September 2007 Archives
Ok, so from my perspective breasts are definitely very, very nice. The old adage "more than a handful is wasteful" is a bit of a canard not least because humans can learn to palm anything from a magician's nickel to a basketball, but, again from my perspective, breasts of any size feel wonderful in my hands. They look wonderful too. And so, yet again from my perspective, it makes sense that after the "first base" of kissing I, like many men from my culture, would be drawn to their partner's breasts as the next place, the "second base" to reach for.
But... but... here's one funny thing about that. Breasts feel great *to me,* and for quite a few (but by no means all) women the hands of an even marginally clued-in man can feel very nice on their breasts. But in the baseball metaphor of getting to various "bases" with a partner we often completely blank out on the effectiveness of other, somehow non-"base" erogenous zones.
For instance thinking back on classic extended evenings with various partners (as best I can with my laptop suddenly suspiciously tippy in my lap... must be some kind of... um... lump under there) it sure seems like more partners have responded more aggressively to me when, say, I spend a lot of time kissing, licking, and even gently biting the sides of their necks and shoulders than when I've spent the same time kissing, licking, and stroking their breasts. (Come to think of it, I think more of my partners than not have been receptive to me lavishing attention on their breasts after first lavishing it on their necks and throats!) And yet convention allows women to bare their necks but requires you to cover your breasts!
So, again, I'm not saying that breasts *aren't* erogenous zones. (Heh, duh, and other one-syllable retorts. Also *men,* of course have breasts) I'm just saying that in the objectively grand enough scheme of things I don't know if they're so much more erogenous than, say, the throat, forearms, the instep of the foot, of fingers, palms, wrists, or forearms, of the backs or insides of knees, of lower or upper inner thighs, or hips, lower bellies, or asses (to name some of the more obvious zones) to warrant it's own metaphorical "base."
But that's not really exactly what this post is all about. It's actually about sex in the post-Victorian, post-Title-9 world where women are no longer expected to, and no longer *instructed to* by institutions of church, state, and medicine, to lie passively back and "think of England."
Anyway, when I think of the video pornography I've been looking at lately (I really only just started and I still vastly prefer text and still images) I've noticed a couple of things. First, in snippets that seem to be recorded by women who are sort of, I dunno, documenting what they do, women generally take off their pants to masturbate but very often don't take off their tops. Meanwhile when they seem to be more intentionally performing for an audience of (presumably) men then the top often comes off before the pants, and breasts are given more time and attention. (And if I didn't have one further point to get to I might stop here and ask whether you masturbate to "the bases" or cut straight to the chase. But I don't want to stop yet.)
The other thing I've noticed from these various videos is how extraordinarily active sex seems to be -- circularly influenced, I think, by industrial porn -- compared to how most people I've seen having sex in real life. Not only are the men involved as rumpy-pumpy as ever, especially when above or behind their partners, but women too no not only rock, roll, and gyre but shake, shimmy, rattle, and grind in ways that put their generally (in porn anyway) unbound breasts in what looks like uncomfortably uncontrolled motion.
Which leaves me wondering if, left to one's own devices, whether more women wouldn't leave their bras on for intercourse rather than removing them as their partners, generally, would prefer. In other words would we see more sports *bras* during sex if we used fewer sports *metaphors* involving breasts as "second base?"
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon says, dryly (emphasis mine)
A school in New York is having problems because their absolute “no bag” policy is a bit anti-female, surprise surprise. As any woman reading this is immediately thinking, the problem with not letting students carry even small bags to school is that female students have a very real need to carry pads and tampons. The danger of bleeding through your pants is statistically much higher than the danger that you’re going to turn out to be a school shooter, but that fact didn’t give the assholes who passed this policy pause.
I think maybe even a few months ago I might have gone totally off-course with a typical (and, I swear, perfectly reasonable) rant about how women have to wear purses because clothing manufacturers steadfastly refuse to sew pockets into women's apparel. And I might even have picked up on the counter-argument that many women, pressured to sacrifice practicality for a "clean silhouette," won't buy clothes with pockets. And a few months ago, after straining my little Y chromosomes extra hard, I might have opined that it's out of control to deny pocketless girls even a small every-day (and not just "special days") purse while their male counterparts slouch around in cargo pants with such big, baggy pockets that they can conceal not just an AK-47 and extra ammo but a carton of milk, a dozen eggs, and the collected works of Proust.
In those days I *certainly* would have steered clear of references to school boys and their boners. That, however, was then. This is now. Marcotte, having brilliantly lit a fuse under a rhetorical firework (danger of girls bleeding through their pants vs shooting up a school) sends it skyward where we can ooh and aah (emphasis, again, mine)
Of course, even if the rule was followed to the letter and security guards were miraculously discreet instead of getting a rise out of making teenage girls feel uncomfortable about their socially awkward fact of being members of the second sex—a fact teenage girls are just adjusting to, mind you—carrying the purse to class would broadcast loud and clear to other students that you were having your period. And we all remember, I’m sure, how teenagers are generally a classy set about each others’ sex-and-body mortifications. I guess they could make the mandatory humiliations a little more fair by walking around demanding randomly of teenage boys that they describe their unbidden boners.
The point being that a) unbidden boners (and during class in High School they're almost always precisely that) are why teenage boys have historically been drawn to the loosest, baggiest pants possible, b) boys, *especially* lower and "outcast" boys are as subject to teasing about their boners as girls are about their periods but (and here's why I think Marcotte's crafted a rhetorical starburst) c) unlike tormented girls, tormented boys and their boners sometimes *do* shoot up schools! (Take a moment to ooh and ahh -- that really was a wonderful device of rhetoric.)
And yet (emphasis mine one last time)...
The small Sullivan County school has been in an uproar for the last week. Girls have worn tampons on their clothes in protest, and purses made out of tampon boxes. Some boys wore maxi-pads stuck to their shirts in support.
After hearing that someone might have been suspended for the protest, freshman Hannah Lindquist, 14, went to talk to Worden. She wore her protest necklace, an OB tampon box on a piece of yarn. She said Worden confiscated it, talked to her about the code of conduct and the backpack rule — and told her she was now “part of the problem."
And yet... somehow it's girls, and their purses or lack thereof, that are part of the problem?
Quick question based on Tristan Taormino's column in The Village Voice about kissing. She makes the point that sex workers, for instance, avoid kissing in settings involving porn or prostitution because it's seen as crossing an intimacy boundary.
Taormino refers to some evolutionary psychology studies that -- surprise! -- confirm all common stereotypes about kissing! But since mouth-to-mouth kissing is far, far, far from universal among human cultures (and therefore studies hoping to "unlock" genetic tendencies may be, um, silly) it might be a bit old fashioned but perhaps more interesting to do some plain old sociology and see whether such reluctance is innate or derived from, say, that scene in Pretty Woman.
But rather than carp about misapplications of science I'm actually posting with a question that, whatever its foundation, does pertain to kissing and intimacy and that would relate not to sex work but to hookup-style casual sex.
When I was at my most sexually active, even after you both agreed you were going to have sex kissing might go on for hours anyway before even the first garments were loosened. I keep hearing (generally from disapproving sources) that contemporary casual sex is just too rigid and formalized to permit much intimacy so...
Question: you meet someone on, I dunno, CraigsList or in a bar or in the cafeteria or the Minneapolis airport or something and you decide you're going to have a nice pleasant sexual encounter but probably no further contact afterwards. So... how much time do you spend kissing in cases like that?
Me? I'd still want to kiss. Kiss in a friendly way at first, exploring, tasting, getting into each other's spaces without too much intrusion, mainly just teasing each other's lips and tongues rather than trying to plough each other's tonsils... in other words to kiss till we're both so warm clothes just seem like a bad idea.
Does that make me old fashioned? Or just less evolved? Or just flipping out of it if I think I even need to ask? :-)
And since I've been passing along short, pithy quotes (sometimes with too much extra commentary) I ought to mention Blue Gal's brilliant insight into the problem with "trophy wives" and other forms of turning real live partners into commodities:
There are men who think they need arm candy in order to impress other men. They are actually engaging in homoerotic dating, pleasing other men rather than themselves.
I'm not *quite* sure "homoerotic" is exactly right but her point that while beauty is all well and good (really, it's well and it's good) when beauty stops being whatever it is in its own right, becomes a proxy for some other form of competition between others of one's gender then yeah, not so healthy.
Susie Bright, in the course of a takedown of Bush-era terror-mongering and evidence-falsifying "all in a good cause" has a chilling reminder for all
There's two phrases, that for me, will always describe the Bush Years: “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and “Child Porn.” Our fears of annihilation and our children’s future being crushed were both hinged on these two... hoaxes.
...People fret over what monster will abduct their kid on MySpace, when statistically, the web site is safer than their church.
Again the issue isn't that there's no child porn, it's that lying about it, or, worse, ginning up stories, or legislation as in Mark Foley's case, or, as Bright points out, in way, way too many churches (of multiple denominations) as a cover for one's own sordid involvement is worse than counterproductive. %!%$!@$#~@$
Update: In comments Sharon says
I know what you are saying, but I think the timing is a bit unfortunate. Many of us are still getting over the shock of seeing that ubiquitous image of the 4 year old girl in Nevada-- the one being raped every which way in a video allegedly found in the desert.
While I agree it's embarrassing to me I don't agree that it's bad timing. I hadn't heard about the case of the rather frantic search for a child identified in a video tape in Nevada. The very good news is that they've found the girl and there's a manhunt for the perpetrator. The tape was evidently made several years ago and the girl has been with her family since the event. And thank goodness!
What's cool to me about this particular case, in the context of this particular post, is that the case was revealed, investigated, and successfully concluded based on ordinary police procedures. Furthermore the disgusting sons of bitches involved have been arrested and will be prosecuted for thoroughly appropriate on-the-books felonies and, if convicted, will serve appropriately long sentences.
It's *further* worth noting, however, that at no point does it appear that the nominally "anti-child-pornography" policies instigated against legal adult porn had anything to do with the arrest. Yet I suspect the case Sharon mention will be used to promote other anti-porn (as opposed to anti-child-porn) measures instead of, um, tracking down and prosecuting actual child-pornographers.
And because I want to be very clear about this: I'd really like to see more actual law enforcement of *any* form of sexual assault or abuse of *anybody* of *any* age, race, gender, or persuasion. And less diverting resources *away* from such efforts in order to harass otherwise legal adult pornography.
Miss Wolfe of Love in the Capitol on overhearing two guys discussing her blog and, since she hasn't posted a photo, speculating about her looks.
it was at this point i felt the need to let them know i was there, not me as miss wolfe but as me a woman. i gave a little cough and they looked over and noticed me. they both got a little flushed because i overheard them.
me: did you ever think she doesn't post her picture on there because she doesn't want some weird stalker guy? (i get a blank stare)
me: i am sorry for butting in but i couldn't help overhearing your conversation.
guy1: i never really thought about it.
guy2: i still think she's a freak.
me: you shouldn't say things like that because she could be sitting next to you. you don't know i could be her.
guy1 and 2: both laugh (they think i am joking)
me: besides you said that her advice helped you a little so maybe shes doing a little good. maybe she wants to help men please women better. isn't that good for you and your girlfriend?
(again i get blank looks, like i'm crazy)
me: sorry for interrupting, i needed to say something.i packed up my work and moved to a different spot. i didn't hear anything specific after i left. i don't think they were happy with me interjecting. the second guy didn't like me at all. i do remember hearing the word cunt as i walked away. i deserved it for interjecting but i couldn't really keep my mouth shut. to the guy that reads the blog, i do exist and now you had the distinct experience of the only reader to ever see me and now know who i am. my only advice to all you me, watch what you say because you never know who is listening.
Talk about a rare treat. Not so much the other guy's unkind remarks, and not so much the chance to get in the last word *on your blog* (although that would be sort of a treat.) But just to hear what an anonymous *reader* has to say when they don't know it's you. There just aren't that many of us who get the opportunity.
Ok, so I like to use the old philosopy of science joke about the cop who finds a drunk guy on his hands and knees under a street lamp, looking for his car keys. The cop asks where the keys were lost and the drunk says "way down the block." The cop says "then why are you searching here" and the drunk says "because the light's better over here." Waka-waka-waka. I actually love that joke because it applies to so much of what we know about society in general and sexuality in particular.
Earlier I had a cranky post about unseemly sexism in Will Saletan's article on differential ages of consent in Slate.com. I have kind of a love-hate relationship as a Saletan reader because he finds great information but I'm so often disappointed in his conclusions.
Now I happen *also* to have posted another cranky missal about how little is known -- or at least paid attention to -- about sex and gender as we age. In particular I grouse about how often sex and sexuality research has been conducted on college campuses where a) researchers congregate, b) research assistants tend to hang out, c) where it's assumed the college-aged will be more forthcoming, and, finally, d) where the young people conducting the studies won't have to think about sex between old wrinkly people in their 80s.
And yet... and yet... a question that's left unasked might be "what makes anyone think college-age people might be more likely to answer questions about sex than their elders. Well, while the *question* might be left unasked, we might *now* glean an answer from Saletan's not-so-questionable data. (Remember I like his data, I just worry about his analysis.)
So check this out (emphasis mine.)
Consent implies competence, and 12-year-olds don't really have that. In a forthcoming review of studies, Laurence Steinberg of Temple University observes that at ages 12 to 13, only 11 percent of kids score at an average (50th percentile) adult level on tests of intellectual ability. By ages 14 to 15, the percentage has doubled to 21. By ages 16 to 17, it has doubled again to 42. After that, it levels off.
By that standard, the age of consent should be 16. But competence isn't just cognitive. It's emotional, too. Steinberg reports that on tests of psychosocial maturity, kids are much slower to develop. From ages 10 to 21, only one of every four young people scores at an average adult level. By ages 22 to 25, one in three reaches that level. By ages 26 to 30, it's up to two in three.
Got that? We draw conclusions about gender and sexuality from research conducted under "street lamps" where the light might be better, yes, but also where on averag less than half the research cohort have reached psychosocial maturity! And yet we assume what we learn about ourselves in our street-light-lit aggregate 20s is every bit as true of our 30, 50 or 75 year old selves.
Now here's the tricky thing. There's *absolutely nothing wrong* with people in their teens or 20s. "Emotional maturity" is a biased term so I'm not saying "nothing's wrong" just to be nice. I mean *nothing's wrong!* But! I think making assumptions about what "must" be true about sex and gender *in general* based on more conveniently collected responses and recollections in our college years might be as incomplete as basing them on grade-school years.
I'm just sayin'
I mention very often that men and women seem to be way, way more alike than we repeatedly tell each other we are. One reason, I think, that I think I'm right is that -- sex instruction books, and college-age-oriented sex surveys notwithstanding -- I've never assumed that sex and gender disappear after, oh, say, graduation from college. Or after grad school at the latests.
Funny thing, though. As people age men's and women's outlooks really do become more similar -- men get more comfortable being emotional and snuggly, women get more comfortable being horny.
Another funy thing. We're old far, far longer than we're young. Yet most statistics are gathered, most books are written, most photographs are taken, and, of course, most conclusions are drawn before age 25 or so.
I try to mention this on a regular basis. This time, however, I've got a little backup from Daniel Engber of Slate.com (which has dedicated the week to stories about sex so I might quote them more often than usual.)
Old people have plenty of intercourse when they're not in an institutional setting. A survey published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a quarter of those between the ages of 75 and 85 were having sex, and many were doing it at least once every couple of weeks. A third of these sexually active respondents said they had either given or received oral sex in the past year.
There's no reason to think that nursing-home residents would be any less frisky, if left to their own devices. After all, we're talking about a mixed-sex population living in close quarters with almost endless amounts of free time. Already, staffers routinely field patient requests for personal lubricants, pornographic magazines, larger-size beds, and prescriptions for Viagra. And that's with the 1.6 million elderly residents who came of age before the sexual revolution. Within a few decades, nursing homes will bse replete with the desires and expectations of almost 7 million liberated baby boomers.
Rule #1: No yap about "throwing up a little in your mouth" thinking about older people and sex. Barring catastrophy I guarantee you're going to be whistling a very different tune within the next 50-65 years. In which case you're not really going to appreciate what today's elderly are subjected to:
For now, though, never mind what they want: We seem content to let our elders lie in celibate repose as they wait for Oscar, the death-sniffing cat. In most nursing homes, residents are relegated to narrow mattresses with very little privacy. Nurses enter rooms without knocking, and express disgust at masturbation or coupling, and in some cases, residents are even deprived of conjugal visits from their long-term partners. (This 2004 case study [PDF] from Clinical Geriatrics describes a 77-year-old resident who is instructed by his doctor to "take cold showers" when he complains of sexual issues.)
Sheeahright -- cold showers are going to work just exactly as well for you then as they do now, ok? The point being that while you probably won't have sex with anyone in their 80s anytime soon it's in your enlightened self-interest to pay sympathetic attention. That is all.
I'm sure it's a *complete* coincidence that all the examples in Will Saletan's article on differential ages of consent in Slate.com revolve around older men obtaining consent from younger women.
To be sure he includes a single "to be sure" (or in this case a "standards apply, in reverse") but by and large the piece is a nice exegesis on men squeezing girls to see if they're ripe.
The lowest standard is whether the partner you're targeting is sexually developed as an object. If her body is childlike, you're seriously twisted. But if it's womanly, and you're too young to think straight, maybe we'll cut you some slack.
The next standard is whether your target is intellectually developed as a subject. We're not talking about her body anymore; we're talking about her mind. When you were younger, we cut you slack for thinking only about boobs. But now we expect you to think about whether she's old enough to judge the physical and emotional risks of messing around. The same standards apply, in reverse, if you're a woman.
Personally, while I happen to acknowledge that most cases of consent do revolve around older men and younger women (not least because nearly *all* relations revolve such age differential.) And I also acknowledge that consent cases involving older women and younger boys, while often sensationalized, are comparatively rare. However it's *also* the case that while boy children don't have anything as distinct as an age of first menstruation, they are nevertheless as susceptible to the perils of sexualization, manipulation, and objectification by adults as girls.
I think, given that one "to be sure," that he intended the piece to work both ways. If so, though, I think if it were me I might have made the same points minus the loving details.
Can I just say that I'm sick and tired of "serial monogamy?"
I mean I might be getting a little radicalized to polyamory (a clunky-sounding word, by the way) here or something but does *anybody* think there's any more virtue in, say, multiple marriages and divorces (or their secular, non-gender-specific equivalents) than in a series of "promiscuous" flings? Or a nice single relationship with sex with friends on the side?
Seriously. I'm just curious. I heard someone use the term in conversation the other day and it's just been sticking in my craw ever since.
It's not that there's anything *wrong* with it, anymore than there's anything wrong with *real* monogamy, polyamory, or just having sex with lots of friends and acquaintances. What *is* wrong, I think, is imagining that any one of those things, *especially* serial monogamy, is somehow more virtuous than any other.
Call me a prudish libertine, or maybe a libertine prude, but it's just not floating my boat anymore.
Update: Along these lines (well, barely) Jess McCabe points to a long-shot conservative Bavarian politician who's proposed that
...marriage should last seven years, after which couples should make an active choice to renew their vows or dissolve their relationship, reports Reuters.
...
Pauli admits that the proposal is mostly meant to shake up the male-dominated, Catholic-dominated party, and it could well be a way to get people discussing issues of abusive, or just plain unhappy marriages.
Kate Sheppard of TAPPED reposts some interesting information that goes against any number of classic social-conservative assumptions about race, class, income, and promiscuity.
Foreign Policy has an infographic in this month's issue about sex, and safe sex, around the world. Seems the number of sexual partners grows with income; people in low-income countries average 6.3 partners, while high-income countries average 9.7. People in high-income nations also have sex earlier, and are more likely to have unprotected sex – with nations like Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand at the head of the pack. Also, Icelanders and Germans lose their virginity earliest, and your sexual preference isn't a very likely determinant of whether or not you use protection. The info comes from the world's largest survey of sexual behavior, conducted by Durex (the condom purveyor). Fascinating.
Dana Goldstein, also of TAPPED, adds a brilliant point
What strikes me about the sex statistics you cite, Kate, is that they really upturn the stereotype that promiscuity is primarily responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS in the developing world. Indeed, in Zimbabwe, for example, women's access to prenatal care is a stronger determinant of a population group's HIV infection rate than the prevalence of prostitution. Educating women and giving them comprehensive reproductive health care is one of the very best ways to fight AIDS.
Nuts and bolts of reproductive education and heathcare basics aren't as, um, sexy as fulminating about, say, abstience, but it's a better use of aid dollars. (And really, *if* someone wants to go squandering money on abstinence education it looks like Sweden, Iceland, and Germany have the biggest "crisis" in non-abstienence. And look how *their* societies are just falling apart! Oh yeah, and if you look at that Foreign Policy infographic, what's up with Turkey?)
Britt Peterson of the Democratic-but-neoconservative The New Republic, after reading this bit of a thumbsucker from NYT business writer David Leonhardt. has some good words about too may progressive men's relationship to feminism
... it's annoying the way (usually male) writers tend to twist them into the same tired old "women are overworked and virtuous, men are beer-drinking, TV-watching slobs" paradigm--it's Marge and Homer, Edith and Archie, Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen, etc. The author concludes: "Inside of families, men still haven't figured out how to shoulder their fair share of the household burden. Instead, we're spending more time on the phone and in front of the television. This weekend, I think I may volunteer to do a little dusting."
It is certainly true that women do more housework than men and that men should take responsibility for making a better balance. I just hate the idea that that's the best thing a man can do to make his wife happy--as if the feminist movement was only about getting men to pick up after themselves a bit more. Men are not children; women are not their mothers. Get over it! There are more important things at stake here than dusting.
Sin on a stick, guys, dusting -- voluntary or otherwise -- is the last thing on fucking planet earth *anybody* needs to do unless you just *want to look busy* ok? (Dusting is like the most futile, but possibly lowest-effort chore one can do. Unless you're vacuuming with a soft dusting attachment you're just kicking dust back into the air where whatever doesn't lodge in your children's lungs will just fall back into place.) So screw that.
And besides, the goal of equal distribution of chores is to gender policy as staying out of the oncoming lane is to traffic policy i.e. it's not about *fairness* and *definitely* not about everybody *slowing down* to an equal speed -- it's about streamlining so *everybody can go faster!*
I'm not sure exactly what the elimination of gender inequality will look like, and I'm not sure anyone else does either, but I guarantee it's not going to look like a giant spreadsheet-driven chore chart.
In fact, especially after reading, say, Barbara Eherenreich and Dierdre English's 1978 book For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women
In fact, if David Leonhardt really wants to lend a hand to gender equality he might instead spend the weekend pondering ways that feminism is not a zero-sum game. Because, after all, if men start noticing there are benefits we might be more inclined to get off our dead asses and start pulling for it instead of watching, sort of bewildered, from the sidelines wondering if an apron would make them look more committed while they dust. (Tip for Leonhardt, and anyone else: "Woman's burden" rhetoric and pointless duster merchandising notwithstanding, the flylady.net website mission, in effect, is to make domestic maintenance as small a part of one's life as possible.)
[I'm posting this a bit early -- it's a big birthday night for a close friend and I probably won't be around, and I'm unlikely to be posting any more tonight anyway. So happy just-a-little-early HNT. --fl]
So the other day I went to Costco and finally bought a deep freezer. I've wanted one for years because, since I do a lot of the cooking, and *if* you're cooking something like lasagnia, or eggplant parmesean, or three-round chicken soup or any of the other thousand things I like to cook, then since it's usually just as easy to make a bunch extra as it is to make enough for one meal I've always wanted to be able to pack up the extras and freeze 'em for later. So I broke down, went to Costco, bought a small freezer *and* one of those little vacuum-packing food saver things.
Anyway, they only had the floor model of the freezer left in stock, and didn't offer to deliver it for me or anything, so after they rolled it out to the curb and walked away I scratched my head, wiped my hands on my pants legs, popped open the back of my mini-van, dropped the back seat, tried to hoist one end to get a corner up into the back and... son of a gun I was able to pick the whole thing up.
Later, when I got home, I carried it around to the back yard, down the basement stairs, and plopped it in right next to the washer/dryer. (Which, unbeknownst to me, had given up the ghost Tuesday night.)
I'm not exactly sure how heavy the thing is but it weighs less than my two children put together, and I still sometimes carry them both up to bed. Anyway, I had the foresight to document me carrying a freezer since I might not be able to do it *that* much longer. If anyone had asked I wouldn't have thought I could do it now.
I did lift with my knees and not with my back.
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Oh, note: you can see the whole series here. Extra note: since I feel a little guilty about pulling my face photo last week (buckka-buck-buck) I've compromised a little: people on my "Flickr friends" category will see a little extra. (To get added to the list you only have to ask.)
Ok, so! Y'know how you go into, say, a big-box store -- the kind where they sell stereos, they sell TV sets, they sell computers, they sell washer/dryers, they sell those idiotic little waterfall thingies with the flashing four-color LED displays that play tinny little jingles? Ok, and y'know how when you set foot in one of those places pretty much every employee on the floor swivels their head in your direction?
And it doesn't really matter what their particular function might be in the store that day, they're all assessing you to see whether you're a punter just making the rounds or if you're "in play" to buy something (note: while *you* might not think you're there to buy, all but the newbies have a pretty good idea whether you *will.*) And they're checking to see which section of the store you're heading for. (Note: if they assess you as not going to their section, or, perhaps significantly, to a friend or rival's area, their heads turn back to whatever they were doing.) They all look, pay attention, know, because in addition to the simple business of retail sales there's the extra dimension of *sales commissions.* And whether they're directly involved in sales, or whether they're managers, or former sales staff, or even just the folks at the registers and returns counters, they know there's a score and they know who the players are.
And some of the sales guys are going to be desperate, and some will be cocky, some will be just going through the motions, some will genuinely want to help you and others will see only a commission. And while you're in there some will ask about your needs, and others will ask about your wants, and some will just ask about your family. And come time to make the sale some will offer the high-yield, low-value "extended warranty" enthusiastically, and others shamefacedly, and others "that's how it works," and others "it's all part of the game," but start to finish every single person who talks to you on the sales floor is thinking about the percentages they'll get for your sale, and the incentives their managers offer them for unloading this or that, and how close to their quotas you either are or aren't going to get them.
And one way or another you know that little extra consideration is there -- not necessarily motivating every sales person you meet (of course not!) -- and not necessarily at every moment (of course they're often genuinely interested in you as people too) but still always, always in the back of his or her mind your value as a commission... complicates their ability to relate to you as a person.
And here's the thing: one way or another you know it too. Enough so that, at least after the first couple of trips when you're young, you consciously or unconsciously erect a couple of layers of protection, of skepticism, of wary preparedness. And not so much out of outright mistrust as just... just... well, a kind of *sticky* feeling you get whenever you go into those places.
And here's *another* thing. It's not just the box stores -- the Friday night meat markets of retail sales. It's there in the Nordstroms and Brooks Brother's too, only you know that the policies there are far more genteel, the pressure on the sales reps there but oh so subdued compared to the poor slobs at Best Buy. And besides, the products there are so much more compellingly desirable, so classy and acculturating that knowing about a little commission motivation doesn't seem so bad... a small tradeoff really.
And then at the *other* end there's the openly desperate street hustlers, the "this fell out of the van in front of me and I already got one so I'm sellin' this cheap" stereo guys, the "hey buddy can ya spare a guy a buck" types, and sometimes the "hand me your wallet and nobody gets hurt" events that... on one hand have *nothing* to do with legitimate retail sales but... still... wind up being a lot about them wanting something you've got even if they're not even pretending there's anything in it for you (except, maybe, survival if you cooperate.)
And here's one final thing: Since you just know that's the way it is, that that's the way the world works... that making a sale is all the further you can trust a commissioned sales person... that *every place you go* it's just a matter of a little more or a little less or a little this way or a little that way that still has getting into your wallet at the back of their minds...
You decide there's simply no other way, that if that's the way the world works you're going to stick with the high-end stores where at least you get a lot of extra perks, or maybe the lowest end stores where you can cut straight to the chase. Or maybe (after getting burned a couple of times) you decide two can play at that game and you just start yanking their chains. Or even, *even,* maybe you finally find that shop or store or sales person who treats you like a human being (whatever else you might be to him or her) and you decide to stick with them... strike sort of a long-term deal.
Any of this sounding familiar?
If not then you're probably a guy just like me in every way *except...*
...your washer/dryer didn't crap out this morning and you went into a box store looking for new appliances right after opening, when you were just about the only customer, when every head in the place swiveled in your direction.
If it does sound familiar? I'm not positive but I'm guessing here that it's pretty much exactly how women feel when they walk...
...anywhere.
Correct me if I'm mistaken.
Just a quick follow-up on yesterday's post on the 10,000 cuts patriarchy imposes *on men* that, when you add them all up, make the whole fucking sexism/misogyny enterprise, and all the even greater misery it imposes on women, a little less than, um, worth it.
This morning I was eating breakfast with my daughter, who's in 3rd grade, and we started talking about when it would be safe for her to walk to the library by herself and...
...there just ain't no way an extra thirteen cents on the dollar, and any other equally puny "perqs" of the status quo, is worth having to think twice and maybe saying a little prayer before telling your 8-year-old "sure honey, any time you think you're ready."
Just in case you wondered whether (sometimes literally) murderous wide-scale misogyny and culture-based sexism hurts men, non-sex blogger Frank Pasquale of Medical Humanities Blog puts it in very simple terms.
In India and China, a population gap has opened between young men and women. There are now about 100 million more men than women in those countries and a few of their neighbors. Many of the "missing women" either were never born because of sex-selective abortion or died in childhood because families devote more medical and other resources to boys. "Missing women" mean men who will never marry. Socially unintegrated young men are associated with a variety of social pathologies; most importantly, they are the prime recruitment targets of nationalist and fundamentalist political groups.
100 million people aborted, infanticided, and medically and nutritionally neglected to death is rather a lot. More than a third of the entire U.S. population. Equal to 70% (69.735%) of all the women in the United States ages 0 days to 121 years! I know that international agencies feel obliged to speak in diplomatic language but really, when it comes right down to it, "missing women" is a term of art for "little girls who were killed for having double-X chromosomes." So there's no doubt that women bear the brunt of sociopathic misogyny.
But where exactly are Indian and Chinese men benefitting from this arrangment? 100 million "missing" women means roughly 100 million un-mated men (accounting for heterosexuality maybe 90-97 million partnerless heterosexual men.)
One could probably contrive a good case that *patriarchy* might benefit from a nearly 10% male surplus -- evidently one huge motivator is that in both China and India only son/daughter-in-law's, but not daughter/son-in-law's, support parents who are too old to take care of themselves. But I just don't see how sentencing roughly 10% of the actual population of men lives empty of partners or children are going to feel that well off either now as they're coming of age, nor later when they have no one to look after them.
Yes, it's a bit much to feel sorry for them since at least they're not fucking *dead!* But while I may just be culturally short-sighted, or heteronormatively biased, but life without the prospect of partnership doesn't sound worth living.
Either way, the upshot is that compared to cultures that are willing to shed sexist, misogynist traditions it's not a zero-sum game where where one gender benefits at the expense of another -- instead neither women *or* men benefit.
It's also worth pointing out that whereas, say, Americans, Canadians, and other North Americans don't practice outright infanticide on girls, and therefore *relatively speaking* we're bastions of gender egalitarianism, neither women nor men here are exactly getting a lot of synergy out of the status quo.
Richard of Down on My Knees has restored my sense of place in the panoply of BDSM-ery with a reflection on a post by Eileen of A Place To Draw Blood Laughing on what she calls being a "service top" or, as she calls it, a reaction top.
"Service top" is one of those bugaboo phrases. Probably invented by some online wanker in order to disparage someone one disagreed with him. Another weapon for that fatuous army of people who tell others they aren’t ‘real.’
While some dominants fear they lack in compassion others fret they’ve failed to pass Fascist Behavior 101. Relationships worth sustaining are beyond slogans.
Look. If I’m a service top … It doesn’t mean I’ll let you control the scene.
But it does mean that if I like you, I might make some of your fantasies come true. It does mean I want to know your buttons, and I want to push them again, and again, and again.
"Some online wanker" sounds about right. I've played BDSM-ish games with partners who wanted me to be the bottom because I'm endlessly fascinated with, and extraordinarily turned on by, that which gets a partner's motor running. Oh yeah, and also because I think it's fair and, finally, because I think it's healthier. *But!* Given my druthers I'm just so much more inclined to be dominant but dominant for the same reason -- I get extraordinarily turned on by getting a partner's motor running and there are just way, way more creative opportunities -- for me anyway -- to explore that when I'm on top. But I was told that that made me a mere service top and not a real top at all.
For instance, as I understood it, a "real" top wants to dominate any partner and not just those who's pulse quickens just talking about it. And at least since puberty I've never had much interest in binding or otherwise topping anyone who wasn't interested.
I know I shouldn't feel like I need outside validation for something that given me *and* a handful of submissive and/or switchy partners some very good times... but it is nice to hear it from Richard and Eileen. And now that I'm feeling better about it... hmm... who's interested? :-)
Update: When I asked "who's interested" I just meant who thinks it's interesting, not who wants to arrange a play date. (He said, blushing.)
Media critic Jack Shaefer of says of the recent stories debunking U.S. trafficking statistics...
"In fact, the United States has become a major importer of sex slaves," wrote Peter Landesman in the Times Magazine article....
The debate over the size and scale of the sex-slave industry will likely grow louder later this week: Trade, a sex-slave feature film "inspired" by Landesman's Times Magazine story, opens in theaters on Sept. 28.
And the odds that there is no deep PR behind the timing of the story?
I dunno. On the one hand if movie marketers were able to just gin up studies they'd surely cook something up *supporting* the premise of their movie. The Washington Post story instead appears to debunk it. Soundly Still, as they say, word of mouth is word of mouth and a month from now all most people are likely to remember is "some story last month about the same thing..."
Your thoughts?
Hmm. I'm having a hard time finding links at the moment but it seems like earlier this year there was a blog storm about "femininity" vs. feminism and how much, or even whether, the two can or should overlap. The upshot for me (if possible for no one else) is that some people identify as "feminine" a particular subset of attire and behavior best characterized as "wounded bird" femininity (as Joan Didion called it) or as best represented in hentai imagery (don't go here if you're easily triggered or at work.)
Well, in a pretty cool post about an otherwise toolish NYT Style Section article Jessica Valenti of Feministing identifies a corresponding "masculine" dysfunction in men.
Apparently, women in their 20s in several U.S. cities are (for the first time) out-earning their male peers.
The shift is playing out in new, unanticipated ways on the dating front. Women are encountering forms of hostility they weren’t prepared to meet, and are trying to figure out how to balance pride in their accomplishments against their perceived need to bolster the egos of the men they date.
...Young affluent women say they are learning to advertise their good fortune in a manner very different from their male counterparts. For men, it is accepted, even desirable, to flaunt their high status. Not so for many women.
This just makes me sad. Is masculinity so damn fragile that it can't handle being treated to dinner?
I think this is an *excellent* call on Jessica's part! I think it's merely a historical fluke that men have been able to define themselves as a baseline to which all others are, well, *other.* And consequently while that which is "feminine" as distinct from female or feminist has received quite a lot of scrutiny the same can not be said of the corresponding concept of "masculinity." Until now.
Now that we're finally starting to approach economic gender parity (in some parts of the first world) and even situations where women are better compensated than demographically identical men (in specific urban economies) we can expect to (finally!) see some interesting insights falling out about the combined set of affectations known as "masculinity" that stand distinct from essential male being or manliness.
And to briefly answer Valenti's question: yes, I think masculinity really is that damn fragile that it can't handle being treated to dinner. Given that "femininity" is just as often too fragile to handle, say, a partner who's not tall enough. (I have an otherwise perfectly intelligent, progressive, and cultivated friend who's so upset that she's taller than the beyond-her-wildest-dreams man that she literally lies awake stressing about it. Yes she knows it's stupid. Yes, she's still losing sleep over it.) Hmm, actually we can close that gap even further, I definitely know at least one man who's broken up with an otherwise ideal partner when he learned she made more than he, I also know at least one woman who's broken up with a nearly perfect man because he made less than she.
The point is that back when there were merely straight white males and "the other" it made no sense to dissect "masculinity" and "femininity" as a single phenomenon. Which, to be honest, might be why those feminine vs. feminist debates are sometimes so bitter -- when "femininity" is treated as a unitary event there's no coherent way to distinguish when, say, lipstick is for personal decoration or merely manipulation for male approval. It's early days but intuition tells me that this new idea -- inessential, and thus fragile masculinity -- that Valenti has brought out here could make a big difference next time the debate breaks out.
As a follow-up to the earlier posts on tabloid-scale trafficking scares and forced pregnancy as a form of partner abuse I want to stress that it's not necessary for pregnancy-as abuse to be an organized or international undertaking for it to still be a serious issue.
In fact, aggrandizing it with task forces and commissions probably won't work as well as a frontal assault on the predominantly social-conservative idea that a) men are just that way and b) it's the duty... indeed the *purpose* of women to attempt to tame, manage, or otherwise control men's bestial nature. In fact men, like women, and contrary to the opinion of most conservative and some minor schools of non-progressive feminism, are perfectly capable of managing themselves *if* and *only if* they're asked to. Because men, like all human beings, are also extraordinarily good at rising to what's expected of them... but often not much more.
And just to be very, very clear about my intentions for this post
- whereas the scope of pregnancy-as-abuse could be very large indeed (since it seems plausible I'm not pooh-poohing it at all) and
- whereas calling it a national or global crisis and declaring "war" on it would tend to serve to cannonize it in the minds of other abusers as a much-loathed and therefore much-desired strategy
- I believe a far less glamorous, far less sensational, but far more practical policy would be to continue pressing for men's recognition of their own moral and sexual agencies
- pressing for women's recognition that it's *not* their responsibility to rein in out-of-control partners and therefore to *get the hell out and call the cops* when their partners start pulling that shit, and
- pressing for general recognition of the equality and overlapping capabilities of men and women in all areas moral and otherwise, and finally
- Kicking the asses of gender exceptionalists who enable boys to grow up lacking moral compasses, and who encourage girls to put their lives, health, and sexual self-determination at risk by calling them failures if they can't "tame" their abusive partners.
According to this morning's Washington Post the scope of human trafficking in the U.S. has been vastly overstated.
[In 2000] Congress passed a law, triggering a little-noticed worldwide war on human trafficking that began at the end of the Clinton administration and is now a top Bush administration priority. As part of the fight, President Bush has blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and spent more than $150 million -- all to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States.
But the government couldn't find them. Not in this country.
...
The administration has identified 1,362 victims of human trafficking brought into the United States since 2000, nowhere near the 50,000 a year the government had estimated. In addition, 148 federal cases have been brought nationwide, some by the Justice task forces, which are composed of prosecutors, agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement officials in areas thought to be hubs of trafficking.
In the Washington [D.C.] region, there have been about 15 federal cases this decade.
Several points come to mind:
1) 50,000 sex, agriculture, and sweat-shop slaves really were being imported into the U.S. every year they would amount to 10% of all estimated annual illegal immigration!
2) The article says only 1,400 trafficked victims have been identified, or roughly one victim for every $100,000 spent looking. Even if most of the money *had* been spent by Bush administration officials (and Bush *didn't* spend it all since states with competent governance have also allocated funds), $150-200 million dollars should should have brought out quite a few more cases *if* the commonly referred-to numbers were accurate.
Now! Does that mean there simply *are* next to no sex, agriculture, and sweat-shop slaves trafficked in and into the U.S. every year? Well since at least out here on the west coast we read about maybe four to six news stories a year about the breakup of brothels, plantation, and sweat-shops there clearly are trafficked slaves in the U.S.
But here's the peculiar thing: most of the busts you hear about seem to originate from ordinary police work. They get a tip here, ask questions there, maybe plant a mole somewhere else, collar a low-level operative and extract a plea agreement, and then when enough evidence is gathered they lower the net. Meanwhile most of the funds *directed* at finding such cases seems to be coming up zeros. So what's going on?
HHS is still paying people to find victims. Last fall, the agency announced $3.4 million in new "street outreach" awards to 22 groups nationwide.
Nearly $125,000 went to Mosaic Family Services, a nonprofit agency in Dallas. For the past year, its employees have put out the word to hospitals, police stations, domestic violence shelters -- any organization that might come into contact with a victim.
"They're doing about a thousand different things," said Bill Bernstein, Mosaic's deputy director.
Three victims were found.
My guess is that it's the same old story of stereotypes trumping reality. One clue? They're assuming most trafficked slaves are sex slaves and they're assuming they're being trafficked into urban areas. And they're making these assumptions because that fits their narrative and...
... I might add that they're making the assumption that trafficking happens in urban areas because that's where you can find the primarily evangelical missionary and outreach organizations that have been getting most of the money (and, contrary to narratives about progressive feminism) have been doing most of the agitation.
Instead I'm pretty sure that, as with current cases in the news, if one wishes to find trafficked humans one needs to look in barely profitable agricultural areas in the U.S. where the marginal benefit of importing slaves is sufficient to overcome the already egregious ordinary exploitation of non-slave laborers.
What bugs me about this sort of story is that when they fall apart, as this story seems to be, as the missing milk-carton children story did, as the cannibal/infant-murder/child-sex/satanist daycare center stories did, as the "welfare cadillac" stories did, the net result is a diminishment of other, more prosaic, perhaps more intractable, but also *actual and signficant* problems like *ordinary* custodial disputes, *ordinary* child neglect and abuse, *ordinary* sexual coercion, *ordinary* involuntarily prostituted women, and *ordinary* exploitation of labor. Of which we have an ordinary fucking abundance but, evidently, no attention span to deal with.
An article in Sunday's ScienceDaily has a chilling reminder that the stakes in the contraception debate go way beyond the merits or demerits of abstinence: abstinence works if your partner cooperates. If instead he's actively trying to get you pregnant as a form of abuse then not so much.
In a new qualitative clinical study published in the September-October issue of the journal Ambulatory Pediatrics, Miller and her research colleagues report that a quarter of the teenage girls interviewed for the study -- all of whom had histories of abusive relationships -- say their partners were actively trying to get them pregnant. The study is the first in the general adolescent health literature to document the role of abusive partners in promoting teen pregnancy.
This isn't terribly surprising for a number of reasons. I'd like to enumerate three that may have bearing on a debate that, frankly, hasn't really changed much in 30 years.
1) It makes sense, in a world where social conservatives insist that children be taught that teen pregnancy is virtually the worst thing that can happen to an unmarried girl, that an abusive partner would consider deliberately attempt not just unwanted sex but also unwanted impregnation. (The intro to the article cites a case where a 15-year-old's abusive partner first tried to impregnate her and soon after pushed her down a flight of stairs, inflicting severe brain injuries.)
2) It makes sense, in a world where social conservatives insist that children be taught that women are one hundred percent responsible for morality and self-restraint because men have none, that boys, having nothing more expected of them, would consider not just unwanted sex but unwanted impregnation.
3) And finally, as I've observed elsewhere, there's a disturbingly rich sub-genre of erotica combining forced sex and forced violence. One wishes the social conservatives spent less time enabling (if not actively enjoying) such disquieting fantasies with their policies aimed at keeping contraception out of the hands the unhappy and unwilling subjects of those fantasies.
Now look. I'm not suggesting contraception should be more generally available just because a (I suspect) small number of abusive men are attempting to use forced pregnancy to control or punish their partners. It should be more generally available because it's the right thing to do. I *am,* however, saying it's naive to imagine, as many social conservatives (and perhaps Will Saletan) believe, that all unplanned, unwanted pregnancies originate during wanted sex. And if it's naive to imagine it, it's also unproductive to attempt to structure contraceptive policy in particular and sex education in general, on that basis.
See also (or not, I find it squicky):
- Wikipedia's Impregnation Fetish page
- Kristen Archives - Just Impregnation Stories
[Link via Viviane of Vivian's Sex Carnival --fl]
The article, originally by Russ Parsons, in the Sept. 6th, 2006, L.A. Times but available via Joe Paris at the non-sex blog Naturalist's Garden, begins...
It is almost impossible to describe a fresh fig without veering into pornography. The skin is nearly human in its tenderness. And the pulp within is as luscious as some exotic cross between fruit jam and honey. You don't so much bite into a fig as engage it in a long, sweet kiss.
The rest is a bit more prosaiac but yeah, fresh figs, especially the purple ones, are just like that. And even when perfectly ripe, figs have an indefinable earthy flavor and aroma that makes me imagine how mushrooms might smell if they were impossibly sweet instead of savory.
Knowing me... if you should back up against me you know I'd wrap my arms around you, pull you to me, scoop your hair out of the way with my chin and press my warm lips to your neck just beneath your ear, and, knowing me, if you then melted against my chest and raised your hand to pull my face closer, then knowing me you just know I'd grow firm before I'd kissed my way down to your shoulder. And knowing me the way you do, when you felt me press against your hip would you lean away knowing that I'd blush? Or lean closer... knowing that I'd blush?
Chelsea Girl of Pretty Dumb things has a nice meditation on the difference between stripping, which she once did for a living, and prostitution, which she did not do for a living and felt mostly fairly self-righteous about it...
Which is, I have to say, crazy. I have known a handful of women who have spent time escorting. I like them. They have been, without exception, smart, creative, articulate and interesting. Why would I need so desperately to define myself against them and their one-time profession? What purpose does it serve me? Why, in short, does it make me feel better about myself? I still don’t have a succinct response.
I do know that all of this elliptical solipsism has made me realize this: there is, in fact, nothing at all intrinsically wrong with being a fucking whore. There may be problems attached to it—not everyone can do it without suffering emotional scars, as the College Callgirl has recently written. Not everyone does it free from coercion or drugs or fear or any of the many nefariousnesses that surround prostitution. Few people, I suspect, choose to go into prostitution without pressing financial need, but I could be wrong. That could be the vestiges of my preconceptions talking.
I suspect that there will be a chick-and-egg relationship between whoredom and acceptance of it. Prostitution probably won’t be treated with the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves until people see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore, and people won’t see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore until whoring gets the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves. I realize here that I’m conflating all the flavors of prostitution into one flat pancake, and that this conflation is problematic. We as a culture seem to have more compassion but less tolerance for streetwalkers, while we have less compassion and more tolerance for escorts, for example, and that’s a class thing, and it’s a problem. I am, for brevity’s sake, lumping all prostitution into one indiscreet bundle. Whatever the kind of prostitution, I suspect there’s a catch-22 relationship in effect in terms of public perception. It’s a shame.
I suspect, though, that as the Internet has changed so much, so quickly, it will change this matter too. For it has changed me. Reading the writing of women sex-workers I don’t know, as well as meeting a few of them, has made me confront my own hypocritical attitudes. And that’s a good thing.
No one—whore, or not, or something somewhere in between—wants to be a fucking hypocrite.
The rest of her post is just as well written and just as well reasoned. Click here to read the rest.
Like Chelsea Girl the prostitutes I've met socially are no more hearts-of-gold than crack 'hos than moonlighting stockbrokers of myth and legend. Instead they've struck me pretty consistently as *people.* Other than long or short term career choices they're just not much different from most other people from their demographic backgrounds. Certainly pleasant enough people, no more or less so than anyone else.
So for me, like she, I think the *profession* of prostitution is circularly stigmatized -- bad because it's bad because... well... only whores do it. And that's sort of stupid.
A problem I *do* have with prostitution is the customers. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, vivisecting a right-wing tool for whining "How the hell did sex get put on the f—ing left? Really, since when are centerfolds images of cultural and political leftism," puts the issue front and center.
It’s almost as if women aren’t rights-bearing people worth mentioning, just warm, inviting holes that could be available for purchase if it weren’t for those damn anti-prostitution laws.
There was a line in one of the early episodes of the Brit comedy Absolutely Fabulous - Complete Series 1-3
There's nothing *wrong* with getting colonic hydrotherapy so you don't have to poop. Similarly there's nothing wrong with bolting food out of the pot over the sink and calling it "fuel." And similarly there's nothing wrong with hiring someone to increase men's dopamine and other sex-related neurotransmitters (strippers) or increace the neurotransmitters *and* extract their semen for them either (prostitutes.) But what's weird is that a lot of people grow up thinking any of the above examples is not like the other one when, in fact, they're all of a piece.
Well, except for the part where we have more respect for people who vaccum other people's anuses with soapy hoses for money than for prostitutes. Or the part where we tend to feel more sorry for men who eat over the sink than for those who hire strippers or prostitutes. Or the part where we balk at women extracting semen for cash but not boxing up food to be eaten over the sink. Ok, ok, perhaps I digress...
My real issue with prostitution, I guess I'm trying to say, is that it just wouldn't exist, or wouldn't exist in any recognizable form, if men didn't have this expectation that women's sexuality is available only through leverage since they have no innate sexual feelings of their own. Or the daft notion that women who enjoy sex as much as men do aren't the norm or, worse, aren't "good girls."
But inside my objection there's no room for objecting to women who choose that line of work, nor room for a line distinguishing them from women, or men, who provide any of the other services mentioned above. If there's a problem, *they're* not the problem.
Just a quick follow-up on my post about the heteronormative homosexuality wherein some subset of closeted men like Idaho Senator Larry Craig rationalize that as long as they seek only to *penetrate* other men they're not really gay! (Whereas, according to this mindset, men who allow themselves to be penetrated -- perhaps regardless of whether they seek or enjoy it -- are gay no matter how much homophobia they promote.)
Anyway, visiting the local library with my son I started thumbing through Mary Frances Berry's very interesting The Pig Farmer's Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present
1n 1916, the Georgia appeals court showed the usual tentativeness about describing homosexual behavior when it heard the appeal of Comer Jones of Sumter County, who had been convicted of sodomy. The judges noted only that Jones had performed oral sex on Earnest Walker, "who was then and there a man."
Walker was not culpable: he was only enjoying the sexual services of Jones, who was the pervert. [Empasis mine --fl]
The court upheld Jones's conviction.
Source: The Pig Farmer's Daughter, page 54
I think the problem ultimately derives from the peculiar idea that men and women have some kind of dueling dualities wherein one's "feminine" side conflicts with our "masculine" sides and where, if they get too far out of balance, you can have, for instance, feminine-dominant, and therefore effeminate, and therefore penis-receiving, and therefore homosexual men. Inside such a mindset a man's still behaving heterosexually when he's "enjoying ... sexual services" with another man because he's still seeking gratification from "feminine" men (or, for pedophiles and ephebophiles, pre- or post-pubescent boys)
Unfortunately the inner dual nature idea, like the larger two-spheres model of gender, is a social construct ("social construct," incidentally, being a fancy word for mass hallucination.) There is no "masculine" side of women nor "feminine" side of men -- there are only 100% men and 100% women who... do or desire what they do or desire.
And that's totally cool, by the way. Imagining or pretending otherwise, though? Not cool at all. Not least because it multiplies rather than eliminates false gender distinctions.
Update: Let's turn this around the other way and take a look: Could you call someone gay if he only got off on penetration by women with strap-ons? Duh no -- his partners are of the opposite sex and that makes him... heterosexual! Therefore anyone who gets off on penetration of other men is still choosing male partners and therefore is... homosexual. Which would only really be a problem if... you believed there was anything wrong with homosexuality. A belief which this false distinction about penetrator/penetratee, again going back *at least* as far as Georgia in 1916, seems to perpetuate rather than eliminate.
Update #2: In Pig Farmer's Daughter Berry casts a historical light on a number of peculiarities related to modern social dysfuctions about sex. Pretty cool book.
Update #3: Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors has two examples demonstrating consequential behavior that makes these distinctions more than semantic quibbling.
Here's a consolidated mass of random TMI Tuesday answers. I nicked the questions from Vixen at Secrets of a Blue-eyed Vixen.
2. Which super power (ability to turn invisible, ability to read people's thoughts, or invulnerability) would you take and why?
The virtuous superpower of my dreams would be to make people understand perfectly their opponent's point of view. Not so we could get all lovey-dovey (although that might be one possible outcome) but instead so that we'd have fewer stupid arguments about inessential details. (Smarter ones would be ok.)
The salacious superpower? Plastic Man / Reed Richards / Elastagirl thing where you can radically change the way your body's shaped. And no, not just so I could do the cliché things with cock or tongue. I'm thinking always being able to have my head in the right spot for full-on kisses regardless of position... which, I guess *could* have some bearing on the usual cock/tongue cliché. :-) But that and being able to just endlessly surge and pour against a partner's body till her body fluttered against mine.
3. Would you rather be tied up or tie someone else up? Why?
Yeah, I keep saying I'd be willing to let someone tie me up and/or spank me, and/or otherwise top me. And I *would* be willing -- I can be extraordinarily aroused by what floats a partner's boat. And I *know* people who can switch easily tend to be a lot better balanced overall than those who stick firmly to one side or another (if, for no other reason, than -- where's that superpower again? -- understanding how the other half lives can improve technique, not to mention creativity.) But... I have issues with being tied up that, come to think of it, have to do with being tied up by playmates as a kid, and... hmm... actually, as I mentioned a moment ago, while I strongly prefer tying to being tied that previous experience really did increase both my compassionate sensitivity *and* my wicked creativity so....
I gotta say, though, that there's something really lovely about just crossing a partner's hands over her head, pressing them down, and growling "keep them right there..." Not all bondage requires binding.
5. If they were naming new Dwarves beyond the seven what would your name be and why?
Blabby I'm afraid. I like to read non-fiction, ok, and I like to talk about what I read. At dinner many years ago a roommate, told my partner (only half-jokingly) "damn, you could just replace him with an encyclopedia and a vibrator, couldn't you?")
Bonus: What's the most embarrassing thing you ever bought?
This might sound funny but the most embarrassing thing I've bought would probably be my first Macintosh. I was really, really into the Mac when it first came out, but way too broke to do much more than look at them in magazines... on the magazine racks, since, for that matter, I was too broke to afford magazines either! Then I wound up in technology, documentation, and IT, which was all PC-based. And so when I finally had the means, motive, and opportunity to actually buy an Apple I'm constantly pleased by how superficially pretty it is but also less patient with it's underlying blind spots. That plus they (we now own three) crash way more often than the Windows boxes we replaced them with. Not sexy, I know, but hey, I'm a rebel. :-)
1. Where was the first place you ever had sex?
You gotta define sex, of course. First ever was probably when I was in kindergarten and a girl my age, who lived on the corner asked if I wanted to play something like doctor behind a building in our neighborhood. We just pulled off our pants but in that context it was powerfully erotic. First ever anything leading to an orgasm I was alone in bed sometime in maybe 7th grade, maybe 8th? I'm going to assume they mean first intercourse, and that would have been on a Valentine's Day in the carpeted hallway of my first partner's exuburban/suburban split level home (we did it there so we'd hear the garage door if her parents came home unexpectedly.)
2. Does size matter? (open to interpretation boys and girls)
Yes. Not so much for sexual sensation but woozie, would the economy ever collapse if we quit worrying about size and started worrying about health, happiness, and general well being. Not to mention that if people didn't worry about size then everyone in both the spam-filtering and spam-generating industries would be out of work.
3. Have you ever had sex in your office or your place of employment?
Yes. Even when I *didn't* work at home. :-)
4. Ever been skinny dipping?
Yes, but not until surprisingly late in life -- about 26 or 27. I went, of all things, with a couple of teenage girls (it was a moonless night and none of us saw any of each other.) Anyway, I was one of the volunteer guides in a sort of outward bound program for "at-risk" youth. A couple of the girls wanted to go in and I wound up going in with them to make sure nothing untoward happened. Turns out all the boys, many of them theoretically tough as nails, were just totally shy and freaked out and wouldn't go anywhere near undressing if there were girls nearby, naked or dressed.
5. Top or bottom?
As Vixen puts it in her answer to this question
Fuck. There is NO way to choose. Top means a guaranteed O. But bottom means *optimum* penetration…. And then there is everything in between… Lord!
See her other answers to last week's TMI Tuesday entry here.
I've mentioned elsewhere that whoever (metaphorically) gets to be on top seems more likely to guaranteed an orgasm, but then when I'm on the bottom it seems like I'm almost always guaranteed I get to enjoy *someone else's* orgasm. Or orgasms. But when it's my turn for an orgasm I prefer being on top.
That's enough for now I think. Off to bed with me.
So I've been slowly reading through the foundational documents of the 2nd Wave of feminism (now nearly 40 years old) assessing them for lost opportunities and potential late points of entry for a progressive philosophy of gender for men that complements feminism without *reacting* to it. (I think too much of what passes for earnest, um, masculistism or whatever, has tended to be in reaction to feminism when in fact we've got our own bridges to cross as well.)
And whereas I arrived at an understanding of the "no-sex" class paradigm independently, and while I derived it entirely in, from, as, and for a men's perspective on our socially dysfunctional, cuts-two-ways misconceptions about women, I think it's possible that was also, as usual, 37 years late to the show.
I've only barely cracked the covers but it looks Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch
If it does I couldn't be happier. We'll see.
---
Note: Again I've barely started the front matter but if the introduction by Jennifer Baumgardner is accurate then Greer may be a bit of a patron saint of 3rd-wave feminism. We'll see about that too.
Stay tuned.
Yes it's time to acknowledge that my nom de plume, "figleaf," is a sham and a lie and a sham of a lie. Yes, after more than two years of posting here, and many more posting under that name on various forums, I must confess that...
...while there are certainly fig trees in my region, in my town, even in my neighborhood there are no fig trees in my yard. I am a figless man and, again, a sham and a fraud and a sham and a fraud.
What you'll find in my yard are annuals and perennials galore, a few trees here and there including quite a large Douglass fir, a beautiful half-moon maple, a lovely stuartia, several eucriphia, and a handful of stray walnut and even elm seedlings scattered about. But, again, no figs, and therefore no figleaves.
What I have instead is not so romantic as fig leaves, nothing so Biblical, nor classical, with no connotations of Victorian Bowlderization, nor Comstockery, and certainly nothing so sexual as fig leaves.
What I have instead is...
...lettuce leaves!
My secret is out.
Whew! I feel better already!
[Ok, chickened out. Here's escape plan B. --fl]
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Ok, so according to Blue Gal of Be the Change, Baby (formerly know as Blue Gal in a Red State) today is Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Well yar, ahoy, and all that... but I'd like to set our tongues on a sweeter path, for the voices we associate with pirates today was simply the way one spoke in Elizabethan England. For instance according to the sponsors of the Heart of the Forest Renaissance Faire's Elizabethan Language Guide
Elizabethan English did not sound like modern English as it is spoken in England – no Cockney, no Uppah Clahss refinement. It was an earthy, vigorous speech.
...
AI AND AY: As in the words maid and day. It’s a flat A followed by that peasanty long I, so it’s sounded maa-eed and daa-ee.
H AND R: These consonants are always pronounced. Never drop the H, as modern Cockneys do. It’s Head, not ‘ed, Here, not ‘ere. The letter R is pronounced with all the glory of a pirate on the high seas: fatherrrr and ratherrrr and herrre, not fathah or rathah or heah. Avoid the Scots burred R, though, unless you’re playing a Scot.
And for practice might I suggest a bit of Romeo and Juliet? The following can be pronounced in any accent and still sound sweet, but as Romeo would have spoken like a pirate you try too.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!Source: Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II
On the other hand the following pretty much must be spoken like a pirate else the final lines don't rhyme:
O, she knew well
Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.
But come, young waverer, come go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households' rancour to pure love.Source: Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 3
Speaking of those last lines: not that I want to add any more ammunition to the "come" vs "cum" porn-spellilng debate but the pronunciation guide reminds us that *if* one were a pirate, or an Elizabethan, one would pronounce the Latin cum and the English come the same way
SHORT U: As in the words cup or run. Sounded like a long U or double O also, so they come out coop and roon.
Now having grown up in Souther Appalachia it's nice to learn have confirmed that ridge-runner speech isn't that far from the old King's (or Queen's) English
EA: As in the words head, bread, or dead. These are given a long A pronunciation, which makes them sound very American Country: haid, braid, daid.
But I'd be no more enamored of a Talk Like Gomer Pyle day than I am of a Talk Like a Pirate day and so I'd rather seal your lips with kisses, trap your tongue tip between my lips, and reduce your vowels from ayes to sighs. And if kisses would not suffice...
Were kisses all the joys in bed,
One woman would another wed.Source: William Shakespeare, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, IV
... Cupid's left me such final arrows that I might fill your quiver overflowing.
In her comment to my Pimply-faced youth post the other day Quilzas said
But as for the first-time sex itself. Hm. Well, actually, first time for me was anal. I wasn't quite on birth control yet and I was tired of waiting. It was fun, we had a great time. :D
Last spring a lot of people had fun mocking "intelligent designers" for their claims that, say, bananas are curved to fit the palm of our hand and therefore creationism is true. One twist that came up was expressed nicely in comments
Imagine that in an Australian accent:
"Now, what I'm doing now is dropping my pants and bending over. Now, look at that. Notice that my anal opening is round and roughly the width of your penis. Go ahead and show them. Stick your penis in my anus. There. See how perfectly that fits? Also notice that my anal cavity goes deep enough to take the whole shaft. Go ahead and show them how you can repeatedly move your penis in and out. Good. See how perfectly that fits?"
So...
The world of heteronormativity and, especially, our now-basic-but-extremely-recent ideas about basic hygiene don't cultivate us to see it that way, and for a lot of us age and experience tends to blur our earliest attempts, but in terms of things one can do with a penis anal penetration isn't that much harder or often any more awkward or uncomfortable than vaginal penetration. Nor (since, upon rereading Quilzas's comment, I notice even here my cultural conditioning is trying to take over) need anal penetration be any less than "fun, we had a great time. :D"
Except for a two-year period of surgically-facilitated fertility I've had vasectomies since I was 21. But several of my partners mentioned that they chose anal intercourse as an alternative to abstinence when birth control was unavailable.
Now at least according to a blogger named Mark Pincus this may be another one of those generational things, e.g.
...we found that most urban 20 something women saw anal as normal while those in their 30's and 40's saw it as something taboo, racy, raunchy, slutty (take your pick).
So... I'm curious. Assuming nobody involved is a clueless dimplick and also assuming your experiences were voluntary and intentional, *and* of course, assuming you've tried both, how would you compare your first times trying vaginal and anal intercourse? And which did you try first?
For me I think it was actually a lot easier trying anal penetration for the first time. For one thing I was older, I already had a lot of experience with vaginal intercourse, and since I was out of adolescence I think I just had a lot less of that teenage angst-on-the-line, whoa-this-is-it feeling. For another my partner was way more experienced and so was able to take the lead and tell me exactly where, when, how, and how quickly she wanted to proceed. Which is a good thing because I was so heart-thumpingly solemnly/aroused/thrilled/honored/curious, not to mention head-over-heels in love anyway, that I was practically trembling. (I think my partner and I trembled the first time I had vaginal sex as well, but that had a lot to do with our dead fear of pregnancy combined with our dodgy contraception techniques.)
Just a note to say I seem to be recovered from my foolish oral surgery. Thanks for all your kind comments wishing me well, remarking on my photos, and critiquing and adding intelligent insights to my posts. I appreciate you all so much. I've finally responded to each of you. Sorry about the delay.
Thanks!
figleaf
I used to use analogies between food and sex so often I created a separate category for it. And still think each is a great analogy for the other.
Not sure why I was thinking about this yesterday while walking along the beach but I started thinking about how... cliché it is that evolutionary psychologists/sociobiologists/social-darwinists/whatever seem to focus so much attention on the evolutionary psychology of sex, constructing *elaborate* "genetic" justifications for the "evolutionary benefit" of wealthy white Anglo-american women wearing strapless evening gowns while their partners wear tight-collared tuxedos.
Oh, got it. I started out thinking about how much I didn't care to eat fish when I was growing up in Southern Appalachia, and how my midwest-raised partner feels the same because in neither area where there really very many options for fresh fish, and I was comparing that to my own children who just fall all over fish when they can get it -- smoked salmon, fried salmon skins (which is a lot like fish-flavored bacon so isn't as awful as it sounds... to me), and, especially, sushi and sashimi. Yup, that's it. That's the point where I started thinking that if you look at something *even more* fundamentally survival oriented, like food choices, you'd think evolutionary psychologists would be all over that since
a) everybody has to eat
b) we have to eat far more frequently than we have to have sex
c) we have to eat far *far* more frequently than we have to select partners
d) people in almost all cultures are far more willing to disclose what and how they eat compared to with whom and how they have sex.
Yet it's pretty much crickets on the old food front.
Anyway, one common trope of the EP crowd is to say something inane like "does date rape have evolutionary benefits? Well, there's one really, really obscure tribe in the middle of a southeastern University campus that seems to rely on it for mate selection... blah blah blah" as if what obscure groups do says much about the rest of us. And yet both they and, to a certain extent we, lap those sorts of stories up.
But outside of a couple of guesses about our early diet based on current trends in obesity (early humans liked sweets and fats too but they weren't very abundant) you don't really see a whole lot of EP theorizing about diet or eating practices when, when you think about it, our social practices around dining -- for instance who we will or won't eat with under various circumstances -- are at least as complex as our practices related to mate selection or sex.
Funny how we study one but not the other eh?
(Oddly, I think if *I* were to go into EP I'd actually spend a little time studying *that* -- our differential interests in cultures of food vs. cultures of sex. But that's a story for another day.)
I'm away from home yet again and too many other friends and family members saying "you on that laptop again? It's *nice* outside!" So posting will be sparce, again, till Monday. (And besides, it really *is* nice outside here! And my only access is dial-up to a *long distance* access point!)
Ever notice how some of the nicest "church-lady" dresses, the ones with the tasteful but sometimes loud floral prints, the scooped collars, the fabric just heavy enough not to really require a slip, the contours not really tight enough to be too shockingly form-fitting, the hem well below the knees... y'know the kind you wear with the big broad-brimmed hat and the big clasp-handle purse?
Y'know, the kind a partner can pull up to your collarbone to reveal nothing underneath but self-garter stockings, the fabric heavy enough that should he drop it at the sound of a passerby approaching you're again church-lady modest, the kind where the neckline falls open enough for a man's large hands to cup your breasts and thumb your nipples stingy-hard, the kind where the broad brim can be lowered to shadow away your flushed cheeks and cock-plumped lips, and the purse large enough to hold... whatever suits your fancy, sure, but also large enough that you or he can rest a foot on it. The floral prints nicely camouflage any wayward drips or stains. And speaking of camouflage... no passerby would ever suspect someone in a proper, long church-lady dress. Certainly not!
Mmm, long dresses! The phrase of the day is long dresses.
Jessica of Feministing has the dirt on the ultimate duty-driven sacrifice of the "purity ball" father: actually *taking* the daughter's virginity!
A pastor in Australia who recently pled guilty to raping two of his teenage daughters said he only did it in order to teach them how to be good wives:
The man told the court the sex was not about fulfilling his desires but about teaching his daughters how to behave for their husbands when they eventually married, as dictated in scripture."
Just a thought--how far off is this from Purity Balls?
After all, it's all about fathers owning their daughters' sexuality and preparing them to be "good wives." And while incest isn't explicit in the purity ball madness, it sure is implied. Thoughts?
I've mirrored her whole post because I couldn't think of a good way to excerpt it.
This resonates with a theme I heard repeated over and over when I was coming of age: better that (generally above-average sexually desirable) young woman have sex with a (virgin-deflowering-experienced, often self-appointed) older man than some "pimply-face" and/or "snot-nosed" kid her own age who didn't know what he was doing... and therefore... what? Put her off of sex for life?
Which implies, of course, that *she* wouldn't know what she was doing, let alone have next to no say in the outcome of her first encounter with partnered sex.
It leaves me wondering if the gender specificity of the arrogant old saying "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime" has anything to do with the blindness with which we tend to approach sex education for girls. Because, after all, if she had a good, solid, comprehensive (academic) education in sex, and if of course her prospective partners did as well, then it seems that she'd have
- realistic expectations rather than hopelessly romanticized ones
- a pretty good idea of the mechanics
- a very good likelihood she'd have worked her way up to it in an if-not-orderly method then still not a blind or chaotic one.
- an almost certainty that by having *ownership,* or at least *equal* ownership of both her sexuality and her experience of it she wouldn't feel "screwed" if it didn't go as she expected because, contrary to "pimply-faced youth" mythology, her expectation would be that as long as everyone's on an equal footing there's nothing wrong at all with a little mutual fumbling around on the way to figuring it out.
- no damaging expectations that as a woman someone else, wiser or no, is supposed to be the one to "take care of it for her" instead of her taking an active role of her own.
And please not I'm singling young women out here, although it is appalling that current expectations of them should be so flipping backwards that the Aussie pastor could imagine he had a leg to stand on. After all, think how astonishingly ill prepared young *men* must be for even one of them to imagine it's *their* responsibility to *train* rather than to *partner* with their, well, *partners!*
So! What expectations were drummed into you about your first time? (Note: since not everybody is heterosexual, neither your experiences nor your expectations may have been heteronormative. If not I'm still just as interested in the expectations you grew into and how they affected you.)
[Note: I'm not sure why people actually *want* to eat pain killers, well, except to kill pain I mean. I'm just taking the equivalent of Tylenol 3 and... well... let's just say I can't tell if the following post is profound or profoundly boring. Opiates? Bleah! Just say "no, thank you." :-) --fl]
I'm too lazy (also analgesic'ed) to find links at the moment but I'm pretty sure you can trust me when I point out that numerous studies over the years have concluded that people often generalize in the direction of stereotype even when most or all members of the stereotyped group *they know* don't fit the stereotype at all.
Example: People overwhelmingly think Congress is corrupt but believe *their particular* representative is an exception; people tend to overwhelmingly believe public schools are bad while also tending to believe theirs is an exception.
And of course we're probably all familiar with the eternal refrain of bigots everywhere: "some of my best friends are..."
It's sort of like my joke about Apple Macintosh users (which I say as an -- again reluctant but sincere -- convert) there are two things every Mac owner believes: First that all Macs just work; second that "mine's the only exception."
Often the consequences are relatively benign as when we grumble that traffic would move more smoothly if everybody *else* would get off the road. Other times the consequences are horrifying as when
- some conservative and middle class consumers of abortion and contraception services support anti-choice initiatives on the assumption that *they're* the exceptions to the "vast majority" of service seekers who are really "irresponsible sluts."
- some "responsible" people, mostly men but sometimes women, who get all worked up about "big black men" who "won't take no from white women" when in fact most women who are sexually assaulted aren't assaulted by strangers of other races but by people close to and sometimes quite close to that, often, believe they can trust.
- adherents of a monotheistic religion claiming descent from someone who's name is spelled, alternately, Abram/Abraham/Ibrahim, believe total war must be declared, and total victory sought, after the adherents of a monotheistic religion claiming descent from the same guy but who insist on a *different spelling!*
Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo ends with a man, a friend of the now-imprisoned scientist, encountering some small boys who are shouting "witch, witch" outside a cottage door. The man holds the boys up to the window, showing them that the ominous shadows they see on the inner walls are just those of an elderly woman making her supper. They see with their own eyes that it's only an old grandmother inside, yet when the man puts them down and walks away they again start crying "witch, witch!" Their knowledge of the stereotype overwhelms the evidence of their eyes!
Now of course the boys are characters in a play but even though we're not we *still* sometimes find ourselves playing similar parts...
...if at no other point then at the point where someone *really does* meet the expectations of a stereotype -- when the panhandler *really does* reek of boozy indifference, when the junkie *really does* mug you, when the Oakie from Muskogee really does whump you because he doesn't like your bumper sticker.
And it's right there, right inside that shocked, almost *instinctive* reflex where we say "Oh my God it's true..." that we have to ask ourselves...
...if we're so shocked by that experience then clearly *it must be a novel experience!* And therefore, rather than confirmation of the stereotype, that "they really are 'all that way,'" perhaps the shock that we mistake for recognition is really shock *at the anomoly!*
I mean, really, individuals who matched the stereotype were routine then we'd feel no shock at all, right?
I used to participate in Sam Sugar's Sugasm pretty regularly. Not exactly sure why I stopped but I thought I'd try it again. What appealed to me about it was Sam's direct-access approach -- the sole determinant is whether you choose to submit, the sole obligation is to repost the digest when your submission runs.
So anyway, for old time's sake here's...
The best of this week's blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #97? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.
This Week's Picks
Tips and Sugestions on having sex with me.
"I'm a slut, but I'm an ethical one"
Wet
"You can smell this wet. It glistens on my thighs"
A Brief Meeting with the Girl Next Door
"You can pay me by teaching me how you like to be licked"
Mr. Sugasm Himself
Stacked Decks
Editor's Choice
Concentration?
Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Beautiful
How To Set Up a MFF/FMF Threesome (and Live)
"Sexual Fantasy # 1 : For Art's Sake"
Tara's Private Diary: Guilty Pleasures
"We're just good friend"
NSFW Pics & Videos
Half-Nekkid Footballer
A Jewell in bondage, pantyhose and latex
Pagan Lust
Pamela Anderson Showing Thong in See Through White Clothes
Valerie Vasquez Nude
Erotic Writing and Experiences
Hot House pt. 1
The Missing Sex Scene: Superman
Now
Syncronicity
Theater
To the ground floor
Vivid memories, solo vacation edition
Sex News & Satire
The Great Porn Debate
Half-Nekkid Schoolgirl
Retro Sex Blog Turns 1 Year Old!
What if...? Suzanne'ss story
BDSM & Fetish
Catalina loves Sexual Fantasies
Center peace
Full Circle - Part II
Good morning little schoolgirl
Hair
Ring
Sex Work
Labor Day - but not for sex workers?
So I'm back. Not nearly as traumatizing as some of the procedures I've been through in an oral surgeon's chair. Still not pleasant.
While my state was, of course, mediated somewhat by a Halcyon muscle relaxer (or some other kind of downer thingie) I think that as a patient I have a lot of highly submissive reactions to pain. If not exactly the "subspace" bottoms speak of then at least a highly cooperative, let's expedite this sort of mindset. (Cooperating when someone says "Open real wide so we can jab this needle inside your gum," and then, later when your head's vibrating and shaking as they plane away bone and you're resolved to keep your mouth open wide so they won't have to keep asking? I can't be sure but it sounds awfully subby to me.)
So there I am medically, if not at all sexually submissive, getting what in BDSM terms would be considered extreme needle play, knife play, blood play, and (though I trust this isn't common!) bone play! And marveling mildly that one is considered bad and the other good, and that if it's bad it's bad only because one or both of you enjoy it for sexual reasons... but not *health* reasons because, after-all-we-all-know, enjoying pain for health is healthy. (If this sounds incoherent it's because I don't get it, not because I'm still addled by drugs that are legal because of a medical use that would be bad for recreational purposes but aren't bad even though they feel good because it's for my own good and not to feel good. Sigh. We're all so weird.)
And the thought that kept going through my head was... has anyone ever systematically studied the mental states of "subspace" in terms of clinical shock or other clinical conditions such as extreme-sports or (I dunno, maybe battlefield?) engagement with sustained physical impact?
I'm asking because we seem to recover so well from things like, well, boxing or tackling, non-neck-breaking falls from horses, soccer-ball headers, lacrosse-stick whacks, and so on, not to mention 30 whacks with a paddle or 31 stitches in our scraped-out gums... yet in other circumstances we sometimes go into much more serious -- possibly even life-threatening -- systemic reactions after unexpected (or expected but dreaded) action that objectively might not seem as corporeally traumatic.
Just curious.
So there's an old Seinfield skit about how nobody ever plans about moving back in with their parents. "Yeah, I'm going to graduate from college, get a good job, meet a nice girl, and then, y'know what? I think I'm gonna move back in with my folks."
Yada yada.
Anyway, nobody brags about getting pereodontal surgery either, and in just a few minutes I suspect I'm going to find out why.
I'll probably be out of it for the rest of the day. I may not feel like writing but just in case, if posts or comment replies seem a bit loopy you'll know why.
(See, for instance, discussion on Shay's blog.)
I've always come down on the "come" side of the debate. I've never been impressed with it because I remember it first showed up in the same hippie-dippie era as words like "luv" and re-spelling names that end in "y" to end in "i," and that little thing where people dotted their i's and j's with circles. And so for me it's always smacked of a kind of adolescent deprecation of something that people were sort of embarrassed to talk about.
There's also the problem of tenses: Sure, "Whatever you do don't stop licking just... exactly... like that... I'm ...about to ...'cum'" works, at least in the sense that that's how you might spell the word your partner actually says. But that leaves the writer in a bind when expressing how one tells one's partner afterwards that "I got so excited when you said you were about to 'cum' that I ____ too." A survey of modern American and English usage says that about 99.8% of actual English speakers would use the word "came." But if the present tense is to be spelled "cum" then how is one to spell the past tense? (Note: diehards evidently depart from English and write "cummed" although I've yet to meet a live human who's used that word out loud.)
So!
After all that preamble you might expect me to dismiss the word "cum" like a lame, low-rent, suburban porn shop, phthalates-contaminated jelly dildo. And indeed I wish I could.
...if not for this entry from TheFreeDictionary.com
cum 1
prep.
Together with; plus. Often used in combination: our attic-cum-studio.
[Latin; see kom in Indo-European roots.]
Hmm. "Together with?" Nice. "Plus?" Great!
And when you do go looking for the Indo-European root kom you get the American Heritage Dictionary's definition found at, for instance, Bartleby.com we learn
ENTRY: kom
DEFINITION: Beside, near, by, with.
Derivatives include enough, handiwork, and country.
1. enough, gemot, handiwork, witanagemot, yclept, yean, from Old English ge-, with, also participial, collective, and intensive prefix, from Germanic *ga-, together, with (collective and intensive prefix and marker of the past participle). 2. cum1; cooncan, from Latin cum, co-, with. 3. co-, com-, from Archaic Latin com, with (collective and intensive prefix). 4. British Celtic *kom-, collective prefix, in compound *kombrogos (see merg-). 5. Suffixed form *kom-tr-. con1, contra-, contrary, counter1, counter-, country; encounter, from Latin contr, against, opposite. 6. Suffixed form *kom-yo-. coeno-; cenobite, epicene, Koine, from Greek koinos, common, shared. 7. Reduced form *ko- in compounds (see gher-1, mei-1, smei-). (Pokorny kom 612.)Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
and then if that's a bit far afield the Collens Dictionary brings it back home very nicely.
cum prep. used between two objects to designate an object of a combined nature
In other words, whereas it's unlikely that the 60's-era teenie-boppers who wrote "Bobbi luvs Terri" on their Nifty brand binders with electric-blue ballpoint pens, or the underground comic artists who wrote "Doobie cums in Red" the word "cum" isn't the worst possible word!
In it's Latin, and earlier Indo-European forms "cum" puts people together, as in "companion" or (for the polyamorists among us) "community." "Come," on the other hand merely indicates that one has arrived. But arrived from... where exactly?
At any rate, 99.8% of the time I'm still going to prefer the English rather than the Latin spelling but (channelling goofy 'winger language guy James Kilpatrick) the word cum, properly italicized of course, is an appropriate designation for orgasms one has *with* one's partner.
So the word of the day, much to my surprise and possibly even to my chagrin, is cum. Mmm, cum. Not bad! Let's all come together on that.
Since I'm a sex blogger I'm obviously very interested in sex (and sexy people) but since I'm also a (reluctant but sincere) monogamist I usually pose invitations for in-person meetings with some variation on "let's get together for a pants-on conversation."
"Pants on" being my euphemism for an encounter that might have sexual subject matter or erotic overtones but doesn't include any actual sex. Intercourse without intercourse if you will.
Anyway, while walking over to the local coffee shop thinking about possible ways to expand things into more in-person contact. And I started thinking about my no-pants thing and wondering whether it was even necessary or whether it was overkill, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, as I rounded the corner my little lightbulb went off and I thought "of course 'pants on' says nothing about shirts...."
And I blushed. And then, ever the prudish libertine, I blushed again because I'd blushed the first time.
Late last month Louise Livesey of The F-Word Blog and a bunch of other progressive bloggers wrote about Southwestern Bapist Theological Seminary in Texas offering a new B.A in Biblical homemaking.
Southwestern Bapist Theological Seminary in Texas (not to be confused with Southwestern University on whose name it obviously trades) is now offering a 23 hour minor degree in homemaking to it's female students. Yes that's right, it's women only (and crushingly advertised under their "Women's Programs" banner). Now their straightforward Women's Studies programme is, as you'd expect for a seminar, dedicated to biblical womanhood and how to explain the bible to people through outreach and missionary work. They also offer a 13 hour concentration in Seminary Studies for Student Wives (yes that's right, learn how to be a baptist wife) which is usefully organised when hubby will be finished for the day so after cooking and clearing dinner you can head over and get some Higher Ed credits in on how to cook and clear and support hubby better. Lucky for her the core course, "The Wife of the Equipping Minister" is provided free (heavens forfend you might have to spend money educating her) and childcare is free so you don't even have to leave the kids where they might disturb hubby's evening.
I was sort of at a loss to comment when I first read about it. It might be two weeks too late but yesterday I read the perfect response written almost 30 years too early!
The hope that education will make housework interesting dies hard.
Source: Barbara Eherenreich and Dierdre English's 1978 book For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women
Not the only reason to buy the book, of course. It's also an incredible resource for the "opt out" debate.
Whenever she reaches under the counter
Her top falls open
Just as her hair falls off her shoulder
To block all light
(22 Words)
So it's harvest time, and that means that at least in my region we're having a bumper crop of farmer's markets all over town. And since my family has a lot of connections to small-scale agriculture we're pretty committed to buying locally grown produce. And that means this time of year we go to lots of farmer's markets. (If you like to cook and like to try new ingredients it's also cool to see all the variations on the basic hatfull of products we get at supermarkets -- even trendy Whole-Foods supermarkets.)
Anyway, one thing I've noticed is that you just don't see a lot of small produce farmers, small-scale fishermen or -women, or small-scaled ranchers who aren't height/weight proportional (as they say in the personals.)
I hadn't thought much about that before but the other day a friend mentioned that what we consider peak training condition for athletes today was pretty much just the way things were back in the days of horse and hand tools. Small farmers today have it a little "softer" but woah there are some kind of happy, healthy, hard-working, good-looking, socially conscious, market savvy and *incredibly buff* women and men out there!
Ever wonder why so many guys seem to react to feminism not just with anger but with fear or dread? It's because we've wrapped ourselves so tightly within the "no-sex" class paradigm that we simply can't uncouple the suspicion that "equal rights for women" will somehow mean "less or no sex." And for men, who inside the paradigm *are* the sex class, that's anathema because without sex we think we'd have no standing whatsoever. ('Member Freud's theory that all other ambitions are sublimations for sex? That's what I'm talking about.)
Anyway such fears are all based on our/men's insane assumption that left to their own devices healthy, happy heterosexual women would never want to have sex.
This plays in with the overwhelmingly contradicted-by-reality notion that feminists are men-hating, hairy-legged, wool-socks-and-Birkenstocks-wearing lesbian separatists. (Since by definition separatists and lesbians aren't interested in sex with men, then inside the paradigm they *have* to be the model for all feminists. Note also that the pervasiveness of this fixation leads women who might otherwise identify as complete feminists to issue the otherwise unnecessary disclaimer "I'm not a feminist but...")
Now I'm *not* saying that the key to men's acceptance of feminism depends on us ditching the "no-sex" class paradigm like the big-shoe, orange-hair, rubber-nose clown suit it is, because in addition to issues related to sexual self-determination there are still unpleasant amounts of gender-related property, uncompensated-labor, and division-of-labor issues to contend with. (I've really drunk Shulamith Firestone's kool-aid
I just wish one could wave a magic wand and make it all go away. But if all it took was hetero feminists saying "hey, we *like* sex" then *it would already have worked!* So I think the only way out is under our own power -- and really, since the current situation makes us nearly as miserable, and every bit as frustrated, fearful, and angry as our partners, then when it comes to this dominant paradigm we're going to be pretty motivated to head for the exits as soon as we can see a clear path to them.
This could be completely unfounded speculation here, but unless skin under pubic hair has fewer nerve endings than skin under men's beards and mustaches then if you shave both your legs pubic hair you probably want to use separate razors.
Because every time anyone's ever borrowed my razor to shave their legs it dulls the blades enough to pull hair and nick my face like crazy when I shave with it afterwards.
Osbasso suggested a sports-related theme this week. It's too early for skiing so here's something else I like to do.
Update: Doh! Checking back in it sounds like *next week* is supposed to be sports week. (Does that make me a dumb jock?) Rats! I'll make it up next week by wearing a sarong (which was supposed to be this week's mildly-recommended theme.)
Update: I also ought to add how nervous I was taking this snippet in a public space. Not that there's actually anything sexual, or even very naked, going on -- for instance even though it's a water-resistant camera I didn't take it into the showers or sauna or even the lockerroom, of course.
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Anna Rose of Voices of American Sexuality says
It's really too bad for Sen. Craig and Rep. Bob Allen that they got caught soliciting male cops. One can only imagine how much better they would have fared had it been female cops. I can almost see it: "Upstanding Republicans Sabotaged by Corrupt Female Dominated Police Force today on The O'Reilly Factor."
Read the quote in context here.
That sounds about right. Sure, *I'm* aware just how different soliciting consensual sex from one's fellow adults is from soliciting commercial sex from a potentially trafficked person -- even if in both cases the eventual sex takes place in public locations, and therefore that there's not quite the correspondence between police stings against gay men and prostitutes. You're probably aware of the difference too, and so is Anna Rose.
But I'm not sure Bill O'Reilly and his target demographic would be and so, she's got a good point. (Sen. Vitter *still* doesn't seem to have suffered.)
Not to harp on the whole intercourse vs everything-else business but what's with this notion that you make a woman by sticking a dick inside a girl? Or, for that matter, that you make a man by... sticking a dick inside a woman?
Sheesh! And those guys think *we're* perverted!
In fact there's only *one think* we need to worry about making when we have sex with another person and that is making that other person happy. Which is a darn good thing because, I mean really, c'mon, whatever else rubbing pee-pees together might do it *does not* bestow adulthood on anybody.
The sci-fi sketch comedy practically writes itself!
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A more bizarre, but also more ominous implication of the whole "make her a woman" conceit is that it can only be done once -- later partners, or even the same partner, can stick their dicks all they like without making anything new at all. And how's *that* little narrative play out in purity/chastity/virginity/women-as-property games?
Quick question that kind of spun off from this post.
Whereas it really does seem a lot easier for men to have orgasms during penis-in-vagina intercourse (at least the way we usually do it where men tend to direct the position, placement, and pace of intercourse)...
It seems to me that, on average, men and women take about the same time to have orgasms from stimulation with mouths and/or hands.
Sure, some men come very quickly from oral sex, but then so do some women. And sure, some women are better at fellatio but then some men are better at cunnilingus. Same stories with fingers and hands. Therefore when I say on average I just mean *on average.*
Still... what's your experience either directly or through observation?
Side A would have it that heterosexual, strictly penis-in-vagina intercourse is one of the best arguments in favor of non-casual monogamy: it's possible for the average woman to have an orgasm from thrusting alone but it generally takes quite a bit of practice.
Side B would have it that sex isn't even sex if it doesn't end in penis-in-vagina thrusting.
Side Me would have it that gee, maybe that's one more reason we hear more men than women waxing enthusiastic about casual sex.
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Side C would have it that heterosexual, strictly penis-in-vaginal intercourse is one of the best arguments in favor of non-casual monogamy: it's extremely easy to become pregnant that way and *under traditional circumstances* casual sex plus pregnancy equals unsupported single mother.
Side D would have it that sex isn't even sex if it doesn't end in penis-in-vagina thrusting.
Side Me would have it that gee, maybe that's one more reason we hear more men than women waxing enthusiastic about casual sex
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Of course *some* people think that women, as the "no-sex" class, just aren't ever directly interested in sex...
Men pursuing casual sex do so for casual sex as an end in itself. Now some women may have casual sex in this way, but they are in a tiny minority. In fact, the idea of indiscriminate sex disgusts most women. To most women, "casual sex" is not casual at all, but part of evaluating a potential long term mate.
To be fair to Ivan Appleton, the author of the above snippet, acknowledges that long-term sexual interest is one of the ulterior motives...
Remember, she's out to find a long-term mate, and part of what a long-term mate has is strong sexual attraction for her. When women complain about men who are "only after one thing", the emphasis is on "only".
... but it's still presented as ulterior motive rather than present desire.
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Of course as long as Parts A, B, C, and D, above are combined with a social structure that is, in the words of Helen E. Fisher,
...a relic of our long agricultural past, when women were pawns in elaborate property exchanges at marriage...
Source: Anatomy of Love; 1992
then simply suggesting "lighten up a little, bbbbaby" probably isn't going to cut it.
As Matthew Yglesias puts it of the Larry Craig kerfuffle
[M]aking it disorderly conduct to hit on a guy in a public place seems deeply at odds with the non-criminal nature of hitting on a woman in a public place. Yes it makes sense to make it a crime to have sex in a bathroom, but no sex was had.
The quote's from a short post, the rest of which is also interesting. You can see that here.
Yup. When I think about the incredibly subtle (and much-mocked) rituals involved in *homosexual* "Pick-up Artistry" with its hankie in this pocket or its wide stances in men's stalls the main thing that comes to mind is how mind-bogglingly non-intrusive it is.
And yet you can get busted for that.
Then there's the entirely non-obvious *heterosexual* "artistry" as picked up on by Heather Corinna of Pure As the Driven Slush talking about one (of two) non-actionably obnoxious guys at a recent book reading.
Man One ... basically was entirely focused on ... having sex with every woman in the room that evening. I knew it was bad as it was, having watched almost every young woman in there try to get away from him, and having moved away from him as he followed me around the store before the event myself, but only in seeing that a young woman who attended the event who had briefly blogged on it note that she was asked for a lock of her armpit hair by this guy did I realize how bad it really was with him in that respect.
So. The whole thing about the gay "wide stance" business is that participants start out *very tentatively* and with a sufficient number of intermediate steps that, by definition, opportunity is provided for one or the other party to back out. (And when I say "by definition" I mean that *if* circumspection wasn't part of the plan then guys would just say "hey, I'm looking to do oral" or whatever instead of tapping their feet, rubbing shoes, swiping hands under partitions and so forth.) Opt-out opportunities in heteronormative rituals? Not so much.
In other words what counts as a high crime or misdemeanor when it might be used, no matter how discreetly on men ("...so I called a friend and we grabbed him and hit his head against the bathroom stall") is deemed a minor inconvenience ("why do you femuhnawtzis hate sex so bad") when conducted no matter how overtly women.
And, actually, not to overquote Heather Corinna or anything but another post of hers this weekend is an extended discussion of just how heterosexually male-centric the theory and practice of sexology and human sexuality studies in general has been. That Larry Craig could be arrested for buttonholing but Corinna's interloper could not or, alternatively, that Corinna's interloper couldn't really even be asked to *leave* while the objectively circumspect Craig was *arrested* suggests how stacked the deck is stacked in favor of men (who might feel uncomfortable being approached in a restroom)... and... in favor of men (who might feel uncomfortable being arrested for mashing every woman at an event that he wasn't interested in but they were.)
I bring this up not *just* out of a sense of fairness, or a desire for consistency, or impatience with homophobia, or a well-developed (and so what?) desire for mutually recreational sex, or what have you, but *also* out of a totally selfish sense that our contemporary sexual landscape forces us all to live a series of interrelated lies that, whatever benefit they might theoretically, possibly, hypothetically have had in the past for anybody now benefits *nobody.* That this fictitious landscape was shaped primarily in the *interests of* men (which, again, does not correspond exactly with *benefits to* men) only sharpens my impatience with the whole silly infrastructure.
Holly of The Pervocracy is on a bit of a tear, brilliant-insight post-wise this weekend.
Home Depot rope. Jon and I use Home Depot rope. Isn't that horrible? It's absolutely true that Twisted Monk rope is better; from what I hear it's woven from the treasure trails of the gods themselves. But what bothers me is the idea that Monk rope is right and Home Depot is wrong. Not lower quality, not more limited in uses, not requiring more caution, but... incorrect.
Bullshit. I'm not going to write a whole paragraph elaborating on this because my opinion fits in five words: Nothing that works is wrong. You can put Heinz on filet mignon if that's what tastes best to you.
...
By the way, one of the worst manifestations of the "gotta do it right!" attitude I'm thinking about here is the idea that what Jon and I do isn't even BDSM. Because, honestly? It's mostly just spanking, rough sex, and overhand knots. There's no medical-grade electrical boxes or 10-gauge needles or ultra-realistic walrus dildos. And I always feel oddly inferior, almost like a poser, for calling something BDSM that doesn't even draw blood half the time.
Actually the question of "right" and "wrong" in hobbies with established traditions is kind of interesting. On the one hand it's absolutely true that "inside the tradition of high French cuisine ketchup on fillet mignon is wrong." On the other hand it tastes pretty good.
When I was a young, recent refugee from Southern Appalachia, having been raised on live-on-radio-and-tv performances by Flatt & Scruggs, Porter Wagoner, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Tennessee Earnie Ford, and too many other (unavoidable and, post Beatles, unavoidably boring) country/western, folk, and bluegrass musicians, I was always startled to meet young gentlemen from places like Long Island and Cambridge, MA who tartly informed me, when I played bluegrass on street corners and coffee houses that "Bill Monroe didn't play it that way." This was all true, of course, but then neither did I chew "Bull O' The Woods" plug tobacco, Brylcream hair tonic, Foremost buttermilk, Bunny bread, nor any of the other products that sponsored those musicians. Nor did I wear my grandpa's sock garters which, truth be told, would have been about as likely as me playing anything exactly the way Bill Monroe (my grandfather's age) would have.
But then who would know the "right" way to play bluegrass, someone raised listening to KNOX and the Cas Walker Show or some musicologist from Brookline? To be honest the jury may still be out since I wasn't a terribly *accomplished* musician, but I'll be danged if I wasn't authentic as Hell!
So nowadays whenever someone comes along and says something like "you're doing bluegrass wrong," or quilting, or, especially these days BDSM wrong I think about the most important movie ever made about technical hobbies -- not *quite* a documentary but nevertheless surprisingly lifelike: Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom
This is in no way intended as a *knock* against the "bluegrass police" in their too-often green satin zip-up jackets, or the used-car-dealer or insurance-industry-actuaries without whom there really might be no traditions at all. Same with those who uphold the "faith" in BDSM circles. But! Neither should one approach those who would hold the reins of this tradition or that as ultimate authorities. Nor should one forget (as Mancur Olsen discusses in his academic work The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Second printing with new preface and appendix (Harvard Economic Studies)
Anyway, I happen to agree with Holly and plenty of others that if you really want to restrain someone head-to-foot with both safety and style then yeah, Monk's beautiful hemp rope is the bee's knees. If you just want to bind your partner's hands to the headboard so they can't stop you from throwing you down and ravishing you till you're good and ready then yeah, anything at hand will work just great. There is no "right" way to play Fox on the Run (trust me), there's no "right" way to ballroom dance, there's no "right" condiment for fillet mignon, and there's certainly no way to make your partner moan or roar with delight. (Even though there are some very good teachers for all of those things.)
Well, turns out there is connectivity up here but not very much. But since the Larry Craig business is *still* being discussed (a more unjust, backwards fate couldn't have befallen a more unjust backwards man) I've got a question about a *different* kind of terrible connections that as far as I know hasn't been mentioned elsewhere: What about the spouses?
I mean, yeah, you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. And I'm sorry but I have a very, very hard time believing that Suzanne Craig and every other spouse of a scandal-plagued politician of the Left or Right has been completely in the dark in the face of their partner's sometimes continuous patterns of behavior.
Some, surely. But all? Surely not!
We're so conditioned (by the "no-sex" class paradigm and other social conventions) to see spouses, particularly women spouses, as innocent of all notions of sexuality beyond a) a sense of marital duty and b) a sense of jealous outrage in the face of transgression.
Yes, and women have been conditioned (by other social conventions but also, more subtly, by the "no-sex" class paradigm's assumption of exchange of sex for security) to look the other way rather than risk what until only the last two generations has been a risk of *catastrophic* economic and social devastation, both personal and for one's children, should they "cross" their husbands in any way.
But...
But...
But *surely* not all of these generally very well educated, experienced, and politically savvy spouses have been caught this off guard for this long. I'd really love to hear about their sides of the stories.
Update: Just to be clear I'm *not* suggesting there's anything right or wrong with any politician's "wronged" partner. Nor do I think there's a "right" or "wrong" answer to my question. When I said I'd love to hear their sides of the stories I mean that as sincerely as anyone possibly can.
Update: It sounds like Dina Matos McGreevey, former partner of former New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey, either has or is just about to release a book about her experience of her husband's outing himself and resigning in response to a blackmailer's threats three years ago. More details, perhaps, when I find a better connection.
Leaning against sun-warmed rocks at the last switchback below the highest alpine pass, far above the tree line, just before Labor Day, the only registered hiker on that remote side of that remote wilderness area. So high up that the surrounding mountain peaks, many still capped with snow, spread out around me as if mere wave crests in a colossal, static sea.
And resting after lunch I got out pen and paper to write the partner I had neither seen nor spoken to all summer. So far separated we were by time zones, mountain ranges, wilderness area trail assignments... and not even phone lines to our respective base camps that letters were the only way we could believe we still existed.
And the more I thought of her the warmer I felt, and as my heart grew fonder my mind wandered and my pen ambled further and further from fevered words towards lines, curves, and more and more lifelike representations of her body, her face, her breasts and ass...
... and I have to say that for all the pixellated abundance of erotic photography there's something far more fundamentally real about limning from memory the lines of your partner's arches and creases with all the heat and passion longing can bring, wishing, wondering, if she could feel whisperings of your caresses and know how much you thought, cared, knew...
And during a break in my reverie, taken when I had to rub away some of the ache in my cock, I realized she already knew *her* body and so I started to draw mine, and so for reference I undressed with the world spread out below, and as I drew and reminisced and wrote and stroked my passion grew such that I rushed to close with my fondest wishes...
...and then leaned back against the rocks, cock in hand, eyes slipping closed with lust, then open to look at her curves as I'd drawn them then rolling up and closed again, the warm, dry wind tickling the hair of my belly and thighs, the scent of heathers and mountain berry leaves full in my nose, and my gripped hand shuttling to and fro so that when I finally came my legs gave way and the lichen-rough stone stroked rough against my back as I slid to my knees, and the last, smallest droplet of semen pattered on paper, surprisingly close to my losing words.
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I'll be up in the mountains again this weekend, this time with friends and family, in a cabin with beds and books, showers and stoves, games, and even a phone. I *don't* know, however, if there will be internet. If not then till Tuesday morning have a great weekend.
