"How can you be a feminist and do BDSM?"

[I'm back!  I know, another really long unannounced hiatus.  I have a good excuse this time.  I had to move sort of unexpectedly and under less than ideal conditions.  I still don't know what I want to say about it, except that this wasn't about Rowdy; Rowdy continues to be awesome.  Anyway.  I'm in a good place now and I have time/energy to write again.]

Journal Of Secrets

I don't think I've ever really answered the title question, even though it's the most obvious thing that comes up when you identify yourself as a feminist who's also into BDSM.  How does this work for me?  Isn't it a big ol' conflict to be for equality and respect for all genders and then give a thumbs-up to men leading women around on leashes and hitting them with whips?

My usual flippant answer--which also happens to be my most  emotionally honest--is that it's like asking how I can be a feminist and keep guinea pigs.  What do my hobbies have to do with anything?  Kink is just a fun activity that involves a different part of my personality.

A deeper answer is that it's pleasurable for everyone involved.  The things I think of as feministically troubling are things that harm someone.  Job and school discrimination harm women economically.  Sexism harms women emotionally.  Violence harms women physically and emotionally.  Receiving pain in BDSM makes me feel strong, makes me feel desired, makes me feel present in the moment, makes me feel alive.  (Also, makes me feel extraordinarily horny and kinda high.)  I know that's not proof that it's good for me or for women, but... it's a significant piece of evidence.  I put up with misogynist environments sometimes because they're the path of least resistance for my personal goals; BDSM requires absolutely no "putting up with."  Good kink experiences are personal goals in themselves.

I also find a lot of the arguments against kink, like the ones in this much-mocked article and many of the ones that pop up in feminist contexts like this random post, to be deeply... god, I'm sick of the word "problematic."  Fuckin' weasel word that can mean anything from "got some facts wrong" to "basically a Nazi."  I find these arguments to be misguided and annoying and sometimes demeaning in exactly the ways feminists are supposed to oppose.



For one thing, a whole lot of those arguments could apply to plain ol' sex.  It can be used as a weapon of, and an excuse for, horrific abuse?  People are sometimes unintentionally harmed doing it?  It's horrible when done nonconsensually?  There are some really awful people who are into it?  A lot of the narratives around it are sexist, hetero/cisnormative, body-policing, and glamorize unsafe and questionably consensual activities?  The industries that sell media and services related to it are often nightmarishly exploitative?  I don't want to deny or minimize the fact that all these things happen in BDSM.  I just don't think it's any worse in kink than in sex.

Actually, I'll go a little further than that.  While "kink is always consensual!" is facile white-washing, on average kinksters are more aware than the general population of what consent is and why it matters.  We talk about it a lot more, and we (at least try to) socially normalize the idea of negotiating it.  We acknowledge that different relationships have different rules and roles, and that gender does not determine them.  We freely admit that lots of people simply aren't wired for what we do, or for specific ways of doing it.  We have concepts like "Risk Aware Consensual Kink" and "Your Kink Is Not My Kink, But Your Kink Is OK."  Again, I won't pretend we all apply these concepts all the time, but... the fact that we even hold these as ideals puts us a little bit ahead of society at large.

I also think a lot of "BDSM is sexist" arguments wouldn't long survive an encounter with a female dominant or a male submissive.  Female dominance is not about women dressing up in leather for men to admire.  It is an actual kink that women can have.  If you see a woman getting her rocks off by having a man service her, and you think "clearly she's only doing that to please him," you're desexualizing her and disregarding her desires.  Although you're still a step ahead of the people who don't even acknowledge that female dominance is a thing at all.

Of course, if we got into the fact that same-sex, nonbinary, and nonsexual kink exist, we'd be here all day.  (I've heard arguments that queer kink is still sexist because people are enacting male and female roles, but... if you see someone who isn't a man being dominant and you think "clearly she's being the man here," I think the problem is on your end.)  And I don't even know what would happen if we let some of these critics know about switching.

Finally, there's the question of whether feminism has any business saving women from themselves.  Because there's a really bad track record here.  At various times, various branches of feminism have swooped in to "save" femme women, married women, women who stay home with their kids, women who do sex work, cis women who welcome trans women into women's spaces--and it has always been a disaster.  It's forced women to defend their dignity and even their safety from the people who are supposed to be advocating for them.  I'm not saying any of these groups are the same as submissive women, obviously, only that "you say you want this... you poor thing" hasn't historically worked out well for feminism.



How can I be a feminist and do BDSM?  Because I trust women to know their own desires.  Because BDSM does not stand apart from the world at large, and if we have to live in this world anyway, we might as well do what we love.  Because I love and respect my body, my mind, and my potential as a human being--and all three are going "hell yeah, I totally want this."

Cosmocking: April '13!

Yellow cover!  Kim Kardashian!  I don't know what's going on with her... lower garment!  I think Cosmo's stylists are getting pretty desperate to make the 35,000-year-old concept of "wearing clothes" seem fresh and new every month!  Go ahead and trace a line from the center of Kim's cleavage to the center of her neck and explain what kind of skeletal structure that implies!  Also please note that her arms are different lengths!

(I think what's going on here is that they've Photoshopped away all creases and features on her neck, which makes the side of her neck look like the front.  And they posed her with both arms behind her so that her chest would stick out, but then her right arm looked wrong or wasn't visible, so they pasted on a replacement arm.  Which would explain the surreal way her hand is interacting with her thighs.)

"I loved reading 'Can Sex Make You Skinnier?'  The next time I had an intense carb craving, I marched right into my bedroom and pounced on my sleeping, unsuspecting boyfriend.  I'm thankful for my new weapon in battling bulge, and my boyfriend is too!  Thanks, Cosmo!"  --Sarah A., Nashville, Tenn.

I'm not, like, an expert in forensic writing analysis or anything, but I think Cosmo's letters page is fake.  Just a hunch here.

Also I would prefer to not eroticize "pouncing" on "unsuspecting" people, but if I point out every time Cosmo does that, we'll be here all day.

Four tiny bottles, each with a secret code name, sit on a shiny table in front of Kim Kardashian, awaiting inspection.  Inside the vial are versions of her latest fragrance, Glam, which is being tweaked to appeal to Japanese consumers. [...] She waves each test strip in front of her perfect, pert nose.  Opulence is too heavy for Asian tastes, she proclaims.  Sequins? Too soft.  "I don't even smell Glitzy any more," she says, before settling on her choice: Geisha Garden.

Kim Kardashian, cross-cultural marketing genius.

Within hookup culture on college campuses, dating is one of the most radical, nonconformist things you can do.

Oh, for fuck's sake.  Yes, young people have casual sex.  No, the entire population between ages 16 and 26 is not subsumed into this boogeyman "hookup culture" where they're all like "what is this Earth thing you call 'love'?"  I would really like the media to get over this particular obsession already and move on to telling us that eating caramel leads to Satanism, or something.

Because our ancestors spoke with their bodies rather than language, we learn more from gestures than words when first meeting someone.  If he's facing you directly, you have his full attention.

I don't think we needed to invoke grunting cavemen to explain the concept of "people look at things they're interested in."

...I would also like to explain to Cosmo that all language is produced by the body.

Make him feel like a piece of meat: "It's a huge turn-on to hear a woman objectify me," 30-year-old Christopher says.  "It seems simple, but it's so powerful."  Take his words to heart and don't be afraid to tell your guy everything you like about his body or what he does that drives you crazy.  He'll be obsessed.

That's not what objectification means.  That's not making him feel like a piece of meat.  That's just sexual compliments.  Yeah, sure, it's easy to say "I don't know what those ladies are complaining about, you can objectify me anytime" if you think it means your girlfriend tells you you have sexy abs.

Objectification is focusing on a person's usefulness to you with total disregard for their desires.  In the context of compliments, it's not saying "You turn me on."  It's saying "You turn me on, and whether you want to turn me on is utterly irrelevant."

Saying "nice ass" to a person who's deliberately wiggling their ass at you is a compliment; saying "nice ass" to a person who's just walking by is objectification.  "I want to sleep with her" is expressing desire;  "I'd hit it" is objectification.  "You're sexy" is nice to say on a date because it's a compliment; "you're sexy" is hideously undermining to say at a business meeting because it's objectification.

Q: My guy constantly asks me for cash to pay the bills.  He's going through a rough time and I don't mind helping out, but how can I stop this from being a regular thing? 

A: The fact that he's asking you for financial help--a tough thing for many guys to do--is a sign that he trusts you.

He Said He Wasn't Ready For Kids [...]  One month, I realized I'd forgotten to take my birth control pill... for five days.  I asked Matt if he thought this was a sign.  "I don't think it's time yet," he said.  Three months later, the same thing happened.

Oh shit, I already used my "this will not end well" image.

(In seriousness, sabotaging birth control is a horrible thing to do, both to your partner and your potential child.  It's really not a cutesy-wootsey "tee hee, whoopsy daisy, hint hint" thing to do.  It's pretty highly correlated with domestic violence.)

The Man-Child Meter  

[selected items from a big boring list of stuff like "he's a man-child if he only eats pizza" and "he's a real man if he has nice wineglasses"]

Man-Child: Invites you over to watch a movie, then texts you to pick up a six-pack on the way 

Getting There: Attempts to go down on you (he's trying!) 

Yep, He's A Man: Reaches for a condom before you have to ask

1. What's wrong with asking someone to bring beer?  I guess it's a little demanding, but "hey, honey, I'm out of beer over here, you want to bring some with you?" is really not that out of line if you like to have a beer with your movie.

2. How do you "attempt" to go down on a person?  Was he licking her knee?
"No, sweetie, not there."
"Okay, how about here?  Is this your clitoris now?"
"Sweetie, that's my elbow."

3. I guess this does rank higher than "just going ahead and having unprotected sex unless you stop him," but... significantly lower than "actually discussing protection before 0.4 seconds prior to intercourse."

Many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.  I don't have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what's appropriate or attractive.  Stop worrying about how your breath's going to smell, whether there's beurre blanc on your face, or whether ordering the braised pork belly will make you look fat. [...] It's all about the enjoyment of the moment and the company and the food.  And if you can be yourself slurping spicy peanut noodles in front of another person, you may have a keeper.

This issue has an article by Anthony Bourdain!  What the heck is he doing here?  Anyway, it's awesome.  And not just because he writes with actual voice instead of "frenemy's va-jay-jay sexcapades" Cosmo-diction.  It's awesome because this is the only article in this magazine full of anatomically detailed sex talk that is actually about pleasure.

A Cosmo writer could have written "have fun eating, because men like it when you're not self-conscious, and it'll totally improve your mood!"  But it took an outside voice to say "have fun eating, because food is awesome."

Bottom skills.

So much "how to BDSM" material is really "how to top."  Which is understandable, up to a point.  The top performs most of the obvious physical parts of the scene--they're the one who has to know how to tie a knot or swing a flogger.  The top is likely to also be dominant, which means that they're going to be the one in charge of planning the scene and directing it.  And the top is also expected to take more responsibility for a scene, because bottoms might be immobilized (or go off into la-la land) and need their tops to watch out for their safety.

There's also a certain bias in BDSM-land toward thinking tops and dominants should be the authorities and their experiences should be prioritized, because... well, partly because they're more often men.  And partly because they're in charge in their scenes/relationships so it's only logical that they be in charge everywhere, even though it's not like the community agreed to submit to them.  So the majority of kink community leaders, authors, and teachers are tops.

As a result of these factors, you can come away from a lot of kink books or conferences thinking that bottoming is... standing there.  (For advanced bottoming, you might kneel or lie down.)  It seems like a purely receptive thing.  Like a beanbag could do it, if you could teach a beanbag to moan and occasionally offer to get people drinks.



This is not the case.  Bottoming well, in a way that creates a great experience for yourself and your top, requires effort and skill.  We are not canvases for the art of BDSM; we are artists too.  Here's some of the things I've learned (or am learning, or need to learn) about being on the bottom:

• Know your desires.
If you don't know what you like, you're not likely to get it.  I've talked about this so much on the blog, I don't want to belabor the point.  Just... have some idea of why you're bottoming in a BDSM scene instead of back at home knitting.  (Knitting fetishists please disregard.)  (That is not entirely a joke.)  Or if you don't, at least be aware that you don't know, and able to say "I'm experimenting right now and finding out what appeals to me."

• Speak up for yourself.
When I first started playing, I had the idea in my head--maybe not in words, but definitely in feelings--that the best bottoms were the ones who were least demanding.  That for me to be an excellent bottom, I should take as much pain as I could stand and allow my top to do whatever they wanted.  I certainly noticed that I enjoyed some activities more than others, but I felt like asking for the ones I wanted would be rude or "topping from the bottom" or selfish or something.  So I just felt happy when I got things I liked, felt sad or annoyed when I got things I didn't, and never gave any external indication of either.

Eventually I burned myself out on the stoicism thing.  I could only suppress my specific desires and limited pain tolerance for so long.  So I became a really grouchy, persnickety bottom.  No, I don't like that.  Don't like that either.  Yellow.  Yellow to that too.  Maybe we should just take a break.  It was frustrating, but it was actually progress--being able to say what I didn't like without being able to say what I liked wasn't very fun, but it beat the heck out of not being able to say either.  My tops were stuck playing "Marco Polo" with my desires, but at least they weren't unwittingly hurting me.

And then--embarrassingly recently--I realized that asking for what you like isn't presumptuous or un-bottomly, it's something that a good top actually wants you to do.  Depending on the sort of scene you're doing, they might not give you everything you like (or they might make you earn it), but they still need to know.  Otherwise they don't know which parts are punishment and which are reward for you, and they're not in control of the experience they're creating for you.

• Look out for your safety.
This is a responsibility tops and bottoms share.  It's more the top's, because they have more control and because they're going to be at fault if the bottom gets hurt, but it's an important bottom skill to be able to help the top keep you safe.  This means knowing and sharing the limitations of your body and your mind, it means using your safewords when you need to, and it means double-checking the top when they do something potentially unsafe.  Your top should notice on their own if they're cutting off your circulation or positioning you in a way that would be disastrous if you fell, but even good tops can miss things, and it's a good idea to also do your own safety checks.

(If you're way off in subspace you may not be able, and then it really is the top's responsibility alone.  But it's a good thing to do if you can.)

• Play along.
This isn't a simple directive but a whole set of skills that depend on how you play.  This is the physical, immediate side of bottoming, and it's a whole lot more than standing there.  It's positioning yourself to assist with an elaborate rope tie.  It's being able to absorb blows.  It's knowing when to push back, when to yield, and when to stand firm.  This really depends on what specific kinks you do, and it's mostly stuff you have to learn "on the job."  And it is things you have to learn.  "Standing there" looks like a no-brainer, but standing in a way that makes it easy for your top to do their job and supports you when you go wibbly and looks good and feels good?  Takes a little bit of brain.

• Give good feedback.
In two ways.  There's the practical feedback, the "oh yeah just like that," the "wow, I'm really just melting away into the wall here," and the "okay, that was the bad ow."  And there's the feedback that tops appreciate and get off on, the... well, actually, the first two sentences above are pretty good examples of that too.  I'm not talking about playing it up and putting on a performance, but a lot of tops really like hearing how much impact they're having on you.  Giving them that, especially if they've asked for it, is good bottoming.

• Know how to cook what you eat.
I don't think this is a requirement for everyone (well, nothing here is required, we're all different and all learning, please don't take this post as a list of "things bottoms must do"), but it's something I value for myself.  I like to know how to perform all the skills that I enjoy having done to me.  I hardly ever top, but I know how to tie a rope harness and where to aim a flogger.  Having this knowledge helps me communicate better with my top, know what I can do to make their job easier, understand and process the sensations I'm receiving, and it gives me a whole lot of appreciation for how much energy my top is putting into the scene.

• Process the experience.
This is the internal work of bottoming, and I don't know what I'm going to write in this section, because it's... magic or neurology or something.  Also a lot of deep breathing.  This is where you take in pain, discomfort, fear, and/or humiliation, and you turn them into something wonderful for yourself.  And very often it is an effort.  It can take focus and intention to turn a spanking from "my butt hurts, ow, my butt hurts again" to "my butt hurts in a way that is giving me the most amazing pleasure."  Or when it isn't pleasure, "my butt hurts and I am strong and I am taking it."  It's almost a kind of meditation.

Everything else on this page is about bottoming.  It's all the logistics around bottoming.  But this part?  This is bottoming.  This is why you aren't home knitting.  And there's nothing easy or passive about it.

•Give aftercare.
Tops drop too.  Tops (at least a lot of them) also get into an altered state when they're playing and they can also come down hard.  So tops might need cuddling and talking after scenes, or they might need to drink water and stretch out and cool off, or they might want to mellow out and enjoy the lingering buzz.  It's good bottoming to be attentive to their aftercare needs as well as your own, and to check up on them a bit after the scene.


Just standing there? Bottoming in BDSM is goddamn hard work, and it deserves to be talked about.

How To Have Sex On Purpose.

Captain Awkward. Or Sue.  I might have gotten my notes switched.

I had an amazing time in Chicago this weekend.   Everyone at the University of Chicago was absolutely wonderful to me, and the talk went great; the room was packed, the audience was great, and besides my little monologue, we had a really good discussion about negotiating sex and relationships.  And then I got to go to the Field Museum and meet Captain Awkward (the blogger) and Sue (the dinosaur).  It was so ridiculously awesome that I'm all out of eloquence and just going "so ridiculously awesome, you guys!"

This is a (rough) transcript of the talk I gave.  It's on a separate page because it's quite a bit longer than my usual posts.  And that's saying something.

Cosmocking: March '13!

[Content notes (and how fucked up is it that a fluffy fashion magazine needs them?): fat-hatred, transmisogyny.]

Pink cover!  Miley Cyrus!  ...wait, what?!  That's Miley Cyrus?!  HANNAH MONTANA?!  Whoa.

...You know what, good for her.

Finally Stop Living Paycheck To Paycheck

Hey broke ladies, it turns out it's super easy to save money!  All you have to do is limit yourself to spending only $1100 on rent and $900 a month on entertainment, and you'll work your way out of poverty in no time!  Don't you feel silly now?

They also describe paying more than 30% of your income in rent as a "faux pas," as if it's a Fashion Don't to want a roof over your head while being poor.

Have a pizza picnic party in bed.  No TV allowed--put on a sexy playlist, and sit across from each other like you would at a restaurant. Serve the pizza on plates, pour some wine, and don't be afraid to get messy with that margherita. 

I've been accused of just not understanding romance in my Cosmocking.  I dunno.  Maybe there's some truth in that.  Because I see this cute little idea for Manic Pixie Dream Girl antics, and all I can think is "oh jeez, that is never washing out."

Orgasms are tension busters, so after a hard day at work, pull your guy close and whisper, "All I want is for you to make me come."  Hello.  When there's a problem, men like to fix it, so you're making him feel like a total stud while getting yours at the same time.

This would be sexy if they didn't give all these fake-ass "reasons."  Let's edit, shall we?

Orgasms feel awesome, so when you want one, pull your partner close and whisper, "All I want is for you to make me come."  Hello.  A lover who knows what they want is hot as hell.

See, just as fun, but doesn't make my vagina sound like a cracked fan belt he needs to replace.

On nights when you want to let your freak flag fly, assume an alter ego. [...]  It's easier to get into character when you don't look like you, so meet him at the door wearing a wig.  Tell him that "Erin is working late tonight.  I'm her evil twin."  His night just got a lot more interesting.

I kind of want to do this, but not with a wig.

 "GREETINGS.  I AM EVIL CLIFF.  IT IS ONLY LOGICAL THAT WE COMMENCE INTIMATE RELATIONS."

...actually that's kind of how we have sex anyway.

[on where to hide a video of you having sex]  Bury the flick in a folder within a folder within a folder on your computer, with a boring name that would never intrigue anyone, like Thank You Card List.

My porn folder, age 15: C:\ windows \ desktop \ stuff \ boring stuff \ old boring stuff
My porn folder, age 20: C:\  program files \ utility \ xp64 \ config \ temp \ 0334 [encrypted] 
My porn folder, age 25: C:\ porn

The 3 Words He Never Wants to Hear You Say 

Imagine the worst thing a guy could say to your (thought joggers: "I'm in love with your sister," "I killed a man..."), multiply it by 10, add a full weekend of nothing but golf on TV--and you'll start to understand how awful it is for us to hear "I look fat" coming out of a girl's mouth.

Oh God.  This is that awful game where you have to obsess over your weight to be sexy, but if you ever let it be known that you're obsessing over your weight, that's terrible.  Sometimes it goes by "order a steak on dates so he knows you're laid-back" followed by five pages of diet tips.  This time it goes by "hearing your insecurities is so hard for me."

Your guy knows you're not fat.  He can see you're not fat.  But the more you say you're fat, the more he'll start to question the evidence.

But I am fat.  I'm not being self-deprecating or whatever, I'm just being... roundish.  And I don't think any combination of words would cause a person who sees me naked to question the "evidence" that my body is the size and shape that it appears to be.

Of course, this sentence makes perfect sense if you understand "fat" to be a word with absolutely no relation to a person's weight or size, but simply an insult of their worth and sexual appeal.  Which seems to be the thing these days.  Kind of painful if you also happen to be roundish, but I don't think "not being painful" was a priority in this process.

[Q: My boyfriend's roommate ogles me and puppydogs me and it's weird.] 

A: Although the roommate should be more subtle about it, checking you out doesn't mean anything.  Men ogle attractive women all the time, even when those women are dating their buddies.  Other than that, it sounds like the roommate's only crime is being exceedingly polite.  If you say something to your guy, it'll create at best an awkward situation and at worst a volatile one.

Yeah, I should have warned you.  This is the point where Cosmo goes completely off the rails.  Where it crosses from "mostly goofy, kinda problematic" to "oh FUCK this was printed THIS YEAR?"  Beyond here I can't even be funny.

"He Didn't Want to Date Me -- He Wanted to Be Me!"

Cosmo's new "Worst Date Ever" column (which is 100% fictional) seems to be a continual fountain of bigotry--it was biphobia last time--but this is a new low.  I don't even want to quote this one.  Basically, the author meets up with an OkCupid date who turns out to be a trans woman.  And her (the date's) behavior is of course hilariously weird and flaky and she reverses in ten seconds from advertising herself as a sexy man to demanding the author do her makeup and go shopping with her.  It's all just the sloppiest, meanest caricature of trans women imaginable. And it plays right into the disgusting "trans people aren't people, they're plot devices to comically/terrifyingly trick you into being gay!" narrative.  It's illustrated with a picture of a big hairy leg in a high-heel shoe.  Once again, I don't think I can be funny about this.

Dammit, Cosmo.  You're supposed to be silly-terrible.  This is no fun when you're straight-up-hatred terrible.

P.S.: In case you missed it last time, I'm talking in Chicago this Saturday!  It's gonna be awesome!

Getting negotiation going.

First, some big news:

I am going to be speaking at the University of Chicago Sex Week!
More details available here, but the short version:

• 5:30 to 7:00pm on February 16th
• The eighth floor of Logan Center (directions on linked page) at the University of Chicago
• It's free and open to the public, and you can register here.

I’m going to be speaking about “How To Have Sex On Purpose”—about creating an intentional and conscious sexuality, informed by kink and poly ethics. Or, less pretentiously: how to go from “sex just happens between us” to “we do sex.” (Doing is better. Not just on, like, an ethical philosophical relational whatever level. Better on the “OH FUCK YEAH” level too.)

We now return you to your incredibly irregularly scheduled Pervocracy.

I never can find pictures that represent these abstract topics.
Here's the cuddly enema that hangs out next to my lab bench at school.

A question I got on Tumblr:

So, I've reread your blog posts on relationship negotiation several times each, because they're so awesome, so I was wondering if you might have some advice. Relationship negotiation meetings is something I'd really like to do. My partner likes the idea too. However, we're both worried that we'll just end up sitting there with neither of us having any idea what to say. Do you have any advice/resources for beginning/structuring such a meeting? Possible discussion questions/categories, etc?

The way these things begin is: awkwardly.  Sitting down and talking frankly about what you're doing in a relationship is awkward as fuck and I can't really sugarcoat that.  It's awkward because it's an activity that completely lacks a cultural script.  It's not something you're "supposed" to do, it's not something you get to watch others do in real life or in media, and the only version of it that does get talked about is one where "can we talk?" means "you're in trouble."  So this isn't going to go super smoothly the first time, and that's okay.  Being real and vulnerable enough to be awkward with each other is great for a relationship.

But how do you get it to go at all?

It starts before you meet, with both of you asking yourselves what you want to get out of the discussion.  What needs work in your relationship?  What's causing you difficulty right now?  If you could have the perfect relationship, how would it be different from this one?  It doesn't have to be all big-deal serious things.  "I need you to stop stealing the blanket" is every bit as legitimate to bring out here as "I need to know how you really feel about my body."  Plus, seeing how able you are to come to an amicable agreement on a simple thing like "we should have two twin-size blankets" is good motivation and practice for working on touchier issues.

I've said this before, in a different context, but any time you catch yourself thinking "well, of course what I would say if I could is XYZ, but I can't possibly," that's your brain telling you exactly what you need to say.  Also, any time something makes you think "I'm unhappy about XYZ, but obviously my partner knows that and has decided to do it anyway," definitely bring it up, because like 75% of the time the answer will be "oh shit, I had no idea that was a problem."

Come to the table with requests, not complaints.  Try to turn every statement about what's wrong into a statement about what you need instead.  (It's okay to not always have solutions in mind.  Just say "I need [thing] to stop/start/change" or "I want us to find a solution to [thing]," rather than "[thing] is bad.")  Even though it's almost the same statement, "I want to have more sex" is a lot easier and less upsetting to address than "I feel like we never have sex anymore."  It makes "we can totally have more sex, I'd like that too" into an agreeable response instead of a defensive one.

Make a date for your first discussion (we call ours the State Of The Relationship Address, because giving it a silly name makes it feel more like "our thing" and less like getting called to the principal's office) somewhere quiet that doesn't mind people camping out for a while--a park bench, a coffeeshop, or a particularly boring bar.

(Actually, it got updated to State Of Our Union, and then corrected to State Of Our Intersection, but anyway.)

Bring notes, and take notes.  It may be dorky--it may even help to acknowledge it's dorky and laugh at it--but nothing says "the serious part of this conversation has started now" like getting out a notepad with "need more attention paid to my clitoris" on it.

As for things to actually discuss, if "stuff that you want to be more better" feels like a hopelessly broad field:

• Sex! Are you happy with the amount you're having?  The type?  Who initiates?  Is there something you'd love to try but couldn't possibly bring up?  Is there something you secretly hate but have been politely not complaining about?
• How much time you spend together.  Too much, too little, too often spent fiddling around the house being bored?
• The path your relationship is on.  Is it something that's going to escalate along the traditional dating -> moving in -> marriage -> kids pathway, follow a less traditional path, or simply stay where it's at?  Obviously your partner can't promise you what the future will bring, but at least saying "I'm hoping if we stay together we can..." versus "I'm really not ever looking for..." can seriously clear the air.
• Fun things you'd like to do together.  Like I said, this doesn't have to all be Heavy Processing.  "We should plan a trip to Maine!" is worth bringing up too.
• Are you monogamous?  If so, what does that mean to you--just no sleeping with other people, or no expressing any kind of attraction, or something in between?  I know this one can be pretty easy to shove under the rug of "but I don't want anyone but you anyway," but it's good to clarify how you feel about flirting/kissing/dinner dates/etc. before you're debating about a specific incident.
• Are you open or poly?  If so, there's a whole bunch of issues that open up, but some relevant ones are: scheduling, how you can express it and what will comfort you if you feel jealous, how much you want them to tell you about what they do with other people, when/whether you want to meet their other partner(s), how you're handling safe sex issues.
• Their friends, your friends, mutual friends--is there anyone who's a major problem for you?  It's hard to ask a partner to drop a friend (although... depends what they've done), but they should at least know what you're feeling.  Or, conversely, do you want to spend more time with your/their/plural-your friends and feel more like you're partnered socially as well as romantically?
• If you live together, all the roommate issues that brings up--chores, budgeting, standards of cleanliness, making your sleep schedules work together, making your "I want to be totally undisturbed while I do this" versus your "I want to interact with you" needs work together.
• How you argue.  "We never argue" isn't good; it means at least one of you is suppressing their disagreement.  But obviously fighting rather than arguing is really, really bad.  Make it explicit between you that dissent is always okay and personal attacks never are, and that you will make every effort to remember the difference.
• That you love each other, and feel your love is worth working on.  Because the end result of all the above shouldn't just be a workable arrangement; it should be a workable arrangement with someone you find incredibly awesome.  Affirming that before, during, and after the meeting makes a big difference.

So that's kind of a lot!  I hope it helps.  I'm sure smart people will add things in the comments that I didn't even think of.

Cosmocking is next!

Circumstantial evidence.

A vaginal photoplethysmograph. It knows what you like.
Even if you disagree.

I got about fifteen pages into Sex at Dawn before giving up. Partly because it seemed to be breaking down "monogamy is natural and therefore good" only to replace it with equally narrow thinking about "polyamory is natural and therefore good."  Partly because the opening chapter is viciously snarky about how everyone is unhappy and bad at sex these days because of their stupid monogamy delusion, which, even though I'm poly, grates on me like condescending sandpaper.  Partly because some of their evidence for universal bad-at-sex-ness is the frequency of Viagra use and female sexual dysfunction--apparently physical genital problems are just proof of your hang-ups, man.

Partly because there's a part where they make the argument that a woman's "copulatory vocalizations" are supposed to excite other men and invite them to have sex with her too, and... NO and EW and WHAT.

But mostly, I gave up on Sex at Dawn because it's full of a problem a lot of sex research suffers from--the love of circumstantial evidence.


Want to know why women moan during sex?  (Or, for starters, whether all women moan during sex?)  What would your first step in answering this question be?

Well, if you're a Serious Sex Researcher, some approaches you might take:
• Watch female chimps having sex.
• Gather media about fictional women making sex noises.
• Dissect female cadavers, searching for the sex-noise node of the brain.
• Read anthropological accounts of the sex-noise practices of women in isolated hunter-gatherer societies.
• Search the literature for historical mentions of women making sex noises.
• Hook up men and women's genitalia to "arousal-measuring" equipment and scan their brains while they listen to sex noises.
• Speculate at length about the sex noises of "cavewomen."

And one approach you would never, ever take because it's just hopelessly unscientific:
• Ask some women "hey, why do you moan during sex?"


Don't get me wrong, I don't think sex science should consist entirely of self-reports, or that cross-cultural and biological perspectives don't have a place in it.  But too often, sex research seems to consist of everything but listening to people about their own experiences.  It's the meticulous aggregation of every possible piece of circumstantial evidence--and no questions for the eyewitnesses.


I have a special hatred for vaginal photoplethysmography, and not just because it's very hard to type.  This is a device that measures bloodflow in the vagina, and therefore purportedly the sexual arousal of the vagina's owner.  Except that study after study shows that subjects' self-reports of their arousal tend to correlate very badly with their photoplethingy readings.  The photothingy says they're aroused, the human beings say they're not feeling a thing.  Naturally, this is reported in the pop-sci press as "Vaginal Blood Flow Not A Reliable Indicator Of Arousal, New Method Needed."

Haha, I'm just messing with you.  I've never seen that headline.  It's always reported as "Women Not Aware Of Their Own Arousal."  (The first link opens with chimps, too!  Oh, those fucking chimps.  Fascinating creatures and all that, but I don't understand the compulsion to study chimps to understand human sexuality, when actual humans are readily available.)  You couldn't get away with this in other branches of science.  If you measured water ice at 20ºC and declared "my thermometer is perfect; this ice must be defective," you'd get laughed out of the lab.  But when it comes to confirming gross old "they don't know what they really want" stereotypes about women, anything goes.

(Don't worry, though; if you have a penis, its degree of erection will also be trusted over your word.  Because no one ever got a hard-on when they didn't want to have sex, right?)



I'm a science nerd at heart.  I like the idea of applying science to sex.  (I'm still trying to find the right excuse to post the pictures from that time we measured my Kegel Power.  About half a kilo, by the way.)  I have no ambition to replace rigorously analyzed data and reproducible double-blind experiments with poems about lilies unfolding.  I think expanding our knowledge of human sexuality is a noble goal in biology, psychology, and sociology, and objective measures are necessary to achieve that.

But I also think that if you want to study humans, study humans.  If you want to study people's feelings, ask them about their feelings.  Cadavers and fMRIs and chimps should be secondary tools to validate what you learn from humans, not the other way around.

In nursing, the definition of pain is simply "whatever the patient says it is," and yet we've still been able to create a massive body of work about the causes, effects, and control of pain.  Our understanding of pain is human and subjective, and still manages to produce precise and meaningful data.  There's no reason we can't study sex this way as well.

Cosmocking: February '13!

Red cover!  Julianne Hough!  The older I get, the less often I recognize these people!  Not quite sure how to feel about that!  She's wearing a, um, transparent plastic cropped biker jacket and satin pajama-underwear-swimsuit... I have no idea what kind of clothing that is!  "Weird Stuff Guys Google About You!"  Believe me, Cosmo, you have no idea!

"A few months ago, my friend asked me to volunteer at a homeless shelter with her--and ever since then, I've been dreaming of opening my own.  I'm so inspired!  I want to give clothing, food, and love to families who live in poverty."

Errgh.  I mean, it's nice that she has good intentions.  But maybe she could be directing those good intentions toward supporting an existing shelter instead of pulling a "I spent four whole hours there, I totally know how to start this from scratch!" Something about this makes me feel like she's not quite prepared for the reality of people who don't just need love, they need healthcare, legal aid, case management, and advocacy.  If all you've got is love, host a fundraiser and give the proceeds to someone who understands social work.

DirtyRottenFlowers.com will send your ex a bouquet of flowers--chopped up, decaying, and decapitated.

Well, you've got to admire the chutzpah of a florist who realized they could make $29 a bundle for their trash pile.

The Fake Chastity Belt 

"When I'm into someone, I don't want to ruin things by having sex with him too soon," says Liz [...] "The problem is, I usually want to have sex with him so badly that I don't trust myself not to go too far with him when we're making out."  So she squeezes herself into her grossest pair of Spanx.  "I have an extra-ugly girdle reserved for really tempting situations." 

Other women rely on things like prickly legs, a grown-out bikini line, or even just a good old-fashioned pair of granny panties. No matter your poison, they are all things we like to call fake chastity belts: preventative measures taken to ensure that no matter how tempted you are to have sex, you don't.

Oh my God.  This fucking article.  This whole fucking article.  I can't even.  I can't.  I just... I'll make a list.

1. Having sex with a guy "too soon" ruins everything. Because the last thing a guy who wants to have sex with you wants is for you to reveal that you want him just as much and then have sex with him, because then you'd both be happy, and that's, uh, terrible.

2. If you don't want to have sex with a guy, you have to go take absurd romantic-comedy measures to prevent it.  You can't just decide not to.

3. A woman with body hair or unflattering underwear is so comically unfuckable no man would want her.

4. No, wait, actually I think the idea is that the man would want you, but you'd be so ashamed by your appearance that you wouldn't let him see you even though he'd want you anyway.

5. The article then goes on to give tips about how to make your unsexiness sexy in case you decide to be sexy after all but you're still in your unsexy clothes that you put on to keep yourself from being sexy.

6. This fucking article.

Q: My guy wants to come on my face. How do I even respond? 

A: [...] If he's into dominating, try doctor-patient role-play.

I needed a breather before I got to the next reprehensible article, so here's something merely inexplicable.

Can Sex Make You Skinnier? 

Carboholism. As much as it sounds like some fake word the diet industry came up with, I can assure you, it is a very real affliction.

Yes.  The fact that you are alive and have a metabolism fueled largely by glucose is a very real affliction.

I joked once, long ago, that one of these days Cosmo was going to tell us the Krebs Cycle was unflatteringly unfeminine.  I never expected them to call my bluff.

Anyway, I had a long quote from this article typed up but it was fuck-all boring, so I'll sum up: writer goes on diet where whenever she wants to eat life-sustaining amounts of food, she does something sexual instead.  (Sometimes the "something sexual" is watching True Blood, or begging her husband to sexy-text her, which he does grudgingly.)  The diet holds up for five whole days.  But it's, y'know, totally an awesome idea that 18 million readers had to hear all about.

"I'm Marrying My Gay Best Friend!"

Spoiler: by "gay," she means "identifies as gay but attracted to some women."  Which kinda changes the whole story from "wow, you better explain why that isn't a terrible idea" to "um, good for you?"

It would be cool if Cosmo used this to discuss how fluid sexuality can be and how people can defy definitions and find happiness in unexpected ways, but they do not take it in that direction.  They take it in this one:

"Oh, my god," I gushed into the phone.  "I just met the cutest gay guy!" [...] 

Dating a gay man has its upsides. [...]  While I wouldn't call myself a slob, Dave basically organizes my whole life.  When we're out shopping, he knows when to ask "Will you really wear those shoes?" He's not just my date to weddings: He helps me pick out the perfect dress and even does my hair."

All of this is very nice, I guess, but also very "Gay man make adorable sassy little pets for straight women!  And I got to take one home!"

I'll let Brian Safi (video link) take it from here.

Go to Best Buy or a specialty audio shop, and ask someone there for a home-theater surround-sound system (warning: a really good one will cost you up to $500).  Say it authoritatively or you're going to get upsold.

I'm pretty sure you're going to get upsold no matter how authoritatively you say that.

(Later, they describe a subwoofer as "a square box that magically balances the sound.")

Touching the strippers is against the rules in clubs, although no one is going to throw a woman out for brushing a thigh or boob.  Because from a woman, that illicit touch manages to be both sexual and sweet.  Instead of doing it with a sleazy grin, like a guy might, women cheer and laugh.  An inquisitive graze resembles a high five at a sporting event between teammates.  Among the female patrons and dancers is an undeniable spirit of camaraderie, like the whole thing is so absurd, they all have to laugh.

Yeah, that's real nice.  Real poetic-like.  Keep your goddamn hands to yourself.

"In our society, the last thing a young woman wants is to be perceived as uptight, humorless, and jealous," says Hugo Schwyzer, who teaches gender studies at Pasadena City College and speaks nationally on gender issues.  "Getting a lap dance assures a man that you're none of these things."[...] 

"Women aren't turned on by male strippers, because they're always presented as a caricature," says Schwyzer.

FFFFUUUUUU....

i'm done.

Teenage Panic.

"But if you do happen to unzip your fly, then, uh... uh...
enjoy your new life as a cautionary example?"

Look at any forum or question site frequented by sexually active teenagers, and you'll see the same theme come up over and over:

"I had sex. I'm terrified I'm pregnant and have every STD ever."

"A guy fingered me.  I'm terrified I'm pregnant and have every STD ever."

"I touched a girl's breasts and then touched my penis. I'm terrified she's pregnant and we both have every STD ever."

I'm paraphrasing a little sardonically, but I remember being there.  The first time I touched a boy's penis, he demanded I wash my hands immediately, because maybe they had some sperm on them and maybe I would masturbate and then I would get pregnant for sure.  And when I started having intercourse, although we always used condoms, I was absolutely convinced I was pregnant and infected.  It got to the point where I would have stomach rumblings and think that I was feeling a baby kicking.

Despite (or because of) this belief, I never took any tests.  I was so scared of seeing a positive result, I couldn't bear to.  I'm damn lucky that I was worried over nothing, because it was more than nine months before I screwed up the courage to actually use a pregnancy test, and years before I went to a clinic for an STI test.

I was a pretty savvy teenager, intellectually.  My school sex ed wasn't much, but I'd been through every page of Scarleteen and the sex chapter of every "you and your health" book I could get my hands on.  I'd read up on the correct methods for every kind of contraception and the symptoms of every infection.  My problem wasn't lack of education, not exactly.  My problem was an all-consuming terror of punishment.  I'd been able to unlearn misconceptions about the biological details, but I hadn't unlearned the idea that having sex was a very wrong and forbidden act.

The morning after I had sex for the first time, I woke up with a crushing feeing that I'd done something evil and I was going to be caught and punished.  The next time I saw my parents, I was terrified.  I thought they were going to catch some nuance in my speech or gestures and go "Wait a second... you're acting like a sex-haver!  You are in so much trouble."  This didn't happen, but the feeling of guilty terror lingered.

And I think it was that guilty terror that led me to my paranoia.  I was so convinced that I had been bad and would be punished, I believed biology itself would punish me.  It didn't help that I'd grown up hearing about how pregnancy and STIs were "consequences" for sex.  Health class, parents, teachers, media, and peers had always talked about these things not as risks that adults have to manage, but as dire fates (or worse, humiliatingly comical fates) for sluts.  At age 15, I took a certain toxic-girl-hate pride in being Responsible and Pure.  At age 16, I'd had a penis inside me.

This nasty mess of emotions did nothing to stop me from having sex, of course.  There was a whole other mess of emotions telling me that you're undesirable and you're not growing up and you're not in a real relationship if you don't have sex, and those won out in the end.  (Plus I was really horny.)  And by "in the end," I mean "within two hours"--I had sex almost immediately the first time I found out a guy wanted to have sex with me.  So much for convincing kids to wait.  All I was convinced to do was have sex, but feel absolutely terrible about it.

But you can't say there was no deterrent effect, because I was powerfully deterred from seeking any kind of medical advice or testing.  That would be humiliating beyond measure, I was convinced.  It wouldn't feel like asking for help; it would feel like turning myself in.  Saying "I need an STD test" felt to me like saying "I'm a disobedient slut who probably got what she deserves," and I couldn't face that shame.  I'd rather just take my chances.  Even though I was terrified of my chances.

God we fuck up teenagers' heads.  We tell them that biological conditions are moral punishments and then we get all shocked when they don't practice rational risk management of biological conditions.  We teach them "sex is super desirable and all the cool kids do it, and it's hideously shameful and will destroy your life" and we wonder why they act an eensy bit neurotic about it.  If you tried to design a system for making sexually active kids confused and unsafe, you couldn't do much better than the American media and school system.

And for once, the answer is relatively simple.  Just talk about sex like it's a part of life.  Some people have sex and some people don't, because people are different. STIs aren't bad because they're Dirty Crotch Rot; they're bad because they're contagious illnesses like strep throat or whooping cough, and you can ask a doctor to check for and treat them just like you would with strep throat.  Unwanted pregnancy isn't a scarlet A; it's a mostly-preventable accident that sometimes occurs when people are going about their normal business of having sex. You can ask the school counselor about a variety of topics, including career planning, problems at home, questions about sex, or conflicts with teachers.

If we could just get the goddamn stick out of our collective ass and accept that sex is a human activity and teenagers are humans, maybe there wouldn't be quite so many plaintive "I don't understand my body and I'm confused and scared and I don't know anyone I can ask in person" messages flying out into the world.

A puppy, and maybe-jokes.

I just got back from Christmas with Rowdy's family!  It was happy and cozy and his parents cooked like they were fattening us up to eat us.  And Rowdy gave me a 350-million-year-old fossil trilobite for a present. It was good times. I hope you all had good times in your own ways as well.

Rowdy's sister and her husband stayed with the family as well, and they brought a puppy with them!  An adorable, hyperactive, cuddlywuddly, toe-nipping little puppy!  (They were claiming it was an "Olde English Bulldogge," but it was clearly not.  We're guessing boxer-pitbull mix.  Cute, whatever it was.)  This struck Rowdy a little bit odd, because his sister never liked dogs.

So Rowdy asked his brother-in-law what was up.  He said, laughing, "Your sister said the only way we'd ever have a dog is if I'd already brought one home and she had no choice.  The next day, I brought home the puppy!"

Ew.

Concerned, Rowdy asked his sister about this, and she said, "Oh, we talked for a long time about getting a dog and we agreed we'd do it around now.  I didn't use to be a dog person, but I love this puppy!"

Huh.

The brother-in-law had been kidding, but the weird thing is, he was kidding in a way that made him sound like a kinda scary asshole.  He would've come off as a much better person if he'd told the truth.  So why did he make up this story about forcing an unwanted burden on his wife?  And why, on some level, does the fact that he made up the story not really bother me, but strike me as a pretty ordinary bit of humor?



There's this widely told jokey narrative that marriage is a state of passive-aggressive warfare where the wife has to be pressured into allowing fun things and the husband has to be nagged into doing responsible things.  People in relationships, good and bad, joke about getting along like the Lockhorns.  See also: every sitcom ever, every issue of Cosmo ever, every social gathering where "my husband is such a manchild/my wife is such a ball-and-chain" is a joke about as edgy as "airline food tastes bad."

The problem is, it's not a joke for everyone.  It's one of those insidious things that hits some people as "ha ha, yeah, I kid about him being a manchild, but really we talk stuff out," and hits others as "so I see, husbands are supposed to be irresponsible and you're supposed to berate them for it."  Even though Rowdy's brother-in-law wasn't really coercing his wife into a major responsibility she didn't want, he was cheerfully playing into a story created by, and validating for, men who really would.



Credit where credit's due, this is Rowdy's theory: One of the major steps toward creating a consent culture is making consent look different from coercion.  It's making a man who respects his wife's right to participate in decisions sound so different in casual conversation from a man who doesn't, that no one could confuse them.

Because our values aren't that screwed up, really.  If you ask people, point-blank and not-joking, if a man should listen to his wife when making a decision that affects her life, people are going to say yes.  Most people--even most not-at-all-feminist people--are going to say, yeah, of course that's basic respect.

So imagine a world where it was really, really obvious who respected their wife (husband, partner) and who didn't.  If people who respected their partners never told these maybe-jokes, people who didn't wouldn't have that maybe-joke plausible-deniability to hide behind.  They'd either have to tell outright lies (which some would, but it would require them to be consciously aware that they had something to lie about) or their "she didn't want it, but I did it anyway" story wouldn't be jokey, it would be a straight-up confession of evil.

Making the distinction between respectful and abusive relationships blunt wouldn't end abusive relationships.  But it sure as hell would make them a whole lot less popular at parties.

We are the 95%.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE on all that follows, including all links.

[I wasn't going to write this post today. Believe it or not, I really don't like writing about rape so much. I want to write more about good happy kinky sex. But then all that stuff with the Good Men Project kinda blew up in my face, and this is the post you got.]



There's one big lie that rapists tell.  Most of the other lies are just part of it.  "Consent is complicated and confusing and there are a lot of gray areas."  "She dressed/acted/talked like she wanted it."  "She never said no; how was I supposed to know?"  "She just regrets having sex."  "We were both drunk and the alcohol muddied things."  "He sure seemed like he was enjoying it."  "I guess I just got caught up in the heat of the moment."  "People do this all the time and only paranoid feminists call it rape."

The one big lie at the center of all these little lies is: "If you were in my place, you could have done the same."

I mean, who among us has not been confused in the process of sexual communication?  Who has not thought someone was interested in them and then found out they read the signals wrong?  Who has not had a partner enjoy sex less than they'd hoped?  Who has not felt "swept away" at some point during sex?  Who has not done something stupid while drunk?  Who has not felt that the things their ex said after the breakup were awfully unfair? The rape-apologist narrative taps into some nearly universal experiences.

And then, in that one big lie, pretends that these everyday insecurities and disappointments could lead anyone to rape.  "It could have happened to anyone," say the rapists.  Especially to men.  And to themselves.

Here's the truth, though, from some pretty major studies:
Between 6% and 13% of men have attempted or completed rape.  4-8% of men are serial offenders, and responsible for the vast majority (90-95%) of all rapes.

I realize these numbers are still uncomfortably high, especially if you have twenty male friends.  But they also mean that 94-87% of men are not rapists.  Add in women (who do rape, but at a lower rate), put in some fuzzy math and broad guesses to get a good-enough ballpark, and roughly 95% of people never attempt or commit rape.

So when you hear all the totally plausible ways it could have been you, realize: nope, probably couldn't have been.  Most people don't struggle not to commit rape.  Most people don't have trouble understanding sexual refusal.  The vast majority of people go through drunken blunders and miscommunication and bad breakups without committing or being accused of rape, just as the vast majority of people don't have trouble restraining themselves from torture or murder.

And forget the numbers for a second.  If you, personally, make a commitment to never have sex without unambiguous consent, your odds of being a not-rapist are 100%.  It can't "happen to you" if you decide not to do it.



This is part of why I talk about consent so much.  It's not just to keep well-intentioned guys from accidentally raping.  Most well-intentioned guys don't really have that problem.  It's to help well-intentioned guys (and girls, and everyone else) see how vast the gulf is between them and rapists.

If affirmative, negotiated, freely given consent is the norm, then rapists lose the ability to say "I just didn't know."  They can no longer make anyone think "but regular sex looks practically the same."  If romance doesn't work a damn thing like rape, rapists can't hide behind "I was trying to be romantic."

Clear consent does make sex better, and it does prevent legitimate-yet-horrific misunderstandings. But that's not all of what it's for.  It's also so that rapists can't say--to us or to themselves--"I thought we were just having sex."



Only 5% of people commit it, but everyone lives with the effects of rape.  Because of this small minority of predators, everyone has to live in a world where they will have a sibling, spouse, child, parent, friend who's a survivor of sexual assault.  Everyone has to live in a world where women are told to live in fear of rape.  Everyone has to know a family, social group, school, political party that's been torn apart by bitter hostility between survivors and their supporters and predators and their defenders.

Because a lot more than 5% of people have been suckered in by the rapists' big lie.  A lot more than 5% of people talking about any case of rape in the media or their social circle start saying "sounds like a grey area to me," and "she really did send some mixed signals" and "do we have to be so hard on the guy?"  A lot more than 5% of people treat rapists with sympathy and survivors with skepticism, because they're thinking "shit, in a situation that confusing, it could have been any guy; it could have been me."

But 95% of the time, it couldn't have been.

We are the non-rapists, the people who will never commit rape and who suffer from the actions of those who do.  Imagine what we could get done if we presented a united front, and the rapists had no one but other rapists to defend and enable them.  We are the 95%.  Let's fuckin' act like it.

Everyone else is doing it... right?

Now someone, somewhere, thinks it's
normal to slut-shame a steak.

Rowdy and I watched porn together last night.  Because Rowdy is a gentle soul in ways I am not, I tend to watch hardcore kinky porn and he tends to watch porn of real couples having sweet lovey sex.  We were watching his porn.

The woman in the video had sex the way I do.  When she was on top, she didn't pump her whole body up and down, she just moved her hips rhythmically.  And she didn't stay on top forever going poundpoundpound like a champ; she did it for a few minutes and then switched positions.  I think that's the first time I've seen a woman in porn do that.

The part that blew my mind: the guy in the video was way into that.  And Rowdy was way into that. And it was in porn, which gave it the official stamp of People Think This Is A Sexy Thing.  I was astonished, because I always thought wiggling my hips on top meant I was incompetent at sex.  I thought you were supposed to bounce full-length on a guy until he came, and since my thigh muscles can't do that, I thought I was too weak to do me-on-top sex correctly.  It was amazing to see people accepting a less athletic method as a totally valid, hot way to have sex.  Hell, it was amazing just to find out that I wasn't the only person on Earth who has sex that way.

It was also amazing, although it probably shouldn't have been, to voice these thoughts to Rowdy and have him reply basically "you think there's a wrong way to ride my dick? and you've been doing it less because of this?" *facepalm* (He was more polite than that.)  A few minutes later, we were having delightful sex with considerably better understanding of each other.



The point of this story is not "if you see something in porn then it's good sex."  Oh god no.  The point is that it's easy-- especially in areas as private and emotionally loaded as sex--to have a totally skewed idea of what everyone else is doing, and to try to conform to that skewed idea.  (Not that conformity is a great thing.  But being able to make realistic comparisons to others, then decide whether you want to emulate them or not, is still useful.)




And I'm probably going to make a whole post about this so I won't belabor the point right now, but this is why feminists care about media and memes that normalize rape.  (Or that stigmatize the words "rape" and "rapist," but enthusiastically normalize the act of forcing sex on people, as long as you don't call it that.)  Because it tells people that rape  is normal, that it's a popular and accepted way to express romance and/or dominance, and we can't assume that everyone absorbing this culture knows "of course that's not how it really works."



It's easy to look around your little corner of the world, and the bits of patchy evidence you get from other places, and think that you know how the world is.  It's easy to conclude on the most threadbare evidence that you're hideously abnormal or that the suffering you're enduring or causing is normal.  The ultimate solution to this is to transcend "normal" and replace it with "good."  But the proximate solution is to be conscious and careful of what we normalize.

Being imperfect is normal.  Being miserable is not.  Being a predator is not.  As long as "normal" is a thing that people care about, we need to get this news out.

Cosmocking: January '13!

[Wow, already? Is it just me or is this one really early?  I know Cosmo always runs a couple weeks ahead of the title date, but this seems extra soon.  Maybe they're trying to get their ads out in time for the shopping season.]

Purple cover!  Carly Rae Jepson!  "Call Me Maybe" written next to her head in case you've already forgotten who Carly Rae Jepson is!  "Epic Sex!"  Wow, so that's how long it takes a meme to trickle down from World of Warcraft to Cosmopolitan!

I joined a social bowling team--mostly for the cheap beer and the girls--and this one guy was super-competitive. He'd make fun of the girls, in a mean way, whenever their balls went in the gutter. One day while he was in the bathroom, I replaced his ball with an exact replica that was twice as heavy.  When he came back, all his shots went into the gutter.

Okay, I guess we can add "bowling balls" to the increasingly enormous list of commonplace subjects Cosmo is not good at lying about.  (Hint: Adult sizes range from 10 to 16 pounds.)

[Woman finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her using hookup websites, which for some reason he's paying for.] Luckily, I also happened to see that his credit-card number was saved in his account info on one of those sites. So, to get back at him, I upgraded his monthly membership to the most expensive plan, the Platinum Membership.  Then I dumped him.

•Bowling balls

•Identity theft law

He texted: "Hey, what are you doing?"  He means: If he doesn't follow up with an invite, he's just checking to see if you're available. This is a text guys use to keep you interested without expending time or energy. 

He texted: "Out at a party; I'll see you later."  He means: He has no real intention of seeing you later, and if he does, it'll be on his terms only.

Aaaand suddenly Cosmo is the mean girl in high school trying to break up relationships by telling both partners, "Oh my god, did you hear what Jesse is saying about you behind your back?  I'm only telling you this because I care about you and I think you ought to know..."

For shame, Cosmo.  Even if he dumps me, he'll never ask you to prom.  You're just not his type.

Cerebral dirty talk (say he's "too big to fail" and watch his "NASDAQ" skyrocket)

Oh baby.  Don't you want to diversify that big, aggressive portfolio with my liquid assets?  Tickle my small-caps, and I'll lick your FDIC.  I'll never short-sell you as long as you can handle my back-end load.

Take your love to an epic level [...] upgrade your love.

I can't do justice to it in quotes, but this is a whole article about how the hot new love is "epic love," and you are currently not having epic love and you must have epic love. The whole thing is written like a fashion piece--here's how to style your emotions like the stars, just in time for the holiday season!  (I'm not kidding, they have celebrity photographs modeling appropriately epic love.) You don't want to be the last one on the block still in regular love!

"Honey, we're loving wrong.  It's no good.  We have to love harder.  The magazine said so.  I'd say we need to love... about twenty percent harder."

Q: I am traditional and won't have sex until things are really serious. How do I handle the third (or fourth or fifth) date and let him know that even though I'm really attracted to him, I'm not there yet? 

A: Drop not-so-subtle hints, and avoid situations that'll make him think sex is imminent. [...]  Or just come out and say, "I'm pretty traditional when it comes to waiting to have sex."  Now, it's very likely that initially he'll think he'll be able to turn you into a sex fiend by date three--it's that kind of bravado that allows men to charge into battle during war and approach women in bars during happy hour--which is why you then need to back up your words with action.  Or really, a lack of action.  Cut off make-out sessions at a point when most of your clothes are still on so that things never come to a head, so to speak, and so that it doesn't seem like you're torturing him just for fun.

Okay, this shit is normalizing rape.  Quietly.  It's just gently implying that if you get in too sexy a situation, well, your wishes regarding when to have sex might not get respected.  Because guys have a lot of bravado and all.  Things might come to a head, so to speak.

Yeah, they're kinda just referring to her getting horny and agreeing to sex before she planned to, but... they're also kinda not.  They're telling her to expect guys to try to violate her boundaries, and not even in a "if you date a bad guy and don't spot the warning signs" way--in a "every guy does this, you'll just have to live with it" way.  Like it's just another wacky part of the dating game to keep your date from pushing you into sex.

In a weird way, this upsets me more than when Cosmo publishes generic "don't go outdoors without a male escort" rape-prevention advice.  Because even though that's misogynistic and victim-blamey, at least it admits that what they're preventing is rape.  Here, it's just... you know, sex you didn't plan to have.  And that's normal. Fuck, Cosmo.

Q: On a first date, I'll always do the wallet grab, even though I'd be turned off if he wanted me to pay.  Do guys know it's an act? 

A: Yes... but that doesn't mean you should stop doing it. [...] There is a trick to doing the wallet grab without giving him the wrong idea that you actually want to split the bill.  [...] Let him make the first move for his wallet. When he does, reach for yours, and silently continue going through the motions of paying until he stops you.

Every time people tell me that explicit communication between partners seems like it would be awkward or not spontaneous, I'm linking them to this quote.  I'll show you awkward and non-spontaneous.

Also, just throw in half, cheapskate.  The rule is halfsies on the first date, alternate on subsequent dates, pay proportionate to your incomes in a long-term relationship.  I'm sorry if this impedes your dinner-check-related arousal, but hey, my rule's better because it also works for gay people and people who aren't sexists.

I Fell for a Woman--While I Was Engaged to a Man

To end things on a not-completely-terrible note, hey, Cosmo published an article by a bisexual woman!  So that's progress I guess.  It's all about her cheating on her partner with a partner of the opposite gender, so not amazing progress, but I, mean, they're trying here.

Sex Menu.

[For those who missed it: I haven't been not-writing, I've been writing elsewhere!  Check out my post at Captain Awkward: Pretty Should Be Optional!]


So, I don't really know how to open this except to say: I made a sex menu!

Check it out here!
(if the font looks terrible, you probably need to zoom in farther.)

There's a reason, though, a reason going beyond "I liked writing all the funny captions."

It's because I'm not good at thinking of things on the spot.  There's all kinds of things I like in bed (as you can see...), but when the conversation comes down to "so, what do you want to do tonight?", I have a terrible habit of answering "Um, sex?"  Some horrible combination of shyness and choice-paralysis comes over me and I literally forget what kinks I have.  It's like holding a pen and staring at a blank page--the endlessness of the possibilities can easily slip from exciting to overwhelming.

This has led to me tragically having unadorned missionary intercourse on far too many occasions.

So I made a menu.  It's dorky--it might be reaching new theoretical limits of dorkiness--but it's also a really nice tool for communication.  It lays out the things we know work for us and it gives us a starting point to think of things that aren't on the menu.  It frees us from the daunting blank page.

I don't know if I can really end this post with "make one for yourself!", because your relationship probably has to work a very specific way for this to be awesome instead of hilariously awkward.  But I will end it with... getting away from the blank page, however you do that, is a very very good thing for keeping sex pervy.



[EDIT: Some people report trouble getting Google Docs to open.  Here's an alternate link to the same file on Dropbox.]

Cosmocking! December '12!

It's that time again!  Light blue cover!  Taylor Swift!  Wait, that's supposed to be Taylor Swift?!  I know what Taylor Swift looks like!  She doesn't look a damn thing like that!  Also they made one side of her neck longer than the other, and her left collarbone seems to reach well past the midpoint of her chest!  I never thought I'd have to critique the anatomy in a photograph!  "Late Night Sex!" If Cosmo runs headlines on "Early Morning Sex" and "Mid-Morning Sex" and "Elevensies Sex" and so forth, they could get a whole year's worth of content out of this!

(Cosmo has bizarre neck errors on almost every cover.  Apparently they always use the same person for retouching, and this person believes that human heads are set on an infinitely mobile ball-joint located on the front of a foot-long neck.  If we can't convince Cosmo to stop selling crude gender stereotypes as "science" and joyless performance as "sexy," maybe we can at least explain to them how spines work.)

(TW: ED) So You Ate a Cupcake? Fast Moves to Burn It Off!

And then there's this headline.  I just... this is really heinously irresponsible.  I know people get all argumentative about whether beauty standards promote eating disorders, but how is this headline about anything but eating-disorder behaviors?

"So you ate a cupcake?  Great!  That will contribute to the nutrients your body needs each day for healthy functioning!  Plus they're yummy!  On a totally unrelated note, moderate exercise can make you feel good and increase your physical abilities, but really shouldn't be connected to feelings of guilt for enjoying food!"

I'd just started dating this awesome girl who didn't eat meat, so I decided to take her to a sushi restaurant. She ordered a tuna roll and seemed into the place... until the chef came out with a live tuna and chopped its head off at our table. My date was horrified as the beheadings continued at tables around us."

A weirdly racist "true embarrassing story," from a writer who clearly doesn't know how big tuna are.    For reference, here's a video (warning: NOT A PRETTY SIGHT) of someone beheading a (dead) actual tuna.  That would make one hell of a tableside presentation...

Worst Date Ever! He Was Bisexual... With a Girlfriend!

Okay, so the "girlfriend" thing is legitimately terrible, since he was cheating on her.  But the biphobia here is really gross:

We headed to a wine bar, where, over a glass of merlot, my date matter-of-factly informed me that he also hooks up with men. I consider myself pretty open-minded, so that bit of info itself didn't bother me--it was his timing.  At this point in the night, we were supposed to be all flirty and into each other.  I figured he'd mistakenly thought it would impress me, so I politely laid it out for him: "I understand that a guy can picture a girl he's dating making out with one of her girlfriends and get turned on by that. But for me personally, picturing a guy I'm dating going at it with his male bud is not a turn-on." My date seemed confused.

I, too, seem confused.  A guy comes out to you, and your response is, and I'm trying to work this out here: "I'm like totally not biphobic, but this was Designated Flirting Time in my head, so clearly every sentence he said was supposed to turn me on, and men having sex with each other doesn't turn me on, so I'm totally justified in framing his sexuality as EWW MANSEX LOL AMIRIGHT LADIES."

Meanwhile, as if on cue, a man who'd been sitting near us at the bar turned toward my date to ask him a question. My date, without hesitation, flirted back.

Come ON.  What kind of fucking sitcom logic is this?

Although if you view it not as "and then he did gross bisexual stuff right in front of me, OMG" thing, but as the other man overhearing that bullshit and heroically rescuing him from his biphobic date, that's kind of sweet actually.

The High-Maintenance BFF: Even the best of friends can come with baggage. 

"We went on vacation together, and on the first morning, she broke her leg jumping on the hotel bed (don't even ask). I ended up pushing her in a wheelchair all over Paris. At times, I'd be so exhausted that I'd end up crying at night. But I didn't want to make her feel worse, so I stayed quiet."

Wow, what a jerk, inconveniencing her friend by, um, not walking on a broken leg! Talk about inconsiderate!

Does Your Coworker Want to Sleep With You?

If he writes something like the note on the right, it's 99.99999 percent likely that he's already pictured you in the nude.

Yeah, I... I don't even know anymore.

You're on a second date with a guy when he asks about your previous relationship. You say: 

A. "He deserves to be in jail. Know a good lawyer?" 

B. "You would love him. We should all go out!" 

C. "Solid guy. We just weren't good together."

If you answer A (or B), the quiz reports you aren't over your ex.  C means you're over him.  Now, I can sort of see the logic here, but... shouldn't the actual events of your previous relationship have some bearing on this?

Not every "he deserves to be in jail" is poorly sublimated grieving, destined to turn to "solid guy" once you get ahold of your tempestuous lady-emotions.  Sometimes it's because dude committed a bunch of crimes.