Misandry

domination, manospheres, darkness

“I’ve never been less in the mood to do this,” Ariel told me as we sat in her car, putting off entering the hotel.

The man we were meeting had been giving the most pathetic energy. Sending paragraphs explaining himself, insisting that he wanted us to like him, asking that we not mention money during the session.

I wasn’t in the mood either.

But, like the benevolent dominatrices we are, we put our feelings aside and strode into the hotel, passing by reception like we owned the place. The elevator took us to the fourth floor where we knocked and a man in red lingerie with his dick sticking out of a thong answered. Off to the fucking races.

“It’s not a fetish, it’s not a fetish,” he insisted when I asked a bit more about his setup. There were about nine sets of lingerie laid on one of the hotel beds, three dildos, an anal vibrator, a vibrating cock cage, medical gloves, and two bottles of lube.

I almost laughed at the deep state of denial he was in. He told us that he ‘has a girlfriend’ but he doesn’t do this kind of thing with her. He kept dodging direct questions, veering into tangents insisting that he ‘has a lot of experience’, and, ‘it’s not a fetish’. I’ve had similar subs before. They want what they want but the shame ingrained in their brains forces them to run around in circles, justifying their desires in roundabout ways. I have sympathy for them but it’s also very annoying.

We told him to dance for us. He enthusiastically complied.

“Want to see me twerk?” He asked. We urged him on and he got on the bed on all fours and started shaking ass. We laughed at just how utterly pitiful the sight was. He looked like that viral dude who is trying to live forever so he takes all those peptides and does all those weird biohacking things but he just ends up looking kind of sickly and translucent.

He spoke in this put-upon soft feminine voice that was obviously part of his sissification fetish. Sorry, his sissification not-a-fetish. The thing with that particular sexual proclivity is that it is less subs wanting to genuinely explore gender play and more that they view women to be the most pathetic creatures imaginable, and those are the qualities they wish to be sexually. They crave humiliation and in patriarchy, the worst thing you can be is girly. So there is an element of misogyny to it.

I’ve had only one client, years ago, who authentically wanted to explore transness. We ended up having a beautiful session.

But the guy we saw this week was not that. He moaned whilst twerking on all fours, apparently moved to ecstasy by his own dance moves. He pulled his thong aside and showed us his waxed hole. It looked bleached. Thankfully he was facing away from us so he couldn’t see our eye rolls.

We made him change outfits several times, do a model walk for us, suck on one of the dildos, anything to pass the time. Eventually he asked for some of the toys to be used on him and reader, I’ll spare you the details, but it had disgusting results. I am a professional, I have dealt with many unpleasant situations in my time as a sex worker. Many unpleasant functions, scents. But this was one of the worst. Ariel and I looked at one another, absolutely shocked. I had to hide the fact that I was gagging with the smell. Thankfully, we were across the room from him when the terrible awful happened. Otherwise I think I actually would have vomited.

If he had been paying us a lot of money, I mean a lot more than our normal rate, then it wouldn’t have felt like a big deal. But we were not paid enough to deal with what we witnessed in that room.

Maybe I’m a bad sex worker for being judgmental. I kind of don’t care. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve dealt with enough from men to earn the right to judge. This man clearly had a lot of sexual shame and I found him to be condemningly pathetic. Just grievously, unsalvageably wretched. The vitriol I felt for him was bitter. It kind of surprised me.

He wasn’t fazed in the least at his little accident. We ended the session soon after and got out of there as fast as we could.

“This sounds awful, but I think if I were him, I’d actually kill myself,” I admitted as we drove away.

Ariel’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. We cracked up.

“I hate seeing a man’s hole,” I said.

“They shouldn’t have them,” she said. To which we cracked up even more.

We decided to go to the gym after, in an attempt to redeem the day. She spotted me as I lifted a barbell above my chest. A man on the bench beside us growled loudly, groaning and lifting, his workout evidently difficult enough to cause a scene. Ariel and I made eye contact, not even attempting to mask our animosity.

“I think I became a certified man-hater today,” she said.

“Welcome.”

Two men I was speaking to on dating apps this week were eliminated because it came to light that they were fans of our fascist president. I’d rather be single forever than with someone who is a fan of a pedophilic dictator who puts people in concentration camps.

I just don’t understand why they can’t be better.

Later, Ariel and I were speaking about our unfortunate experience.

“Do you think it reflects back on us that his existence makes us so uncomfortable?” She asked me.

“Maybe,” I said. I understand that shit happens. And I do think that everyone should be free to explore their desires (provided their desires involve consenting adults). But there are certain things I would rather not be present for.

“Maybe there is a level of acceptance of human experience that we are not willing to take on and that’s ok,” she added, wisely.

It feels ironic, given my journey. I struggled with shame for most of my life. Growing up religious, being assaulted at a young age, being repeatedly slut shamed, purity culture. It all trapped me so tightly that my body felt like more of a cage than a vessel. And I would never want anyone else to experience that.

I realize that there is a lot I do not know. I do not know what it feels like to want something sexually that is out of the ‘ordinary’. My previous shame was because of sexuality itself, not because of any fetishes or alternative desires. I do not know what that feels like.

But the last few years, I have found myself judging my subs more and more. I’ve interrogated it within myself. A small part of it definitely feels like residual purity trauma, I’ll admit it. But the majority feels like something else. Something having to do with disgust at the darkness of the human psyche. How certain activities have to get more and more elaborate to scratch the itch that the host refuses to squelch. The viral video of the frat pledges in the basement, naked, covered in some sort of unidentified substance, all of them silent, keeping the secrets of their superiors. How things like that lead directly to the files detailing the sickness of our leaders. And how those leaders begin wars for their own, selfish purposes. Resulting in the death of thousands. It all feels connected.

Is there a line? Who has the authority to draw it? When does it slip from being a harmless fetish into something more sinister?

Maybe when it involves others who aren’t willing. But all those frat boys in the basement were technically willing. Willing to be coerced. Still coerced. Participants in their own coercion? They were teenagers. Groomed to do absurd things in the name of ritual and tell no one.

A friend and I watched the Manosphere documentary that just came out. It was obviously filled with ridiculous men. But there was also an undercurrent of sadness. The cognitive dissonance and loneliness of the men it featured was palpable. Them claiming to love women while simultaneously spearheading podcasts filled with hate for women. Them claiming that billionaires make life terrible for everyone else yet saying that they wish to become them. There is this one internet personality featured who owns an OnlyFans agency. He calls sex workers disgusting while profiting off of their labor. The most ironic part is that he shows the documentarian a video of himself getting a blowjob that he posted in his telegram chat to drive traffic to his online courses/businesses. He is what he condemns. And he seemed to have no awareness of it.

A lot of what these guys do just seems like rage bait. Ridiculous claims, ridiculous views. Stuff that I don’t actually believe they implement into their own lives. It’s all to drive traffic to their social media and businesses. Unfortunately the rage bait has real world consequences. The young boys consuming it internalize the messaging and act from it. It breeds a new generation of men who hate women.

I would never excuse the harm these men are causing. But I cannot help but also feel sorry for them. There are many scenes where men approach them on the street and tearfully thank them for the content they provide. Because some of the stuff they say has merit. Some of the messaging is about self-worth, self-responsibility, getting creative about one’s life. But somehow it they circle it back to hating women. To blaming them for the way they hate themselves. To a world view so inaccurate it would be comical if it weren’t so harmful.

They so desperately want to ‘break free from the system’, as they claim, yet the system of patriarchy has them so tightly in a chokehold, they are suffocating in it. And their content screams, “harder!”

Their actions still somehow revolve around gaining the company of women. They want success because they think it will cause more women to choose them. They want money so that they can be surrounded by beautiful women. That seems like their ultimate goal. To be loved by what they hate.

It strangely feels like an attempt to connect. The way these guys hug one another, hype each other up, claim that they just want other young men to feel empowered. They are so desperate to connect with one another, for intimacy. Yet they are addicted to power. And part of intimacy is relinquishing power, making oneself vulnerable to hurt. Only in that ultimate surrender and openness can true intimacy exist.

The ‘Manosphere’ feels like a misguided attempt to integrate these competing desires. The longing for vulnerability and the compulsion to seek power.

There is a palpable agony in red pill culture.

I have a distaste for the dark side of men. I have witnessed so much of it through my work. As I’ve said before, my experiences have made me more skeptical of men as an entity, and more empathetic of them individually. I have seen their pain up close and it is no different from any other living soul’s pain. But their pain does not pardon the harm.

In trying to understand it, I’m holding nuance for them, an allowance I doubt they’d grant me.