Years ago I remember reading about a king of a mid-sized European country who, for some reason, either ate very quickly or else ate very little. This was a problem for everyone else at court because tradition dictated first that they took all their meals with the king, next that when food was brought out the king was served first, but finally traditioin also dictated that all plates be taken away the moment the king pushed his away empty. The point of the anecdote was that the queen and courtiers were a miserable and hungry bunch.

I bring this up thanks to some strikingly unproductive news from Lynn Sherr, a reporter for ABC New’s 20/20 website called “When It Comes to Orgasm, Women Work Harder”

We humans are much more complicated. Women need to be in the mood, which many men don’t seem to understand.

“I think that most men, and I have to underline the word ‘most,’ just don’t get it,” said Jenny McCarthy, an actress, former Playmate of the Year, and best-selling author of “Life Laughs: The Naked Truth about Motherhood, Marriage, and Moving On.”

She laments that our differences — the ones that can make sex so much fun — can also get in the way.

“It’s amazing to me how much brain work it takes for a girl to have an orgasm,” McCarthy said. “Guys just need to look at a nipple, and they lose it. God, I wish it was that easy for us!”

Read the whole silly thing here.

It doesn’t get any better on the next page (why two pages for such a short answer anyway?)

“Women need a context in which to be sexual,” Berman said. “She has to feel good about the situation, even about the surroundings, in order to let go and really enjoy the sexual scenario.”

And a man?

“A man isn’t as picky,” Berman said. “It’s just the way they’re wired. Men are much more goal-oriented. And so they’ll try to heat things up way too quickly. And if, you know, men are a microwave oven, women are a slow-cooking stove.”

Hmmm. I could say that maybe it’s not that women have to overthink to enjoy sex. Or that maybe it’s because for at least the last 250 years our culture has trained women to internalize virtue, chastity, self-restraint so thoroughly that it takes a hell of a lot of work not to have the orgasm but to get over all the other shit. I mean, after all, many many of the women Shere Hite surveyed, for instance, and many of the women I’ve spoken with personally say they’re able to have solo orgasms in minutes whereas they may never have them with partners. Even considerate and skillful ones. For instance as Lynn Gassiz-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones notes

Maggie Gallagher at Marriage Debate reports a UK survey in which 61% of men said they had no problem with their partner having sex with another woman (here I’m tempted to add “especially if they get to watch”). And another 31% could maybe forgive it if it happened once. Now, compare the Australian survey results reported by Vanessa at Feministing, in which lesbians reported more frequent orgasms during sex than straight women. Which, if we believe both survey results, suggests that maybe the UK men are too sanguine about lesbian affairs for their own good. Also of interest, in the Australian survey, is the fact that 31% of the women in heterosexual relationships didn’t climax the last time they had sex, while this was true of only 5.2% of the men. And part of the reason this fact catches my eye is the report that Four in 10 Britons are willing to give up sex if that meant they would live to be a hundred years old.

See the rest of her statistically augmented post here.

And I could say that as for McCarthy’s claim that men just pop off? I dunno. Between ages 14 and maybe 22, yeah, that happens pretty often. But even that’s not all young men. Neither are all men young.

But, thinking about that story about the king and all I’m wondering, gee, d’ya think that number Lynn cited, of only 5% of men not having orgasms might have something to do with the fact that “sex” has historically be defined as “whatever it takes to give the man an orgasm?”

Or that if the average man doesn’t give his partner a reliably enjoyable experience she may not have a lot of incentive to initiate sex, while that in turn makes it even more likely that when sex happens it’ll be when he’s initiates it, while em>that in turn makes it likely that sex happens only when he’s horny? (Which, incidentally, would make him more “goal oriented.”) And, getting back to the ABC article, if he’s not very considerate in bed do you think that might have something to do with why…

Women are also more easily distracted than men, even in bed.

McCarthy admitted that she often made lists — grocery lists — while making love.

“That’s not because she’s not interested. Women are natural multitaskers,” Berman said. “Our main sexual organ is our brain. So our body can actually be physiologically responding, but if we’re not in a state of mind to respond, it doesn’t register.”

Pretty irksome article. It’s not that I dispute the facts in the story: women take longer than men, men have an easier time, women are more easily distracted… but I do question whether the the underlying assumptions about why that should be are being addressed at all.

What if it wasn’t a communications problem at all? What if it wasn’t about differential rates of arousal? What if it wasn’t about spousal competence? I mean, sure, all those are good things, but what if underlying all that one little shift could make all that irrelevant.

Hint: Lynn’s article said 31% of women surveyed hadn’t had an orgasm the last time they had sex. So when did the other 69% have their orgasms? Let’s go halvsies and say half of that 69% had theirs first.

Not enough of a hint? Scroll back up a second to the traditional definition of sex. See anything missing?

Last hint: Nothing in the traditional definition — sex till the man comes — says anything about when the woman does which means…

Change the definition to “till the woman comes” and suddenly it’s (mumble… arithmetic… mumble, mumble… round up to the nearest whole number…) 35% of men not having an orgasm the last time they had sex! (35% is awfully close to the 31% figure Lynn cited isn’t it?)

You wouldn’t have to change anything else at all for it to work out that way — just pick another person to signal when all the other plates are taken away and the world turns upside down.

Aaaannnddd…. people tease me for quibbling over semantics?

I could say more, in fact lots more, but I’ll let that soak in. (It’s still soaking in for me.)

Update: Of course I’m not recommending we simply reverse the status quo, which would only put the shoe on the other foot. As a thought experiment, though, it’s a surprising indication that all our fretting — as classically regurgitated at ABC — about women and “low libido” is a structural rather than gender-based problem.

[Thanks to Amber for emailing me the link. —fl]

Boy oh boy, have you heard about the latest scandal to hit Congressional Republicans? There have been rumors that West Palm Beach, FL, Representative Mark Foley had been engaging in explicit and thoroughly inappropriate contact with a young man. Actually it’s been more than rumors — outright reports go back at least a year although his Republican allies have been keeping it to themselves.

It’s pretty disgusting, actually. I mean, check one IM transcript (out of what may be 35 pages!

Maf54: You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.

Another message:

Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.

...

Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

I know we’re all supposed to be groovy and tolerant. Diff’rent strokes, right? And really, is it any of our business whether even a Republican chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus is gay?

Hmm. Actually it doesn’t make a fucking bit of difference that he’s gay! Being a gay conservative Republican might make him a hypocrite but he’d be a hypocrite who’s sexuality was none of mine or anyone else’s business.

What’s disgusting, though, is that the young man, a Congressional page from Louisiana, was only sixteen — both legally and developmentally a child. His particular gender, or Rep. Foley’s gender orientation is utterly irrelevant.

I’ve made it more than abundantly clear that I think it’s a very, very bad idea for adults to have sex with children. Yes, I have vague memories of a an experience of my own but at the time I perceived it more as bullying (the really scary part was her wanting to hit me with a ruler) so I didn’t come to my conclusion because of that.

Instead it’s more about sex in the “gray area” we were discussing earlier in the week — the connived, pressured, or otherwise only grudgingly agreed to sex that can fuck up the victim’s experience of sex forever after.

Whoever the grown up was, what ever his orientation, whatever the orientation of his victim, however willingly or grudgingly his victim participated, he’s only a kid for a few year but he’ll be a grownup for half a century! If Congressman Foley thought he was so fucking hot he could have waited two more years. He would have still been hot and he’d have had roughly another 25% of his post-puberty adolescence to figure out what he wanted to consent to, and how, when he grew up. Like Mary K. Laterneau, or Lisa Zuniga Duran, Foley thought his urges trumped all that. I say the child, every child, deserves that time to grow up so he or she can have a long, happy, healthy, varied sexual life.

I say lock the bastard up, and while you’re at it lock up all the other smug, self-righteous, and evidently thoroughly corrupt bastards in his party who heard about it, covered it up, and otherwise did nothing.

Update: In comments Cheryl of Claiming my iner bitch makes a crucial point that completely slipped past me.

What I have seen of the excerpts doesn’t make Foley “gay.” It makes him a pederast. I hope you realize the majority of pedophiles identify as heterosexual. Gay men, contrary to the opinion of much of the country, are not the largest group poking little kids out there.

The first rumors I’d heard (from non-sex/political sources) was that a south Florida congressman was probably gay. The story about Foley and the page didn’t come out till yesterday and I never adjusted my first impression. And he still might be gay, and I still don’t think it’s particularly relevant, but yeah, Cheryl’s right that the majority of pederasts identify as heterosexual. Final note: while my post poked fun at homophobia and closeted hypocrites I strongly believe people’s orientation is their business and that nobody deserves to be involuntarily outed as long as they’re having sex with consenting adults! Foley crossed that line.

While catching up on my post-laptop-loss reading I saw that Holly of Self-portrait as had an interesting point last month about women and breast size.

One day I listened to Muriel and Jane, a couple of my well endowed friends, decry a survey they’d just read in some women’s magazine, in which the majority of men questioned said that any woman with a B cup or smaller should get breast implants

...

What pigs these men were, my friends agreed! Why couldn’t they just love the bodies of their flat-chested girlfriends and wives, without expecting the women to undergo surgery in order to fit some stereotype of desirability? Why are women’s bodies so often condemned and found wanting if they don’t meet some ridiculous ideal?

I didn’t say much. What could I say? I’m one of the women the majority of survey respondents would send to some plastic surgeon, so he could slice me open and stitch mushy sacs of fluid into the muscles of my chest. And yet, on the list of ways men have treated me badly, “Told me my tits were too small” does not appear. In fact, many men have been quite complimentary of what I had to offer in that domain. But my big-breasted friends wouldn’t want to believe that. And I know that because of a few other conversations I had with them.

...

As I tried to characterize [the Charlie’s Angles movie] for this friend, I said it was like a live-action Power Puff Girls, and then, thinking of the scenes I just mentioned, I said, “And it’s also a tits and ass movie.”

Jane said, “How can that be? Drew Barrymore is the only one with real tits.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

She said, “Aren’t Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu pretty flat-chested?”

I said, “They’re not THAT flat chested, and any way, that doesn’t mean their breasts aren’t real.”

She said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I mean ‘huge’ tits, not ‘real’ tits.”

But what my large-breasted friend REALLY meant is that only huge tits are real tits.

There’ve been several other references to breast size and judgment around the blogosphere lately, including a good question in comments by MandalayVA of I’m not sorry about implants (see the comments here) and a visual exercise in the politics and ergonomics of Jessica Valenti’s sweater by Lynn Gassiz-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones.

Me? I think breasts are cool — enough so that they anchor my sexual orientation to adult women — but I’ve never really thought of them in terms of size. [Full disclosure: elsewhere I’ve admitted a bias towards smaller than larger breasts. —fl] I’ve been aware of American men’s alleged obsession with large breasts for almost as long as I can remember, but I’d never heard about women having similar attitudes.

So anyway, are Holly’s friends just a blip or have I just bought into the men-are-obsessed so heavily I’ve overlooked it’s counterpart? I mean, is this one of those things where once you drop your preconceptions and start looking around the more instances you start to notice?

Like this photo?

Via Amber again I’m curious what you think of the photo at the top of this post by Renegade Evolution of The Fine Art of Free Speech and Dissent about objectification and stereotyping.

I’m asking because one of her commenters said, anonymously

It’s absurd that a woman with a body that looks like an advertisement for muscularity, starvation and obviously fake breasts would write about anything real or natural. You talk about “sexualized caricatures of women”? Look in the mirror! You’re a perfect example! You embody what the Patriarchy likes in its women, or more acurately, its whores. How many real women do you think look like that or further more, want to look like that? You can say you are thin naturally as much as you like, but no one gets that definition without work, and that chest of yours is so obviously unreal it is painful. Congratulations, you look like a sex toy, which I can only assume was your intent.

It’s no wonder you have to deal with people looking down on you and stereotyping you, you ARE a stereotype!

See RE’s post here. Scroll down to find the anonymous comment.

I dunno. I’m slender and muscular, and at least to some people I’m sexually appealing. And while I eat well and get some exercise (you get a lot just piggybacking children up and down stairs) nobody’s going to call me unnatural for it. And I certainly don’t think many people would say I look like a whore for it.

So what’s the double-standard here that I can look this way but Renegade Evolution can’t? Or at least can’t without being called names.

If it’s a gender thing then… well, what’s with that? Men can look buff without catching major flack but women can’t? Shouldn’t?

[Note: People say nice things about my forearms. If you missed them the first time you looked, go check out RE’s in her photo. —fl]

Speaking of objectification, if I’d read Amber of Being Amber Rhea before I wrote this morning’s HNT post I’d have done it somewhat differently. Amber writes about a woman she was in a class with

there was a woman in the class who looked like a poster girl for The Beauty Myth. Long blonde hair, (fake) tanned skin, (artifically) bright white teeth, tall (but not too tall!), thin (but not too thin!), and I don’t remember what color her eyes were but if I had to take a wild guess, I’d say blue. Oh, and big tits (but not too big!).

When I saw her on the first day of class, I automatically felt distrustful and suspicious of her. I found myself having thoughts such as, “I bet she’s really full of herself,” and, “Why’s she taking this class, she probably knows how to do all this stuff already anyway.” -And that last thought made me go, screeeeeech! (That’s supposed to be the sound of brakes.) Whoa! WTF? Where is this coming from? Am I in 8th grade, for fuck’s sake? These thoughts are totally unfair!

She turned out to be a nice woman, no more or less so than any of the other women in the class. And yet as soon as I saw her, I had begun to draw irrational conclusions based on her appearance alone. And this really caught me off-guard, because it happened automatically. Gah, I’ve been programmed by society! Looks like I’ve got a lot more work to do when it comes to unpacking all that societal baggage!

Read her words in context here.

In other words Amber initially did what a lot of us do: reduced another human being, reduced her to a set of lines, curves, shadows, and colors. True, she reduced her to an object of derision instead of one of desire, but…

I guess the question is whether it’s only unacceptable to objectify someone sexually, if it’s fine to reduce them to, say, an object of derision just because of the way he or she looks?

I think one of the most valid points against photographs of people, dressed and undressed, that provoke sexual interest is that it reduces them and their myriad attributes to an object of gratification. The subject of the photograph stops being funny, smart, an artist, a student fascinated by Foucalut or Plank or Schopenhauer, a workaholic, a recluse, a barber, a stamp collecter, devoted parent or loving offspring and becomes instead a set of curves, lines, shades, and colors that facilitates the sexual arousal of people they’ll likely never meet and who, it must be said, are rarely concerned about anything else about them except that single, reductive effect.

One thing I like most about Obasso’s Half-nekkid Thursday meme is that the photos are embedded in the context of the people in them. The images stop being of a babe with great legs and becomes, say, Madame X, of being a guy in his skivvies and becomes, say, AndyT13.

Appearing in HNT has given me a deeper appreciation of others who appear in erotic photographs. And it seems to me that HNT has the same effect on others. In particular, for me, even when I don’t know the person in a photograph I find myself far more curious about who they are even as I still appreciate the lines and curves, the shades and colors of the image before me.

And having appeared as an object of arousal for others it seems like the issue of that objectification is resolvable to the extent people are willing to see a who as well as a what. Or, more to the point, the issue of objectification is unresolvable to the extent people are unwilling to do so.

What’s your take?

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

As long as I’ve broached the subject of “party rape and other forms of sexual assault I figure I might as well go in a little deeper, based particularly on the extensive comments in this post.

Something that infuriates a lot of right-minded people is uncomfortably large gray area between behavior most people consider acceptable and behavior most people would call rape.

In this comment Kochanie of Literate Perversions lays out one case (based on a novel.)

...I would like to present a real life example that may clarify some of the questions raised about consent and rape. The example is a discussion that took place among a group of adults, most of whom were women, whose ages ranged from 35 to 70. The subject of the discussion was the novel, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, or more specifically, the scene in which the drugstore employee named Skeet gives the unmarried, pregnant Dewey Dell a bogus abortifacient. Since she does not have the money to pay for the remedy, Dewey Dell pays, unwillingly, by engaging in a sexual act with Skeet.

Some members of the discussion group argued that this was clearly a case of rape. Others, like myself, asked if this was better defined as sexual harassment. If it was rape, I asked, how would it be defined by statute and what evidence would be required to legally prosecute it?

See the comment and follow-up discussion by other commenters here.

Until Kochanie raised the point about sexual harassment I would have tended to judge the situation as a form of rape, although I’d have been a little uncomfortable about some of the particulars. Even though there was no threat of violence there was still something that amounted to coercion and on the face of it that ought to be enough, again, for any right-minded person. Except, as Kochanie hints, an even semi-competent defense lawyer could drive a tractor through the gray area: “did he threaten you?” “No” “Did you agree to have sex in exchange for something?” “Yes” “Your honor, at worst my client is guilty of soliciting a prostitute.” (Whereupon blood vessels would explode in my head.)

And along comes Kochanie with a flashlight called “sexual harassment” and suddenly the circumstances clarifies. A competent defense attorney can say whatever she wishes, but even a semi-competent corporate sexual-harassment trainer will tell you within the first fifteen minutes of class that you may neither offer or withhold anything in exchange for sex. Poof! No gray area at all.

I think the biggest objection, aside from the absolutely visceral one that all unwilling sex is rape, might be that sexual harassment is not well defined either. This is certainly true at the moment. For instance even though the legal definition tends to be more strict, in the popular imagination “harassment” implies “unsuccessful” when, as in Kochanie’s example, harassment often succeeds. For another, there’s the unfortunate Supreme Court decision that it’s not legal harassment when someone of one gender to sexually harass someone of the same gender. Finally, the legal definition currently covers mainly workplace and academic settings and anything else that’s covered, if it’s covered at all, tends to be a hodgepodge of professional association guidelines that may not be consistently enforced.

But that’s just the situation today. And whereas a lot of people might have a hard time accepting legal changes that expanded sexual harassment to include more of the gray area of “grudging consent” those are the same people who have been balking at attempts to stretch definitions of rape to cover it instead. Since that consideration is a wash…

Oh! Oh yeah! I think one really really critical difference, even though it might sound like a rhetorical one, is that for better or worse people seem extraordinarily shy to admit they’ve been non-violently pressured to have sex. There are all kinds of reasons for this including cultural, psychological, and expectations that they’ll be blamed. (Consider this incredibly moving post from Shay of Shay’s Other Spot and her follow-up post explaining “One of the reasons why I never talk about this incident is because I really don’t want people to judge me based on something that had happened to me so long ago…”)

Ok, so whereas there’s a (largely unfounded and certainly unjustified) tendency to “blame the victim” for rape I’m unaware of any corresponding blame or shame associated with sexual harassment. (Yes, there are a lot of people who whine about charges of sexual harassment but the very fact that they’re whining suggests the power of the charge and shift of sympathy from perpetrator to victim. They wouldn’t be whining if harassment, even “successful” harassment, was either respected or easily dismissed.)

At any rate, since I believe “gray area” assault and “grudging consent” situations are a key incubators of “sex-negativity” for all genders I’d like to endorse Kochanie’s suggestion that sexual harassment should be expanded to match criminal sexual assault in terms of recognition and severity.

[Quick aside: Whereas FDA regulations permit pharmacists and doctors to withhold emergency contraception from a patient for reasons of conscience I wonder if Biting Beaver could bring a sexual harassment suit against the doctors who denied her a prescription after grilling her about her loose morals. —fl]

Over the weekend I caught the last minutes of an NPR Weekend America segment called Sexual Assault on Campus. First caveat: I only heard the last few minutes. Second caveat: You can listen to the whole segment here but you need to have the Real Networks audio player.

The whole segment is eye-opening, or was for me, but I’m primarily going to address what was said in the closing minutes of the segment between the reporter (host Barbara Bogaev?) and Indiana University sociology professor Elizabeth Armstrong.

Anyway, in response to a question Armstrong, who’s recently done ethnography research on the women’s floor of a college residence, outlined what she described as a typical campus situation where a group of young women decide to go out drinking heavily, encounter a similar group of of young men, and hook up as groups and continue drinking heavily. She said eventually one of the women and one of the men start making out, and then, ice broken, some number of others pair up… and then she skips forward to a conclusion wherein women “predictably and systematically” wind up victims of sexual assault due to the inherent ambiguity of mixer-party/hookup situations.

I have absolutely no bone to pick with Armstrong for skipping that bit, by the way. If you listen to the segment it’s clear that she has an understanding of the problem that’s as compassionate as it is nuanced, and in the context of the radio clip it wasn’t in her scope to get into details.

Nevertheless, based on my own first- and second-hand experiences with young people and alcohol in groups, and also a year-long intensive college-level program I took on the sociology and psychology of small-group behavior, I believe strongly that the part she skipped is critical to understanding what happens. It doesn’t help, at all, that less, um, nuanced authorities and pseduo-authorites such as Camille Paglia, Warren Farrell, or Mary Koss perform similar yada-yada/handwaving on the way to their agenda-driven conclusions about what does or doesn’t happen.

First of all, since, as Armstrong points out strongly, ambiguity is a big part of the problem let me filter out some of the distinctly unambiguous dimensions in the scenario she describes (and I’ve witnessed or been directly or indirectly party to.)

- The (often dominant) individuals from each group who break the ice by hooking up. There are exceptions to everything but generally these two know what they’re doing and are clear and comfortable about whatever the outcome is going to be. In the event that consent is violated neither party is ambiguous about the ramifications.

- The subset of individuals who pair up after the ice is broken. They also tend to know what’s going on, at least to the extent that they’re able to negotiate appropriate levels of consent. Here too the parties are generally clear about what to do if consent is not respected.

- The clear cut predatory situations where a more sober and/or more in control individual consciously peels off someone who they recognize is more incapacitated. Whether or not the more incapacitated party winds up regretting the outcome I think this is pretty unambiguously abusive.

- The subset of individuals who are unambiguously disinclined to couple up.

- And finally, the subset of individuals who don’t fit in any of the above categories. This is the (largely unexamined) subset I want to discuss in this post.

(Note: there are valid other ways to group sets of individuals. For purposes of this post I’m choosing this grouping.)

Ok. So. Situation from the perspective of any individual in either group: You make a collective decision to go out together, including a general plan for the evening, certain statements about possible outcomes, certain agreements to “wingman” each other, and expressions of concern or expectation with corresponding acknowledgments and/or dismissals thereof. As a group you enter a bar or party, and as a group you become intoxicated. Then your group encounters another group and, at the group level, you decide to party together, talking, dancing, and, of course, continuing to drink. At some point hierarchically or circumstantially (by reason of motivation) dominant individuals connect as individuals within the group. Some numbers of others follow suit. Still others check out or otherwise stand by their decisions not to connect. And the remainder find themselves in a situation where “the group” has decided to start connecting and they have to choose whether to join or break that mixed-group consensus. Meanwhile the structure of the original groups is breaking down — the more sober, the more intoxicated, and/or the more motivated individuals begin disregarding their original mutual agreements and start making their individual decisions. And I think when there’s trouble that’s where it really starts — where you recognize that the larger groups — the macro group and your original one — are collapsing into pairs while you’re still committed to them.

There’s lots of talk about ambiguity in “hookup” settings. I think that to the extent there really is ambiguity (I think I eliminated a lot of it in my list, above) it happens here where group structure is breaking down, the dominant and disinterested parties have made their respective choices, and the people in the middle are grappling with what they “should” do.

I think people in those circumstances can feel overwhelmed by conflicting pressures: conflicting loyalties (the large group, the group of peers you came with, the individuals you’re being prospective with and those who are being prospective with you, and of course to your personal integrity), conflicting desires (desire to fit in or not be left out, desire to meet personal expectations, natural physical desire, to “fit back in” again when your immediate group of peers reassembles back at the dorm or before the next outing, and possible desires to rise or at least not fall in status in the eyes of others) and, of course, the pressure to appear able to “hold your liquor.”

And that’s where “ambiguity” happens for both men and women: the point where pressure to conform overrides personal sexual preference. It’s the boys/girls-get-prettier-at-closing-time moment, the ride-with-the-big-kids or stick-with-the-training-wheels moment, the move-it-or-lose-it moment, the musical-chairs-and-the-music-is-about-to-stop moment. It’s pretty miserable for everyone in that situation and when choices about pairing up and/or having sex are made at that point they tend to be made for extrinsic rather than intrinsic reasons. And, in my personal opinion, choices made for extrinsic reasons are bad choices no matter what the outcome. Honest communication is extremely difficult. Alienation is high. There’s a sense that personal power is being lost, and sometimes convulsive attempts to regain it. The results are a lot of “go along to get along” sex, of “I guess so” sex, of “here’s my chance” sex, of “too late to change your mind” sex, of “this isn’t working” sex, of “oh, what the hell” sex, not to mention “what just happened” and “what was I thinking” sex. And finally, there’s also third and second degree criminally assaultive, ignoring-no-always-means-no sex. And no matter what you think or say afterwards to yourself, each other, or to others, any time you have sex for any reason other than both of you wanting to have sex because you’re both horny and you want to have sex, it’s one-way-or-another-one-or-both-of-you-lose sex.

You’ll notice I don’t have any answer to any of this. In fact I’m not sure I could even ask intelligent questions. Instead I’ve pointed to some areas where there’s probably very little ambiguity and one very large area where ambiguity is certain to be high. I have to use speculative words like “probably” and “certain” about the latter because as far as I know that area isn’t well studied and is frequently glossed over.

One other point from the radio segment that’s pretty critical: Armstrong says that most of the students she’s interviewed come out of school with a good, strong education about what sexual assault but that, in her opinion, it tends to be laid out in blunt men-bad/women-good terms that tend to complicate rather than resolve the middle ground.

I feel strongly that by better understanding that part and the social factors that facilitate assault we could a) reduce the number of times it happens, b) make it easier to recognize and avoid those circumstances, c) make it easier to determine what course to take before, during, and especially after, and finally, d) cut out a lot of opportunities for “yeah, but…” punditry.

[Note #1: According to her official university bio Professor Armstrong has done some pretty interesting research. Unfortunately it all appears to be awaiting publication and therefore not available online.

Note #2: Because the word “ambiguity” was used in the radio report I use it too. The word itself has multiple meanings that might be misconstrued to imply that sexual assault might or might not take place in some circumstances. I have tried instead to use it to refer to people’s uncertainty as to how to prepare or respond rather than to any uncertainty about what actually happens. —fl]

There are two things every Macintosh user knows:
1) Unlike Windows computers Macintoshes never crash
2) Mine is the only exception

It’s extraordinarily difficult to write a nuanced post about date rape because it’s such a hair-trigger issue and the last thing you want to do is be misconstrued as dumping on men, misconstrued as blaming the victim, or misconstrued as playing the one-note “gee but us men have it tough too” MLA tune.

And when you’re an hour or so into such a post, based on what you feel is an incomplete narrative of a typical “hookup” session between to social groups in this radio segment on NPR’s Weekend America you return to your computer from a break only to be locked out of your machine by the evidently-much-dreaded OS-X spinning wheel of doom/death/and-so-on “hourglass” cursor, for the second time that day (up from “only” once a day for the 10 days you’ve owned the machine) there’s just not much chance you’ll have the emotional energy to write the whole thing all over again after holding down the elegantly designed power button for six seconds to force a restart.

It seems dumb to have to go back to saving my work every five minutes since I’d pretty much forgotten to do that after upgrading to Windows 2000 back in, well, 2000, since unlike my expensive new Macintosh it really never crashed.

That is all.

A powerful post today from Gander of Goose and Gander about men and touching.

Gripping a male bicep, tracing a finger around and down the lines and musculature of the male body, taking a male nipple between my fingers. Well, that’s gay obviously. You’ve crossed the Rubicon there. < /snark > The fact is men aren’t supposed to touch women, either. I don’t dare hug my female co-workers and brushing an arm is cause for worry. A social male-female hug is Kabuki-esque. And children…don’t even pedestrian down that alley. In most of the kink scene the male touch is marked and fraught with significance. “Don’t touch other people’s subs.” “Don’t touch Doms without permission.” “Better yet, stand over there.” This is one reason I enjoy our friends of the puppy-pile orientation. Generally though, women feel liberated to touch each other in the kink scene, but it’s still a bounded terrain for men. I know those protocols are important, especially in a zone where many other prohibitions have been let loose. But is there such thing as the innocent male touch?

His words are even more touching in context, here.

Both Gander and I recognize the sources of inhibition and prohibition for men touching anybody. Awareness is so high and transgressions so prevalent that moments for genuinely innocent, non-selfconscious male touch are generally lost by the time they’re recognized.

Here’s the deal though. I had a perhaps classic male response when I read Gander’s words: First step, yes! I’m starved for touch. Next step, “No!” Not touching in others is so ingrained I don’t even miss it. I derailed in the classic next step, that women are so lucky because they can touch whenever they wish… because then I had a perhaps classic figleaf response: Is that really true?

In absolute terms it’s true that, outside of contact with sex partners, the arena in which women are allowed to make contact is a bit larger than the arena in which men may (hands, the arm from shoulder to elbow, and the back between the shoulderblades and down to about where the ribs end if you’re willing to push it a bit.) But also in absolute terms it’s true that the “scarcely any” permitted of women isn’t really an improvement on the “not as much of scarcely any” permitted of men.

What’s your take on it?