Tag Archives: sexism

April 28, 2017 · 8:07 am

Why Bigotry And Prejudice Can NEVER Be Resolved (For Now)

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It’s all around us. It generates protests, outrage, and angry rants of every variety on cable news. It floods social media, infects college campuses, and drowns out any and all meaningful dialog that might actually lead to productive change. I don’t even have to reveal it at this point. Everybody knows what I’m talking about on some level or they at least have a vaguely accurate idea.

It goes by many names. Call it racism, reverse racism, sexism, man-hating, homophobia, islamophobia, or transphobia. It all falls under the same overly-divisive rhetoric that is bigotry and prejudice. It always seems to be in the news. It always makes a conversation awkward and unsexy. It seems to get better some days and regress the others.

Now I know I’m making everybody’s panties very dry by bringing this up, but bear with me. This post is not going to get as bleak or depressing as it would if it were a Michael Moore documentary. I prefer to convey a more optimistic spirit to my audience. It puts them in a better mood, which is important if you’re trying to sell erotica/romance novels.

On the surface, though, there’s no way around it. This is as ugly a topic as it gets these days, the concepts of bigotry and prejudice. If it isn’t the stereotypical white male patriarchal types bemoaning how lazy and violent minorities are, it’s the radical left-wing hippies who call everyone who doesn’t support interracial gay couples kissing in the streets Nazi supporters.

It really is a strange, distressing state in which we find ourselves in. There used to be just one extreme in terms of prejudice, namely that which tried to preserve the overtly-unequal status quo that favored one particular group, be it white men or one particular religious group. Now, the extremes are all over the place.

I’ve talked about a few of them, like radical feminism. They’re just one of the many extremes that have emerged in recent years, often in conjunction with trends in identity politics. It’s not peace-loving hippies who put flowers in guns anymore. It’s angry, entitled, hashtag-starting narcissists who go into a Hulk-like rage whenever someone dares contest their utopian worldview.

There’s an extreme for women, who want men to suffer for their historical crimes against gender. There’s an extreme for race, some of which favor completely disenfranchising all white men for their historical crimes. There’s even an extreme for those who dare to use the wrong pronouns when describing boys and girls. Yes, it really has gotten that crazy.

That says nothing about the craziness that has emerged from extremes within religious groups, but we’re all kind of used to that. We expect extremes in religion, whether they’re favoring the execution of cartoonists or demanding that their particular religion be given a right to discriminate. It’s just the same bigotry and prejudice, but with holy decrees and a convenient excuse to not pay taxes.

No matter the extreme, the outcome is the same. It divides people. It makes them angry, unruly, and hateful. It makes the comments section in every YouTube video about feminism and race relations a raging tire fire that undermines whatever faith in humanity you might have had at this point.

It’s as frustrating as it is tragic. It often leads us to ask the same question Rodney King once asked. Can’t we all just get along? Well, with all due respect to Mr. King, I’m sorry to say that there’s a wholly valid answer to that question.

Unfortunately, the answer is a definitive no. We cannot.

That’s not the solemn musings of cynical man who has read one too many BuzzFeed articles. It’s a cold, inescapable fact. However, there is a context here and a fluid context, which means we shouldn’t be too cynical. If anything, we should be even more hopeful.

The reason why prejudice and bigotry exist is simple and it has nothing to do with some vast, elaborate conspiracy by cisgendered white heterosexual males. Any conspiracy involving that many straight men probably involves fantasy sports or a “My Little Pony” marathon. Once again, this immutable problem in our society has roots in our biology.

It’s another byproduct of caveman logic. Those same settings in our brains that haven’t been updated in 200,000 years essentially guarantee that there will always be some level of prejudice and bigotry. The fact we’re able to function as well as we do as a global society is nothing short of miraculous.

To understand why this is, you need to recall the circumstances of our distant ancestors. They did not live in big cities full of a diverse mix of people from various cultures and ethnicities. They didn’t even live on farms in rural towns where cow-tipping counts as entertainment. They were hunter/gatherers, roaming and foraging in small, close-knit tribes.

For most of the history of our species, that’s how we lived. As such, that’s how our brains are wired and that wiring has not changed much. Due to the slow, clunky processes within our biology, it really can’t and that’s the crux of the problem.

Modern neuroscience has revealed a great deal about our brain’s capacity to form groups and cooperate. These groups become tribes and we, being the very social species that we are, come to tie our identity to those tribes. We work with them. We trust them. We rely on them. Most importantly, as it pertains to prejudice, we defend them and make endless excuses for them.

Picture, for a moment, how this works in our hunter/gatherer context. You’re an individual living 100,000 years ago. You have only a loin cloth, a spear, and functioning genitals. On your own, you’re not going to survive for very long. In a fight against a hungry lion, you’re basically a walking snack.

Then, you join a tribe. You ally yourself with other people who can help you, share resources, and give you an opportunity to use your genitals with others in a more enjoyable, intimate way. Suddenly, that hungry lion loses its appetite. One human is easy to maul. A hundred humans, each armed with spears and an incentive to impress fertile women, is much harder.

Being in that tribe, you come to rely on them and cherish them. Being around them gives you a sense of purpose and identity. You come to love and respect them. You form your own rituals and quirks. You sing certain songs. You do certain dances. You wear certain loin cloths that you think are stylish as hell. This tribe makes you feel complete.

Then, one day, you encounter another tribe. However, this tribe is not yours. They look different. They talk funny. They believe weird things. They wear weird clothes. They follow different rules. Everything about them is so strange and that freaks you out, so much so that you cling harder to your tribe.

Maybe there’s something about that other tribe that’s scary. Maybe they have weapons that are bigger. Maybe they have talents that your tribe can’t do. Maybe their food tastes better and their gods are more powerful. This is all causing you some serious stress and when your brain gets stressed, it does a lot of crazy things to mitigate it.

The next thing you know, your tribe goes to war with the other tribe. Your tribe loudly proclaims that theirs is the greatest tribe in the world. Their gods are better, their food is better, and their rituals are better. The other tribe is so wrong and misguided that they can’t be human. As such, killing them or demeaning them isn’t a big deal. It’s no more distressing than putting down a rabid dog.

Now, extrapolate this tribal mentality, carry it out a billion times in a billion ways within large multi-cultural societies, and apply the reaction to the comments section of a Justin Bieber video, and you now understand why prejudice and bigotry exists. You also understand why nothing can be done about it for now.

Remember those last two words though. I bolded them for a reason. This is where I offer readers a sliver of hope. Does racism, sexism, and homophobia truly disturb you? Do you wish that our society could move past it and forge a more peaceful existence? Well, you may live to see that day.

Keep in mind, these traits that make us so hateful and divisive all stem from our brains. It’s that flawed wiring that still thinks we’re hunter/gatherers picking nuts out of elephant shit on the African savanna that fosters so much bigotry and prejudice. We humans are capable of a great many technological and intellectual feats, but we cannot circumvent the wiring of our brains.

Thanks to companies like Neuralink and advances in human enhancement, like smart blood, we are very close to finally tweaking those outdated settings that make us mute certain people on Twitter. It may very well happen in our lifetime. We may see a new breed of humans whose brains can function beyond brutish tribalism.

We don’t know how these humans will think, how they’ll function with those still stuck in caveman mode, or how they’ll relate to one another. If they aren’t as hateful or petty as we are today, then perhaps they’ll find creative new ways to relate to one another, connect with one another, and make love to one another.

We can only imagine/fantasize for now, but I do take some comfort in the progress we’ve made as a species. We’ve done remarkably well, despite our caveman brains. It’s fun to imagine how much more we can do once we update the software. It may make for a more promising future and some very sexy stories, some of which I intend to write.

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October 24, 2016 · 6:57 am

The Outrageous Outrage Of The Outrage Over An Invincible Iron Man Cover

As a general rule, I try to stay away from overblown media outrages. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion on them. It’s just that in my experience, peoples’ attention spans are so damn short and their outrage is so damn selective that it’s just not worth the time. I’d much rather dedicate my energy to something more productive, like writing novels that make men and women horny for all the right reasons.

However, there are certain outrages that I feel obliged to address. If said outrage involves comic books, superheroes, and people who whine about insanely petty issues, then I’m going to make my opinion known. I love comic books and superheroes. I hope I’ve made that abundantly clear on this blog. I’ll continue belaboring that love for as long as I must.

So when someone decides to throw a hissy fit that gives comic book fans like me a migraine, I’m going to take notice and I’m going to have an opinion, especially if said hissy fit involves something petty.

So what has people whining, bitching, and moaning at superhuman levels this time? Well, it all has to do with a comic book cover for an upcoming series called “Invincible Iron Man.”

It’s not actually the main cover for the book. It’s what we in the comic world call a variant, meaning there’s only so much that are printed. They’re basically a gimmick for comic collectors and since they can be pretty damn awesome, most comic book fans don’t mind. I certainly don’t.

This one in particular is actually a variant cover exclusive by J. Scott Campbell, a very talented and highly respected artist among comic book fans. This one was actually done for Midtown Comics, a premier comic book store in New York City that I make it a point to visit every time I go there. So of course it’s special and of course it’s going to carry more weight than others.

So what’s the controversy? Well, before I reveal that, let me show you the cover. If you can immediately spot the outrage, then I think you’re already part of the problem so this blog post won’t affect you. If not, then bear with me because it’s going to get even pettier than you think.

Not bad, right? Good colors, good lines, and a generally upbeat tone. It depicts Riri Williams, a young African American woman who will be taking the role of Iron Man for a while. Those of you who only know Iron Man from Robert Downy Junior’s depiction in the Avenger movies may be confused. Trust me, it’s actually more confusing than you think.

I won’t get into the reasons why someone else is taking over Iron Man. I’ll just note that this happens a lot in comics. Every now and then, an established character will either die or go MIA for a while so someone else can take up the mantle. It’s been happening a lot lately because Marvel has been seeking more diversity in its heroes.

Riri Williams is hardly the first. Last year, they did the same with Wolverine. The former Wolverine in the comics died and was replaced by his clone/daughter, Laura Kinney. By and large, it was a success. It generated little to no controversy. Even comic book fans shrugged it off. Who better to take over for Wolverine than his own daughter? It’s a beautiful thing.

So what’s up with this cover surrounding Riri Williams? On the surface, it’s the kind of cover that appeals to comic book fans who want a simple, visually appealing hook for a comic. It’s a visual medium, after all. Shouldn’t it be pretty to look at?

For some people, being pretty is some horrible affront to all that is good and just in the world. How is it terrible unjust? Just look at the cover again. Look at how sexualized it is. No seriously, look at it. Is this piece of artwork really so overtly sexual that a generation of children will be scarred for life by seeing it?

I try to be fair and understanding in all major controversies. I really do. This time, however, I have to fight the urge to bang my head against a brick wall. Is this what really qualifies as being too sexual lately? Is this comic book cover, in an era where the hardest of hardcore porn is available with a simple google search, just too damn sexy for public consumption?

Sadly, enough people whined about it to prompt Marvel to pull the cover from the market. It’s a victory for those who are so fragile, so weak, and so petty that they can’t stand the idea of any form of media being the least bit sexy. For anyone who is just a fan adding more beauty to this deranged world, it’s the equivalent of a tequila hangover.

This isn’t the first time people have lost their shit over a comic book cover being too sexy. A few years ago, those same puritanical, overly petty types lost their shit over this cover for Spider-Woman #1.

That cover is by Milo Manara, an artist with a history of creating artwork that is overtly pornographic. Is it the best style for a superhero comic that’s marketed to adults and kids? Probably not. At the very least, there’s some merit behind the outrage here. It doesn’t take an overly petty person to look at this cover and see that it takes too much inspiration from Nikki Manaj videos.

Again though, how petty do you have to be to think Riri Williams in this cover is too sexual? Yeah, she’s a teenager and she shows off her mid-drift. News flash people, teenagers dress like that. Anybody remember Madonna? She was a teenager at some point too a million years ago and she dressed like this.

Have we really regressed that much since the 1980s? Are we really returning to a time when a woman exposing her mid-drift is on the same level as flashing her tits at a bus full of kindergartners? I know outrage is usually selective and petty to some degree, but this is a world of internet porn and Honey Boo Boo. I think that kind of pettiness is obsolete.

Again, here’s the cover one last time. Again, this is Riri Williams, a young African American woman who is about to become a superhero. Look at it closely.

She’s not wearing a thong. She’s not wearing a bikini. She’s not even wearing a dress for crying out loud. She’s just wearing what you’ll probably see high school kids wear around the beach, a mall, or anywhere they want to show off how many sit-ups they’ve done. If J. Scott Campbell wanted to make an overly sexy cover, there are many other ways he could’ve done it.

Except he didn’t. Some may argue that Riri’s bodily proportions are wrong and unrealistic. Some would much rather have her look like someone we would probably ignore if she walked into a coffee shop in New York. These are the same people who don’t seem to mind Photoshop being used on fashion magazines or breast implants being used by porn stars. Once again, they have to be extremely petty and selective with their outrage.

I can stand people being petty. I can stand people being outraged over dumb shit. We’re a flawed species. We’re bound to act stupid for obscenely stupid reasons. However, when that stupidity is given credibility, I have a problem with it. I doubt this will be the last such problem, but it sets a sad and dangerous precedent. It means that those who whine and complain loud enough will have their childish arguments taken seriously.

We don’t take children seriously when they whine about not being able to eat candy for dinner every day. Why should we take them seriously with this? Trick question. We shouldn’t.

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October 17, 2016 · 6:58 am

Injustice, Male Privilege, And Why It’s So Unsexy

There are a lot of unsexy things out there that really kill the mood. Dead kittens, an overflowing toilet, and Rush Limbaugh’s voice all come to mind. We all have certain tastes and proclivities that either make our pants feel 10 degrees hotter or make us want throw up in the nearest trash can.

These tastes vary from person to person. Some are more typical of certain cultures. Some are more typical of genders. Men tend to get more aroused by big boobs and women tend to get more aroused by big biceps. It’s basic biology. In terms of what turns us off, that’s a bit less obvious. Aside from the things that involve heavy vomiting and excessive back hair, it’s hard to pin down things we deem universally unsexy.

I contend there is something that does turn us off faster than a picture of Pat Robertson taking a shit. It’s something that’s also ingrained in our biology, beyond the extent of the caveman logic I so often love to cite. Pull your pants up, skip your next meal, and brace yourself because I’m about to tell you the least sexy force in the world:

Injustice

I’ll give everyone a moment to stop gagging. For those of you who are confused, stay with me and skip your next meal as a precaution. It’ll make sense soon enough.

I spent a good deal of time talking about gender double standards and just how much they suck. I know it’s not as sexy a topic as sleeping naked or the different types of orgasms we can have, but I’m exploring these issues for a reason and I promise those reasons are sexy in nature.

In order to convey the extent of that sexiness, however, I need to touch on one more inescapable detail that stems from these double standards. I originally wasn’t going to dig any deeper on this admittedly unsexy topic, but then I came across a powerful video on YouTube that changed my plan.

There’s one feature of gender double standards I’ve tried to avoid, if only because it’s a loaded term. I can’t avoid it anymore so I might as well come clean. It’s the concept of “Male Privilege.”

Now I’m not going to lie. As a man, I do feel like I have my share of privileges. For one, I can walk around without a shirt on and not get arrested. I don’t feel compelled to shave my legs every other day. I don’t feel pressured to put on a certain amount of makeup before I go out. People even assume I’m tougher than I really am, never knowing that I grew up in a family with two older sisters who could kick my ass with their eyes closed.

However, there has been a growing trend in recent years, some from feminists and others from bullshit media controversies, to shame men (particularly white men) for having so many privileges. We’re getting to a point where “male privilege” has become a blanket term to undermine every benefit that any man has ever achieved.

Now I’m all for gender equality. I hope I’ve made that abundantly clear on this blog. Men and women can’t be biologically equal, but we can be socially and legally equal in the eyes of justice and fairness. The problem is we are a woefully imperfect species. That means there’s a long list of instances where men have created horrendous injustices for petty, sexist, bullshit reasons.

However, there’s a problem with this approach and it comes back to that horrendously unsexy force that we call injustice. As someone who grew up on a steady diet of superhero comics and superhero cartoons, I like to think I’m well-versed in what constitutes injustice.

In pretty much every episode of Superfriends and every other issue of Superman, there’s a common message about injustice. You can’t fight it with more injustice. Injustice is like an ant infestation. Fighting injustice with injustice is like trying to fight ants by throwing surge cubes at them. It’s only going to make the problem worse.

The popular perception is that “male privileged” ensures that men get more justice than they deserve. Ignoring for a moment how we measure the quantity of justice each person deserves, let’s not cross our eyes so that we can’t see the forest from the trees. Injustice, like spam email or annoying pop-up ads, finds a way to hit everyone. That includes men.

So what kind of injustices do men face? Are they at all comparable to the injustices that women face? Well, that’s hard to gauge because some of these comparisons are subjective. I’m sure there are women out there who see injustices against men and laugh their ass off at it. It may even make them horny.

These people are despicable excuses for human beings and are beyond reaching. If you are at all okay with injustice against men, please do me a favor and don’t come to my blog, buy my books, or interact with me in any way. I can do without that kind of douche-baggery in my life.

For those with a sense of compassion, decency, and justice, here’s the video that I found so powerful. Whether you’re a man or a woman, I hope it has the same impact on you that it did for me.

I hope this makes those who complain about “male privilege stop and think for a moment. It’s true. There are injustices in the world that are fueled by direct and indirect sexism, but it’s not just women who endure those injustices.

Our society is imperfect. Our species is imperfect. I’ve pointed it out many times before. Our biology is crude, clunky, and prone to errors, overkill, and oversight. Despite this, there’s still some glimmer of hope within those flaws that keeps us honest as a species.

Remember, children as young as two already possess an innate sense of fairness and justice. When we see something that’s unfair, it bothers us. It makes us anxious and uncomfortable. In essence, the feelings we get when we see injustice are the complete antithesis of the feelings we get when we see something sexy. That alone sends a powerful message about the innate sense of justice we all share.

Within that justice, it shouldn’t matter whether they adversely affect men or women. The abuse, harassment, and subjugation of women is a gross injustice. The denigration, dehumanization, and disparity that men endure is just as great an injustice. Writing it off as “male privilege” is just a pitiful excuse to ignore injustice and whenever injustice is ignored, more injustice will follow.

I’ll give everyone another moment for the non-sociopaths out there to swallow their disgust. These injustices should make everyone, male or female, sick to their stomach. That still leaves one burning question. What do we do about it?

I’ve made clear before that I’m not a fan of whining. Just talking about an issue is akin to throwing dirt on a festering wound and calling it medicine. Our society has made progress since the caveman days, but there’s still plenty more to make. With that in mind, how do we go about fixing this? Can it be fixed?

Being an optimist with a dirty imagination, I think it is fixable. I believe we will see more progress than we think. What form will that progress take? Why is a romance/erotica writer even talking about it in the first place? I’ll reveal that in future posts, but there is a reason for it and that reason will become clear very soon.

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October 15, 2016 · 9:06 am

One More Point On Gender Double Standards (Courtesy of Cracked)

Are you tired of hearing me talk about gender and double standards? I don’t blame you. Can I guarantee I’ll never talk about this issue again? Of course I can’t. Making promises on the internet is pointless. In a digital world, anything you write (and even some stuff you don’t write that gets attributed to you anyhow) can come back to bite you down the line. So please, I beg of you, don’t make me belabor this more than I have to.

Double standards are important to point out, especially with respect to gender. There’s a reason I chose to explore this subject. It’s not just relevant in an era where Chris Hemsworth is a sex symbol when he takes his shirt off, but Nicki Minaj is a slut for shaking her ass too much. It affects my aspiring career as an erotica/romance writer.

Gender dynamics are kind of an important component of romance and erotica. By important, I mean that trying to work around them is like trying to perform open heart surgery on an angry lion. These dynamics shape and guide relationships, characters, and the overall sexiness of the product. These are all factors I must take into consideration when crafting a sufficiently sexy story.

I don’t just want to tell stories about some random guy or girl going out and falling in love/getting laid with some schmuck. I want to forge a relationship of equals. There are enough of those on the market today, from erotica novels to re-runs of Jerry Springer. Relationships of equal are more difficult and, as a result, much rarer. That’s why I went out of my way to highlight one when it showed up in an X-men comic of all things.

I won’t pretend the results of my efforts are perfect. I’m positive I’ll mess up along the way. Every writer does. Every goal worth seeking requires at least a few mistakes along the way. That’s exactly why we need to be aware of the obstacles in our path and double standards are just one of those obstacles, although finding a publisher has been a bit harder at times.

So in the interest of belaboring double standards just enough to get the point across, I’ll turn back to the fine folks of Cracked.com. They’ve been an insightful source for information and comedy on this blog before. As it just so happens, they did an article earlier this year on double standards we, as a society, just accept or turn a blind eye to.

Some are small and indirect. Others have major political implications that people on talk radio won’t shut up about. They’re all relevant in the sense that they’re a byproduct of these powerful double standards that shape relations between men and women. The more I think about it, the more I’m amazed that either gender can resist the urge to strangle one another.

With that upbeat thought in mind, here is another wonderful article from Cracked.com about double standards and the implications for gender relations. Just to be safe, keep your hands in your pocket for a while after you read it. You’ll thank me later.

Four Gender Double Standards Everyone’s Apparently Okay With

Number Four: Adele – Stalker

Seriously, listen to the lyrics of Adele’s hit song, “Hello.” I love that song too. Don’t get me wrong. However, if you really listen to what she’s saying and what she’s doing, it’s hard to differentiate that from a stalker. If a man sang this same song, then he’d be in line for a restraining order.

And let’s be honest: While in a scholarly way, we’re willing to admit that any scumbag thing a man can do, a woman can do as well, it’s generally with a reluctance that anyone would admit to a sexual crime perpetrated by a woman against a man.

Number Three: Sex Tapes/Selfies In The Media

Let’s be honest here, something that the internet often has a problem with. There are a lot of naked women on the internet. Men like looking at naked women and women (and even other men, to some extent) love to shame them. As for the naked men on the internet?

Well, we just all shrug and go back to searching for pictures of baby kittens on our phones. Jennifer Lawrence gets her phone hacked and nudes of her go all over the internet. Suddenly, she’s this tragic victim who had her privacy violated. Hulk Hogan gets his privacy violated, arguably in a way much worse and nobody can give two licks of a donkey’s ass. Is that fair? Hell no, but since when do double standards give a damn about fairness?

This is just one sad example from a site with the journalistic integrity of me after ten shots of whisky and a bribe, but it’s noteworthy for the way at least some of the media approaches the idea of invasion of privacy: Men have none, while women do. Hulk Hogan, whom not even science wants to watch have sex, must be watched! Jennifer Lawrence, darling girl of the Internet, must be white-knighted to the safety of Gawker towers, where none shall dare even glance at her ankles again!

Number Two: Hillary Clinton vs. The World

I am not going to get overly political on this blog. I would rather bathe in a tub of honey and stick my face in a beehive than talk politics. It’s the fastest way to ruin relationships, kill a mood, or offend everyone around you in a way on par with chronic diarrhea.

That said, I don’t think it’s disputable that Hillary Clinton and female politicians in general have to play a rigged game with a stacked deck. On top of that, she has to play cards that nobody with a white penis ever has to deal with. Again, it’s not fair. Regardless of what you think of her or her policies, the double standard here is pretty disgusting. Seriously, nobody should have to defend their record on anti-poverty spending and fashion choices at the same time.

Except Clinton’s getting raked over the coals for her emails, for her husband banging an intern about 20 years ago, for Benghazi, for various financial and ethical issues, and for her Wall Street ties. In other words, people have an entire list of genuine concerns about her as a politician. And then they want to know why she’s wearing an orange pantsuit. Clinton’s “free pass” costs just as much as any candidate’s, with the added bonus of having a dress code.

Number One: Amy Schumer’s Speech

Specifically, this one refers to a speech that comedian, Amy Schumer, gave back in 2014 where she recalled an incident with her, a drunk guy, and a night of sloppy sex. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with sloppy sex. It happens. It’s the reason why romance/erotica writers like me have a job. We like to imagine stories where it doesn’t involve alcohol, regret, and a lack of orgasms.

However, if you break down the details of the story, you see a pretty serious double standard here. Listen to it again, reverse the genders, and what do you get? You’ll get a guy whose life is over because in the court of public opinion and Twitter hash-tags, he assaulted her. Anything a woman does while drunk makes her a victim. If a man is drunk though, then screw it. He’s drunk. What does it matter?

The man is so drunk that he’s fumbling and stupid. He can barely get hard. It’s like he doesn’t know what’s going on. My God, Amy Schumer is a sex devil! But read the actual words Schumer spoke, and it actually reads closer to her being the one sexually assaulted. The only difference is that because she was hopeful for the encounter — because she wanted it to be good, to be that fairy tale romantic moment — she allowed it to continue. She didn’t rape the man; she let a drunken bum get off on her while she effectively rubbed a lamp and hoped for a romance genie to appear. But it never did

For safety reasons, I recommend everyone still keep their hands in their pockets for a few more minutes. It’s okay. The kind of sentiment you’re feeling is normal. As I said before, our caveman brains do understand fairness on some fundamental level. By exposing these double standards and the unfairness behind them, we can let caveman logic do the best. It’ll be good for both genders in the long run.

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October 14, 2016 · 6:53 am

Thought Experiments On Double Standards

I’ve done a lot of whining on gender and double standards this week. For that, I apologize. I know that’s a real mood-killer. I’m an aspiring erotica/romance writer. Talking about these issues isn’t making anyone horny. That’s not good for my creative energy or my prospective customers.

That said, I’m not a fan of whining just for the sake of whining. That’s what children, internet trolls, and annoying reality TV stars do when they want to distract themselves from how little they actually contribute to society. I’m not a whiner. My parents had a low tolerance for whiners. Whining isn’t sexy and even the best erotica/romance writer in the world can’t make it sexy.

I bring issues like double standards up because it’s not just relevant in terms of where our society is at the moment. It also affects my work. When I’m working on a novel, I find myself hesitating at times to take the story in certain directions because of the gender of the characters involved.

One particular issue that came up recently involved my book, “The Final Communion.” That book has a sizable glut of erotica elements, to say the very least, but I did find myself struggling with certain scenes. I always intended to tell the story from the perspective of a female character. However, when I brought some male characters into the mix, I struggled at times to give them the depth I wanted.

This is largely because within those erotica elements, it’s hard to develop male characters outside the expectations we have towards society as a whole. Compared to women, those expectations are horribly skewed and unbalanced. We expect men to be aggressive. We expect men to be callous. We expect men to jump through any number of hoops just to get a chance at having sex. Do you see the running theme here?

I admit I played into some of those expectations in “The Final Communion.” I tried to add depth where I could, but it’s unavoidable in some respects. Our culture and our expectations shape our collective tastes. It affects how we relate to one another, how we seek love with one another, and how aspiring erotica/romance writers craft their novels.

So far, I feel like I’ve painted a bleak picture of sorts. I’m giving the impression that it’s hopeless. Men and women will never get along. They’ll never be equal. There will always be conflict between the horny men who just want to have sex without all the red tape and the horny women who want to just want to have sex without the stigma.

Does this mean double standards will never go away? Well, I don’t like to think in terms of such absolutes. At the moment, the research is not all that promising. According to an article in Psychology Today from 2014, which cited multiple studies, this is our current situation:

  1. Unlike premarital sex in committed relationships, which was once a hot-button topic but now viewed as OK by most Americans, the battle over the acceptability of casual sex has not (yet) been won by either side.

  2. A multitude of attitudes exist simultaneously among young people: Some consider casual sex wrong for everyone; others consider it OK for everyone; and others still consider it wrong for some but not for others.

  3. Women continue to be more conservative than men in their attitudes toward casual sex in general.

  4. There is still a double standard in the population as a whole, but only a minority of young men and women endorses it.

  5. Among those who endorse a traditional double standard, most are men.

The data is mixed, as it often is with all the insane complexities of the human condition. It’s also not final. No study ever is and those claiming to be are probably funded by tobacco companies, the Koch brothers, and the Vatican.

At the very least, it does highlight some trends that offer at least some glimmers of hope. Most notably, it reveals that Rick Santorum’s efforts have failed miserably. Acceptance of pre-marital sex is becoming so common that we’ve stopped punching each other in the genitals over the issue. When there are so many health benefits to orgasms and promiscuity, I call this a win.

However, even as acceptance of pre-marital sex grows, our inclination to shame others and whine about it still lingers. This is to be expected. Human beings are amazing creatures, but we’re still at the mercy of clunky, inefficient biological processes that often manifest in our societies.

Hell, we still have countries in this world where women don’t even have the right to drive a car. We can’t expect some of these outdated attitudes to disappear just because enough people whine about it.

For me, the most promising revelations of this study is that, while the sexual double standards for men and women are still there, the participants don’t exactly approve of it. This, to me, is the glimmer of hope that’s worth highlighting.

A lot of these double standards aren’t overt. They don’t walk up to you, slap you in the face, and scream into your ear for five hours every day. We tend to fall into them for the same reason we thought wearing bell-bottom pants was fashionable. It’s just the collective tastes of our peers that we don’t notice or scrutinize.

However, if you point it out to people and make them aware of it, they see the inherent unfairness of these double standards. That’s important because fairness is one of those powerful concepts that’s very important to the survival of a highly social species like ours. We don’t have the teeth of a shark or the muscles of King Kong. We need to work together to survive. That means fairness is a big fucking deal.

Current research also supports this. According to a study published in 2012 in Psychology Science, infants in the second year of life already possess context-sensitive expectations relevant to fairness. That means even when some of us are still in diapers, we have bullshit detectors that reveal the inherent unfairness of these double standards.

I still concede that some of these double standards have some basis in caveman logic, but only to a limited extent. It’s culture, injustice, and unequal power structures that skew these standards to an excessive degree.

For this reason, I believe that the double standards we apply to genders with respect to sex will one day fade, just as our attitudes towards casual sex did. It won’t happen overnight. We probably won’t even notice it. Angry old people complaining about today’s youth will still probably whine about it, but some people will always find a reason to whine. It’s better for society as a whole if we don’t make it easier for them.

With that in mind, let’s try a little thought experiment, which I hope to explore in future books. Let’s imagine a time several decades into the future where these egregious double standards between men and women simply fall out of favor. By all accounts, society is equal with respect to gender, or at least as equal as any sexually dimorphic species will allow.

This means that men and women are punished equitably for the same crimes. Nobody shames each other for having too much sex or wanting more sex than they have. Radical feminists and men’s rights activists aren’t influential or are all dead from whining themselves to death. What kind of society would that be? How would it operate?

Picture the following scenario. It’s one I’ve used before, but let’s apply the thought experiment to it.

Man: Hello ma’am. You look very beautiful today.

Woman: Thank you. You look quite handsome yourself.

Man: Thank you. I appreciate that. Listen, I’m single at the moment. I’m not looking for any long-term relationships at this point of my life, but I find you very sexually appealing and if you want, I’d like to have sex with you tonight.

Woman: I appreciate your honesty. I’m single at the moment too. I’m certainly open to long-term relationships, but I respect your current desire. And since I find you sexually appealing too, I’d be happy to have sex with you tonight.

Man: Great! Would you like to do it at my place or yours?

Woman: Let’s do mine. I live closer. It’s just easier.

I admit this is a laughably simplistic scenario. It’s so simplistic that it wouldn’t even qualify as a script in a low-budget porn movie. Even so, it highlights the necessary elements.

Two consenting adults walk up to one another. They don’t bother with elaborate flirtations or games. They just honestly tell one another what they want and respect each other’s desires. That’s as simple and basic as it needs to be.

This same scenario could’ve even played out another way. Consider this.

Man: Hello ma’am. You look very beautiful today.

Woman: Thank you.

Man: Listen, I’m single at the moment. I’m not looking for any long-term relationships at this point of my life, but I find you very sexually appealing and if you want, I’d like to have sex with you tonight.

Woman: I appreciate your honesty. I’m single at the moment too, but I’m afraid I don’t find you sexually appealing. I’m also not really in the mood for sex right now. I appreciate the offer though. I’m sorry.

Man: That’s okay. I’m disappointed, but I understand.

Woman: Thank you.

Again, it’s laughably simplistic, but it reflects the same underlying theme. Both individuals are up front and honest with their desires. Men don’t have to act like James Bond and women don’t have to act like every female character in “Seinfeld.” They can just be fair and honest with each other in matters of sex, love, and desire. What a concept, right?

I offer this thought experiment because some of my ideas for novels take place in the future. I enjoy looking to the future and imagining how our world and our society will change, both in terms of technology and in terms of how we’ll relate to one another.

It’s a concept I don’t see explored often in romance or erotica. I’d like to explore it in whatever unique way my perverse mind can conjure. I don’t have any clear plans at the moment, but when I do, rest assured I’ll do what I can to make those plans sexy as hell.

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October 13, 2016 · 6:43 am

Double Standards And How They Screw Both Genders Over

A couple years ago, I took a trip to New Orleans. While I was there, I frequented many bars on Bourbon Street, as many people do when they visit the Big Easy. In doing so, I noticed a common theme of sorts, one that highlighted some rather annoying differences between men and women.

It played out in two distinct scenarios. If you’re a man sitting by yourself at the bar, slamming back cheap beer and tequila shots while occasionally glancing towards the pretty girls, then congratulations. You’re a creeper. You couldn’t be more creepy if you wore clown makeup and had a machete growing out of your ass.

The second scenario is the exact same situation, but with a woman. If you’re a woman sitting by yourself at the bar, slamming back the same cheap beer and doing just as many shots of tequila while glancing towards any man, then congratulations. You’re probably going to get laid that night and chances are you won’t have to worry much about your reputation. It’s New Orleans. Like Las Vegas, the whole city may as well be a giant mulligan.

This highlights an annoyingly common, but not wholly illogical double standard between men and women. Call it the slut-versus-stud dilemma. Call it unbalanced sexual dynamics. Call it anything you want. It’s still a frustrating inconsistency for anyone who claims to value freedom, gender equality, and everything Rick Santorum stands against.

We all know how this inconsistency plays out. A man goes out, has sex with two Japanese twins, a Sweedish bikini model, and a Russian gymnast in one night. The next day, he gets high-fives and praises form all his friends. Hell, some them will want to smell his cock just to get a whiff of the sweet scent of pussy. The man is a stud.

On that same night, a woman of the same age and level of attractiveness goes out and has sex with a bouncer, two joggers, and one of Brad Pitt’s stunt doubles. The next day, she’ll probably endure an intervention from her family and friends. What kind of woman goes out and has that much sex for no other reason than because she enjoys it? She’s a slut. There must be something wrong with her. End sarcasm.

It’s one of those unspoken rules that some will talk about, but in the wrong way for the wrong reason. When it comes up, it usually focuses on the slut-shaming that women endure for wanting to have more sex than society deems appropriate. This sucks too. Slut-shaming in general is a major dick move, if that’s not too fitting a term. However, there are two sides to this coin and I’d like to talk about the other side.

I don’t deny it. When a woman goes out and has more sex than celibate priests say is acceptable, she gets a lot of shit for that. It can affect her family and friendships. It can affect her job prospects. Hell, female teachers have been fired for being too sexy. That sucks. That’s an injustice. We, as a society, should call bullshit on that.

However, let’s at least try to be fair because there is a part of the male perspective that’s equally unjust. Sure, a man probably won’t lose his job if he has sex with ten bikini models over the weekend, but there’s another injustice within that dynamic that should also be called out.

It manifests in the form of expectations and assumptions that men and women share about sexual intimacy. I’ve mentioned it before when I’ve talked about sexual promiscuity. Our current culture, with respect to gender dynamics, sets it up so that men have to jump through all these hoops to even have a chance at getting sex.

Those hoops include going out on dates, paying for meals, giving rides, offering expensive gifts, remaining in constant contact, and accommodating the woman in every way in hopes that she’ll decide he’s worth seeing naked. Every woman has a different set of standards, but at the end of the day, she’s still the primary decision-maker. A man can jump through all of these hoops, and even a few he doesn’t have to, and she can still decides he doesn’t get sex.

Needless to say, this can be annoying and frustrating to men. It’s a reason why some men hold deeply misogynistic views. That’s also part of the reason why men respect and admire those who can get so much sex without jumping through all these hoops. They’re like gurus or infomercial salesmen. They have skills and insights that we want to mimic, copy, or buy.

We’re men too. We want sex too. We want to know the tricks of the trade. That’s why we’ll eagerly befriend others who have better success at getting sex from women. That’s why we won’t shame them and will make every possible excuse to defend them. We want to be like them, learn from them, and draw from their experience.

Using caveman logic again, this makes perfect sense. Like all living creatures, we’re hard-wired for two major imperatives: survival and reproduction. If there are any ways to improve our efforts with the latter, we’ll be inclined to do it and make every possible excuse to justify it.

This means that men’s pursuit of sex isn’t always rational or ethical, for that matter. We’ll make whatever excuses we have to because it’s a biological imperative. Those imperatives tend to trump laws, culture, and social norms. Biology doesn’t give a damn what sort of arbitrary rules we make or what deities we conjure. We need to survive and reproduce, damn it!

So let’s revisit that frustrating double standard. Let’s re-evaluate it with the perspective of both the man and woman in mind. There’s a lot we can say about it. There’s a lot to interpret. Thankfully, a brilliant comedian named Jim Jefferies has already nicely summed it up with the following anecdote.

Once again, comedy tends to echo with a harsh truth. Now I would take issue with his concept of how fair this double standard is. It’s debatable what constitutes fair in matters of sex and gender dynamics.

It does, however, highlight the deeper inequalities that only make some amount of sense when we look at it through the harsh lens of caveman logic. Despite what radical feminist types may claim, men and women are very different.

The human race, like many species, is sexually dimorphic. That’s just a fancy sciencey way of saying that the different genders of a species exhibit unique characteristics beyond having different body parts to rub together. Human beings have plenty of those characteristics. We’re different in terms of muscles, body hair, facial structures, bone structure, hormone balance, and all sorts of other characteristics that I’m not qualified to describe.

The most defining trait, however, is that women are the ones who bear the babies. Men only provide the seeds. That means there’s an inherent imbalance in the sexual dynamics at play. If a man has sex with 25 women in one night, he has a chance to get them all pregnant with his genes and, thereby, propagating the species as his biological imperative says. A woman, on the other hand, can have sex with 25 men, but still only have one or two children in that same time-frame.

This is where the caveman logic bleeds right into basic economics. Nature is crude, blunt, and doesn’t give two whiffs of a skunk’s ass about our assumptions and expectations about sex. Nature just wants our species to survive and reproduce. That means it’ll follow crude incentives.

Now that’s not to say we should just accept these injustices and imbalances. We shouldn’t. Slut-shaming women and deifying promiscuous men to the extent we do asinine, even by the standards of basic biology and caveman logic.

Our attitudes and expectations towards sex and gender dynamics are skewed. It gets teachers fired. It makes social outcasts of people who don’t deserve it. It also creates every annoying antagonist in every teen movie ever made. We don’t need more of that in our society. We don’t need to distance ourselves from one another more than our genders already do.

We can’t circumvent our biological imperatives or our caveman brains beyond a certain extent. We just tend to push that extent way farther than it needs to be. There are injustices and inequalities in our current attitudes towards men, women, and sex. These injustices and inequalities are making it harder for us to relate to one another, to understand one another, and (most importantly) to love one another.

We can acknowledge our inherent differences on a biological basis. We can modify our attitudes towards how we go about sex, how we pursue relationships, and how we relate to one another. It takes work, more so than an aspiring erotica/romance writer can provide alone. I hope my books can inspire others to re-shape those attitudes.

Unjust assumptions can only lead to unjust actions. Unequal attitudes can only lead to unequal understandings. At the end of the day, we’re still wired to seek out love and intimacy with one another. Let’s not make it harder on ourselves.

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October 12, 2016 · 6:53 am

Monogamy May Be Going Extinct (Too Soon)

A big part of being a romance/erotica writer is finding new ways to explore romantic and sexual love in novel ways. Let’s face it. There are only stories you can tell about love at first sight. Those themes are as old as Shakespeare and it’s hard to make those stories interesting these days.

There’s still a place for these kinds of bland, basic love stories and there always will be. I’ve certainly used those elements in my own books. We’re an affectionate species. We love to love every bit as much as we love to hump. However, the ways in which loving and humping manifest will change with time, culture, biology, economics, and whatever happens to be a popular internet meme at the time.

There are already some ongoing trends that are making religious zealots, registered republicans, and anyone overly fond of the 1950s very nervous. According to the Centers for Disease Control, marriage rates are declining. Divorce is declining as well, but that’s to be expected when people aren’t getting married in the first place.

If that weren’t horrifying enough to the “Father Knows Best” crowd, the average number of sexual partners isn’t one. According to the CDC, men average approximately 6.7 sexual partners over the course of their lifetime while women average around 4.3. Seeing as how men tend to exaggerate the amount of panties they’ve moistened and women underestimate how often their panties get moist, let’s just call it an even 5.0 for both genders.

For some people, these numbers are truly terrifying. It means people are daring to love more than one person over the course of their lifetime. It means they’re daring to have sex for reasons that don’t involve consummating a marriage, making a baby, or showing homosexuals on how it should be done. The horror.

I hope everyone can appreciate the sarcasm in that last paragraph because this really shouldn’t be terrifying. People have sex. People love more than one person. It happens because people are complicated creatures. We can’t even agree over pizza toppings and ice cream flavors. How can we possibly agree on the right way to love and make love to one another?

I say this as someone who comes from a family that has a fair number of divorces and a fair number of marriages that’ll probably last until the sun explodes. I know how erratic and fickle our passions can be. It makes sense that our eyes, as well as other parts of our bodies, would wander.

I’ve talked about it before on this blog. Our bodies and our biology don’t know that we live in an era of Tinder, internet porn, and no fault divorce. As far as our brains are concerned, we’re still hunting and gathering in close-knit tribes on the plains of the African savanna.

Within those tribes, monogamy can happen, but it’s not the only way our passions manifest. In some cases, like when women die in childbirth or men die hunting sabretooth tigers, we need to be able to share our passions with others.

Loving more than one person doesn’t just make sense from a biological perspective. It makes sense in that it ties us together closer as a tribe. If we love each other and want to have sex with each other, we’ll be that much more dedicated to protecting and supporting each other. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s also a sexy thing. Even the most ardent clergyman or nun can’t deny that.

So when I hear stories about how monogamy is in decline or that family institutions are decaying, I want to roll my eyes and bash my head into a brick wall. This sentiment gives the false impression that monogamy has always been the end all/be all of sex, love, and relationships. That’s just not how the world works. It’s not how we’re wired as humans. It’s not even the theme of most sitcoms anymore, as “Modern Family” can attest.

So who is claiming that monogamy is in decline? It isn’t just the usual cast of clowns from the overly religious types who think their particular deity wants them to micromanage every aspect of our personal lives. Even more liberal types, like the Young Turks, are proclaiming loudly that monogamy and family life is going the way of disco, bell-bottom pants, and the Macarana.

Now I can understand the doom-saying from both sides. They’re looking at the same data and noticing the same trends. People just aren’t getting married, having children, and living around a white picket fence for the rest of their lives anymore. For some strange reason, this life doesn’t appeal to every member of the human species. Go figure.

That’s more sarcasm by the way. Sarcasm is necessary when addressing any form of doom-saying, be it from wide-eyed hippie liberals or fire and brimstone loving religious nuts. However, this sentiment that monogamy is in serious decline is worth taking seriously, if only because it means I may have to tweak the themes of my books.

As I’ve noted before, the current economics for marriage and monogamy are shit. The legal framework in which love and marriage operate are woefully unequal. In some ways, men get screwed over. In some ways, women get screwed over. It is a horribly unequal, inefficient institution that may as well have been crafted by divorce lawyers getting paid by the hour.

Since I’ve beat that dead horse more than it needs to be beaten, I won’t go off on another rant about why divorce sucks and why expectations of monogamy are unrealistic. I don’t think I need to belabor those points than I already have. However, there is one element to this sentiment that I think is worth pointing out and it’s something the Young Turks even discussed to a certain extent.

While it may be true that marriage and monogamy are in decline, it’s not necessarily declining in an equitable manner. What do I mean by that? Well, in the same way that divorce and marriage laws are woefully unbalanced, our cultural concepts of sex, romance, and gender relations are just as out of whack.

It isn’t because of the rise of feminism or radical feminism. It isn’t because of men losing their edge or fearfully protecting their male privilege either. In many respects, the problem has to do with the lingering impact that our uptight, puritanical, monogamy-loving culture still has.

Keep in mind, we still live in a culture where women can’t agree on whether Kim Kardashian showing her naked body on the internet counts as empowering or shameful. We live in a culture where a man can’t just walk up to a woman, say she has nice breasts, and not dread being sued for sexual harassment. We live in an environment where false accusations of sexual assault can ruin lives.

In other words, our current culture isn’t ready to let go of monogamy. We’re still kind of stuck on it. We still have these strange, skewed expectations about how men and women relate to one another, both romantically and sexually.

We expect women to be reserved and prudish, never freely engaging in sex with as many men as she wants. If she does, we as a society just assume there’s something wrong with her and go out of our way to shame her. It can’t possibly be that she just enjoys having sex and all the toe-curling pleasure it gives her.

We also expect men to be aggressive, pig-headed brutes who would gladly hump a dead cow if it looked enough like Jennifer Lawrence’s ass. If a man goes out and humps every woman within his area code, then he’s just being a man. If he actually goes out of his way to love and be faithful to one woman, then he must be a total pussy.

You see the problem with these expectations? Now try to imagine a society functioning without monogamy. It just can’t work. Our collective heads will explode from all the double standards, hypocrisy, and conflicting biological imperatives.

The fact remains that gender relations in our current society are just too fucked up right now. They’re too unequal. They’re too imbalanced for monogamy to decline to the extent that doomsayers fear. I’ll let the immortal Eric Duckman sum it up in the most crude, offensive way possible.

https://youtu.be/G8xp8BQxftE

It’s unavoidable. Men and women today aren’t ready for a post-monogamous society. Too many of us still cling to the “Father Knows Best” principles of how love, relationships, and sex should manifest. Almost as many cling to the politically correct sentiment that one gender must be guilted and shamed to no end for past injustices. It seems like there’s no way for society to achieve a healthy balance.

I try to be more optimistic than that. Our society always has room for improvement. Trends change. Cultural attitudes change. We, as a species, are great at adapting to new conditions. It’s part of what makes us the dominant species on this planet.

We tend to be slow, clumsy, and inept as hell when adapting our culture to new conditions, but we do get around to it. I believe that at some point, the incentives for a truly balanced understanding of love, relationships, and sex will be greater than the forces driving us apart.

It may take a long time, but it’s one of those goals that is worth the wait and the effort. It’s a goal I hope to explore in my books in various ways. I might not be able to speed up the process, but I can at least make the wait entertaining and sexy as hell.

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October 5, 2016 · 6:54 am

I Wish Ads Were THIS Honest

I saw this ad on a message board today and just had to share it. It’s a wonderfully relevant summation of the issues I discussed last week on radical feminism and sexual objectification. I know I said I didn’t want to keep talking about those issues. Believe me, I’d rather get a prostate exam from a lobster than talk more about these issues. Sometimes though, you just have to make an exception when it’s warranted.

When I saw this ad, I knew it was warranted and I’ll gladly make an exception because it reflects a point I didn’t get a chance to make in my previous posts. In our overly politically correct culture, we tend to get so emotionally worked up about overly specific shit that we can’t see the forest from the trees. If we’re not careful, we end up burning the whole goddamn forest down.

This particular tree already has wilting branches and dead leaves. It’s the tree of sex in advertising. Like peanut butter and jelly, Jack and Coke, or ketchup and damn near everything, it’s the go-to target for the politically correct crowd that loves to complain about objectification of women. To be fair, it’s hard to blame them when the target it this big.

However, this whining (like pretty much all forms of whining) doesn’t fix anything, nor does it acknowledge the actual context of the situation. It’s the other C-word that offends so many people without realizing it. That word, context, is the key to making sense of so many politically correct absurdities.

In the case of this ad, it basically says what shouldn’t need to be said to a reasonable mind, male or female. The fact we have to actually remind ourselves these days is deeply troubling for both genders. I guess some things just need to be belabored.

With that in mind, I’ll belabor the same point that this ad belabors so retreat to your safe space if you have to:

It’s okay for a heterosexual man to find a beautiful woman attractive.

I’ll give everybody a moment to stop gasping. I know. Shocking, isn’t it? Are we really at the point in our culture where we have to remind ourselves of shit like this? Do we really have to explain slowly and carefully to people that there is a context to all this sexy advertising? I’m usually pretty good at resisting the urge to punch my computer screen, but some days are harder than others.

There’s this disturbing trend in our culture where we’re shaming heterosexual men for finding women beautiful. We may as well shame them for breathing, farting, and coughing as well because this isn’t some elaborate patriarchal conspiracy. This is human biology 101. Heterosexual men find beautiful women attractive. Why does that have to be controversial?

Beyond the controversy, there’s another important point in the ad that’s worth belaboring. Again, retreat to your safe spaces because this may get heavy.

You’re not obligated to look at this ad and it’s perfectly okay to ignore it

This is where I feel like people give way too much credit to the human attention span. We live in a world where everyone cares about a dentist killing a lion one day and Kim Kardashian’s ass the next. We, as a species, are not good at paying attention for long periods of time. Anyone who fell asleep at an economics lecture understands this.

This is where my old friend, caveman logic, comes into play again. We have to have a finite attention span. Pay attention to one thing for too long and either a lion eats us or we forget to procreate. Our brains are wired in a way to help us forget trivial shit and what’s more trivial than an ad?

That’s not to say an ad can’t be offensive. An add that uses the Nazi holocaust to cell an oven is a bit harder to ignore because it exploits an egregious tragedy that actually killed people. A beautiful woman is not on that same level. It’s not even in that same time zone.

I get that some people find things more offensive than others. I get that some people are offended by next to nothing while others are offended by damn near everything. That makes ignoring trivial shit like ads all the more important. It serves everybody better.

Now, there’s one more point in the ad I’d like to make and this is probably something else that requires certain people to hide in their safe space.

Ads that involve beautiful women are targeted towards heterosexual men

I know it’s obvious. I know it’s downright inane, but it still needs to be said because it’s a context that some politically correct types just refuse to see. These ads aren’t just thrown out into the world to piss people off. There is another reason for it and, shockingly enough, it involves selling shit to a specific market.

Like it or not (and some do hate it), heterosexual men make up a good chunk of the market. They are a sizable chunk of the human population and, as I’ve pointed out before, tend to be much more visual compared to women.

They also make a lot of money. Heterosexual men don’t have babies and, historically speaking, have made up a larger chunk of the workforce. It wasn’t really until the 20th century that women, thanks to the development of birth control, were able to join the workforce in larger numbers.

Heterosexual men have money. Advertisers want them to buy their products so they can get some of that money. They make money by getting the attention of customers and what’s the easiest way to get the attention of a heterosexual man? Use a beautiful woman. It’s not just pragmatic. It’s basic biology. I’ll even argue there’s beauty in that biology.

Are you back from your safe space? Have you avoided any possible trigger warnings? Good. I’m glad I could share this ad and this insight.

As an aspiring romance/erotica writer, I want to appeal to everybody, be they heterosexual male, transsexual female, or something in between that I’m not equipped to define. As such, it doesn’t make sense and is kind of a dick move to single out one chunk of that population for shaming.

It’s okay for men to find beautiful women attractive. It’s okay for women to find handsome men attractive. It’s okay for gay men and women to find their own gender attractive. It’s also okay for ads to use this imagery. It’s not going to change our biological wiring. No amount of shame is going to change that. It’s better for everyone if we just accept it, hug each other, and move on with our lives.

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