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Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me.) Used under a Creative Commons license.
Dodai of Jezebel says
Something Once Regarded As Exotic Has Become Commonplace
"According to the first academic, peer-reviewed studies of vibrator use, it is nearly as common an appliance in American households as the drip coffee maker or toaster oven."
By coincidence at almost the exact moment she posted her piece I was reviewing a photo I'd taken in the Electricity Hall at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History during our recent family vacation in Washington, D.C. The photo was of a bunch of early American home appliances. Among them were now-100-year-old fans, toasters, waffle irons, and mixers from the turn of the 20th Century. But, oddly, no 100-year-old vibrators.
Which might not sound like much of an omission.
Except that, as Rachel Maines meticulously detailed in The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)
The electrification of the home proceeded rapidly after the introduction of electric lights in 1878, and predictably, women were significant consumers of electric appliances. The first home appliance to be electrified was the sewing machine, in 1889, followed in the next ten years by the fan, the teakettle, the toaster, and the vibrator. The last preceded the electric vacuum cleaner by some nine years, the electric iron by ten, and the electric frying pan by more than a decade, possibly reflecting consumer priorities.
...
A one-liner in the June 1908 Review of Reviews ... cautions readers against "imprudence" and "excess in action" when using vibrators...
...
Women were advised [in advertising] that the "American [brand] Vibrator ... can be used by yourself in the privacy of dressing room or boudoir, and furnishes every woman with the very essence of perpetual youth."
Source: Pgs.100-103
Oh yeah, and
During the first two decades of [the 20th Century], the vibrator began to be marketed as a home appliance through advertising in such periodicals as ... Modern Woman, Hearst's McClure's, Woman's Home Companion, and Modern Pricilla. The device was marketed mainly to women as a health and relaxation aid, in ambiguous phrases such as "all the pleasures of yought... will throb within you." When marketed to men, vibrators were recommeded as gifts for women that would benefit the male givers by restoring bright eyes and pink cheeks to their female consorts. ... An especially versatile vibrator line was illustrated in the Sears, Roebuck and Company Electrical Goods catalog for 1918. [An] advertisement headed "Aids That Every Woman Appreciates" shows a vibrator attachment for a home motor that also drove attachments for churning, mixing, beating, grinding, buffing, and operating a fan."
Source: Pgs 19-20
In other words, contrary to Dodai's sources as appliances go the electric toaster predated the vibrator but not the coffee maker.
The slip-up seems natural because just a few years later Freud came along and the 2500 year old practice of treating "hysteria" massaging the vulva to the point of "hysterical paroxysm" was replaced by... talk therapy to treat "frigidity" and "nymphomania," leaving women between roughly 1925 and 1975 largely in the lurch.
Composite image from menswear enthusiast MagnificentBastard.com. Click image to view site.
Bjørn Østman of Pleiotropy again
Aha! So this is what is constantly bugging me. Finally, here's a book describing what I need to become a real man.
"In a time when everyone is looking for a bailout, headlines highlight John Edwards' affair, and books detail A-Rod's steroid use, what has happened to men of honor and integrity? Once upon a time, a real man fought for his country, treated women with respect, and was a hero to his children."
Dare I say that one of them recently became president?
"'The Ultimate Man's Survival Guide' explains how to fight off alligators, identify poisonous spiders, mix a perfect martini, and more. From tying a tourniquet to tying a bowtie—Miniter teaches men the skills, attitudes, and philosophies they need to be the Ultimate Man."
It should come as no surprise that I got this ad in an email from a conservative group - the ideals of a real man fighting off alligators and tying a bowtie fit right in with that, while I myself have other ideals. Not that I disagree that those are nice things to be able to do (especially mixing the perfect Martini), but I fear that the philosophies that this ultimate man must adhere to are of the conservative kind.
I wonder how learning from a book how to be the ultimate man squares with being the ultimate man. Seems kind of sissy ass liberal to me.
Østman, an evolutionary biologist, blogs a lot about conflicts with Biblical creationism in both its raw and more sophisticated "Intelligent Design" forms. Another point he might have raised is that if as Creationists like to think the Earth is only 6,000 years old... that really wouldn't have left a lot of opportunities for men to play with Bowie-knife-type weapons. As for bow ties? What. Ever.
Seriously, 101st Fighting Keyboarders fantasies notwithstanding, neither knife-fighting, alligator wrestling, nor bow-tie tying makes one an ultimate man. Not least because trying to describe, let alone aspire to be, the "ultimate man" is about as misguided as trying to describe the ultimate shade of blue or the ultimate note on a piano.
Not to sound too woo-woo or anything but when I was maybe 19 gourd-stoned future former hippie earnestly declaimed to me that in his opinion "we're all born with a bag full of shit tied around our neck, and our ultimate goal before we die is to take as much shit as possible out of our bag without putting any of it in anyone else." To the extent wrestling alligators or stirring (even I know better than to shake) martinis contributes to that ultimate goal of unfilling ones self with shit then good for them. Otherwise one wonders if the advice in such books might not produce the opposite result.
Matthew Yglesias says of a study that tries to claim that macaque monkeys conduct prostitution transactions. In the sense that sex is more than twice as frequent (3.5 times vs 1.5 times) when males that "pay" sex by first grooming females than when they don't.
If you think about human society, “paying for sex” denotes a pretty specific kind of social practice—prostitution—and isn’t a catchall phrase to cover every mutually beneficial relationship that involves sex. You could probably do a study of married human couples that would show that sex is more likely after a husband is nice to his wife than after he’s been a jerk; I don’t think you’d call that a study about “paying for sex” among married couples.
That sounds about right. It happens to be the case that a lot of people imagine that "proper" men "pay" for sex through marriage. Which makes sense in those relationships where women have no interest in sex, whatsoever. Or who, because of artificial limits on social and economic opportunities imposed by the dictates of gendered culture they have no, zero, none interest in sex with the men they're obliged to marry.
Oddly the article, and the study it describes, claims no parallels should be drawn between human and macaque behavior. Which is laudable I'm sure. Or would be if, rather than conclusions drawn the researchers and reporters hadn't instead drawn premises.
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P.S. if I'm not mistaken I'm more likely to want sex 3.5 times an hour instead of 1.5 if, instead of just bending over the first "female" I'm on intimate terms with and "copulating" with her I instead spend time "grooming" her by putting my arms around her, stroking her cheek, murmuring things out loud that remind me why I appreciate her, burying my face in her hair, kissing, nuzzling, or biting her neck and shoulders, and otherwise engaging in the kind of "payment" we more often think of as, oh, I don't know, foreplay!
Because, you know, foreplay increases men's interest in and desire for more frequent sex. Something the subset of anthropologists and science reporters most drawn to moronic anthropomorphization of macaque (not to mention macaque-ization of humans) might discover if they ever bothered to try it.
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Seriously! The idea that only women "need" or otherwise benefit from foreplay is just... um... yeah, just try it some time. I mean, not to drag in the food issue or anything but don't studies also show that people who eat food cold, out of the can, over the sink to "save time" also tend to eat less overall than people who take the time to actually enjoy their food as a cultural activity and not just a biological necessity? Well, same for sex, m'kay?
Abby Spector, guest-posting at Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between. has the one really critical takeaway about sex and alcohol.
I’m being honest, I’m not planning on swapping my flask for a carton of soy milk anytime soon — I’m still in college, for chrissake.
But what I am trying to teach myself is that every positive experience I’ve had while intoxicated, I am capable of achieving sober. Alcohol is a permission slip, but nobody is stopping me from signing those permission slips myself, in the clear light of day. My bisexuality was not hiding in a keg — it was there all along. Alcohol simply provided the burst of confidence I needed for self-acceptance.
Here’s a toast to the joy of uninhibited sobriety. Because the only thing better than awesome, toe-curling, uninhibited sex is awesome, toe-curling, uninhibited sex that you can remember in exquisite detail the next morning.
I've mentioned elsewhere that I pretty much quit drinking when I turned 21. So its been a while (turns out I have a defective gene for the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol) but Spector really brings home what's important about drinking and sex.
It's not so much that one shouldn't (that would just be my sour grapes since I can't) as that for an awful lot of us alcohol gives us an excuse to do stuff we'd... at least be willing to try anyway.
With the added advantage you mention of having more memorable experiences to remember... and fewer we wish we could forget. :-)
Susan Frelich Appleton of Washington University School of Law has an interesting paper in the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice called Toward a 'Culturally Cliterate' Family Law?. Amazingly (for an academic paper) you can download and read the whole thing. Here's the abstract.
Toward a 'Culturally Cliterate' Family Law?
Susan Frelich Appleton
Washington University School of LawBerkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, Vol. 23, 2008
Washington U. School of Law Working Paper No. 09-05-02Abstract:
Sexual desire and sexual activity long have played central roles in family law, rationalizing its rules, informing its policies, and animating any number of calls for reform. Since the 1970s, gender equality has also become a salient value in family law - purporting to correct legally imposed double standards of the past. Yet, despite the conceptual centrality of sexual desire and sexual activity, family law says nothing explicit about sexual pleasure. And despite the salience of gender equality in contemporary family law, the field remains preoccupied with performances that produce heterosexual men's orgasms while ignoring or rejecting women's interest in orgasmic pleasure. As a result, family law today is marked by fundamental omissions and inconsistencies.This paper attempts to begin to fill the gap and to explore the incongruities. It builds on Susan E. Stiritz's Cultural Cliteracy: Exposing the Contexts of Women's Not Coming (published as a companion piece) and examines the relevance of Stiritz's analysis for family law. According to Stiritz, "'©ultural cliteracy' denotes what an adequately educated person should know about the clitoris, which is that it is a culturally despised body part because it is an obdurate reminder of women's independence and power and supports women's liberation." Stiritz tracks the role of the clitoris and women's sexual pleasure through history, compares past and contemporary anatomical understandings of the clitoris, and then demonstrates through empirical studies, based on courses she has taught, how cultural cliteracy can empower women and bring new insights to the reading of women's texts. She calls for the integration of "adequate understandings of the clitoris" into a variety of different discourses, including law.
In response, this paper focuses on family law as a promising site for integrating cultural cliteracy into legal discourse. Part I introduces the project and its challenges. Part II explores the central role of sex in family law, with emphasis on how family law seeks to channel sexual desire into monogamous marriage and how this effort to manage sexual activity plays out, given the pervasive silence about women's sexual pleasure. This analysis, in turn, exposes significant inconsistencies, challenging the coherence of family law’s own stated policies, including its simultaneous preference for monogamous marriage, acceptance of no-fault divorce, and commitment to gender equality. Part III turns to contrasting ways to make family law more culturally cliterate, specifically, allowing individuals to learn what they can from popular culture versus undertaking affirmative government efforts to promote such knowledge, through educational programs. Part III next looks beyond educational programs to suggest how respect for women's sexual pleasure might prompt rethinking several specific aspects of family law, including divorce grounds; civil actions for sexual harm; and the legal treatment of various supports, interventions, and protections that facilitate sexual pleasure, from sex toys to reproductive autonomy. Part IV concludes with a deeper look at the prospect of a culturally cliterate family law, including the fundamental paradoxes that it might pose.
Keywords: clitoris, sexual pleasure, women, orgasm, marriage, channeling, monogamy, family law, gender equality, feminist theory, sex education, divorce, torts, sex toys, reproductive autonomy, contraception, abortion
Source: Social Science Research Network. Follow the link to download the full document here.
Yes it's hard-core academic feminism. No I haven't had time to read it all (I've got to finish cooking supper.) Yes it gets off to a very nice start
[T]his project, which began as a modest and largely conservative attempt to accept family law largely on its own terms while making the case for attention to women’s sexual pleasure, ultimately exposes profound paradoxes that merit analysis.
...if family law were to rescue women’s sexual pleasure from popular culture, our understanding of such pleasure would no doubt change. Would such “legitimating” efforts impose confining regulation, in turn defeating the individuality, diversity, and spontaneity necessary for the sexual pleasure that animates the enterprise? Can cultural cliteracy survive family law?
Finally, and again paradoxically, if we take modern family law on its own terms (in the sense of conceding, purely for purposes of analysis, its central objectives and ideals), then we must come to the conclusion that this field— which has sex as its conceptual core, which seeks to channel sexual desire into monogamous marriages, and which proclaims commitment to gender equality— would be far more coherent if it could achieve what Cultural Cliteracy establishes that women should be entitled to expect: sexual self-efficacy and sexual pleasure. Yet, this effort to make modern family law more coherent and more successful might well prove to be family law’s own undoing, subverting the stated objectives that provided the starting poCan family law survive cultural cliteracy?
I'll be interested to see if she gets into some of the assumptions about gender and desire that Bob & Susan-Yager-Berkowitz confront He's Just Not Up for It Anymore: Why Men Stop Having Sex, and What You Can Do About It
Via Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors
TBK of The Beautiful Kind says
The other day I told my sexy microbiologist friend that the human mouth contained the same bacteria found in the ass and produced the same aromatic sulfur compounds. This, I said, explained halitosis.
He set out to prove me wrong. He took swab cultures from his cock n’ balls, mouth, and ass, and shared the results with me. In his words...
Read TBK's scientist friend's actually-not-that-surprising findings here.
Short answer: Mouth, ass, and genital bacteria aren't the same at all. TBK's version is a lot more fun to read though. Cool post.
Intern Katy of Jezebel says (emphasis mine)
Unfortunately, the vasectomy is hard to sell, according to doctors. Many men, like Michael Lewis, author of Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood, view the procedure as somewhat akin to castration. Lewis says his own vasectomy made him feel like a "traitor to [his] sex."
Well, he's got the traitor to his sex part right.
Seriously? The guy's supposed to be some great big-swinging dick reporter? (He actually introduced the term "big swinging dick" to financial reporting in Liar's Poker!) He's supposed to be good enough to report credibly on Iceland's entire economic meltdown after a long weekend spent there but in 49 years he can't even figure out how his own penis works? W the F?
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More from Katy's source (USA Today, I think, but visit her post and follow the links.)
Myths about vasectomy persist. The biggest, doctors say, is that it will lower testosterone levels and affect sexual function and desire. "We still spend a lot of time explaining that there is absolutely no effect on sexual function or libido," [University of Illinois at Chicago professor Lawrence] Ross says.
Yeah, like I had any less testosterone when I got my first vasectomy?
Like I had any more after my reversal?
Like I have any less after my follow-up vasectomy?
I don't think so.
Actually I'm pretty sure when it comes to testosterone I've got plenty. If I had anymore I'd grow antlers.
Hey, you want the inside scoop on what vasectomies have done to my sex life? Wanna know what women have generally done to my penis after seeing those little scars?
Raunchy things.
Lascivious things.
Exotic things.
Loving things.
Enthusiastic things.
Repeated things.
Repeated things.
More repeated things.
Eager things.
Things that by and large have felt very, very good!
But most importantly?
Exactly the same things they wanted to do before I had them.
Except more frequently. Because for a man, before or after, there's really no... well... fucking difference between having a vasectomy and not having one except neither he nor his partner needs to worry about anymore, um, "innocent byproducts."
Than they already have.
Than they already wanted.
Than they already planned.
Sheesh!
Katy says
Despite the fact that the vasectomy is a safer, simpler process than female sterilization, more women undergo sterilization surgery than men (half of women using birth control ages 40-44 had had their tubes tied, while only 20% of men that age have). It seems that the vasectomy has a real PR problem.
Seriously! More sex more often? Zero concern about unplanned, unwanted pregnancies? Less stressed out partners? No impact on testosterone? Opportunity to call Michael Lewis a wuss? What more PR do you possibly need?
Sheesh!
Anna N of Jezebel has two (trending?) posts that raise a pretty interesting question if you believe men are motivated primarily by horniness.
In 1967, sociologist Eugene Kanin said that for frat brothers,
"A successful 'snow job' on an attractive but reluctant female who may be rendered into a relatively dependable sexual outlet and socially desirable companion is considerably more enhancing than an encounter with a prostitute or a 'one night stand' with a 'loose' reputation."
Translation: getting a "nice girl" to have sex with you, possibly by any means necessary, is better than having sex with a slut.
Along the same lines (and citing the post above) she also says
Thanks Twitter, for bringing us first #liesgirlstell, and now trending topic #urahoe, in which users list ways to determine if a woman is a "hoe."
...
"SmackurFavRappa: #urahoe if u have known me less than 7 days & u already want it"
Because someone who is attracted to you and want to have sex with you must be a "hoe." Nice girls are reluctant and require extensive convincing.
Trust me when I say how aware I am that men really get horny. Often. Yup. Quite horny. Quite often. In fact... :-)
But that's not what the gentlemen Anna N quotes are saying. What they're talking about is what they choose to do about it. And the answer doesn't appear to be "do something about it with someone who wants to do something about it with you."
Which, when you think about it, suggests something else coughnosexclasscough might be at work. (Remember, if you're indoctrinated to believe women aren't naturally, normally into sex then you'll have a strong tendency not only to seek women you perceive as uninterested but also avoid "sluts" who, because they aren't uninterested must have something wrong with them. Bogus much?)
Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me!) Posted under a Creative Commons license.
Megan of Jezebel takes exception to yet another Double-X article, this time dumping on women (but not, evidently, men) for selling DIY stuff they make on Etsy.com.
...what I feel is most problematic is the idea inherent in the work that women should, in some sense, face the reality that their dreams of successful entrepreneurship will never be realized. In truth, most small businesses fail. Many people — men and women — engage in the marketplace with a unique product, idea or service and fail to amass enough profit to stay afloat. The difference between men and women is that men are more often encouraged to do so then women, and encouraged to try again. Mosle's piece attempts to convince women not to take a relatively risk-free wade into the entrepreneurial waters of the American marketplace because they'll "fail," as though economic failure is something with which women cannot or should not be expected to cope.
Yup. I hate to say it but it sounds as though the author at Slate For Ladies Double-X doesn't get the idea of small business prototyping, test marketing, scaling up, or... well... a lot of stuff about micro-entrepreneurship. If I start selling the belts and other light-fetish leather items I've been having enormous fun making lately chances are very good I'll do it with an Etsy account. Where for a relatively low investment in time and money compared to more conventional alternatives, I expect I'll learn a great deal about customer likes and dislikes, my own likes and dislikes, price points, and more. And if I discover I only occasionally like to make items in limited runs for limited times then heck, I might stay there.
But more likely, like most people who use Etsy, or any other micro-retail online business incubator, if I don't find a niche that's particularly well-suited to selling via Etsy I'll either quit doing it altogether or else move up to either small-scale distribution or my own Amazon/Yahoo/Google/DYI site online.
Megan adds
I guess I should also add that I find it a little ironic that Mosle's worries about women artisans being ghettoized on Etsy is printed on double x, where Slate has collected its women writers and separated them and their stories from their site at large.
I'd add that it's also ironic that Double-X would have published a hit piece like this on-line exploitation of newbie and/or amateur piece-workers. Because what are the odds the mostly-women writers there are making enough to quit their day jobs to write for Double-X?
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One last thing. The article is titled "Etsy.com Peddles a False Feminist Fantasy." It's not clear, at all, what's supposed to be feminist about either Etsy or the article. Or, for that matter, Double-X.
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Dang it all, one more last thing. The big fatal flaw is supposed to be that Etsy, an arts and crafts sales facilitation site, has mostly women sellers. I... I dunno... call me crazy but it seems like there's been a centuries-long tradition of men working out of the home in farming, manufacturing, or service, and women working in the home making the sort of stuff that... is typically referred to as "arts and crafts." Again I could be really naive here but lot of people seem to be trying to sell hand-knit sweaters and hand-sewn quilts on Etsy. And (you'll be shocked I know!) very few of them seem to be men. One area where one traditionally sees men (most often older, retired men) doing sellable home-based crafts would be fishing lures, duck decoys, and woodworking. Aaaannnddd son of a gun, you won't be surprised either that most of the lures, decoys, and woodworking is done by men. Now a small fraction of the products sold by Etsy fall into those categories, and so, also not surprisingly, only a small fraction of vendors appear to be men. But from the looks of it I'm going to say these imbalances have a lot more to do with broader social imbalances than specific-to-Etsy ones.
Some other items I could consider selling on Etsy even if I didn't end up selling leather fetish gear...
Clockwise from top right: Hand-knit silk sweater; hand-batiked silk scarf with fig leaf motif; hand-printed nettle-leaf t-shirt; hand-cast decorative brass bells
For those of us born to live in maritime climates, once temperature and humidity rise past a certain point having a cool shower becomes preferable to having sex.
Although a cool shower after sex would be nice too.
Or just sex in the shower.
Passing observation: It is almost invariably more charming when someone else slips their hand up the leg of one's shorts than when one does it one's self.
That said it can be very... charming when someone special slips their hand up the leg of one's shorts!
Unless, of course, one is ticklish.
And sometimes even then.
Photo by Flickr user itspaulkelly. Used under a Creative Commons license.
In a recent post about withdrawal I recalled the definition from the days before it was even remotely permissible to let someone know that you masturbate, let alone see you do it, as...
...a brinksmanship-y technique where the man gets as close as he can to orgasm during intercourse and then, somehow, clearheadedly pulls out in such a way and in enough time for his otherwise hands-off ejaculation to occur such that no semen comes in contact with her vulva, let alone is released inside her vagina.
This is but one of a variety of reasons I was a bit leery of the prospect even though I'm a proponent of not coming inside a partner when only low-reliability (annual risk of unwanted pregnancy for "typical" use is greater than 10%) contraception is used.
To which Emily H. of The Clothes That Got Me Laid said in comments (emphasis mine)
WAIT, WHAT? People think the withdrawal method means the guy is supposed to pull out at the last possible second?? & then have an "otherwise hands-free ejaculation"? Well, no wonder people think the withdrawal method doesn't work. No, no. I've never met a pullout method user from back in the day who thought it worked like that, let alone seen a hands-free orgasm of the type you allude to. The way it is supposed to work is, the guy pulls out when he is getting close, then basically finishes up by jerking off (onto his lady companion's boobs, perhaps). I will defer to the superior wisdom of some guy from Vice magazine on this one: "True pulling out means you have to beat it for, like, 15 seconds."
I'm just SO GLAD to hear her say that! I think she got the quote from this page. If so I'm not going to vouch for any of the other advice they offer. Just this.
"True pulling out means you have to beat it for, like, 15 seconds."
Kudos to Vice Magazine. My only quibble (actually it's a pretty big one) is that, unlike maybe 90% of porn, there are other perfectly lovely ways to give him an orgasm. Fellatio, frottage, friction from hands, toys or other body parts by her -- since we are talking mostly about contraception here -- in addition to him "beating it being obvious choices.
But, one way or another, yes, 15 seconds seems like a sensible... and also humane/reasonable limit. Any closer and, yeah, the risk of pulling out too late must skyrocket.
One more factor I'm guessing is not taken into account by current research.
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Incidentally the other day I mentioned that there are at least two ways men can have orgasms that in terms of pure physical pleasure are more intense than ejaculating inside their partner's vaginas. Several people asked what those methods might be.
Before I got there here's a quick clarification: there are different ways to enjoy sex with someone; there are different ways to experience pleasure. And while intercourse is emotionally, delightfully intense for me the actual orgasms are lovely they're almost never the best part. (This could be because the emotional and non-orgasmic elements are so nice.) Anyway, what I had in mind when I said what I said was plain old genital-orgasm sensation.
And with that clarified two methods that have sent me over the moon have been slow manual stimulation after extended, emotionally and physically intense sexual activity and slow oral stimulation after extended, emotionally and physically intense sexual activity. Where those extended, emotionally and physically intense sexual activities might include, but not be limited to multiple bouts of intercourse in multiple positions.
I might add that whereas the cliché "money shot" in modern porn may have familiarized (and even, evidently, enamored) several generations with the idea of men coming outside their partners body the evident requirement that semen be visibly projected, preferably onto the patiently-presented body of the ostensible "partner" in order to "prove" ejaculation happened and maybe to "mark" the other actor or actress for the behalf of the viewer tend to... limit the available techniques. Also the evident inversion of status in porn means the ejaculating actor rather than his partner produces it himself.
All well and good I'm sure, and I'd be the last to deprive someone else of his or her heart's delight of porn-style money-shot ejaculations with a partner. But there are other ways to do it.
Someone partner who shall remain unidentified in time or time-zone thinks (or at least used to think) it's seriously cool to cup one hand on top of the end of a partner's erection while she got him closer and closer with the other because she likes the feel as he jets up against the palm of her hand and then rains back down over himself. You usually don't see that in porn but, at the risk of putting a too much I in the TMI, it feels... lovely for the recipient as well.
That said, I'd like to comment on the widely, widely pulled... but also widely misinterpreted pull quote from the introductory paragraph of "Better than nothing or savvy risk-reduction practice? The importance of withdrawal" (pdf) by researchers Rachel K. Jones, Julie Fennell, Jenny A. Higgins and Kelly Blanchard of the Guttmacher Institute published in Contraception magazine.
Having now read the darn thing I think Jones might still be a bit more sanguine than I or, say, Scarleteen might be about the feasibility of withdrawal as a viable form of primary birth control if your really don't want to get pregnant her paper indicates it's still an important consideration.
Jones makes the point that because withdrawal isn't considered a viable form of contraception it's often not mentioned at all in surveys of contraceptive use, with results-fuzzying results
- It's often not mentioned in questions by researchers because they don't consider it a valid method
- It's often not volunteered by respondents because they don't consider it a valid method either, even though
- An evidently large, but largely undetermined, number of people still do it at least occasionally
The result is the extent of its use, or effectiveness, isn't as well understood as it could be.
But there's another consequence that Jones unearths: there's considerable evidence that couples use withdrawal in combination with other methods more often than researchers take into account. With the result that the actual effectiveness of other methods may show up looking better than they really are.
For instance if very many users of the newly-re-reintroduced Today contraceptive sponge (made famous in the 90s in a Seinfeld episode) also used withdrawal its already pretty-awful failure rate (a not at all "spongeworthy" 16-36% likelihood of pregnancy each year!) might look even worse that it seems.
But is it? Do they? Should we? The message from Jones is it's hard to say because we don't really know.
Thus the first affirmative result from Jones' paper her admonition that withdrawal needs to be better studied and better understood is dead on.
This post is a follow-up to a a couple of previous posts about male ejaculation outside the man's partner's body in general, and outside the heterosexual man's partner's vagina in particular, as a means to decrease the likelihood of fluid transfers that could result in infection transmission or pregnancy when pregnancy was not desired.
In those previous posts I misused the word "withdrawal," which most people see as a brinksmanship-y technique where the man gets as close as he can to orgasm during intercourse and then, somehow, clearheadedly pulls out in such a way and in enough time for his otherwise hands-off ejaculation to occur such that no semen comes in contact with her vulva, let alone is released inside her vagina.
Most people, it turns out, have the right impression. My impression was that "withdrawal" meant having intercourse as a form of caress but using other means altogether -- such as manual, oral, self-stimulation, toy stimulation -- to reach male orgasm.
So, while I still think it's fine for men to come inside, especially when invited to do so by their partners, and while I still think it's even nicer not to make that the default assumption about how men "should" have their orgasms, and while I still think ejaculating outside one's partner's vagina is a good way to enhance more conventional forms of contraception, and while I still think ejaculating outside one's partner's body is a good way to enhance more conventional forms of STI avoidance... I'm going to stop using the word "withdrawal" because it's not really the same thing at all.
Y'know how those "Million and One Sex Positions" manuals (all inevitably hetero) you see all over the place? The ones with either highly-stylized stick figures (some with translucent overlays) or else even more highly-stylized photographs of recruiting-poster-perfect people with model-blank expressions and static-figure positions? You know how they give you the impression this is All Serious Business because they're just so stick-up-the-butt... well... All Serious Business?
Jayme Waxman of Sex Matters sets us straight in a nifty, off-the-cuff video post.
After overdosing on a slew of sex positions, here’s a random thought about why you would even try some of the most ridiculous of positions…
Sex Positions: It's all about the smile from Jamye Waxman on Vimeo.
It's startling sometimes just how entrenched the whole "for purposes of reproduction only" theory of sex is. Even when there's no intention... or (since not all sex involves interlocking between fertile heterosexuals) no possibility of reproduction.
And I think, in the west at least, and it looks like a couple of the other major world cultures, it's got a lot to do with philosophical or religious wariness of pleasure in the corporeal world. With the result that when it is discussed publicly it's discussed soberly, non-salaciously, with an eye towards reproduction... or prevention thereof... for purposes of health... or prevention of disease... or more egalitarian allocation of "marital bliss." And, most 'specially, for purposes of education. Without which UR Duin it Wrong!
With the further result that the idea that some positions when someone says "are they serious" the correct answer might be "actually... no." :-)
I just gotta pass this along. Em & Lo of Sex. Love. And Everything in Between. say
Photo from Em & Lo's site. Link takes you to Amazon Tingler page with their associate code.The turn-of-the-century enthusiasm over the Tingler may have faded, but don’t forget this ridiculous-looking repurposed kitchen whisker for pre-sex relaxation and nerve-stimulation. In fact, experiencing the Tingler is the closest you can get to sheer ecstasy without taking MDMH or having an orgasm. This cheap metal scalp-massaging tool is so simple — but then most ingenious ideas are: It gently touches acupressure points to send shivers throughout your entire body. And that’s not just regurgitated marketing copy — that’s for reals.
Whether they are, as Em & Lo suggest, one of the best foreplay tools ever, I gotta say they can feel celestially supernal. Leave a comment if you've ever tried it.
Although I'm more partial to quoting irrelevant bits of Gilbert and Sullivan this Monty Python dinosaur seems appropriate to my recent spate of ejaculation-during-PIV-intercourse posts.
Customer A:
Morning,Waitress:
Morning.Customer A:
What have you got?Waitress:
Well, there's
Egg and spam
Egg, bacon and spam
Egg, bacon, sausage and spam
Spam, bacon, sausage and spam
Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam
Spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam tomato and spam
Spam, spam, spam, egg and spam
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam.Or Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce served in a provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam.
Customer B:
Have you got anything without spam?Waitress:
Well, the spam, eggs, sausage and spam
That's not got much spam in it...
Customer A:
Why can't she have eggs, bacon, spam and sausage?Customer B:
That's got spam in it!Customer A:
Hasn't got much spam in it as spam, eggs, sausage and spam has it?Customer B:
Could you do me eggs, bacon, spam and sausage without the spam, then?Waitress:
Yeeeeeccccch!!Customer B:
What do you mean 'yeeeccchhh?'...
It's not that there's anything wrong with spam.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with spam! It's basically just pork sausage steamed with juniper berries, and made fresh instead of canned, and partnered with the right dishes and libations, it's marvelous.
So it's not that there's anything wrong with spam, it's just that assuming every meal has to have spam in it, trying to work "different" approaches that... still end up with spam in it... that it doesn't even count as eating if it doesn't have spam in it... sounds, um, familiar. :-)
A little earlier today I mentioned a post by Britni Danielle expressing how she's keen on most things about hetero sex, except...
I absolutely love when a man comes on my tits or stomach. I adore being covered in come. I also love when a man comes in my mouth. I think it's totally hot. I don't necessarily love having someone come on my face, but if it's someone I'm dating and he really wants to, I'll let him. So where do I HATE when a guy comes? Inside me (without a condom).
I think it's absolutely repulsive. I think it's messy. I hate that it drips out for the next hour, whether it's onto the bed or into your underwear and you have to sit in it all day.
She continues...
But honestly? I think that it may be partially related to my complete aversion to having children. I think that I associate someone coming inside with procreation or babies or pregnancy or something. ... Now of course I know that there are sperm in precum and blah blah blah, and I'm on the pill which is 99.9% effective and blah blah blah, but I still hate the thought of someone coming inside me. Even if it's someone that I'm really emotionally connected to and intimate with.
When you add it all up it does seem like -- however nice PIV/ejaculation might be -- that there's an almost... disorderly emphasis put on that one particular activity.
I can think of a couple of obvious reasons why. The most circular being that it's the most "natural" form of sex. Or, its sociobiology/evolutionary-psychology form, it's the most "genetically wired." But I can also think of a couple of other ones: a thousands-of-years-old, intense legal and doctrinal fascination with restricting sex "except for procreation." The equally ancient tradition of male "semen conservation" for health, vitality, and old-age would be another. (I've mentioned elsewhere that in the peak of Victorian-era hysteria it was believed in Europe, England and the United States that "as much as ten ejaculations a year" could be fatal to a healthy adult male!) The old Monty Python song "Every Sperm is Sacred," in other words, had (and in many cultures still has) an entirely secular side as well.
One nice side effect of the Protestant Reformation in the West was an overturn of the idea of sex only for procreation. And men have demonstrated, um, repeatedly that semen "conservation" has few if any benefits at all. Add the substantial risks of unwanted, unplanned pregnancy, the increased risk of transmission of some STIs, the inconvenience and mess born mostly by the recipient and the point that there are actually more pleasurable ways for both men and women to have orgasms together and... it's worth, well, reconsidering our obsession with the practice.
Except for procreation, of course. :-)
Update: For the record, since my enthusiasm might be mistaken for stridency, after complaining about the notion that we should always limit "normal" sex to PIV intercourse to ejaculation I'm not turning around and saying we should never do so. I am, however, questioning its centrality and the assumption -- especially in the face of quite a bit of contrary evidence -- that it's the easiest, most natural or (according to DSM proposals) least "abnormal," or best thing people can decide to do together.
I'm also aware that a lot of the alternatives sound a whole lot like the dismal, almost universally self-induced "money shots" of pornography. To that I'll just say that the "money shot" of porn is to male orgasm what the rest of porn is to real adult sex: highly stylized activities designed almost exactly to be more exciting to watch than to do in real life.
So I realize I've done a couple of posts in the last week that were all related to a stealth brain-changing post from Britni Danielle of Oh My God, That Britni's Shameless who said
I absolutely love when a man comes on my tits or stomach. I adore being covered in come. I also love when a man comes in my mouth. I think it's totally hot. I don't necessarily love having someone come on my face, but if it's someone I'm dating and he really wants to, I'll let him. So where do I HATE when a guy comes? Inside me (without a condom).
My post about Shere Hite and her view that depictions of men in porn are impoverished compared even to, for instance, their sexual expression while they're masturbating, the one linking to Guttmacher's Rachel K Jones assessing withdrawal as contraception, one about heteronormative assumptions embodied in proposed revisions to the DSM, and even the one from Em & Lo questioning why stains from women's menstrual blood are more problematic than "wet spot" semen stains after intercourse were each influenced by Britni's post questioning the utility and/or desirability not of PIV intercourse but PIV intercourse culminating in male ejaculation as the default/desirable/fallback/ultimate sex act.
Many of the above posts have sparked cool conversations in comments. Other comments have (not-unreasonably, considering) questioned my judgment for being, for instance, so sanguine about "withdrawal." There's a longer answer, which would be the possibly radical idea that intercourse itself should be employed as "foreplay," but the shorter answers lead back to Britni's post.
Megan of Jezebel passes along some kind of cool, kind of ominous information about the effectiveness of the old-fashioned "withdrawal" method of birth control. Quoting Rachel K. Jones in the magazine Contraception she says
[Withdrawal] is not as ineffective at preventing pregnancy as we might think.
The best available estimates indicate that with "perfect use," 4% of couples relying on withdrawal will become pregnant within a year, compared with 2% of couples relying on the male condom. More realistic estimates suggest that with "typical use," 18% of couples relying on withdrawal will become pregnant within a year, compared with 17% of those using the male condom. In other words, with either method, more than eight in 10 avoid pregnancy.
So, if it's just pregnancy we're concerned with avoiding, it's actually not the worst choice.
I'm reminded of the line we were given when I was a teen peer councilor at a sex information hotline back when pregnancy was the biggest concern because all common STIs were still curable with antibiotics: "Condoms... they're better than nothing... barely."
Jones mentions using withdrawal in conjunction with other forms of birth control, which is actually always a good idea anyway. Score one for the evident ongoing migration of the unfortunate "money shot" phenomenon from porn to real life.
But Megan passes along Jones's main point: it's time to stop stigmatizing women (I'd say women and men since, now that I think about it, it's an actual third way men can contribute actively to contraception besides condoms and vasectomies) and...
start talking about it in a scientific fashion with their patients, and that they stop telling women who use it that they might as well use nothing at all — which is both inaccurate and unhelpful.
If people are going to keep using it -- and statistics suggest a heck of a lot of people do -- then yeah, might as well give it a good, hard look and make sure you know what you're talking about when you talk about it. We don't have to like it, but especially if it's in the ballpark with other common alternatives then dealing with is a whole lot more effective than denial.
After researching the practice of collaring in BDSM, and coming up with, um, idiosyncratic results, Kink In Exile offers...
5 easy things to think about when doing research (kinky or otherwise):
- Check your sources — how do you know what you know? Is your data coming from the CIA, a research institution, or the kid who lives on your floor? Is the article you are reading peer reviewed?
- Check multiple sources — are you getting different numbers from different sources? Do your sources have different agendas?
- Check publication dates — there was a time when the sun went around the earth and all the best scientists of the day would have told you so. Make sure your information is up to date; this is especially vital with medical information.
- Fact or opinion? — Fact: collaring is a known practice in BDSM communities. Opinion: Collaring ceremonies are only valid between people who play really really hard. (Oh, and I will support my fact by saying that the many articles written on the subject and posted to BDSM community boards are indicative of a shared experience or in-group behavior.)
- Validity based on what — Does the article provide data from a well-known source, or peer reviewed study, or does it ask you to believe what it says is true because it’s Tradition?
Good advice in any context. It's really helpful when dealing with previously suppressed, othered, or otherwise voiceless communities. Even when you're part of the community yourself, but, obviously, especially helpful when you're not.
Via Petra Boynton, sex researcher Shere Hite, writing in The Indypendent, tackles a subject that's very near and dear to my heart: the representation of hetero men in conventional pornography.
Pornography, it seems to me, presents a highly distorted image of men. While my research with thousands of men shows a different picture of “who men are sexually,” pornography imposes a rigid ideological view on male sexual feelings, expression and behavior. They are not the monolithic beings depicted in most porno images, nor do they find their authentic selves in pornography.
Ironically, pornography seems friendly to men — more than to women — but its underlying message makes fun of men. Subliminally, it tells men that their sexual expression is ridiculous, base, insensitive, even grotesque. Visually it frequently makes men look ugly and coarse, foolish and unappealing.
It's almost cliché that women are presented as one-dimensional and cartoonish in porn. Critiques of women in porn are practically an industry unto itself. Extending that critique to men is rather refreshing.
An emerging criticism of her column and, presumably, her underlying work is that she misunderstands how men are depicted in porn. And while a quick tour this morning of popular porn upload sites like YouPorn and RedTube (we really are presented as almost voiceless, as always having and keeping erections, as uninterested in emotional contact or even non-penis physical contact) suggest she's not that far off the mark.
But reading deeper into her column that's not really her point. Even if everything that's presented about men in porn was sexually enjoyable1 to do, what's really important is that it's a really, really limited set of the full range of sexually enjoyable things that men can do with a partner.
Hite speaks in particular to something I think men (and, often, even our partners) tend to shy away from in real life and, evidently, avoid like the plague in porn. Here's Hite.
Men say they enjoy masturbation because they can fantasize about whatever they want and there is no pressure on them to perform. During masturbation, in my research, men stimulate themselves in many more places than they do when with a partner.
...
But many men cut short foreplay because they are afraid they may lose the erection which they have been taught is necessary to enjoy sex and which would be “shameful” to lose. More men could reach much higher peaks of feeling and arousal if they did not feel anxious about how they should behave sexually.
The great middle of the bell-shaped curve of porn never goes there, never treats men as interesting or, especially, complicated or, quirkily, fun to play with. We're remarkably fun to play with though.
I think it's great that Hite has raised the question.
And hey, just in time for Kristina Lloyd's Man Candy Monday photo over at porn-for-straight-women Erotica Cover Watch. Oh, and check out comments on this porn-for-women post by Jessica Freely.
And if you're an adult you can click here for yet another entry.
[1: Although seriously, what's fun about stopping everything to wank out a "money shot" when you've got a partner right there who, in real life, would welcome your orgasm in contact and would almost certainly enjoy more active participation in creating it? Especially when it's done over, and over, and over, and over. And over! --fl]
Hey, more good advice from Em & Low, this time on their regular blog. A reader said she was embarrassed to have gotten her period with a regular booty-call partner and wondered what to do about it. Their response is a good table-turner.
First, how does you unexpectedly getting your period reflect badly on you? We’re sure you didn’t plan to turn his bed into a crime scene, right? Sometimes these things happen. Your period is part of life. Heck, it’s part of your sexuality. And have you seen the stuff that comes out of the end of his dick when he ejaculates? Not exactly flowers, either. If you wanted to win the Nice Booty Call of the Year award, you could have offered to either help him clean the sheets (he may not have the experience we ladies do with getting out blood stains) or buy him new ones. But how many guys do you know who offer to clean a woman’s sheets when he spills his seed all over them, huh? It’s just not that big a deal.
The rest of their advice is similarly practical and perspective-building. Body fluids are body fluids. Modern detergent can deal with it, so can we.
Proof that water under the bridge is still drinkable. Very cool post last Mother's Day from Em & Low at their other blogging gig at Sundance Channel's Sunfiltered Blog
It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday — don’t forget to call and thank her for all the wonderful advice.
1. Always wear clean underwear.
2. Trim your fingernails and wash your hands thoroughly and often. (It’ll help you avoid infection and make you less likely to tear delicate internal linings during manual sex.)
...
5. Don’t eat candy that’s unwrapped. (It should always have a condom on it.)
...
10. You never call. Why don’t you call? If you say you’re going to call, then call.
Hey, it's funny, it's heartwarmingly mushy, and darned excellent advice.
Responding to a knee-squeezing podcast from ZDNet about technology at Sex 2.0 Sabrina Morgan of Sabrina in Stockings left a pretty brilliant comment
Thanks for mentioning my session, although I'm not sure what was behind the case of the giggles as soon as the term "sex" came up. I'm sure you share my understanding that CRM software is a set of useful tools; CRM itself is a mindset and a way of running your business. Sex work as a personalized service industry is no different.
Some of the first and longest-running podcasts were sex podcasts (Open Source Sex, Bedroom Radio, and Whorecast come to mind). At a conference focused on the intersection of sex, technology and feminism, Ellie and Nobilis's Podcasting 101 panel was a perfect fit.
As far as getting free attendance as an analyst - good luck with that one. Most of the attendees were sex/tech/culture analysts and paid regardless. The conference was inexpensive to begin with ($40 for last-minute tickets); if you were interested in attending the event for free, volunteer refunds and scholarship tickets were available.
Taking it to their professionalism rather than taking it personally isn't just a good idea in general, it's got to have hurt. "I'm sure you share my understanding of CRM...?" Ouch! Reminding commercial podcasters that they weren't there first? Ouch again. And suggesting that if the $40 for "analysts" (who hadn't bothered to analyze the conference $30 early registration fee) was too pricey they could volunteer or request scholarships? That too.
Even better twist? In Twitter she twisted the knife with just 132 razor-sharp characters.
I can't be offended. They managed to get my name right, promote #sex20, make us sound interesting and make themselves look immature.
Nice work!
Further reflections on "vanilla," "kink" and negotiations. At Sex 2.0 I finally got to meet Miss Calico of Dominatrix Next Door. A week or two ago Calico wrote with warmth and fondness about a BDSM scene she played in with an acquaintance. In addition to sounding eye-rollingly painful for her (which I can handle) her description sounded dangerously out of control (which alarmed me.) I mentioned this to her, in rather maudlin terms that surprised both her and her top.
We talked about it a little further when we met in person and she said, with some exasperation, that she hadn't thought it was necessary to write about the extensive email, phone, and in-person negotiations she and her partner had gone through to detail exactly what they intended to do together, what to expect from each other, what their limits and squicks might be, what their contingencies would be, nor did she think it necessary to talk about their communications before and during the scene nor the details of aftercare afterwards.
I said it made perfect sense that she wouldn't want to do that in her post but that I thought it would be nice for her to talk more about negotiation and aftercare in her blog because a lot of (CoughVanillaCough) people who might like to try kinky things would probably have better experiences if they knew more about it.
The blank look she gave me was worth the price of the plane ticket. "People already know to do that," says she. So I tried to rephrase it, saying that I knew people heard about things like "safe words" but not so much else and that there really wasn't a lot of discussion of "sub drop" and aftercare and that it didn't just come naturally because negotiation, communication, reconsideration, and aftercare isn't really part of standard heteronormative scripts. _[Aside: would Business Time be funny if it wasn't so recognizable? --fl]_ Whereupon she said something that would have been worth the price of a plane ticket to Madagascar to hear it.
"And I'm supposed to justify what I like to do!?!?!?"
Kind of hard to argue with that.
Her observation that heterosexual "vanilla" people make a lot of unspoken assumptions isn't new, of course. That goes back at least as far as Easton and Liszt/Hardy's The Ethical Slut
Which leaves one wondering which practices, exactly, should and should not be discussed in the sexual disorders and fetishes sections of ab-psych classes.
Here are my rough, non-verbatim notes from Cunningminx's excellent ice-breaking presentation "Internet Famous / Conference Shy." The notes are necessarily incomplete during audience-participation sections. Finally, because I arrived a few moments late I missed part of the introduction.
Language note: Minx uses the ominous-sounding term "stalking" in the OKCupid sense of being interested in or curious enough about to want to know more about or to meet someone you know only online. (In real stalking there's obviously no such thing as "stalking politely.")
First, here's the session description from the 2009 Sessions page.
Are you great on a keyboard, but overwhelmed by the time you get to the registration desk? Are you charming on Twitter but glued to the wall at the opening night party? Sometimes internet abundance doesn’t translate well to having a great time at that conference. From wildly famous sexperts to curious wallflowers, from keynoters to first-time guests, conference experiences might not easily translate from the keyboard. Find out how, with just a little preparation, you can have the best possible experience at your next con.
Session leader: Cunning Minx
How do you stalk politely?
- Check blogs and their other sites
- Leave comments
- Follow twitter
- Google for other social-media connections
Be organized
- make a list of who you want to see
- and what you want to talk about with them
- name/alias
- organization
- blog/twitter topics
- recent events attended
What can I do to be stalkable/open?
- Write best work before the event (most interesting to/about you)
- Be yourself, be interesting
- Reach out via blog, podcast, Twitter
- Use the event #hashtag for Everything
- Blog/Twitter about folks you do know
- Find out/ask who's going
- What you're excited about
Join the conversation
- Mailing list
- Listen first -- take a week to listen to what others are talking about, so you know what is and isn't... topical.
- Answer questions (if you really know)
- Ask questions
- Post a pic to Facebook group
- Post to Facebook wall
- Continue interesting conversations with individuals off list
- Be a real person
Mailing list don't
- Don't use as a dating service
As you pack
- Make sure you've got all your equipment with you
- Including chargers and cables
- And extra batteries
- On the other hand, asking to borrow a power cord is a great ice-breaker
- Bring fresh business cards w/ name/pseudonym, TwitterID, blog, cell-phone or texting
- Backup your laptop
- Give current partner some loving
During the conference
- turn twitter notices on mobile device
- be stalkable
- be your "party self"
- Post about all the fun you're having
- If you show faces do a pod/vidcast
- seesmic.com
audioboom.com[Couldn't find working link. --fl]
Starting a conversation
- Statement
- I just went to...
- This is my first...
- Disclosure about yourself ("I" statement)
- I think...
- Invitation (opportunity for them to say)
- What do you think about...?
Conversation Starters
- Which session are you going to?
- Oh, I missed that, how was it
- Going anywhere for dinner (be specific
- What do you do at XXX
- How did you find out about YYY
- Did you see the season finale of ZZZ? (Battlestar Galactica, good example -- kind of random, good break-out-of-conference-mode question.)
Say what you want
- I'd like to present/scene with you tonight (Can't get what you don't ask for -- they're not telepathic)
- I'd like to get to know you better
- I'd love to hear you scream
- Point being -- get it out there out loud so they can respond
Practice believing in yourself
- If you get emo get yourself out of it by... asking/outreach to pull yourself back into "party" space
- Say fears out loud
- "Egging on" exercise -- you vent, they agree instead of saying "oh no." Point is you can end up laughing about it instead of resisting their resistance.
Take care of yourself
- Adopt a policy of
- Trying new things
- meeting new people
- having new experiences
- no regrets (you won't enjoy everything you try, e.g. the 9-star tofu faux chicken-liver appetizer everyone else at dinner said they liked.)
- Decide you will kick ass
It's really annoying, and patronizing, and counterproductive to refer to sexually aware people who don't drool down other people's blouses (without a negotiated invitation anyway) as "sex geeks." Or geeks, period.
---
Which gets to something Ghostorchid said about "vanilla" vs. "kink" approaches to sex in comments to Miriam Perez's post at Feministing
I feel like there's sometimes a tendency in the alt.sex and sex blogger scene where it's "all kinks respected" but it's okay to make little jokes about "vanilla" or to imply that more conventional folks would benefit from "more creativity" and "exploring" and whatnot. There's this tiny assumption that they're a little repressed, playing on the safe side, or missing out.
I also feel like there's an assumption that trickles around in alt sex communities that the alt sex scene is the "healthier, better alternative", when it's really just as great and as screwed up as every other scene. I get frequently told I should try more kink stuff by people who don't understand or can't believe that I've had horrible experiences in the kink scene. They insist I was just with the wrong people, although I was surrounded by radical self-identified feminist types who departed feeling like they'd exhibited great sexual politics while I felt sad and betrayed and erased. It's as though alt.sex and kink is the cure-all to sexual power issues.
Before I go anywhere else with this I want to acknowledge Orchid Ghost's unhappy experiences. They're way too common in kink where, unfortunately, the "smartest people in the room" effect -- where it's assumed that if we're doing it we must be doing it right so if you don't like it you must be doing something wrong -- can be as common as anywhere else something new or unfamiliar is practiced. There's also the plain old ordinary fact that players and users are as likely to attach themselves to sexual advocacy groups as anywhere else (in non-sexual terms see eternal attempts by "young socialist" and "anarchist" groups to hijack or subvert social-organizing and protest movements.) And finally, like any other complex skill involving technology, emotions, and/or body fluids, it's easy for beginners to get hurt -- either by themselves or because those who are adept forget that it's not "intuitive." (Computer pundit John Dvorak correctly quipped that the Unix operating system is intuitive once you thoroughly understand it.)
That said...
The common assumption is that "vanilla" equals "normal" and "kink" means alternative, naughty, radical, or (especially) transgressive. Instead "vanilla" implies a patriarchal and heteronormative, reproduction-centric, penis-in-vagina-intercourse-till-male-ejaculation-focused form of sex where negotiation terminates with a woman's "consent" to let the man proceed to "take" her as he sees fit.
Whereas "kink" tends to include any sexual activity with any combination of individuals, orientations, body parts, and sensory preferences (including the traditional "vanilla" ones) with the significant difference being that consent signals the beginning rather than the end of communication, negotiation, and shared decision-making.
That "vanilla" people think it's "kinky" to continue negotiating after consent has been given says all anyone needs to know about why both terms are almost perfectly inappropriate and non-descriptive terms.
And returning to Orchid Ghost's unfortunate experiences, simply calling one's self "kinky" can be as empty as calling one's self "sex positive" or (from back in the 1960s and 1970s) "sexually liberated." But it is the case that "kink" has more of a framework for intentionality, negotiation, and a "principle of least surprise" than "vanilla..." which (speaking of principle of least surprise!) can include the inherently non-consensual, non-negotiated and extraordinarily transgressive "penis in popcorn box" stunt. Just sayin'
Update: In comments SnowdropExplodes says Dw3t-Hthr talks about being the "clean up crew" when people have been "smartest in the room"ing.
This post is about an effective way to deal with people who post sexually "incriminating" information about others against their will: outing the posters so that their future employers, partners, and customers find out when they Google them.
On Saturday at Sex 2.0 Maria Diaz gave a presentation on "revenge porn" "Revenge porn" is the umbrella term for the act of distributing information about a person's sexual nature against the victim's wishes, but it's most closely associated with posting nude photos taken before a relationship ends as a way of getting back at an ex.
One of the big concerns for victims is that even if they get redress from perpetrators... or even if the perpetrator genuinely regrets their decision, once information goes into circulation it can't be recalled.
One potential bright spot is that as more, and more, and more people "grow up online" and as more and more people's photos end up in distribution (either involuntarily or voluntarily) we can expect to reach a certain saturation level such that the existence of such photos won't be scandalous at all. (In 1984 the discovery of years-old nude photos of Vanessa L. Williams obliged her surrender her position as Miss America. Some years later the disclosure of far more sexual photos of rabid right-wing radio host "Doctor" Laura Schlessinger raised eyebrows but caused no lasting damage. Just recently the discovery of photos of controversial figure Carrie Prejean have caused scarcely a ripple. (Compared, at least, to her genuinely scandalous, but unconcealed homophobia.)
Odds are that it won't be that long before such photos won't derail a Supreme Court nomination.
That will be then, however. This is now. And now, for whatever reason, not only do people feel embarrassed and threatened when a former partner posts photos, they also face potential discrimination from future partners, colleges, and employers during routine background searches.
So what to do?
Well, Google and background checks cut both ways. If Google can turn up "incriminating" photos indicating that, like the entire rest of the population, one has a pee-pee and an inclination to do things that feel nice with them, well? Google can also turn up information on the assholes who think it's fun, funny, or "revenge" to post them.
And you know what? Whereas a "saturation" effect may protect victims in the future it's extremely unlikely that future employers, partners, journalists, or biographers will ever be pleased when they turn up evidence that a candidate has posted such photos.
"Youthful indiscretion" is almost by definition a transitory phenomenon that, again almost by definition, has no bearing on one's likely future performance. "Being an asshole," on the other hand, can be a little more... indicative. (For instance it's very likely that no matter what he does in the years between, 30 years from now Jason Fortuny's odds of a supreme-court nomination will be approximately what they are now: zero.)
So to the extent you can't recall photos posted on the internet I'd like to suggest making it just as difficult to recall the information identifying the individuals who posted those photos.
Yes, I'm aware that many victims would prefer the incident be forgotten as quickly as possible rather than dredged up again in the future. That's obviously fine. But not every victim will feel that way. And, really, it only takes a few to create a laudable "chilling effect" on other would-be perpetrators.
One of the evening activities after Sex 2.0 (Twitter tag #sex20con) this evening was a screening of award-winning porn, including Matinee, directed by Jennifer Lyon Bell, from the Cinekink 2009 event. Here's a synopsis of Matinee from Cinekink
Actors Mariah and Daniel play lovers every night, but their onstage romance lacks spark. One slow afternoon, they discover that today's matinée performance will make or break both of their careers. Daniel wants to make big changes, and Mariah starts to wonder: are Daniel's suggestions reasonable? Or has he lost track of the boundary between actor and character? Rushed to the stage, in front of a live audience, they must figure it out together.
I came in late and, because the room was very crowded, I didn't stay long. And so I don't know much about the premise or plot. But the one sex scene I saw was in my opinion a real eye-opener.
The female lead leads! Every step of the way she's the active party. The point of view focuses on both of them but she's the one doing the foreplay, stroking him hard, eating him, unwrapping the condom, pulling him toward her, guiding him into her. Even when he's on top she's actively moving up against him as much as he's moving into her.
They separate before either of them come. She climbs on top of him. He holds himself this time, but more to hold himself steady as engulfs him. Once they're joined he leans back and she moves. As she gets more excited she reaches down and rolls her own clitoris.
Again they stop before either of them come. She rolls back. Their hands join over her vulva. He strokes her to a well-acted but persuasive rather than porn/theatrical orgasm. Rather than jump to the next scene there's a really nice enactment of the pause for "aftershock" care.
There were a lot of highly non-vanilla people present and I didn't think the film was well received (they may have just been really rowdy, or else perhaps the into scenes, which I didn't see, were unbearably hokey.) But I thought from a gender-role perspective its hetero/vanilla veneer made it all the more transgressive. She put the condom on him even before she began to eat him. The pace and tempo was in regular-intercourse tempo rather than the conventional hyper-porn bippity-bippity-bip pace that, I think, is pitched more for the tempo of male masturbation. There was no money shot. No calling anyone a bitch or grimacing out "give me your fat rutabaga you big stud." At least while I was there she came and he didn't. In fact except that there was nudity, PIV penetration, and couple of porn-style moans and groans it missed most of the tropes I remember driving me to give up on video porn.
That last bit is kind of interesting: any bumpkin in porn can cough out a money shot, and many do. The standard routine is, roughly, that the director gets all the shots he or she needs, all the positions, acts, and angles, and then they stop everything re-arrange the shoot, and the actor stands or kneels and quickly wanks out an ejaculation. Usually on somebody else's body or face. Whee! Just how I always want to finish when I have sex (but, to be fair, it probably helps the target-male customer identify since at that point he's probably masturbating too.) What's different about Matinee is that she has the "money shot" using only his hands -- considerably more difficult even for porn actresses to produce in male actors (given how rarely they do it instead of him.)
An important point that I probably wouldn't have picked up on if I hadn't been watching with other, perhaps more porn-savvy viewers: I get the impression is more of a masturbation aid than representative sex. And so, I think, maybe the stylized, 7-minute naked-step-aerobics of "real" porn is more effective for people who use it to get off than the stuff regular people do. (Sort of like you might enjoy seeing a whole top-chef episode worth of effort to prepare your meal even though you probably wouldn't want to cook under that kind of pressure yourself every evening.
But by and large? Although personally I like a little more turn-taking when I have sex it was all in all the kind of slow comfortable, cuddly, orgasmic screw I'd thoroughly enjoy spending a matinee-long afternoon doing with a partner.
Anyway, cool scene in what looked like a cool movie. (The Cinekink jury evidently agreed. They gave Matinee the award for best narrative short.
Learn something new every day.
At dinner at the Sex 2.0 conference I learned from Bad Influence Girl, who writes sex-toy reviews and erotic reveries, that...
"Female condoms," the kind of sleeves that are inserted vaginally instead of rolled onto the penis as with condoms for men, are cooler than I'd been led to believe.
- First, they're great for women who's partners have difficulty getting or maintaining erections. That would include those who loose steam while putting on condoms, sure, but also for those who have difficulty getting or maintaining full erections at all.
- Next, they're nice because they make initial entry, the kind involving a lot of nice, cooperative bumping and sliding and aligning when you're not using your hands, feel more natural.
- Oh yeah, and most of them are polyurethane or nitrile polymer instead of latex, which is not only great for people with real latex allergy-allergies, but for people who's skin is irritated by that kind of squeaky friction you get even when you use lube.
Anyway, that's actually pretty cool to hear about. The operative language about condoms in general, and condoms for women in particular, is that the language used to discuss them is often highly... operational. Yes, they give women control, especially in the sense of women who's partners selfishly refuse to use condoms themselves. And yes they provide roughly the same protection regular condoms to (more in the case of so-called "bikini condoms" since they offer more protection from skin-to-skin transmission of, say, perineal or scrotal herpes; some of the earlier versions provided less protection; like regular condoms they can be difficult to learn to use properly.)
But... BadInfluence wasn't talking about the pragmatics, she was talking about what made them more enjoyable, for her, than male condoms.
Your mileage may vary but if you use condoms with a second form of contraception and, especially, if you or your partner has erection problems, you might enjoy checking them out.
Hugo Schwyzer has taken up the issue I raised in Unforseen Consequences of Men Believing Themselves Unseen.
In comments he ran into some perfectly legitimate but somewhat skeptical objections. The first being Lisa KS (of Punkassblog) who said
“I have lost track of the number of women of my acquaintance, now often in their thirties, who have a lot of bitterness and anger about the fact that no man has ever really intensely physically desired them–made them feel hot in the way you so eloquently describe above–no man has ever said such things to them. This same hurt and rage in women is absolutely identical, and anecdotally I’d say nearly as prevalent, as it is in men.”
Her point is interrelated to the point Hugo (and I) are raising but it’s really, really important. What Hugo is talking about is the different heterosexual gender narratives of desirability. What she's talking about is the disconnect between gender narratives and actual real life.
In other words a) we have little vocabulary for discussing visual/physical desire for men and b) the vocabulary that exists for discussing desire for women excludes many or most actual women.
That’s not to belittle Lisa's point. At all! I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and trying to work through it. In fact the lack of a narrative of desire for men first occurred to me while thinking about it. But they’re different problems. That both need to be addressed.
Frequent commenter Mythago said
Feeling that your body is ‘neutral’ - that men’s bodies are just sort of, you know, people bodies, but women’s bodies are the sexy ones - isn’t the same thing as “I have a penis so I’m ugly”.
And another commenter ElleDee said
"I’m having a hard time feeling too sorry for guys about this.”
and
“How about this? We (straight women) will tell you when we think you are hot if y’all (straight dudes) tell us when you think we are smart and funny and really interesting.”
Feeling sorry for men wouldn’t be all that helpful anyway. It’s at least part of a bed we’ve made and are laying in. So the most productive thing to do… for us and anyone who’s willing to help… is figure how to get us to get up.
I think that’s more critical than almost anything for getting over the next gender hurdle. The gendered beauty and worthiness traps are caustic in the extreme. Whereas Mythago correctly identifies male form as “neutral” men tend to perceive “neutral” as irrelevant. With the result that men imagine we can only be attractive in terms of material-accumulation or accomplishment. With the further result that we perceive heterosexuality as transactional. With the further result that we’re indoctrinated to see women’s accomplishments not just as competition but as an existential threat. Because, to paraphrase male-persona Red Green, “if the women don’t find you handsome, and don’t find you handy, they’re not going to give you the time of day.” And would that form a nice basis for ultimate self-hating misogyny? Why I believe it would!
So anyway, at least for me, the point isn’t to make us men feel better by broadening beauty narratives to include us. Instead it’s to further bend the gender conventions that say there’s only one way society assesses men just like we’re already working to alter the way society assess women. It’s about finding more ways to subvert the dominant paradigm wherein men are men, women are women, and never the twain shall be treated alike.
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Meanwhile... Mathilde Madden of Erotica Cover Watch (a blog wherein two straight women erotica authors are occasionally reviled as radicals and even lesbians for wanting to see more good-looking men on the covers of erotica written by and for straight women) reveals one of her "Man Candy Monday" sources
I was idly flicking through regular candyland Hunk du Jour and discovered I couldn’t choose between these two. I know, it’s a tough old life.
Most of the images at Hunk du Jour seem fairly work safe. Looks like you can find other, somewhat less work-safe sources in Madden and her co-blogger Kristina Lloyd's blogroll.
If you're an adult you can click here to see a possibly not-work-safe image.
In comments to a great troll beat-down by Sady of Tigerbeatdown, belmanoir quotes the troll and adds what might be the missing piece to an critically important puzzle (emphasis mine)
"Another thing, why is it always up to the guy to stay sober enough to stop the act? If I go home with a girl after drinking, and we both have sex wasted as hell, she can wake up and say that she didn't want it. Then I go to jail. Where does that seem right at all? How about don't get drunk enough to agree to sex with a random stranger unless you are prepared to accept the consequences? That's how you 'ask for it'."
I think I love it so much because Tom is identifying the consequences of HIM getting drunk enough to agree to have sex with a random stranger as a POSSIBLE RAPE CHARGE and he doesn't seem to want to accept that at all! By his logic, guys who have drunk sex are "asking" to be accused of rape. And I can't help feeling like that wasn't his point.
Because seriously, it stands to reason that if drunken women are "asking to be raped" then drunken men are "asking to be charged with rape." The symmetry is beautiful not least because those most inclined to be... or at least to sympathize with... drunken men are going to be saying "now wait a minute, that doesn't make sense!" To which the answer, obviously, would be exactly!
To be honest I think it actually is problematic that date rapists are pretty consistently as hammered as their victims. But it's never been sufficient to say we should manage men's alcohol consumption any more than it's sufficient to claim we should manage women's. Still you can say to men, as we evidently insist on saying to women "if you go out drinking then you're asking for it."
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More generally, though, I like belmanoir proposal that if drunken women1 are asking to be raped then, well, you're asking to be charged with rape for having sex with drunken women.
What's nice about that construction is that it works even in the Seth Rogan movie where his rent-a-cop rapes a profoundly intoxicated woman while he's sober.
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Good informal metric: if someone's too drunk for you to feel comfortable with them driving, they're probably too drunk to competently either give or to discern consent.
That doesn't mean they won't consent when they're hammered. It doesn't mean they won't attempt to discern it. It just means that, as with driving competence, they're not going to be up for doing it competently.
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I think the biggest concern here is that it feels patronizing to make determinations about other people's competence. But hello, car keys? Which wouldn't be a metaphor in the first place if intoxication and competent decision-making played well together.
As for "well it was her/his decision, who was I to judge?" Doesn't work for bartenders, and it only sometimes works for social hosts. So I'd say nope.
---
Final point: yeah, you say, but you and/or your partner love tipsy sex. How do you get there if competent consent goes out the window? It's hard to imagine anyone objecting if you and your partner(s), together, to get drunk and screw before you get drunk and screw.
[1: The discussion was framed in stereotypical gendered terms but the principle is obviously general. --fl]
Sometimes it seems to me that if you announce to the world that you're, say, a "self-admitted sociopath" or a misanthrope or a separatist, and you use the rhetoric of sociopathology or misanthropy or separatism to advance your causes of, say, sex-worker rights or recognition of women as human beings... that you're going to encounter quite a bit of, um, resistance. Or resentment. Or misunderstanding. Or exclusion.
Which is fine. Sociopaths, misanthropes, and separatists expect and perhaps demand resistance, resentment, misunderstanding, or even exclusion. And so when they get it they're happy. Indeed one gets the impression sometimes that when such individuals detect acceptance or adoption of their positions they flee extremeward... sometimes further than their own comfort zones... in order to re-establish the adversity their self-identity demands.
And that's fine too. Just yesterday... somewhere on Twitter or a post or in a PDF or comments to someone else's post or somewhere else... someone I wish I could identify raised the perfectly valid point that almost by definition change is not initiated by well-adjusted people. So thank goodness for misanthropes, sociopaths, and separatists!
The problem arises, I think, when one confuses rejection of one's unpleasant or adversarial rhetoric or personality with rejection of one's cause. Because after a certain point ones audience can begin to entertain the same confusion. With the result that in addition to closing their ears to one's asshole behavior they close their ears to one's perfectly legitimate cause.
Update: See also risk identified by Ezra Klein re: Sen. Inhofe as conservative id rather than crazy uncle.
So an anonymous donor has granted a big chunk of money to colleges run by women, stipulating that the money be given as scholarships to women and minorities. NPR Claudio Sanchez reporter evidently asked whether colleges run by men would get any money.
Twisty Faster of I Blame The Patriarchy response illustrated two things it's really important to know about her. First, she understands (heck, she taught me!) that the goal of radical feminism isn't so that women can gain access to the slightly nicer cage men are trapped in, it's to get everybody out of the damn cages. Second that she thinks hyperbolic misanthropy is the best way to explain radical feminism.
No, Claudio. I’m afraid men are shit out of luck. It’s the Law of the Conservation of Human Dignity, which states that, within a social order based on dominance and submission, the total amount of human dignity must remain constant. In other words, whenever women are treated with an iota of decency, a reciprocal diminishment of men’s humanity must obtain.
A consequence of this law is that whenever a girl gets to kick a soccer ball, somewhere a boy will be made to play with Barbies. Whenever a woman exercises sovereignty over the contents of her internal organs, somewhere a man will have to wear a frumpy 19th century calico dress and do the family laundry by hand. Whenever a woman publishes a paper on particle physics, somewhere a man will be waterboarded for a week before being shot by a firing squad of hairy humorless feminists. Etc.
Another way to put that first paragraph would be that no, the donor probably noticed there are plenty of schools who's presidents are men, and plenty of scholarships available to men, and so no, there will still be plenty of money for men in academia.
And another way to put that first paragraph would be that it's probably not a zero-sum endowment. Given the nature of the grant the choice probably wasn't between women vs. men in academia but instead a choice between advancing women in academia vs. advancing, say, women's health, reproductive rights, or political freedom. Therefore the endowment is just as likely to have increased the sum of money available to academia rather than shifting it from men to women.
And another way to put that second paragraph is that no part of feminism, especially radical feminism, is a zero-sum game with men where for every gain a woman makes a man must lose.
If you want to put it hyperbolically one might perfectly correctly say an endowment for women in academia isn't a blow to men because advancing feminism isn't about redistributing deck chairs on the Titanic, it's about getting everybody safely off the Titanic! And not just because the Titanic is gonna sink under a combination of bad design and bad management. It's because once you get off the Titanic there's a whole rest of the planet's worth of possibilities.
Putting it any of those ways, though, demonstrates that including misanthropy in one's argument isn't necessarily the most effective way to make one's case.
I've been meaning to mention this video from the National Sexuality Resource Center called "How to Have the Best Sex of Your Life after Fifty." It's an interview with sex educator Karen Forsythe from Second Wind, a sex site for sexually active men and women ages 50 and up.
I can't embed the interview here but you can go see for yourself.
Notable Forsythe quotes:
"Get away from the idea of "intercourse" as the biggest kahuna in the world because it's not. At our age intercourse becomes only one of several options you can have."
"You're going to get laid for the rest of your life."
And since, by the way, you are going to get laid for the rest of your life (if I don't get that point across I'm not doing my job!) you ought to check out Second Wind. It's a cool site whatever your age.
Weekend editor Hortense of Jezebel says
Oh, internet. Without you, how would we ever learn about Boytaurs and those who love them? According to Urlesque, there's an entire (NSFW) Boytaur site devoted to those who prefer "pony boys with octopus arms."
Boytaurs fall into several categories, apparently: either half-man, half-horse, or just men with multiple arms and legs. "Of course, many boytaurs don't stop with four legs," notes the site, "Some add more legs, going six-legged or more. Some add extra arms. And many, enjoying all their boytaur feet, decide to go wristfooted as well."
She found the link via URLesque.com
To be honest I'm not terribly impressed. I'm not sure the site's intention is even erotic so much as more of the same old iconic/stereotypic/lookee-thar. And pretty much by definition photoshopping men's torsos on to horse bodies (let alone photoshopping more muscles onto already musclebound men) doesn't representing the erotic possibilities inherent in the figure of the ordinary heterosexual male. Still, if manamal mashups are your thing boytaur.com seems to be your go-to destination.
If you're an adult you can click here to see a possibly not-work-safe image.
Even further follow-ups on Kink in Exile's post about erotic appeal and men. Shulamith Firestone, one of the original 60's-era radical feminist and author of Dialectics of Sex actually has some seriously cool stuff to say about beauty and eroticism. In a way that pushes forward her agenda, not at all backing it off. Check it out.
And eroticism becomes erotomania. ... From every magazine cover, film screen, TV Tube, subway sign, jump breasts, legs, shoulders, thighs. ... Even with the best of intentions, it is difficult to focus on anything else. ... But in all this barrage of erotic stimuli, men themselves are seldom portrayed as erotic objects. Women's eroticism, as well as men's, becomes increasingly directed towards women.
Hmm... no wonder critics accused Mathilde Madden and Kristina Lloyd of being "‘hard-headed feminists’ ‘do gooders’ and, um, ‘lesbians‘" for thinking erotic photos of men are hawt!
Firestone continues
I want to add a note about the special difficulties of attacking the sex class system [Note: seriously, "no-sex class system" would have been better nomenclature --fl] through its means of cultural indoctrination. Sex objects are beautiful. An attack on them can be confused with an attack on beauty itself. Feminists need not get so pious in their efforts taht they feel they must flatly deny the beauty of the face on the cover of Vogue. For this is not the point. The real question is: is the face beautiful in a human way - does it allow for growth and flux and decay, does it express negative as well as positive emotions, does it fall apart without artificial props - or does it falsely imitate the very different beauty of an inanimate object, like wood trying to be metal?
I say "no-sex class" is more appropriate than "sex class" precisely because women as ideal sex objects are projected as wood or stone -- faces and forms frozen... literally "statuesque," eyes on the horizon, jaws tilted and knees locked just so. (One wonders whether the seemingly enforced breakdowns of... almost exclusively... women at Kink.com is fired by desire not so much to see them break down as to see how much they can "take" before they do.)
It gets better though,
To attack eroticism creates similar problems. Eroticism is exciting. No one wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and routine affair without at least taht spark. That's just the point. Why has all joy and excitement been concentrated, driven into one narrow, difficult-to-find alley of human experience, and all the rest laid waste? When we demand the elimination of eroticism, we mean not the elimination of sexual joy and excitement but its rediffusion over - there's plenty to go around, it increases with use - the spectrum of our lives.
That's so cool! Everybody thinks radical feminists are anti-sex, or, even better, "sex negative." It's more like... you know that old joke "I like both kinds of music, country and western?" Or "We have both kinds of wine, red and white." Or, maybe more accurately, "We only serve the best beer -- if it doesn't come in a green bottle we won't sell it." It's like they're objecting to that kind of view of sex -- not that there's something wrong with country music, or beer in green bottles, or even no-strings simulated sex with submissive skinny supermodel sibling sluts from Sweden and Saskatchewan but that that's the only valid kind, and only if you "pass the test" of either beauty for women or worthiness for men and if you don't fit you don't count.
Because great hand-blown hummingbird feeders that view of sex, relationships, and sexuality isn't just "sexist" or bad for women (though obviously it is) it's also a desperately, starvingly impoverished view for everybody.
What. Ever.
It's funny but even though I don't always feel comfortable or welcome claiming I'm a plain old feminist it's stuff like this that makes me say, unhesitatingly, that I identify as a radical feminist.
Conveniently for a follow-up to yesterday's post about the men's insufficient vocabulary for our own appearances Scott Adams of Dilbert.com Blog says
Yesterday I spent several hours at a photo shoot. The photographer was an award-winning top-of-his-field professional with an almost supernatural sense of visual rightness. At one point he was taking some profile shots of me and I mentioned that I thought I had a "good side" but couldn't remember which one it was. So he had me face left, then right. As soon as I turned right he said, "It's that one." No hesitation. No doubt about it.
I find this to be an inconvenient sort of knowledge. For the rest of my life, every time I talk to someone I will want to cheat my face toward the good side. I will never again make eye contact unless it by peripheral vision. In the interest of public safety I will only walk on the side of the street that puts my good side toward traffic.
...
Or was it my other side that the photographer said was my good one? Shit.
Again, it's not that we can't know who does or doesn't looks good to us as far as men go, it's that there's so little context we can't related it to anything.
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Follow-up to the follow-up: an important point I forgot to mention yesterday that I only glanced off off with the Dan Quayle discussion. It wouldn't matter that men's ideas of attractive men were the same as women's. It's that very often when we say "don't you think so-and-so is attractive" we're often asked if we're serious. Which sounds like another way of saying "not so much."
And yes, in a way it shouldn't matter. And yes, it's grievously unfair... and dumb... that straight women and gay men, who may be no more attracted to attracted to other women than straight men are to other men, nevertheless are saturated to the scuppers with messages about exactly what is or isn't desirable about women's appearance. And oh yes, it would be a serious problem if men were evaluated only by their ability to reflect photons in an appealing way. But the preferred alternative to TMI isn't sphinx-like silence, it's something closer to a happy medium.
A follow-up on my "Quitcher Bitchin" post from yesterday since I think I may not have clearly reflected my concern. Turns out last week Kimberlly of of The Errant Wife found herself subjected to a rash of insults that possibly better reflect the point I was trying to make.
Well, who doesn't love a torrent of abuse on a Thursday?...
So far I have been called despicable, a urinal, a whore, a cunt, a bad mother a bad wife, a swine: and that is just what they are calling me on my comments, you should see what they are saying over there. By a day in it had degenerated completely: apparently I should be killed and I should have AIDS - if the world were fair that is. Interestingly, the comments got uglier as time went on. "Group think" as my husband put it. Much as we bloggers legitimize ourselves via our similar leanings - they draw strength from their numbers.
The use the perceived worst things of femininity: I have my period, I am a bad wife, a bad mother, I am ugly, I am fat, I am rapidly aging, I have a big vagina, I am (god forbid) saggy - they judge me based on a view of what it is to be a woman that I have long since rejected.
It fascinates me that in crafting their insults they see only the female - I am not a terrible person, I am a terrible woman - most of what they hurl at me from their safe anonymity are gendered insults. Because I am not a person, you see, I am an object to be possessed.
Yes, I'm aware of various etymological and linguistic support for the inevitability, and even, I guess, desirability, of using attribute-denigrating language. That plus various "recovering meaning" initiatives for words like "slut" and "queer." And the whole "but you n-words say 'n-word' all the time" business.
I don't think Kimberly's interlocutors have any of that in mind when they call her the words they call her. Instead they call her those things because they believe it specifically, descriptively identifies her as precisely those things. Which, they believe, are the shittiest, crappiest, lowest, most worthless, things they're capable of imagining: characteristics "of or peculiar to" something with a vagina.
My point in saying it's hard to be sex-positive and still use those words wasn't because I thought it's just naughty to use un-PC words because they might hurt someone else's feelings. Nor was it because I think there's a real problem with people using dead metaphors without considering their once-living implications.
Instead I mean what I said, in my usual starchy way, in my first post ever on this site: "it's hard to use cock-sucker as an epithet once you've met someone who knows how to do it."
It's not that calling someone a cunt, a cocksucker, or a slut might hurt their feelings. If you want to hurt their feelings go for it -- if you pick a really scummy degrading one maybe it will hit home and they'll feel really bad and you'll win! It's just... it's hard to use those words as insults once you have an actual sexually positive understanding of their "technical" meaning.
Call me naive but I'm pretty sure none of Kimberly's comments come from particularly sex-positive individuals.
Via economics blogger Tyler Cowen and sex-blogger Violet Blue we've got not one but two works of epic fiction, one sociobiology and evolutionary psychology that, together, explain perfectly why so many women can have orgasms the regular way (with fingers, toys, tongues) but no so much from intercourse.
Exhibit #1 would be sociobiologist David Barash (in his first book, incidentally, he claimed the behavior of microscopic, parasitic acanthocephalan worm somehow explains or justifies homosexual rape in humans) who's new book, How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas co-written with long-time collaborator Judith Eve Lipton, M.D., spends an entire chapter on the "Enigmatic Orgasm" (Note: sociobiologists think only women's orgasms are enigmatic while men's are thoroughly self-evident... and therefore absolutely unnecessary to explore)
Anthropologist-primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy suggests that female orgasm evolved as a spur to having sex with many different males. “Based on both clinical observations and interviews with women,” writes Hrdy, “there is a disconcerting mismatch between a female capable of multiple sequential orgasms and a male partner typically capable of one climax per copulatory bout.” A potential consequence of this “mismatch” is that females would be inclined to seek multiple partners in order to achieve their orgasmic potential. As for why this potential exists at all, Hrdy suggests that it is ultimately driven by the fitness benefit of taking out an anti-infanticide insurance policy, as proposed earlier for the evolution of concealed ovulation. Thus, female orgasm and its requirement of sustained stimulation may have provided the proximate mechanism underpinning the ultimate payoff deriving from having sex with multiple partners. Here are Hrdy’s own words: “It is possible that as in baboons and chimps the pleasurable sensations of sexual climax once functioned to condition females to seek sustained clitoral stimulation by mating with successive partners, one right after the other, and that orgasms have since become secondarily enlisted by humans to serve other ends (such as enhancing pair-bonds).”
So. Got that? Them gang-bangin' hoor women somehow evolved mulitple orgasms... or maybe evolved... um... difficulty having orgasms with just one partner... in order to encourage them to have lots of group sex. Got that?
But wait, there's more!
This month's Scientific American Jesse Bering summarizes the latest word on Ev Psych thinking about the evolution of penis shape in "Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?"
It too takes the line that women are just a bunch of train-pulling cum dumpsters, and therefore, mens penises have evolved our evidently atypical bulbous glans and flared coronas in order to...
...effectively displace the semen of competitors from their partner’s vagina, a well-synchronized effect facilitated by the “upsuck” of thrusting during intercourse. Specifically, the coronal ridge offers a special removal service by expunging foreign sperm. According to this analysis, the effect of thrusting would be to draw other men’s sperm away from the cervix and back around the glans, thus “scooping out” the semen deposited by a sexual rival.
So. Got that? Men evolved the kind of penises we have becausea them gang-bangin' hoor womin pulllin alla them trains. Got that?
So we've got a little concordance here between "creationist" sociobiology and it's more sophisticated "intelligent design" ev-psych descendant: them gangbangin' hoor women forced men to evolve plunger-shaped penises out of reproductive self-defense. We didn't want to, women made us!
Now this is where things start to get tricky. See, the researchers Bering mentions tested their semen-extraction hypothesis with sex toys. Specifically with "anatomical" vs. smooth-sided dildos inserted into masturbation sleeves. And sure enough, dildos with coronas extract more artificial semen (they boiled precisely measured quantities of flour and water for precisely measured quantities of time so it has to be science) than did dildos without coronas.
All well and good. Except, of course, unlike dime store "pocket pussies," actual vaginas, rather like actual live human beings with vaginas, are complex, dynamic, muscular, and responsive. Worse, from the ev-psych/sociobiology point of view real women's vaginas do that darned tenting thing as they get close to orgasm, meaning this carefully selected-for "semen extraction" business isn't going to do much good at all if the woman's even slightly aroused.
Which is where the ev-psych/sociobiology unified field theory rides to the rescue! If penises don't efficiently displace (other men's) semen in pre-orgasmically aroused women then men must not be accidentally incompetent about helping their partners have orgasms during PIV intercourse compared to other methods, our incompetence is evolved!
At last! Not just a biological basis but an evolutionarily determined basis for the proscriptions and prescriptions of the no-sex class paradigm! :-)
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Now truth be told there are more than a few teeth missing from the ev-psych/sociobiology combs here. Which is fine, of course. There are a few muffins short of a baker's dozen in my arguments as well. The difference being, however, that I don't pretend to be a scientist.
Gap #1: Other closely-related species are also promiscuous (hello chimps? bonobos? Orangutans? Though not gorillas) but Bering says they're not semen pumper-shaped.
Gap #2: Which means we would have had to evolve ours in the ~6,000,000 years, or call it 2-300,000 generations since separate speciation from common ancestors. Which, sorry, isn't a lot of time for multiple-partner competitive semen-extraction to be a significant selective factor at the margin.
Gap #3: Just because it's not selected for doesn't mean that human penis shape doesn't facilitate semen extraction. The authors Bering cites aren't the first to notice the effect. Bering cleverly proposes that the male post-orgasmic refractory is evolved to prevent men from pumping their own semen back out of their partners by resuming intercourse too soon after ejaculation. The down side of this, though, would be that if Barash's interpretation of Hrdy is correct and women "evolved" to favor lots of group sex (um...) then a refractory period would tend to be maladaptive for all men who weren't women's final partner.
Gap #4: So based on #3 the refractory period suggests men and women both evolved having more single-partner sex than Barash, Hrdy, and Bering suggest, or else there's some other reason for the refractory period. I can see having one, or the other, but both doesn't make much sense. (And, at least as Barash is willing to admit in his title, these are all "just so" stories so there could be plenty of other reasons instead of the ones proposed.)
Gap #5: All of the above leaves out... um... y'know... women, even "primitive" proto-human women, making decisions in the matter. A counter experiment I might propose would be instead of using phthalate-laden plastic sleeves to ask real, actual women to try not two types of dildos but three: the original smooth-sided and "anatomical" ones, sure, but also one of the new glass dildos which tend to have lots of extra bulbs and ridges. Oh wait! We don't have to conduct that experiment, women who can afford them speak highly of glass dildos. (For instance.)
Gap #6: See gap #5.
Gap #7: See gap #6.
Gap #8: For something called "Evolutionary Psychology" these guys (and it's still mostly guys) don't spend much time on the psychology part. In fact they're highly resistant to it. The problem being that humans almost certainly started being able to do mind hacks around the time we learned to make tools -- which would have been at least 1.36 million years ago. And the problem with mind-hacks is that they by definition derail predestination.
That doesn't mean humans haven't evolved. Or even that human penises haven't evolved. Or even that human behavior isn't adaptive or selected for (see human facial expressions, for instance.) It just means you can't base every flipping hypothesis for human sexual selection on the behavior displayed in reruns of The Flintstones and Mad Max.
%$$!@$!^&*!!!
Weekend blogger Hortense of Jezebel says
Each day, more information is filtering out regarding Philip Markoff, the 22-year-old medical student accused of being "the Craigslist killer." Most of that information, good and bad, is coming from those who knew Markoff personally.
...
Naturally we begin to cast characters in such a story: here, we have a "clean cut" accused murderer and his "blonde bombshell" fiance, a perfect storm of Lifetime movie scandal, intrigue, and beauty: these educated, seemingly "normal" people, the public exclaims, aren't supposed to be in a situation like this! How strange! How creepy! How do we make sense of such a thing?
...
Whether or not Philip Markoff is guilty, the fact remains that when a story like this breaks, everyone's memories spill out in order to create a composite picture of the man in the handcuffs; we are constantly seeking the signs, the defense, the point at which we should have, could have, must have seen something. We are so hardwired to view people in a certain light that we'll shift our thinking to suit whatever purpose makes us feel a little safer, a little more aware.
I can't find the link but that last line echos something Audacia Ray said last week from an inside/sex-worker perspective. But Hortense's larger point seems first that we use stereotypes as a framework when we're trying to piece together insufficient information. And that's actually great -- stereotypes are really good for that. But what she also says
We live in an era where you can't afford to hesitate: the court of public opinion is swifter and more damning than ever, thanks to our rapid methods of communication, and the accused often find themselves in a weird state of media hysterics, with both supporters and detractors rushing forward to tell their version of an as-yet unsolved story. With each detail released about "the Craigslist killer," the media storm grows, as we are, for some reason, drawn to the darker sides of one another, desperate to know what happened, and how, and if there was anything that could have stopped such a tragedy.
When we're faced with a) personal concern and b) tight, high-pressure media cycles we run the (very real) risk of mixing stereotype as temporary framework while we assemble facts... with stereotype as templates for which facts are gathered and placed depending on whether or not they fit our stereotypes. That, on the other hand, is not really great. Or, I should say, it's great for opera, but it's terrible for trying to understand ourselves and others and our places in the world. (Sometimes, by the way, I swear the cable news networks make up their little scrolling chirons, icons, and flash-backgrounds and then send reporters out to find quotes that match them. I obviously don't accuse Fox in that accusation -- I don't believe they've ever seriously claimed they do journalism.)
Anyway, it's a cool, cool post. Not least because we don't just confuse opera and real life in major news events. When we're not careful the same mechanisms lead us to cast similar roles inside our relationships with family, co-workers, and even partners.
Diva of Debauched Domestic Diva notes a current law that one suspects has slightly, um, gendered origins
Did you know that in New York you can be stopped by the police on the street and if you have condoms on you they can be used as evidence that you were soliciting sex for money? Neither did I but I learned about it last night. SWP is working to try to get that law changed and that is what they are about. When Andrea Ritchie spoke last night and said this I thought to myself about the condoms I had in my pocketbook. I like to practice safe sex. I'm a huge advocate about sex safe just as I think all of us should be but I also should not be at risk for something just for the simple fact I carry condoms.
It's hard to imagine this law ever being invoked against men, given that as far back as World War II U.S. soldiers were routinely provided with condoms, and given that for much of the time since it's been practically cliché for men to keep a condom in their wallets "just in case" (a bad idea by the way.) And I don't know how old the law is (I'm assuming Giuliani-era or earlier) but one has to assume they didn't imagine that women who aren't sex workers might be brazen enough to have "just in case" considerations of their own.
And to be fair that's not too big a stretch. If the law dated back to, say, the 1970s before either health concerns about the Pill or HIV became well-known (and when the line in sex-education circles was "condoms are better than nothing... but only barely) it might have been the case that only women sex-workers would routinely carry condoms. Who knows?
But jimminy crickets, if the law is still on the books that's a bug not a feature.
Kink In Exile tackles head on the masturbation question that's been percolating around the intertubes (and, obviously, in real life) recently
Someone did in fact ask why it might be hard for some people to orgasm with a partner if most of their orgasms have been through masturbation. I should first clarify that question to say “…if they can masturbate to orgasm successfully.”
...
The way people masturbate is often different from the mechanics of partnered sex. You may have learned to masturbate in an environment of secrecy and so you do it quickly, but find that partnered sex doesn’t allow you to reach that tempo. Or maybe you find an angle from which to approach your own genitals that feels soo good, but is harder to do with partnered sex. Your body gets used to the way you’ve been getting it off and expects that kind of contact; you change things up, don’t go fast enough, or don’t hit the right spots and suddenly it doesn’t work. Keep in mind also that many women can’t orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. So what do you do? Pay attention to how you masturbate, how your partnered sex looks and what physical differences exist there in. You can then try masturbating in a way that is more reflective of partnered sex or adding toys to partnered sex to make sure you’re hitting all the right spots.
There's been a fair amount of conversation lately about the merits and demerits of masturbation as it relates to partnered sex. Given that masturbation is now effectively mainstream… as is conversation about sexual function and dysfunction… it’s a good time to talk about integrating solo and partner sex competency instead of imagining they are or should be separate.
At least for women back in the 1970s Shere Hite announced a strong correlation between learned masturbation position and, I think, orgasms during intercourse. (Darn it I’m probably going to have to look it up now.) Anyway, I distinctly remember her saying something about women who learned to masturbate in face-down or curled-up, upper-legs-crossed positions having difficulty and thinking yeah, that could be a problem. Although that was so long ago now that rear-entry intercourse was still largely considered a (demeaning, intimacy-avoiding) kink.
I had a little epiphany about sex and masturbation a couple of years ago, based on remarks from someone who said she never got off on intercourse and so she’d wait till her partner was asleep and then masturbate really surreptitiously. That experience was probably more unusual for men but since the advent of Prozac and other anti-depressants many men need a manual override to have orgasms during partner sex as well. There’s also, as you hint, a bit of a subculture among young men (at least) who might fantasize madly about whoever they’re oriented to… but in practice prefer the pace and, possibly, the auto-focus of masturbation. Oh, and finally, there are any number of people in kink who don’t care for or who even actively dislike, say, being beaten black and blue _while it’s happening,__ who nevertheless get off hard in anticipation, on recollection, or both. So my epiphany was that we ought to get over the idea that we ought to reconsider not just the 70's notion of "simultaneous orgasms" as ideal but the idea that intercourse is the "right" way to have orgasms at all.
The key, though -- one that Hite missed or disregarded in her post -- is that just because you develop one set of neural pathways to orgasm (through this position or that sensation) it doesn’t mean that’s the only way you'll ever be able to do it. The obstacle, at least physically, is that it can take almost as long to grow the nerve pathways as it did to learn the first way. That’s fine if you mix it up while learning (something Betty Dodson talked about at least in her workshops.) It’s harder if you learn on the sly, if you’re uncomfortable or in denial about doing it at all, or if you get the idea (from porn, say, or bible-study classes) that it’s supposed to be this way instead of one’s own way. Or, preferably, ways.
None of this is to say orgasms during partnered sex is bad (in fact, as they say in the blogosphere, "heh.") It's just that as Kink In Exile points out, if you're pretty good at having them by yourself, and if neither you nor your partner are brow-beaten and/or drum-beaten into being embarrassed that it might be so. And while I'd never make promises, who knows? Given that expectation stress and performance anxiety are major buzzkills, not worrying about it might even improve one's odds with one's partners.
See also:
- The Masturbation Industry from Noli Irritare Leones
- Why Am I Boner Kryptonite from The Beautiful Kind
- It Was Bound to Happen from Secret Lovers Lane
- And No, I Accuse! from Skin::filter()
- And most recently, Did You Come? from Calico
If you're an adult you can click here to see a probably-not-work-safe image.
...sometime ago, an inside contact on these things told me that a big part of this “offensive” content problem is the simple fact that wingnuts buy a lot of “adult content”, and that makes it so that people who buy an item that is tangential - say, a very floridly illustrated bible - get recomendations for all sorts of bondage-themed novels and the like.
It isn’t that the search engines are recommending things that are inappropriate - it is that the people who buy certain things tend to buy certain other things that are solidly adult content.
Ms Kate on 04/14 at 08:01 PM
Ouch! The reference, in case you missed it, being to last month's red-state/on-line porn report.
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I originally meant to stop here but after sleeping on it I realized that minus the delightfully snarky wingnut porn/religion angle Ms Kate's hypothesis doesn't sound that far off.
People do order a lot of erotic material online in areas where eyebrows would be raised if local vendors sold it... let alone if local residents purchased it.
I think I've mentioned that during the whole eBay craze I had some friends who resold clothes from yard sales. They stumbed across a huge stash of very large women's shoes from an out-of-business shop and put them online... and they were snapped up almost instantly. They tracked down more such shoes and... they were instantly snapped up. Eventually they actually ordered new extra-large shoes made and for several years did a booming business. It actually took them a while to realize their primary market was midwestern and southern cross-dressing men who socially couldn't afford to buy them for themselves in local stores.
The other day a somewhat skeptical Rachel Kramer Bussel mentioned a rumor she keeps hearing that Barnes & Noble hates erotica. Which, if true would be funny since I'm pretty sure the big reason for their leap to national prominence over much larger and better-established vendors in the then-mail-order days was that unlike anyone else they included the sort of erotica titles (from "anonymous" Victorians to specialty fetish to Mapplethorpe coffee-table photography) that... you can find in their stores today. (They also, years ahead of their time, carried LGBT titles including LGBT erotica.) Which, again, must have helped lower the reluctance threshhold... or the blunt availability threshold... for thousands or millions of readers.
Anyway, given the possibly natural tendency for the shy and embarrassed to pay "I just read it for the articles," it's probably fairly common to order somewhat thematically-similar "straight" titles associated with the erotic materials for "oh there must have been a mix-up in my order" excuse making if I was designing a "you might also like..." or "people who bought this also bought..." feature for an on-line bookstore I'd probably add tweaks to make sure kids who selected the 80's hit "Indiana Jones" presented with the 80's schlock-porn hit "Indiana Jane."
Doh! I just realized why this line of thinking seemed so familiar!
A while ago I ordered a Tony Comstock video, Heather Corinna's S.E.X, and Pamela Drucker's cross-cultural adultery report Lust in Translation and Amazon suggested that people who bought those titles also bought... Tracey Rihll's Catapult: A History (Weapons in History)! Which at the time I saw as completely, 100% random... but maybe not.
I'm not saying that's what Amazon did, just that I'd probably do that if I was coding out suggested sales. Although evidently unlike Amazon I'd also give users a chance to opt in or out.
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution has an interesting hypothesis about who among married or marriage-inclined heterosexuals does and does not support gay marriage.
The interesting question is why there is so much opposition to legal gay marriage (which I favor). You can cite various evil opponents and their evil motives, but there are many good people who aren't all that enthusiastic about the idea.
...
I have a simple hypothesis about the cross-sectional econometrics. If you take the heterosexual couples who engage in the practice which is sometimes "associated" with male gay marriage, I predict those couples will favor legal gay marriage to an astonishingly high degree. Their marriage is already "affiliated" with that practice, and so the notion of legally married gay men (and the practices which go along with that) does not constitute an extra and unwanted affiliation for their marriage ideal.
In a way it doesn't matter exactly which "practice which is sometimes 'associated' with male gay marriage" he means. Although since he's being so indirect I assume it's something like fellatio or maybe ass play instead of more obviously common-to-both practices such as setting up wedding-gift registries at Target or working in the yard on weekends.
But if it doesn't matter what practice he means it remains a good point. Even if they were generally tolerant and of good faith, couples that believed sex should be strictly limited to PIV intercourse when and only when reproduction is intended might also be anywhere from baffled ("but why would they want to have sex if they can't reproduce") to outraged. And meanwhile even conservative hetero couples who aren't adherents of the _other_ Victorian fetish (missionary/PIV-only/reproduction-only/lights-out/female-orgasm-denial) *aren't* baffled by the appeal and so are more sanguine about the prospect of other people wanting to do it too. Whatever the mysterious "it" turned out to be.
Just because it's logical doesn't mean its true. But as hypotheses about social attitudes go it's testable with off the shelf data gathering and analysis methods.
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Note: it's possible I'm just being oblivious and everyone else but me knows what "'associated' practice" Cowen's talking about.
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Update: See also the eternally pragmatic Matt Yglesias "...the more people see gay equality in practice, the less frightening it looks." Which supports from the other direction my hunch that those mysterious "associated practices" really will turn out to be things like shared interest in gift registries and yard work.
Holly of The Pervocracy digs in hard not just to Cosmopolitan for propagating destructive myths but the actual myths:
...There's an article on home security for women living alone that basically comes off as "you fool, a woman can't live alone, she'd be a babe in the woods!" (Naturally, it doesn't even mention guns. This is a magazine for women, sillypants!)
Plant something thorny, like a small cactus or rosebush, in front of your windows to keep Peeping Toms or potential thieves at a distance.
I'm pretty sure thieves don't care if they have to destroy a little bit of landscaping, and as for peepers, maybe you should just close your curtains when you take your clothes off.
20 percent of all violent crimes occur in the victim's home--more than in any other venue. The greatest number of rapes and sexual assaults (33 percent)... happen in the victim's home as well.
That's because you're massively more likely to be assaulted or raped by someone you know. These statistics don't represent home invasions, they represent truly shitty boyfriends, and there's nothing you're going to plant in front of the windows to get rid of those.
It's a killer point that shows up in Yes Means Yes as well: women are taught over and over (there are whole cable networks just for that <cough>Lifetime<cough>) that scary happens out in the world. Jessica Valenti doh! Jill Filipovic puts it bluntly, and accurately:
Women are more likely to be victimized in their home or in the home of someone they know, whereas men are more likely to be victimized in public. ... And yet it is women who are treated to "suggestions" about how to protect themselves from public stranger assaults.
Source: Yes Means Yes, pg. 23.
And not to put too fine a point on it, cactus bushes? Rose bushes? Seriously? And when they recommend getting a dog they suggest precisely the cutsie but useless little lapdogs they say guys hate (and would admit if they "had the guts" and ever "told the truth." Undercut much, Cosmo?) Seriously? I know, and how about putting an ottoman somewhere in the living room for burglars to trip over Dick Van Dyke style!!! Yeah, that'll work! Then you'll be safe!
Oh, and do complete the circle of gender obliviousness, let's not forget the countless "home security service" ads pitched, hard, on men's programming about how your hot-looking but down-home wife is by herself in your big house with all the glass windows and no curtains and she's lovingly wiping invisible crumbs off the some-kind-of-expensive-substance counter and there's a man behind her, and because she's cleaning the kitchen with no lights on it's too dark for her to notice, and he's got ropes, or an ax, and he's really big and the music's getting all dumm-dumm-doom-y... and... oh if only you hadlocked her inside a secure perimeter before you went... wherever it was in that big SUV and/or first-class plane seat and you keep dialing and dialing to warn her about the big guy who's right behind her right now only she's deaf and... and...
And meanwhile on average women are safer when there aren't men there to protect them. Because as I'm pretty sure Holly can confirm as an ambulance-company employee, the number of 911 calls about home-invasion injuries is dwarfed by the number of plain old-fashioned domestic violence calls.
The point here isn't that men are violent brutes, by the way. In fact almost none of us are and (not to sound too much like the constable in Pirates of Penzance) most of the time those who are violent brutes aren't being violent (gimmie one more second here before you press 'fail,' I've got a point here.)
The point here is that the gender modeling we have for women and men isn't just about watching threats that are fairly low-probablility. It's that we're narrating gender plot lines that leave us unprepared for much more real, much more high-probability problems: domestic violence, domestic sexual assault, acquaintance rape, and date rape.
The point is we're not narrating scripts for detecting, assessing, communicating ("if he had the guts to tell the truth" indeed!), mitigating or resolving issues while they're still precursors to conflict and not triggers for committing or failing to confront violence and sexual assault where it happens -- in generally familiar locations with perpetrators and victims who are generally very familiar with each other.
And that's seriously bad. A moment ago I asked for patience after making the possibly wild assertion that even violent men aren't violent most of the time. If this was a "whut about teh menz" post one could jump into a little victim-blaming and talk about avoiding triggering and all the crap I'm... pretty sure would be the closest Cosmo would come to addressing domestic violence issues.
I'd like to propose instead that rather than coaching each other and ourselves to go tiptoeing around trying not to trigger violent outbursts we consider that a lot of our gender narratives are so wound up with stranger-danger distractions and interpersonal relationship obliviousness denial that when men, and women, run out of script we don't always improvise, um, competently. Or safely. So I'd like to figure out how to model responding to freaky, high-cortisol-level situations a little less often in favor of preparing people for the situations they're more likely to wind up in... and in trouble in.
Making up not just fear-mongering stories as Cosmo, home security and, say, firearm vendors do but making up highly gender-enforcing stories about insecure women helplessly "protecting" themselves with cute prickly window boxes, and about insecure men wish-fullfilling violent preemptive-revenge and "protector" fantasies on their way home from work doesn't just get in the way of solutions, they're part of our problem.
Heather Corinna of Scarleteen provides a cool answer to a fairly troubling question from a young man who says he can no longer have intercourse with his partner because, he says, "I think about what I'm doing I feel like I'm stabbing her, or performing some kind of violent act on her."** In the process she introduces what I think is a really, cool, really effective new euphemism for intercourse.
I think it might help if you made some adjustments to the way you think about intercourse and sex as a whole.
You use the word penetration, and talk about what you're doing as stabbing or a kind of invasion. I also hear you saying that sex is something you are doing to your partner or on your partner rather than with your partner, or as something you are doing together. You frame sex -- as many people do, unfortunately -- as something you have, rather than as something people actively and jointly do or create.
Physically, metaphysically, and often emotionally and intellectually (sometimes even spiritually), sex is about people and their bodies interlocking in any number of ways, and about BOTH sets of genitals (or other parts), both bodies, both people being actively engaged, doing something together, not about one person doing something to, on or at the other.
I know that can be quite the mental headstand when there are so many ideas and presentations of intercourse as men forcing themselves into women, as vaginas or vulvas as somehow passive and only penises as active, and with heterosexual sex, as what men do to women, how men dominate women, but those ideas come more from political agendas and sexism -- and reactions to inequality and those agendas -- than they do from what is really happening with intercourse or other sex when any two (or more) people are sharing an experience that is mutually wanted, about mutual pleasure and real connectivity.
Interlocking, huh? It's a really great alternative to the someone-has-to-be-topping-the-other ways of saying it like penetration or engulfing.
Another nice thing about "interlocking" is it's not heteronormative. Nor, for that matter, is it particularly genital-specific. One can interlock any number of ways.
Mmm, interlocking. The word of the day is interlocking.
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See also:
- the rest of Heather's post for the rest of her gentler-than-he-may-deserve attitude adjustment.
- an earlier Scarleteen post about the Etiquette of Entry
[** Buying into the idea that penetration is by-definition injuring doesn't seem that different from not caring whether or not it hurts. --fl]
Greg Fish of the science-research analysis blog World of Weird Things takes a look at Sagarin, B., et al. (2008). Hormonal Changes and Bonding in Consensual Sadomasochistic Activity Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38 (2), 186-200 DOI: 10.1007/s10508-008-9374-5 and says
So a chemist, a film and television expert and a psychologist walk into an S&M club to watch couples play a little rough… No, that’s not the beginning of a joke but an actual, honest to goodness study about the relationships of couples which practice a variety of sadomasochistic activities. And as it turns out, bondage and domination can bring couples closer together provided that both partners enjoyed themselves. This sounds like a no brainer at first, but we have to consider how S&M play was originally perceived by psychology.
Until the late 1980s, sadomasochism was viewed as a psychosexual disorder and doctors saw all relationships which included bondage, domination, consensual pain and power exchange as pathological. The third edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, or the DSM III, labeled pretty much all kinds of sadomasochistic activities as proof that the patient had a sexual dysfunction to be treated. But a number of research projects started finding that relationships in which S&M play was a form of intimacy, weren’t actually as uncommon or as rough as most early treatises on sexual health had assumed and that sadomasochism was enjoyed by many people in stable partnerships, with good education and perfectly normal childhoods. As the researchers try to politely note, the original ideas of BDSM in general were based more on the societal opinions of the enthusiasts than factual evidence.
Now, just watching S&M enthusiasts enjoying themselves is more of a fun Friday night than an actual research project which is why the researchers analyzed the production of testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol in those who engaged in bondage, spanking, power exchange and pain and pleasure routines. Their findings were a little surprising. Instead of both partners reacting to the stress of the activities with extra testosterone and cortisol, only the submissive men and women registered a hormonal reaction. The dominant partners maintained the same baseline levels before and after their S&M play. On the psychological end of the study, the men and women who said that their experience that night went well, reported that they felt closer to their partners and were happier with the relationship than those who were left unsatisfied. So in other words, a good night of consensual masochism brings a couple closer together says the study’s conclusion. And the survey data seems to support this idea.
Couple of great things about this post. He acknowledges the knee-squeezing potential of the subject matter with humor in the opening paragraph and then drops the humor instead of wallowing in it. He gives the paper a fair reading and reports the results to the best of his understanding. He acknowledges any "obviousness" of the results and then explains why they matter anyway. He reserves his own questions or concerns about the research parameters and the researcher's conclusions to his closing paragraphs. He puts the relatively small sample size into proper context.
And, finally, since he doesn't climb way out on a limb of speculation, pomposity, and knee-squeezing, and since he recognizes that his opinions are just *his opinions* he *links to the original paper* so you can go make your own assessment instead of having to take his word for it. (Although of course if you don't have access to a research library or you're not rolling in independent loot you may balk at coughing up the journal's $34 dollar ransom to read it.)
Sheesh! I wish *my* posts could be more like that!
As for the study itself, that sounds pretty interesting too. Here's the abstract from the NIH website
In two studies, 58 sadomasochistic (SM) practitioners provided physiological measures of salivary cortisol and testosterone (hormones associated with stress and dominance, respectively) and psychological measures of relationship closeness before and after participating in SM activities. Observed activities included bondage, sensory deprivation, a variety of painful and pleasurable stimulation, verbal and non-verbal communication, and expressions of caring and affection. During the scenes, cortisol rose significantly for participants who were bound, receiving stimulation, and following orders, but not for participants who were providing stimulation, orders, or structure. Female participants who were bound, receiving stimulation, and following orders also showed increases in testosterone during the scenes. Thereafter, participants who reported that their SM activities went well showed reductions in physiological stress (cortisol) and increases in relationship closeness. Among participants who reported that their SM activities went poorly, some showed decreases in relationship closeness whereas others showed increases. The increases in relationship closeness combined with the displays of caring and affection observed as part of the SM activities offer support for the modern view that SM, when performed consensually, has the potential to increase intimacy between participants.
In his analysis Fish wonders whether the findings are specific to BDSM or if they'd apply to any trust-based activities. The good news is it sounds like the methods (which sound relatively non-intrusive compared to blood draws, instrumentation, or verbal responses) would make it fairly easy to find out. Assuming the original paper doesn't cite other studies using the same methods.
Bottom line, though, is it sounds like the study confirms that most actual, you know, sadists and masochists say about their experience of BDSM. As opposed to what outsiders might be dead sure it's about. (Which, when you think about it, can also be said of ballroom dancing, bass fishing, scrapbooking, NASCAR, etc.)
(Via ResearchBlogging)
fMhLisa of Feminist Mormon Housewives has a great rundown on the obligation women feel to shave their legs. And by extension anywhere else.
I was sitting on mfranti’s couch, when the evening light hit my legs at the right angle and she (in that uber mormon-nice way of hers) screeched, “Ahhh! Leg Hair! Ewww!” while pulling her gag face. I don’t really blame her, truth be told, I often have the same reaction. Especially when I put on my dressy boots and the leg hair kinda flops out over the top, ewww. Run Away!
So why not shave? you ask, and save yourself the horror of the leg-hair boot flop.
Well, I’m totally lazy.
Plus the getting old thing, simultaneously less attractive (chin haired, boob sagged, and wrinkled) and more comfortable with myself (dude I’m totally awesome, I kid you not).
And then there’s the ideology. Though I’m never really sure if my ideology is an excuse for the laziness or my laziness is an excuse for my ideology (one wouldn’t want to come off as a militant weirdo).
This is going to sound like a *total* digression. It's not.
Back before I was "figleaf," in fact back before blogs, I spent a lot of time on the old Usenet newsgroups pertaining to pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. And because I was a stay at home dad I talked occasionallly about shopping and cooking.
One day, sort of out of the blue, I got an email from a reporter from a national cooking magaine asking if she could interview me about being a dad in the kitchen. I said sure and after a little back and forth I sent her my phone number. When she called she spent a minute or two asking a couple of general how-are-you question like how did I like being a stay-at-home dad and how often did I cook. But then she started asking me how my mother's cooking influenced my cooking. I said not at all, my mom hated to cook and except for a couple of pretty good scratch recipes she relied heavily on cans, freezers, and (when it came on the market) Hamburger Helper. I started to tell her instead that I'd gotten the idea when an african american woman from our church stayed with us for a week when mom needed surgery and mentioned that, since *she* worked during the day, her son, who was my age and in my Sunday school class, would cook his own lunches.
No, no, says the interviewer, can you tell me more about how you learned recipes from your mom. And I said, well, I didn't really learn any recipes from my mom. Instead I was bored one summer and read the Joy of Cooking cover to cover and... No, no, says the interviewer, what recipes did your mom use that you use now? And I said, well, I guess I make macaroni and cheese from a box the way she did but, really, I read this short story about a chef in upstate New York who... And the interviewer said "it sounds like you didn't really learn to cook from your mom." And I said no, I learned... And she said thank you, but my editor wants stories about stay at home dads and how they learned from their mothers. And she thanked me again.
And that was the end of that.
I mention this because a friend and I were talking today about gender and fashion and somehow shaving came up. And I opined, based on my old hippie friend's experiences with "straight" boys and men, that men aren't really as concerned about shaving (legs and armpits back then) as they were made out to be. I mean, sure, they might say something. But they didn't run screaming from the room. And, for that matter, later many of them became hippies themselves. And stopped shaving. Their faces.
My friend brought up the point that thanks to porn men are insisting that women shave not just legs and armpits but pubic hair before they'll have sex with them. And I was thinking... you know... it wasn't *that* long ago that men, not just hippie men but "mainstream" men, were *suspicious* of women who shaved their pubic hair. (We won't even go into the whole, stupid "does the rug match the drapes" business, m'kay?) And it wasn't that much longer before that that porn would rave on and on and on about "luxuriant" pubic hair being an indication of sexual appetite. So I said I *still* didn't think that many men are really refusing to have sex with their partners because they don't shave.
And my friend said (and here's where my digression stops looking so digress-y) that she didn't know. "Even" Cosmopolitan is obsessed with the importance of shaving body hair. And she mentioned that any time they run an "ask men" feature that involves pubic hair, sure enough, all the men insist they can't even get it up for sex with someone with anything less than a full-on Brazilian wax.
And I thought about how the article the reporter who contacted me was all about men who were influenced to cook by their mothers.
Hmm....
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It absolutely does. But probably no more often than women insist they won't go near a man with back hair. In other words, it happens. But in one case word of every instance carries a ton of freight; in the other it vanishes with scarcely a ripple.
Which brings me to my next point. The Las Vegas Courtesan (l'll link in a minute) writes intelligently and in the first person about sex-worker issues. She also does self-photography and posts them. The photos are *not* "half-nekkid" and, since photos like that aren't everyone's cup of tea I wanted to let you know that if you following this link would take you to a photo of LVC minus underwear, plus pubic hair.
I mention this because the comments are are relevant. And again for those who'd rather not check out the photo I've quoted them below. (The second comment is from LVC.)
#Nice shot. Very hot! Love the nude and the hands, so much more erotic.
Glad to see the “bald” look hasn’t completely taken over. (Much sexier IMHO).
March 29th, 2009 at 7:15 pm# lasvegascourtesan Says:
Yea I am going to take some more photos before I get waxed again because I know quite a few people like the natural look. :)
March 29th, 2009 at 7:42 pm# Thru.Blu.Eyes Says:
Stomach and legs are awesome! I agree about the “bald” look. It seems so predominant everywhere you look now. I prefer smooth lips and a little hair on the mound. Landing strip, triangle, heart, doesn’t matter. I just like women to look like, well, women. Love your pictures on the site, LVC. Very erotic and sexy.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm# John Says:
Awesome picture! Very erotic and I love the not so bald look. Slightly trimmed is a much better look in my opinion. Mmmm, thanks for sharing!
March 30th, 2009 at 4:19 am# Jeff Says:
Very nice picture… I agree with previous notes about liking a little patch of hair more than simply bald. Don’t be fooled though! I personally don’t like the forest look
Say anything you like about the overall tone of the comments, but it's kind of inescapable that
a) the four men who chose to comment affirmed a bias towards at least some pubic hair.
b) only the last one, Jeff, chose to say anything even slightly negative (he doesn't like a lot of pubic hair.) Another commenter said affirmatively that he likes slightly trimmed pubic hair. (Call it a cliché, or call me a whiner, but since pubic hair *really does* go up your nose I prefer trimmed pubic hair too.)
c) LVC acknowledges that "quite a few people like the natural look."
Again, it could just be that commenter #5 hasn't come along. Or it could be that would-be commenters #5 through #5000 all retired to their fainting couches a la the Romantic artist John Ruskin on (allegedly) his wedding night. But I doubt it. Instead, the first four outside comments about a (literal!) "pornstitution" photograph said, more or less, "cool, pubic hair."
As opposed to "'Ahhh! Leg Hair! Ewww!' while pulling her gag face."
Question Authority, m'kay?
Oh, and go read the rest of fMhLisa's post. Compared to my rambling anecdotes she directly articulates why the pressure (in her case from other women, but from men as well) is overblown. And generally worth ignoring.
You know that little statistic about the first-year reliability rate for vasectomies is 99% instead 100%? Fade to Numb, who had a vasectomy about three months ago, has an important public service announcement that's strongly related to that.
In the meeting with the doctor at the time, as well as from the papers I brought home afterwards, I learned something interesting. Evidently, no more than half of the guys that get vasectomies actually go back into the lab at a later date to make sure their specimen is all clear. ("Specimen is all clear" could be translated as "all the little spermies are completely gone from the semen system.")
And (surprise surprise) it can take many months and upwards of 20 ejaculations before they all get cleared out. So some of those people that have "miracle children" after vasectomies? I suspect some of them are less "miracle" and more "didn't bother to follow up after an operation."
...
Long story short (or, rather, less long), I got a letter back from the doctor the next week. Sadly, it stated that I've still got some sperm swimming around in the system, and I need to take another specimen back to the lab in another three months, and until that time I need to make sure I use proper protection during sex.
Point being that vasectomies actually *are* extremely good for keeping *new* sperm cells out of semen. But you're not sterile till the last of the old cells are out of your system.
For the record there's a very, very small chance that his vasectomy really didn't work and that sperm is somehow getting past the snips. If so then his follow-up check will detect that and he and his partner can decide what to do next. meanwhile, though, they're not going to make assumptions about whether he is or isn't still fertile.
Cool post.
There are some games where the *top* gets wears the blindfold...
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Some of the comments to Courtney Martin's perfectly ordinary, sensibly inquiring post about a re-released 1985 movie about sexual surrogates were a little, um, over the top. But that's ok, they were substantially uninformed too.
"Word..I haven't seen the movie or anything, but the concept creeps me out. Will another form of therapy address "anger issues" where the client gets to stab the therapist to get over his insecurity?"
...
"Does anyone have any information on why this is not considered prostitution? She is having sex for money? [For the record, I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with prostitution or sexual surrogacy, I just don't understand what the difference is.]"
...
"oh please, somebody just wants a "valid" excuse to make money while having sex with random people. Nothing's wrong with that, but don't pretend otherwise."
...
"we act like the only possible way for a sexual part to 'function/ is to do something. But having that part do nothing is as normal and natural and predictable as having it do something, so why do we automatically call it doing nothing 'dysfunction'?"
...
I'm not clear, was [Bay Area psychologist Bernie] Zilbergeld implying that he was pimping out the sex surrogates he worked with for non-therapeutic purposes?
What. Ever!
[To be honest the rest of this post is a bit of an old-fashioned curmudgeonly rant. If you're not into that sort of thing I'll totally not be offended if you don't read on. --fl]
Yeah, it's really nice hearing so many people just being dead sure that sex surrogacy is prostitution. Really nice. It's like all those small-town types who are just as dead sure that massage therapists are prostitutes (the customer undresses; the therapist touches them; naked+touch=prostitution Q.E.D.)
And hey, it's not even a *totally* bogus conclusion to draw: during the 1970s "massage parlour" was basically a legal euphemism for "brothel." That this mistake drives actual non-sex-worker massage practitioners absolutely insane (from the community accusation, stigma, and avoidance standpoint) and puts them at risk of physical danger and professional embarrassment (from confused customers hoping for "happy endings) should *not* be "just a cost of doing business."
But please, by all means, go ahead and assume based on very little knowledge and a 1985 movie that sexual surrogates, like massage therapists, are glorified whores.
---
Let's think for a minute about the premise of this post. Hmm. Let's see. A movie maker decides to make a movie. His backers hint that they'd like to see a return on their investment. Society is a big knee-squeezing, voyeuristic, patriarchal mess. So the movie maker makes his decision to... surprise!... choose scenarios that he hopes are informative but that, necessarily, have maximum salacious value. Which would be, what? Women taking money to have sex with men with cliche dysfunctions like 40-year-old virginity and bad divorces.
Riiigght! Why don't we base *all* our assumptions on Hollywood contingencies. Did you know Vulcans can interbreed with humans? That CSI labs are all glass, chrome, and edgy lighting with multi-million dollar machines that work every time? Did you know innocent bystanders always dive out of the way in the nick of time during high-speed car chases?
Yeah, and sex surrogates are really just prostitutes with no training, really mostly women, really working mostly with men, really working with problems they should just suck up and get over, yada yada yada.
Hey, sometimes it's true. More often not.
I don't know what the state of the art in surrogacy is, but I used to know someone who did. She wasn't a sex therapist, she was (if I recall correctly) a psychiatric nurse who moonlighted on a largely volunteer basis and took what she did *very* seriously. She didn't work to "cure" erectile dysfunction, she worked with mostly men who for various reasons wanted to be able to have sex but had (mostly) psychological problems that weren't always related to sex itself but to, say, body boundary issues, PTSD. Other times the point was to overcome conditioned aversions to sexual contact, to overcome childhood sexual trauma, or to overcome issues of emotional trust. Also I'm not sure where people got the idea that surrogates only work with single men. Many patients are, or at least were, in partnerships.
And finally, it's just not the case that sexual surrogates have *actual sex* with their clients. Because unless you've *totally* drunk the coolade of "sex" meaning only PIV intercourse there are generally *quite* a few steps... and roadblocks... before you get to intercourse. Or even get *close* to intercourse.
But no, please, let's all squeeze our knees together and insist it's illegitimate, insist it violates ethics, insist therapists "pimp out" surrogates to their clients, insist it's all about patriarchy, insist that all clients are men and all surrogates are women, insist they're all heterosexual, insist clients are all unkempt shlubs who should get over it, insist (dear sweet mother of pearl!) that it's some kind of "sacred temple" revival thing, and insist it's all about Teh Intercourse because what else could something related to sex therapy *possibly* be about? Because we all feel *so* much better when we do that we don't have to actually, you know, *think* about whether it a) serves a purpose, b) meets a need, or c) might be undertaken competently, professionally, and, believe it or not, sometimes surprisingly non-salaciously.
Clue? Eight seconds with Google (try it some time) turns up lewd, suggestive code words like "These therapeutic experiences include partnerwork in relaxation, effective communication, sensual and sexual touching, and social skills training."
"Effective communication?" Nudge, nudge, eh? "Social skills training?" A wink's as good as a nod to a bloind man, say no more!
Another clue? (21 seconds with Google): "Often female clients will ask their therapists, or seek out therapists who are open to the possibility, to find a male surrogate with whom they might work. Largely because of the sexual double standard that continues to operate in many, if not most, therapists, however, most clients of surrogates continue to be male." (Admittedly that was from a 1984 paper.)
Final clue? From a 2007 post about sex therapy: "a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found surrogate therapy was significantly more effective than couples therapy alone in treating vaginismus."
Sheesh!
Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey that's me!) Used under a Creative Commons license.
Bridget Crawford of Feminist Law Professors takes note of copy for a new ad for a women's razor with some kind of built-in trimmer. (Emphasis mine.)
Circular, triangular, rectangular, oval and square — “whatever your style” — as long as it’s not natural, according to this commercial, it would seem. Ok, so it is a razor ad, after all, so it’s not like I expected Schick to take a pro growth position.
"Pro-growth!" I love it! It's a wonderful inversion of the stereotypical restrictive social-conservative rhetoric of anti-grooming. Saying you're "anti-shaving" sounds dour. Saying you're "pro-growth," though? That's just cool. Seriously. It's great branding if you're into that (only currently unfashionable) fashion choice.
I happen to have a love-hate relationship with the whole body-hair business. On the one hand I *really* don't care. In fact as a former genuine pose-for-photos-with-tourists-on-San-Francisco's-Fisherman's-Warf hippie I *really* think natural body hair is hot.
That said? As a former hippie with former piercings, a tattoo, a personal history of... alternate head and facial hair styles *and* friends of all genders and orientations who over the decades have worn everything from dreads to braids to microbraids to mohawks to buzz cuts to mullets to glare-blindingly bald I *also* think it's not just stupid but *barkingly* stupid to balk at *any* person's individual decision to do whatever the heck he or she wants to do with their body hair.
So if I think deciding to go all natural is hot, and I do, I think choosing to go shaved, waxed, or lasered smooth as an eggplant is *also* sexy.
But also, coming from that tradition, I think someone who won't shave or trim because he or she feels pressure not to is just as much of a buzzkill as someone who guiltily cuts a make-out session short because he or she feels "overdue" for a waxing appointment.
And, as long as I'm being in full-on prudish libertine mode, can I just make one more point about pubic, or armpit, or leg stubble on women?
You know how some people think a man with stubble on his chin is wickedly raw and spontaneously sexy? Well... am I just missing something or shouldn't pubic "five o'clock shadow" be just as spontaneously hot on a devilishly unconcerned woman?
I mean... sure, it goes against the whole gender narrative of "men just need a place to have sex, women need a reason" ideology where women's sexuality is supposed to be entirely calculated on her partner's enjoyment and all and so there has to be something *absolutely wrong* with a woman who'd put her own immediate sexual desire ahead of personal grooming on her partner's behalf, or seek immediate gratification of *her* desire even if her appearance wasn't up to... um... whatever Vogue or Cosmo holds up as that month's compulsory standard of beauty. But...
But...
There's a whole world of possibilities between all natural and all artifice...
And that's hot too.
Via Em & Lo, Emily Nussbaum, writing in New York Magazine says
Earlier this month, the journal PLoS Medicine analyzed data from a study of over 50,000 pregnant women and came to a simple but stunning conclusion: Older fathers have dumber kids. The more geriatric the dad, the dimmer the progeny, on measures including “thinking and reasoning, concentration, memory, understanding, speaking, and reading.” (Luckily, geezer offspring had no problems with motor skills, making them ideal for wheeling around their elderly dads.)
It was another unsettling addition to the growing pile of evidence that men have their own biological clocks, with older fathers also producing higher rates of schizophrenia and autism. But what really caught my eye was the secondary finding, which was that older mothers were associated with smarter children. I quickly did the calculations and was pleased with my findings. The most intelligent children, I deduced, must be the outcome of 45-year-old career women inseminated by their 21-year-old personal trainers.
Oddly usual amen chorus of ev-psych/sociobiology apologists are silent on this confirmation of the *exact opposite* of traditional gender ideology and sexual stereotype.
Mind you the actual *authors* of the study (who I've heard interviewed) are clear that the decline in intelligence with paternal age is very real, it's also very, very slight -- on the order of one IQ point drop for every ten years or so after the father turns 35.
Not that that's ever stopped pop-evobios before...
Hmm, must be *some other* reason. Can't *imagine* what that might be.
---
Seriously, a one or two point IQ drop isn't a terribly serious liability for offspring of older parents. Certainly not compared to the many other, potentially much more serious liabilities.
---
And speaking of other liabilities, the most recent but still substantially scientifically unverified being a sixfold correlation between older fathers and children with autism. And considering how, um, cautious people have been about *extremely* difficult to confirm links between autism and vaccination a strong, 6x correlation with paternal age ought to be a category-five, slam-dunk, outta-tha-ballpark red flag.
---
It might not be the most important reason for older gentlemen to become "extinguished members" of the vasectomy party. But it's not a bad one. (By contrast an *excellent* reason being that sex is just more enjoyable when the possibility of unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is remote.)
[Note: "Continue reading..." image is... almost modest but still better viewed in private. --fl]
Karen Rayne of Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne says
Early on in the conference, I was at a bar with friends. One lovely man was flirting quite nicely with one particularly lovely woman. They are friends back home, and here they were away from the daily constraints. When the man went to get another drink, the woman confided in me that he had been interested in her for sometime, and that she wasn’t very sure about it. The evening ended and everyone went home alone, more or less drunk.
I'm not going to wreck the story, which is cool and turns out not the way you might expect. Even if you think you know what to expect.
But I am comfortable quoting from her analysis
Alcohol clouds judgment. Many bad sexual choices come about when the participants are intoxicated. The people in my story are in their mid-twenties and thirties. They have experience drinking. And yet they still get high holy drunk and do things they wouldn’t do sober...
...
I am frustrated by the cavalier attitude of people around sex and alcohol. So go talk with your friends, your family, your children about how alcohol has the capacity to change how you think about things and how you act. Talk about ways to drink responsibly - not too much and preferably with a sober friend along to watch your back and do the driving.
It's a seriously cool story with a couple of morals. Including, importantly, an interesting illumination of men's response to conflicting social pressures when intoxicated.
But the main thing is that people's responsibilities (not just men's, not just women's) are altered by alcohol in ways that, as in Rayne's story... *usually* are agreeable and inconsequential. But also as Rayne points out, who we *all* are while drinking can be markedly different from who we are when we're sober.
---
Another point about the man's behavior, by the way, is that it illustrates just *how close* our drunken and sober sensibilities can be. And same, though it's a *bit* less clear, with the woman's. Resulting in strong evidence that we *really don't* need to get roasted before doing the *sensible...* as opposed to *proper* thing to do.
Kirsten Moore of RHRealityCheck.org says Will Saletan's "more in fear of the right-wing sorrow than in anger" approach to supporting abortion rights is thought-provoking, sure, but also missing a lot of the point.
Today it is this recommendation
"For liberals, that means taking abortion seriously as an argument for contraception. We should make the abortion rate an index of national health, like poverty or infant mortality."
Abortion as a rationale for contraception? Why not women as the rationale for contraception? Why not children as the rationale for contraception? Why not healthy sex as a rationale for contraception? My support for birth control education and services is grounded in my belief that everyone has to make their own decisions when it comes to the most intimate, important, life altering aspects of human experience - sexuality, pregnancy and parenting - regardless of whether I agree with their decision or not.
Or why not even -- the ignored elephant in the room -- *men* as a rationale for contraception?
Oh wait! If we started talking about *men* in discussions of abortion we'd have to
- Acknowledge that neither abortion nor contraception is *entirely* a women's issue since... um... duh. Which means we might have to...
- Acknowledge that contraception for men is thwarted, repeatedly, by persistent but persistently false myths about men's reluctance to use them.
We'd also have to
- Acknowledge that anti-feminist insistence that men are incompetent, incapable, irresponsible, brutal, nasty, and... somehow... naturally superior desperately compounds the problems of... well, all sorts of issues really, but in this context both abortion and contraception.
- Confront how deeply culture is hooked on the idea that the kind of sex that can result in pregnancy isn't simply for the enjoyment of men but a *reward* that's fairly "earned" or violently "taken."
- And confront the corresponding cultural idea that contraception, like pregnancy and abortion, is a burden or *price* women pay for (prudent or imprudent) bestowing her charms, booty, and/or some other wealth-equivalent term in exchange for... whatever it is besides erotic enjoyment women are supposed to get out of it.
I think I've mentioned this elsewhere but the cool thing about framing the discussion in terms of contraception and unplanned, unwanted pregnancy *avoidance* instead of the (right-wing benefitting, right-wing maintained) frame of after-the-fact *abortion* is that the spotlight comes off the whole woman-as-vessel ideology that Saletan's PTSD-ing over. Which in turn makes it possible to ask the questions about everything (health, choice, bilateral heterosexual enjoyment) and everyone (women, children, *men.*) And therefore makes it possible to *involve* them.
Or, as Moore puts it
For me, the value of this work is not solely about reducing abortions, or even unintended pregnancies. It is about creating a sense of ownership among women and men -- old and young -- about their own body and their relationships with others because this ownership is a key to healthy bodies -- bodies free of substance abuse; healthy relationships -- relationships free of coercion or violence; and healthy children -- children who are born to parents who are ready to commit to their obligations as providers, caretakers and role models.
Which is putting it very nicely indeed.
Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me!)
So *if* it's a virtue to be able to tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue, how do you interpret being able to tie knots in only three out of four cherry stems?
(To be honest I'm not sure there's any *practical* significance at all to being able to tongue tie cherry stems, even though people have been eyebrow-wiggling about it for generations.)
[Caveat: "Continue Reading..." image not exactly safe for public spaces. --fl]
Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that's me!)
prMac of the technology newswire MacMegasite says
Vancouver, BC - PhotographyTips has released its first guide for posing female models for iPhone users, entitled “Poses Volume 1: The First Female Collection.”
“This product will be welcomed and embraced by photographers who use iPhones or the iPod touch, and who have a need to attractively pose female subjects,” said Dan McCormick of PhotographyTips.
Poses Volume 1 contains 368 individual color images of attractive, popular poses that any model can quickly and easily adopt. The application has a unique ‘Fit Pose’ feature that assists in getting the subject’s pose to closely match any professionally-posed example from the application. ...
“This practical guide will solve any photographer’s posing problems once and for all,” said McCormick, “whether photographing a girlfriend at the beach who may never have posed before or a professional model in the studio. It’s easy to use, and a superb posing resource that photographers and models will call upon over and over again for years to come.”
The volumes 2 and 3 are forthcoming. It's possible the other two volumes will have poses for men and, I dunno, children or something, but I get the strong impression it'll be another 736 (for a total 1104) ways to pose women.
Actually though this is pretty interesting. One of the nice things about professional, semi-professional, and amateur photography on the internet (erotic and otherwise) is you see enough images that you start to recognize a certain grammar... and organization... to poses that becomes more stylized cliche´ formal based largely on the experience or training of the photographer.
Even more interesting are digest or excerpt sites that pick out "best of set" photos for reuse on their own sites. If you follow their links to the original photo sets you'll often see the photo in question isn't necessarily the "best" content-wise (you might see as much of the subjects, you might see as much of the backgrounds, you might see pretty consistent proportions, focus, color, etc.) but instead "best" fits into one of the (evidently 1104 for women) ways to pose.
It's not just human photography, obviously. You'll see it in car and airplane photos, sports photography, food, and even LOLCats.
Anyway, it's kind of good to see that past some level there really are, literally, *templates* for posing people.
Update: See also Scott Adam's Rules of Art.
Photo by Flickr user Joan Thewlis. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Oof, here's an interesting conceptual turnaround from Holly of The Pervocracy
It's kinda funny to me when people talk about shaved pubes being suggestive of prepubescence, because I've shaved mine since about age 16. I was hairy when I was innocent and just growing into my womanhood, then as an adult I was bare.
I can't help but associate childhood (well, jailbaithood, at least) with having pubes.
It's kind of like, woah! Good point. I mean, being surrounded as I happen to be with children in the earliest throes of puberty it's... pretty darn clear their bodies (9-12) begin to develop *long* before their autonomous, independent sexualities begin to (13-16.)
Which means if you think a boy or girl is ready for sex just because they've got pubic hair you're... um... a sexualizer? Pedophile? Clueless moron who ought to refrain from expressing your opinions, let alone dispensing advice, in the presence of children under maybe age 18?
Oh, and just to be clear? Anyone who thinks a grown woman's vulva, or man's penis looks juvenile without pubic hair a) has never changed diapers and b) has *very* little experience with grown women's vulvas or grown men's penises. Because, hello? Adult genitals aren't just children's genitals slightly larger and with hair any more than adult's faces are children's faces after the tooth fairy gets done with them.
*Please* don't take any of this to mean I think anybody *ought* to do *anything* with his or her pubic hair. At any age. Seriously, to dictate what anybody should do with the hair on their body would be as... as... *stupid* as telling them what to do with the hair on their heads. (And as far as I know the people who care most about the latter would be... oh, say... the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, for women, and the Taliban for men *and* women. Just to name two.)
But!
While I'm not saying what anyone should or shouldn't do with their hair, pubic or otherwise, I *am* saying that Holly makes perfect sense: healthy, non-sexual, non-sexualized children are probably going to be *way* into puberty... and therfore have quite a lot of pubic hair... before they really decide what they want to do about it.
Cheri of Secret Lovers Lane, in the same post I mentioned yesterday, talks about a *much* less-frequently discussed double standard
I think men are still chauvenists in some ways. They want the woman to be sexually open...the world is okay with them floating around..but a woman...you need to stay with one lover or otherwise you are a whore. I've seen this happen with a couple of friends and women on Ashley Madison. Men want you to enjoy sex as long as you are exclusive with them EVEN if there is no commitment or it is never discussed. Sounds double standard to me.
Women have needs. It's as if men sometimes forget that. It's not like years ago when our sexuality was surpressed as women. You want us to be sexual, you want us to be sensual..you want us to enjoy sex....and many of us really do..., with the right person or multiple affairs. Men do it all the time....its called dating so why are women judged harsher? Why do men think that a massage and a happy ending or a lapdance is ok or even strip clubs? Can you see a woman saying, I am going out with the girls after work for some guys to finger us until we cum?
I suppose it's a perfectly natural mistake under Rule of Desire #1 that *even if* we as men wish women were "more" sexual it doesn't follow that you have to go out and be sexual with *someone else!* For heaven's sakes!
Which would make *her* being "more" sexual with *him* the, um, exception that *proves the rule?*
Rule #2 doesn't exactly make matters better: if we can't believe women can sexually desire *us* then it becomes not just inconceivable but intolerable that you might *want* to have sex with other men, let alone if you *actually did!* Because (we're peculiarly, self-deprecatingly dead sure) if you enjoy sex with someone else why on *earth* would you want to have sex with *us* again?
The odd thing, as Cheri points out, is we consider it completely unremarkable that *we* think we're able to do so while being shocked and/or appalled that you might to so as easily... without thinking any less of us afterwards. Would that be the no-sex class paradigm talking again? Um, yeah.
Heather Corinna, founder of Scarleteen.com and author of pure as the driven slush is a patient advocate at a local, independent women's clinic that provides, among other services, pregnancy termination. Her post yesterday is almost literally a picture-perfect illustration of the meaning of "pro choice" and how that's not just different but quantitatively different from being simply claiming to be "pro life" or, more directly, anti-abortion. Or even *pro-abortion.* Unless you've been to a clinic yourself it might be eye-opening even if *you're* pro-choice.
We had protestors yesterday, one of whom walked right by a teen client in front of the clinic (and broke the law here in WA by doing so on our property) who was already upset, and who was already being pressured TO terminate outside by her boyfriend and family.
Anyway, it's a cool, cool post.
I was able to get her inside, take her downstairs to my sitting room, and give her open time to talk about all of her feelings, what she wanted, and how she felt she was given no permission by anyone to make up her own mind. She was able to say she felt very unsure, and was considering termination, but had also wanted to consider adoption but was told this was “selifsh” I gotta say, I hadn’t heard that one before about adoption, but you hear something new every day. She also informed me her mother had told her she could legally block her from remaining pregnant, which I let her know was false. We were able to discuss both options in some depth, and she was able to hear someone tell her — and mean it — that ANY choice she made was an acceptable choice which could be her best one, and that none of her choices were selfish save that this was about her and it was really important she think of herself. I was also able to open the pressure valve by letting her know that no matter what, when we have a client come for a procedure who says they are here due to being or feeling forced by others and/or says they do not want to terminate, we will not and cannot do a termination that day, and that I’d be happy to inform anyone she needed me to that that was our policy and my firm decision on that. I let her know she was welcome, if she decided for herself she did want to terminate, to come back, even the next day if she liked, and we could still talk more about all of this regardless, but she did not have to worry about making up her mind that day.
The next few paragraphs are about a mediation session the client requested with her boyfriend who... well, to be *fabulously* generous let's say he's swallowed standard narratives about what teen pregnancy, and single motherhood, and, um, being female, period, so deep the hook's caught in his rectum. Such that his own shit comes out of his mouth any time the line gets tugged on. Anyway, after some (highly readable) processing Heather ads
I can’t know what she wound up deciding unless she does come back, but in the end, my sense was she was going to be likely to terminate, and was feeling that may have been best for her from the start, she just needed everyone to back the hell off so she could get all the information and breathing room she needed to consider her options, and so she could make her own choice. This is actually a pretty common occurrence, especially with teens who also tend to face people not giving them autonomy in most things, so they often already feel talked over and controlled as it is.
It doesn’t matter to me what she chooses, but my sense is whatever it is, it’s a lot more likely to be her choice now, and whatever she feels is best.
Choice. It's what human beings do. And not because humans always make some pre-determined *right* choice, even when given all the information, space, and freedom to make it. But because at the end of the day it's human being, her or himself, who lives with their *own* choice. As opposed to surviving the imposition of *other* people's choices.
Holly of The Pervocracy, trying her hand at Good-Housekeepingmocking, riffs on "18 Clues He's Still Crazy About You"
By popular request (one person is "popular" around here), I will point out the thuddingly obvious: this Good Housekeeping article on "18 Clues He's Still Crazy About You" is retarded. It's jokey of course, but the jokes are only funny if you accept their basic premises as true. So hopefully they're not very funny.
1. When you wear a T-shirt, boxers, and socks to bed, somehow he still thinks you're cute.
"Somehow?" "Still?" Jeez. So in general, a set of really sexy lingerie just on the hanger would be sexier than an actual slightly disheveled woman?
Um. Yeah, t-shirt, boxers and socks to bed only *somehow* sexy?
See..
It's like...
Look, first of all, you'd think that 100,000 elegantly, lucidly, and passionately articulated assertions that what you wear is *not* an excuse for unwanted advances or worse would have *some* effect. Second, though, you'd think 100,000 perfectly clear assertions about unwanted attention would translate into an understanding that it's not a factor in *wanted* attention either!
Second of all, what, exactly, isn't sexy about t-shirts, boxers, and socks? Does your (male) partner only look good to you dressed in... what? Don Draper's business suit? Hugh Hefner's smoking jacket? Borat's yellow... bikini?... holster?... swimsuit thingie? But not a t-shirt, boxers, and socks? Then why not you?
And finally, the nice thing about boxers and t-shirts (if not quite socks) is unlike, say, corsets, fishnets, and push-up bras they're actually soft, comfortable, and roomy. They feel good against *our* skin as well as yours. And unlike almost anything "sexy" they're not made to be "torn off after five minutes" because they *don't get in the way!* (Sounds weirdly paradoxical I know but compared to a nice pair of white bikinis or boyshorts a thong's darn hard to slip one's hand inside of.) And the socks? Every good lover knows a warm partner is a sexy partner. (And even *bad* lovers know that a partner in socks isn't going to shock us shriveled when you slip your iceberg toes between our thighs to try and warm up.)
Anyway, "somehow" sexy? Somehow *still* sexy? Sorry, "less revealing" isn't the same as "not sexy." 10,000,000 ads in vogue not withstanding, for anyone less superficial than Prince it's *who's* wearing it (hint: you) not *what* you wear that matters most to your partner.
Even if she didn't reference the no-sex class outlook by name (blush) I'd have to quote this post by Kink In Exile
[M]y sexuality is not a political statement. I have seen too many blogs in recent weeks about how all women are superior to all men. Matriarchy is the salvation of humanity and I must immediately demand the gentleman behind me at the grocery checkout fall to his knees and lick my boots while we both await the pimply kid behind the register.
To borrow a line from Sarah Jones — your revolution will not happen between these thighs.
What all of these ideas of female domination lack is respect for my desires. I’m going to say this again because it’s really important: if in seeking do submit to women you refuse to acknowledge the fact that not all women want to dominate you you have missed a really huge point. If you refuse to acknowledge the fact that some women get off on submission to men you have shown blatant disrespect for female sexuality. If you insist on calling me mistress despite the fact that I do not enjoy the title you have missed the point. If you are, in fact, unaware of the amount of effort and energy that I invest into the scenes I top then you are taking me for granted and have not moved one inch past the women as no-sex class issues endemic to patriarchy.
M'yeah, funny how that whole pedestalizing business works. You get to be all superior and "admirable" and chaste and aloof and "statuesque" in order for me to stay perpetually horny. Gee, how gender-bendery is *that!?!?!?!?*
Y'know rule #1, that says it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for women to feel sexual desire? Given how intensely prowess is engrained into men's sexual identities who do you think is more invested in women's sexual restraint? Who's more invested in keeping men "teased" into perpetual arousal. Who's more invested in "pro femdoms" wearing sexualized but actual-sexually impenetrable leather cat suits, whacking men with floggers, chastising them for having "dirty" thoughts, and (I love this) not defining the activities as sex because there's no "contact?" Who's more invested in women spending days, weeks, or months keeping men "on fire" through orgasm denial?
Yeah, that's where the "inconceivable" part of rule #1 comes in.
Y'know rule #1, that says it's simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for women to feel sexual desire? Let's turn that around for a minute and ask what would become of men's identities as horny animals if women wolf-whistled us into elevators, lurked naked in desk wells waiting to give us blowjobs, begged us to undo their bikini tops... and bottoms... so they'd tan "evenly" all the way down every beach, texted at all hours for hot 8-way sex with their sorority sisters and/or nursing shift and/or bridge club, and otherwise manifested every viagra-spam email title on the planet?
And, m, yeah, hello, refractory period? Bye bye men as the sex class. That's where the "intolerable" part of rule #1 comes in.
Point being that claims that "women are superior," whether as saintly inviolable mothers, or "outa yer league" supermodels with "a boyfriend who could break you in half," or as whip cracking, spit-when-you-walk-past man haters (or, clue, even as "hairy legged" separatists feminist lesbians) it's all about keeping the status quo as completely and utterly conventional as possible.
Hugo Schwyzer made an incredibly valuable point about modern hedonism in a post yesterday. Responding to an assertion by "crunchy conservative" Rod Dreher that churches need to "preach more commandments and fewer affirmations." (Emphasis his.)
Rod makes a mistake, however, when he writes that our problem is that “we love ourselves and our pleasures entirely too much.” It sounds good, but he misses some key points. First off, a great many people who spend a great deal of time pursuing material things do so not because they love themselves too much, but because they don’t love themselves enough. Much of the reckless consumption that characterizes the modern middle-class lifestyle is rooted in a profound anxiety and unease rather than in genuine self-satisfaction. We consume and consume in order to distract ourselves from ourselves, eating when we’re not really hungry and buying what we don’t really need. Folks in that situation don’t need happy little affirmations that everything is fine, but neither do they need stern admonitions about their own sinfulness; heck, deep down they already suspect they’re plenty sinful enough.
...
God isn’t impressed by the truffle you didn’t eat or the orgasm you didn’t have. ... [S]elf-denial is about quieting down our habits of mindless consumption so that we can listen to the real needs of our bodies and our souls. What deep hunger are we masking by overeating? For what sense of inadequacy are we compensating when we consume compulsively? If stopping a familiar coping strategy helps us confront the real source of our pain, then we’re doing the right kind of therapy — uncovering our garbage, naming our problems, so that we can discard them once and for all in the name of love.
The great mistake we make — and I do believe that the right makes this far more often than the left — is that pleasure is the enemy. Pleasure is sinful only when it does one or both of two things: when it comes at the expense of another creature’s happiness or when it serves to hide our own hurts and fears from ourselves.
I think that's about right. The other day I was talking one of the "other discoveries" parts of the eponymous book The G Spot: And Other Discoveries about Human Sexuality
Whereas a (non-asexual) man striving mightily to abstain sexuality until his wedding night, as much as a woman striving passionately for g-spot orgasm may discover spiritual meaning along the way, there's also the possibility first that intensity of their obsession might outweigh the potential virtue achieved... as well as of discovering the attainment may not have been worth the loss of that which was foregone to do so.
Consider further what Lis says in comments to Hugo's post
This post is part of what prompted me to sit down today and realize that my Lenten fasting was doing the opposite of my intention. Over the past two weeks, I became obsessed with finding loopholes, got self-centred around my inner battle, and lost focus on the really important things. The past couple of days, it’s felt like my entire life revolved around Not Indulging In Forbidden Things. I needed a reminder that Lent is about spiritual practices, not material observances.
Yup. A point overlooked at least as often among faithful conservatives as among godless hedonists.
Oh, and see also Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon raises nother issue with sacrifice as an end in itself.
The louder they wail and moan about how people aren’t sufficiently self-sacrificing to bullshit ideals that serve no purpose, the more extreme they get (like Ken Blackwell just condemning sex outright and suggesting on national television that people who use contraception are animals), the more people are going to be turned off, and the more hysterical the base will get as they get more isolated from the rest of the country.
(It's obviously not confined to conservatives... see also the increasingly alienating spiral of PETA's "outreach.")
Follow-up on AshleyMadison.com's adultery-promoting advertisements get things exactly backwards.
First of all I probably ought to be clear I'm not promoting adultery. Instead I'm saying that *since somebody is* promoting it I've got opinions about more or less socially productive ways to do it.
For instance I'm... pretty sure that if you're at a point in your marriage where you really ought to just end the marriage you should *end the marriage!* Because at that point following the thought process "gee that website would make an affair effortless" probably isn't helping *anybody!* I just don't see how in those circumstances an affair, even a website-facilitated one, would help you escape. Any more than an escapist movie like Indiana Jones would help you *actually escape* a cave full of poison arrows and a big stone ball or a tent full of Nazi torturers.
In other words, if you're in one of the situations many of the ads suggest then, seriously, I don't think I'm going out on a limb for saying you probably need interpersonal communications, marriage counseling, couples therapy, values clarification, assumption reassessments, financial counselors, possibly career counseling or training, and lawyers more than you need an affair. Because, seriously, if as an individual your current partner isn't providing everything you need to help *stay* in a relationship then there's *no way* an individual you have an affair with can provide everything you're going to need to *get out* of one.
For what it's worth, the agency's advertisers at least somewhat get it. While Googling around for the ad I saw broadcast I found the following one as well. (The YouTube version bills itself as NSFW. It's got some tacky elements, about which later, but it's no less safe than a Victoria's Secrets or sports swimsuit-issue would be.)
In this ad there's no hint that the individuals have unhappy marriages. Which I consider to be a step in the right direction.
Of course there's no hint that they have *happy* ones either. But *if* I wanted to run a responsible adultery-facilitation service I'd want the ads to... um... stray no further into negativity. And preferably, in follow-up ads I'd try further modeling by, say, showing the individuals in their respective homes genuinely welcoming their loved ones. With a tagline that goes something more like "life is *great,* have an affair" instead of "life is short, have an affair." Because, seriously, otherwise why not just get the divorce?
Note: The ad deliberately, I think, employs a bucketfull of clichés about romance, ethnicity, opulence, age, and gauze-covered lenses... and ends with a final shot that suggests to me that, like the one I remembered from TV, this one is attempting to attract women to the service. The other ad I found, probably from the same ad agency, plays *much* more strongly on negative stereotypes of attraction and body type and the (male-centric) consequences of lust-driven impulse rather than the references to romance or emotional alienation in the first two.
Ok, so... imagine we lived in a culture where people mostly just never smile. At least not in public, or even at home much, especially with the lights on. Although sometimes they'd get together, especially when they had a lot of trust and intimacy, and at home, in bed, with the lights off, they'd sometimes daringly tell each other jokes. And they'd enjoy it quite a lot, although they knew it was dirty and naughty and not what you should talk about during the day.
Imagine how shy and embarrassed they'd be about letting anyone see their "smile" face. :-) *Talk* about funny looking! I mean, eyes squinching shut? Cheeks bulging to the sides? Teeth showing and sometimes the whole *inside of the mouth?!?!* Occasionally tears in the corners of their eyes?
Ewww, *totally* embarrassing, right? And no way anyone would want to *see* them that way.
Even if *they* had lovingly, carefully, secretly, thoughtfully told the joke that produced that *awful* face, right? Why that would be the *last* person you'd want to see you that way! Right?
That's sort of how I feel about worrying about "O" face.
It's not that *I* wouldn't worry about other people seeing *my* O-face. Because... well... um... because even though *yours* is adorable... beautiful... and outright heart-beatingly, breath-shorteningly, denim-strainingly hot... *mine* just *has* to look awfully, embarrassingly dumb. Right? It's not just because I'm not used to seeing my own either. It's not, it's not! Right? :-)
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon takes on the barkingly stupid but highly predictable assertions Ken Blackwell during his appearance on a Chris Matthews segment about abortion and contraception.
Ken Blackwell has nothing at all to add to this, of course. He just screams about how he and his are going to pray away female sexuality, and it’s just a matter of time. It’s mildly useful that Blackwell openly admits and downright brags about how he and his are basically against women having sex and that the only form of birth control they’ll tolerate is the pill you hold between your knees.
...
Blackwell’s argument against the existence of non-procreative sexual intercourse is actually kind of funny, though. He comes right out and says we should abstain as a way to differentiate ourselves from other animals. In my experience, however, wearing clothes, speaking, and walking upright tend to be enough to signal to other humans that I am not a lemur or a newt.
Not to mention that we also differentiate ourselves from the animals by...
... *having non-procreative sex!!!!*
Sheesh!
By the way, drawing all sorts of conclusions about mate selection among other totally disparate species would be a lot easier if the creationists were right and we could just pray away all interest in non-procreative sex.
Twitter: nice but low bandwidth for big ideas. E.g.
BDSM: I think people maybe are trying to use sex to meet needs that rugby, football, or karate do better. Do that first. *Then* have sex!
Which raises its own questions. But then you try to explain
Sometimes I wonder "why separate rugby and sex when you could do BDSM?" It's way more a mixing problem than a morality one.
[Not too sure about Twitter use. Makes me drop words, ideas. Hold intervention if I ever say "U" or "b4!" Good exercise in brevity for wordy figleaf tho though. --fl]
When you were mostly offline for a week it's tough wanting to call attention to cool, cool posts that everyone else might already think of as, well, last week's news. But they're big-deal posts and *somebody* besides me might have missed them the first time, so...
Amanda Marcotte, writing at RHRealityCheck.org wrote about the paradigm-ridden nature of efforts to "deal" with women's "low libidos."
It's an indicator of how male-dominated our society is that the fact that women have diminishing libidos and don't seem to care that much about it is treated as the problem, when in fact it's merely the symptom of a larger problem--that women feel overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed about their bodies. If we treated the actual problems that women face, higher libidos would be the happy result, I'm sure. But in order to do that, we'd have to treat male domination like a problem to be solved, and since few people really want to do that, instead we're left with articles that note women's lack of libido, but carefully resist asking why.
Another consequence of being off line so much last week is that I can no longer find a cool political/policy-wonk post I read... too long ago to find again evidently... by, I thought, food blogger and health-care policy wonk Ezra Klein. The insight there, though, was that a *heck* of a lot of increases in national healthcare costs are related to keeping us alive in the face of the really unhealthy diets, sedentary lifestyles, and environmental impacts brought about largely by... *other* national agricultural, transportation, and environmental policies. We might not be *happy* campers if we just stopped getting 40% of our calories from corn syrup and soybean oil, if we had to walk to a bus stop instead of drive a car, or if we had to stop jagging off with phthalate-ridden "novelty items"... but whether or not we were wiser we'd be both healthier and wealthier: finding money for better medicine so we can keep making money making ourselves sicker doesn't make sense. On *any* level.
Amanda's saying the same thing: finding "cures" for "low libido" so that we can maintain the conditions that *suppress* libido doesn't make any sense either. On any level.
Michael O'Hare of The RBC makes what might be considered a belated discovery...
In the middle of a long thread on a writers' list-serv, provoked by my post on fashion models, it occurred to me that one of the unrecognized ways women are kept dependent and threatened is simply denying them pockets. This is more important than one might think, right up there with hobbling them with high heels and way more effective than an upper-body-strength advantage.
...
Why does this matter? Well, think what autonomous adults do, almost tautologically: they admit themselves to secure locations with keys, show identification, write on paper, start a car, read (think glasses), spend money with cash and credit cards, check mail and talk on their cellphones.
I can do any of those grownup things instantly, almost all with one hand, while walking, and neither miss a step nor look away from my surroundings for a second. With the jacket, I have pockets to spare for an iPod, papers, a candy bar, and even a book. A woman, however, dressed for business in slacks or a skirt and a jacket, or even wearing loose-fitting casual clothes, will have no usable pockets and has to carry a handbag. It takes both her hands and several therbligs to accomplish any adult task, never mind looking and groping inside the bag for the appropriate tool.
The handbag itself is disempowering; it's prey to a thief just walking on the street unless clutched (there's one hand occupied), and for sure hanging on a chair in a cafe, while a man only has to worry about a skilled pickpocket or a strongarm mugger.
Pretty obvious right? Here's the kicker though, and why it's not just another run of the mill joust at a sartorial issue that, seriously, just doesn't seem like it'll ever go away. Because in an update O'Hare concludes
Obviously these insights are not original with me. A reader points to a page apparently more than a decade old, where the pocket issue is classified as a joke. This reminds me of another oppressive tool, which is to diss reports of injustice with ridicule and condescension (though satire and humor are not out of place in serious political discourse). I don't think this stuff is a joke.
And at least for me this is *not* an abstract issue. At all! Just this morning I wanted to hand my 9-year-old a little first-aid bottle for a canker sore. Girl sweatpants? No pocket. Girl shirt? No pocket. *Girl's sweatshirt?* No pocket! Meanwhile my 12-year-old? Boys pants? About 21 pockets including a bunch down each leg. Shirt? Well, it's a totally ratty soccer jersey so no pocket. But boy's sweatshirt? Four pockets. But who's got the canker sore? Not Mr. 25 pockets. I suggested that 9-year-old put the bottle in her backpack. Instead I found it on the kitchen counter after they'd both caught the school bus. #!&#@!*!! asshole clothes designers! She'll be hurting all day but -- what!?!? -- her thighs won't look fat or something? Age 9 and the fuckers are already watching out for her figure.
For those who've done both, is fellatio any harder or easier than cunnilingus? And/or more or less enjoyable?
The question popped into my head halfway down an aisle at the grocery store while I was doing my weekly shopping. I'd been thinking about that Em & Lo wise-guys either/or question post about intercourse vs. fellatio and...
...it suddenly occurred to me that since most of my partners, especially when I was younger, tended to like intercourse but love cunnilingus I wonder if maybe it's no surprise that so many men tend to say... they like intercourse but love fellatio. Men's and women's preferences being, folklore notwithstanding, more alike than different that would make sense.
So anyway, while in retrospect it seems like there are a lot of other considerations, the first thing I thought was that probably depends on whether fellatio or cunnilingus is objectively easier or harder than the other.
Rather than guess I thought I'd just ask. So...
If you've done both, is one any harder or easier than the other? And/or more or less enjoyable?
Thanks.
For their regular "wise guys" feature this week Lo of Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between. asked three experts
“If guys had to choose between only intercourse or only blowjobs for the rest of their life, which do you think most guys would choose?”
It's always easy to try and dodge either/or questions this way but her panel does a good job of sticking to the situation at hand. "Straight single guy Chris" thinks most men would pick fellatio but advises intercourse. "Married straight guy Fred" agrees. And "Gay Committed Guy Terence" intercourse for sure. Two commenters, David Perrins and Yatz say given a choice *they'd* pick cunnilingus. Which is outside the scope of the question but worth consideration because it brings up what I think the most important consideration would be: whichever activity one’s *partner* would prefer doing for the rest of *her* life.
Because, really, you want to have blowjobs for the rest of your life then what’s your partner going to get out of it? Or intercourse when it didn't do much for her?
Turn it around for a minute and see what I mean: your partner gets to choose whether she’d rather have only intercourse or only cunnilingus, right? What if Perrin’s or Yatz’s partner picks intercourse? What if Chris’s or Terence’s partner picks oral? Either way their *partners* might be happy but Perrin, Yatz, Terence and Chris? Not as much.
And then (with the tables still turned) over time, how enthusiastic about persevering would Chris, Perrin, Terrence, or Yatz be? And how much fun, exactly, is an unenthusiastic partner? So. Turn the tables back to the original question and see if you’d come up with the same answer?
[Still very poor net connection. Things should be back to normal when I get home later this weekend. --fl]
Britni of Oh My God, That Britni's Shameless gets gently ruthless about abstinence-only education being a cruel, murderous prank perpetrated against young people in order to make other people feel the illusion of vicarious virtue**.
Bristol Palin is proof that abstinence-only education doesn't work. The best part about it is that her mother's entire sex education platform is for abstinence-only education, yet her daughter is a perfect example of why it's ineffective. And Bristol, I think, is trying to say that as much as she can. By saying "abstinence is unrealistic" she really means that "teenagers are going to have sex anyway." And by saying "don't end up like me" she is implying that you "shouldn't get pregnant at 17."
Q: How do we prevent pregnancy when teenagers are going to be having sex anyway?
A: By teaching teenagers how to prevent pregnancy.I know, I know. That sounds so logical and obvious. But that right there, abstinence-only education advocates, is why your way just won't work. The kids are gonna fuck. So please, let's teach them how to do it safely. Bristol Palin is totally on board for comprehensive sex ed, regardless of what her mother thinks.
Not only did [Palin's mother, Governor Sarah Palin] not equip her with the tools to have safe sex because she is for abstinence-only education, but she is pro-life and therefore wouldn't allow Bristol to abort the kid that she didn't want and ended up pregnant with accidentally. Those right-wingers make total sense. I'm not gonna teach you how not to get pregnant, and then I'm not gonna let you abort the kid you don't want and aren't ready to raise.
Can't put it much more clearly, or bluntly than that.
[** "Gee figleaf, how do you *really* feel about that? --fl]
In an excellent rundown of current male-contraceptive technology in development, Soumya Vemuganti of RHRealityCheck.org says a product I've been waiting for for years has been approved by the FDA last year.
Confirming Lack of Sperm Production
Since it takes just one sperm to fertilize an egg, it is extremely important to confirm a lack of sperm production using any of the aforementioned male contraceptives. A product approved by the FDA last year will help to measure the effectiveness of male contraceptives which block spermatogenesis. SpermCheck Vasectomy offers patients an at home method of measuring their sperm levels post-vasectomy. It is easy to imagine that this product could also be used to measure the efficacy of reversible male contraceptives; in fact, SpermCheck Contraception is in the works.
Because non-barrier/non-vasectomy contraception for men is almost always going to be a lot more complicated than the main non-barrier/non-IUD contraceptives for women having a method to confirm one's infertility seems pretty critical. And, obviously, it's just as critical to be able to confirm one's *male partner's* infertility as well. I'm guessing that at least initially the test won't be cheap enough for casual use -- the size of a market based on one-time-only post-vasectomy tests can't be terribly high -- on the order of several hundred thousand a year -- and they've gotta recover their costs somehow. Presumably with the advent of oral/injectable contraceptives or, possibly more exciting, hotpack-based methods (who knew? but they say it can be 100% effective!) the market could grow into the tens of millions of repeat customers. Presumably that would make the product affordable for frequent use.
One of the few things generally applicable things Ronald Reagan said (over, and over, and over... he was already developing Alzheimer's) during his negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev was "trust but verify." Which seems like a tailor-made tagline for a fertility testing product.
Excellent advice from Em of Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between.
If we all followed the golden rule of reciprocity in bed, we think there’d be more sex, more orgasms, less bickering, fewer sex advice columnists (we’d be out of a job!), and possibly even world peace. Remember, if your partner tickles your back, it’s not just because they’re being nice — they want you to tickle their back, too. And anything tactile, whether it’s a back massage or a nipple tweak or oral sex, feels better when you don’t have to ask for it.
It's funny that Em would have to remind us but... we hear over and over... and over and over and over... that the hetero bias towards one-way sex is frustratingly durable.
I don't want to bring up my, um, universal explanation for everything but it *does* seem that if people were a bit more willing to acknowledge that women might enjoy sex because it *feels good* and not just because they like making letting their man feel good in exchange for some other, non-sexual benefit we'd probably all enjoy ourselves a lot more. There'd certainly be more orgasms during sex. And there might be probably be fewer sex advice columnists. I'm actually not sure about world peace or even less bickering since I'm not a big believer in the "...just needs to get laid" theory of conflict resolution. I *do* think there might be less bickering *about sex.*
But forget all that! You know what's *really* nice about reciprocity? It's not the "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" that makes it cool. It's the "doing unto others, period" that's cool. Because, seriously, scratching or massaging someone else's back is fun. Tweaking someone's nipple back is fun. Oral sex? Can I just make the only-seemingly-paradoxical proposal that while it's not as *orgasmic* to eat someone it's just as much *fun?*
The one caveat? "Reciprocity" isn't the same as "payback." If you're eating your partner, say, only because they won't eat you if you don't? Then yeah, resentment's kind of a buzzkill... but it's a buzzkill both ways. I'd also point out that reciprocity also isn't "I'm rubber and you're glue." It might be that one of you rocks out over receiving oral and the other only gets of when she or he is on top. If so then great -- reciprocity can work that way too.
So yesterday I was reading a website more closely than I usually do and saw their copyright notice was out of date. Which was great, actually, because it reminded me to check the copyright notice here. Sure enough, it's no longer 2008.
That's fine, of course. It usually takes me till February to stop reflexively writing "08" on my checks, for instance. And copyright law is pretty flexible so not having the most up-to-date date, or even having a copyright notice at all, doesn't automatically give someone else a copy right. Still, it's better to be current than not so...
Anyway, a quick cruise around the interblogs suggests this other site and mine weren't outliers. I didn't find any copyright dates earlier than 2005 but I only looked at ten blogs.
My guess is that most of us put the copyright date in the template footer the day we setup our blogs... and then don't think about it again unless or until we update the templates again.
Anyway, while I think it's usually more polite to keep your eyes on a blogger's header, title and latest post, at least once a year feel free to let your eyes stray... drift... downward... and if something's a miss? Whisper discretely "Ssst! Check your zipper copyright date!" :-)
The other day Kink In Exile said
Last night I played in my yoga clothes. I didn’t plan to. I didn’t plan to play really…I planned on a quiet mellow evening. We ordered Chinese and while we waited for the delivery I wanted to get the kink out of my hip flexors (no pun intended). I changed into yoga pants and stayed in them through the evening. Of course one thing led to another and shortly after dinner I was relishing the sight of a man on his knees on my concrete bedroom floor. And I was, naturally, still in my yoga clothes.
On some level I find this absurd. I found it especially absurd when he called me mistress — a title I last used while pro-domming, and so one I associate with a certain look. A look, I’m sure you understand, that does not include stretchy pants and a tanktop. On the other hand, I have better scenes when I’m comfortable, and it’s hard to get comfortable in a corset and 6″ heels. The trappings of BDSM are really interesting though. They setup a context, almost like a bounding box. They, theoretically, get us in the mood, and help set the scene — we didn’t need the help it seems.
It's true that attire and language help set the scene and create a context for sex -- everything from the (Victorian) floridity of Valentines Day to the (Victorian) white trappings of weddings to the (Victorian) black leather and chrome trappings of BDSM. But sort of like beer at a college dance, or corsets and words for women that end in "...trix" they're only familiar, not necessary.
I like to imagine that the Victorians (being removed from us by only a handful of generations) were pretty much exactly like us, and so I like to imagine that if the Victorians had had spandex, lycra, and NuSkin then we'd probably be doing BDSM in... yoga pants instead of leather, lace, and leopard-fur prints.
Kink in Exile adds
Later my partner suggested a yoga-wear themed play party. I think that’s an awesome idea not only because it will be comfortable, but because it inspires me to take more lessons from my yoga practice into the bedroom. Besides which, it’s totally worth while for the mindfuck.
It's true! While the Victorians had all sorts of great ideas related to sex**, after nearly 200 years some of their tropes and traditions have become a bit shop-worn. Ideas that have already seeped into sexuality from yoga, massage, and other body work have been pretty cool and I'm guessing more would be welcome. And years ago I only-semi-jokingly suggested importing lederhosen and Tyrollean/Swiss climbing culture into the BDSM-fashion mix. And years hence one wonders what sort of erotic nostalgia will arise from the colorful austerity of punk...
My guess is that in 200 years from now we be wearing something more interesting than tuxedos and crinoline gowns in weddings, pondering lingerie less stale than (Victorian, again) garters, stockings, and merry widows, and spanking each other with something more up to date than riding crops.
[** Ok, and a lot of *really, really, really* terrible ones: circumcision to "cure" masturbation? Virginity as an outright sexual fetish rather than inheritance-driven socio/economic imperative? Semen conservation? Women as medically, emotionally, physically and, especially, sexually fragile flowers? Just for starters! --fl]
So. You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that sex toys are called "toys" instead of, say, sex appliances or masturbation devices for a reason. Nor would you be surprised to learn they're called toys, or, more specifically, "novelty items" specifically because so many jurisdictions either explicitly or implicitly regulate commercial activities anything having to do with sex, let alone anything having to do with masturbation.
Ironic, then, that whereas the *sale* of sex devices are heavily regulated around the country (until very recently they were flat illegal in Texas) the manufacture of "novelty items" isn't regulated at all. With the classic twittery vs. substance consequence that many such toys contain toxic and/or carcinogenic chemicals that would be prohibited if they were sold for actual *use!*
What? You actually *use* your vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, sleeves, and other items instead of having a good laugh at their novelty and then chucking them out? Who knew?!?!? :-)
That's where Grist comes in. They've teamed up with Babeland to promote a funny, disarming video that both mocks the lack of safety in some products and promotes healthier, and hotter (njoy vibrators and glass dildos anyone?) alternatives.
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This isn't Grist's first foray into eco-friendly sex advice. See also
* Naughty by Nature
* A Valentine's Day's Night
* Sermon on the Mounting - How to green your love life
* Bleeding hearts - An eco-friendly Valentine's Day guide for the bitter and alone
Hat tip to Jennifer Prediger
Thinking about the pale rose flush that sneaks in little islands down your throat and chest that leave me wondering how *anybody* could think women's arousal is invisible without *much* more intimate inspection. Not that there's anything wrong with intimate inspection (assuming it's genuinely intimate and not, say, imposed.) It's just not the only way to tell.
Twisty Faster of I Blame The Patriarchy, while fulminating against the ills of vaginal penetration in general, efforts to relieve vaginismus and, especially, to treat it with injections of brand-name botulism toxin, also has a good point. In a footnote, sure, but still a good point.
This psychnet-uk.com is a real peach. It appears to reject the notion that anything short of “actual intercourse” may be classified as sex. Orgasms achieved through clitoral stimulation are categorized as “foreplay.” Seriously! in 200-fucking-9!
Um. Yeah, by their definition the partner I had the most memorable, whole-body-shuddering, hands-trembling, heart-thumping, can't-speak-in-complete-words-let-alone-sentences, years-later-wake-up-dreaming-about umm... um... series of physical-relationship engagements while hardly ever having "sex" at all.
Frequent vaginal penetration, yes, but not with the body part Twisty loathes most, and frequently no part of mine at all. Nor at my instigation. Nor for that matter by my hand or any other part. (Well... actually sometimes *with* my hand, or most of it.)
But as far as I can tell since it wasn't vaginal penetration with Teh Cock none of that was sex either.
Hmm... since she didn't have (external) clitoral orgasms it wasn't foreplay either.
Dang, we must have been bored senseless!
Worse, since what we *did* do never counted as sex then none of the other ways we gave each other and ourselves sometimes almost painfully intense orgasms wouldn't have been foreplay either.
You know what we did do though? We talked a lot (we didn't always live in the same place.) And we showed each other what we liked to do to ourselves. And we spent a lot of time with each other. Naked. Touching each other. All over. No, I mean *all* over. Like massage. Only erotic. Like back scratching. Like shoulder rubs. Like exploring each other, your hands on top of theirs not guiding but following, their hands on yours but again not guiding but following. Like tracing each others faces, and backs, bellies, toes, ribs, throats, insides of forearms, insides of knees, curling little wisps of unshaved hair and always, always trying to get as *close* to tickling as possible... without tickling at all... till your skin was almost electric, till just warm breath was erotic fire. Like licking, sucking, mouthing each other, slurping fingers, ears, lips, toes, breasts, labia, cock, throats. Like oiling each other and then sliding over and across each other, reveling in not just the sensation but the weight. Like cupping each other's groins, hers wet, mine hard, glowing in the infrared with hot blood heat. Like jacking and jilling ourselves and each other...
But since she loved penetration... but was never moved by intercourse... at least not with me and maybe not with anyone mortal... what we discovered together instead was, well, some of the most erotically profound not-foreplay-nor-sex-according-to-psychnet-uk* I've ever had in my life.
---
Here's the thing about Twisty though. Everybody assumes she's a lesbian. Or asexual. Or a survivor of this or that. Or an internet troll. Maybe so although unless she says so out loud it's really none of our business. But even if she turned out to be the founding matriarch of the F(eminist)LDS with 131 husbands stashed away in a compound somewhere near Waco it *still* makes sense that patriarchal crap (like Psychnet-UK's assertion that another vagina-related psychological disorder, dyspareunia, can be caused by insufficient foreplay or infection and can be treated by counseling and psychotherapy or with medication or lubrication) would drive her batshit insane.
Actually it would make *more* sense that the grand matriarch of 131 husbands would have zero tolerance for standards of phallocentrism so rigid that sex isn't even *defined* for a woman without a jack lodged firmly in her pulpit. For that matter just assuming that she's a polyandrist would *also* explain her sense that women, being human, should have sovereignty, acknowledgement, place, compensation, and co-location with men on the species definition of H. Sapiens Sapiens.
I'm not saying she is or isn't any particular way because I either don't know or don't remember. Just saying it wouldn't be necessary to be a radical feminist separatist lesbian to carry on the way she does. And therefore it's not terribly useful to assume she is... and to use that assumption to rule out everything she says... instead of just the stuff you disagree with.
In their regular "Wise Guys" sectionEm & Lo asked "Do guys ever turn down casual sex?"
I like the column, not least because even when the answers are conventional they're often conventional in non-stereotypical ways. This week not so much.
It's a trickier question than it sounds. One of the interesting consequences of a tradition that requires men to do all the initiating… and the obvious corollary that we only initiate when we’re interested… is that we rarely have to confront invitations when we’re *not* interested.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got enough expectations tied up in “scoring,” and we have enough institutional and biological padding that we don’t have to worry as much about consequences (like reputation hits and pregnancy) that we can get interested pretty quickly.
But still, when it happens and we’re clear-headed enough to assess the potential fallout, it would be nice to have some kind of vocabulary to fall back on besides, oh, say
Yes guys do, contrary to popular belief, turn down casual sex on occasion. The number one reason given, “That bitch was crazy!”
Because saying that? That’s more like covering up when you’re panicked and looking for excuses. My suggestion? How about manning up and saying “no thanks, I’m not in the mood.”
---
Short of maybe Brad Pitt every single, actively heterosexual man on the planet knows exactly how nerve wracking is to ask someone out… and knows just how much it can sting to get the rude brush off. And so every hetero man out there probably ought to either a) show a little collegial courtesy… or at least “honor among thieves.” :-) Or, seriously, a little sympathy and a considerate yes or no when someone summons the nerve to ask *us!*
And not to put too fine a point on it, from a men’s perspective the more women begin asking men out the more sympathy *we’ll* get when *we* ask *them* out!
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One final point. One of the more corrosive aspects of the no-sex class paradigm is that men don't just condition ourselves to passively believe that "good" girls can be sexualized but not independently sexual, we also condition ourselves to actively enforce perceived departures from our ideological expectations. Thus a woman who initiates is a recurring sexual *fantasy,* sure, but like sexual initiative-taking, sexual fantasy tends to happen when... we're in the mood.
On the other hand, if a woman initiates in real life, especially at a time when circumstance or mood makes us disinclined, it isn't received so much as sexy, interesting, or a fantasy come true or, especially, for an opportunity to do something fun with someone who, other than genital anatomy, is just like you. When that happens men aren't given a lot of places to go except up (with superior pronouncements like "she's a bitch") or out (with escapist characterizations like "she's crazy") but never straight across ("I'm sorry, I'm already in a relationship" or "I don't think that would be a good idea... can I call you a cab, I don't think you should drive" or even "Not now but can I call you later.")
I'm not even going to say there's something wrong with one (fantasizing about forwardness) or the other (preferring reticence in reality) since in day-to-day life women seem to feel somewhat similarly. I *will* say, though, that men need to spend a little time reconciling the differences. That plus making room for *everybody* and not just men to initiate, proposition, or propose, and walking back the panicky name-calling reactions next time a woman seems more ready, willing, and able than we are.
Photo by Flickr user figleaf (hey that's me!) Used under a Creative Commons license.
Jill Filipovic of Feministe jumps hard on last week's New York Times Magazine article “What Do Women Want?: A new generation of postfeminist sexologists is trying to discover what ignites female desire" by Daniel Bergner. She ably dismantles the most egregious assumptions Bergner brings to our attention, but I'd like to pile on with one more point.
A compact 51-year-old woman in a shirtdress, [psychology professor Marta] Meana explained the gender imbalance onstage in a way that complemented [psychology professor Meredith] Chivers’s thinking. “The female body,” she said, “looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal.
Not to sound cruel or dismissive or anything but... is she *mental?* Or just really inexperienced around aroused women and men?
Because, pardon me, but arousal in both men and women is at least moderately (almost said "modestly!") obvious from the collarbones up. And while contemporary beauty standards do their best to camouflage hints of arousal behind (peculiarly) the simulated arousal of makeup on lips, eyes, and cheeks, and posture-altering heels and foundation garments visual signs of arousal still peek through. And if everybody's naked there are even more perfectly visible evidence. And...
That's all assuming arousal is to be detected in the absence of, oh, I dunno, social and context, body language and *conversation.* Which, even in the extravagantly stylized "primitive state of nature" happened exactly *how* often?
And about the male-erection thing. Thought experiment for anyone with sexual experience with men: Imagine the various men in your life when they're aroused and not aroused. Now imagine a little black cartoon-style "censored" label across their lower midsections so it's impossible to see if they're "announcing" anything with their erection or lack thereof. Are signs of *male* arousal so binary and limited that it's impossible to tell if they're aroused without peeking behind the black bar?
I mean... seriously?
Yes, in those circumstances where men or women are visible only from navel to upper thigh, where there's no possibility of verbal communication or body language, where they're too far apart to listen to their breathing, assess their posture, feel their body heat, watch them move, or smell them *and* you're either color-blind so you can't see genital and non-genital flushing or too far away to discern vulvar engorgement and lubrication, *and* for some reason you have to assess whether someone's aroused then yeah, thank goodness you can check for an erection. Oops, unless they're wearing something that's not quite form-fitting. Oh, and you can somehow confirm that he didn't just wake up and he has to pee... or conversely that he's actually quite aroused but dealing with erection dysfunction. But yeah, in those circumstances it's obvious whether men are aroused but not when women are.
I mean, *seriously?*
It would be one thing if we were talking about evolutionary psychologists because it's generally agreed they're fascinated by sex because they're too dweeby to have had it themselves. But these people are supposed to be flipping sexologists and that's the best Meana can do? Because, seriously, as far as insults to grown men and women's intelligence goes that's *way* over the top.
In her post Jill suggests an alternative
How about the fact that women grow up in a society that is centered on men’s experiences and lives? That the female body is used as a representation of sex itself, whereas (hetero) men’s experiences and understandings of sex dominate our cultural narrative?
Now *that* makes a lot more sense. I was really struck by one of the panel discussions on orgasms with a partner on Cherry.tv where one of the women said she never masturbated because she grew up believing it was “just a thing guys did. ... I think I found out about it when 'American Pie' came out. It was like 'girls masturbate?' ... It was, like, foreign to me.” So yeah, in a culture that communicates that to women (and, of course, men) then you’d also expect it to communicate that a man’s erection is the only conceivable or detectable sign of arousal in all of humanity.
Sheesh!
[** Also what's with this "*the* female body..." "*the* male..." business? Maybe it's because if researchers used direct words like "women's bodies..." they'd have moments of self-identification and balk at the absurdity of blanket statements like that. --fl]
Somewhat related to Heather and CJ's chapter on sexual entry, Kink In Exile has a cool post up about personal space and boundaries.
Months ago I had an argument with someone over touching. I am a very physical person. I did not want this person to touch me. Why? Because it felt wrong... I don’t know why. It felt like a violation.
Last night I was getting a massage from someone who warned me that he doesn’t mix massage with sexual touch...”it’s all about intent” I believe were his words. It made sense. I am nude lying on a bed and his touch does not feel intrusive. I am fully clothes in a public space and his hand on my back crosses a line. It isn’t quantitative, I can’t tell him (for that abstract all the men in my life past, present and future value of him) where he can touch and where he can’t. I can’t even tell him when, or in what context it is appropriate. It is about the intent he comes to me with, and about my perception.
Kink in Exile adds that it's not necessary about lengthy conversations either. Which is one good reason why intent is a handy concept. It implies that while not *every single* action requires verbal negotiation before proceeding (which sounds a bit too much like process fetishism in kink) it *does* mean verbal check in is needed at every point where there's any possibility of ambiguity.
Over on the wonderful sex-ed site Scarleteen.com authors CJ Turett and Heather Corinna have posted an in-depth, non-gender-specific article called "Let's Get Metaphysical: The Etiquette of Entry."
Vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, placing fingers inside a vagina or anus, fellatio (blowjobs), in plenty of ways with cunnilingus (oral sex for women), and even kissing with your tongue are all some ways we might enter someone else's body or have someone else enter our own.
First of all it's just so cool that they're calling it "entry," which locates things in the person entered instead of "penetration," which tends to emphasize the person doing the entering. And with that in mind here's a clip on the section about why they think it's important to deconstruct entry in the first place.
* The person whose body is being entered is usually at a higher risk of injury or sexually transmitted infections, because it is their genital tissue which is most likely to wind up with small abrasions, fissures or micro-tears. For any partner involved, when there is bodily entry going on, the stakes are higher than they are with, say, dry sex, or rubbing someone's breasts or penis.
* The person whose body is being entered is often the person more likely to experience any pain or discomfort, often due to things like nerves, inadequate arousal or lubrication, or an aggressive or over-eager partner.
* If we’re talking about an instance of sex and a combination of body and parts that could possibly result in pregnancy, it’s the person whose body is being entered who is at risk of pregnancy.
* Many people have had or do have trauma when it comes to others entering their bodies, whether due to the forced entry of rape, having experienced pain in the past with entry, medical abuses, childbirth experiences, or experiences with a previous partner who disrespected or disregarded limits, boundaries, or desire. Both the physical body and the mind remember pain, so previous pain -- be that physical and/or emotional -- can make entry scary for some people or trigger some challenging or painful emotions regarding previous traumatic experiences.
* We have a lot of cultural baggage that says only women get entered and only men do the entering, or that any kind of entry is a kind of violation or powerplay. For some men, a lot of homophobia can also be tied up into them being entered, as entrance has historically been constructed as a passive or more feminine role. Balancing our desire or interests with our community, family, or religious values—as well as what we’ve been taught from other places—is not always an easy task.
* Some people may have gender identity issues with either being entered or entering someone's body. The ways we feel about our own bodies and body parts, and whether those align with what our partners may see about us or understand about our identities, can sometimes be confusing. Regardless of our gender, we may also have preferences about what kind of sexual roles we see as acceptable or desirable for ourselves.
* Some people also have shame tied up into the insides of their body, or the fluids or substances with which contact can be made, particularly when entry is involved.
And from a section on entry, personal space, and boundaries
This might sound a little hokey, but entrance into another body — whether you are inviting it for yourself or someone else is inviting you inside of them — is often a profound moment of connection. While all sexual activity, regardless of whether or not there is entry present, is an opportunity for this sort of connection, physically crossing into and entering into another body can be highly emotional for a lot of people. But it’s easy to forget or overlook that when you’re busy thinking about everything else, like how to physically go about it or how you’re performing or whether or not you’re “doing it right”.
And a historically-critical from a section called "A Vagina is Not a Sock, and Other Helpful Hints"
With any bodily orifice, we're not talking about something that is passive or just lying around. Body parts exist within relationship to other body parts, within relationship to complex bodily systems, reactions, and interactions. The mouth is active and full of muscles. The vagina is a muscle. The anal sphincters, anus, and rectum are muscles. And with any of those parts, if we're really paying attention rather than going into our own heads or focusing only on our own bodies, we can feel when they are really are opening up to us and when they are not.
And, a fairly big one, from the section on patriarchal, feminist, and heteronormative constructions of entry
Heterocentrism also makes it really easy to skew this conversation to only be about heterosexually-identified people who were assigned male at birth (and who still identify as male) with people who were assigned female at birth (and who still identify as female). Heterocentrism can mean that we often default to viewing penis-in-vagina sex as “real” sex, and anything else as somehow less or not valid even though they really are mighty similar and have some very important things in common.
On distinguishing between body signals, body language, and verbal consent
Lest we unintentionally send an inaccurate message, this is not to say that if the bodily signals are there (erection, lubrication, a flushed face or chest, increased swelling around the genitals, increased heart rate—all of which can be signals of arousal) then all systems are a go and you have complete liberty to do as you may with your partner. Nope. All of the signals need to be in alignment, and indicators of bodily readiness can only take on meaning in the presence of verbal consent. Consent is not simply the absence of NO; it’s an active statement of yes, and a freely given and enthusiastic YES at that.
And finally from a section on the language of entry itself
The wording and construct of “penetration” can imply that one person is pushing through or into another, often by overcoming resistance. In some contexts, that word can deny or make invisible the fact that while, indeed, sometimes that can be how an encounter goes – particularly when we’re talking about rape rather than consensual partnered sex – that’s not actually what is going on when sex is wanted by all partners, and everyone is emotionally present and bodies are fully engaged.
...
Instead of saying "receptive," when we talk about the partner who is being entered, we might say that a partner and their body are welcoming, yielding, inviting, taking in, enfolding, embracing. Heck, even "entry" is a bit limited. We're short of language for so much of what we're talking about here in large part because for such a long time the ways that we’ve talked about sex were (and in many ways still are) all caught up in the politics of separateness, inequality, of conquering, and of power-over rather than power shared.
I'm sure it sounds like I've just quoted the whole thing. But Heather and CJ have put a *lot* of work into this. Oh, and incidentally, except for a few posts by people like Bitchy Jones, most of the work on... I dunno... call it the philosophy of entry/penetration was done back in the 1970s. And a lot has changed since then. Anyway, it's good stuff and I highly recommend it.
Hortense of Jezebel says
So it turns out that alcohol consumption, once thought to be a leading cause of poor performance in the bedroom, actually improves a man's sexual abilities, according to a recent study of 1580 Australian men.
"We found that, compared to those who have never touched alcohol, many people do benefit from some alcohol, including some people who drink outside the guidelines,'' says Dr. Kew-Kim Chew, who led the study at Western Australia's Keogh Institute for Medical Research. After studying the habits of 1580 Australian men, it was found that men who drank within recommended guidelines had 30% fewer problems during sex than teetotalers, and, according to Clair Weaver of The Sunday Telegraph, "Even binge drinkers had lower rates of erectile dysfunction than those who never drank, although this type of drinking can cause other health problems." And if that isn't wacky enough, ex-drinkers were the ones with the highest rates of erectile dysfunction. (That sound you just heard was a million guys, giving up their New Year's resolution to drink less. Or perhaps a "WTF" sigh from your straight-edge boyfriend.)
Even though I'm a near teetotaler (hey, I drank an entire mixed drink just the other day... ok, ok, for the first time in maybe a year) and even though some of the reporting is of the breathless-as-usual type, I think it's an entirely plausible conclusion.
One thing though. Hortense says
There's no real reason given for the increase in performance that alcohol provides, though one would suspect a sense of relaxation and a lessened sense of anxiety helps a bit.
I actually agree that being easygoing and less stressed makes a difference and alcohol could make a difference there... although it's just as likely that those who drink in moderation are just more easygoing anyway. But I'm pretty sure the answer's actually a lot more straightforward.
It's not that alcohol *boosts* performance (assuming "erection" is really a synonym of "performance") it's that alcohol *reduces* inability to perform. Here's how.
There's roughly one ounce in: a standard shot of whiskey, a standard bottle of beer, or a standard glass of wine. And numerous studies show that people who drink between one and (no more than) three ounces of alcohol a day have much lower rates of heart and arterial disease and death. (Actually *much* lower although, unfortunately for enthusiastic drinkers, the benefits plummet into deficit after three a day.)
Anyway, given that an awful lot of non-psychological difficulty with erection is all about cardiovascular health (Viagra is basically heart medication with a pronounced and profitable side effect) it's not surprising that if small amounts of alcohol benefits the blood vessels of the heart it benefits the blood vessels of the penis as well.
So short-term relaxation notwithstanding certainly long-term you'd expect moderate drinkers to have more reliable erections than either non-drinkers or heavy ones.
And hey, that's not to knock short-term benefits either. One of the first effects of alcohol** is vasodilation, and if constricted blood vessels make erections more difficult then (up to a point) less dilated blood vessels will make them less difficult.
One last thing, again, in addition to any possible psychopharmacological effects of alcohol: alcohol in general and beer in particular suppress production of something called antidiuretic hormone, with the result that you need to pee more. And I don't know about anybody else but I've always found that erections are a lot easier, and a lot longer lasting, if my bladder is comfortably (but not uncomfortably) full. So unless that's just me (and since I don't have any erotic associations with urination or urination denial I'm pretty sure it's *not* just me) then that could be yet another short-term, erection-related benefit of moderate alcohol consumption.
In an always interesting regular feature, Lo of Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between. runs a statement from a reader to a panel of three men to see how they respond.
“I really hate going down on guys. I’ve tried it, I don’t like it. In fact, I loathe it. I feel bad about it, but if I don’t expect oral in return (I don’t), then why should I feel compelled to do something I don’t enjoy?”
Yeah, feeling obliged to do something we hate during sex is just the best… um… way to… stay enthusiasti…
Um, no. That doesn’t really work, eh?
And, yeah, getting a blowjob from someone who’s half-hearted, hurried, and so not into it her mouth is cold is just such a… great feeli…
Um, no, that’s not so hot either.
I *think* the difference is that men have this idea that your no doesn’t mean “no, I don’t enjoy it,” it means “no, I’m holding something back.” Stupid I know. But since it’s just not true that “there’s no such thing as a bad blowjob” and since one of the best ways to get a bad blowjob is to pressure someone who isn’t into it in the first place then… it’s not about the physical sensation it’s about feeling like they’re somehow getting “all” of you.
Question is then do you really want to keep hanging out with a guy who thinks he’s getting *more* intimate with you by… pressuring and/or pining you till you do something you hate doing?
One of the panelists, identified as Gay Engaged Guy (Joel Derfner, author of Swish), had an excellent point...
If you don’t like going down on guys, there’s absolutely no reason you should feel compelled to do so. However, there’s also absolutely no reason a guy should feel compelled to keep dating you if you won’t go down on him. You just have to find somebody who gets his kicks in other ways. The pool will be much smaller, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t, um, fish to be had.
...that goes even better in the other direction. Sure, if a guy thinks it’s his *privilege* that you go down on him then yeah, he doesn’t have to stay with you... but... you really want to stay with him?
There are actually plenty of men who won’t pass one up if offered but who don’t think a blowjob is the Holy Grail. So why waste *your* time (not to mention compromising the quality of *your* sexual enjoyment) on someone who does?
Another panelist, Straight Married Guy (Matt) took a more conventional line “But wouldn’t giving the occasional (special occasion) blowjob be a little easier than banking on these super longshot odds?”
Eh. While I think it's a fairly common strategy, saving up something you really hate for special occasions probably isn't going to make it that much more special for you.
Here’s the thing, and no, it’s not a secret back door ploy to get disinclined women go give blowjobs after all: for a lot of people, not just women, not just men, feeling obliged to do something is enough of a buzzkill threshhold that you never get to where you might not mind it or might even enjoy it.
I don’t know about women doing it for men so much but I’ve certainly heard men say they they eat their girlfriends only for something in return. And they hate that too. Meanwhile like a lot of other men** I think eating a partner is fun all by itself because even if it wasn’t pretty, and tasty, and intimate, and sexy it’s *really cool* when someone is writhing and shuddering and panting your name. And for people, men and women, if you’re just feeling resentful it's hard to register any of that. All of which means that if Em and Lo’s correspondent finds a partner who’s just not that into being eaten it might give her enough space to enjoy it. And if not? No big deal.
[** Sabina of Y Tu Hermano Tambien has a good post on men who are into being eaten vs. men who'd rather eat their partners. --fl]
Despite yesterday's festivities quite a few people tackled the TMI Tuesday meme's bonus question, "At what age do you think men and women reach their sexual peak? Do you think you have hit yours yet?"
Biscuit of One Biscuit Hound, who actually didn't play the meme this week nevertheless came up with an excellent answer:
I don't really believe in sexual peaks. If you've seen one woman hit her sexual peak, you've seen ONE WOMAN reach her sexual peak. You can't lump people together like that.
It's like, how do you define "peak" anyway? It's sort of like where does the Mississippi River "peak?" Up north when it's running the fastest? Further down where it's running deepest? Even further down when it's widest? And what about during dry years? After Katrina-like heavy-weather years? Well, same with sex. Is when you're horny most frequently? When you're having sex most often? Enjoy it the most? When your partner brings out the best in you?
I know I was supposed to peak at, what, 16 or something since that's what boys are "supposed" to do. But to be honest while I was certainly sexually pretty... um... jittery? :-) High frequencies, yes, but I didn't run very deep at all. I didn't really *peak* til sometime in my 20s... and again some time in my 30s... and... and... and...
Another thing, anyway. *How* old is that "boys at 16, women in their 30s" answer anyway? Because I remember reading those numbers in all the then-already-old sex manuals and medical references I stumbled on when I was 12 or 13, and some of those dated back to the 1930s and 1940s. And a good rule of thumb? Any unsourced folk knowledge, about sex anyway, that's persisted unaltered for generations is... probably wrong.
Lisa of Sociological Images, reviewing a YouTube-based ad for the Oslo Gay Festival takes a moment to rattle the stereotype that anal intercourse = gay sex.
How do gay men have sex? Well, they must copy straight people as closely as possible. Therefore, they must put the penis in an opening “down there.” Ah ha! I bet they all have anal sex all the time! I’m sure some gay men do have anal sex, but some surely don’t, and lots of straight couples do! I bet a lot of lesbian couples find a way to do it, too.
That sounds about right. Some percentage of the population, *period,* (don't know how big or small but it's some percentage) is sensorially responsive to enjoying anal stimulation. Some but, like any other random distribution, not all are gay men. But that's not because gay men are supposed to like anal sex, it's because gay men are part of the population. And while some of those randomly-distributed anally receptive people are gay men *the rest are not.* Which is where I rejoin Lisa to point out that the rest *aren't* gay men. Bottom line: enjoying anal stimulation doesn't make you gay.
Similarly some percentage of the population *isn't* responsive to anal stimulation. And again I don't know how big or small a percentage but it's there. Some of *those* people are gay too. The rest aren't. Bottom line: *not* enjoying anal stimulation does *not* make you straight.
And then there's side B, where some percent of the population gets a kick out of playing with their partner. This too is randomly distributed. And this to does not distinguish one as gay or straight... or even male or female.
Aside: the classic illustration would be R. Mildred's entry in the "Blowjob Wars" from a couple years ago, at the mostly-political Punkass Blog. Here's the relevant part.
Look to the Heavens, Oh Yeh Of Little Faith, for anything that should, always, requires you sticking a digit or thumb up the guys butthole and stimulating his prostate for it be maximally pleasurable for the guy, is not supportive of the patriarchy.
...The middle finger is the fellatio finger, never forget that, and we sex-positive, feminist, heterosexuals display it to show that we know it’s proper use.
The rest of the entry isn't directly relevant to this post but you can read it here.
Which also introduces the third factor, one that might complicate things a bit: since potential for anal stimulation, and potential interest in stimulating, are randomly distributed some percentage of the population (I don't know how large or small) are going to be ignorant of the possibility, and a possibly even larger percentage may be indoctrinated to believe, or may just believe due to Freudian-style memories of potty training, that it's sick, wrong, inappropriate, painful, etc. to touch or be touched "back there."
They might even grow up with the socially-instilled belief that this randomly distributed set of characteristics is "gay..."
With the result that gay men, operating under less social stigma and, indeed, influenced by stereotypes might be more inclined to find out if they enjoy anal stimulation and/or stimulating. But... if they're part of the distribution then even though they might be more inclined to *try* it, they're no more likely than anyone else to *enjoy* it. They're just more likely to discover whether they do. Or don't.
Point being that as with so much else about people and especially about people and sex, our stereotypes can enable inclinations or discourage them but in a way that tends to confine *everybody.*
Final note: Based on conversations and reading it sure sounds like gay men get that enjoyment is distributed pretty well. Straight men, for instance, are evidently *far* more likely to keep pushing a partner for anal sex after she's declined. (Which, I might add, may have way more to do with men's drive to get that all-important no-sex class-confirming "no" from his partner than with any objective difference in penile sensation.) Gay men, on the other hand, are more likely to have found out for themselves, or learned in ordinary conversation with other experienced men, that it's great for some but not for everybody.
No wait, *final* final note: R. Mildred's post also illustrates that enjoyment of anal sex isn't only not confined to gay men, it's also not confined to anal penetration with a penis.
JohnR of Mind on Fire and cross-posted at Feminist Mormon Housewives has an encouraging, detailed, very cool, and *very* funny account of his recent vasectomy. I'll do my best not to quote the funny or surreal parts (you should read those yourself) but I did want to flag the following paragraph
So, you may ask, why am I choosing to render my testicles useless? (At least as gonads–thankfully, they will continue to be fully functioning members of my endocrine system.) Mainly, it’s because we’re cheap. For the cost of one month of pills for Jana or two Costco megapacks of condoms we don’t have to pay for birth control ever again. (Well, if we were really chintzy, we could just stop having vaginal intercourse altogether. We’re not that cheap.)
There are other reasons. We already have two wonderful, precocious, beautiful, and according to the Guardian, extremely expensive teenage children. ... I’m just kidding, of course. Our kids are priceless. And we’re satisfied with them.
It's cool that he qualified "render my testicles useless" with "they will continue to be fully functioning members of my endocrine system." Because that speaks to a frequent but completely unfounded concern men have about the procedure. It's cool too that he detailed the breakdown in costs -- compared to all other forms of contraception it's not only extremely** effective dead cheap.
I also think it's funny that he and his partner considered the costs and benefits of discontinuing sexual intercourse.
And I really appreciate his point that he and his partner were satisfied with the children they had and that they had no further need of reproduction.
All in all a cool post. So check it out.
---
One last point. I didn't quote the bits about his doctor or the circumstances of his procedure because they're the funniest parts.
But.
The physician, a friend JohnR identifies as a dean of a medical school, was certainly qualified. It's a simple procedure after all, one that an intern performed ably the first time I got one at age 21. But a better choice might have been whichever local physician has the most, and most recent, practice performing them. It not only might be less expensive, but chances are that a doctor who makes vasectomies a regular part of his practice is going to have a quieter examining room and less intrusive support staff. Sure, it might not have been as amusing a story (I never got to yell "Come in! This is where the party is!" after the umpteenth interruption) but it almost certainly would have been a more comfortable experience.
Case in point: When my partner and I were ready to have children (20 some years after my vasectomy) we sought out the best qualified, most experienced urologist in the area to do my reversal. Several years later, after our planned, wanted, second, and last child was born, I did *not* go back to my urologist. Even though I liked him, and even though he was obviously qualified to undo with a couple of quick snips the intricate microsurgery he'd performed earlier I went instead to a local doctor who has an entire clinic just for doing vasectomies. Because, again, even though he wasn't a med-school dean or ace surgeon he wasn't just cheaper his clinic was set up for it, he knew what he was doing, and so did his staff.
Something to think about if you've got a mind to follow JohnR's and my example.
[** But like anything else not one-hundred point zero, zero, zero, zero percent. Sometimes they really don't work. But once sterility is confirmed it's as close to a closed deal as you get. --fl]
Em of Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between. passes along a great vocabulary word
Oprah loves Kate Winslet’s real boobs. Winslet jokes that they race for sanctuary under her armpits when she lies on her back, but Oprah has a nicer way of putting it: they just part. As opposed to pointing toward the ceiling like the silicone variety. High-five for Kate’s golden globes!
I don't know if it's because so many people, men *and* women, learn about anatomy from Barbie dolls but I'm always surprised when people say they think breasts should continue to point up when you lie down.
They don't.
In fact, as I recall from my own teenage years, even teenager's breasts of any size at all rarely continue to point straight up when they lie down.
But here's the thing. When they do that thing where they "race for sanctuary" under the armpits? That's not "sagging" it's by design. Which is why parting isn't just a nicer way of putting it, it's more apt.
Score one for Oprah.
The word of the day is "part."
Catching up on my newsreader backlog it seems like there've been are a *lot* of posts about blowjobs in the last week or so. Occasionally by men saying "meh," but also by women expressing considerable satisfaction with them.
I'm pretty critically aware of historical attitudes about fellatio. Nobody who came of age before attitudes began to change in, say, 1985 could avoid being aware of them. Enough so that while I've always enjoyed performing cunnilingus I actively avoided fellatio... and looked askance at partners who wanted to do it... and didn't really learn how to enjoy it... until well into the 1980s and well into my 30s. (If you're not old enough to remember the 1970s then count your blessings.)
Because back then whatever other problems people might have had with fellatio (the first big explosion of expressly as opposed to incidentally demeaning porn in the 1970s would be a big one) there was almost universal agreement that it was inappropriate... even demeaning (thus the emphasis in prostitution and porn) for women to engage actively, rather than receptively, in sex.
And whatever else you can say about it, and however legitimate Catharine MacKinnon's legitimate but sometimes, um, overexpressed concerns are, fellatio is almost always about activity rather than passivity.
This obviously isn't to say the *only* way to be non-passive around a partner with penis is to perform fellatio. (To be fair those other active roles also tended to be scowled at back in the day.) And so fellatio certainly needn't be the only way... or even the way at all.
[Note: The more I write about this the more sure I am that I've said something like it before. But it's not coming up in searches so I'll keep going a bit longer. --fl]
At any rate, I've been thinking lately about ways heterosexuals can subvert traditional gender roles. And given that in our traditions masculinity is defined as almost entirely performative, and femininity as passive it's worth listening to those who value *doing* it as to those who still believe it shouldn't be done.
Because, especially if we look to the not-too-distant past, it's important to ask "what's the alternative?" Because I think, for a lot of people, women *not* performing blowjobs is preferred for suspiciously suspicious reasons.
A few obvious caveats:
* Catharine MacKinnon's concern that it can be traumatic when *forced on the unprepared or unwilling* is well-founded and too often disregarded.
* The even broader concern that after the acceptability turnaround fellatio is too often considered an obligation for the provider, or an entitlement of the recipient, also requires more consideration than it's often afforded.
* The great thing about real adult sex is that regardless of peer pressure, social expectation, and even the desires of one's partner is that nobody "should" do anything that doesn't contribute to their own arousal as well as their partner's. Therefore, for real adults, no one has to perform oral sex if they don't want to. Nor, for real adults, no one should *not* perform oral sex if they *do* want to (and, duh, their partner is into receiving it.) The benefits of everyone doing only that which contributes to their own arousal and that of their partner(s) um, should be self-evident.
* Following up on the previous two points, it's also important to pay attention to those who'd rather not receive and *even more important* for recipients to listen to themselves and make sure they're not receiving because they think everyone else enjoys it so they should be too.
Dr. Kate, who's recently moved to her own blog, Gynotalk, posts a reader's question
So, here's a twist: I (the girl) orgasm super easily, while my boyfriend does not--in fact, he's only come during sex with me once, and that was the first time in his life (he's almost 30). He can come if I go down on him (although I am the first girl he has been able to with and he didn't for the first few months of our relationship) and it took him a while to even come when I used my hand. He thinks something is physically wrong with him
I don't actually mind her answer but I do have some reservations about it.
I don't think that your boyfriend's issues are physical ones - a circumcision (good or bad) shouldn't affect his ability to orgasm (though yes, it can affect his surface sensitivity) - for most men, it's primarily a pressure/friction issue, not a skin-touch issue, like for women. And the fact that he can come "pretty regularly" in ANY way, means that his "plumbing" is fine. So that's the good news, since most physical problems don't have easy answers.
But what I think is happening is that he has some mental difficulty with intimacy and sex - if he can regularly come through masturbation, but has a harder time with a partner, then something larger is going on.
It's entirely possible that something larger *is* going on with the correspondent and her partner, but maybe it's just because I'm old enough to remember advice in sex manuals from the 60s**
But check out the results if you run that post through Regender.com's very-clever gender-switching engine (which among other things replaces "Dr. Kate" with "Dr. Karl")
Dr. Karl,
So, here's a twist: I (the boy) orgasm super easily, while my girlfriend does not--in fact, she's only come during sex with me once, and that was the first time in her life (she's almost 30). She can come if I go down on her (although I am the first boy she has been able to with and she didn't for the first few months of our relationship) and it took her a while to even come when I used my hand. ...
I'm sure the problem is compounded by other stuff. She's less self-conscious about this than she used to be, but if in 10 years of having sex YOU weren't able to orgasm, it would just be like the biggest, most embarrassing elephant in the room, right? I can't help but think that there's something more I could do. I really, really want her to be able to come again, and now it's all I think about! Before she did, I didn't think much of it because she had said she wouldn't be able to and I just went with that. But then she did, and it was amazing for both of us, and now it's like my hopes are up.
Wishing for Coming
Dear Wishing,
I don't think that your girlfriend's issues are physical ones ... for most women, it's primarily a pressure/friction issue, not a skin-touch issue, like for men. And the fact that she can come "pretty regularly" in ANY way, means that hers "plumbing" is fine. So that's the good news, since most physical problems don't have easy answers.
But what I think is happening is that she has some mental difficulty with intimacy and sex - if she can regularly come through masturbation, but has a harder time with a partner, then something larger is going on. Kudos to you for being so caring and concerned about her pleasure, and clearly she feels more comfortable with you than with previous partners.
Probably *not* the advice one would offer were the roles reversed!
I'm saying this not in a "what about the men" sort of way but because while the bell-curve distribution of orgasmic success for men tends to lie to the left of the graph for women it's *still* a bell-shaped curve.
Speaking for myself I'm pretty sure I'm sexually perfectly healthy but I didn't figure out how to have orgasms from fellatio till well into my 30s (not enough pressure where I needed it, and generally not enough pelvic-muscle involvement to make up for it.) And when I briefly took a prescription anti-depressant I still thoroughly *enjoyed sex* but was barely able to have an orgasm manually, let alone during any kind of sex with a partner.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that cliches about expected male functionality can be as perilous as the ones about women were 30 years ago. (Cool by the way, that Wishing doesn't feel out of place that *she* comes super easily. In earlier times women often would preface something like that with "I'm like a man that way because I...")
[** By the way, see Holly's post for why I might remember so much about sex manuals from the 60s! And while I'm at it see also Lynn Gazzis-Sax's take on the extent of gender differences in "Men are from Baltimore, Women are from Philadelphia." Oh, and finally, see also Anastasia's take on the return of orgasms after discontinuing use of anti-depressants. --fl]
Somebody named Simcha at The Frisky makes with the funny.
Stamina Pillows Stop Men In Their Sacks
Thumbnail image from The Frisky.Men premature ejaculate because you are just too damn fine! Girl, you know it’s true! Well, that’s the concept behind Durex’s new limited edition Stamina Pillows. Originally given away with their Performa condoms that have a mild anesthetic to prevent dudes from beating you to the finish line, the cases feature some not-so-sexy pictorials—like an old bag lady with pigtails, a pearl necklace, and armpit hair licking her lips. It’s pretty creepy. But there’s also a redheaded guy with cabbage patch bangs sucking on a lollipop and we think he could be Michael K from Dlisted’s soul mate. Hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so, it might not work for everyone! However, we’re willing to try anything if it means we’ll get to party with our pants off for even just a few more minutes.
What. Ever.
First of all, even though they only seem elderly instead of misshapen or unattractive the people in the photos don't do much for me either but then I'm not close to them in age. And since I distinctly remember my early teens when my peers and I felt sorry mostly vague dismay for older, "one-foot-in-the-grave" college-aged men and women I suspect the alleged flaws in these pillow photo models are more a matter of the onlooker's generational perspective (or lack thereof) than of the models themselves. Call that strike one against the pillows.
What also makes it jarring is the effect of even-older-than-usual people striking "sexy" poses and facial expressions derived from... the generally naive flirtations of school children. You'd have to click through to the article to see them but... where exactly did that finger-in-the-mouth or slurping-a-lollipop look get lumped over into sexy? (And everybody laughs at Senator Vitters' diaper fetish!) Anyway, I've noticed in general that actual *grown up* men and women in their 20s, let alone 40s, let alone older, tend to flirt and express arousal in ways that make sense for their ages and experience. Call that strike two.
Finally, though, I'm also struck by the name, "Stamina Pillows," and the implications that the solution for premature ejaculation would be presumed psychological dismay of envisioning people one isn't (yet) old enough to be attracted to. I mean... seriously... *what's the intention here?!?!* Never mind intentions, what are the *implications?*
Here we are, men supposed to be all selfishly, short-sightedly, thinking-with-the-little-head obsessed with our own gratification and... during holy-grail-for-men intercourse we're... memorizing baseball scores? Reviewing tax tables? Contemplating allegedly non-sexy elders?
Sheesh, and *we* complain that women think about shopping lists?
Maybe...
Just maybe...
Nahh... communications, creativity, taking turns, and maybe getting over the idea of intercourse as the sexual end-goal couldn't *possibly* result in overall more frequent, let alone more frequently *enjoyable* sex. For all involved.
Couldn't be.
That would be strike three.
Photo by Flickr user perldude. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Monk of ...and the strangest things seem, suddenly routine tells a story by way of answering why he likes rope bondage.
Few years back I was selling rope at a convention and got into this very conversation with three well known and well regarded rope tops.
When asked, the first paused and stroked his chin contemplatively and said, “It would have to be the artistry of it all, the lines and how they form across the body. The symmetry of the rope and how it forms the bottom into a compelling shape…”
The next one shook his head and disagreed, “That is all well and good, but for me it is the engineering of it. The “how” of doing bondage, what knots are going to be the strongest and most useful, how am I going to execute the bondage in the most efficient and streamlined fashion… that is what I really like”
Turning to the third and final rigger, he sorta shrugged and in a matter of fact voice said, “I do it cuz trying up pretty girls makes my dick hard. Always has.”
It's not for me to judge an activity that doesn't really float my boat to begin with but, y'know, *if* it were me I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to be the bottom in an activity called erotic bondage I'd... probably go with the top who had concrete rather than abstract reasons for wanting to tie me up. Or, more accurately, who was comfortable admitting, to himself or others, that that's why he enjoyed doing it.
Because, y'know, the symmetrically aesthetic guy kind of glosses over what those "compelling shapes" might compel him *to.* And the efficiency/engineering guy makes it sound like he'd be even happier building suspension bridges since there are more knots.
Whatever else one might say about the last guy at least he's able to acknowledge that he gets erotic gratification from doing something that's, well, *supposed to be erotic!* With, presumably and one hopes equally, erotically gratified *persons* no less!
You see that same sort of alienation in photography when people talk about the esthetics of light and shadow with "the nude." And yeah, light, shadow, and nudity really are esthetically very pleasing. But... but...
If you're unable to disambiguate the individuality and agency light and shadows from "the nude" one is surveying then one might have more integrity instead "capturing" light and shadows on cars or pumpkins.
And yes, this is me being a prudish libertine again. I think it's all great, I just also think it's important to keep in mind that it's all great *with the people you're with!* Or you should probably stick with the intricacies of photographing sand dunes or suspending Chihuly glass. :-)
Via Rachel Kramer Bussel, John DeVore of The Frisky says in an article titled "Mouth Love Is Meh"
Blow jobs are overrated. There. I said it.
I think "meh" can be the right word. It's not that there's no such thing as a great blowjob, it's that there's *not* no such thing as one you don't enjoy. (Key point: it doesn't have to be *their* fault if you don't enjoy it.)
What's weird, or, maybe more accurately, significant, is that we feel compelled to duck rhetorically when we say it (as in "There. I said it.") as if it was *doctrinal* heresy rather than a personal or even general insight.
I think DeVore, like me and like one of his commenters who said "Even if you don’t get off on mouth-love—and I rarely do—it still feels great," are actually pretty average. Fellatio feels good; it's hard to come that way... and therefore the doctrinal *mania* for receiving it comes from somewhere else.
Aside: about that "somewhere else." Until not that long ago fellatio, in particular, was considered exceptionally coarse, the provenance of (then scorned) homosexuals and, oddly, of heterosexual lower/working-class customers of prostitutes. (For that matter it was often considered too coarse for prostitutes!**) Consequently no matter how nice it felt, nor how much fun it was to do, the barriers to either asking or giving were extraordinarily high. That, however, hasn't been particularly true in mainstream culture for going on decades now. Yet the sense that it's an *accomplishment* to receive one or, for that matter, a compromise to give one, persists. But I digress...
On the other hand the enjoyment in *giving* blowjobs, if it's anything like my enjoyment of giving cunnilingus, makes a lot more sense: it's fun, it's a developable skill, and most important (and sort of reinforcing my point) it's really great *when you get it right.* That last bit about "when you get it right," when you think about it, belies the received wisdom that receiving oral is automatically the best sensation in the world.
Of course the same can be said, I believe, about cunnilingus... for many of the same reasons.
Anyway, any more than it's true that the subset of those who enjoy receiving it overlaps perfectly those who's partners enjoy performing it, neither is it true that the subset of those who feel "meh" about it overlaps perfectly those who's partners don't thoroughly enjoy doing it.
Point being
See also: Rachel Kramer Bussel for whom feeling "meh" about receiving fellatio is a deal breaker. And Britni Danielle who would far rather give than receive.
[** "...up to two decades ago Sydney prostitutes refused to offer French at all. The women expressed disgust at its suggestion and took affirmative action if the subject was raised. Lisa, who worked in the lanes in the 1960s, told me that at that time the guys just asked for straight sex and nothing else, no oral or anything, and if they did they would have got their heads kicked in. One girl got caught doing oral when I was on College Street (1950s) and she was smashed and left lying in the gutter." Source: Working girls: prostitutes, their life, and social control/ Roberta Perkins
ISBN 0 642 15877 0 Canberra : Australian Institute of Criminology, 1991 (Australian studies in law, crime and justice series) --fl]
Holly Page of Whoopie School says something dear to my heart
Van Morrison said that girls get “dressed up for each other,” and never does that feel more real than when I get all dolled up to go out and Jason doesn’t notice. It is infinitely more baffling, though, when he finds me ravenously sexy in the morning. Maybe it’s the vulnerability or the naturalness of it all, I’m not sure. I can’t imagine that it’s the crusty eyes and disheveled hair. But whatever it is, this man finds me irresistible when I just wake up. It makes it hard to get out of bed.
I find him most sexy when he’s leaving, like when he’s going into the office for the day or heading out with friends. The moment before he walks out the door, I see him as others see him - dark messy hair, unshaven face, mischievous eyes - sexy as hell. He’s no longer the ridiculous man who didn’t empty the dishwasher; he’s mysterious and attractive. It makes it hard for him to get out the door.
The media would have you believe that there is only one way to be sexy; namely, that you have a perfect body, pouty lips, and bedroom eyes. But what we really find sexy is never as rigid as the poses in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Sometimes silly is sexy; sometimes vulnerable is sexy; sometimes angry is sexy; sometimes messy is sexy.
If you’ve ever been desired despite (or because of) forgetting to shave, wearing sweatpants, crying all day, being sick, or whatever other unattractive thing you can think of, then you know what I mean. And I’ve learned that you don’t have to feel your sexiest to be sexy; sometimes it feels good to be wanted beyond all reason, and to give in.
I love that line "the media would have you believe that there's only one way to be sexy..."
Seriously! Think about all those folks take the pre-dawn "walk of shame" lest their partner see them with the bed hair it might have taken his or her partner all night to create with a hundred caresses, a thousand kisses, and one... three... uncounted avalanches of sheet-twisting desire and cascades of sighs! Think of what they're missing -- what they're denying not only themselves but their partners as well.
Megan of Jezebel briefly explains what... really shouldn't be a mystery in the first place.
Brazen Careerist's Penelope Trunk examines the correlation between women getting oral sex and how much money they make. As if you needed another reason to ask for a raise!
...
...I think it's worth noting that societies that allow and even encourage women to achieve educationally and professionally are also societies in which women have (some and increasingly more) autonomy over their lives and their bodies. If you are free to pursue your own life, your own career and your own relationships, then you are also more and increasingly free to pursue sexual pleasure. So, I'd agree with Trunk's editor that while there is likely a statistical correlation between women's income level and cunnilingus rates, the correlations is probably due more to the fact that these women are increasingly less likely to take up sexual roles proscribed by traditions that specifically discourage them from outside employment and equal earning power.
Not that everybody sees it this way. Megan raises another point:
Trunk's (male) editor added this:"Let's assume that men give oral sex only because women ask for it. That's probably 95% true. Then who asks for it? Women who consider themselves at least equally deserving of that sort of consideration -the women who are going to be better earners because they are educated enough to know that they deserve it (both the income and the oral.) So I think they are coincidental, not causal. A woman who earns more has the self-confidence (and the self-worth, boosted by external factors like earning ability, education, etc.) to ask for oral."
Actually, that's an interesting argument, with which I have one very large quibble. Most of the damn time, I don't have to ask for oral sex. In fact, I'd say that he's got the numbers completely wrong, at least in my college-educated, high-earning single experience: 95% of the time, the guy offers, requests or just heads on down there to eat me out. (Maybe it's because I have better luck picking lovers than boyfriends?)
I... *think* what's going on behind the "mystery," as suggested by Trunk's editor, is that some people still see oral sex in terms of power dynamics -- as something you have to *get,* based on some reason *other* than it being something most people just like to do with each other because it feels great, it's very erotic, and just as much fun to give as to receive.
If, on the other hand, you thought you had to calculate your relative advantages over each other before deciding whether one is allowed to, expected to, obliged to, or... what?... too *good* to go down on their partner? Or to be gone down on? You probably wouldn't be into it either. And if one's *partner* seemed to be making such calculations? Um, yeah, that's a real turn on.
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And, obviously, this is entirely separate from the questions of whether one actually *enjoys* eating or being eaten. If you don't then I don't see how any amount of status or savvy obliges anybody to do something sexual that they don't care for. Even as a "trade" for something one does.
Photo by Flickr user FL4Y. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Yesterday I asserted that there are two meanings of the word seduction: one that's in a class with obtaining sex by force and the other as more what autonomous people do when they're both interested in sex but haven't necessarily worked out the details.
In response to a comment I made on Maggie Hays's post another commenter named Sophie said**
Interestingly enough, I've never heard of the second meaning. I checked the dictionary too (I don't think anyone who stands with the word 'seductive' as not related to rape would want to check my dictionary; it spells it out as persuading someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do).
Bottom line is... yup, as far as the dictionary goes Sophie's right. In fact, all the definitions of seduction are pretty gross!
se·duce (si do̵̅o̅s′, -dyo̵̅o̅s′)
transitive verb seduced -·duced′, seducing -·duc′·ing
1.
1. to persuade to do something disloyal, disobedient, etc.
2. to persuade or tempt to evil or wrongdoing; lead astray
3. to persuade (someone) to engage, esp. for the first time, in illicit or unsanctioned sexual intercourse
2. to entice
And then there's the etymology
Etymology: ME seduisen < LL(Ec) seducere, to mislead, seduce < L, to lead aside < se-, apart (see secede) + ducere, to lead
Or more literary and less formal definitions...
To draw aside from the path of rectitude and duty in any manner; to entice to evil; to lead astray; to tempt and lead to iniquity; to corrupt.
Specifically, to induce to surrender chastity; to debauch by means of solicitation.
Notable quotes:
Voltaire: It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
Jean Paul Sartre: If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.
Suggested synonyms include "debauch," and "undo."
We won't even go into what the "seduction community" thinks they're doing, although they do have that big emphasis on using various methods to approach women they by-definition believe wouldn't ordinarily give them the time of day.
So... yeah, Sophie's right about strict dictionary definitions but...
But...
But...
But...
If that really *was* the only meaning why so many objections to the characterization of seduction as a form of assault by those of ill will... usually men... against, primarily, the innocent (sexually or otherwise)... usually women or, ew, children?
Because it still seems like there's more to it than that, at least in common use. Something that happens between the *non* innocent. Something that self-knowing songs with titles like "Fever" and "Fire" have in mind. Something to describe what *consenting* adults, single, coupled, or long-term-involved do besides negotiate the equivalent of a vanilla (or, heck, non-vanilla) safe word and shucking their outerwear.
I mean, I'm *prepared* to be wrong -- the whole reason I post, as I used to say, was "to learn from my mistakes so you won't have to." I just don't think I *am* wrong. So what, if anything, am I missing here?
[** Cool post by Sophie at 2 B Sophora. --fl]
Another great one from Holly of The Pervocracy, this time on the overlap between perverts and geeks.
Geeks didn't get laid in high school--or even if they did, they were still mocked for being unsexy and they probably felt they weren't getting nearly as many sexual privileges as the cool kids. Well, we're grownups now, so in your face, cool kids!
And the most important, probably, is fantasy. Many perversions are really enactments of sex as high drama. Probably the one defining feature of geekery, more concrete than any other, is escapism. So naturally, we have to escape ordinary human sex. My bedroom is a dungeon, my lover a beautiful monster, violence making our sex so much more intense and passionate and dramatic than reality. Perversion creates a heightened world, sexier than mere sex, a world insulated from reality, (a world where you're really awesome cool and sexy) a world you can be swept away in.
I used to run around with my friends and get bruised and dirty playing that we were grand mythical figures. Now I do... really, the same thing, but with less pants.
There's so much cool stuff to unpack there. The big one about how geeks (i.e. the non-beautiful crowd) not being acknowledged even for the sex they *were* having, harks way, *way* back to one of my earliest posts, from a now long, long gone blogger named Cat Nastey, along the same lines. Nastey said
I was hanging out with a friend of mine last night and we got to talking about sex...big surprise with my friends!!
Both my friend and I consider "sex" to be more then just about the
penis-in-hole action and tend to get frustrated with partners (straight guys)
who seem to have this "penis-in-hole-or-nothing" attitude when it
comes to "sex" and the having of "it". For us,
"sex" can involve many different activities from mutual masturbation to oral sex and doesn't (nor should it) involve JUST the penis-in-hole definition.We started joking that *most* straight guys complain that they aren't getting
enough sex and that "non-straight" people seem to be having lots and
lots of sex...well, what if it's all about the definition? Wouldn't it make
more sense that one might be getting more "sex" if one included more
activities into the the definition of "sex"?
(Even in 2005 that was an archived post (Oct. 2003!) She had such a great perspective on sex. I learned a lot from her blog and I'm sorry she's gone.)
Another big point I like in Holly's post is her reference to the progressive double standard of approval for active women who get bruised and dirty everywhere *but* during sex... where *participating in and enjoying* getting dirty and bruised is supposed to be sick and wrong.
Holly of The Pervocracy, in another bout of what she calls Cosmocking, takes Cosmopolitan magazine to task for, as always, warning women to put us men first, foremost, and always lest our rock-solid faith in the "no-sex" class paradigm be shaken. For instance, from an article in the January issue called "Surprising Things that Turn Him Off"
Being Kinky in Bed (At First)
There's nothing wrong with showing enthusiasm. But when it comes to off-the-wall sexcapades, setting the bar--or stripper pole--too high the first few times can make guys wonder what else you have in common with Jenna Jameson. "It feels weird to say it out loud, but I really don't want a girl to be completely uninhibited in bed when I first start sleeping with her," says Jon, 27. "I like to feel like we discover some stuff together and then work up to the really experimental stuff."
I'm actually about halfway with Jon here--it's awesome to discover new ways to have fun together--but only if you're actually discovering them. If you're just biding your time as you reel out the tricks you already knew, it's not experimentation, it's pretense.
Yup, nothing makes us men less comfortable than imagining what might consider "experimental stuff" she thinks is practically passé. (Note: consider that sex manuals from the 50s and early 60s considered both woman-on-top intercourse and any kind of oral sex "experimental" for both women *and* men.)
Remember that one of the peculiarities of men's self-induced no-sex class indoctrination says men should expect (and, according to Cosmo anyway, even *demand*) a "no" from women... and thus to keep asking (no condom this time?), and asking (anal?), and asking (threesome?) till we get one. And since men, too, have comfort zones we're kind of hoping to get to that "no" before we get out of ours (uh... threesome... with your *dad?!?!) The great thing about *kicking* that indoctrination, by the way, is there's no advantage to "pushing" anybody's boundaries just to see how far they'll go before saying no. And here's the deal with that: if you're not "experimenting" to see where one's partner's "no" is you can actually *experiment,* *together* no less, to see what you both really enjoy doing *together!*
Way to be, Cosmo.
In comments on this post about pop-evolutionary psychology's fascination with "proving" gender differences Holly Page from Whoopie School said.
...it's interesting that of all the institutions that science has historically been willing to challenge, the "men are from Mars" notion isn't one of them. By focusing on the differences, it validates treating people differently by gender or sexual orientation.
Exactly! It's like... what if scientists refused to reconsider Rousseau's remark that it was inevitable that one in four children would die of disease before age five? And all they did was set out to prove *how* inevitable that was? And considering that all it took to change that *hugely* was elementary sanitation like, say, keeping fecal bacteria out of drinking water! Meanwhile all it takes is equally elementary changes to effect tremendous gender equalization. And they're almost never interested.
Odd blind spot, eh?
Doh! This post from Sadie of Jezebel is what prompted me to render my own opinions about the importance of getting fitted for bras instead of winging it. So I should have posted it first.
The point, Sadies says, is that...
...apparently men are so crap at buying underwear for the dames in their lives that London's John Lewis store has set up a "lingerie academy" to prevent the purchase of Pussycat Dolls-esque monstrosities in random sizes. But seriously, is it really that hard? Apparently so!
According to the academy's mastermind, Maria Walker, men's problems fall into a few categories: buying for themselves rather than their recipients; cluelessness as to size; and generally being intimidated by the setup of the creepily-named "Intimates" departments and Victoria's Secret bordellos, and the fear of looking pervy. Then too, the mechanics of fit and hoist, or underwire and cuppage, are a language that's mysterious even to women.
...
...in a panic, guys go with what they've been told is "sexy," almost never what we'd choose. Think red, black, thongs, and a lot of teddies.
...
Rather than guessing at sizes (which I can tell you from my time in retail, men never know even if they think they do) the academy recs that guys get camisoles and panties and stay completely away from thongs, however much they want them. They also have to coax some guys out of the weird virgin/whore complex that presupposes that racy lingerie suggests "mistress." I would personally add to this: if there is any danger of receiving lingerie, ever, beat into the buyer's brain the brand you wear: it's so hard to find stuff that works with the vagaries of individual breasts there's no point taking a chance on a line that cuts small through the back (ahem, Elle MacPherson) or inconsistently in the cup (yes, looking at you, Gap Body.)
The few times I've bought anything like lingerie for someone else I've tended towards clothing that *I'd* want to wear. In the sense that I thought it would be comfortable to wear (although see "continue reading..." below.) The lingerie I like most, on me or anyone else, is "nothing" so I'm not exactly the best person to ask about what *looks* best. But perhaps *because* I prefer nothing I think I'm pretty tuned in to what will or won't *feel* nice for the wearer.
But anyway, while I'm sure there are some men who can do a pretty good job of picking out clothes for their partners I'm... pretty sure that, regardless of *taste,* or eye for color, when it comes to items where fit is really important it's probably best to leave those choices up to the to-be-fitted individual. Not to say you can't do it at all, just maybe bring the actual person with you when you go.
Em and Low of Daily Bedpost
We've said it before, we'll say it again: Sex is not intercourse. So stop using the two words interchangeably! When we as a society do this over and over again, it gets into the collective unconscious and starts limiting how we imagine the possibilities of pleasure, especially for women. A majority of women (that's more women than not!) don't climax from intercourse, so why rush to get there when you can spend time on more rewarding acts? But make no mistake: it's not like you gentlemen out there can't enjoy the variety that comes from taking intercourse off its pedestal--hey, if the destination is orgasm, how could anyone complain about the journey there? (Indeed, how could anyone NOT call that "sex"?!)
Nicely, if heteronormatively**, said. I always like to go a bit further, though, and stress that "sex," however you define it, also doesn't automatically end with male ejaculation.
This is not, by the way, to buy into the idea that orgasms are just "harder" for women, or that women "need" foreplay. After all the "fore" in foreplay is short for the same old "before intercourse to male ejaculation" Em, Lo, all other right-thinking people, and I are trying to nudge out of first place.
Instead, as Em and Lo hint, if the point of sex was male ejaculation then "Jizz in My Pants" would be an instructional video and we could all go home. Since there's almost universal agreement that "ejaculation" and "sex" aren't the same thing it's not that much of a stretch to "intercourse" and "sex" aren't the same thing either...
At which point you get quite a bit more latitude for enjoyment not just for women but *for men too!*
One last point about the benefits of confusing intercourse with sex. Among heterosexuals it's overwhelmingly the case that "intercourse" is something that men *do* to their partners. Not necessarily a bad to do things to each other during sex, and I'm given to understand that many (though not all) women enjoy it for precisely the reason of feeling "done to."
Thing is, though, that if for the most part "foreplay" means "getting ready for sex" and "sex" means "intercourse" and "intercourse" means "what the man does to the woman" then... well, where, exactly is the room for women to enjoy actively things, for men to enjoy actively being *done to?"
I mean, if (heterosexuals) can't break out of that then we're stuck in what amounts to one party always hosting dinner (using food as my favorite analogy again) and the other party always being the guest. Not that there's anything specifically about that either (one reason I think it's a good analogy.) It's just... limited in the sense that neither side gets the full range of experience. Just for example: of planning what to make or bring or do, of anticipating what the other has planned; of making requests or alternately of soliciting them.
And, seriously, with *sharing* sex, just as with sharing food, the experience of breaking out of the "host" and "guest" roles provides further understanding, further appreciation, greater inspiration, closer connections, and consequently much richer, much deeper, and much greater pleasure. For all concerned.
[** Focusing on heterosexuality is just fine in this context, because for reasons that... don't actually have as much to do with *sex* as it does with notions of *reproduction* heterosexual sex seems to be a lot more consistently... even *institutionally!*... and *unnecessarily* dysfunctional. --fl]
Echidne of the Snakes raises and issue dear to my heart: the obsession some people have with "proving" the gender status quo.
There's no field called 'the study of gender or sex similarities'. No fledgling assistant professor will make tenure or get promoted by publishing an article which points out that men and women really are rather similar in some characteristic. Just imagine the sensation that would be caused by a book titled Men Are From Baltimore. Women Are From Philadelphia. Snores.
It occurs to me that what's weird about researching sex differences is that so many sex differences are *so freaking obvious!* Like, gee, the metabolic requirements for growing eight to eleven pounds of incredibly complex new human being, and modifying and sustaining the associated maternal organs during and after pregnancy have functional impacts on other body systems including (temporarily) cognitive functions? Or that kicking a man in the groin will induce higher subsequent risk-avoidance behavior than in women? Do tell!
Some of those differences are even genetic. (The Y chromosome codes for critical-to-fetal-male-differentiating increased testosterone... and hairy ears. The X chromosome not so much. Case closed.)
Problem is no matter how much research you do you're only going to further refine the good... oh... let's be generous and say five percent of human biology and behavior can be explained by innate gender differences in the first place. Leaving...
The other 95 percent of commonalities that are generally overlooked. Overlooked not least by the absolutely unexamined assumptions that men and women are as different as night and day, Mars and Venus, or the deceptively convincing black and white symbols of yin and yang.
There's a possibly-apocryphal but instructively popular anecdote about construction of one of the early cyclotrons. These are large circular machines, dozens, sometimes hundreds of feet in diameter back then, with tons of magnets that physicists use to accelerate subatomic particles to high speeds. Controlled collisions of such particles can reveal quite a lot about the nature of matter, but in order for such machines to function properly they have to be circular. Really, really, millimeter-perfect circles.
Anyway, the story goes that builders of the cyclotron measured everything meticulously at every step, using micrometers to insure that each part was aligned perfectly with its neighbor. When they turned it on... nothing happened. So they got out their micrometers again and measured and adjusted, measured and adjusted, eliminating even the fractional variations they found. And when they turned it on... nothing happened again! So out came the tools, this time even more precise... and... again nothing happened.
And, the story goes, a janitor/carpenter/passerby/kid got a stick, a string, and a pencil put the stick in the middle of the big ring, tied the string and the pencil together, and traced a big circle and found... the measured-by-millimeters circle was actually more than a foot out of round.
The point of my little digression being that, like the alleged cyclotron builders, gender-difference researchers who spend months looking for minute (or even possibly imaginary structural differences in features of the brain) might ask themselves if our brains are really so different why is it *so hard to distinguish them,* even with really sophisticated instrumentation, from all the parts that *aren't different...*
...when the social-sciences equivalent of a stick and a string can tell you that the genes for growing noticeable-to-passers-by boobs, in combination with other individuals with genes for growing bigger muscles, in combination with social structures that historically have treated people with boobs as exchangeable commodities might explain more than you (well, not *you* but too many others, evidently) want to hear about the basis of significant gender differences in people with very, very *similar* brains?
Echidne adds,
Why does any of this matter? First, because these studies are always a defense of the status quo. That status quo is always "the worst of times and the best of times" for women; the worst because the studies have established that women really can't (and don't even want to be) be equal with men due to all those hard-wired (by some prehistoric electrician) sex differences, and the best because the current arrangements in the society are the best women really can hope for. But of course the status quo of the different-humors theory was different from the status quo of the late nineteenth century which is different from the status quo of today.
Second, bad just-so theories about the difference between men and women affect more than what people talk about at cocktail parties. They affect the culture and its norms, and they affect the beliefs, aspirations and self-confidence of girls and boys yet not born.
Hear, hear. Despite the decidedly non-catchy title Men Are From Baltimore. Women Are From Philadelphia would actually be a *much more interesting book!* Just for starters, it would start to explain how and why men, women, and those in between use the *same parts of their brains* to respond to differential environmental and social inputs.
There are a million different possibilities but, this being ostensibly a sex blog... and since "sex sells," such a book might contain inquiries into (nonexistent as far as I know) studies into how heterosexual male college students react when they're considerably outnumbered on campus by increasingly sexually-assertive heterosexual women. It might contain data about women's reactions to partners who are sexually cooler than they are. It might compare and contrast stereotypical beliefs against the realities of men who have a hard time having orgasms and women who come "prematurely..." and lose interest before their partners are done. And in general it might spend a lot of time looking at (also next to nonexistent as far as I know) studies explaining how men, women, and people in between respond to situations where their socialized gender conditioning is screened or filtered out.
Again, I'm not saying men and women are identical -- see genes for boobs, hairy ears, above. And so I'm not saying explorations of the similarities would turn up *only* similarities. I'm just saying I expect science to try and tell us stuff we *don't* know, not to reinforce what we do. And, as I've said elsewhere, a great way to do that would be to begin with the *assumption* that we're the same instead of different and see what comes out of that.
Photo by Flickr user zmxncbv.com. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Last week it seemed like more people than usual were (coincidentally) talking about vasectomies. This week I've noticed more than the usual number of posts about breasts. As a result I've got a couple of things I want to say about breasts as well. Here's a good place to start. Dr Petra Boynton, tipping her hat to a post by Bad Science's Ben Goldacre
As you may know, one thing that winds me up nearly as much as dodgy surveys for PR purposes it’s using fake formulae to promote products. The formulae I’ve taken most issue with have been those supposedly identifying ‘perfect’ breast and sizes or what the ideal Page 3 girl’s vital statistics should be, although there have been formula created for just about any purpose you can imagine - anything from the perfect consistency of a biscuit through to which day of the year is the most depressing.
None of the formulae ever really make any mathematical sense, but then they’re not supposed to. They are designed simply to get a product mentioned in the papers. And that message is always emphasised by the appearance of a ’scientist’, ‘psychologist’, or ‘boffin’ (often from Cambridge University) who will give weight to the maths. They can get pretty shirty if you tell them their formulae don’t make any sense - or have been written for them by a PR company. But despite invitations from the media and other scientists to defend their work none have so far accepted challenges to the accuracy of their formula. Instead they make the claim that they are leading the way in science communication or are using these PR opportunities to raise our interest in psychology, science, or mathematics.
Read the rest of her post, and follow the links I haven't included, here.
We've heard discussion of beauty ideals for thousands of years -- of proportions and ratios, of ideal weights, of complexions, of hairstyles, of curves or lack thereof, and of course of ideal behaviors. (There's been... considerable differences of opinion, varying wildly not just from country to country or century to century but sometimes from one decade to the next.)
Oddly, according to a credibly-researched presentation I heard last winter on the history of the brassier from a fellow student in the sex ed, women's studies, and communications course I was in, there was almost no discussion of the ideal breast size until garment manufacturers settled on a standard for bra sizes right around the middle of the 20th Century.
Sure, bras had been around for a few decades (and obviously, before bras there had been corsets that did similar duty.) But standardized bras had something the earlier bras and corsets hadn't: cup sizes.
Industrial society, with it's recent appreciation for economies of scale, already had a bigger-is-better attitude about a lot of things, but at least in terms of breasts there hadn't been much discussion in the early 1900s about whether, say, Mae West's ample bosom was superior to Mary Pickford's slight one.
But suddenly there was a single measurement. And suddenly there was the opportunity for comparison. And suddenly there could be competition. And suddenly there could be (by-definition post hoc and easy to mock) "formulas for perfect breasts."
A seriously steamed dominant female (and manifestly *not* "femdom") Bitchy Jones of Bitchy Jones's Diary explains why she *shouldn't have to* explain why the BDSM practice of "forced fem," the practice of giving men jollies by making them adopt "humiliatingly" feminine clothing or behavior is *not* like (as a commenter of hers evidently keeps insisting) like a Jewish person getting off on role-playing Nazi victimization.
Who has the power outside the bedroom is relevant. Taking something that oppresses you in daily life and making it your sexual power source is a valid and often useful thing to do. And hot. Taking something you use to oppress other people and then making some parody of it to stroke off some ideas you have that wouldn’t it be dirty to be a slutty women, ain’t the same thing. That’s why I can say it isn’t okay and not be oppressing the way some oppressed groups make sexual fantasies of their oppression.
It is a different thing.
Look, you know that bit in the America version [of] the office where Steve Carrell’s character takes off a Chris Rock routine and it’s horrifying? That’s the same thing. Rock takes some language and ideas that oppress the group he comes from in real life, and makes them funny. Carrell takes some ideas that oppress a group that he has power over in real life and that makes it horrifying. That’s the difference.
And that’s not even getting started on forced fem’s prevalence in femdom enforcing shitty little ideas about femininity and submission being, like, what, fucking interchangeable, or something. Just stop. Really. If everything we do in femdom equates the ideas that femininity is what submission really is and dominance requires a cock and no emotional engagement, femdom will never stop being a joke, a sickness, a wrong, wrong thing.
Just to be clear, there's nothing wrong with getting your own jollies by indulging or even sharing your partner's fantasies. Just don't confuse that with either dominance or sadism. And for crying out loud don't assume that's what dominant women are "supposed" to want to do.
As I've mentioned in the past I think dominant women like BJ, and submissive men like Maymay, are even closer to the cutting edge of gender-awareness on *this* particular gender issue than mainstream or even radical feminism because they face erasure from all directions.
---
Update: Two other points:
- One common assumption (that also drives BJ nuts) is that heterosexual "femdoms" hate men. But what assumptions should we make about men who think being forced to act feminine is to be (erotically!) humiliated?
- It's unusual (not to mention redundant) to say "she's a woman doctor" or, going further back, "she's doctoress" because "she's a doctor" is sufficient. So what does it say about gender entrenchment that we say things like "He's a male submissive" or "she's a female dominant?"
Quick follow up up on my post about Echidne's dissection of an evolutionary psychology researcher's article.
Unlike Echidne I'm not a statistician. In fact I'm barely to the point of starting to look for appropriate math courses so I can tell what's going on. I am pretty good at looking at people's assumptions, though, and I think I could have saved Echidne, the journal that's publishing his paper, the peer reviewers who approved it, and even the researcher himself a little time by examining his.
The opening paragraph of his paper, before he gets to any data at all... before he even presents his *hypothesis* seems a little... wrong?
Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related to reproductive
success. Displays of wealth and social status are an important part of human male mating effort. The degree of male financial consumption may be related to variance in life history strategies, as differences in life history patterns are fundamentally differences in the allocation of effort and/or resources. Males who have higher mating intentions may maximize their economic displays, saving little and even spending beyond their capacity through the use of credit. These men may seek and possibly obtain a greater number of sexual partners.
Two questions immediately pop up.
First, is it true across cultures that economic wealth is the best signal of male reproductive success? Because... call me crazy but... pretty much everywhere you look in the world the most reproductively successful men seem to be non-ostentatious, religiously observant, non-affluent, and often pointedly monogamous. Data point: the notoriously economically empowered Hugh Hefner had sex with myriad partners but appears to have fathered only four children... about average for midwesterners of his generation across all income levels. So the first question would be is it even true that economic power results in (evolutionarily, statistically significant) increases in male reproductive success? Because if it's not then Kruger's research might be interesting to anthropologists, sociologists, maybe psychologists, and certainly of interest to marketers of men's magazines, but not *evolutionary* psychologists.
The bit about Hefner leads to the second question: is it true that obtaining a greater number of partners translates into better reproductive success? Because I'm not really seeing a whole lot of that across cultures either. Little bits here and there, sure, with this aristocrat or that celebrity. But for a trait, especially a complex one, to make its way into the genome it typically has to provide a pretty durable and sustained success rate to make it past the substantial background noise of, oh, say, *learned* behavior.
Unspoken in all that, by the way, is the assumption that women are some sort of neutral constant, motivated (preferably) entirely by the welfare of the progeny for which sex is only a "no-sex" class avenue rather than, maybe, a desired end in itself. Unspoken as well is the whole question of how, if men are supposed to be so good at just flinging their "seed" around willy-nilly (or, I guess, willie-in-Nellie), poor, helpless, can't-raise-babies-without-manly-male-economic-support female partners of profligate partner-seekers are going to adequately parent any offspring that *do* result from such wild oat-sowing. So, again, is it even true that men who seek multiple partners have *consistently-over-generations* higher reproductive rates than slow-but-steady-wins-the-race monogamous men? Because, again, if there's not a persistent and significant advantage to that strategy it'll be pretty hard to distinguish from selective background noise.
So. My position is that Kruger's assumptions are first insufficient (I don't think you can show an evolutionarily significant benefit for opulence over mundanity) and inconsistent (premise a: more offspring doesn't strongly correlate with b:multiple partners in humans.) So why bother reading, or even writing, the rest of the paper at all?
---
Addendum #1: About the idea that men seeking multiple partners is easily selected for. *Especially* inside the major, major ev-psych assumption that *women* are no-less selected for prudent partner selection because it's just *impossible* for women to raise children without a man around the house. Because the standard model implied, particularly, in Kruger's proposed sexuality model -- of men *pretending* to be wealthy having more partners -- means most of his offspring -- again by definition inside his assumptions -- are going to be impoverished rather than able to themselves pretend to be affluent.
Consider what appears to be the case for investment "prowess." Ezra Klein says "more people should read Malcolm Gladwell's profile of Nassim Taleb"
For Taleb, then, the question why someone was a success in the financial marketplace was vexing. Taleb could do the arithmetic in his head. Suppose that there were ten thousand investment managers out there, which is not an outlandish number, and that every year half of them, entirely by chance, made money and half of them, entirely by chance, lost money. And suppose that every year the losers were tossed out, and the game replayed with those who remained. At the end of five years, there would be three hundred and thirteen people who had made money in every one of those years, and after ten years there would be nine people who had made money every single year in a row, all out of pure luck. Niederhoffer, like Buffett and Soros, was a brilliant man. He had a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. He had pioneered the idea that through close mathematical analysis of patterns in the market an investor could identify profitable anomalies. But who was to say that he wasn't one of those lucky nine?
For a genetic trait to become, well, genetic it has to continue generation after generation after generation -- not two, or ten, but (typically) thousands**. But as Taleb points out the prospects of such a *genetic* strategy of pretending to be rich while actually being able to support the offspring one sires being successful even for *ten* "generations," let alone is actually... um... well... *poor!*
The odds of it being *culturally* successful -- where, say, an evolutionary psychologist who's not at all related to Hugh Hefner sees Hefner having lots of sex and decides to try it himself are considerably higher than that of Hugh Hefner's (three) sons inheriting a magical Hefner behavior-influencing mutation and passing it along to *their* (male) offspring.
So I'm saying look for another explanation. Which brings me to...
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Addendum #2: That's not to say there's no utility to having multiple partners, though it's not clear that the benefit accrues only to male humans. For instance in places where population density is low and healthy, working offspring critical to survival -- the American midwest and west in the 1800s, say -- it was culturally accepted, even necessary, for young couples not to marry till pregnancy was confirmed, and for them to shift partners when pregnancy didn't occur.
And as *someone* said [let me know in comments if it was you so I can give proper credit --fl] in response to a post about young, less-than-competent sex partners, how are they ever going to get better if they don't practice? Which, when you think about it, is as good a reason as any for them to keep trying.
That would work. It just wouldn't work with standard, mainstream-status-quo-obsessed, alpha-males-rule/us-beta-males-drool pop ev-psych hypotheses.
From kazanit of Voices of American Sexuality (for instance)
From the creators of "Dick in a Box" comes another hit music video: "Jizz in my Pants". It might not be the most positive approach to premature ejaculation, but at least it gets people talking (or singing) about it.
So. Funny about men and attitudes about premature ejaculation, especially in the first-encounter/random-hookup contexts presented in the video. . I mean... an orgasm's an orgasm, right? And "there's no such thing as bad sex," right? And men care only about getting their rocks off so... what's the problem here?
It's... almost as though... men were interested in... something *besides* getting their rocks off.
That's not necessarily a *good* thing. For instance on the downside it's pretty clear from the context of the videos that any enjoyment the gentlemen "jizzing in their pants" experienced from their spontaneous orgasms are overcome** by their greater concern about social loss of face. Ok, and the discomfort of sticky pants. But on the upside there's the implicit acknowledgment that "even" for men sex means more than orgasms. And even though the context of the video implies it's all about Teh Hookup there's often a lot of anxiety around sexual prowess standing in for desirability, where desirability is kind of key to the establishment of, you know, *relationships.* (Again however superficial the video implies the depicted relationships might be.)
If I was running a high-school or college-level sex-ed class I'd use that video not to introduce a section on premature ejaculation (too obvious... and probably a little too triggering for those who chronically experience it) but to begin a discussion of what people want out of sex compared to what we just assume they do.
[** Oh dear, that pun was unintended as well. --fl]
FTN of Fade to Numb just had one. Kidder at Sex is Fun has (duh, medical not erotic but still not work safe) photos of his. Em and Lo interviewed a younger (27-year-old) about why he got his (it's a long list.)
And late last week I gave a friend a ride home from the clinic after he had his.
It's been a while but I've had two (one at age 21, another at 44, with a reversal in between) but this just seemed like a good week to break out my two vasectomy-related mementos. The ring I cast from silver and gold in my college metal-arts shop. The license plate I picked up at a yard sale recently (the seller's partner had given him a vasectomy shower years before when he got his.)
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Photo "Gratitude" by Flickr user J. Star. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Short observation: anybody who's spent any time at all in a large physical-therapy clinic probably has a much more sanguine opinion of BDSM than the general population.
And yet we haven't nearly the speculations about nor the abusive nature of practitioners, nor of lasting psychological trauma to victims.
(Let's not even *think* about what goes on in your average hospital burn unit! Yeeeiiikes! For that matter even dentistry's no great shakes.)
Hmm... there must be some kind of difference between imposed, unwanted physical abuse and participative medical, or dental care... or BDSM activities! Even though in strictly objective terms each of the latter can be as painfully violent as the former. I wonder what might account for the subjective differences?
Image: Aristotle and Phyllis by the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, c. 1485, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The depiction of the concubine Phyllis riding the philosopher Aristotle was a popular subject for artists of the Gothic period and early Renaissance. Popular because the patrons of those artists considered the scene to be emblematic of the relationship of the sexes and of the mind and body. The scene known as Aristote chevauché is derived from the medieval tale Lai d'Aristote" written by Henri d'Andeli, a thirteenth-century Norman poet.
According to the Lai, Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great, advised the young king to avoid the company of the concubine Phyllis, since the time spent in her arms was dissipating Alexander's energy and dedication to his studies and civic duties. Alexander agreed, albeit reluctantly, and eventually told Phyllis the reason why he avoided her company. Phyllis devised a plan to unseat her learned rival.
When Aristotle was in his study in the early hours of the morning, he was distracted from his reading by the sound of singing in the garden. Looking out the open window, he saw Phyllis, barefoot and clad in a gossamer shift, dancing and singing in the garden. As any serious student will tell you, willpower is no match for sexual desire which has been denied for too long. Aristotle groaned, closed his books and called to Phyllis. He told her how much he wanted her and, she promised to satisfy him if he would indulge a whim of hers: he should be her steed and allow her to ride on his back around the enclosed garden. Aristotle agreed, dropped to all fours, and carried Phyllis on his back while she sang:
Master Silly carries me.Alexander, intrigued by the singing in the garden, looks over the wall and sees Reason ridden hard by Desire. When confronted by Alexander, Aristotle tells his student that there is a lesson to be learned here: if a wise and aged philosopher can be swayed so readily by Love then one as young and inexperienced as Alexander must be on his guard against such temptation. However, Aristotle's influence has been weakened and Alexander once again enjoys the company of Phyllis.
Love leads on, and so he goes,
by Love's authority.
Henri d'Andeli's narrative has a tongue-in-cheek quality, poking fun at those who believe themselves impervious to physical desire. But over time the story behind the scene was changed. Phyllis was no longer Alexander's concubine but the wife of Aristotle and, her act of riding her husband like a beast was interpreted as an example of woman's malicious manipulation of man's need for physical love. By attributing such power and malice to women, men became, by default, the submissive class. A resentfully submissive class.
We are in dire need of new imagery.
Where can one find an image of male vulnerability that is not insulting? The place to start is the most powerful sexual organ, the human mind, preferably the mind of one who has lived on both sides of the whip. One such as Elizavetta Mora, of Vespertine Erotica. Consider this excerpt from a piece entitled, Words: sometimes they're pretty useless, in which she describes a man who can deliver a fifteen minute monologue detailing what he wants Elizavetta to do, yet cannot look her in the eye as he speaks. And for her, that reluctance holds the key to what that man really needs and wants:
"Tell me how much," I said. "Tell me how much you want me to hurt your cock. Say it. Say all those words you just said… say them again to me."His eyes began fluttering with tears. He struggled with trying to speak while looking in my eyes. His struggle went on for a long, holy moment.
Then just before it seemed he was going to finally speak, I reared back fast and slapped his face very hard.
When his head snapped back toward me, the look on his face went from stunned to hurt… betrayal… anger… in a matter of seconds. I backed up and stood barely a foot away from him to watch while he strained and arched in his bonds toward me, away from me, totally at the mercy of all the emotions and sensations firing at light speed through his being.
Eventually, as I suspected would happen, a great rage rose up in him; a rage that made me thankful he was bolted to the wall. And, as I suspected, it was the rage that finally did it (along with, perhaps, my uncompromising, uncommenting witnessing of it).
And as that lifetime of rage silently burned it’s white hot way from the center of his body outward, he never broke my gaze - and never said a word - until his knees gave way and his cock spurted in wild grunting whole-body thrusts into the electrified air between us.
You can read the entire post by clicking here.
That scene conjures up many images in my mind, none of which I would describe as humiliating or insulting. One has to have a profound respect for another human being to free him from so fortified a prison of the self.
If you visit her site and read her poetry and stories, you will find that Elizavetta understands what Helene Cixous meant when she referred to l'ecriture feminine, feminine writing, language that allows a woman to express what her body feels like to her. Such language is poetic, nonlinear, and free of the restrictions of realistic prose. It is this language, grounded in the body, that Elizavetta uses to give shape to the thoughts of the spellbound Thomas Rhymer:
To her understanding smile, he begged, “Am I dying?”“Ah, no, I am not that One, Thomas.” So gently she spoke, with a knowing of long abiding sorrows it seemed. “Not yet that One.”
With that, she took his hand and suddenly they were astride her horse. His arms went about her like they had always been there, and his face buried itself in her hair.
His wife’s voice gone. His children’s smiles, all gone. His afternoon rest along the safe bank of his own river, the river of his fathers, gone. Her hair, her apple-scented hair was the whole golden world, the only world before him now. Everything else, forgotten, forgiven, swept away.
She clicked her tongue and snapped the reins. They lurched forward and the river’s rushing tumble sang along with the harness bells. The sky around them clouded over with every blue and gray that could be painted.
You can read The Rhymer's Queen here.
Please. You have a long weekend ahead. Go visit Elizavetta and allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Final point (for tonight anyway) from Andrea Zanin of Sex Geek post, again in advice about mitigating abuse in the S&M community, but this time relevant to something Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) pay lots of lip service to but... don't really seem to do very much about.
Remember that not everyone is fucking heterosexual already. Remember that abuse exists between gay men and between lesbians and among trans people of any orientation. (In fact the only person I can think of whom I would blacklist, if I believed in blacklisting, which I don’t, is a lesbian.) Stop talking about abuse as though it were just for top men and bottom women who necessarily play with only each other. This limits the discussion and leaves out vulnerable people.
Yeah when it comes to abuse "women do it too." To male *and* female partners. And more to the point yes, men are often victims of abuse. From female *and* male partners. Back in the heyday of 2nd-wave and separatist feminism the former was a source of sometimes *very* angry pre-kyriarchy discourse. Which has been substantially overcome. That some male victims might be in abusive gay or trans relationships continues, I think, to dreadfully hamper the credibility of MRAs attempts to effectively deal with, let alone gain sympathy for, very real male victimization. (Hmm... and yet another example where prior efforts can poison the well for subsequent, more realistic and good-faith efforts.)
Oh, and another excellent point by Andrea Zanin of Sex Geek -- again specifically addressing ways for S&M community members to deal with abuse, but applicable way outside that single community.
2. Remember that submissives are not idiots. Anytime the idea of “protecting the poor helpless submissives / newbies” comes up, it makes my skin crawl. It is condescending and inaccurate to think that someone in the submissive or bottom role is any less likely to stand up for themselves than anyone else; any less likely to take proper precautions to protect themselves in the first place; and any less likely to know their limits, know how to defend themselves, and know how to make wise choices. They may be marginally more likely to find themselves in a vulnerable position within a scene, but this doesn’t make them airheads who can’t take a moment to think about relative risk and commonsense safety precautions.
What started out as just ferrying an out-of-town guest turned into an unexpected invitation to a dinner party the other night. One of the other guests was an MPA grad student who, among other things, spent a year as a caseworker working with traditionally underserved young, often undocumented women who were either pregnant or had very young children. She said the same thing I keep hearing over and over again from pretty much *everybody* who works *with* (instead of maybe tries to heroically "rescue") new and prospective teen mothers.) Bottom line is same as Sexgeeks: they're not idiots. In fact they're often not just bright but *very* bright. To the extent there's a problem it's more often *external* to the young parents themselves.
Same with, oh, say, sex workers, undocumented immigrants, the impoverished, and other heavily "othered" demographics.
I might add that there are more than moral or ethical reasons for remembering that othered members of the "underclass" aren't idiots, there are practical reasons as well. For instance they may not *recognize themselves* in our descriptions. They may *resent* our characterizations. And consequently they may not respond to our attempts at outreach... even, once burned, attempts that might actually be respectful and helpful.
Andrea Zanin Sex Geek has a great post about protecting vulnerable people from abusive players in S&M. The whole list is thoughtful, practical, community *building* and hard in the best character-building sense. Much of it is excellent advice in any context but I'd like to highlight one in particular (emphasis mine.)
5. Ask the question: What can I do that will help prevent abuse? NOT What can I do that will make me feel like a hero? Then stop, and ask it again. And again. And again until you get as deep inside your motivations as possible and away from anything that looks like the desire for revenge, self-important heroism, grandiose visions of saving the world and so forth. Once you get there, keep asking it until you come up with a list of at least eight or ten answers. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you start groaning and saying, “Man, that would be a lot of work / that would be personally challenging for me.”
The impulse to ride to the rescue runs deep, deep, deep in American culture. The intention, at least, is actually very cool -- comic books would be a lot more boring without it, for instance -- and it *really is* helpful to prepared to come through in times of crisis. Too often though (*cough*PETA*cough*) efforts to satisfy such impulses leaves something to be desired.
The other thing, though, is that trying to project one's self as a hero against a *systemic* problem -- abuse, oppression, exploitation, and structural circumstance, for instance -- tends to make us *alienated* not only from those we would "rescue" but from our *own* entanglements in the systems we deplore.
The instance that comes back to me over and over: until I stopped thinking my role in feminism was "helping women become men's equals" it never occurred to me to notice how thoroughly anti-feminism confines *men.* Once I did notice that I stopped wanting to "help," stopped wanting to be a "feminist ally" and started wanting what feminism wanted: out of a massively impoverished, barkingly oppressive, less-than-zero-sum system where "as good as it gets" means only that at least there's someone in the system worse off than you. Point being that looking at it "heroically" for (classic, eh?) my mom, partner, and daughter, made it impossible to put *myself* among the potential beneficiaries.
Another problem with Hero Thinking is that the alternative to the grand gesture is too often... throwing up your hands. ("Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" being one way, "I put in my time" being another.) And somewhat relatedly, the hero attitude makes "what needs to be done" *optional.*
Anyway, that's just one point from Sexgeek's list of six. Each is taylored mainly towards the kink community, but the lessons are broadly applicable.
Photo by Flickr user Mushroom boy. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Know how when you were a kid at some point you were sitting somewhere *totally* engrossed in a book, or game, or movie, or especially just daydreaming... just 1,000 miles away in your own world anyway... and someone, probably a grownup, would come by and say something like "sit up straight, honey, that can't be good for your back/neck/posture/whatever?" Or maybe they just said "at least close your mouth so the flies don't get in?" And even just dropping out enough to asses what they said, let alone sit up, or fly right, or close your mouth was usually all it took to knock you out of the dreamy, timeless place you'd been? And do you remember how much work it usually was to get back? Or that by the time you were back you'd slid back into whatever posture you'd been upbraided for, or your face had gone completely slack again? Funny how trying to please someone else's idea of how you should look when you're having a good time pulls you... right out of that good time.
Gwen of Sociological Images says
Brianna S. mentioned to me that the December issue of Cosmo has an article about whether you’re making an attractive face when you orgasm. I googled “Cosmo make face orgasm,” and found an image of the cover (notice the big “Your Orgasm Face” tagline next to one of Jessica Simpson’s boobs) and a discussion of the article at Jezebel:
The implication (”What he’s thinking when he sees it”), of course, is that if you’re not careful, you might make an unattractive face while you orgasm, and that your male partner (because who cares what women’s female partners think?) will be put off by it. It’s female orgasm as performance. Cosmo is reminding us, in case we forgot, that a woman’s sexual pleasure isn’t really about her. Even while having an orgasm, she needs to be sure she looks attractive.
I can’t help but think that if you’re anxiously trying to monitor your facial expression, it might get in the way of you getting to have an orgasm at all. I wonder which would be preferable, then: having a real orgasm but with an ugly orgasm face, or faking an orgasm but making sure your face is under control.
This seems like a pernicious influence of porn, but even more so (and going way further back) of conventional movies, where a) the people on camera are nothing *but* trying to look their best *for the camera.* And if, as sometimes happens in porn, they actually *are* in "the zone" as when male performers are trying to perform a "money shot" the directors and camera operators direct the attention *away* from the often-necessarily-slack "O-is-for-effort" face.
Which is sort of a tragedy when you think about it. Because teasing a partner about his or her "O-face" isn't just knocking them out of their, well, O *space(!!!)* it's also totally deprecating the skill and effort *you've* put into helping them have one! And because being too self-conscious about *your own* O-face" isn't just knocking you out of or keeping you out of your O-space, it's deprecating the skill and effort your partner puts into helping you build it.
And seriously, this isn't about being afraid to cook because the kitchen might get dirty -- for most people cleaning the kitchen, however delicious the meal, is still a chore! It's more like being afraid to put cinnamon rolls in the oven for fear they might become puffy, and brown on the top, and sticky/gooey/bubbly on the bottom, and smell heavenly melted-buttery, and incredible tasting.
In other words it's about learning to get that our O-faces, and our partners', means things are happening perfectly.
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Hmm... there's obviously more to it than this but... I wonder how much of people's often very real enjoyment of rear-entry positions has something to do with not having to worry about revealing O-faces, with the result they're better able to just let go and enjoy themselves. I'm guessing probably not much but... well some people really do go home after sex rather than sleep with their partners for fear of being seen with "morning face."
Photo by Flickr user stephentrepreneur. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Olvlzl of Echidne of the Snakes makes such a great point about the whole vampire fetish
The idea of a man slipping into a woman’s bed room at night and vampirizing her as romance might be less sick than the romanticizing rape only due to the fact that vampires don’t exist. At least I hope there aren’t kids trying out biting people in the neck as a lifestyle choice, now that Hollywood is presenting the blood sucker as a white bread teen idol. I just don’t get it. But then, I never got The Leader of the Pack either. I haven't done a study of it, but I'll bet that female vampires preying on males are not generally portrayed as sympathetic, romantic characters. They might be seductive but they the ones I recall are only the more evil for that.
I hereby nominate Bram Stoker's original Dracula as the official novel of the "no-sex" class paradigm. I mean, think about it! A charming, inexplicable, and wealthy... but also relentless, carnivorous, and *overwhelmed by animal compulsion* man sets his sights on an innocent and (by definition in this case) disinclined flower of a girl, mesmerizes her so that she has no idea what her role is, warps and corrupts other men and women in his pursuit of her, and is finally defeated when he's penetrated by the custodial men of his would-be paramour. Extra bonus features? The female vampires of Dracula's castle initially want to seduce/consume Jonathan Harker but are frustrated by the male vampire who makes them settle for the blood of an infant or small child he brings them! (Note also that the vampire Lucy, a proper Victorian, intuitively preys only on children.) Oh yeah, and what awaits Mina and befalls Lucy for succumbing is, literarily literally, a fate worse than death!
Interestingly, at the end of the novel when his soul is "released" even t