Can we talk about "male sexuality"? Trigger warning: fetishes

[Elspyth]

Inspired by recent threads on Debbie Hayton and Andrew Doyle
Hayton describes their self confessed AGP fetish as "a beachball they can't keep under water" and numerous posters on here have said that Doyle/Janice Turner/anyone using preferred pronouns are unwittingly participating in their fetish.

I've seen other male commentators (I think it was Doyle but I am not sure) say that the "beach ball) metaphor resonated with them and women don't get it because they don't understand male sexuality.

It got me wondering about fetishes:

1. are fetishes part of normal male sexuality? I have known quite a few men with them (and there will be more I know that have them, but I don't know)

2. some fetishes are visible (AGP, and exhibitionists) but many aren't (high heel fetishes for example) or are secret (men who plant cameras in womens spaces, or upskirt them) Are heel fetishists who hang around professional settings because of women in heels also nonconsensually exploiting women? What about a man who upskirts a woman? Is it less of a problem if the woman is unaware? Are some fetishes "worse" than others? (Excluding the ones where people are raped or murdered, those ones are definitely worse)

3. Can we/should we try to stop men having fetishes? How do we do that? I think there is quite a lot of comorbidity e.g. men have multiple fetishes. If we crack down on one, will it cause a different one to pop up? Should we see AGP as just one of a range of fetishes or should we treat it differently?

I'm not sure where I sit on this. Personal view is talking about fetishes as male sexuality is centring penis needs and I don't like it. But pragmatically am aware lots of icky fetishists are out their exploiting women without their knowledge so maybe its not possible to expect to avoid them, depressingly.

Why is it ''well said'', and not 'I'm all right Jack so stuff you other women who are worse off then me''?
Liberal feminism seems very self centered to the rest of us.

Maybe do this on a different thread? This one is meant to be about men's sexuality and fetishes, there are lots out there about trans politics and women's sex based rights.

You have not had an issue because you are more privileged then other women. If you would have been locked up in a prison together with a mentally unstable man, like many women have, you would know there is a huge impact and danger for women.

There have been disabled and sick women who have been punished by not receiving the care they need because they insisted on have a woman intimately wash them and not a bloke in a dress.

Womanhood is not something you can identify into. Women are not an idea in a mans head. We aren't skirts and lippy.

And your understanding is completely wrong. Trans is now an umbrella term based on self-ID and it includes heterosexual men who get of on dressing like women. In fact they are now the majority of "trans women".

Speaking of police officers, if you need to be intimately searched it is supposed to be done by a woman. Now straight men who claim to be a woman can do that and you are committing a hate crime against that officer. Hope you never get into that situation love.

Let me make this really clear to you. In silence of the lambs the serial killer buffalo Bill... 10 years ago he was a psychopath. Today he is a stunning and brave transwoman that is misunderstood and is put in the women's prisons.

That is how insane the world is now and you have kept your eyes closed to it.

I'm sorry you are completely right!

@Reddingneckdie The AGP issue aside, what would be the proper path forward for the majority of men, and what guidance would be beneficial. It seems these feelings are fairly universal among men, especially young men. Obviously rape, child brides, & non-consensual / criminal behaviour are not effective paths forward.
Prostitution & pornography can be a consensual agreement, given the choice between rape or prostitution I would think the latter to be a better option but I cant imagine that many people (especially women) would consider prostitution a good advisement toward men? Pornography seems to have rapidly expanded with the advent of the internet, it is way way more prevalent then it was when I was young, but I don't know that this is a very healthy avenue either, it seems that allot of young men are turning to pornography to deal with their sexual frustration but a withdrawing / isolating in the process and last I checked it seems all advisement toward young men is to avoid pornography.

"In a sense much of Patriarchal oppressive traditions and ‘institutions’ are about circumventing this power of refusal women have over men’s advances - eg- prostitution, strip clubs, pornography."

If there were no options to circumvent this power of refusal women have over men’s advances would this situation among men improve?

I don't know anything about Andrew Tates other than I am seeing the name allot lately since i have started reading this forum, I'll maybe spend some time looking into him.

Photography and video-recording is a very recent (in terms of human history) thing, but sexual art and writings are much older. As is being ‘peeping Toms’, stealing women’s clothes and possessions as sexual totem. Also prostitution may be re-branded as ‘consensual’ these days, but it is steeped in coercion (as is pornography) - it is tied in with slavery, pimping and desperation in women. It’s training ground (like pornography) is often through childhood sexual abuse, trickery, rape, deception of girls. Also it is financially exploitative, the pimp exploits both the prostitutes body and her being as well as the man’s craving for sexual intimacy. People get very rich by discouraging male sexual continence.

The desire to ‘circumvent women’s power of refusal’ is essentially about coercing women to partake in something they wouldn’t willingly do, had they been free of prior abuse -sexual, psychological, emotional, financial and/or physical.

Most women get ‘the creeps’ about men who want to circumvent the “no” - for self-preservation reasons. The thought of men stealing underwear, peeping through keyholes, dialling up ‘only fans’. It’s flesh-creeping behaviour.

Something to remember about sex is that it can never be satisfied ‘once and for all’. Highly-sexed men want sex again very soon after they just had it, and could happily have sex multiple times a day, every day. So using a prostituted woman could provide momentary relief for a man, but it would not be lasting and he would soon be out kerb-crawling again. In fact, using prostituted women, pornography, indulging a fetish, or abusing, coercing, raping, whatever, tends to escalate. Men can easily destroy their own lives, waste all their time, squander all their money, wreck their families, their careers and their actual sex-appeal, by trying to get around the “no” of women.

Men and boys need to learn to manage themselves - other species manage it. If you think about the lengths that a lot of male birds go to, to prove they are worthy of a mate, and if they get rebuffed they just get on with trying again, or even herding animals where the poor males need to fight for supremacy or perhaps cut their losses and return later when they are stronger. Short-circuiting of the male drives in our species does no good.

Ed Sheeran wrote the hit song “Don’t Mess With My Love” when he’d been kind of ‘led on’ - as it seemed to him. He was able to channel that energy into something creative. The world would have been a worse place if he’d just hired a prostitute instead.

The analogy I think of about what men /boys need to do, is like giving up refined sugar. Chewing fibrous food to get to the sugar is good for us. Taking the sweetness, without the nutrition- the vitamins, minerals, fibre, protein rots our teeth, gives us diabetes, is bad for our skin, digestion, everything. So it is with men and boys wanting the instant gratification ‘sex hit’, without working at making themselves worthy and desirable to women.

I find sugar addictive, but when I haven’t had it for a while, I lose the craving. Just one little quality street can set me back and I am there with the constant craving again.

Boys and men need to learn to avoid the short-circuiting. Learn to accept women’s “no” with grace. And learn to channel frustrated sex energy into something worthwhile. It makes them better people. And when they do masturbate - they have a perfectly capable imagination to use, instead of being coercive in some way. Plenty of men manage this perfectly well.

Making some very sweeping statements about men I notice

Have you not read the title of this thread?

Amazing post! I like this:

Something to remember about sex is that it can never be satisfied ‘once and for all’. Highly-sexed men want sex again very soon after they just had it, and could happily have sex multiple times a day, every day. So using a prostituted woman could provide momentary relief for a man, but it would not be lasting and he would soon be out kerb-crawling again. In fact, using prostituted women, pornography, indulging a fetish, or abusing, coercing, raping, whatever, tends to escalate. Men can easily destroy their own lives, waste all their time, squander all their money, wreck their families, their careers and their actual sex-appeal, by trying to get around the “no” of women.

Thanks for sharing your view. I'm afraid your understanding of the situation in prisons is incorrect: www.gov.uk/government/news/new-transgender-prisoner-policy-comes-into-force

I also feel that describing someone as privileged because they haven't been to prison is questionable. Unless you are in a position from which you can share your first hand account of having been in a to you unacceptable situation with a man who dressed as a woman inside a prison, I'd love the debate to stay on kinks and fetishes instead of whether I can "afford" an opinion due to privilege.

I do think there is an element of having to clarify trans rights if a significant share of this thread is focused on whether men should be suppressing their fetishes and kinks and AGP is referenced in this context in the opening post. How else will we know if our debate is about the same things - and it is a debate that was invited by the opening post.

a transwoman or a man dressed in women's clothes using the bathroom stall next to mine really doesn't feel like an issue to me.

How do you feel @SpaghettisMum about a man like this using the stall next to a woman who does mind, who doesn’t consent, who feels violated and disturbed - frightened by the lack of respect for her boundaries (she’d sought out a single-sex toilet for a reason)? Is that an issue or do are you only concerned about what bothers you personally?

To drag this back to male sexuality how might @SpaghettisMum feel about that man wanking over the thrill of being in the women's toilet or surreptitiously using his phone to video other women over or under the stall (a niche section on PornHub)? Or videoing women after entering a women's changing room (another PornHub section)? Those are aspects of male sexuality.

Did he never consider just deflating the beach ball rather than forcing everyone else to participate in his fetish?

I would say that woman has a right to her opinion and personal feelings of being bothered by it, just as much as I have the right to my opinion not to be bothered by it. As I mentioned above, it's a debate - an exchange of opinions to canvas different perspectives, not a court of law.

Do you think it ‘feels like an issue’ if another woman is bothered by it, or does it still, to you ‘not feel like an issue’ if only other women are bothered by it?

I would argue that any of those actions would be criminally chargeable and that I would be very bothered about those.

However, as many have made the point above, there is a clear difference between criminal offences and kinks/fetishes. While at times they are not mutually exclusive, they certainly aren't the same, and someone dressing up like a woman doesn't mean they do so to commit a criminal offence in a woman's bathroom.

And to bring it back to the author's original question: unless they are criminal behaviour, I don't see a need for men to suppress their kinks. I actually think that society is letting men, especially young boys, down by not creating open dialogue around feeling different, and I think that can contribute to unhealthy behaviours and an impacted ability to control those. And to anticipate the "but what about women?!" - I think more open dialogue with women earlier on is needed too, whether that be about their sexuality or how to own it and express consent (or the lack of it). That doesn't mean I celebrate every kink that isn't harmful behaviour. It just means that I chose to let people be people as long as it's legal.

We're solely having an exchange of opinions here, as part of which I value hearing views different to mine. It's the point of a discussion forum, right?

These fetishes/paraphilias very often involve the non consensual participation of others.

I would argue that any of those actions would be criminally chargeable and that I would be very bothered about those.

I don’t think it is against the law for a man to wank in a cubicle inside the ladies toilets.

The thing is, if a man sees a door and it says ‘women’ on it, or it has words or symbols to that effect, and he know this means ‘only women beyond this door, no men may enter’… yet he still pushes that door open and walks inside, what does that say about that man, and his respect for women’s boundaries?

Surely this alone is an issue?

I would say that woman and I are having a difference in opinion. I am sure there are lots of things that I have an issue with, that others don't. Sort of beside the point though, I feel.

I feel we have now moved to trying to prove me wrong or convince me otherwise, instead of exchanging opinions about the question first posted so I'll excuse myself from the debate but hope you have a great rest of the day :)

Yep. That's transgressing boundaries, which is instantly causing problems.

The analogy I think of about what men /boys need to do, is like giving up refined sugar.

Yes, I was also thinking of a food analogy in answer to OP's question of what do we do about paraphilias? I think we have to understand and be open about the fact that there is healthy and unhealthy sexuality - both male and female. We need to bin the term "kink-shaming", which is a reflexive term to stop "kink-questioning" and "kink-judging", both of which have their place and should be encouraged. We should acknowledge the line from atypical to potentially harmful to actually harmful to illegal.

Sexuality is similar to appetite in that it is a biological mechanism within us to ensure human survival. However like with food, we can get stuck in unhealthy patterns from an early age, some of us might be more genetically/physiologically disposed to unhealthy sexuality and we live in a sexually unhealthy environment that greatly influences us. Anyone who watches porn is engaging in the paraphilia of voyeurism but because so many depend on it as a vice, like chocolate or fast food, people are unwilling to engage with the fact that it is not remotely normal or healthy. However, the younger generations are quite health-conscious so I could see this view gaining popularity. I think we should change our environment to help men (and women) with sexual control rather than make it more difficult as we are currently doing. This alongside encouraging personal responsibility.

As @Metamorphosising so brilliantly put it, sex is not a thing to achieve or collect, but an interaction. No one goes around demanding a handshake or a conversation, so men need to be able to understand it as such. I think it's a reflection of not seeing women as full equal human beings that this is so easily overridden by men's sexual desire, but paradoxically I think framing sex like this will help men to humanise women, and therefore make the rejection less painful.

Fundamentally though I think it is incumbent upon men to bridge the gap between men and women for us to have equality.

This is a bit like saying to someone who wants to lose weight by dieting, did you ever consider just not wanting to eat?

It may be possible for someone to get in that head-space but we all know it's not all that easy, and prone to failures.

I was told that there are no sexualities, only genital fetishes.

He was trans and was gaslighting me into thinking he was a lesbian and i was a bigot.

“we live in a sexually unhealthy environment that greatly influences us”

This is such a great way to put it.

When I think about the smoking ban - it seemed insurmountable at the time - to ban smoking anywhere where someone works. The passive smoking was seen as a human rights issue - that one person’s ‘freedom to smoke’ did not trump the rights of others to not have their health harmed by passive smoking when working or accessing services.

These (overwhelmingly male) sexual stimulus addicts and the profiteers/suppliers of sexual stimulation are creating an unhealthy sexual environment for everyone, especially young people.

If you think of the smoking ban, it made giving up smoking so much easier for many people, no longer being confronted by temptation and opportunity to spark up everywhere.

The proliferation of easily accessible pornography and the push of kink and fetish out into the open, the mainstream - even to make it acceptable in the workplace - (eg- a fetishistic crossdresser can currently teach children at school), is creating an unhealthy sexual environment for everyone. It certainly isn’t teaching boys how to manage their drive and be sexually continent, or helping girls to form healthy sexual boundaries. The people who are pushing for it are like those opposing the smoking ban fighting for the “freedom to smoke” where ever they like, or like the tobacco companies fighting to keep profiteering.

Thank you @PriOn1 that was really extremely helpful (is it coughing?). could this have escalated into a paraphilia if you had lived another, lonelier life? Did you tell partners about it? Did it absorb you more at some times than others in your life?
By the way I think you’re mistaken over what Stella O’ Malley said, she said some lesbians get a sexual charge out of clothes, and then clarified that some women get a sexual charge out of clothes, she clearly said it wasn’t a paraphilia in the same sentence https://open.substack.com/pub/stellaomalley/p/so-ive-been-publicly-shamed-again?r=7v0g9&utm_medium=ios