{"id":84057,"date":"2019-07-23T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=84057"},"modified":"2019-07-23T07:49:40","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T11:49:40","slug":"quillette-marilyn-simon-unsex-me-here-and-other-bad-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=84057","title":{"rendered":"(Quillette) Marilyn Simon–\u201cUnsex Me Here\u2019 and Other Bad Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winkler completed an MA in English Literature in 2013, at the same time that I was working on my doctorate on Shakespeare, which makes the two of us grad school contemporaries. I understand well the myopic feminist perspective of English departments, of how students are often trained to read specifically for attitudes of unfairness towards women in order to confirm the narrative of women\u2019s victimization. I also understand how the \u201cmale gaze,\u201d men\u2019s sexualization of women, is treated punitively, as a dirtiness within men that can cause them to dehumanize women and which can lead to cruelty. And of course <\/em>this is sometimes tragically true.<\/p>\n

But what troubles me is that women commonly fail to appreciate the internal struggle men have with their sexual instincts, and instead condemn them for having these instincts at all. In other words, consciousness raising feminism rightly asserts that men shouldn\u2019t treat women like objects for their use, but it does so while being unconscious<\/em> of men\u2019s humanity, and as a consequence, both minimizes and punishes the male sexual instinct that causes men to see women sexually in spite<\/em> of men\u2019s civilizing efforts not to.<\/p>\n

What contemporary feminism fails to adequately grapple with is nature itself, and as a result, feminist attitudes towards men, and particularly towards male sexuality, are compassionless and punitive (not to mention humourless\u2014and human sexuality is so often very funny!). With a blind spot for men\u2019s experiences, consciousness raising feminist attitudes towards male sexual energy are unlikely to inspire mutual respect, and instead work to engender resentment, anxiety, and unhappiness.<\/p>\n

As I grow older, I\u2019m becoming increasingly aware of and sympathetic to the internal struggle between powerful sexual instincts and self-possession that most men contend with every day. Many women have an active libido, but in my experience the vast majority of women think about sex much<\/em> less than men do. Women: imagine what it would be like to think about sex a lot, then quadruple what you\u2019ve just imagined, and now you\u2019re in the ballpark of the average man. It would be exhausting, I can only imagine, to constantly have to assert one\u2019s own self-restraint over an appetite that gnaws at one\u2019s imagination from moment to moment. But to be made to feel somehow polluted for the appetite itself, the appetite that men most usually successfully control and deny would be almost intolerable.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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“What feminism doesn\u2019t understand, and probably doesn\u2019t want to understand because it might create compassion for male sexuality, is the internal struggle of men against their own appetites.” https:\/\/t.co\/Rg3uWMQUW4<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) July 23, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n