Becoming a boy-mom during the rise of the manosphere

I originally wrote this essay for Petit Mort VOL viii when I was processing the feelings it brought up for me, having worked as a dominatrix for the decade prior, to realize I would be raising (serving?!) a boy. My son is now nearly five years old, and we are in the stage of navigating body boundaries, social dynamics, personal space, power struggles. He loves to snuggle at my feet, sometimes licking me like a dog, and I am tasked with responding to these physical bids for affection with love while upholding the expectation for permission-seeking and consent. This is a tough needle to thread, and I observe in him a vast, soft sensitivity that he has already begun to shield with facades of toughness, silence, and “it’s fine!” Off he zooms on his scooter when his father and I try to “give him tools” to “express his feelings.”

Having recently watched the Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere documentary, the scene that most stuck with me featured an interaction between misogynist-hypocrite-charlatan HSTikkyTokky and his mother, who he said disagrees with his views, and raised him as a single parent. A hard-working, well-meaning woman with purportedly liberal views gave rise to a man who shames, ridicules, and disparages women in general, and sex workers in particular, while profiting from their labor. I let the credits roll as a new fear unlocked: this is nightmare material. It is from this anxious haze that I post The Feminist Curse. This essay reveals my own experiences in sex work and the dynamics within my own primary relationship, and is available only to paid subscribers. To read this and future essays of an intimate nature, please subscribe monthly or anually.

Placing b still warm from the bath onto the countertop, he squirms away and crawls from the padded gender-neutral-yellow bath mat towards the mirror. As his hands dip into the sink, his bare bottom tilts towards the ceiling. I’m confronted by the tiny button of his butthole, the pink fistula of skin puckered above a set of smooth hairless balls dangling between sturdy thighs. Reaching out to wrestle him back into place for a full-body lotioning, I freeze–disoriented in a moment of deja vu. This view is familiar, too familiar. Like how a strobe light breaks up fluid movement into discrete snapshots, I see in rapid sequence all the men’s asses I’ve seen from this angle flash before my eyes: back arched, ass spread, saggy, tight, wrinkly, hairy, beige, brown, black balls dangling surreptitiously, sometimes with a peek of penis visible below. In daylight, dimmed light, mood lighting; on beds, floors, bondage beds, over towels, over puppy pads; in hotel rooms, airbnbs, BDSM parlors and dungeons.