You know, the anonymously-authored blog 25 Things About My Sexuality provides an imperfect but still very good window into other people’s takes on their own sexuality. The premise is you email 25 things about your sexuality to the listed address and, as far as I can tell, whereupon they’re published. I have no idea whether and/or how they’re selected, filtered, or edited — which is part of what I mean about its imperfection. But the results are varied enough to offer insights into sexual experience one might not otherwise get.
At any rate, an entry from June 15, 2010 begins 1. This account is going to be less colorful than some, but it may also be more typical. Us vanilla people have stories to tell, too.
If you follow the link you’ll find a perfectly average, and perfectly wonderful, account of a 21-year-old heterosexual, self-defined vanilla woman who’s very comfortable with her sexuality in the context of the relationships she’s had with her partners.
After a couple of great conversations last week in New York and D.C., some brief and some very long, with a number of very thoughtful people it’s just been really sinking in lately how deeply we take relationships as a given when we confer about sex, kink, gender, and media.
It’s not that we don’t take relationships into account. We do! It’s just that we tend to treat them sort of the way birds treat air or fish treat water.
I’d really like to see that changed. A one-night stand is a relationship. Two people watching porn together are in a relationship, even when they’re not also long-term partners. A customer who hires a sex worker is in a relationship, and, more significantly, may be in a domestic relationship with another partner as well. Conversely, those who’s sex and romance life is limited to vibrators, lube, and/or tissues in the solitude of their own bedrooms may not be in relationships — a phenomenon that also tends to be handwaved away with terms like “loser,” “low status,” “cat lady,” “loner,” or even “asexual,” rather than considered as a social being. But I digress…
It seems to me that the most of most people’s sex lives more or less resemble the anonymous poster’s, which we tend to dismiss as the neutral flavor to which all the more interesting flavors of kink may be added. And yet… and yet… without that base what’s left is often just a bunch of pretty syrup and sprinkles puddled in the bottom of the bowl. And even without the added flourishes the base tends to still be… pretty fucking fantastic.
Again that’s not to say the extra flavors, textures, aromas, and sprinkles of kink are without merit. Quite the opposite, they’re often delightful. I just think we should stop taking “vanilla” for granted.
Not least, I might add, it should stop being taken for granted by “vanilla” people themselves.
Even the label “vanilla” is
Submitted by ImogenQuest (not verified) on Tue, 2010-06-22 07:05.Even the label “vanilla” is interesting in that respect. I noticed the other day that, as I’ve gotten older, the taste of vanilla is no longer bland/neutral/sweet. It tastes that way to kids, and artificial vanilla is like that, but real vanilla is dark, smoky and spicy as well as sweet. Make of that what you will.
[Oh heck yeah, Imogen! Like a lot of other heavily-oxidized aromatic natural ingredients vanilla’s awesomely complex. And, at least until they synthesized vanillin and started putting it into everything on the planet, it was considered exotic, erotic, and mysterious. But they put it in everything not because it’s cheap but because it’s delicious! Or check this out — you know what ingredient is even more basic, universal, and “generic” than vanilla? Salt, right? And yet nobody scorns someone else for being sexually “salty.” Weird. Thanks! —fl]
Bravo. I should also add,
Submitted by Ms Naughty (not verified) on Tue, 2010-06-22 16:03.Bravo.
I should also add, I’m a little tired of the snark the seems to imply Vanilla is some kind of enemy to the world of kink and queer, that the average “boring” hetero couples out there are all trying to repress everyone else with heteronormativism (or insert your appropriate angry sociological term here). I’m a married Vanilla girl. I have fun. My sexuality has just as much right to exist as yours. Cliques and trends don’t belong in the world of sex.
Can’t we all just get along?
And I adore Vanilla pods. I make the best vanilla custard, it is absolute heaven.
Yep. We’ve all got to bear
Submitted by Viola (not verified) on Tue, 2010-06-22 16:59.Yep.
We’ve all got to bear in mind that other flavours may be exciting, but even if it’s ‘just’ vanilla, you’re still getting icecream.
Mmm, vanilla. Tomorrow I’m
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Tue, 2010-06-22 23:08.Mmm, vanilla. Tomorrow I’m off to a world where vanilla comes in every form – just not fake. (OK, I’m leaving for Germany, where they take their baked goods very seriously indeed.)
But about those relationships. I agree that there’s a relationship even in something as apparently flimsy as an email flirtation/affair/foolery – and all the more so if a “flirtation” persists over time. And yet: How often do partners respect an apparently transient relationship, rather than simply blowing it off? How does each partner affirm the basic worth and humanity of his/her counterpart? I’ve seen and experiences so many failures on this count. (And by failures, I mean failure to perceive the Other as a human being, despite the fact that two people were entwined in a relationship, no matter how transitory.)
Surely, figleaf, with your broad experience, you’ve got some insight into this – especially where virtual flirtation is concerned.
Sometimes I suspect that “vanilla” seems to give license to those of us who (mostly) identify that way. It seems to give us carte blanche not to reflect. Or only to reflect on the things we do that meet social expectations – while broadly skating over any actions, reactions, and attitudes that don’t fit the vanilla, nice-married-person box. Vanilla is yummy. It’s delicious! I wouldn’t want to ever use it as an excuse not to engage with a partner.
[Funny you should mention that, Sungold. I fell into it again by failing to mention it in my list, above, but yeah, virtual flirtations are also very real relationships. I had a long conversation with Heather Corinna about it the other day, by the way, and while I shouldn’t have been I was surprised when she said the model for younger people, at least, is almost always to begin relationships in virtual space. Even when you know someone in real life when you live at home the only room for intimacy is virtual space, with the result, she said, that cyber-relationships and cyber-sex is way more common for people even before they begin having any sex at all. The upside is it helps people clarify what they want and don’t want, and that’s great. The downside is that for a lot of people (especially older ones I think) there’s a lot of recognition of the sex part of cyber sex but not at all enough recognition of the relationship parts. All the more reason, then, to stop not addressing that part. Excellent point, Sungold! Thank you. —fl]
Oh hell, what is up with your
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Tue, 2010-06-22 23:10.Oh hell, what is up with your comments, figleaf? I see that my words have apparently been wiped out – I reconstitute them – and then they appear twice, to the annoyance of all! Could you please remove the first version? Thanks.