Twitter - AGP Awerness Day

There's always tiny part of me feeling dreadful when people do the flowers thing - I wasn't fishing for sympathy, honestly! - and it occurred to me last night, my brain's using woman-stereotype language and feeling distressed by the thought I could be identified as a recipient of that stereotype. Bloody brain.

Still, any opportunity to increase awareness! I should put a talk together for next October's agp awareness day I realistically won't

I just wish people wouldn't view agp psychology as only found in males. You can't really see what's going on in their heads until you find the equivalent group of females and run a compare&contrast to figure out what the hell happened.

Ex has issues with being identified within the manly man stereotype (goes back to daddy issues and gendered trauma and him not wanting to be the bad thing that hurt him and his mum). He rejects the alpha-male stereotypes that he's aware of. The male entitlement and other male-socialisation issues are still there and he honestly had no idea because his brain hadn't internalised all that as a masculinity stereotype.

What his brain has got programmed in on a very basic level thanks to his experiences, is a stereotype of woman built out of his interpretation of his mother's behaviour, and later his first long-term girlfriend's behaviour. It really throws him when I don't meet this image of How Women Behave and Think that he's built up - and he had no idea that his own behaviour matches his interpretation of his mother's behaviour.

He acts like he thinks his mum acts, and in so doing he pulls the women around him into being the alpha in the dynamic. He makes women into his dad. He's recreating his childhood trauma in his relationships with women. And he was completely blind to all of this, because he hadn't even got as far as accepting that he wasn't to blame for what his dad did to them.

And then I look at my life and see all the parallels flipped through the sex axis. And find my empathy for the female one of every 'queer' het relationship.

Oh tyro, it's heartbreaking to read what you were put through. the perspectives and experiences on this thread are invaluable and should go on the break it down for me thread.

Regarding drag, the way young boys are being encouraged into it is what disturbs me, and then the normalisation. So it's possible for agp to be normalised. Eg queen lactacia, Desmond etc. Normalising the act , the performance and the sexual links.

And then the whole lgbtq pride approach to 'accept me as I am with all my kinks,' plus the sex positivity movement, makes me worried that more women will suffer but be shamed into forcing them selves to accept abuses. I'm thinking of the early experiences of the trans widows and also that awful recent murder of his partner by a man who clearly had agp.

Gosh I thought I knew all about AGP, but nup I've learnt more. Thankyou all, especially tyro

(Don't smite me, MNHQ, I didn't write it.)

A radfem did at one point attempt a Serano translation...

deludedserano.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/introduction/

I suspect that Serano would think that women who choose not to wear makeup are either cowardly or trans.

I hardly ever wear makeup and never for work. Can't be bothered

Gah, halfway through a post and lost it. Damned touchscreen.

For me it takes courage to wear makeup, but that's because of the pressure from inside my own skull and I'm a bit of a niche case. I did try, once, in the desperate hope that if I could perform the basics of Socially Constructed Woman the bullying might stop. It only took once for me to realise makeup was a game they would always win. That was twenty years ago and the prospect of being required to wear it still triggers unpleasant emotional responses that I struggle to bear.

But that's not because I'm somehow not a woman despite biology. It's because they used my (lack of) performed femininity as yet another stick to beat me with.

It took courage to resist makeup too, though. I can only imagine how much harder it is for women who submitted to the practice initially and are now trying to find the courage to resist it while knowing that to do so may negatively affect their lives in various ways. Kudos to those who manage it!

Would Serano say a female resisting makeup is rejecting same-sex stereotypes, or would Serano say a female resisting makeup is adopting opposite-sex stereotypes? Because the former I agree with, but the latter is default-male flavoured sexist bollocks.

[Serano says] it's an 'act of courage' for women to wear make-up

I'd buy it being an act of courage for men to wear makeup in certain contexts. It's an act of courage for women not to in many contexts.

I think the problem is that Serano quite literally can't afford to see things from women's perspective because that would require an acknowledgement of the fact that Serano isn't one and is entirely differently situated to women in relation to femininity, power, sexuality, and pretty much everything really. Serano's worldview requires actively rejecting any sort of empathy towards women or ability to see us as people.

brilliant posts on this thread, especially from Tyro

[Serano says] it's an 'act of courage' for women to wear make-up

talk about getting it arse about face.

Serano also argues that feminism should be about defending femininity, not females

which rule of misogyny is it that feminism must be useful to men?

Yes, NotTerf, I can see parallels there with ex's understanding of femininity and feminism.

Your brief recap of Serano's points suggests to me that Serano is starting the analysis from a very different place to anyone born female. It's an analysis of femininity from the outside, by a member of the class whose dominance has been the fixed point around which femininities evolve.

It sounds to me like Serano has rejected women's analysis and set about creating one that explains Serano's experience and understanding of femininity. To which I would respectfully say Serano doesn't have a clue because Serano does not, cannot intuitively understand how femininity functions from the inside. Serano understands it as men understand it - from the outside.

The glaring omission is the acknowledgement that femininity doesn't occur in a vacuum, it coevolves with masculinity. One cannot exist without the other. Without recognising this, males are blind to the conditioned masculinity within themselves. And they believe femininity is about sex and power without the slightest understanding that femininity is created in order to systematically cripple the power of the female class.

It's designed to make females a) powerless and b) happy about the fact.

The fact that it does only one of these two things for Serano, my ex, et al, really ought to be a clue for them.

Tyro Serano wrote about the 'transmisogyny' that transwomen suffer - a combination of transphobia and misogyny. Serano argues that transwomen are despised because they're transitioning from a higher to a lower social status (male to female). Serano thinks that this causes masochism which explains why so many transwomen, including Serano, find identifying as a woman sexually exciting. I don't remember if Serano felt they had power by being a woman - it seemed like the opposite, but that was a turn on to Serano. Serano was a 'tomboy' growing up, and first started to feel like a woman after wrapping a towel around their head and posing in front of a mirror aged eleven.

Another aspect of Whipping Girl was the idea that femininity is despised in general - and it's an 'act of courage' for women to wear make-up. Serano also argues that feminism should be about defending femininity, not females. Serano feels that feminists are disparaging of femininity, and that's a bad thing. But at the same time, Serano's understanding of femininity seemed to be limited to wearing make-up and sexy clothes - it was nothing to do with being gentle, passive, caring or self-sacrificing.

Yes tyro, I see things like that awful ad for lingerie where the women were bending over etc displayed on a high st being more damaging.

Drag trends are an obvious worrying contemporary example but it is far, far broader than that. Woman = femininity = sexy = receptive giver of pleasure = submission - these associations are built out of tiny blocks reinforced over and over again, not just in porn, not just in private, but everywhere, in public.

Ex didn't need drag queen story time to pick up the ingredients for how he ended up. He managed just fine with a walking cliche of a father plus access to women's clothing catalogues. There's probably a grim agp variation of the however-many Yorkshiremen sketch in there somewhere. But yes, increased access to the building blocks of agp, plus increased awareness of the agp=brave&stunning interpretation - current drag trends are well capable of contributing to an increased incidence and visibility of agp.

where little proto-agp boys are picking up the seeds of their fetish

Current drag trends worry me in this regard.

Very informative thread. Thank you all.

The media, advertising and societies' objectification of women, and porn, is hugely responsible for this.

And so does society at large, because that's where little proto-agp boys are picking up the seeds of their fetish. They don't make it up all by their twisted pubescent selves; it's fed to them on a plate.

The fact is that most men do seem to have some sort of a sexual fixation. For some it’s agp or other submissive fetishes like cuckolding or femdom. I suspect this is mostly to do with the misogyny in society. However it also perpetuates the misogyny in society.

So, how to deal? On many fronts, I think.

For example pretty much everyone now agrees that guys with a Madonna/wh* complex have a problem. That is, they want to get married to a “pure” woman but they aren’t interested in sex with said wife because that would “violate” purity. So most of them become cheaters who find a suitably “dirty” woman to have sex with.

These men need to identify the problem before they can solve it, through therapy helping them realize that women are actually humans, not either madonnas or wh* stereotypes.

Likewise men with agp need to realize that women are not sexy stereotypes but actually humans. The first step to solving a problem is to recognize that a problem exists. Therapists especially need to know it exists, and so do men with the fetish.

Which again is an act of dominance

Agreed, Eresh - it wouldn't occur to me to describe my relationship as somewhere in the bdsm spectrum, but he made it so, didn't he? That's an unsettling thought.

Janie. Sometimes I feel a bit shit because all I have is words, but so many of us don't even have those. I'm glad I can help with them if nothing else.

And so he unwittingly dominated through performing his fantasy of submission.

This is quite common in "male sub" relationships, I've heard.

Spot on Tyrotoxicity. You have explained perfectly what I couldn't put into words Thank you x

Expanding on my previous with reference to agp ex - his assumptions about what was happening in my head during sex are remarkably revealing.

He believed that I (as a woman) would be sexually excited by ostensibly being the powerful subject. He believed that if he took the role of pleasure-provider to my pleasure-receiver, this indicated his submission to my 'power'.

This says a lot about what he has been taught about sex and power.

The experience is greatly enhanced for him, in terms of sexual excitement, if he is wearing women's knickers, because he has very successfully internalised the frilly knickers = female = powerless provider of sexual pleasure message that is rampant in our culture.

Of course, underneath it all, he is a man with typical male entitlement, and I am a woman with serious compound trauma issues, which meant that in our sexual interactions, he was the fixed point around which everything revolved. If he didn't fancy something it didn't happen, full stop; if I didn't fancy something I tried it anyway, tried to find a way to make it work for me; tried to train my receptive desire to align with his spontaneous desire.

He had all the power - but he couldn't see it, because he believed that 'power' was all about sexual excitement and desirability. He thought power in the bedroom was something women possess and may freely choose to temporarily hand over; he had no understanding that his perception of handing power to me was nothing more than an illusion he maintained to cater to his dickfeels.

He believed dominant and submissive were roles that people chose based on personal preference. He had no class analysis, no real understanding of sex as an axis of oppression; no idea that as a woman I have spent my life being conditioned to accept the imposition of a submissive role. And so he unwittingly dominated through performing his fantasy of submission.

How's this comparing with Serano, NotTerf? Wholly irrelevant? Obvious parallels?

I'll keep an eye out for a copy of Whipping Girl - unless it's available free online anywhere? - because buying new is hindered by principles.

I should probably read it though; if nothing else, to see if Serano's account is consistent with my own analysis (my suspicion is it will be, based on what little has been said here).

Re: men not feeling sexy doing Man Things so why should women? - from this I get that they feel something when they're performing sexed stereotypes to their own satisfaction, and they think we feel something in the same circumstance. In that, they're right.

What does a woman feel when doing a Manly Man thing? If it's a thing she's been raised to believe she can't and mustn't do? She does it anyway, she does it well, she realises she really is capable of so much more than they told her - and she feels powerful. It doesn't make her feel sexy, or aroused, it makes her feel human instead of lesser, more than they told her she could ever be, in control, competent and capable.

And we all get taught that feminine-sexy is powerful. She's a woman, she's doing something that makes her feel powerful, it's exciting and exhilarating and she feels on top of the world - ergo she must be feeling sexual excitement. Thus inferred existence of crotch-tingles is established.

The assumption is that men and women feel the same way when doing things they've been taught are inappropriate for their sex. Totally ignores the fact that one sex learns that being a sexual object is inappropriate, and the other learns that being a sexual subject is inappropriate.

Serano claimed that the sex Serano had had with Serano’s previous patrners made them all lesbians. Penis notwithstanding.