Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

AlwaysArousedGirl says it’s not enough to just have an RSS/Newsread on your blog so that your readers can use blog subscriber/aggregator like Google Reader or NewGator to keep up with you. It’s also important to use the “whole post” setting in your feeds and not just teasers, snippets, or headlines-only.
Photo by Flickr user orangejack.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

Here’s how she puts it.

After ages of reading blogs through my blog roll only and adding blogs by hand (and very reluctantly), I finally switched over to Google Reader.  This makes writing the Tuesday Fleshbot Sex Blog Roundup ever so much easier for me.

At least, it’s easier for me if you do one very small, very simple thing.  May I beg you to publish a full feed?  Please don’t tease me with an abbreviated feed or worse, just the title of your post.

“But I want people to click over and read on the blog itself,” you might be thinking, and I thought the same too for a long time.   But the fact of the matter is that many people won’t click over.  Blame it on time constraints, blame it on laziness, blame it on the momentum one acquires when paging through the dozens if not hundreds of items that land in one’s feed reader daily.

It doesn’t really matter why people won’t leave the comfort of their reader.  A sizable portion won’t, and that leaves you with a decision to make in regard to potential readers who like you well enough to add you to their feeds:  If they’ve already made the decision not to click over, would you prefer that they read your whole post or just a fraction of it?  If your only concern is how many hits your blog gets, then by all means continue to publish only a partial feed.  But if your concern is having people read your words, for fuck’s sake publish the whole thing.

She said it here.

She’s right. It’s pretty important to publish that whole feed and not just teasers. If I can read your whole post in my newsreader then… well… I do! I almost never just breeze past a non-teaser post.

It’s not a trivial point either — if you rely only on tools like StatCounter or AWStats or Google Analytics to track visits to your site you’re almost certainly missing a lot of traffic. When Google Reader scans your site it shows up as just a single visit whether there are two subscribers to your feed or two million! (Note: I don’t think many blogs have either one or one million subscribers but you know what I mean.) All I know is that one day when I was spending a little time hand-washing my server logs I discovered I had more than twice the number of readers I thought!

Chances are pretty good that if you’ve got a teaser-only feed you don’t have as many subscribers… but you may not have as many readers either. Just sayin’

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Now, that said, if you’re viewing this post on a newsreader you’ll see a little link saying “Continue reading…” That might seem a little hypocritical considering I’m asking everyone to do just the opposite. On the other hand, since I only use the “Continue reading…” for the photos I sometimes post, and because those photos are usually only incidental to the content of the posts, and because that created problems for some people who read this blog via newsreader in public places, I feel that’s an ok exception. It’s fine if you do likewise. But please leave your generally wonderful prose out where everybody can find it.

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Quick tip: since about 85% of the blogs in the world seem to be hosted on Blogger/Blogspot, and since about 80% of the teaser-only feeds I read are on Blogger/Blogspot, here’s a quick how-to to change your feeds to full text. (If you’re on a different blogging system that defaults to teaser feeds, and you’re not sure how to switch to full-text feeds, and you actually want to then drop me a line in email or comments telling me what blogging software you use I’ll do what I can to track down a how-to for your system.)

Oh, a quick pre-postscript: If you make the switch and let me know I’ll post your URL in a thank-you.

For Blogger/Blogspot blogs

1) Go to your Blogger.com dashboard (blogger.com/home)
2) Click “Settings” in your “Manage Blogs” area
3) Click “Site Feed” in the row of links under the “Settings” tab
4) Select “Full” from the “Allow Blog Feeds” list
5) Click “Save Settings”

Thanks!

I thought last September that Twisty Faster of I Blame The Patriarchyhad permanently gone off to the Austin-ian hinterlands to ride her horse (Lester?) hang out with her dog (Zippy?) and return to civilization only occasionally for fresh Chardonnay Oak-Smoked Fleur de Sel sea salt at Whole Foods. Instead she had killed two stereotypes about men, women, and technology by switching to a new newsfeed.

Twisty Faster of I Blame The Patriarchy notes that in rescinding the global gag rule President Obama said

[I]t is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development.”

Twisty would have preferred he’d put even more directly

“It is right for us to rescind this policy because women are human beings who are entitled to personal sovereignty.”

She said it context here.

I think that’s about right. Women are human beings. Human beings are entitled to personal sovereignty.

An awful lot of problems in this world would be a lot more solvable if human beings recognized that there are more human beings in this world than they’re willing to recognize. (And yes, while I often mangle syntax and grammar I meant that last sentence word for word.)

Twisty and I part company in places, but it mostly has to do with whether it’s possible for humans to do that or not. She leans pessimistic, I lean optimistic. She’s also right about Chardonnay Oak-Smoked Fleur de Sel, though typically, wrong about it being good on watermelon.

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The bit about economic development in the President’s executive order would sound more like a non sequitur if economic development didn’t tended to go up when, where, and to the extent women’s personal sovereignty (especially in but not limited to reproductive choice) is recognized. Seems to me there are a couple reasons for this. First, because women with personal sovereignty can decide to do something besides have and raise children if they want to… like, oh, read, write, teach, work, invent, and lead. Second, it takes work to deny human beings personal sovereignty which means that by acknowledging women’s personal sovereignty men have time and energy for something else like, surprise!, reading, writing, teaching, working, inventing, and leading. All of which paves the way for authentic (i.e. non-resource-extraction-for-export) economic development. Bit of a win/win then.

I've got hundreds of entries in my "no-sex" class category archives. Here's my latest attempt to boil it all down.

1. It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.
2. It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

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Discussion:

At least in contemporary western society every gender-related ill derives from some combination of items #1 and #2.

• Homophobia? #2
• The "two-sphere" mars/venus model of gender? #1 and #2
• Stoning your 14-year-old daughter in front of the neighbors for holding hands with a boy? #1
• Unequal pay for equal work? #1 and #2 (if women aren't kept desperate for money...)
• Slut shaming? #1 (duh)
• Psychotically insisting that contraception = abortion when it. just. isn't? #1
• "Gray area" date rape? #2 and #1
• Men who initiate are studs, women who initiate are "that bitch was crazy?" #1
• Purdah, harems, chastity belts, wimples, chadors? #1 and, paradoxically, #2*
• Prostitution? #1 and #2, and, paradoxically...
• Anti-prostitution? #1
• The... peculiar... obsessions of pop sociobiology/evolutionary-psychology? #2 and #1

The minor issue that neither rules #1 nor item #2 are _true about humans_ isn't the flaw in my argument, it's the _point!_ (In particular if the were true society wouldn't perpetually exhaust itself trying either to enact, persuade, enforce, or prove they were.)

[* Sounds weird I know but remember, when each of the big three western-civilization-influencing religions were established women were believed to be tempters -- cloistering, covering, and other forms of impoundment were _not_ designed to protect the virtue of women but the virtue of men. And lest we think we've outgrown all that see also all versions of "she was asking for it" victim blaming. --fl]

Tony Infanti of Feminist Law Professors (now with a new URL, ) says

In a blow to hypocrisy, a federal judge has rejected the attempt by Prop. 8 supporters to shield the names of those who donated in support of the measure from release to the public. I refer to this as a hypocritical position on the part of the Prop. 8 supporters because the law that makes the identities of those who contribute $100 or more to initiative campaigns a matter of public record was itself enacted through the initiative process by California voters in 1974. In defending Prop. 8 after its passage, supporters of the measure have argued that the courts should defer to the will of the people; however, it seems that the will of the people means little to them–and, in their view, should mean little to the courts–when the will of the people affects Prop. 8 supporters (rather than the LGBT community) adversely.

Read the quote in context here.

To be honest I am a little creeped out not by reporting requirements but by how close to invasion of privacy it gets. But it’s a compromise I’m willing to swallow in a political landscape so easily overrun by Astroturf.

Still, any lawyer compassless enough to make that specific argument — that initiative-passed law should be disregarded for the benefit of proponents of initiative-passed laws — probably ought to be disbarred.

Furthermore it’s hard to sympathize about the privacy rights of those who’s initiative was exclusively about interfering with other people’s to make private decisions.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says that vertently or inadvertently, the new VH1 reality show Tool Academy has an unexpected side benefit

But here’s the thing: Aside from the show being totally entertaining because of the finest collection of douchebags ever assembled on one reality show (which is really saying something), it’s also one of the most amazing exposés evah on how the patriarchy is just as bad for average straight men as it is for everyone else. (The Patriarchy: Bad for everyone who isn’t a patriarch!)

The first thing you discover is that, emotionally, every one of those guys is a hot mess. They don’t know what normal emotions are, repeatedly expressing shock that other people feel the same way they do—and they’re constantly confused because the behaviors and coping strategies that work among men, at least men like them, (competitiveness, braggadocio, aggression, dishonesty, emotional suppression) don’t work at all with women within the intimacy of a one-on-one relationship.

...

It’s actually quite compelling to see the tools trying desperately to reconcile what they’re supposed to do around men with what they’re supposed to do around women. They have no idea how to navigate between the two disparate spheres—and it’s for the same reason they’re huge tools in the first place: They have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the hyper-masculine role of the Alpha Male as defined by the Patriarchy, where manhood and masculinity is defined almost exclusively in contradistinction to womanhood and femininity.

Anything stereotypically female is eschewed for what is stereotypically male, meaning that all the qualities necessary for a successful and mutually fulfilling relationship—kindness, gentleness, generosity, nurturing, empathy, communicativeness, self-sacrifice, compromise—were long ago rejected out of hand as being unmanly. Tenderness and decency are for girls and queers!

...For whom, of course, the tools have nothing but contempt. And how is it possible to truly love someone you disdain?

It isn’t.

The path to true (het) love leads straight through feminism. Which I always knew, but it’s nice to have it so conspicuously confirmed. Even by a bunch of tools.

Read the quote in context here.

The premise is their partners tell them they’ve nominated them for a “Mr. Awesome” award. And they really are nominated by their partners. But the idea, apparently, is to see which, if any of them can get clued in.

McEwan marvels that the guys on the show even had partners. And it sounds like something to marvel at. (When flustered one contestants says “you’re not gonna show me up! I’m gonna break something and I’m gonna pick this heavy [bleep]ing chair up and I’m gonna throw it. And you’re gonna like it, too!”)

But my experience, first, second, and third-hand is that a lot of guys don’t just not have a clue, they know they don’t have a clue. And in lieu of going out and finding one they effectively “bid” behaviors and proposition to one another to see not what’s actually manly but what the consensus on manly might be. With generally nasty, brutal, and… often tragically prolonged results.

Consider: McEwan emphasizes that things seem to be harshest when the men are in mixed company and wind up trying to reconcile their most likely more sincere one-on-one relationships with their partners to their less authentic one-to-many relationships with men.

And my guess is that, rightly or wrongly, the women who nominate their partners rather than leave them outright think there’s something worth keeping. Which may only show up when they’re alone together.

Yeah, I think that’s called the Wendy Dilemma when it doesn’t work… and maybe when it does. And a lot of the time it doesn’t. And even when it does it’s a triumph of the genteel patriarchal mandate that women exist exclusively to “tame” men. (As I’ve said elsewhere, and as McEwan hints in her “unless you’re a patriarch” post, the only thing post-industrial patriarchy hates worse than women is men.)

Anyway, while I’m not optimistic that Tool Academy is going to create many feminist men it really does sound like a classic illustration of the principle that the only way out of oppression is consciousness-raising. In this case male consciousness raising.

The difference… one that might make it even harder for men than we’ve made it for women over the last 40 years or so… is that we have to overthrow ourselves! Or, more accurately, or terrified little bidding wars for manly consensus. And since the bidding is effectively a race to the bottom, without at least a little introspection and maybe something like non-zero expectations, the man in a group who stands out gives the other already-anxious ones a chance to double down.

There’s a catch though.

It’s something one of my social-theory professors noted after showing us “Obedience,” the short movie about Stanley Milgram’s experiment in social cooperation and, um, torture of the innocent. You probably know the story — Milgram recruited volunteers to participate in a “simple” experiment to see what sort of electric shocks people were able to withstand. The volunteer was paired up with someone else, they flipped a coin, and the winner got to administer the shocks while the loser got the shocks. What the volunteer didn’t know was that everyone else, including the person they believed to be the other volunteer, were actors. And the volunteer didn’t know that the coin toss was rigged so that the real volunteer always won and, therefore, always administered the shocks. The real volunteer didn’t know, either, that the actors weren’t really shocked… even though over the course of the experiment they acted as though the shocks were increasingly, and eventually unbearably, painful. And finally, the real volunteers didn’t know the real purpose of the experiment was to measure just how far average people were willing to go when goaded to by an authority figure (in this case another actor posing as an insistent, experienced researcher.)

The way the movie plays it nearly every subject winds up shocking the “victim” into (feigned) unconsciousness. And in fact that usually was the outcome. More ominously, when there were other “volunteers” urging the real volunteer to keep going they often kept administering shocks even when the “victim” appeared to have had a heart attack!

What my professor said, though, was that in other variations with groups it almost always took dissent one other actor saying “I think he’s really hurt” or “I think we’d better stop and help this guy” to snap the real volunteer back into his or her senses and start resisting the urgings of the “researcher” to keep going.

My professor thought it would have been a much different movie if they’d explored that little angle — that obedience works, sure, until someone steps up. And I agree.

The thing about patriarchy — obviously, as evidently recounted in Tool Academy as well as too much of real life — is that it doesn’t work for the men in it. It makes men miserable, insecure, isolated, small, and generally pretty loveless. And I’m… pretty sure that even the “and I’ll throw this recliner” guy would head for the exits… if he just knew which way the exits were… and if his equally insecure cohorts didn’t bid him back in.

I dunno. I don’t know how to do it. We gotta figure out how to though. It’s hard to sympathize with men who make everyone else’s lives so fucking miserable. And I’m sure it’s great television to watch them dangle and thrash. But not only will we be better off when they have a direction to pull in, they will be too.

Lisa of Sociological Images says

Fabian D. S. sent us this screenshot from a men’s health email he gets:

Along the bottom it reads: “Get the sex you deserve.”

The phrase could be read: “Get the SEX you deserve.” That is, get sex. Or it could be read: “Get THE SEX you deserve.” That is, get awesome mindblowing sex. The context reveals that it’s the latter meaning and I’ve seen this sentiment (but not the former) in material aimed at women, too. I wonder when, in American history, we decided we were entitled to awesome sex. I can’t imagine that pioneer husbands and wives, after spending all day trying to not to die (whether it be that day or that winter), and lying on a straw mattress next to their six children in their freezing/sweaty one-room home, felt pouty if their sex wasn’t mindblowing. The entitlement to great sex, then, must have come later (at least to the regular folk). I would bet it had something to do with capitalism and the commodification of pleasure, generally, and sex, specifically. After all, how do you get the sex you deserve? Well, you buy the right products: whether that be, for example, diet- and exercise-related products, cosmetic surgery, or sex toys. Ariel Levy said it very well (watch the 2nd video down here especially starting at 1:22… but all the clips are great).

She said it here.

It’s actually a great question, one with possibly a complicated answer.

First of all, of course, would be that (for those of us who’ve read the entire “Little House on the Prairie” series to our children anyway) it’s pretty clear they didn’t feel entitled to very much at all. A piece of candy and a hair clip for Christmas, the luxury of a new food that came into season (followed by quite a lot of ennui because the new food might be all they had besides the usual staples for weeks or even months), a Bible and maybe months or years old “Godey’s Lady’s Book” magazines, and…

...considerable body modesty even between married partners… even when the nearest neighbor was several days ride away.

Which in the context of the times was probably all for the best because of a) the widely-held but obviously incorrect knowledge that ejaculating “as often as” ten times a year was believed to be more fatal to a man than drinking a quart of whiskey a day and b) the widely-held and absolutely true knowledge that sex=pregnancy and pregnancy = pregnancy-related mother and infant mortality.

Outside the U.S. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” is read primarily as a formal philosophical exercise into the limits of what is essential for a civilized life and what we only imagine we’re entitled to. The list is of what really is essential, he concludes is, um, spare. And roughly equal to… the material lives of the pioneer husbands and wives Lisa mentions. (I’ll get back to Thoreau in just a moment.)

On the other hand!

Whether we consider ourselves more refined, more spoiled, or simply more in denial than the Thoreaus and Wilders of the world, it’s certainly the case that we imagine ourselves entitled to refrigeration, indoor plumbing, a variety of wholesome foods, fair pay for honest work, and, more recently, decent bandwidth speeds. And so I think it’s fair to imagine that when we have sex we’re entitled to awesome sex. Or at least not miserable sex.

Which gets to what I think is the core of the complaint about that ad. Thoreau also talked about the men and women in his community who crushed themselves with debt, stress, and deprivation in order to maintain a facade of prosperity they felt they deserved. My concern about the ad is that rather than encouraging people (considering the illustration they probably mean specifically men) to enjoy sex while making sure their partners are enjoying it with them they’re instead creating an impression that the sex they’re already having is inadequate.

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Also, just to be a bit tetchy here, the problem with putting sex in the context of “deserved” is that it ties into the notion that sex is something that’s earned. Which implies that it’s not shared but transferable. Which means it’s a value that can be dispensed from those with a “surplus” (i.e. women who under the convenient ideology of the no-sex class paradigm wouldn’t otherwise have any use for it) to a) those who “legitimately” prove themselves worthy of “getting” sex or b) those who obtain it by, um, other means.

While reflecting on a New York Times article about Nevada brothels Michelle Cottle of The Plank says

...here’s the line that caught my eye: “There are about 225 women licensed by the state as prostitutes; no county allows brothels to have men who sell sexual services.”

Hmmm. Can this really be? If so, is it simply that no one has ever pushed for such a license, or do local Nevada lawmakers have an unspoken policy against men turning tricks?

Read the quote in context here.

She does a little digging and it looks as though the only attempt to branch out into male prostitution, an effort by Heidi Fleiss to open a brothel for women, got tripped up in a routine bribery scandal that evidently had nothing to do with either her or prostitution.

Cottle speculates

Some people chalk up the disparity to economics: What self-respecting woman would ever pay for sex when there are so many perpetually horny men to be had for free? But this question seems based on a market-model as misguided as the idea that Playgirl magazine was consumed by women. Even if you don’t think the gals will pony up for a casual shag, what about a high-end stud farm for gay men? Confident, well-adjusted, hot gay men might not consider paying to have their kinkier desires indulged, but what about shy, nerdy, awkward, homely, or semi-closeted types who long to be treated like a king for a few hours by some strapping young god?

My assumption is that the politics of the business are simply too fraught. Allowing women to rent their bodies to lonely, sweaty pervs with naughty-nun fantasies is one thing; giving the legal nod to man-on-man sexcapades is too hot even for Nevada. For an industry already concerned that its right to exist will be reversed by uneasy legislators, the pressure not to rock the boat must be intense. 

Still, I smell discrimination—not to mention a lost business opportunity.

To be honest I’m not as sure as Cottle that out of a national market there wouldn’t be enough women clients to support a single male brothel, but it certainly makes sense that there’s an adequate market for brothels that catered to gay men. I am confident that she’s right about Nevada, with all it’s bravado about relaxed mores and “what happens in Vegas,” being far too “traditional conservative” to upset the “natural order of things” where men are men and women are property.

Years ago the generally very health-conscious, and healthy, women of Marin County, California, had a very nasty scare. Compared to most parts of the country there was a higher rate of breast cancers, especially among younger women. Worse, even though people in the county took steps to increase awareness and mitigate possible causes the rate of new cases actually increased.

After quite a bit of study epidemiologists worked out that it wasn’t that Marin County posed higher-than-average risk factors for breast cancer, it’s that the relatively affluent health-conscious citizenry was more diligent about screening with the result that more cancers were detected, and detected earlier. And of course as word spread more women came in for screening with the result that more cancers were found. But while there’s still concern resonating in that community what’s important was that a lot of cancers that might have been missed, or missed till it was too late, were instead detected when there might be something to do about it.

Incidentally I don’t bring that up in a “oh those whacky Californians” kind of way. If 15 years ago even one link in a chain of coincidences (one being that I heard about all those early detections in Marin County) had broken I wouldn’t have gotten a “well, you’re too young but let’s take a look anyway” colonoscopy, and consequently today, 15 years later, what were then still-benign polyps would by now have almost certainly morphed into colon cancer!

I mention this because Dr. Kate of Gynotalk mentions a similar possibility about STIs

The CDC just released its annual report discussing trends in sexually transmitted diseases in the US (summary here). The upshot: chlamydia and syphilis are on the rise. And gonorrhea is stable (yay?) but at still-high rates. The CDC doesn’t track HPV or herpes in the same way, so we don’t know if these too are increasing.

Why in the world might this be a good thing? The increased rates of STDs may mean higher rates of infection…but it may represent better screening of these diseases. The scariest part of the STD crisis is just how many people have an infection, and don’t know about it. I’ve had patients of all ages tell me they’re too frightened to get tested, because they “really don’t want to know.” But the consequences of an undiagnosed STD can be devastating. Not only might you unsuspectingly pass chlamydia to a partner, for example, but the infection can cause irreversible damage to your fallopian tubes – leading to tubal pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain or infertility.

Knowing you have an STD may suck, but not knowing is worse.

She said it here.

What Kate said: Knowing may suck. Not knowing? Definitely worse.

(Actually I appreciate most of Kate’s posts. if I don’t get around to a separate post about it her answer about partners with lower libidos is just dead on.)

While cruising this week’s Half-nekkid Thursday entries around the HNT-o-sphere (hey, Osbasso says HNT has made it into Urban Dictionary.com!) I ran across a cool, clever, sexy
Photo by 13 Messages.straight male sex blogger at 13 Messages. He does great, creative self-photography, has a nice wry, dry sense of humor, solid erotic sensibilities that don’t seem to involve sexually deprecating either himself or others, and for extra credit although it sounds like he worries about it sometimes he also seems to really care about being a good dad, a good son, a good grandson, and a good partner.

When I started this blog there really weren’t many men doing this. And so to paraphrase the old Greatful Dead bumper sticker, I might not have been the best at what I do but I was the only one doing it. Good to see other men picking up the slack.

Oh, and not to slight anyone else who’s doing it too — it just happens I had an epiphany last night that while I wish more men were into taking a… well… hard look at the cool things about heterosexuality (as opposed to just repeating what we’re taught to say about it) I haven’t actually been promoting those who do. But that’s about later. For now, if on average you like the more erotic side of this blog you’ll probably also enjoy 13 Messages.

Ok, ok, actually the current photos have me in socks and… well, shoes and pants. And a belt, I think. But these are from a long set of photos I took that explored whether it was possible to look appealing in just a pair of wool socks.

Answer? Possibly. Though I may not be the best judge of that. (I keep thinking well, if it was someone of my preferred gender I’d probably think it was adorable… but… I’m not my preferred gender! Plus from my perspective it’s me and that’s always cause for a little cognitive dissonance. :-)

Anyway, possibly I’ll post more if that sounds interesting to anyone else.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

More like this here.