Is Having a Tug Ever Just Having a Tug?

This week, I've been mostly concerned with the recent controversy over the hacking and publication of celebrity nudes on 4chan. While building a body of iron in the gym, I got chatting with my fellow bros about the issue. We agreed quite readily that it was quite a tangled issue, and there were many angles to consider. Despite these apparent impediments, we were sure that there was an absolute perspective, a line of thought that lead directly to the truth of the matter. Stevo cracked a cynical one about the apparent futility and self-deception of pursuing absolute truth, which got a giggle out of us. He's a miserable prick though, because his calves are under-developed. I suggested that we would have to muscle our way through the issues, pitting each perspective against its exact opposite, before pitting the amended argument against its respective opposite. The process would thereby refine our perspective until we arrived at the most nuanced and rational conclusion (or at least apply that process as much as we possibly could). If there are two things that we gym rats agree on, it's that you can't skip leg day and that no system is as reliable as the (misattributed) Hegelian dialectic for discerning the rational and the real.

Madzer Dave got us started by mentioning how he'd ride the hole off Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton if given the chance. Simon told him sharply that he'd be lucky to get a wank over one of the pictures, before adding that the our sexual impulses didn't merit the release of the theft of private property. We then explicitly concurred that neither celebrity was likely to be interested in Dave. Madzer, perhaps angry at our comments or affected by the hormonal changes the steroids were causing in his body, started bleating on about how it was a great victory for the hackers and that the celebrities in question had little to complain about, given they were practically naked in many photo shoots for magazines. After calming him down a bit, we were able to convince him that hacking into someone's account was wrong, and all the  sexually charged photo shoots in the world didn't justify the theft of private images. I considered confronting Madzer on using the sit-ups bench for doing unnecessary decline chest presses, while he was in a malleable state of mind, but the conversation moved on quickly. Jimmy exorcised the notion that the celebrities were in anyway responsible for what happened, eager to label such thoughts as 'victim-blaming'. The comparisons between the leak and rape soon came into the discussion, but we agreed in the end that, despite the sexual aspect of the wrongdoing, the crime was theft, not sexual assault. "To what extent are the celebrities to blame for what happened?", Simon mused, adopting a pose with his foot on the 'pec deck'. "I mean, if you're thick enough to leave your stuff in the locker without locking the door, ye deserve to be robbed. I'm not saying its right, but don't be so fuckin' stupid."  RA-head Pádraig countered that their vulnerability was no grounds for taking them, gesturing with the arm that has a tattoo of Patrick Pearse. We soon came to agree that, while it was greatly imprudent of such famous and coveted celebrities to leave their naughty pictures in a vulnerable cloud, the wrong lay only on those who hacked the accounts, even if it is hard to assign blame to faceless collective. Old Larry, who had joined the circle of  physical aesthetes, asked meekly what they meant exactly by a 'cloud'. "Is it like the internet or something?", he inquired semi-dementedly, his voice getting more distant as we muscled him out of the conversation. "He's like a scrotum on a pair of legs.", complained Gary, knowing well that Larry was still in earshot. "I feel like vomiting when I see him in the locker room", which was rich coming from a man with no neck. "The only gains that guy can hope for is the firmness of rigor mortis", I added. Nobody laughed, and Simon called me a "posh prick."

Kate Upton's career is over now we all know what her nipples look like.

Michael, whose ripped physique is made palatable by his gentle demeanour, suggested tentatively that Apple's iCloud may be responsible, as it leaves accounts vulnerable, often without the user's knowledge. We agreed that while the utility should be available, it should come with the explicit consent of the user and continual reminders of its existence. We chuckled about how nobody is likely to forget about it now, before returning to the main topic at hand.

After some more dialectical consideration and dick jokes, we found that we had not yet finished with the sexual aspect of the leak. There seemed to be something sinister in the idea of lots of covetous men and boys obtaining something sexual from a woman, despite her explicitly wishing to keep it from them. It's not sexual assault, it's not quite voyeurism or stalking, but it's wrong. Simon proffered that perhaps it was "the feeling that a woman has had some of her anatomical and sexual autonomy taken away from her. She is no longer in control of that which should be solely hers to share or keep." This, we agreed, was not such an issue for men, as their sexual powers lie mostly in different things. We left the issue of whether or not this was a feminist issue in aporia; it concerned the objectification of women, but it also concerned the nature of our sexuality. Gary summed it up for all of us, when he said, "It's okay to use or objectify someone, provided you respect them and consider them to be more than their utility." "And you don't limit them to some prescriptive definitions of their sex." We all then eyed a beautiful woman doing squats, safe in the knowledge that, while beginners would admire the form of her body, we old pros admired her more for the form of her technique.

As the group began to return to their exercises, I couldn't help but mention what went unsaid throughout the whole discourse, namely that the leak was a Pyrrhic victory for the hackers and horny masturbators. Michael smiled instantly, knowing what was coming next. The others seemed to agree, but I doubt they really understood what I was trying to convey. I explained that the satisfaction of desire, particularly of a revelatory desire, such as this, was empty, as it didn't contain the desire or longing that drove its satisfaction. To use a proverb, you can't have your cake (as a future prospect), and (have) eat(en) it. The sexuality that young men learn is never satisfied, only silenced temporarily. Actual sex, no matter how good it is, satisfies few of the intense desires conjured up by images of beautiful women. Naked revelation only satisfies by some sense of completion or forbidden insight, and that soon evaporates. The sexual currency of naked flesh, like all organic material, has a definite expiry date. This is the case with most desire, especially when revelation is concerned. Revelation, for all its vaunted value, has virtually no duration. Perhaps it's an overstatement, but satisfaction and contentment don't seem to derive from the attainment of a long-held desire.

As future projecting creatures — especially us fitness aesthetes, so focussed on obtaining a difficult goal — the thought brought much disquiet. Michael smiled again, saying he knew what I was talking about; the other slaves to muscular gains shuffled off silently, quickly returning to the rhythm of our routines. A little anxious about what I had said, I went over to Michael's house that night, in the hope of talking to someone who understood. Despite both being straight, we had homoerotic sexual relations that night in the tight grip of our musculatures. This is the inevitable conclusion of being overly preoccupied with every muscle on the male body; that and gym is like prison. Anyway, he proved that everything I had said earlier was wrong.