damn near got him fired!

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write that version all the same, so here it is. If you’re a man who has been rebuffed more than once by women you thought you were flattering, this article is for you. (I say “more than once” because misunderstandings could account for the occasional incident.)

It’s not up to you what I find flattering

The first problem with thinking a woman should be flattered by your behavior and getting irritated when she’s not is that flattery is subjective. Some people are flattered by comments about how smart they are. Others want to hear how good they look. And some of us react warily whenever someone seems to be attempting to flatter us because we assume they’re buttering us up for a favor.

If a woman doesn’t take what you intended as a compliment the way you expect, the correct response is to recognize you’ve had a communication problem, and it might be that she misunderstood you but it might also be that you don’t sound like you think you do.

Feminism Friday – “Feminists Look for Stuff to Get Mad About”

originally posted on Shakesville by Melissa McEwan | Monday, February 25, 2008 as Feminism 101: “Feminists Look for Stuff to Get Mad About”

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[This is a new series in which I'll be addressing misconceptions or answering questions about feminism and/or feminists. There are certainly old posts that would naturally fall into a Feminism 101 series, like Rape is Not a Compliment, Animal House, or On "Bitch" and Other Misogynist Language (reposted here on FF101 last week ~tigtog), but, increasingly, it's apparent we need a collection of posts on critical theories and prejudices, to which we can point here and elsewhere to succinctly deal with recurring themes, so here we go. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered in this series, email me.

Note that I won't tread on Jeff's territory in defining key terms with his "Explainer" series: MRAs, Gender Feminists and Equity Feminists, and Nice Guys^TM. If you need something defined, email him.]

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“Feminists Look for Stuff to Get Mad About”

Of all the condescending, dismissive, and factually incorrect accusations used by concern trolls (or hostile trolls) to attempt to silence, shame, or in some other way discourage feminists from addressing sexism in all its manifestations, perhaps none is quite so stupid as the charge that feminists are “looking” for things about which to be offended—as if feminism is a product that will go out of production if there aren’t enough buyers and sales are waning because sexism is, like, so over, dude.

This notion is ridiculous for a couple of reasons. For a start, misogyny is so pervasive that no one has to look for it. That said reality is even remotely in doubt is laughable, given that any YouTube comments section on any video featuring a woman will be rife with misogynist swill.

Feminism Friday: On “Bitch” and Other Misogynist Language

cross-posted by Melissa McEwan , originally posted at Shakesville on November 20, 2007

[Important Note to Feminist Noobs: This is a long post. It contains lots of different, though related, Feminist 101 kind of ideas about misogynist language. Please carefully read the whole post before commenting. If you don't understand one of the points that is made in the post, I highly recommend asking for clarification before issuing an opinion on it. If you make an argument in comments that has already been discredited within the post, be prepared to be thoroughly mocked.]

Andi Zeisler, co-founder (with Lisa Jervis) of Bitch magazine, wrote an interesting piece for the WaPo this weekend on “the B-word,” its cultural connotation, and its reclamation:

Bitch is a word we use culturally to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising and, often, uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn’t respond to men’s catcalls or smile when they say, “Cheer up, baby, it can’t be that bad.” We use it for the woman who has a better job than a man and doesn’t apologize for it. We use it for the woman who doesn’t back down from a confrontation.

So let’s not be disingenuous. Is it a bad word? Of course it is. As a culture, we’ve done everything possible to make sure of that, starting with a constantly perpetuated mindset that deems powerful women to be scary, angry and, of course, unfeminine — and sees uncompromising speech by women as anathema to a tidy, well-run world.

…[Bitch magazine is] not about hating men but about elevating women. But too many people don’t see the difference. And, at least in part, that’s why the B-word is still such a problematic term.

Definitely read the whole thing.

I found it particularly compelling because of its pertinence not only to the sexism surrounding Hillary’s campaign which we’ve been discussing around here recently, but also because in the last week, I had a really retro and disheartening conversation about sexist language—a really retro and disheartening conversation about sexist language that I’ve had dozens of times before.

Friday Feminism: Fierce

[This is a crosspost from Shakesville where it was originally posted in October of 2007.]

I was standing in front of a full-length mirror with my leg stretched out, modeling at its end for my own consumption the left half of a pair of kelly green steel-toed Doc Martens knee-highs I had just bought, in spite of their outrageous price tag. "Girl, those boots are hot!" came the voice from beside me. This was St. Nate of the Perfectly Shaped Eyebrows, my coworker and friend, who would, one day, find himself at my parents’ house in the suburbs racing through their kitchen as I screeched, "Get the baking soda!" to help put out a fire I’d started on their deck with the grill. But today he was admiring my boots. And admiring me.

"God damn, look at you!" He pulled my shirt from the back so it clung to my form. This was not a look I felt was particularly good for me, even in those thinner days, and I pushed his hands away, squirming and frowning at myself in the mirror. He raised an eyebrow and frowned back, then turned me around by the shoulders, away from the mirror.

"Bitch, be fierce…"
 

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Nate was one of many people who fall under the "T" in LGBT who have been important to me in one way or another, many of whom have played vital roles in helping me understand and appreciate my queer-brained self, and sort out what it means for me to be a woman. This is, quite obviously, no coincidence. Being myself a person who is, like many non-trans feminists and queers, uncomfortable with, and thusly constantly challenging, the expectations imposed on my sex and gender, I have found it valuable (and, in my personal experience, inevitable) to engage with Ts as part of divining my own self-definition. Which is to say nothing of simple and precious friendships.