Stand by Your Manhood (6 page)

‘I never thought I’d be the one who ended up defending these types of magazines,’ she tells me.

Unsurprisingly, when she shared this experience, Lulu realised the unpalatable, ironic truth that – actually – it was other women, not men, who were the ones being sexist.

When she puts it like this, it’s a no-brainer.

When I was a boy, my mother was a counsellor at an abortion clinic in Liverpool. I’d often go there in the school holidays and play in the empty waiting room. One day, as we arrived on a seemingly normal day, the street was crammed with people. Loud pro-life people, mostly women – I might add – with banners. As we approached the bright red front door of the BPAS building, the crowd jeered, spat and pushed – even at me, a child.

These self-appointed freedom fighters – fiercely claiming to represent the moral future, the way forward, the majority – thought they were civil rights heroes, but actually, they failed to recognise that they were more like the new oppressives. Why?
Because the people they were claiming to liberate were already free.

As we jostled through them – placards waving, whistles blowing, my dad trying to shield us – he explained
very calmly and in hushed tones that, sometimes, people are so passionate about a cause, so indoctrinated by their version of truth, so desperate for it to survive and thrive, that nothing is off limits – and, sometimes, they become exactly what they claim to oppose.

Years later, whilst writing this chapter, I remember these words – and look them up. Turns out famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said something similar: ‘Beware that, when fighting “monsters”, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’

Somebody might want to tell Lose the Lads’ Mags this. Because whenever I see them in action, I remember these words, see the weakness in their extremism and cringe.

AT THE RISK OF QUOTING
’90s hip-hop trio Salt-N-Pepa, let’s talk about sex. Not just because it’s one of life’s greatest pleasures – well, unless you’re Max Mosley, poor guy – but because none of us would be here without it.

Whatever you call it – intercourse, making love, fucking, schtupping, boning, bumming … oh no, not bumming – sex made us. Sex is what stops civilisation from coughing and wheezing its way into oblivion. It is, almost literally, the Big Bang of human existence. A
biological masterstroke. The circle of life’s pivotal starting point (by which I mean the cradle-to-grave metaphor – not Elton John’s song of the same name, obviously).

Essentially, we owe it all to sex.

So it’s surprising, and perhaps a little ungrateful, that it’s long been given a bum deal – and not in a good way. First it ended up on the cutting-room floor when the Virgin Mary conceived baby Jesus, then religious finger-waggers branded it sinful until the swinging ’60s – but, even then, legislation kept it on a tight leash without the slightest hint of adventurous role-play.

Thankfully, these days, we are much more relaxed. Channel 4 has already had real-life couples shagging on live TV, branches of Agent Provocateur line the high street, vibrators are bought like toasters and the biggest literary hit of recent years is
Fifty Shades of Grey
– a book consumed by women of all ages, in all places, at all times of the day and night, from busy trains on the morning commute to Kindles in care homes. Its sadomasochistic subject matter is no longer an extreme fetish to be gasped at, pearls clutched, but the title of a Rihanna track played at family weddings.

Female sexuality has never been such a casual, and comfortable, cultural reference point.

So it’s bizarre that whilst public attitudes around women’s desires have relaxed, those concerning men’s have,
well, stiffened. Not just in relation to how we consume erotica in public, with tacky ‘titty bars’ and the like being frowned upon – that’s nothing new – but privately, in our homes, and increasingly, our minds.

Men enjoying sex has become sexist.

American journalist Tom Junod experienced this first-hand when he published an op-ed piece in
Esquire
noting the appeal of 42-year-old women. Sure, he may have a career that includes two of the industry’s most prestigious accolades, plus acclaim for his landmark piece identifying 9/11’s ‘falling man’, but even that didn’t exempt him from a good old-fashioned bollocking. In fact, he was publicly savaged by critics who said he had no right to voice an opinion – even though what he wrote was, er, an opinion piece.

Columnists everywhere from Jezebel to the BBC queued up to say he was reprehensible for such ‘offensive’ beliefs, presumably because, in their eyes, it was default discrimination against every woman who wasn’t yet forty-two, or who had been but wasn’t anymore. The scale of response was so exaggerated that the
LA Times
assigned five writers to it, whilst Gawker reported the story three times.

‘They said I declared 42-year-olds fuckable, which isn’t true,’ he tells me during a transatlantic call when the dust finally settles, six weeks later. ‘But the facts soon
became irrelevant – it quickly morphed into something else, something aggressive and personal, which is a shame because I wrote it honourably.’

So what happened?

Five days of online trolling and personal attacks followed, along with calls for an editorial retraction. The vehemence, even violence, with which people expressed themselves was alarming. One hater said, ‘I just looked you up on Wikipedia and I see that you’re fifty-five. Oh, yeah! That is such a hot age. It’s like, you’re still alive, but only for about thirty more years,’ whilst another chimed in: ‘We’re going to beat down that sad man’s door…’

Christ, he might’ve had a better time criticising the Prophet Muhammed in the Middle East.

But did they at least have a point?

Amid the shrilling, the message – although never explicitly stated – was clear: ‘good’ men will diplomatically
find all women equally attractive, all the time, forever – which I can only assume is like giving every child a prize in a party game.

Then again, when Alex Bilmes, UK editor of
Esquire,
said the role of all its female models (across all adult ages!) was somewhat ‘ornamental’, at least for its readers in that specific instance, he too kicked up a storm. Speaking at a conference on feminism in the media, he made the startling revelation that the monthly glossy is – shock, horror – a men’s magazine. He earnestly said:

You know, the same way
Heat
and
Marie Claire
feature naked men.

Yet, sure enough, he was publicly lambasted, with one website naming him ‘Douche of the Day’ and
The Guardian
– of course – asking if he’d ‘escaped from a
Benny Hill
sketch’.

Hilariously, all this self-righteous fury erupted after decades of women portraying men on a binary scale of either a) boring in bed/unable to make women orgasm/incapable of finding a clitoris/emotionally retarded/lacking endurance or b) creepy, predatory and perverse.

In Hadley Freeman’s
Be Awesome,
for example, she says men who like women with Brazilian bikini waxes are – and I quote – ‘lazy, selfish jerks or paedophiles’, which is perhaps slightly over-thinking the style of a person’s pubic hair. But, let’s run with it anyway, because surely this also means a woman’s corresponding preference about, I don’t know, a man’s hairy shoulders or his smooth ‘back, sack and crack’ equates to the same thing.

Ah, no – of course not, because that would be a cougar! And they’re ace! Let’s make a film about them! We’ll call it
Notes on a Scandal
! Judi Dench will do it! It won’t be the story of a woman who cheats on her husband to shag a minor, oh no. Instead, it will be a cerebral, artistic, empowering examination of the deep-seated sexual and emotional rapids that run at the heart of every woman, whilst the men are off being dirty pervs in raincoats. Give me a fucking break.

Firstly, let’s get something straight: a twenty-year-old woman with shaved pubic hair looks like a twenty-year-old woman with shaved pubic hair,
not
a child. Secondly, women do not dictate what men find attractive.

Blimey, it’s no wonder we’re all retreating into commercialised sex, where the customer is always right – or at least always
feels
right. There’s less risk of repercussion in a pay-per-view person. Then again, even this is under fire. Five years ago the government pushed through the Policing and Crime Bill 2009, which gave local councils across Britain the power to shut law-abiding strip bars at random. The latest is Spearmint Rhino in central London. Yep, Richard Branson may be on the verge of selling tickets to the moon and sperm can be bought online, but free-thinking adults can’t pay somebody to dance in an over-priced bit of cotton-blend. Go figure.

Tellingly, supporters of these moral-compass
clampdowns
do nothing – at all, ever – to close gay sex clubs. And nor should they. But it does make me wonder: why the disparity? Why are gay men more entrusted with testosterone than their straight brothers? Is it because, if they went feral and suddenly attacked someone, their victim would be male, not female? Wow. I’m sure Peter Tatchell would be delighted with that.

Either way, men’s enjoyment of sex is the new, low-hanging fruit for our biggest critics – and, at its core, is shame. But how the hell did we end up here? Weren’t we all supposed to be liberated and new age about this by now?

‘When I was in college during the mid-1960s, heady
dreams of liberation filled the air. Hippies were practising free love whilst European art films embodied a sophisticated model of sexual expression,’ says Camille Paglia, tell-it-like-it-is author, professor and feminist talking head who, funnily enough, happily discusses
giving
head – albeit not personally, but professionally, as an expert on sexual politics.

Wow, that’s an instant cure for priapism right there. Mercifully, she refrains from saying ‘I told you so.’

Two decades earlier, Paglia predicted the current climate when she said, ‘leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist’. A little harsh? Maybe. Last time I checked, plenty of feminists enjoyed sex. Then again, there are certainly some ‘interesting’ quotes about this from the sisterhood. America lawyer Catherine MacKinnon once said, ‘All heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent’, whilst Valerie Solanas – the woman who tried to kill Andy Warhol and penned the SCUM manifesto, which cheerfully encouraged the extermination of boys – said, ‘To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.’

Thankfully, Solanas’s plan died with her in 1988 and the Society for Cutting Up Men never really bounced back, but when you consider sex to be the single most dynamic, vital interchange between the genders, her choice of target isn’t remotely surprising. Sex
is
power.

For some contemporary ‘sextremists’, the very act of it – the physical process of an erect penis entering a vagina, an anus, a mouth – isn’t a natural expression of attraction, but remains proof of men’s aggressive nature. Even when it’s nothing of the kind. Still, in these instances, biology is begrudged for its perceived anatomical slight against women and the penis suddenly doubles as a lethal weapon (well, when it’s not too small or too soft, I assume).

Ms
magazine’s Robin Morgan once said (and never retracted) that ‘rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman’, which makes me wonder why she married a man and how she’s coping with having a son. After all, Andrea Dworkin – who seemingly had a chip on each shoulder to balance herself out – once claimed: ‘The annihilation of a woman’s personality, individuality, will and character is the prerequisite to male sexuality … [and] every woman’s son is her potential betrayer. The inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.’

Yep, that’s
you
she’s talking about there. And to think this shit still gets taught in Women’s Studies classes.

But, hang on, if men weren’t men – if they didn’t find women attractive and want to sleep with them – what would become of all that famous feminine mystique? The power women possess as sexual beings? That timeless, intoxicating allure men are programmed to respond to? Well, quite frankly, it’d become redundant – creating millions of female eunuchs overnight. Suddenly, all over the world, girlfriends would become the butt of impotency jokes because their power to control men with sex would end.

As the gatekeepers to sex – the bouncers on the bedroom door, perhaps – they understand that, contrary to popular perception, they’re not passive, weak and
one-dimensional in the exchange. They’re actually the ones in control because they determine when men get it. Therefore, if they play it shrewdly – both personally and politically – they can ultimately control men to their advantage.

Think about it: sex isn’t something men do to women, it’s an act that’s enjoyed together. But politically, there’s no sway in that – and, if power comes from being vulnerable, they need an oppressor. That’s why men are constantly depicted as walking fragments of the patriarchy, not free-thinking individuals: it elevates women’s ranking in the hierachy of marginalised groups. This, in turn, gives them status and moral superiority via the state. It maintains the myth that men are bad, women are good, which tilts the PR axis in their favour.