Having a great time. I’d have to connect via dial-up at long-distance rates unless, as now, I’m able to drop into an internet cafe in town. Having a great time. Weather’s cool but it’s marvelously sunny, especially for the far north California coast. Great beaches, the occasional whale in the distance, redwoods you’d need to pack a lunch to walk around the trunk, and my (evidently chill-proof and wind-resistant) children are transported with all the sand, water, shells, gravel, and the enormous rocks dotting the coastline here.

Meanwhile it finally soaked in after however long it’s been that what I’m really interested in dealing with if I can find a good graduate program that’ll let me do it is understanding, discussing, and mitigating the impact of anti-feminism on men.

Because for all the plaintive refrain of NiceGuys™ everywhere that “patriarchy hurtz menz twoo,” for the most part nobody does very much about it except, possibly, concern-troll about how nobody does anything about it on feminist-focused websites. Which is sort of a shame because for all the incontestible crap it heaps on women the benefits to men are, um, kind of meager.

Oh rats, almost out of batteries.

More tomorrow, maybe.

Photo by Flickr user superterrific. Used under a Creative Commons license.

I’ll be off on a bit of a busman’s holiday beginning Saturday morning: a drive from the rainy, chilly snow-on-cedars forests of Washington State to the… evidently equally rainy, almost-as-chilly redwood forests of northernmost California.

Seemed like a good idea when we booked the trip last November but the weather map says it’s even more 40-degrees (F) and raining there than it is here. (And my father swears that here we just paint our thermometers at 40 degrees to save ourselves the trouble of buying real ones. :-)

Actually while it will be rainy it’s actually a beautiful time of year to visit and my whole family is looking forward to it.

Even me, despite slight qualms about just how much internet connectivity there might be — it may be dial-up from the little cabins we’re staying in, assuming there’s even a local access number!

Anyway, all this by way of letting you know that if I seem to vanish, or at least fade somewhat, it’ll be a planned outage and if so then while I’ll still be reading appropriate materials off line (at the very least I’ll be thoroughly enjoying myself reading Amanda Marcotte’s new book “It’s a Jungle Out There”) and otherwise recharging my batteries.

If I do find my way to a connection (who knows, it’s 21st Century California and not 18th Century Borneo after all) you can probably expect posts on prostate cancer and the no-sex class paradigm, further reflections (with a distinct figleaf twist!) on what might constitute “feminist porn,” and reflections on a startling realization about what I’ve actually been interested in blogging about for at least the last half year (if not my whole adult life.)

Sooner or later, preferably sooner.

figleaf

Earlier this month during the Eliot Spitzer kerfuffle a married blogger[**] who writes a lot about her experience with and appreciation for infidelity Ms Inconspicuous of The Seduction of Infidelity had a cool point about why, especially, powerful, successful men cheat.

I think it’s because, really, though they may appear to have everything to lose, they have less to lose overall—or less risk in being caught. I’m no stranger to the concept that the most financially successful partner is the one that often is the cheater—even Yahoo! News picked that up at one point. Why would that be? They could lose their wives, kids, etc., in a divorce settlement—essentially everything. First off: a successful person, at the heart of the matter, has the skills to offset the bad press of an affair. At the very least they can rebuild their lives and recoup their costs. Secondly, how many wives or husbands would stay by their spouses—stand by them in a press conference, even—because they’ve provided a comfortable lifestyle to which they have become accustomed?

She said it here.

Ms Inconspicuous’s point makes sense on its own: the more wallpaper you can afford the less you worry about needing some to paper over a scandal. But I thought it works very well with a post about successful men and affairs this evening from Amanda Marcotte’s of Pandagon

The most likely explanation, albeit the least conducive to essentialist sexist arguments, is that there are simply a lot less female leaders. Women do, after all, cheat almost as much as men, and so if every adultery turned into a sex scandal and representation was 50/50 in the halls of power, we’d see an equal number of women getting outed as adulterers. But I’m not going to dust off my hands and call it a day with that, because I think the Newsweek article does make a good point about the qualitative difference. Women have been outed for garden variety adulteries, but with men, it’s often about sex with prostitutes, interns, grooming the next younger wife while the current one is sick with cancer, etc.

Read the quote in context here.

What I especially appreciate is that neither Inconspicuous or Marcotte are buying the “men think with their little heads” theory of infidelity, or, once again, the “men have sociobiological imperatives to spread their seed as widely as possible” theory, both of which might also explain why, despite roughly equal numbers of men and women in affairs, men have more spectacular flameouts: society in the form of scolding non-feminists and anti-feminists, and even scientists make all kinds of excuses for us that say, in effect, what do you expect? (And, after all, gung-ho sloganeering notwithstanding, people in general are extraordinarily good at rising only to expectations. And so if you expect men to be unable to resist cheating, well, that’s what you’re going to get. But I digress…)

Instead of making excuses the two bloggers assemble the case that it’s not just a matter of having no power to stop themselves, it’s a matter of them having enough power not to bother.

(For the record after making her case for power over mere horniness Marcotte takes her argument further into the realm of masculine entitlement and paying for the appearance of dominance. I’m not exactly disputing her further arguments so much as saying I was already convinced before she gets there.)

[Attribution updated. —fl]

Photo by Flickr user FotoRita [Allstar maniac]. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So anyway, I was thinking about a long-ago relationship where whoever got up first semi-platonically kissed their way down the sleepier partner’s body: nose, lips, chin, collarbone/sternum, belly button, cock in her case, clit in mine… and then we’d slip out of bed, slip into a robe or other clothes, and go make the other person coffee.

I have to say, a very nice way to begin the morning. It never (or pretty much never, I could be forgetting something) went any further than that. Like a lot of people she wasn’t that interested in sex in the morning, and while I’ve never minded it I don’t think I’ve ever felt deprived by missing it. I don’t remember us being particularly oral when we did have sex either — I’m sure I ate her but I hadn’t learned to feel comfortable receiving, but I mostly remember a we had a sort of slow-paced over-and-over roll where I’d be on top for a while then she’d be on top for a while then she’d sit up, then I’d sit up, and then I’d roll her onto her back and we’d be me on top for a while again.

But anyway, the memory popped into my head at another one of those waiting-at-the-stoplight moments and I got a little epiphany.

See, what I remember from her muzzy/fuzzy early-dawn-light kisses was the little skin-buzzing kiss she’d plant on the loose skin on the side of my cock. And I remembered that with her pubic hair in the way I was never able to get the same sort of skin-to-skin slurp when I kissed her. (Instead I’d have had to spend a moment first parting her hair with fingers or tongue and that would have sort of broken the arrangement by complicating it.

And that’s where I had my little epiphany about the difference in oral sex for men and women: chances are very good that anyone fellating an ungroomed man isn’t going to get his or her nose tickled or face wet with saliva-drenched pubic hair, on the other hand chances are excellent that anyone (umm… why isn’t there a Latinate word for this?) cunnilingualling someone with natural pubic hair is going to wind up tickled of nose and a very wet of face. And very hairy of tongue. It’s not a bad feeling, but it’s not the sort of feeling you’d really look forward to doing under other, less erotic circumstances.

So anyway, what I’m getting at is that while there’s certainly that whole ridiculous two-sphere gender model where if men are hairy women have to be the opposite… which means hairless. And yes that’s stupid because the way men’s and women’s body hair grows you can tell a naked man from a naked woman from the north end of the beach to the south. (Very different, you see, while not opposite is still, well, *very different!)

But if the double standard really does seem to be the biggest issue, it nevertheless obscures the point that with oral sex among heterosexuals, cocks stand well clear of hair and clitorises and labia generally don’t, and that given a choice I’m pretty sure most people, and not just women, would tend to be less interested in removing it if it didn’t get in the way of quick kisses…

... or very long ones.

Ironic isn’t it, especially in terms of that pesky two-sphere gender model, allegedly big hairy men are the ones with no hair where it would interfere with oral sex.

So there you go. A little epiphany because it’s not really a huge deal.

Green Shirt 004 from my Green Shirt set on Flickr.

The word of the day is vellus, the “short, fine, ‘peach fuzz’ body hair” that’s just one of the most underrated of bodily delights.

Often nearly invisible except when highlighted from behind or when we’re very, very close, vellus hair on cheeks, foreheads near the hairline, the small of the back, the belly and breasts, catch our eye, tickles our partner’s faces, and respond to feather-light, not-quite-tickly kisses with tiny goosebumps that quickly melt again when we warmly, gently breathe over them.

Mmmm, vellus. The word of the day is vellus.

It’s funny how we get about jeans. Compared to almost any other clothes we tend to value them more the older and more worn they get. I mean, how many other clothes do people buy that actually come from the store already faded, softened by tumbling with rocks, even partially digested with acids!?!?

I dunno. I adore my jeans — they’re versatile, comfortable, attractive, heavy duty, and unlike almost any other clothing except maybe painter’s pants, you’re not expected to immediately change out of them when they get a little dirty from gardening, housecleaning, hiking, or doing art.

Have I mentioned I think that jeans combined with a plain white t-shirt can be severely sexy whether you’re wearing racey lacies, whitey-tighties, or nothing at all under them?

All good things come to an end though. It took all day for me to realize the impossibly worn fabric just below my back pocket had finally worn through. Which means if you’d stood behind me at the supermarket checkout, or the coffee shop, or as I browsed the shelves at the local library, or stood in the kitchen fixing coffee, breakfast, school lunches, my lunch, and afternoon coffee you’d have seen… well…

Not enough to get me in trouble, but enough to maybe spark your imagination. Maybe enough that you’d flirt with the idea of finding out if I was ticklish.

Sigh. All good things come to an end. I’m going to miss these jeans.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Just a quick follow up question on my post about grinding/frottage/kit-riffing/"dry-humping" from a week or so ago.

You'll recall I'm interested in promoting ways couples can have hot, full-body, generally orgasmic sex together without skin-to-skin/penetrative contact. I won't go all the details yet (besides the fact that I think grinding through clothes is incredibly hot) because I'm still in the early stages.

But I did have a question for people who might be familiar with lap dancing in strip clubs. I know that male customers often seek out lap dances because they can have orgasms when a dancer rubs herself against them. So that part I get.

What I have no idea about, though, is whether or how easily women can have orgasms by "lap dancing" a partner.

It's not necessarily the end of the world if the answer is no, it's not as nice for the dancer as the, um, dancee. Because at least in my experience the roles are reversed with the classic on-the-couch grinding where my partners have generally had no problem with orgasms but I find it almost impossible.

Anyway if you've got clues I've got cluelessness, so thanks in advance.

Photo by Flickr user Hvnly. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In a post titled “The enemy of desire is duty,” Hugo Schwyzer writes about a minister’s genuinely creative way to get his congregants to lose interest in sex:

Marvin Lindsay sends me a link to the 30-Day Sex Challenge, famously initiated last month at the Relevant Church in Tampa, Florida. The challenge was simple: all married couples in the congregation were asked to have sex with each other each day for thirty days.

Read his words in context here.

Ok, to be honest that may not have been the minister’s intent, but based on the resignation expressed by couples I’ve known that were trying with difficulty to conceive (“we can’t go out again tonight, my partner’s fertile this week so we have to stay home and have sex”), and on the similar resignation women have reported feeling about the pressure to perform their “wifely duties,” I’m pretty sure that would be the outcome: the enemy of desire is duty.

Just to be clear I’m not endorsing the minister’s motivations, I’m just observing that if one felt, as many people of faith profess, that by and large the pleasures of the flesh are suspect, then getting all wound up in “don’t do it” probably isn’t the most effective approach.

Not least because “don’t do it” generates that whole pesky thrill of the forbidden business. Make it obligatory instead and stand back!

Seriously, if you were into that sort of thing (I’m not) then if it wasn’t completley unethical but if my parent’s generation had made everyone have sex, with whoever was orientation-appropriate, in 8th-grade, somewhere between the “What’s Happening Inside Your Body” assembly and the obligatory ballroom-dancing/square-dancing lessons I suspect I now be calling this blog “Real Adult Celibacy!”

There’s an open discussion post up called “Can There Be Feminist Porn” at Finally Feminism 101.

Sara, one of the first commenters, suggested that the heavy-duty (potentially triggering) BDSM site Kink.com is ethical due in part to it’s model rights form and rules for directors. Perhaps not surprisingly she was challenged for potentially writing an “advertorial” but at least based on a quick bit of Googling and a review of her three blogs there really doesn’t seem to be any connection between the writer and the website except, possibly, they’re both from the Bay Area.

At any rate, Kink.com isn’t my cup of tea (because I’m not partial to tea, not because tea is bad) and (like society in general) seems partial to the fetish of gender dominance (a compelling term that comes up elsewhere in comments on the post) but I think Sara’s got a great point.

I think the answer would have to related to the possibility of agency in the eye of the beholder. If, as I think is currently true, most pornography is created with an exclusively male audience in mind then any possibility of identification by women might occasionally happen but certainly not on purpose.

And that’s where Sara’s observation comes in. To the extent Kink.com creates an appearance of participation for women then there’s at least the possibility that — unlike a lot of other theoretically less “objectionable” but otherwise thoroughly androcentric sites — some women could imagine making a decision to participate as opposed to simply having the situations imposed on them.

And therefore even if some of the post’s commenters were right that Kink.com’s guidelines and accommodations are a publicity stunt (which they might be) and even if for them it was an outright intentional scam (I really don’t think it is), I still think it models the behavior that a feminist/gender-conscious porn site ought to follow: active agency for all parties; the possibility of personal identification for all represented roles; and a direct intention to arouse all potential viewers within the broad categories of orientation and individual proclivities, of course.

Another way of putting it would be that if there were other, less power-exchange-y sites that implemented the same policies then Sara’s point would seem way less controversial. Assuming there are any. (I’m not aware of them if they are.) If there is such a thing as feminist porn (and I certainly think there can be) then it should at the very least meet if not raise that bar.

On the one hand you have radical feminists (“radfem” is a slur) who argue that because we live in a culture of coercion, even if his partner welcomes his advance it’s difficult or impossible for male-initiated heterosexual sex to be anything but rape.

On the other hand you get just some of the most rediculous spam titles imaginable (“She can’t help noticing when it’s so bit it hurts”) that… strongly reinforce the radical point of view.

Both positions seem to rely too much on the dominant paradigm that men are instinct-driven, hormone-addled, unthinking, incomprehending, obligate sex machines, a.k.a. the “sex class.”

Which is kind of a shame.

I don’t think either the spammers or the radicals win too many converts with their rhetoric, and in the case of radicals it matters. A lot. Because nobody gives a shit if spammers go broke pushing a meat-robot view of men, but when radicals alienate more more women and men than they recruit then real people suffer because the dominant paradigm is advanced instead of subverted.