This is all bringing some interesting things to mind. I'm just going to throw out some ideas, and then maybe later they'll fall into place and make sense.
I remember watching a show about sexual harrassment several years ago. On this show, they profiled three men who worked on an oil rig out in the ocean and who ended up on the same ship for several weeks at a time.
During the time on the ship, two guys continually sexually harrassed the skinny guy. The skinny guy (not me, despite my username
) later claimed that the two other guys continually sexually harassed him, even doing things like going into the shower when he was showering, and taking a bar of soap and sticking it near his ass and saying things like, "We're going to shove something else up your ass eventually!"
Okay, all very disturbing, I know. But what I'm getting at here, what is important for me, is what a psychologist said about this. The psychologist said that in cases like this it is not really "sexual" per se. As with rape, sexual harassment like this is about power and violence, and degradation.
I mean, on one level it's easy to think that maybe these guys were gay and they really just wanted to have sex with the skinny guy. But the psychologist said that what was at issue was domination and degrading the guy and humiliating him; it was about violence and not sex.
In a way, I see a parallel between this example of the three guys and what you have described about the frat house with the block of ice and the penis waving. I mean, if you ask me, what the fuck is "gayer" than waving your dick in another man's face? Reasoning would say that the guys doing the dick waving were actually quite gay; how on earth did they think they were degrading the guy, making him "gay," or whatever, by making him sit on a block of ice while they waved their dicks at him? I mean, they're the ones who chose this activity!
But I think the issue here is power. The object is to objectify the other guy and humiliate him (even if in a joking way), with a sexual context involved.
It was a sexual "form," but not a sexual "content." The real "content" was degradation and humiliation.
The way this relates to circle jerks is this: the "form" of a circle jerk is sexual; but maybe the "content" isn't. Maybe what circle jerks ultimately mean is something like, "We are all sexual beings who have dicks and produce sperm. We can co-exist." Maybe, at some level, what circle jerks are really about is abolishing the degrading tendency of heterosexual male relationships -- particularly when it comes to sexuality. It's kind of like, "Our sexuality can co-exist. You are not the object of this. My own dick is. And it's fine with me that you have a dick and are jacking off and shooting sperm too."
Then again, circle jerks do fall into the category of male competition. But I gotta tell, my brothers, that in itself may really just be a smoke screen. At some level, we probably all just liked having a context where we could "abolish the degrading tendency of heterosexual male relationships -- particularly when it comes to sexuality." I mean, what is the real incentive in a circle jerk? To win ... but, uh, what exactly do you win? I didn't get a trophy or anything when I won. All I got was to laugh and say, "Ha-ha, I won!"
I remember watching a show about sexual harrassment several years ago. On this show, they profiled three men who worked on an oil rig out in the ocean and who ended up on the same ship for several weeks at a time.
During the time on the ship, two guys continually sexually harrassed the skinny guy. The skinny guy (not me, despite my username
) later claimed that the two other guys continually sexually harassed him, even doing things like going into the shower when he was showering, and taking a bar of soap and sticking it near his ass and saying things like, "We're going to shove something else up your ass eventually!" Okay, all very disturbing, I know. But what I'm getting at here, what is important for me, is what a psychologist said about this. The psychologist said that in cases like this it is not really "sexual" per se. As with rape, sexual harassment like this is about power and violence, and degradation.
I mean, on one level it's easy to think that maybe these guys were gay and they really just wanted to have sex with the skinny guy. But the psychologist said that what was at issue was domination and degrading the guy and humiliating him; it was about violence and not sex.
In a way, I see a parallel between this example of the three guys and what you have described about the frat house with the block of ice and the penis waving. I mean, if you ask me, what the fuck is "gayer" than waving your dick in another man's face? Reasoning would say that the guys doing the dick waving were actually quite gay; how on earth did they think they were degrading the guy, making him "gay," or whatever, by making him sit on a block of ice while they waved their dicks at him? I mean, they're the ones who chose this activity!
But I think the issue here is power. The object is to objectify the other guy and humiliate him (even if in a joking way), with a sexual context involved.
It was a sexual "form," but not a sexual "content." The real "content" was degradation and humiliation.
The way this relates to circle jerks is this: the "form" of a circle jerk is sexual; but maybe the "content" isn't. Maybe what circle jerks ultimately mean is something like, "We are all sexual beings who have dicks and produce sperm. We can co-exist." Maybe, at some level, what circle jerks are really about is abolishing the degrading tendency of heterosexual male relationships -- particularly when it comes to sexuality. It's kind of like, "Our sexuality can co-exist. You are not the object of this. My own dick is. And it's fine with me that you have a dick and are jacking off and shooting sperm too."
Then again, circle jerks do fall into the category of male competition. But I gotta tell, my brothers, that in itself may really just be a smoke screen. At some level, we probably all just liked having a context where we could "abolish the degrading tendency of heterosexual male relationships -- particularly when it comes to sexuality." I mean, what is the real incentive in a circle jerk? To win ... but, uh, what exactly do you win? I didn't get a trophy or anything when I won. All I got was to laugh and say, "Ha-ha, I won!"
