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Just following up on my earlier post, Domestic Experience and Being Taken for Granted: It’s Not a Gender Thing, It’s Situational, the other, obvious thing is that it’s all my side of the story.*

Because if I would say the floor is not a closet my partner would say the dining room table (where I work) is not a recycling bin. And if I groused out loud to my children about them not liking the lunches I make them to take to school, my children would suggest they’d make lunches for themselves if I didn’t crab so much about the mess. And so on. And my children and partner would all probably say that when I’m not cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing their homework and/or computer time, or snuggling them at bedtime I’m nose-deep in a book, or laptop, or a musical instrument.

The point here is that we all have visions of how our lives are supposed to be, and part of that vision includes the roles we take on, the tasks we see as needed, and our understanding of how people around us to perceive what we do.**

In other words we don’t just stereotype other people we stereotype ourselves.

There’s nothing specifically wrong with stereotyping, by the way — our brains would slow to a crawl if we had to look at every instance of every thing as completely unique and previously unencountered. What is wrong, though, or at least unproductive, is to mistake our stereotypes for reality and either forget to examine and update them when reality conflicts with them… or, worse, to ask reality to adjust to our stereotypes. Including, our stereotypes of ourselves.

* By the way, no, I wasn’t prompted to mention this. :-)
** The Two Rules of Desire and the whole no-sex class thing work this way. Our expectations of how the world works condition us to miss cues that are given, and see cues that are not. Hilarity rarely ensues.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon on one of the paradoxes of relationships.

To call someone a “bitch” for dumping you is to imply that she was wrong and mean-spirited to do so, but the fact that you wield the word “bitch” to describe women who believe they own their own selves is evidence that she was actually a wise woman for getting rid of your sorry ass.

Read the quote in context here.

Amanda links the specific sentiment (referencing the intro to the movie (500) Days of Summer, which I haven’t seen) to misogyny but similar iterations of the paradox can be found at the end of quite a few relationships regardless of the erstwhile participants’ gender, orientation, or outlook on life.

An indication of the insincerity of the sentiment often derives from the point that the angered or scorned individual often genuinely wishes their relationship with the accused was still intact.

Complicating (but not, I think, diluting) Amanda’s point, I’d add that proprietary attitudes towards partners isn’t limited to men toward women partners. In English at least, even after a relationship ends we refer to each other as “my ex.” Or (relating this back to the more general version of Amanda’s point) “my ex-hole.” Which is what an old friend used to call hers.

Related: Regina Lynn on how to sever your online connections in How to Delete Your Ex.

Holly of The Pervocracy tackles “relationship advice” from a recent issue of Glamour magazine

“How to tell him to get better clothes: ...You lie next to your peacefully sleeping boyfriend. After making sure he’s down for the count, you sneak over to his dresser, shove a couple of particularly awful items in a bag and hurry out the door.”

NO. Do not do this. Do not fucking destroy someone else’s property because it offends your aesthetics. It’s not cute, it’s not mischievous, it’s not funny, and it’s not something you fucking do. Maybe he hates some of the things you own, you know that? Would you like your stuff to just disappear with a tee-hee and a “now we can get you things I like”? I don’t fucking think so.

She said it here.

She brings up more of the same this time from Cosmopolitan

“Why you should check his E-mail: Never read his e-mail, but a glance at his in-box can give you some insight into the kind of person he is.”

No. No no no no no. The inbox is up there with the medicine cabinet and the diary on the list of places you are just not invited. You creep. And “oh, of course reading is wrong but it’s okay to just skim” ...really? Come on.

Source

To be extravagantly gender-aware for once boyfriends are no more dolls to be dressed and scripted than girlfriends are scores or trophies of games.

The other day in comments Sungold asked, roughly, whether I thought women are brought up first to sacrifice themselves for their men or for their children. And while I can’t answer that well I can say that the way we have always raised girls might make it as difficult for them to relate to their male partners as the way we raise boys to relate to theirs.

We are in fact all human beings, men, women, and children. Not pieces, not property, not “ours” or “his” or “hers” or “theirs.” And so to want “a baby” or to want “a girlfriend” or to want “a husband” and especially to sacrifice to get those things is to lose track of what an honor it is to be with another person, to get to be with their being while they’re with us whether it’s by choice or chance or necessity. It’s also to miss the extraordinary pleasure of being with someone instead of something.

Cosmo and Glamour for women, like Details and Esquire for men, aren’t entirly to blame for this by the way. They only encourage patterns we begin in childhood but for whatever reason (including continuing encouragement from magazines and their sponsors) hang on to when we’re grown.

Karen Rayne of Adolescent Sexuality, who teaches both sex education to early adolescents and sex-ed instruction to education majors has an interesting take on summer/vacation flings for teenagers.

Vacation flings can range from more emotional connection and no physical connection to an exclusively sexual experience.  They can last a weekend, or a week, or several weeks.  Some of them are remembered and some are forgotten.

But what’s the point of these little affairs?  Are they essentially good or harmful for teenagers?  Should parents encourage them or discourage them?

As I have mentioned before, teenagers are in a place where they are discovering who they are, who they want to be, and how much choice they really have in the matter.  To go through this process, most teenagers need to experience themselves in a variety of situations and acting in a variety of ways.  It’s a healthy thing for them to date around and learn what kind of a partner they want to have.

Vacations often offer a safe place to experiment.  The relationship is generally, by circumstance, limited in length. If the match is not a beneficial one, the parents (and the teenager) can take solace in it ending shortly. The teenager can experience a different side, a different personality, a different kind of relationship, with a firm expiration date attached. If the teenager likes this new sense of self, it can be brought back home, but if the teenager does not like the new sense of self, it can be discarded and left behind. Very convenient, no?

She said it here.

As my blog name suggests I’m not enthusiastic about sex and young people. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they shouldn’t be sexual. I hope it’s obvious that I support sex education (I believe age-appropriate sex education should begin very early.) It’s just that since adulthood actually lasts a really long time, and that a healthy, non-pressured, non-sexualized adolescence lays a great foundation for… well… real adult sex I don’t think one “misses out” by waiting till you’re already a adult instead of imagining it’s sex that actually makes you a man or woman.

Where I part company with the abstinence/chastity crowd, of course, is that don’t see adolescence as a rearguard attempt to hold off on relationship formation till one finds their “one true love.” So I agree wholeheartedly with Rayne that casual or transitory relationships are important precursors to serious and long-term ones.

See also: Debby at My Sexy Professor has a post about How to Make Casual Flings Work. The four main headings: know thyself, come prepared, safety first, and have realistic expectations nicely illustrates the difference between adolescent and adult relationships and further illustrates how learn to crawl before you walk and learn to walk before you run extends to learn to navigate relationships before you have sex.

It takes time to “know thyself.” “Come prepared” tends to assume you already know what to prepare for. “Safety first” sounds self-evident, and to be honest in our hyper-vigilant culture of parenting it’s the rare child who hasn’t been stuffed brim-full with it from birth. But the transition to “independently assessing potential partners and opportunities” is a pretty big step up from “don’t put your fingers in the fan.”

Which takes me to Debby’s last point about having realistic expectations: Good expectations need to include the point that at least half of all college freshmen are still virgins! Even though something like 85% of freshmen believe only 15% are… and that, naturally, they’re part of that 15%... and that, naturally, that makes them losers. Which evidently, even in college, in turn makes it harder for them to get a serious grip on know thyself, come prepared, and safety first.

Which in turn goes back to the message Karen Rayne, and Deb Haffner, and Heather Corinna and countless other professional sex educators come back to again and again: the point of real, comprehensive sex education isn’t just to get us ready for sex (a big concern of “traditional values” types that Rayne beautifully refutes here) but to help us get ready to get ready to have sex as well.