But then I lit into Marty. And he wrote some funny nonsequiters about me on his site and then sent an e-mail subject line olive branch and I apologized back and a follower of his lit into me on his website. I think it’s the same guy as BrokenArrows above, but not sure. Marty has some impassioned fans.
So why did I attack Marty? I wouldn’t want that done to me, and I’m usually better at toeing that line. Here’s what I think was going on: What I liked about the women readers was all the female subjectivity about sex, a little break from the world that after 35, 40 years of feminism is fuller than ever of images of women as fuckdolls and girls and women worrying more than ever that Hot or Not is what defines them. So it’s still important and wonderful to hear women get up and say, “I’m going to tell how sex is for me, and I’m not doing it for your titillation guys, I’m just telling you because that’s what a writer does and I want my version of reality heard.” (I’m pretty sick of neo-burlesque myself, BA.)

And Marty ruined what was for me a nice vibe with his fat-chick jokes and his gay jokes; suddenly we were all dragged back to junior high. Tensed up against the mean jocks, keeping quiet and trying to make ourselves invisible so we didn’t get singled out to be called faggot, fatty, or slut.

And that was what pissed me off, and I wish I’d said that, not tried to engage Marty in that pretending-it’s-not-emotional critic way and call him a bad writer. I chickened out, I let the mean jocks win by not saying what I meant, that his performance felt like an assault. And I wanted to speak up for the assaulted and say, Hey, we don’t threaten you when we tell our version. Threaten in the sense of the vicious jokes and also the penis-as-weapon heavymotif of Marty’s story (oops I did it again).
Which is of course of enormously complicated, because BA is right that everyone’s allowed to write about his own experience, the more honest the better. And Marty and presumably BA are much younger than me and have only known a post-third-wave-feminist world where maybe they feel stifled and shamed for their sexual expression. That’s intriguing and I would like to know more about what that feels like in a way that goes beyond name-calling and attacks.

This writing is the manifestation of Freud’s concept of “penis envy.” I’m not sure how third-wave feminists hijacked sex, but they’ve definitely ruined it with their cliche stories and ugly burlesque troupes.