blogging

On My 8th Anniversary I've Finally Connected My 1st Post And My 2nd Bogus Rule of Desire

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2013-01-21 00:31

Photo by Flickr user ejpphoto. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user ejpphoto. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So eight years ago today I began this blog with the following post

Regarding Cock-suckers
Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2005-01-20 08:49

Cock-sucker: The term has many unfortunate uses and connotations, which is a shame since very very few of the connotations have anything to do with actually sucking cock. Let’s go one step further. Just as boys in the lockeroom stop bragging about sex as soon as they actually begin having it, it’s hard to use cock-sucker as an epithet once you’ve met someone who knows how to do it.

Even before I wrote that first post I'd been puzzled by "cocksucker" as a nigh-unto-nuclear taunt and insult. Because first because it's so frequently said by men, and so often said about women. What always seemed so weird about it was that second of all... well... most men kind of enjoy getting them!

This morning I finally figured it out. Which just goes to show I'm either a slow learner or else pretty indoctrinated into something I posted about a few years later.

A few years later I wrote what's turned out to be a productive for me and modestly popular post

The Bogus Two Rules of Desire (a.k.a. the Shorter No-Sex Class Paradigm)
Posted by figleaf on Fri, 2009-01-30 10:29

Over the years I've written hundreds of entries for my "no-sex" class category. Without ever feeling I'd gotten it exactly right.

Then one day I got a brainstorm and streamlined it to two basic, bogus, but amazingly deeply ingrained rules.

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

I hadn't put it together before, eh. The reason that a) men generally enjoy receiving fellatio while b) using it as an insult most vile would be c) that second bogus rule of desire, right?

Sigh.

That it's taken me this long to twig to something both as vexing and as obvious as that just shows how far I've still got to go.

That it's actually still true that it's inconceivable enough to imagine that no one would ever desire to perform fellatio, and that it's actually still true that it's intolerable that there are those who nevertheless do, and that it's men ourselves who are most likely to condemn it socially (even while perhaps enthusiastically receiving them in private) shows how far society still needs to go.

The good news, actually, is that in the last eight years the inviolability of both Rules have softened considerably, particularly among those who've come of age in that time. It's not likely another President would be impeached for receiving one. And increasingly it's no longer barkingly taboo, let alone illegal, that men who desire to perform fellatio on each other might finally marry each other, as women who sexually desire each other may. It's been years since I've heard anyone (mostly my generation or older) imply or outright state that fellatio is not vanilla. Even longer since I've heard anyone imply that only a "closet homosexual" would let his female partner "go down" on him. Or that only a "fallen woman" or one who didn't "care about herself" would willingly (let alone enthusiastically) do so.

So. Progress in one dimension anyway.

But people still use the epithet.

And mean it.

Maybe in the next eight years we'll grow past it.


Tags:

The More Absolute a Right to Post Dead Teenage Girls The More Absolute Someone Else's Right to Out You For It

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2012-10-14 10:21

This post examines several sides of the collision of privacy and freedom to offend.  And comes to a conclusion that surprised me.

There's a lot of complex hand-wringing, celebration, and outrage making the rounds about the recent Gawker post that outed internet uber-troll Michael Brutsch, who for years has led an anonymous and wildly successful movement on Reddit and elsewhere to be as calculatingly cruel as possible to victims of previous crimes and other offences.

The hand wringers are pretty uniformly people who recognize Brutsch for the flaming fucking asshole he is... but who nevertheless feel conflicted about people's rights to a) post anonymously and b) retain a right to free speech.  Oh, and possibly c) a right to privacy.

There are others who feel that the mere nature of Brutsch's deplorability (and, seriously, the guy is utterly deplorable) deprives him of his rights to free speech and privacy.

And there are yet still others who feel that the very deplorability of Brutsch's "speech" (and again, seriously, his entire on-line presence revolved around creating, celebrating, and nurturing deplorability) somehow enshrines his rights to free speech and privacy.

Sorry, gang, there's no paradox, no cause for outrage, no cause for censorship, and definitely no cause for hand-wringing.

Instead it's a matter of standards.  Standards of decency.  Standards of deplorability too.

It is, of course, equally deplorable to either a) to offend sensibilities by encouraging others to jack off to photos of dead minor children as Michael Brutsch, operating under the pseduonym Violentacrez did, or b) to offend sensibilities by outing someone who posts anonymously on the internet, as Gawker Media did.

Sorry, on the hand-wringer-y side it's just true: if you're offended by one you should be offended by the other -- and thus people offended by outing Brutsch's "speech" must by definition be offended by Gawker outing him.

Similarly, sorry, on the censorship side it's just true: if you defend Brusch's right to post calculatingly deplorale "speech" on the internet then you by definition must defend Gawker Media for outing him.

And finally, sorry, on the free-speech side it's just true: if you agree that Brusch should have been outed for posting his deplorable speech then by definition you agree he should be able to post it.

If you think you can weasle out of it by picking one side or the other you're mistaken. (Well, while remaining a progressive anyway: conservatives do it with self-serving ease but that's why they disgust us.) If you think you need to wring your hands over it you're also mistaken.  (Well, while remaining progressive anyway: liberals do it with self-defeating ease but that's why so many of them disgust everyone else.)

Update: Other variations include

If you support censor Gawker for outing Brutsch you support censoring Brutsch

If you support taking revenge on Gawker for outing Brutsch you support taking revenge on Brutsch


Tags:

Wowzie! Google Analytics Says "1,270,462 people visited this site" Since late 2008

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2012-09-18 21:59

Screen shot of Google Analytics for Realadultsex.com, Oct-2008-Sept-2012
Screen shot of Google Analytics for Realadultsex.com, Oct-2008-Sept-2012

Maybe I need to start taking this site a little more seriously again!

That doesn't even include now-lost stats from the years before 2008 when this blog was really popular. (When I blogged more about sex than politics and gender.)


Tags:

Blast From the Past: How and Why I Picked the Nom De Plume "figleaf" With a Lowercase "f" Back In 2001

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-03-22 12:39

Source unknown -- found on a hard drive archive ca ~2005
Image source unknown -- found on a hard drive archive ca ~2005

While browsing my server logs I found a link from the password-only forum I participated heavily in before I started this blog back in January of 2005. Someone had looked up my profile and found the link I left there when I started posting here instead.

In the past people have asked, wondered, and downright questioned why I use "figleaf" and why I don't capitalize it. (This evidently drives some people crazy.) As luck would have it, here are the thoughts that were going through my head back on Sunday, May 13th, 2001, at around 10:52 AM Pacific Time, about two minutes after coming up with the name.

A fig leaf covers only a little bit but lets you feel comfortable showing the rest.

I don't mind people knowing about my own habits and preferences. But discussing them necessarily reveals stuff about friends and partners who might not care to be identified. Thus the pseudonym.

You can easily find out who I am. (For instance you could email me and I'll probably answer.) But I'd prefer you didn't.

In other words I thought of "figleaf" as more of a description than a name.  So at the time I didn't capitalize it then.  By the time I started this blog I was capitalizing it out of habit.

So anyway, no e.e. cummings tribute, no emulation of bell hooks either.  Just a two-second decision almost eleven years ago(!!!) when I decided to start writing about the politics, sociology, and experience of sex.

Meanwhile, though, I've been doing this for eleven years?  No wonder I've slowed down a bit! :-)


Tags:

The Excellent (and Slightly Salty) Food Blogger Linda Miller Nicholoson on Dealing With Threats in Comments

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2011-09-17 08:14

The mildly naughty-leaning Seattle food blogger Linda Miller Nicholoson of Salty Seattle, who I just stumbled upon a day or two ago, wrote a very smart post about dealing with some kind of animal rights or possibly food-allergy troll who not only heaped the usual loads of invective on her but also threatened to both her and her child.

It's a pretty cool, level-headed post about the impact it had on her, how she located details about the commenter (including the street address associated with the originating computer's IP address) decision to go public with those details, and advice on where and how to report such computer-based threats to the appropriate local and federal authorities including a specific agency website set up for reporting not only online frauds and hacks but internet-based threats such as these.  (The Internet Crime Complaint Center.)

You should read the whole post both for context and specifics but I'd like to highlight what one of her commenters said

I got one of these comments as well (though not as troubling) with the email charles’dot’bollinger at gmail’dot’com. Both names sound similar to Charles, or Chuck.

Methinks this is that same trollish DocChuck that has been harrassing SteamyKitchen and Pioneer Woman for a long time. I know he DOES in fact live in Florida, and seems to search around for mentions of famous bloggers and attack the blogs that do the mentioning — it seems he might be googling the peanut butter pie phenomenon. Think of him as the Westboro Baptist Church of internet trolls :(

Source: Salty Seattle

This is what happens when you go public with your cyber demons -- you not only discover it's not just you, you also inform other targets that it's also not just them!

It's important to realize that no victim is ever obliged report or even publicize his or her troll's behavior.  And in fact most of the time folks deal by just moderating such comments or blocking the sender.  Although sometimes they also take down their blogs.*

But while it's ok to keep such threats quiet, by going public you can often multiply both the pressure on one's tormentor and provide solidarity and relief to other victims.  Who may in turn provide solidarity, relief, and solid suggestions, to you.

Anyway, I should also mention that Nicholoson's more typical fare, Gourmet orSaveur quality posts about food that range from philosophy to comfort to haute cuisine to molecular gastronomy, is pretty good reading.  And as a nominal sex blogger I appreciate her flip attitudes and sometimes very cute salacious analogies.  Definitely worth a look.

Update: I just noticed that Nicholoson is also the sponsor of what looks like an annual fundraiser/photography-contest site, NudieFoodies.  Again, mildly salacious while staying pretty safe for work.  Nicholoson's got the right attitude, incidentally -- for her own entry she made a bikini from marshmallow Peeps!

*For sad but obvious reasons this has been a common response among anonymous sex bloggers.  For even sadder reasons, at one time there was at least one fairly popular sex blogger who decided the best way to rise through the ranks was by smearing, stalking, and even threatening more popular competitors unless or until they dropped out!


Tags:

Hats Off But Helmets On for Clarisse Thorn

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2011-08-24 12:53

In a post titled "So, I broke my neck," Clarisse Thorn says

That’s why I haven’t been around the Interwebs for a while. Because I broke my neck in a bicycle accident.

...

The only reason I survived this accident with nothing more than a fractured spine is because I was wearing a helmet. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I would be dead right now. Wear a helmet!

Source: Clarisse Thorn

She says it doesn't look like there will be any neurological issues or paralysis but at the moment she's in a brace that's literally screwed into her skull.

This would be a good time to mention that I wish there was a good way to say "I'm sorry XYZ happened" that didn't at least peripherally imply a sense of responsibility for someone else's woes. Lacking that I'm just going to say I'm really sorry Clarisse was injured so badly and I'm glad that she wasn't more badly hurt.

I like Clarisse a lot, and as long as I've been reading her I've really valued her commitment, her perspective, and her insights into areas of gender and sexuality that have historically been swaddled in assumptions, stereotypes, myths, and sometimes deliberate untruths.

From the bottom of my heart I wish her a speedy and complete recovery.

And yeah, wear a helmet and if you've got loved ones do what you can to make sure they wear theirs.


Tags:

Hey mom, I'm #5! Moving Up on Google!

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2011-08-20 22:05

Screen shot by figleaf.
Click for larger image. Screen shot by figleaf (hey, that's me!) Posted under a Creative Commons license.

Hey who knew? Look what happens when you type "figleaf" in Google! Last time I tried it the first entry related to this blog was at least ten pages back in the boonies.


Tags:

Em & Lo Looking for More Wise Guys

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2011-08-16 13:08

Em & Lo are looking for new contributors to their popular Wise Guys section. I'm a participant and if you meet their understandably male-identifying criteria you might be too. Here's the scoop.

All we need is a few good men. A straight single guy, a straight married guy, and a gay single or married guy, to be precise. Must be communicative, concise, respectful of deadlines and not sexist. Bonus points for a great sense of humor and a penchant for correct grammar. We can pay you in crazy promotion for a blog, a book or a business (sorry, we’re short on cold hard cash these days). If you’re interested, send us a sample answer to the question below via our contact form (select “Question for the Wise Guys” in the pull down menu) — please keep your answer to one paragraph, no more than 250 words. And don’t forget to let us know your relationship status, sexual orientation, age, profession, the name you’d be writing under, what (if anything) you’d like promoted (please include links), and if you’d be happy for us to use your picture. By submitting a written answer to the below question, you agree to allow us to publish your answer on EMandLO.com for all eternity:

What’s the best way for a woman to ask a guy out?

Source: Em & Lo

Once again you submit your answer to their contact form, not in comments on this blog.


Tags:

Personal Note: Uh Oh, Fog Lifting?

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2011-07-18 18:14

Photo by figleaf (hey, that's me!) Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by figleaf (hey, that's me!). Posted under a Creative Commons license.

You know, I've been in kind of a depressed funk for about two years. As some of you've probably noticed. You know how it goes -- you start out blogging horny thoughts and flirting anonymously with other anonymous people and maybe the occasional erotic prose poen and then, perhaps after you've had your say you start noticing what else is happening in the world, and what's getting in the way of those aforementioned horny thoughts and anonymous flirting. And then you start digging in deeper and deeper, and you start seeing just what a colossal neurofibrillary tangles of customs, traditions, laws, phobias, obsessions, and manias society has built for itself. And then you get all bummed out and just grouse about gender dysfunction?

I don't mean that. I mean more like I've been "geez, I'm cranky, crabby, low-libido, going through the motions, you kids get off my lawn" bummed out.

Anyway, for around the last month or so -- since about a week before my vacation began in June maybe -- I've just started looking on the brighter side of life. I've been hugging my kids more (not sure I ever stopped that) but hugging my partner too, noticing cute women walking by, having deliciously erotic dreams and waking up at all hours with dreamy eyes and midnight erections. I've even been listening to pop radio and humming along -- something I didn't even do in my callow youth.

Of course I still get grumpy and if anything less composed (you should see some of the near-flaming comments I keep going back later and apologizing for on other people's blogs!) But I think even that might be part of the process -- sometimes I've been so even tempered it's just sounded silly.

Anyway, I think I want to start blogging not just about the sociology and politics of relationships, gender, and sex, I actually want to start blogging about sex and relationships!

Goodness knows it would be more predictable and less disruptive if this turns out to just be a passing phase and I'll return to being the stodgiest sex blogger since Andy Roony.

My guess would be probably. At the very least I'll at least settle down a bit.

But then again, maybe not.

I kind of hope not.

It was kind of boring.


Tags:

Note to Rep. Weiner: How to Improve the Odds of Being Appreciated by Women and Ignored by Brietbart

Posted by figleaf on Tue, 2011-06-07 09:59

Note: The enclosed erotic male image is considered perfectly "safe for work" since it only shows body parts that straight men don't realize are sexy.  All links, however, lead to other NSFW posts.

Note to Rep. Weiner and... pretty much every other man who thinks it's the height of creativity to snap a pixie of their peepee and call it erotic, here's how you do it.

Australian sex-blogger and frequent erotic self-photographer GeekyVamp reposts another woman sex-blogger, Musingsandmischief's repost of a male self-photographer, Isinpi's photo.

Photo by Tumblr user Isinpi. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Tumblr user Isinpi.

Oh wow, mr Isinpi,

this pic deserves to be reblogged the shit out of. Well played sir, well played…

musingsandmischief:

Beautiful picture, no wonder I keep seeing reblogs with you getting tumblr ladies weak at the knees.

isinpi:

I can’t decide which one, so fuck it I’ll post two. Hands, clavicle, lips, and scruff in one photo.

Source: There May Be Tits There May Be Banter

It's not that women don't think penises are sexy.  Or that penis bulges veiled behind athlete-gray underpants are sexy.  A surprising number do.  But what seems to be an even more surprising number of women prefer a bit more context -- as, in fact, would most men if they too were regularly innundated with random unsolicited closeups of solicitous women's vulvas.  Once context is established (and believe it or not, intentionally visiting a porn site establishes some kind of context) then one has a great deal more latitude.

But for out of the blue imagery?  Even when you want to preserve your anonymity?  Well.  If you follow the link to his Tumblr post and check out who's already followed and/or liked the photo you'll find that as of this morning (the photo was posted this morning) fifteen women (and no men) have indicated their approval and several, like GV and MAM have reposted it to their own erotic-photography blogs.

Hint, maybe?  Clue perhaps?

The funniest thing?  I could be mistaken but I'm guessing that Rep. Weiner could post and tweet photos like this all day long and the likes of Andrew Brietbart would never register it.  Or if they did they wouldn't register it as anything but some kind of artsy-fartsy east-coast liberal noodlings.  Because, you see, it wouldn't be porn for men.

Now I don't happen to think there's anything wrong with porn for men per se. And of course there are plenty of women who are downright cheerful about consuming it (and of course men who aren't.)  But that's not the point.

The point is, it seems to me, that if you're interested in women, and if you're going to go around sending random, unsolicited photos of yourself to women, then maybe you should take, oh, five or ten minutes to find out what women find most eye-catching about men.  And try sending that instead.

Especially if you're going to send them via Twitter.  Because, you see, while in the ancient history that was the world before Twitter (i.e. July, 2006) and before Tumblr (i.e. 2007) it was quite a bit harder to find out what sort of erotic images of heterosexual men women preferred.  But nowadays?  If you were interested you could find out pretty quickly.  But you would have to be interested.

Update: While watering the planter boxes just now it occurred to me that I might sound like I'm claiming I know this photo but not that one will work as "porn for women."  I'm just saying that if you want to know what works, look at what women are saying works!  Same's true, obviously, about all manner of other kinds of decisions, sex-related or not, about what works for all kinds of people.  Even when you think you know what should work for other people.

Also, this post obviously isn't supposed to be an enlightening tract on how people, in Congress, in power, or otherwise, should and should not impose themselves sexually on those who have not indicated it would be appreciated. 


Tags:

User login