For me, nothing in this sublunary world rivals the beauty of young males and after Tumblr went all prudish and modishly censorious on us last year, I nuked my ten year-old blog curating images of Male beauty and moved to Twitter. I don't especially like Twitter. You may publish there as much cock as you like, so I do. But the liberality ends there. For example, suggest that a trans person is not really a full member of the sex they were not born into, and you'll probably get suspended. However, urge people to punch 'transphobes' or to visit other forms of violence on members of any group currently deemed oppressors, (white men, white men and white men, mostly) and you will garner likes by the bucket-load, presumably with the tacit approval of the beardy Silicon Valley man-bunned types in control. Disagreement is censored, but incitement to violence? Like, whatever.
This morning a gay Twitterer I follow published two black and white photos, the back and front bum of a trans man, with the question 'shall I leave this here?' We were offered what looked like a convincingly muscled and hairy male arse, then equally masculine hairy thighs and between them, a vulva and clitoris. The comments were without exception most enthusiastic, urging the Tweeter to keep the post up, many remarking salaciously on what they would love to do with the trans man in the photo. Given the gay male adoration of the phallus, I found this extraordinary. Some of the comments were baffling variations on 'hey, great ass and dick, dude!'
Dick? There was no dick: there was, as I said, a vulva. Even though I have far more hands-on experience of the former than the latter, I can tell the difference. So in answer to the Tweeter's question, I wrote 'No, I like men.' Well, the model for the photo appears to keep tabs on the comments it attracts, for within seconds I received a charming message: 'I AM a man, you stupid bitch!' and was instantly blocked from his account, one I had not intended to look at, far less follow.
OK, if he says he's a man, we now need to accept this as truth if we don't want the Old Bill to call us and tick us off for non-crime hate speech - now there's a category for you to ponder. (And no, it was not a fucking limerick, it was pure doggerel.) My experience of being a man includes having a whole swath of dreary expectations about my behaviour dumped on me as a boy by my elders (which I resisted) but also inevitable, physical, exclusively male stuff such as having twanging erections, the feeling that my cock is like a fifth limb reaching to touch another man, knowing the fierce joy of ejaculation, knowing how pleasurably and painfully tender testicles are, experiencing a time or two the agony of getting my foreskin caught in the zip of my jeans and having had a couple of doctors shove a finger up my arse to check my prostate. He has known none of these things. So if he and I are both men, what does it mean to be a man? I'll listen to anyone's explanation.
It is possible, I suppose, that tweeters remarking on the hotness of that non-existent cock were doing so ironically, but I suspect not. We now live in a world where people post such tweets as 'penises can be so feminine!' and a man who wears a wig and ill-chosen dresses can kick up a stink because beauticians who offer intimate waxing only for women refuse to depilate his ball sac, even though it's a female ball sac, or a ball sac on a female body or whatever the fuck s/he would have us have it it be. Male, female, man, woman, penis, vagina - all seem to be words that are losing their meaning and merging categories and you do well not to point this out, except pseudonymously, if you want a quiet life.
A while ago I suggested to a friend that anyone who decided to update Charles Mackay's 1841 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' would probably start right here with the gender madness of the last few years. I was right: Douglas Murray has done just that. I'm on the train down home from the North and the book's waiting for me there. Entirely predictably, the Guardian reviewer does not like the book. This review from the London Evening Standard is more positive. Good review here by Lionel Shriver.
This morning a gay Twitterer I follow published two black and white photos, the back and front bum of a trans man, with the question 'shall I leave this here?' We were offered what looked like a convincingly muscled and hairy male arse, then equally masculine hairy thighs and between them, a vulva and clitoris. The comments were without exception most enthusiastic, urging the Tweeter to keep the post up, many remarking salaciously on what they would love to do with the trans man in the photo. Given the gay male adoration of the phallus, I found this extraordinary. Some of the comments were baffling variations on 'hey, great ass and dick, dude!'
| Today's mystery object. |
Dick? There was no dick: there was, as I said, a vulva. Even though I have far more hands-on experience of the former than the latter, I can tell the difference. So in answer to the Tweeter's question, I wrote 'No, I like men.' Well, the model for the photo appears to keep tabs on the comments it attracts, for within seconds I received a charming message: 'I AM a man, you stupid bitch!' and was instantly blocked from his account, one I had not intended to look at, far less follow.
OK, if he says he's a man, we now need to accept this as truth if we don't want the Old Bill to call us and tick us off for non-crime hate speech - now there's a category for you to ponder. (And no, it was not a fucking limerick, it was pure doggerel.) My experience of being a man includes having a whole swath of dreary expectations about my behaviour dumped on me as a boy by my elders (which I resisted) but also inevitable, physical, exclusively male stuff such as having twanging erections, the feeling that my cock is like a fifth limb reaching to touch another man, knowing the fierce joy of ejaculation, knowing how pleasurably and painfully tender testicles are, experiencing a time or two the agony of getting my foreskin caught in the zip of my jeans and having had a couple of doctors shove a finger up my arse to check my prostate. He has known none of these things. So if he and I are both men, what does it mean to be a man? I'll listen to anyone's explanation.
It is possible, I suppose, that tweeters remarking on the hotness of that non-existent cock were doing so ironically, but I suspect not. We now live in a world where people post such tweets as 'penises can be so feminine!' and a man who wears a wig and ill-chosen dresses can kick up a stink because beauticians who offer intimate waxing only for women refuse to depilate his ball sac, even though it's a female ball sac, or a ball sac on a female body or whatever the fuck s/he would have us have it it be. Male, female, man, woman, penis, vagina - all seem to be words that are losing their meaning and merging categories and you do well not to point this out, except pseudonymously, if you want a quiet life.
A while ago I suggested to a friend that anyone who decided to update Charles Mackay's 1841 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' would probably start right here with the gender madness of the last few years. I was right: Douglas Murray has done just that. I'm on the train down home from the North and the book's waiting for me there. Entirely predictably, the Guardian reviewer does not like the book. This review from the London Evening Standard is more positive. Good review here by Lionel Shriver.
