Safe words and locker room banter

What is safe enough to be a safe word?

Sadomasochistic sex, is sexual preference whereby participants enacted fantasies that may involve humiliation and pain. Hence it is commonplace for such participants to agree on a ‘safe word’ so that if either one feels excessive pain or discomfort they would know that it is time to stop. Why does one need a ‘safe word’ in order to let one’s partner know that they want to stop? In Sadomasochism, saying ‘no’ or ‘stop’ is insufficient because they do not have the conventional meaning of ‘no’ and ‘stop’ in such situations.

In SM scenes, which require one party’s submission to the will of the other, the formulaic resistance function of ‘no’ is particularly important. If the submissive partner offers no token of resistance, the dominant partner cannot experience the pleasure of imposing his or her will on a powerless other, while conversely the submissive partner cannot experience the pleasure of being overcome by a more powerful other.” (Cameron & Kulick, 2003)

Participating in Sadomasochism requires a lot of trust between all parties involved, and when things get kinkier and perhaps more painful, it’s vital that things can be halted immediately. Therefore while taking part in such a sexual activity, one would require a safe word that would 1) stand out in context jarringly and 2) has an unambiguous meaning. If the safe word is not able to stand out from the fantasy being enacted, the dominant partner would most likely think that they are just playing the part of their resisting role and does not really mean ‘stop’.

In view of Julie and Mike’s situation, I would think that the emoji that would best suited to be a ‘safe word’ is the cucumber emoji. In a study done by Sex toy emporium Lovehoney to find out what are the favorite safe words by 1,280 couples from across the world  the yellow fruit came out on top (The sun, 2018). Since it is highly unlikely that the name of a fruit would come up in a fantasy enactment of sex and power play,  that gives the ‘banana’ or ‘cucumber’ its incongruousness and unambiguous meaning which has to be agreed beforehand. Other popular options were ‘pineapple’, ‘Justin Bieber’ and ‘Michael Jackson’. US President ‘Donald Trump’ also made the list – perhaps thinking of him would be an immediate passion killer.

The remaining emojis seem to have an explicit sexual connotation such as the chain and zipped mouth emoji which would allow us to imagine a chained up and gagged submissive partner. The hand up emoji may look like a stop sign to us conventionally, it may not be the case for sadomasochism play as it is also common for slapping and spanking, which could be the meaning for this emoji. Others such as the shit and toilet emoji seem to be out of place in conventional sex play but it could very possibly be terms that S&M partners use to form the fantasy of humiliation.

The absence of a safe word or one that is not unambiguous enough could result in appalling consequences for one’s body such as bodily and/or mental harm. Such could be the case if one takes part in activities without establishing proper rules about consent and safe words. In Sadomasochism, consent is key to a healthy and satisfying fantasy play involving pain and humiliation to a certain extent that can be accepted between partners or perhaps even groups. However once such an understanding is compromised and things are taken too far and limits are broken, the submissive role player could end up possibly suffering from abuse sexually and psychologically. Such occurrences are mentioned in an article on Broadly Vice about what happens when safe words are not taken seriously and consent is broken and taken for granted.

Jackie shudders when she recounts the couple. “They were pushing limits.” The man is now banned from a number of British clubs, after an incident when a woman was tied up and touched without permission. (Pavelin, 2015)

 She’d had experiences in London where people had forced ketamine on her, and kept her against her will for days. (Pavelin, 2015)

It would seem that such occurrences are getting more rampant as the demands of the Sadomasochism community are constantly evolving. To avoid such tricky issues to maneuver for submissive partners, perhaps it would be best if one only takes part in Sadomasochism play in a safe environment with a trusted partner and well-established rules and of course, a safe word.

 

 Locker Room Banter and its social functions

Locker room talk: 

  1. The crude, vulgar, offensive and often sexual trade of comments guys pass to each other, usually in high school locker rooms. Exists solely for the purpose of malecomedy and is not meant to be taken seriously.
Jenny overheard me calling her a cum dumpster when I was out with the guys last night.
I told her it was just locker room talk and she totally forgot about it.

2. Any manner of conversation that polite society dictates be held privately – with small groups of like-minded, similarly gendered peers – due to its sexually charged language, situations or innuendos.

This one guy on the train kept talking to his friend about getting a blow job in the bathroom at Chili’s last night and he was really loud so finally I barked at him to “Save the locker room talk for somewhere else!”.

3.  Racist, sexist, and crude language most men use towards immigrants, minorities, and women, when they are with their fellow male chauvinistic pigs.

A presidential candidate was forced to apologize for his locker room talk, when video tapes of his crude and rude interviews were leaked out by his political opponents to the media.

Locker room banter is often seen as a sign that a man is chauvinistic and has no respect for women. While that may be true, there are certain extents to such “banter” and all of it plays a certain role for social functions among men. Or to be more precise in this case, heterosexual men. Locker room banter can be seen as having a main function of allowing men to relate to one another in an informal, non-hierarchical way. Hence what may appear to be essentially ‘heterosexual’ talk is in fact homosocial talk (Cameron & Kulick, 2003).

Its primary function is for the men to bond with each other, in ways the workplace hierarchy would not allow for, and talking about women explicitly and sexually gives them something to discuss and agree on. Rather than a woman’s body being the highlight of their conversation, it is their relationship that is the actual priority in their “locker room banter”, however implicit it may be.

 

Linguist Debbie Cameron argues in a post highlighted by Gretchen McCulloch at All Things Linguistic, Trump’s “locker-room talk” is indeed offensive, lewd, and inane, but that’s not all it is. It’s about bonding with the boys (Baer, 2016)

Cameron explains:

Like the sharing of secrets, the sharing of transgressive desires, acts and words is a token of intimacy and trust. It says, ‘I am showing that I trust you by saying things, and using words, that I wouldn’t want the whole world to hear’. It’s also an invitation to the hearer to reciprocate by offering some kind of affiliative response, whether a token of approval like appreciative laughter, or a matching transgressive comment. (‘I trust you, now show that you trust me’.)

In its own twisted way, bragging about serial sexual assault, which Trump is clearly doing, is a display of vulnerability. As an affiliative bid, its social function is a lot like cursing, in that swears are “unexpectedly useful in fostering human relations because they carry risk,” according to In Praise of Profanity author Michael Adams. The function is a lot like humor more largely writ: All over the world, people tell each other that they want to eat one another’s intestines (Papua New Guinea) or lovingly knock the chardonnay out of each other’s hands (New York). This is because the meaning of spoken language and gesture isn’t just a matter of “semantic content,” or the definitions and clauses and propositions you lay out in your grand arguments, but social function — words allow us to communicate shared experiences and put the “relate” into relationship.

Locker room banter also has the function of sexual reaffirmation, whereby men in a group talk about things that a “real” heterosexual men would both relate to and approve of: such as the over-sexualised talk of women and their bodies and the crude way of insulting homosexual men in order to reaffirm their own heterosexual-normality.

However, besides the function of males bonding, locker room banter has a darker meaning to it: misogyny. So yes, surprise surprise! Trump is a misogynist.

Allison (1994: 184) men use such banter as a strategy for constructing gender rather than sexuality or heterosexual interest. Because sex talk is seen in cultures to degrade the woman and not the man, it emphasizes a gender imbalance that gives the man the pleasure of dominating. Putting the woman down is merely another means for structuring this relationship. (Cameron & Kulick, 2003)

This goes to show that male dominance is an inevitably important part of the construction of gender and hetero-sexuality.

What is disturbing about Trump’s defense that it was just “locker room banter,” and his additional argument that it was “just talk” creates a vastly inaccurate misunderstanding about the power of words used and language. The way one uses words is how one describes the world that one sees or live. Therefore the use of such “locker room banter” by Trump shows us  the basic building blocks that create his reality: women as objects and a lower status compared to him, and the male privilege (to do anything to women) that he, a true blue heterosexual masculine man, is entitled to.

References:

Baer. D. (2016). Locker-Room Talk Is the Glue of the ‘Fratriarchy’. Retrieved from: https://www.thecut.com/2016/10/how-trumps-locker-room-talk-maintains-the-patriarchy.html

Cameron, D. & Kulick, D. (2003). Language and Sexuality. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Gritt. E. (2018) FEELING FRUITY ‘ ‘Banana’ is the most common safe word used by kinky couples indulging in S&M sex. Retrieved from https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/5590317/banana-safe-word-bondage-sex/

Pavelin. T. C. (2015). Beyond Safe Words: When Saying ‘No’ in BDSM Isn’t Enough. Retrieved from https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/bmwey8/beyond-safe-words-when-saying-no-in-bdsm-isnt-enough

Is there really a Gay Voice?

The documentary ‘Do I sound Gay?’ by David Thorpe addressed many issues about the stereotyped “gay voice”, how it is perceived as a signal for one’s sexuality, how it could be acquired and whether it is indicative of a person’s sexual orientation. The documentary touched on many interesting topics but did not delve too deeply into each. Thorpe conducted street interviews with passer-bys who were asked to evaluate whether he sounds “gay”.  Many of them agreed that Thorpe does indeed sound gay, but there were also many who said that he simply sound like an intellectual or an artsy man. Young kids interviewed however, said that he did not sound gay. It would thus seem that these stereotypes only become apparent or internalised when we grow up. How did this stereotype come about and why is it considered bad to speak with a “gay voice”?

Characteristics of gay voice

So how exactly does it mean to “sound gay”? In the documentary, this is characterised by what Thorpe described as “braying ninnies”. We are also provided a list of features such as clearer and longer vowels, longer Ss, clearer Ls, and over articulated Ps, Ts, and Ks. The general concept that gay men speak like women is rampant since a good few decades ago.

Linguist Lakoff, author of Language and woman’s place, claimed that many of the points on her list of women’s speech traits also apply to stereotypes of gay men’s speech. She maintains her view of gay men’s speech being an imitation of women’s speech, but also noted that “while some men might use characteristically female speech norms, they do so with different meanings or for individual special reasons” (Gaudio, 1994, p.32). Although Lakoff did not further elaborate on what these meanings or reasons could be, the fact that the ways in which gay men use such speech forms in a different manner is reason to believe that gay men speech is not simply an imitation of women’s speech patterns.

So, in what sense is a voice or language “gay”? Attributes like gender inversions are common in gay speech. They are gay in the sense that linguistic gender inversion, for particular historical and cultural reasons, has become an icon of male homosexuality (Cameron & Kulick, 2003, p107). Therefore, from society’s point of view anything connotative of femininity seems to be a fair indication of being gay.

 

How is a “gay voice” acquired?

Thorpe is well aware of his speech style, but remains confused as to how, when, and why he acquired his current voice. He went on a journey to find out, talking to family and close friends. The people closest to him like his mother and grandmother were unable to enlightened him on when he first started changing his speech style, but his close friends and cousins were able to do so. Turns out that it was after he returned from college after “coming out” that he started using his “gay voice”. Thorpe’s close friends even mentioned how he sounded like he was greatly exaggerating his “gay voice”, attributing it to his desire to express his identity and to show and advertise his gayness to everyone. That is in a way, the materialization of one’s gay identity by certain ways of using language.

It would be worth noting that the way a person talks is a means of constructing one’s gender identity, one that has often been taken for granted by heterosexuals. Gendered talk is able to mark one as heterosexual, just as how masculine and feminine speech styles can be used to mark one’s gender and sexuality, it may also be a way to establish homosocial relationships among people of the same gender. In a similar manner, “gay speech” could be a way of showing their own gender identity and to establish relationships.

 

How did people start identifying/ stereotyping what a gay voice was?

A study done by Gaudio in 1994 tried to determine if the pitch and intonation stereotype for gay men were indicative of their sexual orientation. He played recordings of gay and straight men reading passages to 13 listeners who gave ratings on whether the speakers were gay/ straight, masculine/ effeminate and found that most of them got the sexual orientation correct. However, Gaudio found that while gay men do use a greater pitch range than straight men, it is not statistically significant for the correlation of sexual orientation to pitch range and variability and only happened during the reading of non-fiction texts (Kulick, 2000, pg 260-261). Based on this study, it is not exactly known how listeners manage to discern men with different sexuality based on their voices since the test did not reveal much difference in the pitch range and variability between gay and straight men.

The most popular stereotype regarding the speech of gay men usually attribute it to speech pattern characteristics of women (Rendall, Vasey & Mckenzie, 2008). Therefore, listeners would often expect largely feminized speech in gay men, thus perceiving a gay sounding voice as a feminine voice, which is indicative of a cultural stereotype. In the documentary, Ben said that the basis of such stereotypes came from gay men who are very conscious of their sexuality and would remember speech features that are prominent in a subset of gay men and put social significance on them.

Ron, on the other hand, believes that the stereotype came from society’s expectations. Society wants gay men to be like women, so they pick the characteristics they find to fit what they think. Although many people pick up on the many characteristics of gay sounding voices that sound feminine, many of these gay voices are also from straight men, so it is simply not true. This could be seen when Thorpe introduced his straight friend Chris who sounds gay and his gay friend Matt has a very masculine sounding voice. All these were explained by the notion that one’s speech is emulated from the people around them and Chris and Matt got their speech features from growing up in an environment that consisted of mainly men or women only. Hence it can be seen that using a certain intonation or having certain speech features are mere stereotypes and not indicative of one’s sexual orientation.

 

Delving into the reason behind power attribution for “gay voice”

The issue with “gay voice” is the fact that while some society do not have a problem with gay men, the moment they start speaking with gay speech features, they are laden with a mountain of disadvantages. It is apparent from the various bullying cases such as in Zach’s case where he received so much hate from the boys in his school that he ended up the victim of a violent outburst. The reason for it? Zach was not shy about speaking and acting the way he liked, which in his case was a speech act that people would commonly stereotype as “gay speech”. He is unabashed about speaking the way he wants and the “normal” boys in his schools could not tolerate it. The documentary tried to provide reasons for heterosexual men’s intolerance for gay men, especially those who are not afraid to use their “gay voice”.

For most the part, it is still deeply steeped in society the stringent cultural norms for men and women where men are supposed to have “masculine” behaviour and “feminine” behaviour for women. Masculinity was described as sounding authoritative, being commanding, and stating instead of suggesting things. The “gay voice” is described as effeminate, according to one passer-by interviewed, by sounding like a woman you are then perceived as one of them, hence you would be perceived to be of the same inferior social status as women. Hence, if one sounds gay, he is perceived to have failed his gender role of being “masculine” and must be “banished” or “punished”.

There is also the point of how male speech is unmarked (common, dominant version) as compared to women speech which is marked (stands out, different in comparison). Therefore, a switch from an unmarked speech to a marked speech would be far more obvious and thus seen as deviant. As identities are created and sustained by social relations of power, the reason for gay men’s lack of power can also be attributed to the cultural contexts where masculinity is still defined as the opposite of femininity and homosexuality. So, while men hold the power in society, we will always be on the other end of the stick until things changes for good.

So is there really a “gay voice”?

As it was emphasised in the documentary, the idea of a stereotypical “gay voice” may have been signaled out by groups of people who choose to look out for what they want to see and hear in order to create a certain identity or traits to identify a certain group of similar people. Just like how not all women speak in a high pitched tone and hold conversations full of fillers and adjectives, gay men should not be held to that sort of stereotype and be subjected to cruelty and abuse just because they are seen as not part of the hetero-normal crowd.

Thankfully, times are changing, and society is warming up and embracing the differences between people and how they choose to present and identify themselves. We unconsciously employ different personas to fit in or stand out, thus it would be good to change societal perceptions of the stereotypes of gay men and offer them academical informed facts or news to try and change their biased views. There is nothing wrong with sounding gay, straight, feminine, masculine, if it is the best fit for yourself. What’s most important is to feel right at home in our own skin (voice).

 

 

References

Cameron, D. & Kulick, D. (2003). Language and Sexuality. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Gaudio, R.P. (1994). Sounding Gay: Pitch Properties in the Speech of Gay and Straight Men. American Speech, 69(1), 30-57. Retrieved March 20, 2018, from http://www.jstor.org.ezlibproxy1.ntu.edu.sg/stable/pdf/455948.pdf, 30. Doi:102307/455948

Kulick, D. (2000). Gay and Lesbian Language. Annual Review Of Anthropology, 29, 243-285.

Rendall, D., Vasey, P., & McKenzie, J. (2008). The Queen’s English: An Alternative, Biosocial Hypothesis for the Distinctive Features of ‘Gay Speech’. Archives Of Sexual Behaviour, 37(1), 188-204.

 

When she tells you “I’m not feeling it”

The topic of consent and when “no means no” has been an ongoing issue since the beginning of humanity and it seems to have grown awry especially in today’s society where false accusations and most people cannot come to a consensus on the definition of consent.

The article “When she tells you I’m just not feeling it” by Chase Amante, owner of the Girls Chase website specializing in articles contributed by “dating experts” aimed at men who are interested in pursuing sexual relationships with women, provided a list of tactics on a ” few superior options you can use to deal with objections like this”. With the use of the word “objection”, it is made to seem like a simple opinion that can be changed instead of an outright rejection where it is the final say.

Amante says that “There’s a certain category of rejection girls can hit you with, where they object to the potential between you and them. Usually this takes the form of a girl telling you it just doesn’t ‘feel’ right, in this way or that. Examples:

  • “I just don’t feel any chemistry”
  • “The spark just isn’t there”
  • “I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it”

This could have been a ordinary article teaching guys how to pursue women, if not for the fact that the end product of these tactics seem to nearly always be sex.

His three tactics for tackling the “I’m not feeling it” rejection from women includes:

#1 “WE’LL GET THERE”

#2: DISTRACT/FRACTIONATE

#3: INVESTIGATE

Out of the three, only #3 seemed to be non sex motivated. In both #1 and #2, Amante spoke about how you can use these methods to change a woman’s mind about how she does not feel like having sex/ continuing intimacy. His argument seems to stem from the mentality of how a woman’s “no” is not really a “no”. Like what Don Kulick said in his article “No”, “a woman’s ‘no’ is constrained by cultural expectations… and the illocutionary force of a woman’s ‘no’ to sex is consistently thwarted and distorted to mean ‘keep trying’, or even its inversion, ‘yes’ “(Kulick, 2003, p.141).

In his #2 tactic , he talks about how to change a woman’s mind by distracting her with something else and then attempting to arouse her when she has temporarily forgotten about the first botched attempt. Perhaps it is a concept misunderstood by me, but it seems pretty disturbing when a man is so intent on getting a woman to cave in to his advances even after rejections. Why is it that society gives praise to persistent young men who thinks that it is manly and admirable to keep on trying with women even after rejections? Many love novels and movies romanticize the concept of a man who never stops trying, i.e. the notebook – where Noah was very persistent in his pursue of Allie to the point of threatening to kill himself if she does not go on a date with him. (Context: Noah hanging onto a Ferris-wheel ride in front of Allie until she agrees.)

Amante also spoke about how he used to think that “not feeling a spark” meant that it is absolute and there is nothing a man can do to change this, until he grew up and amassed a flurry of relationships with women with whom he has had “tremendous chemistry” and yet told him that they were not feeling it when he kisses them or goes in for sex! He thought that it was weird since these women were usually up for sex with him thus it did not make sense to him as to why he could be rejected when he had been successful before. He eventually attributed this “feeling it / not feeling it” thing to being mood-dependent, situational, and subject to change. Which applies for both girls he wanted to sleep with but hadn’t slept with yet, and girls he had as girlfriends.

Here we can see how Amante found it ridiculous how he was denied sex/ intimacy when he has already been “granted access” before, and how he eventually signed it off as a petty argument that can be changed with a change of tactic in pursuing. Amante either does not understand the concept of respecting someone’s opinion and not pushing for the other party to agree with you or has internalised the concept of a women’s “no” to mean “keep trying”. Both of which are pretty bad.

Hello Bromance!

Bromance, commonly deciphered as a friendship between two males as close as brothers, yet as sweet as a romantic relationship. One perfect example would be the bromance between these two South Korean actors: Jisoo and Nam Joo Hyuk.

https://www.dramafever.com/news/-b/