Technology blogger Susan Mernit mentioned this morning that she’ll be quoting from my Rays of sunshine, rays of warmth post about blog hackers and stalkers in a talk called Sex & Longing & Web 2.0 this afternoon at Gnomedex, a large technology conference, this afternoon.

She’ll also be quoting or linking to a number of other sex bloggers

Quotes from personal bloggers related to my Gnomedex talk

Figleaf: “As you know, one of my on-going themes is that the average sex blogger doesn’t do anything the average non-sex/non-blogger does except admit it. One of the huge benefits of sex blogging, especially anonymous sex blogging, is that we learn from each other that we’re not the only ones.”

Magadalena: “I have absolutely no idea how many sexual blogs there are or what percentage of the 40.1 million sites Technorati currently tracks dedicate themselves to sexual content, but I would think it’s pretty high.”

Bliatz: “I wish I had the courage to turn this blog into my main outlet. I wish I had the guts to just write everything here, expose the whole picture and expose it all to everybody. I wish I didn’t feel I had to hide something as natural and straight-forward as my sexuality and all the thoughts and emotions connected to that.”

Evil Minx, commenting on Anastasia’s Sexualitie blog (which was hacked): “It’s the loss of freedom that gets me also. The sheer uninhibited joy of being able to write as the person behind my eyes is what has kept me going over the last year. “

Some of the blogs, videobloggers, web sites and podcasters I may reference:

Real writers, cloaked identities
Unfurling My Sexuality —divorced and searching
Jefferson, One Life, Take Two —pervert and parent
Viviane—Viviane’s Sex Carnival —bright and sexy
Freya— Freya’s House of Dreams —erotic wife
Always Aroused Girl- -erotic wife 2
Figleaf— Real Adult Sex —wise guy
Rent Boy— MonMouth —sex adventures
Bliatz —sex and identity
Girl with a one track mind—bright and searching
Erotica Lee 1—Memoir of a prostituted child, now adult
Coming Out at 48 —long married, coming into new life

Open for viewing(and making money from it…)
Violet Blue— tiny nibbles
Adacia Ray— Waking Vixen
Susie Bright— Susie Bright’s Journal
Bridgett Harrison – Ropelover Journal

Podcasters:
Polyamory Weekly; Notes
Violet Blue-Open Source Sex

Outed/Hacked & related (examples)
Magdalena-Delta of Venus
Mamalicious

Brand new blog, with issues
In My DNA

See Susan’s post here.

While it’s flattering anytime someone quotes you, I really appreciate that she’s bringing public attention to some of the issues around anonymity and privacy in the online world. As we learned last January, a lot of anonymous bloggers go dark because someone contacts them, threatens to out them, or just plain threatens them.

It’s still happening, of course. The anonymous blogger, and extremely popular, Armando from the political blog DailyKos had to withdraw when he was outed by a gang of conservative journalists, and dozens of smaller bloggers of all stripes (including, of course, sex bloggers) wind up going dark because someone creepy starts drawing conclusions.

I’ll have more to say once I hear her talk (Either in person if I can get in to the sold-out event or if I can catch a live feed of it online) but while I don’t think she’ll be talking much about security directly this is a good opportunity for me to bring up the main point of my Sunshine post: being outed as a blogger is almost always embarrassing, to say the least, but stalking, threatening, or blackmailing a blogger is almost always a criminal offense.

More later.

Well! Everyone who commented was able to take huge chunks out of my argument in yesterday’s post about whether sex acts can be inherently liberating.

Upon further reflection it might have been so easy because I said… whatever I was trying to say… so clumsily. And even what I was trying to say seems to forcefully contradict the position I took here and here on marriage not as a precipitating event but as a continuous act of creation.

Since I did actually have a point, even if it was a muddy one (and one based on rusty recollections of a fiendishly unapproachable point of Hegel’s), I’m going to try one more time to square that particular circle. I’m perfectly prepared to be wrong about this, but that’s ok since one of my reasons for blogging is to unlearn all the stuff I only think is true.

So. The gist of my post yesterday was that no individual act of sex can be liberating because, I maintained, such acts are always consequences of a previous, precipitating act that, I hinted, might derive from something as squishy and poorly defined as some kind of “self determination.” Kochanie, Amber, Lime, A, Colette, Toolesage, and no doubt others correctly pointed and laughed (with various levels of sympathy.) The main problem being that, say, self-determining that I’m going to be a fireman when I grow up doesn’t make me a fireman. Among other things I pretty much have to actually put out fires.

It’s not always that straightforward though. When I was a young man an extraordinary number of my friends declared that they were bisexual, a declaration that evidently gave them strong senses of personal liberation despite the fact that very few of those self-proclaimed bisexuals ever had sex with someone outside of the gender they already preferred. Still, I think the fact that so many people made that declaration created a space in which a small number of people felt comfortable having acts of bisexual sex (meaning trying sex with someone outside the gender “assigned” to them as hetero- or homosexuals.) Anyway, if I’d used this example yesterday I’d have said that the precipitating act of liberation was the public declaration of bisexuality and that acts of sex undertaken in that created space wouldn’t necessarily be liberating acts in and of themselves. Which would be accurate only in the most narrow, nit-picky way imaginable. Instead, each act within that space made the space more real, more clearly defined, more… I don’t know… traversable. It’s worth mentioning that along those lines, as bisexual chic faded and as most people in my circle of friends settled anew on a gender of choice, the space of bisexuality in that group retreated again into abstraction — acknowledged, remembered, but generally no longer made real by action.

Now here’s the tricky part, the part that made me question whether individual acts of sex can be liberating in themselves. Imagine there had been no moment of bisexual chic in my circle of friends. And imagine further that instead certain people choose to have sex with someone outside their “assigned” gender our of curiosity or horniness and thus became bisexual, as it were, by accident. Imagine further that they discovered they enjoyed sex with both genders and decided to continue to be bisexual without necessarily declaring themselves so or affirming it to others. Would it be correct to consider those individual encounters as acts of liberation, at least in the same sense as before?

Next, imagine an individual (their gender is irrelevant in this case) who, when they date men, always perform a blowjob because they took to heart Dan Savage dating dictum that “blowjobs are standard.” Imagine further that they encounter the big “hummer debate,” begin to think about the pros and cons, and determines that, in fact, performing blowjobs isn’t just the point of etiquette they’d thought it was but instead was an act they enjoyed, took pride in, looked forward to. Imagine further that they no longer felt obliged by convention to do it but instead derived satisfaction not only from the act itself but also from liberating themselves from the constraints of either orthodox (conservative traditionalist) or unorthodox (radical separatist) conventions. With me so far? Ok, now. This individual is out on his or her next date with a man. They’ve reached a quiet point in their date, they’ve got time and privacy, and our hypothetical individual, who’s done this before with the same person, is right on the verge of giving his or her partner another blowjob…

So here’s the deal: My intuition says this next blowjob will happen in a space of liberation. Is that true? My intuition also says that the blowjob given on the preceding evening did not happen in a space of liberation. Is that true? If both of those things are true (and I’m only proposing, not insisting, that they are) then where do you see the act of liberation taking place? At the point the decision was made? At the point where the blowjob itself takes place? At both points?

And finally, just to confuse things further, let’s imagine the date himself has no idea of the debate, no idea of his partner’s reorientation, and simply says to himself “Thank you, Dan Savage, you’re the man!“ Does this complicate the idea that his date is now engaging in a liberating sex act? If so how? Again my intuition says yes, it complicates it greatly, but I’m not sure I could explain it coherently.

Anyway, accept my apologies if this is all ground that’s been covered elsewhere. But do send me links.

[Update: It just occurred to me that this same line of reasoning could equally demonstrate how something becomes an act of participation in degradation/self-oppression. (Imagine the second-date scenario above where our individual encountered the hummer debate and decided instead that contrary to the blowjob he or she enjoyed giving on the previous date the one he or she was about to perform was in fact support for patriarchy/heirarchy.)

The prospect that an individual in one apartment might be performing a liberating blowjob at the same time his or her neighbor is performing a self-oppressing one is… actually it’s probably why the whole hummer debate was so acrimonious in the first place. —fl]

It’s so unusal to have good weather in the Northwest that it’s always a bit of a shock to remember the summers here are… awesome. (It rains more in Arizona in the summer than here in the Northwest!)

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Earlier this week Amber of Being Amber Rhea asked

The short answer to the question, “Can a sex act be liberating?”

Breaking with an imposed standard that feels oppressive in order to move toward being true to oneself (instead of trying to live up to outside expectations) is extremely liberating, no matter what it is.

I wrote that in a comment at Bitch|Lab and was so pleased with my sudden, unexpected eloquence that I figured I’d post it here, too. More to come.

Read her whole post here.

Can an act of sex can itself be liberating? I’d say probably not. In the technical sense of the word liberation comes from the act of creating a space within which one may engage in subsidiary acts. Following that reasoning, by the time you engage in a particular act of sex the liberation has probably already taken place.

For a not-strictly-sexual example consider Amber’s decision to take a pole-dancing class. Is the act of taking the class liberating? No. That’s just moving into a space created by self-determination. Self-determination is liberating, choosing to take the class is just a choice within that possibly-newly-liberated space. I think the same would be true for sex acts.

Nerd note: The origins of the words liberty, liberal, liberation, etc. derive from a term meaning “within or between walls.” There’s an implication of self-determination in the word. For instance when you say “I’m not at liberty to discuss” something you’re implying participation whereas if you said “I don’t have the freedom to discuss…” you’re implying coercion. In practical terms “your right to swing your fist ends at my face” is a statement about liberty, as are all statements of rights. If you instead have freedom to swing your fist then I have no recourse but to duck or accept a broken nose. It’s worth noting that the Presnit, however stupid his outward behavior, understands perfectly the distinction between freedom and liberty. It’s tragically clear which way he swings.

Following up on yesterday’s post I’d like to look at one point:

“Another assumption that crops up in the discussions on Kiki’s site is that looks really do matter, enough so that men simply won’t consider partners who don’t meet certain (generally conventional) standards of attractiveness.”

I’d like to be clear that “standards of attractiveness” doesn’t exclusively mean face and figure. Re-reading the post it seemed like between the points about “blonde hair and fake boobs” and my selection of flowers as an example of iconic beauty I might have created that impression. Don’t get me wrong about physical attractiveness. It’s all well and good but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient. (For example for most post-adolescents it’s not sufficient that hostile performance artist Ann Coulter has an iconic model appearance. And meanwhile a list of “not necessaries” would be dauntingly long.)

The assumption is that (grown) men require a certain minimum of standard physical attractiveness or they won’t give women the time of day. Of course a corresponding assumption is that if you do meet that standard men will hound you endlessly. (Is it necessary to point out that most men feel very similar self-induced stresses, expressed most often by worries that women won’t find them attractive unless they meet certain difficult-to-achieve standards of physical attractiveness, status, income, physical fitness, or ability to dance? Oh yeah, and sufficiently “hung?” I didn’t think so.)

The tough thing about either assumption — that men won’t notice you if you don’t meet standard X, and that they’ll chase you relentlessly if you do — is that either way is a setup for failure with some people overlooking overtures because they don’t feel up to scratch, and others frustrated that no one seems interested even though they’re archetypically “hot.”

The secret, maybe even the dirty little secret, is that those things do matter! Just not the way we imagine.

See that man over there, the one who’s killing himself at two jobs so he can afford the hotter sports car so he needs so he can get someone to go out with him? Y’know what? His lack of a sports car is really killing his chances. (But do you know why?)

And see that woman over there, the one who’s totally stressed about the Oreos she binged on the other night and now she’s making herself pay by skipping breakfast and lunch, all because she needs to lose another dress size before anyone will think she’s sexy? Y’know what? That extra dress size really is killing her appeal. (But do you know why?)

And that [individual] over there, the one who’s not mingling because [they] weren’t able to wash [their] hair or shave after [their] workouts because a water main broke? The ones who already know they’re not going to score because [they] need to look presentable or no one will give them a second glance? Y’know what? That sweaty look really is killing [their] chances. (But do you know why?)

Here’s why. (It might surprise you.) Nobody wants to go out with an egotist.

And while we generally think of egotists as people who spend all day thinking how great they are, it’s just as egotistical (not to mention a lot more common) to spend all day thinking how inadequate you are, how poorly hung, how inadequately stacked, how unfashionably shod, how unpleasingly plump.

In other words the “whys” of sexual undesirability generally have a lot more to do with our fretting about not meeting* standards we measure ourselves against than about any standards that are imposed on us by our potential partners.

—-

Finally, I think this may point to another question that I didn’t finish mulling over yesterday and still can’t answer: why does the media/advertising/porn standard of beauty seem to be a “tall skinny blonde with a tiny arse and huge tits” (as the non-heterosexual Eric Idle of Monty Python once put it?) It’s not that that’s a genuine best standard of beauty. If it were then, again, Ann Coulter would be considered universally beautiful and she’s often harshly criticized (and I mean for her looks, not just her offensive posturing.) I’m not saying I know for sure. Could it have more to do with unachievability than actual desirability?

A couple of weeks ago Kiki of Saucebox mentioned a friend, a man, who feels sexual attraction for every woman he meets. Between her post and resulting comments, and a parallel discussion at Pandagon I’ve been mulling over the possibilities.

I guess the first thing I should say is I can identify with Kiki’s friend. I wasn’t sure right away, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since, asking myself when I meet someone “can I be attracted to her.” The answer — almost always yes — in turn creates a couple of other interesting questions.

One being about our assumptions about the priorities of sexual attraction. Sexual attraction doesn’t translate automatically into sexual desire. At least for me, I find its not that hard to consider people who I think might be interested and say yeah, we could work it out together. Still, that’s not the same thing as wanting to, or needing to, or regretting that one can’t.

Another assumption that crops up in the discussions on Kiki’s site is that looks really do matter, enough so that men simply won’t consider partners who don’t meet certain (generally conventional) standards of attractiveness. I actually think that might be true at certain ages, particularly adolescence when we at least perceive incredible pressure to conform to all manner of standards. But (by definition) adolescence isn’t adulthood, and I think for most adults looks do matter, but they’re not the deal-breaker other people assume.

One good question that came up was why, if looks don’t matter, we’re presented over and over with the same limited standards for women’s looks in pop culture — blonde hair, big chests, etc. I think it may have a lot more to do with iconography than ideals. Ask 100 people to think of a flower and they’ll probably imagine a red rose, a red tulip, or perhaps a white daisy with a yellow center — the iconic flowers. But if you took all 100 of them to an arboretium and invited them to select their favorite flower very few would select the iconic flowers. Anyway I think the same thing is true for iconic images of masculinity and femininity — ask me to pick the iconic “sexy” man and woman and I’ll pretty much say Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But mostly because they’re the designated sexy icons. Ask me to select who of the people I know I’m most attracted to and you’d get very different answers. Anyway, I’m guessing that’s why we’re presented with instance after instance of the same types of people in media — advertising, moving pictures, and porn.

Anyway, if our culture was less monogamy-centric then chances are good I’d be sexual with more than one person. But very few of my partners would be attractive in the classic/iconic sense.

—-

One thing that wasn’t clear from the discussions on Saucebox or Pandagon was whether women had corresponding attractions to men. I’ve noticed that if you give people time for reflection their answers overlap a great deal more than our stereotypes would suggest, with most of the variation coming more from age or background than gender. I’m guessing the same thing is true for looks. What do you think?

Not to get too personal or anything but oh I had a wonderful weekend!

I bring this up not to brag but because one part of it was getting to watch Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money.

What I liked best about it was the way everything turned out to be exactly the way it seemed — generally not worse than it seemed, generally not better, just… exactly the way it seemed. That was significant to me because we’re so trained by, say, Woody Allen, to have everything fit together in tidy packages, to have either clear red-herrings or unambiguous foreshadowing. Instead what happened just sort of happens because of what happened earlier.

And yes, that sounds ambiguous so here’s an example: A thread that keeps coming up in the movie is this fundraiser dinner that everyone will be going to. The seemingly-randomly-chosen cause is ALS (the progressive paralysis suffered by Stephen Hawkings and Lou Gerhig) which, in the movie, no one seems to take very seriously. Francis McDormand plays a successful, increasingly cranky clothes designer who, for some reason, has stopped washing her hair. At one point she says “I don’t know, my arms just get tired.” Ok, in any other movie that would have been put it to let us all know she was in the early stages of ALS, and later in the movie we could all get weepy about her brave, tragic, and ironic fate. In this movie, no, she’s mostly just letting all the little frustrations in life wear her down.

The movie is also about sex: sexual stereotypes, assumptions we make about sex, the accomodations we make in relationships, the passive or pointless or perplexing decisions that lead us into and out of relationships or bed. Or, significantly, not!

I love the way the women are portrayed in the movie but even more I love the way the men are.

Again, everything turns out exactly as it seems. After decades of irony, sarcasm, and intrigue, its almost perverse. :-)

Just one part of a wonderful first-week-of-summer weekend.

As I mentioned a few months ago I’m not egotistical enough to believe many policy makers have read my posts about triangulating fence-sitters away from the anti-abortion radicals with solid pregnancy prevention policies (though I’ve advocated it passionately, for instance, here and here)

Instead I want to say I think it’s wonderful, wonderful news that such a strategy appears to be working!

Consider an article by Nancy Keenan on Alternet

Why are pro-choice candidates winning? Because they are not only using these egregious bans on abortion to put their opponents on the defense, they are also introducing voters to their commonsense message of increasing access to birth control, including the “morning-after” pill, providing honest, age-appropriate sex education and better family-planning services for those without health insurance.

Read the whole article here.

I want to be very clear that I believe pushing policies that promote the development and distribution of safe, effective, reliable, accessible, and convenient in order to prevent unplanned, unwanted pregnancies is a laudable goal on its own, regardless of its impact on politics or its effect on the question of abortion. Fortunately, as Keenan points out in her article, there are effects and they’re, well, very effective.

I’ve needed an excuse to post about an article about sex with nerds for a while and Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon just gave me a great excuse.

Amanda points to a vacuous article suggesting women try use their good looks to hook up with unattractive-looking but financially secure geeks. The tenor of the article boils down to a variation on the old bluegrass wheezer “Always marry an ugly [man] / that’s the only kind / [he’ll] never, ever leave you / but if [he] does you won’t mind.”

For instance the article says

“A nerd is an excellent provider and a guy who puts you first,” says E. Jean Carroll, Elle magazine’s love and sex advice columnist. “He’ll turn out to be a great father and a great husband.”

[I’m not linking to the article this quote comes from but Amanda has it in her post. You can find it here.

Instead I’d like to offer this alternate, largely gender-neutral, endorsement of nerds from Glee Magazine.

Two things I particularly liked about the article: a) it doesn’t make the mistake of assuming all nerds are men and b) despite the emphasis on nerds the author’s relationship advice is sound no matter who you’re with.

[Note: The link I’d saved, from April 30th of this year, doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. Luckily I saved a large excerpt. Ordinarily I don’t post things this big but since you can’t see the original, and since it’s generally good advice anyway, I’ve posted a cached copy of the post after the “continue reading” fold. If the link comes back up I’ll reduce the excerpt size. —fl]

Nerds Make Better Lovers

By Cristina Millano
Glee Contributor
Updated: Sunday, April 30, 2006

It’s one of the biggest misconceptions in dating, and it’s time to get it out in the open for good. The so-called “cool” men and women out there aren’t half as good in the sack as their “nerdier” counterparts. Nerds not only have the brains, but they also have the most powerful possession of all, the love touch. These guys and gals have taken the time to do their homework, and they’ve mastered the geography, chemistry and mathematical formulas of how to make your body scream. Ready to smarten up and become the ultimate seducer? Then put away those shades and pick up a pocket protector because your about to get lesson 101 in love.

Read the original article here, if the link works.

Come to think of it, most of my relationships have been with nerdy women — bookworms, classical guitarists, agriculture and horticulture students, mathematicians, park rangers, square dancers, theater and band nuts, scientists, librarians, and IT industry professionals. It’s not that the nerds I’ve known are really that much better in bed — like everybody else there’s a wide range of interest, enthusiasm, and skill. It’s just that nerds are generally my kind of people.

Original link to Glee via Mikey Mongol at TGP.COM.

Here’s an update from Lena about the defacement of her site.

I’ve embraced the classic English response to a crisis and have made tea.
I’m feeling calmer, and hell, even philosophical. This being the Solstice, I’m choosing to rekindle faith with pagan truth.

Someone destroyed my site yet my sacred space is inviolable. As some of you will know, in ancient China, when a house caught fire and blazed, it was considered auspicious to let it burn for a time. This was believed to purge the home. Across all cultures, fire is seen as a catalyst for change and an agent of transmutation.

In my recent 100 things, I said ‘fire captivates me’ and so it does. As do the mythologies associated with this purifying force, which view fire as a transformational power. The most exquisite mythology is that of the phoenix which not only regenerated when wounded, but also rose anew from the ashes.

To those who destroyed the old site, I say fuck you; have the carcass seasoned with my contempt.

To my dear friends and gentle readers, you have my assurance that I will be back. I’ll create a new home, and each of you will be so welcome there.
Between then and now, you can still reach this wandering metawhore by mail:
magdelena@hush.com so please stay in touch for I am invisible but not silent.

My love to you all.

I figure I’ll keep her link in my blogroll anyway.