Grayson Perry

[madderose]

Interview in the Times:

Who could be more fearless, then, than Perry? So it comes as quite a surprise, within an hour in his company, to find myself beginning to suspect he is self-censoring. The suspicion is confirmed when I ask if he would call himself woke. “Me?” he exclaims. “What a question!” He pauses to choose his words carefully. “Well, I can agree with many of the things that the woke say.” He hesitates again. “But some of the perhaps more arcane campaigns of the woke might fizzle out before they become normal.” Such as? “Oh God, I am so not going there! Because there are certain arguments I keep out of that are real hot-button issues.” So the transgender debate, I begin but he cuts me off quickly, repeating: “There are certain arguments.” And he steers clear because? “I don’t want it to define my public persona. Like it has [with] other people.” Does he mean JK Rowling? He repeats: “Like it has other people”^ which makes us burst out laughing, because he sounds like a politician.^

So basically, he is GC but he's not brave enough to come out and say it like JK has? I've always been a fan of his but feel a little disappointed......

I think there is a place in public life for a very delicate approach to being GC. I really, hugely admire the direct and outspoken; but that is very polarising. I sympathise with those who can't be outspoken for practical, life reasons (I am one); but in addition to that, I also think that they will eventually serve a practical purpose in providing the bridges to bring people back together. Young people in particular, over the next few years, are going to need face saving mechanisms for rowing back, at least partially. It will be hard to do that if the only GC critical people have been publicly cast into the outer darkness. A few quieter, more political people are needed, so that certain nuances are at least available to be dialled up in volume over the next little while.

About fetishes: I don't think society generally takes the view that it's unacceptable to get (part of) your sexual kicks from being out in public.

Men traditionally love perving at women, openly, in groups. This heightens their pleasure somehow and still happens though it is less entirely acceptable.

Some women fancy their man more when they go out in public and notice other women looking at him. (I'll be honest and admit to this: I love being out, both well dressed, with a man who looks good and knowing that I get him all to myself in bed later)

Some couples (new married couples) get a kick out of parading their attachment and like to feel gorgeous holding hands and cuddling slightly on their bar stools.

I think all of this can be very uncomfortable from various angles, some more than others, and it's part of the friction that makes public space less safe and less effortless than private space. The absence of rubbing up against, or being an object of, someone's sexual feelings is one of the things that is so brilliantly relaxing about women's space. (I find it so anyway - I don't know why the presumed presence of lesbians is not the same though)

I do not consider it realistic to expect people always to leave their sexual selves at home. Nor do I consider it the case that people who need the gaze of the public as part of their sexual existence are occasional aberrations.

Fancying the person you're with and feeling a sense of proprietorship or fancying women you look at is completely different to dressing as a little girl and being aroused by people's shocked reactions.

He's fetishising female hood, and girlhood at that. He's not going out dressed as any number of other shocking things that don't involve the fetishisation of women. Women and girls are key.

Deliberately setting up a public scenario to turn yourself on by the unwitting participation of women and girls, and my daughter, who are the subject of your fetishisation, is certainly not something that I find in the slightest bit acceptable.

I do not consider it realistic to expect people always to leave their sexual selves at home. Nor do I consider it the case that people who need the gaze of the public as part of their sexual existence are occasional aberrations.

If you start putting public displays of fetishes (which are almost always displays of male dominance) in the same category as public displays of love and affection, then where do you draw the line?

Is the guy in the rubber suit wanking in the toilets of his (child protection related!) workplace ok? Is the guy who says he can't get a job because of prejudice against Adult Nappy Wearers in the right? What if your child's teacher is a Furry?

"If you start putting public displays of fetishes (which are almost always displays of male dominance) in the same category as public displays of love and affection, then where do you draw the line?"

I don't know. To be clear - I don't consider any of this to be unproblematic. I have a huge problem with public space being a sexual playground for those who, in whatever sense, can afford it, at the expense of those who do not have the same freedoms.
When I first started work in London, having come from a much quieter and more sheltered environment, I was slightly mad with the pressure of what it meant to be a young woman in a world absolutely humming with male sexuality. I cried a lot and I was furious and got into drunken shouting matches in bars a lot. I was absolutely furious that the world did not align with what I had grown up to think of as my right to bodily and sexual autonomy.

Now I am tired, jaded and cynical and I like hanging out with friends at home and booking out nice airbnbs with women. I don't expect the world to change for me; I am relieved that being middle aged I am let off more lightly, but I seek relaxation elsewhere than this male sexual playground.

It would be great if it were not so, and it is a massive con that the "permissive society" (very old fashioned phrase!) is just a succession of different trendier ways for men to get off at women's expense. but Grayson Perry isn't the only, or even remotely the most harmful, guy doing it. I like his self awareness actually.

Also - he really annoys woke lefty bros, in my experience, so I think he's put his finger on something.

"Is the guy in the rubber suit wanking in the toilets of his (child protection related!) workplace ok? Is the guy who says he can't get a job because of prejudice against Adult Nappy Wearers in the right? What if your child's teacher is a Furry?"

none of this is remotely ok. At least it is notionally the case at the moment that children can and should be protected from these things. I hope that remains the case and in fact that protection can be strengthened.

What I would say though is - sexuality in general is not necessarily benign. I think right now we're suffering from a flow of ideas from a traditional view that hetero marriage, for instance, is nice and loving and good; therefore what could be wrong with homosexual couples wanting the same; therefore what about all unconventional stuff? - all just people trying to be themselves, right? - here we run into the furries in a school scenario and OUCH! I'm upset and scared, like you; BUT I would start at the very beginning, with the hetero marriage, and question the neutrality and benignity of that itself.

If the public sphere is already a toxic male playground, let's not add blokes' weird fetishes to it. It's bad enough as it is.

I think answering the question "what can we do about male fetishes that are damaging to women?" with "We need to tackle the institution of marriage first" is edging close to whataboutery.

'Claire' is a very exaggerated parody of femininity. I get the sense that's deliberate (and may be offensive for various reasons). Of course, it could be a case of hiding in plain sight, and if he's getting off on it, deliberately making women uncomfortable or crossing the line into pervy behaviour, then it's a serious issue. I've never personally heard these points made about Perry. But if memory serves me correctly he has previously stated that his behaviour is a fetish, and also that he was quite clear about the sex demarcation and was making no claims whatsoever that TWAW. I think this was before that argument turned into quite the political hot potato it is now.

The sort of AGPs who insinuate themselves into women's changing rooms, force themselves into women's underwear (and often do worse to it) before posting about their shenanigans on well-known mainstream retailer frankly worry me far more. I think there's a line to be trod between the liberty of wearing what you like within reason in a 'free' society and foisting a fetish on others that is likely to make them uncomfortable.

In terms of forced participation in someone else's fetish, I understand people's concerns. But there's also the argument that rejecting traditional markers of 'gender' should make it easier for people to dress and present however they wish, without the declaration that TWAW and the accompanying expectation that this permits free-for-all access into women's sex segregated spaces. Or erasing the word 'women'. Or calling people the 'C' word. Or doxxing, threatening and 'cancelling' women who pronounce an opinion that's against the orthodoxy. Etc, etc.

He’s been very TMAM before but always had a thing about transvestites and male to female transsexuals. He claimed in a documentary once that he and transsexuals don’t get along.

So he’s more than willing to accept trans men as men, but projects his own experiences on to trans women.

I suspect he takes aspects of what he doesn’t like in himself and projects them on to trans women as a group. Perhaps this allows him to be more comfortable with aspects of himself.

He ain’t no feminist nor would I call him GC.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/grayson-perry-my-greatest-sort-of-sex-dream-was-to-be-a-housewif/

However, I don’t think he’s a bad person and really enjoyed his recent Art Club series. It was a highlight of the week during lockdown.

@TinselAngel

I think answering the question "what can we do about male fetishes that are damaging to women?" with "We need to tackle the institution of marriage first" is edging close to whataboutery.

I see where you are coming from, but rather than saying "let's tackle the institution of marriage first" I am more just throwing my hands up in the air about the whole shit-show and saying I prefer an honest fetish to a sneaky, self-righteous, victim-positioning whiny manipulative one.

Where I am at, at the moment, is that I've become much more mistrustful than I used to be of a binary approach to people (in my personal life, or as public figures) as good or bad. I think writing people off as bad because they have "crossed a line" is actually shooting ourselves in the foot, in the long term.

The whole "well then, if you're going to be so stringent, no one is good" is one reason for this (which is the "not so keen on societally endorsed sexual grandstanding even within marriage" angle that I expressed upthread.

The other main reason is, when the focus becomes virtue, virtue signalling takes over and the most manipulative win.

I just don't buy that fetishes are an intrinsic part of you that you have an automatic right to express, like sexuality

It depends how it's done. A man like GP wearing a dress and make-up in public is just a man wearing clothes and cosmetics. As long as he's not behaving in a sexual way, it's his private business how he's feeling about doing that.