here's a little story... i went to the quickey mart the other night and as i was walking out there were two drunk guys from the bar across the way that were standing around trying to talk to me as i got in my car. i was'nt rude and they wer'nt really either just drunk and obnoxious. so as i drive away one of them says "bye mamma" and i reversed the car and rolled down the window and walk up thinking it's thier lucky day and i say"i'm not your mamma and if i was you'd have much better manners" he he he , they did'nt have much to say to that. i think they felt dumb...good, girls probably don't put them in their place enough. anyways it felt so good, i'm a little badass.

i don't really know the answers... my views on sexuality change and evolve all the time (especially growing up in these times as well as my catholic upbringing)...

I despise the notion that men scoring = stud, girls scoring = slut... believe it or not, it goes both ways... i was never a big fan of "going all the way" on a hook-up situation, even when the event presented itself, i dunno, i just wasn't into it... being a guy with guy friend, believe me i got a lot of shit for that... i think the reason why most guys don't understand why girls don't get all giddy when they hoot and holler is because that's the kind of attention they're NOT accustomed to getting themselves.. they sit back and say "i don't know, i'd be stoked if someone did that to me, what's her problem", when the reality is, watch a straight guy get hit on by a gay man and watch them flip out... i just sit back and smirk... what's the matter man, why aren't you "stoked" that someone wants to get on your shit?

personally, i enjoy giving and receiving compliments, and i'll be honest, there are probably times when they are misconstrued as "come-ons", and for that i feel bad, but if most of them are simply taken with a "thanks man", it makes me smile...

1. I hate the notion that to be masculine means to be a violent,close-minded dumbass. I hate having to feel that I should be a jerk to women for them to like me -- I always feel like theres some outside force pulling me to be a distant, unemotional, uncompassionate person in a certain situation, while the opposite person would be the right person for the situation. I hate the boundries we set for ourselves -- where women act a certain way and men act another way.

2. Stop generalizations. I think a person is who they are because of their unique personal experiances. Maybe because they belong to a certain group they are exposed to simular things, which might produce relationships, but does not mean they are the same. People are dynamic, complicated, ever changing their minds and actions. We always go wrong when we compare and judge. It's easier to use our pretenses rather than get to know someone. Life is chaotic, but people try to stable it. When something comes along that threatens their stability people tend to fight that threat to save their stability rather than accept it.

end rand? what did you not like "Atlas Shrugged"?!?!?
just kidding Morgan...I know what you meant.

my views on gender roles and expectations are kinda skewed because almost all of my friends are either gay...or Marines...or both. so I kinda get to sample from the broad spectrum. I don't ever feel down by being a guy. I wish I was always expected to be the more aggressive one in the dating arena..but i think that is changing a lot. I also don't like being expected to be the one to kill spiders and snakes and such that get into the house...I'd rather keep them, personally. Being in the Marines there is a lot of bullshit macho posturing that one often feels obligated to involve themselves in...but I just dunno...I never seem to have much problem avoiding it.

I think it 's just a matter of education and people getting a wide variety of experiences with all kinds of different people. most prejuidice and pigeonholing coes from limited experience/limited ignorance...going by only what the lowers common denomenator suggests. and let's face it...some people are just fuckwits.

Hey Morgan,

Wow! Thoughts are a flying now.

You can be nice and still be able to tell someone they have their head up their ass and shit for brains. No means no. Girls should be treated as princesses and fellow adventurer in life. A full partner, not a conquest or an object.

Answer to #1. It bothers me that society portrays women as the "weaker" sex. I'm not talking physically. My wife is a weightlifter and can probably bench press more than I. I'm taking about emotions. Saying that being emotional is weak. It is not.
Women have a powerful emotional nature that works side by side with their intellect. Women can take on a challenge and succeed where a more logical intellect (that is portrayed as "better", like Mr. Spock) would not even attempt such an undertaking!
It is possible that women are the more powerful creatures because their power comes from love, not fear. How many men know this?

I was always told that a woman should don and doff her personna as the situation dictates. She can be as dirty or pure as necessary for the situation. BUT SHE DECIDES! That is key.

2. The lady (can't remember her name) who runs Columbia sports products states that her mantra for success is: "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertize!"

p.s.- Wow! Did you really like Ali Davis's True porn clerk stories site? What an interesting read!!

Instead of answering each question individually, I would rather respond with an amalgamut of answers to both.

For one, I agree that men often take things too far when it comes to women and sexuality. No girl is dirty for being on this site or for having any type of view towards their own sexuality for that matter. What is so fucking wrong with a man or a woman who wants to explore their sexuality or who wants to hide it away? You, Morgan, are very attractive, I am not afraid to tell you that, I will also admit that I haven't necessarily had all the most "pure" thoughts when viewing your pictire sets. But then again, am I now a dirty drooling sleaze ball? Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves sexually and unfortunately guys do not always do it so well. The underlying factor is that guys are pressured to to act like that, like it is part of their manhood, and girls are pressured to think/act like sex is so taboo and that they are impervious to it. I don't agree with that. What needs to happen is for a lot of gender walls to come crashing down and everyone to get the fucking sex stick out of their ass, no pun intended. Girls, you can have all the sex you want or you can abstain at your own will. Guys, the same applies. You [both genders] cannot push your choice on anyone else regardless of gender, though. Don't be afraid to have your own opinion. It is the only way that you will be happy with yourself and your own choices. If you get touched ina way that you didnt want, say something, if you get spoken to in a way you didn't want, say something, but do not look down on anyone else for their views on the matter of personal sexuality.

"C'mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now..."

Thank you!

Being a white middle class male, I guess I really feel I have no place complaining about my place in society.. Although a man's role is changing, I really do not see it diminishing radically anytime soon. This of course isn't right and if I had to pick anything to single out as being wrong it would be the whole macho, "manifest destiny", seek, conquer, and destroy attitude that pervades much of our culture. Although it is existant throughout Western society, it is all the more prevalent among males. I guess I've basically grown tired of feeling the pressure to get a piece of paper from school, buy a nice car, a house, some "bling", all to allow me to attract a girl who desires these things. Only to end with myself subverting her into marriage and pregnancy, where we all live happily ever after. if any of that made any sense at all.

or as eddie izzard put it all the more simply:
"If women fall over wearing heels, that's embarassing, but if a bloke falls over wearing heels then you have to kill yourself."

slainte.

I would like to say 2 things:

1) Morgan — the things you've just said, the feelings you've just expressed make you much, much sexier than any naked picture ever could.

2) I am a very nice person... I am tired of people equating this with being a wimp. I don't fight and I never will except in defense of someone I love — this does not make me a "pussy." I really like some "cick flicks" and it should be fine that I do. I cried at the end of Steel Magnolias. I'm not obsessed with sports, and that doesn't make me "queer." I don't throw like a girl, I just can't throw very well. The measurement of my penis is not a measurement of my worth as a man. I like this site more for the community than the naked pictures... and that's just swell. I'm sick and tired of the jock mentality perpetuated by my fellow man.

The first thing we can do to quell sexism is to irradicate sports in the public schools, take the millions of dollars saved, and funnel them into art, theater and music.

Writing sonnets makes me useless for hard thinking afterwards. It's rather like sex...all I want is nice, cuddly thoughts afterwards. But I'll try an answer anyway...

The thing that bothers me about gender is that it's not the bipolar thing people make it out to be. There's a whole range of masculinity and femininity, and people don't even occupy fixed points on it. Depending on moods, situations, or which part of their character you are focusing on, anyone could be anywhere between the extremes of that spectrum. Not to mention that the words we use for those ends are one of the biggest parts of the problem.

So it bugs me when people take a quick read and assume they know where I'm at. It irks me to be honked at by random drunken college guys as I pass in front of their truck on the street and be told to "Go home, you fucking faggot." It irks me to get sniggering "nice purse" comments on my camera bag. Not because I give a flying fuck about their possibly misreading my sexual/gender identity - I am, after all, the straight guy who used to wear a shirt with a giant Q on the front and "Queer" on the back - but because I am constantly reminded by these sorts of incidents of how rarely people actually take a sensitive reading of each other as individuals, who have their own special complexities and change through time.

How to change it? Well, we should pay more attention to each other. Take a "stop and smell the roses" approach to other people. Notice the little things that make people unique and interesting individuals.

In that context, even the stereotypes can be interesting because they give you a template to use to admire all the interesting ways an individual person pokes out of it.

Rather like how you can see the amazing beauty of the sun's corona when it is eclipsed by the moon.

-ff

It takes a long time realizing what things really mean... (these eight years ago when you were in doubt about the meaning of "being nice" don't seem very long to me....) ...and it doesn't becoming any easier with time passing, as we're continually showered with ambiguous messages with blurred meanings... doesn't this site offer lots of examples of this?

Attitudes change meaning with time: "Don't do anything you don't want to do", did you say, as if it was commonplace... Generations and generations of boys and girls have been hammered with the exact opposite of this message: "don't do anything you want to do". " If you really want to do this, sure it's bad". With many more variants. No wonder Jerry Rubin's "Do it!" finally became a motto for an entire generation. It was a healthy reaction in these times. Now we are more aware that "Do what makes you happy" is a meaningless statement if not accompanied by "Do not what makes you unhappy".

What doesn't change is that bullshit thinking and sexism have always had to be confronted, laughing them off has been tried often and work but for a short while... and ignoring them never works.
So, I hope Morgan will not end ranting!

re:your post

i totally agree we are all ultimately screwed. it's just that certain groups are screwed less (white males) than others (women, god forbid anyone with a darker skin tone, the poor, etc.)

"Baby Je, we bring you 20 cigarettes, a can of diet coke, and a sack of charcoal."--no real relevance to anything it just randomly popped in my head.

slainte.

I work with a guy who told me that in the end I will be measured by three things:

1. How many women I've slept with.

2. How much booze I can drink.

3. If I can kick someone's ass.

By "Tough Guy" standards I'm a wuss.

What can I say? I'm a nice guy and for some reason that seems to equal feminine in the eyes of some people.

I know this isn't what you were asking. but I just wanted to say that as men we also have social perceptions that are exagerated, unrealistic, and just plain stupid.

As far as the way I treat women, I was raised by a single mother and have nothing but respect for all of you. That said, there are good women AND bad women, just as there are good AND bad men.

The trick is learning to tell them apart from each other.

Anyway Morgan, it's posts like this that make you one of my favorites.

Keep us thinking.
JVB

It's not what *I* want to see. Not in the slightest. I'd rather see a set of you fully clothed, hanging out and just being the kickass cool intelligent person you are. Playing nintendo or some crap. I'm not even kidding.
It's the same kind of thing that "normal" guys think is crazy when I say that I'm more attracted to a woman when she's not made up, wearing whatever clothes are comfortable, and not dressing to make herself or anyone else feel that she is attractive. Usually, I see that and go "bleh", because I don't care if the person wants to be seen as attractive, it just matters if I think they are interesting, and if I think they are attractive, I'll see that without all the additional assistance.
The questions of gender issues and what's messed up in them are becoming near impossible for me to fathom, as I learn of more and more women who legitimately tell me that they really do enjoy being a sexual object. I, personally think that this all stems from them being previously influenced by the remainders of a male oriented society, but they have shrouded that fact in their desire to see it as empowering themselves and overcoming that society to "choose" to be a sexual person, not "having to be, because a man told them to". Either way, the guy gets to be an asshole, and the woman gets to find it hot. That's crazy. It's not the same thing, but it's a comparable concept:
The High heel. these shoes do terrible things to women's legs and feet, and they often complain about the discomfort they cause. most of us know that the high heel was developed my men for women because it made their calves look sexy. now, women wear them not because they have t, but because they like to look taller and like men to think they are sexier (even though I often hear "it's not for men, it's for me, because I think I look sexier") . Personally, I'd like to say that women should never wear these things anymore, it's unfair for men to fuck up women's bodies so that they can look sexier for themselves or for us. But most women I know would never give them up, because they like to look sexy in their high heels, and love the way they look, despite the pain it causes them. I think that the high heel is possibly a fantastic symbol for male oppression over women's sexuality. Many women cling to their "right to be sexual" in the same manner, and I think it's often fooling themselves into perpetuating male sexual dominance under the guise of empowering themselves.
The way I see it, people should treat each other with respect no matter what, race religion body type nationality sex or whatever, and the desire to have sex with members of the opposite or same sex should be a whole separate issue. The problem as I see it is that this will never happen because sex has become an important part of our lives beyond just having it.
Sex sells products, and encourages health ideas, dictates power in relationships, all sorts of things that it wasn't meant to do. It was meant to cause reproduction and, arguably, cause pleasure. I don't know if we will ever separate sex and attractiveness from social interactions, but we don't separate other things either. A skinny guy walking down the street does not get the same reception from onlookers as a big fat guy does, and a woman walking past a construction site doesn't get the same reaction a man does. These are both issues that the human race has created for itself, and we need some sort of fresh start to wipe away all of the social paradigms that linger around from times that most of us think were unfair and barbaric.
-it's an age-old question of whether people act in this way because society always has, regardless of the fairness and healthiness of it, or if society developed that way because that's the way we ugly humans are. Many men treat women like ass, and many women accept it and expect to be treated that way. Do they accept it because it's normal, or is it normal because they've accepted it? Either way, it pisses me off.
Dave