Stephen Fry has outraged feminists in an astonishing outburst where he claimed that women only use sex to manipulate men into having a relationship. Well, isn’t this largely true? Lesbians, unfettered by never having to deal with a man’s reticence for instantaneous domesticity pick out china patterns even before they hear that fateful question, less an offer for sex where women are concerned and more an invitation to nest building, “So, what are you doing tonight?” Apparently not, judging by the Daily Mail article and the author trots out the lascivious ladies from Sex and the City as evidence. Except, I was under the distinct impression that Sex and the Citywas really an allegory for mainstream gay sex, not heterosexual female sex.
More surprising to me is the Attitudejournalist’s opinions on Fry’s interview:
Gay men debating the whys and wherefores of female sexuality… for very obvious reasons, we can hardly claim to be experts.
Oh yes we can. Any gay man who has ever had a fag hag girlfriend knows the sexual psychology of women in exhaustive detail. And I emphasize the word exhaustive; women can never shut up about even the smallest slight they feel that they’ve endured at the hands of some man. That’s what gay boyfriends are for. Free therapy.
I’m more interested in his feeling that straight men are somehow to be pitied. That’s quite a radical standpoint.
There’s nothing radical about it. Women treat most straight men like shit and this treatment should be evident to even the dullest homosexual. However, pity is the wrong word in my case. Pity is a useless emotion that infantilizes the recipient. I do not pity straight men. I empathize with them. And, judging by the reaction of the howling maenad hordes to Fry’s interview, in the Anglosphere at least, the fate of any man, straight or gay, who dares to criticize women is the same. Stephen Fry is very lucky to have established a career without typecasting himself as a heterosexual male lead, otherwise he would now have no career.
