In response to the recent article on Deconstructing Vincent Tabak, I’d like to say some words about the premises of that argument, namely: that this murder was brought on by the conflict of ‘sexual needs’ and ‘sexual shame’, which men are subject to. I contributed at length to the discussion, this is a summing up of my comments to articulate clearly why I think this thesis is so badly wrong.
1) Men’s ‘need for sexual expression’
This very concept is where violence against women starts – ‘need’. As if men must have sex or else (what? They’ll die? Go mad?). It is a recurrent myth used to control women that ‘men need sexual expression’ (and so, by implication, women must enable them to express it), and it’s so much rubbish. Women also have powerful sexual instincts – some are far more highly sexed than men – but are given no such privileged status in having those needs met. Many women have no sexual outlet – probably far more women than men, as in general we have the added problem of an aversion to (or cultural constraints against) casual sex (which isn’t true of most men) and other barriers around age/looks.
But whatever our sex drive, we’re never told that if we want sex then we must be able to get it, at whatever cost – even to the use of slaves via the sex industry, or rape. We just get on with life without it – as should men. This may mean years of going without sex (guess what? You don’t die, or go mad – you can satisfy yourself totally in a physical sense with just your imagination – porn, not necessary, prostitutes, not necessary), and/or therapy to address sexual hang ups and social inadequacies if appropriate – it’s ironic that it’s women who are most likely to address their psychological problems in this area.
Sexual ‘need’ as a cause of sexual violence is a red herring. Rape and murder (and porn use) have nothing to do with sexual gratification. There are many people who choose not to have sex at all and feel no problem with it; and many people who have masses of sex and never feel satisfied. What this proves is that it’s not need that dictates what you feel about the sex you’re getting, it’s ‘expectation’. Frustrated expectation is the energy behind sexual violence – expectations of women’s sexual availability and compliance, which women don’t live up to and so are demonised. 
Saying that men have ‘needs’ that can lead to murder, is implying that ALL men are potential rapists/murderers. I think better of men than that, (maybe I shouldn’t), and that men can be ‘good guys’ – but only if they let go of the privileged status that somehow they are entitled to sexual fulfilment – nobody’s born with a right to shag. This is the same as Jack Straw excusing the appalling grooming of young women recently by saying – They’re young men with raging hormones, so we must understand why they did it. Men must stop making excuses for each other.
Quote by a trans man
After living as a male (and this was cemented when I went on testosterone and then had a male libido), I realized that the “you’d do it if you? loved me” crap is just manipulative Bull. no one needs sex enough to rape to get it.
Since the possibility of sex change treatments we don’t just have to take men’s word for it anymore, and we’re finding out that you haven’t been straight with us. Men can no longer hide in these out-dated myths.
2) Men’s ‘sexual shame’
Women have MASSIVE amounts of sexual shame to deal with – far more than men. Women get killed for expressing their sexuality, they get cast out of their communities, abandoned, and publicly vilified – it far outstrips what men experience. But you don’t find women murdering men as they rape them. (Well, to be fair you don’t find most men doing that either – another argument against it as an explanation).
Why, if shame provokes such horrendous behaviour, aren’t more women locked up for rape and sexually motivated murder? As a mid 50yr old I was brought up with crushing amounts of sexual shame. I suffered very badly from it and had immense and complicated emotional and physical problems which took many years to untangle. But I never killed anyone. I didn’t become a consumer of abusive images of men, I never felt the need to bully, oppress, hurt or control anyone sexually. If anything it made me more of a victim.
The ‘sexual shame’ analysis is a distraction. Even talking about porn can be a distraction, because the root of sexual and gender-based violence is misogyny, pure and simple. Porn is a manifestation of misogyny, and a reinforcer of it, but it arises out of deeper attitudes. Vincent Tabak would never have even been in Jo Yeates’s flat in the first place if he hadn’t thought there was a chance of sex with her – and that is based in the notion of woman as ‘wanking booth’: “oh, this one’s free, I’ll just pop in there and get my rocks off”. Ask most women and you will find they have had similar experiences: your boyfriend’s away so his friend will call to say hello; a relationship breaks down and the guys come out of the woodwork to ‘help’; a male friend’s wife is away/ill/sexually unresponsive and he turns to you for sexual ‘comfort’. The behaviour that would logically accompany such attitudes, can lead to violence:
“I want sex, she’s for sex, she won’t have sex with me even though she’s probably a whore as she had sex with my friend. That means she’s a controlling bitch and, as I need to express my sex, I’ll just have to take her, and show her what for at the same time.” Woman as wanking booth, not human being.
No, men’s shame isn’t the problem – it’s resentment that their entitlement is being called out and they’re being made to feel bad about it, that’s when the violence explodes and Vincent Tabak takes out his anger on women for making him feel bad about getting what he considers rightfully his. The shame involved is a far more complex thing than such an analysis would have us believe. Such simplistic explanations can’t be used to excuse male violence against women. Men have to own that fully before it will stop, they can’t relinquish responsibility by blaming hormones and conditioning.
These are culturally/patriarchally constructed excuses for sexually motivated violence. Many women are harassed daily, continually by men in the street, on buses, at work etc. etc., who feel entitled to force their sexual attention, desires, fantasies, and resentments on them. My 14 year old niece is just starting to experience the entitlement any old bloke in the street feels he has to talk to her, follow her around and harass her. This is pure objectification: a woman is a fantasy, not a human being. What she wants isn’t even on the radar; she is a resource and a receptacle.
I believe this does give rise to shame also, but it’s a shame which lies deeper – not in a man’s individual psychology, but in the existential shame he feels in partaking in the universal abuse and degradation of women which has been going on for centuries and is still alive and well in the current myths. I believe any shame felt by men lies in being acquiescent about culturally bred associations between sex and violence, the myth of sexual needs, and the objectification of women – acquiescent because they advantage men, excuse bad behaviour, and keep women in check. And that men, in general, really quite like the cultural manifestations of this – violent & misogynistic music, games, films, magazines and language, and pornography – and they can’t live with that thought. They’re ashamed of their violent behaviour (porn consumption being a violent act in itself), not their sex drive. A deep and unacknowledged shame at the abject state of a masculinity that knows it’s brothers are raping and killing women on an epidemic scale worldwide (sometimes on the screen in front of them), and does nothing.
It’s an incredibly disturbing thought, but patriarchy doesn’t really mind women dying and being raped, in fact a certain amount of it is essential to maintain the status quo. Patriarchy by definition must continually suppress ‘the feminine’, and almost by default sanctions such behaviour (this doesn’t just apply to women – eg, ‘the feminine’ could apply to homosexuality etc.).
Vincent Tabak wasn’t a monster, he was a normal bloke, doing what society tells him is normal – he stepped over a line, and became a murderer – same as nearly 100 other men every year who kill in the context of domestic violence in this country but who rarely get reported in the media, often aren’t caught or prosecuted, and the women’s deaths aren’t given significance. Patriarchy doesn’t mind violence against women. It’s news if a policeman gets blinded, if it’s a young pretty respectable woman, if there’s a siege, if it’s a serial killer. But there are nearly 2 women a week being killed by former or current partners in this country and we never get a whiff of it, because a male-centric media robs it of the oxygen of publicity – and frankly doesn’t give a shit. If Vincent Tabak had killed a prostitute (that’s a single prostitute rather than several in a row) it wouldn’t have been news, and if he had just raped Jo Yeates, it is debatable whether he would have been pursued for it, prosecuted for it, or found guilty of it.
He stepped over a line due to some malfunction in his social skills, an ignorance of how far you can push your feelings of entitlement over a woman’s body – but it’s only the next step on a trajectory that many men are on, but who have maybe been socialised a bit better. I don’t think many men are able to handle how close they are to such behaviour, and thankfully there is a thin line that keeps most from following through, but it’s a very thin line. It’s only a small step from rape (which many men have committed, most get away with, and many other men sanction – or redefine so that their behaviour isn’t included – which the judicial system doesn’t take seriously, which juries rarely convict, and whose victims are punished. There are still boys coming to sexual maturity who will have seen their father rape their mother with impunity) to murder – rape with a hand over her mouth, or some other such means of restraint, that’s all it takes. You could even see Vincent Tabak as just being unlucky – he tried to do what thousands of men do – take what he wanted – he used a tiny bit too much force and blammo, he’s a murderer instead of a rapist. No not a monster at all, an ordinary bloke doing what loads of ordinary blokes do.
Shame/need combo explanations make him the victim and that is made far too much of – as if most people (men and women), aren’t victims of the system in some way, and don’t have at least some weird attitudes to sex – whether that be addiction to it, fear of it, confusing it with love, calling it ‘evil’, calling it ‘good’ – no-one really has a good attitude to sex in a patriarchy (and it’s the patriarchal need to control women’s sexuality which has caused these too). Sexual hang-ups are normal – and shouldn’t be used to explain his behaviour, as it just distracts us from the real issue: Men’s sanctioned attitudes to women as sexual booty; men’s sense of entitlement to have their sexuality fulfilled come what may, by their wives/girlfriends, or if not then slaves on screen, or slaves on the street/in massage parlours/strip clubs etc. etc. – this sort of accepted ‘right’ men have given themselves to have it, buy it, take it, to have what they want at all costs – even the lives of women.
If rape was properly policed Vincent Tabak probably wouldn’t even have been in Jo Yeates’s flat that day. He was given tacit permission to try and take sex from her (via our society’s refusal to take such a crime seriously), and accidentally killed her in the process. Any sympathetic analysis of these acts is seriously flawed in terms of an overall answer to such a problem. He may also, at base, be a victim, but that’s beside the point – such crimes won’t stop (neither will the creating of such victims by our system) until the attitudes which cause them (society’s underlying misogyny, and sexual myths which support it) are exposed and properly vilified by everyone: men, the courts, the media, the police, and women too – who forgive far, far, too much. And of course, until rape stops becoming the entertainment of choice for huge numbers of men via pornography.
I also believe there is need involved, but it’s a much deeper yearning than the crassly simplified ‘need for sexual expression’. Men do truly have profoundly unsatisfied needs, and they are linked to sexuality, but characterising it as purely the need for sex is totally inadequate. I believe men’s needs are emotional not physical. Masculinity is tutored out of relationship/emotional/empathic skills, because they’re considered feminine skills and are given no value or status in our world. So we get the jokes about a man’s life ending after marriage; the reluctance for many men to face their emotional life; reluctance to commit to monogamous relationships; absent fathers; obsession with casual connection-less sex or promiscuity; the withdrawal from relationships to porn use to avoid emotional entanglements, etc….
The deep connection that occurs during (good) sexual encounters is a real need – although the connection can also occur without sex, and is a characteristic of intimacy of all kinds. The fact that men are brought up to distrust such intimacy, and the fact that sex is so shot through with it, sets up a terrible contradiction between his instincts (i.e. instinctual need for emotional connection) and his conditioning. Sexuality must therefore divorce itself from relationship and intimacy (the feminine) and become the act of one person, not two – one man’s sexual fulfilment, as opposed to the relationship between two people enabling them both to gain sexual fulfilment. And when it becomes the act of one person there must be an object to act on. Women become the object – but often don’t behave as such, and this is what causes the rage and humiliation which underlies misogyny, and provokes sexual violence, or the lack of connection which makes men turn to porn. Patriarchy grew out of the need to keep women as objects and sexually available, and it has necessitated centuries of cultural reinforcement of men’s entitlement over a woman’s body, in order to control access to that which otherwise necessitates commitment and loss of control – i.e. the formation of an equal relationship with an autonomous sexual partner – who is not always available, who may have different desires, and whose humanity is more important than their sexuality.
Maybe we should consider that we earn our right to a good sex life by becoming fully human and acknowledging the relativity of our desires and expectations compared to other people – that our desires are only valid as one part of an interaction with someone else, and are not self-justifying or automatically deserving of satisfaction. Patriarchy can never acknowledge that – as it might mean men relinquishing control and having to address their relational/emotional issues, and maybe some men never having sex at all (and women too incidentally, but that isn’t important to patriarchy). The thought that sex is neither a need nor a right, but something you become worthy of, is taboo. But some move towards this perspective might help turn the tide of festering violence, exploitation and degradation that characterises human sexuality under patriarchal rules.
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Wow this is fantastic! Great analysis, articulating so much of what the problems are with patriachal sexual attitudes and the dynamics of sexual violence – and of what sexual attitudes in a culture free of such oppression would be.
This is an amazing article. So well thought out and true. Thank you so much for this!
I think the root cause is that we have all been taught to disdain emotions. If men really allowed themselves to feel, they would gain clarity. But instead our society teaches us to run away from “negative” emotions and suppress them, and by extension suppress other who may give us feedback that is uncomfortable. Emotions are valid and necessary and until we accept the discomfort of certain emotions and feel them fully, we can’t progress as a society.
“Women become the object – but often don’t behave as such, and this is what causes the rage”
So true
Bravo!
Very interesting article, quite thought provoking.
As a man myself, I have to say that my personal experiences lie far outside of the ideas that you put forward here, and that I don’t feel the social pressures or conditioning that you claim are widespread. I hope that my experiences are becoming more of the norm.
MichaelM – I’m not sure they are. Levels of sexual and gender-based violence aren’t declining (indeed they’re increasing exponentially in some cases) – there is still a base level of misogyny on which many of society’s rules and morés are based.
Also, we’re not always aware of the conditioning we’ve been subject to, much of which is subliminal and treats the things we’ve been conditioned into thinking as fundamental truisms or expressions of the ‘natural order’, when they are actually invented justifications of exploitative behaviour. Even seemingly innocent assumptions about gender play a part: women are more nurturing/emotional/passive, men are more competitive/rational/ aggressive, all these stereotypes feed into the conditioning we experience.
But even if you’ve managed to avoid all this, part of my point in the article is that even the ‘good guys’ aren’t exactly doing a great deal to fight it in society as a whole, (with a few notable exceptions like the white ribbon group) they’re not going out of their way to help the many hundreds of thousands of women who suffer sexual and partner violence, or to challenge the structures (legal, political, social, cultural) which allow such atrocities to continue. Believe me these structures do exist. As a feminist campaigner I know from bitter experience the indifference most politicians, policemen, judges, journalists, and ‘men in the street’ feel towards what huge numbers of women are going through (estimates of a rape every 9 minutes, 2 deaths a week through domestic violence, thousands of girls suffering genital mutilation, thousands of women trafficked into prostitution). Not to mention the downright hostility of many men towards these issues. Most men just aren’t interested – being more concerned with their own sexuality.
I do hold hope that a younger generation of men will start to change these things (I have a 23 year old son and I think he ‘gets it’), but just saying ‘I’m not like that’ isn’t enough. You could start by writing to the BBC (in fact all media) and saying you want them to report every time a woman is murdered – if every murdered woman was news it would become obvious that violence against women is an overwhelming problem, far outweighing gang/knife crime panic, or other issues that the media make much of. We asked them to do it just for a month – to mark end violence against women day last year – and they refused. You can be brainwashed by what’s kept from you as much as by what you’re exposed to.
It is true that “the good guys” could get a lot more involved in fighting misogeny.
But we must also acknowledge that, as shallow as it seems, “good guys” long for being pursued by women simply for being “good guys”. Why don’t most “good guys” experience women hitting on them to the same extent that women claim to be harrassed by male chauvinists? If women want to be saved by something as old-fashioned as activist “good guys” (e.g. PM Gladstone and the prostitutes he sought to help in the streets of London), it’s perhaps time to roll back the clock to the time when women threw themselves on decent men and avoided bad boys.
I never mentioned women being saved by men. You’re deliberately misunderstanding what I wrote. The fact is, the sex industry only exists because men use it, and men validate it by the harping on their needs and how hard done by they are sexually. The good guys are the ones who don’t feel that entitlement to have their desires satisfied, who wouldn’t exploit women sexually, and don’t expect women to be there just to satisfy their sexual urges – the only saving that’s needed is for men to stop exploiting us – we’ll manage to live our lives just fine, if we are safe from men’s violence and men can stop objectifying and exploiting us.
You seem to think being sexually harassed is a good thing. And this ‘good guys don’t get the girls’ is another myth. Treating women with respect is different than being nice to try and get sex. The sort of good guy that women would want to be involved with isn’t such because he wants sex; but someone who’s thought about these issues and actually respects women more than he desires to satisfy his appetites; someone who is interested in the woman he’s with more than he’s interested in talking about himself or having orgasms. In fact the sexiest thing in a man (to me) is his ability to forget about himself and his own concerns for a while and treat me like a cherished human being for no other reason than I am a human being, and definitely with no other motivations (especially not the motivation of getting laid).
There’s no sexual reward for being a good guy, and if you’re trying to be nice for that reason then you ain’t one of the good guys.
Being a genuine “good guy” is not a choice, some kind of faux attitude you adopt to get laid, but a mixture of nature & nurture much like homosexuality. Some of us were born without overtly aggressive tendencies and have had that side further developed by being raised by feminist mothers and can’t imagine being any other way.
Hi tati hare, you’ve made lots of great points – the main part I disagree with is your insistence that you substantially disagree with the original article
I definitely think you’re describing the same elephant.
Perhaps it’s part of patriarchy that associations with words around sexuality sound so distorted. When you saw “need for sexual expression” you seem to have heard “coercion”, “I need it so I’ll take it” and a justification for all manner of creepiness. And perhaps many men use it to mean that. But as you point out, porn, rape and objectification are not about sexual needs. Large segements of society have seriously crossed wires regarding sexuality. Some of us have hardwired, literally pummeled/ground into our genitals, our hatred, rage and all kinds of other emotions . (I think this is part of why increasing pelvic awareness is the first part of Picucci’s guidelines for sexual healing, which could be a good place to start for those interested in the “sexual-spiritual split” approach to recovery
(or as I’d rather put it, “getting our wires uncrossed”).
http://www.michaelpicucci.net/media/pdfs/Guidelines_Sexual.pdf
tati hare I would be very interested to know if there’s anything you disagree with in what Picucci advocates – because it is at this level of tactics, of what to actually do about the problem, at which you and RC seem to disagree)
So overall, I take this post as an important clarification of the earlier post, and another valuable wake-up call about the entitlement mentality.
Brava! So, so true! Experienced this “entitlement” all my life. Wish it could be eliminated.
John – need is coercion, passive subliminal coercion. And I’m definitely not describing the same thing as the original article. That was a male-centric analysis with men as the focus, making men an object of sympathy. I make women the focus and the object of sympathy (the ones who are dying).
Regarding your link – this still seems to start with the notion that to solve this men need to sort out their sexuality. What they need to sort out is their attitudes to women. I understand the violence in the groin thing, but that comes from the very issues of entitlement I talk about. If men had a healthy attitude to women, healthy sexual relationships would follow (although it may take many more years to heal the trauma of womankind).
The document you linked to has the same prurience that many of the efforts to tackle this problem suffer from. An obsession with genitalia and exercises to improve sex – these aren’t the issue. The issue is in the head, not the pelvis, and it’s in the head you must confront it (maybe in the heart too, or maybe all three). In my experience, these attempts to address sexual problems are all too often what men say are needed, because their sex lives are unsatisfying – which isn’t the point at all. I’m not saying that such therapies aren’t good for certain problems, but there a much more ingrained attitudes which underly our schism with sex, and I don’t think personal therapies alone address those – unless individual men are prepared to undertake them with no thought of improving their sex lives, but with the goal of helping women.
Hi tati hare, thanks for taking the time to respond and look at the link. I’d tend to go for the “all three” answer of a head, heart and loins approach, and perhaps different people will start in different places.
From my perspective the motivation isn’t directly about ‘helping women’ – which could be patronising as ‘help’ isn’t necessarily what all women want or need from men – so much as improving relationships, and bringing healing to the often bewildering nice guy/porn guy split personality some of us developed. Which would certainly have the same endpoint of reducing violence.
Thanks again for your provocative and challenging article.
Great article Tati. You’ve explained very clearly the mechanisms that lead men to commit these horrendous crimes against women.
One thing I would take issue with though is the idea that Jo Yeates’ death was accidental. That’s what Tabak tried to claim in his murder/manslaughter trial, however the jury didn’t believe him which is why he was convicted of murder. In fact he deliberately killed Jo Yeates, probably as part of his murderous sexual strangulation fantasies which were expressed beforehand through his porn viewing habits. The police also think he may have killed before. This crime bore the marks of serial killing.
Thanks though for explaining so clearly why Rhiannon’s analysis of this case was on completely the wrong track.
Fair point Delphyne. But there are many killings that do happen the way I described, and the serial killer analysis gets lots of other men off the hook by making it about a one-off weirdo which men don’t consider applies to them. And he’s actually still only a small step away from normality in our current definitions of male sexuality.
Thank you for this. Great points.
I’m so tired of hearing a certain class of ‘men’ invoke sexual ‘need’ as an excuse to demand whatever they want without considering the woman’s needs, feelings or boundaries.
Someone once told me I was being ‘a bit much’ by asking a boyfriend to wear a condom while I gave head. Um what? Apparently his right to his 60sec of pleasure is more important than my right not to vomit….
Brilliant, brilliant article.
A friend of mine (male, my ex-boyfriend) once said that sometimes he was ashamed of being a man, having a penis. By seeing what some men are capable to do in terms of sexual violence against women, he felt bad about his own body.
(I expect my english is understandable).
São Paulo, Brazil
Yes, that is what I meant about the deep shame men feel – not about their sex drive but about the masculinity. And I’d feel the same if I was a man too – I’d feel so ashamed that I would have to act to change things, which is what many more men should be doing.
(english is fine)
“Ask most women and you will find they have had similar experiences: your boyfriend’s away so his friend will call to say hello; a relationship breaks down and the guys come out of the woodwork to ‘help’; a male friend’s wife is away/ill/sexually unresponsive and he turns to you for sexual ‘comfort’.”
This was really quite eye-opening for me. Was not really aware that this happened that much.
I know loads of women who’s husbands/partners have been unfaithful to them because things like breast cancer, pregnancy, ME, depression, low libido etc have interfered with their sex life. And have been hit on quite a few times by friends’ partners because of… well loads of reasons: she doesn’t love me cos she won’t have sex with me; it’ll help her as I’ll have learned how to give you an orgasm; she doesn’t understand me; she won’t fulfill my sexual ‘needs’. But it all boils down to the same reason really – they put sex above the feelings of their partner.
Neither was I. Obviously we move in more moral circles!
*”“I want sex, she’s for sex, she won’t have sex with me even though she’s probably a whore as she had sex with my friend. That means she’s a controlling bitch and, as I need to express my sex, I’ll just have to take her, and show her what for at the same time.” Woman as wanking booth, not human being.”*
I think its a natural desire for men to want to help and protect women however this can become distorted.
What?
^ how old?
So what about the 2 women a week being murdered by a partner or former partner? What about 1 in 7 women coerced into sex, 1 in 4 women raped? That’s not a distorted version of wanting to protect – that’s violence based on hatred and contempt, and a refusal to accept that women are human beings who don’t exist simply to satisfy men’s sexual urges.
Rather than wanting to be helped and protected, we want men to stop being a threat that we need protection from, so we can be equal and safe. We want men to change their attitudes to women, and to become more responsible for their behaviour. The ‘help and protection’ thing can be just another form of control.
If men really want to help women – well here’s what I said on the original thread:
if they really wanted to help us… “they’d be…: joining with women to shut down the sex industry completely; patrolling the streets to ensure women’s safety; reporting/testifying against your mates/sons/brothers when they are sexually/domestically violent; not trying to find mitigating circumstances for violence to relieve your own guilt feelings; camping outside Stringfellows, storming pornography studios in vast armies of men saying ABSOLUTELY NO MORE OF THIS IN MY NAME. Dream on.”
if they really wanted to help us… “they’d be…: joining with women to shut down the sex industry completely; patrolling the streets to ensure women’s safety; reporting/testifying against your mates/sons/brothers when they are sexually/domestically violent; not trying to find mitigating circumstances for violence to relieve your own guilt feelings; camping outside Stringfellows, storming pornography studios in vast armies of men saying ABSOLUTELY NO MORE OF THIS IN MY NAME. Dream on.”
HEAR HEAR!
Dear Taki,
A highly interesting article. Even though I agree with many of your points there is one in particular that I find troublesome. This is your conclusion that sex is “something you become worthy of”. This is because it is very colse to the notion of entitlement which, as you clearly point out, is a highly dangerous notion.
Even though I understand that you mean worthy in a different sense, it is easy to see how this could be missinterpreted by an individual. Infact I might even be so bold as to suggest that most sexual assualts, rapes and other sexauly related crimes are products of someone thing that they are worthy of, rather than entitled to, sex. I would guess (to the best of my ability seeing I have never gotten direct insights into the resoning of such criminals) that it is more common to think that ‘I should get sex, because I have/am/did X, Y and Z’ rather than just ‘I should get sex’. The problem, and the criminal’s solution to it, comes when the other person does not recognice the same grounds for worthyness as the potential criminal.
By reverse understanding this logic also follows a dangerous path in that it connects sexual relationships with a persons worth. This has the potential to create a lot of social and phycological harm. Indeed individuals that do not recieve sex might then accredit this to their own unworthyness. This in turn could lead to vile acts based on the understanding that ‘if I get sex I have proven that I am worthy’. Even if such acts did not occur it might still turn a person whom, by whatever standards we might think of as defining such a person, into a non-worthy person if s(he) does not recive sex, since the act in itself in a ‘worthy of- sysetem’ could easily become that which distinguishes ‘goog’ and ‘bad’ behaviour.
Hence we can see that even in a system that places the definition of worthy in the less willing partner (which also becomes a very odd distinction), the concept of ‘worthy of sex’ becomes highly problematic.
I would actualy go as far as to claim that it is the very opposite that is needed. Sexual relations need to beconcidered in much the same way as for example friendship is. It is a need, yet neither a right nor an entitlement, and possibly bettered described as a longing. The establishment of such a relationship is a complex process that primaraly involves personal compatability/mutual attraction. However it also involves elements of for example luck, such as in finding that/those persons you are compatible with, but also requiers nurturing of different forms, an element that admittedly is somewhat linked to the concept of worthyness. However, just as with friendships, sexual relations are far from only based on worthyness and a persons self-worth should in no way be seen as directly linked to their performance either in getting friends or getting sexual partners. A good friend/sexual partner is a great thing to have, but your worth is not determined by your success with friends/sexaul partners and this success is only partly determined by ‘worthy’ behaviour.
As I hope you see, I agree with you that entitlement is a highly unhealthy attitude to sex. I am only concerned that worthyness is only a vailed form of entitlement and not the tool to break the patterns of gender-stereotyped identity creation that lead to acts of sexaul criminality.
Society DOES recognize that women need sexual release. Women are not generally condemned for using masturbation to achieve this release. Two very common tools women use to assist masturbation are sex toys and romance novels. Sex toys are objects that very often replace one part of the male anatomy. Romance novels present fantasy males custom-designed to the whims and pleasures of the female reader.
Women are NOT sanctioned by society for seeking sexual release through the use of a disembodied phallus and a fantasy male character. Sex toys are easily available, and romance novels (representing the single most popular genre of fiction) are ubiquitous. Female masturbation, with assistance well beyond personal imagination, is widely accepted and even encouraged.
The author of this article seems to think she is being generous by granting men the right to masturbate — so long as the act is assisted ONLY by imagination, nothing else. Would she be as willing to take away the male-replacement objects and fantasy males that women use to assist masturbation, and insist that women ALSO masturbate exclusively using imagination? Would the world be a better place if all women threw out their sexually oriented male-objectification material?