Search Term... Sightseeing Journey! Part II.

pdrvocracy
pervocrasy
peervocracy
perrvocracy
pervocracry
perovocrasy
I always told myself that I'd know I'd made it when this happened. Being known is great, but being known so well that you get misspelled... that's the big time, baby.

twisty faster is really a guy
My first instinct is to reply with "well, that explains a lot, ho ho," but really, I'm rather sick of people insulting women by calling them men. It's anti-feminist, anti-man, anti-trans, anti-butch... it's just anti too many things. Quit it.

cfnm what do women think
We think it's fundamentally a male fetish, and it's based more on thinking that you're arousing women than on actually arousing them. It's a form of femdom, and nothing wrong with that, but it's a form of femdom that seems to be entirely invented and propagated by the male submissives--I never hear actual female dominants enthuse about it.

"how do you learn to fuck"
On-the-job training.

"i want to have a baby" craigslist
Oh god no. Don't do this. Please. I'm begging you.

"it tastes like boy"
...try pork chops?

24 hour forced vibrator torture
See, you really don't want this. You want, like, 1 hour forced vibrator torture, and after that it'll really start getting old and you'll want to go to the bathroom and have a drink of water and take a nap.

bbw ideal waist to hip ratio
Well, you can't have both, unless she's eight feet tall.

beta male used by women
Dude, if I say "drive me to work and I'll be your girlfriend," I'm using you. If I just say "dude, I'm in a really tight spot, could you please give me a ride to work?", everything you project onto that is your own problem.

can you pick up a hairy guini pig by the hair?
NO! JESUS, NO! That poor thing! If you want to pick up any kind of guinea pig, put one hand under its butt and one hand under its front legs! Please!

"can you get pregnant if he cums in your mouth and you put it in your vagina"
Probably not, fortunately. But you're making me seriously rethink my opinion on condoms for blowjobs.

cfnm forced to jack off
Oh sure, and next I'll throw you in the briar patch.

doctors comments on making a child smell poop
What? No! Is this like some kind of bizarre potty training method? You rub his nose in it? I'm no doctor, but you're not even supposed to do that with dogs.

how to fuck a bitch on first date
It'll help tremendously if she feels safe with you, like she really knows you respect her as a person, you fucking asshole.

polyamorous "can't get laid"
Try starting with just one person, and working up from there.

sexy earring put on vagina
If I had a camera right now I'd humor this person. They're just that awesome.

ugly desperate women in montana who want to get laid
Totally exhausted the "attractive confident women in Montana" options, huh?

what do women fantasize about
The same exact things, all 3 billion of us.

why are people uncomfortable with rape
...

There are some questions where if you don't know the answer already, you might not be able to learn it.

why do men like to feel titties
This too, really.

eurosabra holly laid
Not bloody likely, buddy.

Confessional.

Bless me, sex-positivity, for I have sinned.

I have practiced monogamy.

I have nodded approvingly while secretly being bored to tears by "feminist porn" from the "female erotic perspective," then gone home to beat off to Extreme Anal Insertions 5.

I have worshipped the Judeo-Christian God.

I have gotten ever-loving sick of the word "problematic" as a completely generic sensitive-sounding way to say "I don't like this, or at least feel like I shouldn't like this, but can't be bothered to make an actual judgement about it."

I have been overemotional about casual sex and underemotional about committed sex.

I have given misogynist entertainment a pass just because it was really frickin' funny.

I have consented to sex that I wasn't really into, to maintain a relationship or follow through on a promise or frankly just to humor him; I have put my partners into the same position themselves.

I have had my own consent violated and let it slide because it wasn't like a super big deal, really.

I have groped.

I have felt crappy about masturbating, because a really hot chick would be getting laid right now, and no, it's not "sex with yourself," it's just stupid old masturbation.

I have lied about my "number," in both directions.

I have been a party to cheating.

I have yearned for a tiny blonde big-titted body.

I have given blowjobs without condoms and lady-blowjobs without dental dams, and wondered, seriously, does anyone really use dental dams?

I have voted Republican.

I have had sex completely shitfaced drunk and/or high.

I have not insisted on foreplay, or on my own orgasm, or on stimulation of my own fetishes and sensitive places.

I have been creepy.

I have patronized the sex shop that's 5% cheaper, rather than the one that's women-owned and well-lit and friendly and destigmatizing and based on sound feminist principles.

I have considered penis/strapon-in-vagina/anus intercourse the "real thing" and everything else "just messing around."

I have worn makeup and girly-ass clothes and high-heel shoes, not because they were "really me" but because I figured my appearance needed all the help it could get.

I have lived caught between the raging storm of emotions and desires within me and the fucked-up complicated world outside me, and I have found one simple set of beliefs--any one simple set of beliefs--utterly inadequate to guide my confused, defiant, frivolous, inconsistent, selfish, independent, practical, irrational, cynical, fallible, human life. When I have the luxury to pontificate about it I may be a good sex-positive feminist, but when I go out and live my life I am not sex-positive nor sex-negative, but sex-fucked-up in all kinds of crazy ways.



I shall say three Hail Susie Brights and an Our Betty Dodson.

The Fear Factor.

One reason women sometimes appear to have lower sex drives than men--or at least less interest in casual sex: fear. Oh, not that we're scampering around terrified of men, but for both cultural and real-world reasons, a woman agreeing to casual sex does have to consider some creepy factors. You're going to be alone with this person with your clothes off, and likely you'll even fall asleep in their presence. If they turn out to be a bad person, there's a lot of things they could do to ruin your day.

Of course men could say the same thing, but this is where the cultural part comes in. A man sexually desiring a woman often has overtones of threat in our culture. From street harassment to horror films to PUAs, women learn that someone desiring you doesn't mean they're going to be nice to you. Whereas female desire for men is almost universally seen as flattering. You can even see this in extreme cases--read the comments on any news story about a woman sexually abusing a man or boy, and a good portion of them will be calling the victim a lucky bastard.

As a result, women tend to go on the defensive. It's not our sex drive that's weaker but our trust. We learn to reject men, not because we don't want them, but because we aren't sure that their advances are the friendly kind. Even when I'm horny as hell, I can't turn off the creep-dar, and when a guy is physically attractive to me but sets off the creep-dar in any way, I can't sleep with him. I know this is unfair to guys who aren't creeps, but don't blame women--blame creepy men. They're the ones poisoning the lady-well.

When I decide whether to go home with a new guy, we're both thinking about whether we want to fuck each other, but only I'm thinking about whether or not he'll stop when I say "no."

Coming Clean.

I guess this is as good a time as any to say it. I am not Holly Pervocracy. She's a character I made up. I'm a man. My real name is Chris, I'm 31 years old, and this has gotten way out of hand.

Way back in 2007, I got the idea to write an erotica blog. I looked around at what was out there, and found that the ones written by women were a lot more popular and well-regarded. Writing about sex as a man, I feared I would have come off as just a creepy horndog; but a woman who's loudly and lustily perverted, everyone wants to see that. Besides, creating a character gave me a level of safety--both on a practical level, by preserving my anonymity, and emotionally, by giving me the freedom to tell myself "it's not me saying this, it's just Holly."

Holly changed as my interests did; she started out as a relatively one-note porn character, but as I burned off the initial steam I delved into more genres, weaving relationship dramas in her little world, using her to explore BDSM and fetishes, and more recently using her as my political and philosophical mouthpiece.

I don't know if I can say "the character took on a life of her own," because in many ways, she took on my life. The more details I added about her mundane life, the more I borrowed from my own. I really did work as an EMT when I was younger; I really did just move across the country and visit Germany. Hell, most of the time Holly got laid was when I was getting laid.

More insidiously, Holly changed my life. Because of her, I found myself in situations I'd never have gotten into on my own--at a BDSM party, or talking a friend into sending me naked pictures to use as "Holly", or using a goddamn epilator on my junk. Being Holly expanded my horizons, it got me laid, and it got me to try just about everything short of tampons.

It's funny, but I don't feel nearly as comfortable talking about my own sex life when it's real. I suppose now that I've outed myself I'll do that from time to time. For now, I'll just say that I'm bisexual, I mostly date women, and I'm not seeing anyone right now.

I'll keep the blog going and I think I'll keep Holly around. I've gotten used to talking through her, and frankly, I kinda got to like her. But I had to get this off my chest. I'm sorry if anyone was hurt by this deception; I really love and appreciate my my readers even when I'm having Holly chew them out, and I hope you'll stick around.

Even if I am only a man.

Epilator.

On the advice of a reader, I got an epilator. The good part is that it makes me totally, amazingly smooth without stubble, in a way shaving never did. The bad part is that it hurts like a red-hot cheese grater dipped in acid. I can only stand to use it for a minute or two before taking a Pain Break. This is worse than some minor surgeries. This is worse than the dentist.

But if it's easier in the future (I've never even waxed, so I'm attacking totally virgin follicles here), and it makes me super-smooth all the time, that's worth it. I really love the feeling of smooth. Even if I'm not totally keen on the feeling of AUGH IT BURNS.

Home!

I'm back in Mass! In my very own apartment!

NAKED TIME!

Going Home.

Very early tomorrow morning, I get on a plane for Boston. (Well, actually I get on a plane for Brussels, and then I get on a plane for London, and then I pace around the airport in London for five hours, and then I get on a plane for Boston. I don't understand why it's cheaper for the airline to fly me further and on more flights, but I'm no airplanologist.)

I have to admit, I'm looking forward to it. It's been fun here and I'm awfully lucky to be able to just run off to Europe like this, but I'm also lucky to live in a place where I have a car and time to myself and I can speak the language. It's been cool though. Europe is like going to another planet and finding a civilization parallel to Earth's, where everything kind of looks the same but everything's kind of different. Also everyone speaks Martian. And there's culture and stuff (although not that much in Hamburg because most of the culture got blasted to shards in WWII), and a lot of nice places to just walk around or hang out in.

I can hardly say "well, back to the same old boring routine," when I've been in Massachusetts less time than I've been in Germany. Back to trying to find a routine, really.

The Beta Male.

NOTE TO PEOPLE READING THIS POST:
1) Yes, it's sarcastic. The things below?  Not actually true. I thought this was apparent to anyone who had spent time on Earth.
2) If you post a bitter trolly comment, I won't let it through moderation unless I have a funny comeback.
3) Go out and make some friends. You might or might not get laid. Either way you'll be happier and know more about how humans actually work.
-Holly Pervocracy, 5/1/2012


There is a frighteningly large population of heterosexual men for whom not getting laid has become a lifestyle and an identity. They're "love shy," they're "beta males," they're "average frustrated chumps," they're "incel," they're "nice guys."

These are the tenets of their belief system:

* The word "woman" refers exclusively to slender, outgoing, fashionable, conventionally beautiful heterosexual white women under 30 who aren't too slutty. Other types of woman aren't undesirable so much as nonexistent.

*With this extreme restriction on female existence, there are far fewer women than there are men, so competition is fierce. Only the rare lucky or skilled man is able to get a woman.

*Women are not, inherently, attracted to men. A woman would certainly never pursue a man or initiate contact with him; at best she accepts applicants and judges them harshly.

*Women get an enormous thrill out of rejecting men. It's like having an orgasm while winning an Oscar and eating chocolate-covered bacon. God it's good. When a man submits his Application To Get Laid to a woman, she looks for any excuse to reject him, because she's just itching for that thrill. A woman's ideal evening is rejecting fifteen men and going home alone, and it's up to a man's luck or skill to break that streak.

*Friendship with a woman is an extremely drawn-out form of rejection, in which every time you meet and she doesn't fuck you is its own little mini-rejection. The only reason some men remain friends with women is that they continue to hold out foolish hope.

*"I love women!" Women are like sports cars you can stick your dick into. They're good to be seen with, good to use privately, and just plain fun to own. Of course these guys "love women"--who wouldn't love an awesome toy like that?

*Some men are alpha males, and everyone likes them and they can get lots of women while acting like total assholes and it's no fair. These men are chosen by random lottery at birth and did nothing to deserve their status.

*The vast majority of men are beta males, and can never ever have sex because the alphas are taking all of the women. Women meet in secret to trade lists of known beta males; this is why a totally unfamiliar man can walk into a totally new venue and all the women will just know they're supposed to ignore him. It's certainly not anything he does.

*As women are not attracted to men, a man's attempts to be traditionally "attractive"--being well-groomed, smelling good, appearing healthy and active, dressing presentably, acting good-natured and sociable--are completely pointless and no effort whatsoever should be made in these areas.

*Talking to women is a totally different skill than just talking to people, which is how someone can have an education and a job and not be a hermit and yet truthfully say he can't talk to women.

*The only hope for a beta male is an intensive course of schooling that will enable him to mimic the stereotyped behavior patterns of the alpha. These behaviors are so diverse and bizarre they merit their own post, or series of posts, or series of posts that I promise to do and then forget about because there was a shiny thing.



Fun fact: wolves in nature do not have "alpha/beta/omega" social systems! This only occurs when unrelated individuals are confined together in a way that never happens in the real world. Wolf packs are actually more like nuclear family units, in which the younger males don't mate because the females are their mother and sisters, not because they're "betas." When the males get older they'll go off on their own and a lot of them will find females and mate.

And presumably the ones who don't spend a lot of time hanging out and telling each other that it's not their fault, it's just those damn bitches.

Rights vs. Right.

There seems to be a lot of confusion in Internet arguments between things you have a right to do, and things you ought to do. It may be true that your right to swing your fist ends at my face--but come on, do you really want to be the kind of fucknut who walks around swinging his fist everywhere?

In other words, our only obligation is to avoid harming others' person or property, but that alone doesn't make you a good person. You do that bare minimum and I won't harm your person or property--but I won't like you. Just because someone is within their rights doesn't mean I have to approve or shut up.

I was reading a discussion about a woman with Nazi tattoos, and one of the moderators of the forum said:

If someone is a sexist, racist, every other -ist they are still a person and especially if these are only the person's THOUGHTS and the person isn't actually acting on them (ie raping and attacking people because they are female, or black, or white, etc). It's perfectly legal for her to believe in her white supremacist crap. As much as I disagree with her beliefs (ie IF they even are her beliefs since none of us actually know her) I'm still not going to put her down.

What the hell is that crap? Because something is legal, you aren't allowed to even say anything bad about it? Yes, she's still a person, but she's a really bad person. I agree that the woman shouldn't be arrested or anything for being an asshole, but you're allowed to--in fact I think you should--freaking talk bad about her, Jesus.



In a free society, you have the right to be a tremendous jerk. It's merely my strong recommendation that you do not exercise this right.

Hairy.

Since I left the US, I haven't shaved anything. I didn't bother bringing razors, and I didn't bother getting them here. I'm not getting laid anyway, and while I usually shave just for comfort, I figured I'd try a brief experiment.

(I would post photos, but my camera died! The actual image sensor is busted, there's no saving it. Woe.)

The funny thing is that all I've learned is that I'm not hairy at all. My body hair gets long pretty fast, but it's just not dense; my hairy crotch looks less like fur and more like... well, a shaved crotch, if you're more than a couple feet away. The fur is pale and sparse. And you'd only know my legs and armpits were unshaved if you actually felt them; I can't even see the hair.

So if shaving makes me look prepubescent, well, shit, I was never going to hit puberty.

Then again, if shaving makes me feminine, I guess I'm already pretty feminine naturally. It's one of those feedback-effect things where most women are naturally less hairy than most men, so the beauty standard becomes that women should have no hair at all, lest they be even slightly masculine and thereby hideous.

But I'm still going to shave when I get home, because what shaving really does is make me soft. It makes it possible to glide a hand up the whole length of my leg without a hitch, to stroke my pussy and find it velvety and smooth. It means when I fuck a man who shaves, we can glide together, skin on skin. Shaving is ultimately not a vanity but a tactile luxury, a way for my skin to feel nicer and to feel more.


Also I itch pretty bad right now.

Fat Acceptance A La Carte.

I've mentioned the fat acceptance movement in passing many times--I'm kinda fat, they say nice things about people like me, sounds great--but I don't think I've ever really dedicated a post to it. There's some things they say that I agree with, and some I don't.

There is no excuse to be uncivil or discriminatory against someone because they are fat.
Completely, 100% agree, and the main reason I read Shapely Prose. The level of schoolyard bullying that fat people are subject to, from grown adults who should seriously know better, is insane. And the media is fully in the "ha ha, fatty" dogpile--when they're not leading it. Professional news sources that bite their nails about using the proper "-American" for every other group post articles about obesity with hilarious "a rapidly expanding problem" puns and undisguised disgust. Even if you disagree with every other thing on this list, even if you think every fat person can and should diet down to a BMI of 20, at least don't be a dick.

Fat people are people and deserve respect, ditto fat people who don't diet or exercise, ditto really super-fat people, et cetera.

Fat hatred is a feminist issue.
Yes. Women are held to far more stringent skinniness standards and subject to far more shit when they don't meet them. Hell, women who aren't even fat are still expected to be obsessed with their weight! And it's all because of the idea that a woman's attractiveness to men is her worth, because what else are broads good for?

The BMI standards are screwed up.
Reserved agree. BMI itself is just a way of generating a number, but the "25 is overweight, 30 is obese" rule is too simplified and too stringent. The ideal weight is way too low for tall people--6' and 185 is considered overweight!--and for muscular people. That said, when I'm 5'1" and *cough* pounds and not a champion bodybuilder, the fact that my BMI is over 30 is a pretty good indicator that I really am fat. BMI is screwy, but that doesn't mean that overweight simply doesn't exist. You can't draw the "this is okay, this is too fat" line with a single equation for everyone--but wide and fuzzy though it may be, there is a line.

Weight loss shouldn't be a moral issue.
Completely agree. Talk about good and bad foods, about being sinful or naughty when you eat, about how exercise is a virtue and cake a vice, is bullshit and makes weight loss way too much of a crazy-making emotional issue. (As does the idea that virtuous food has to taste bad--I realize that I've dropped out of a lot of diets because they demanded I eat bland health foods or horrible food replacement substances. I would rather eat smaller amounts of delicious food.) Nor is being fat a sign that you've committed the Sin of Gluttony--or the related Sin of Needing Healthcare--and should be subject to guilt and shame.

Weight loss isn't easy.
Completely agree. Saying "calories in, calories out, it's simple!" ignores the fact that some people's bodies really screw them over with a tremendous hunger for calories in and a tremendous miserliness about letting calories out. It'll work at extremes, if you starve yourself and run all day you'll lose weight, but you'll also hate your life and possibly end up in the hospital. Figuring out a lifestyle that leads to a healthy rate of loss, doesn't make you intolerably uncomfortable, and that you can maintain for years--not simple.

And saying "just stop eating so many donuts"--dude, you have no idea how few donuts (or cake, or cheeseburgers, or bacon, or whatever) I eat. Like most fat people, I have a problem with chronically eating a little more ordinary food than I burn, not with indulging myself with super-rich reward foods all the time.

Weight loss is impossible.
This is where I start disagreeing. It seems to be an article of faith in the fat acceptance community that it's not possible to lose weight, that your set point is genetically coded and that practically no one loses weight and keeps it off. But I personally know people who've done just that. I think most people do.

Saying "diets don't work" also smacks of an excuse, when not-dieting ought to be, in a fat acceptance framework, something that requires no excuse.

Eating disorders are a serious risk of weight loss attempts.
No. Eating disorders are a risk of self-hating and perfectionist attempts at weight loss, and of pressuring children or teens to lose weight before they're fully developed. But I don't think that an emotionally stable adult following a reasonable diet and exercise plan is likely to accidentally slip into anorexia or bulimia.

Being fat isn't unhealthy.
This is the big one. And I disagree. I agree that being a little fat isn't a big deal and the research is inconclusive, but I think that significant fat--even the amount I have--can lead to health problems. I don't think I'm guaranteed to get diabetes and a heart attack at fifty, but I'm convinced it's a higher risk than if I were at my ideal weight.

And I think the fat acceptance movement really drops the ball when it comes to people who are at very high weights. There's a lot of people out there claiming that "health at every size" encompasses literally every size, and it really doesn't. In my job I saw people who were very overweight and had severe joint, cardiovascular, and blood-sugar problems at very young ages.

It shouldn't matter on the decent-person level, there is no weight that makes a person fair game for mockery, and a 200-pound person going "well, at least I'm not one of those 400-pound freaks" is being a jerk. But physically it does matter how fat you are.

Fat isn't a disease.
I wish fat was treated like a disease. No one hates people with diseases or rubs their nose in how unsexy the disease makes them. Very few people yell "sicky!" at coughing strangers or write articles on how the flu epidemic is all the fault of those fucking stupid flu sufferers who were too lazy to wash their damn hands. Doctors try to help people with diseases, they don't resignedly tsk at them to "be less sick and you wouldn't have all these problems." It's not a good idea to go around with an untreated (noncontagious) disease, but it's not a selfish or antisocial thing to do.

There's no good reason to lose weight.
Disagree. I know that even within the relatively modest weight fluctuations I've been through, I just felt worse at 190 pounds than I do at 170. I tired out faster and I was physically uncomfortable. I like to sleep on my stomach and that's hard to do with a big belly; I like to hike and that's hard to do with extra weight. The sex was worse and--accursed Society and all that--I felt embarrassed of my body more often.

These are all valid reasons, but there's a bigger one: I want to. I want to do something with my body and it's my decision. End of discussion.

Elbe / Hookup Culture.

Lovely day today. Dad and I walked out on a dike by the Elbe, still in the city of Hamburg but surrounded by farmland on one side and tall reeds on the other. A big herd of sheep was grazing on the dike, with adorable little lambs frisking about.

We had lunch by the entrance to Hamburg's port, watching the big ships come in. An announcer at the little tourist-trap house announced, very importantly, the name and nationality of every ship that came in and played the appropriate national anthem each time.



And the link of the day is Tiger Beatdown, on hookup culture. The gist is that the real question isn't "is casual sex wrong?" but "how can casual sex be done right?" Hookups are fun, but hookups used as a pretext for a screwjob suck.

Money quote: Not just “sex” or “not sex,” when you’ve heard that “sex” consist of “giving a guy who refuses to be your boyfriend a million blow jobs that are never reciprocated.”

It's not really that hard to have non-screwjob casual sex. Just be... friendly. Be generous in bed like you'd be generous with a friend, and be nice to them the way you'd be nice to a friend. Ask what they're into and (within your own comfort zone etc.) do it for them. Unless they explicitly ask you not to, do your damnedest to give them an orgasm. Be honest before and after about the relationship potential you are or aren't considering. If they turn out to be expecting more than you were afterwards, let them down explicitly and politely; if it turns out you feel like seeing more of them, discuss it with them once and then let it go if it's clear they don't feel the same way.



Public service announcement for the guys: you all should start a little cooperative project where whenever you have casual sex, you try really hard to leave your partner happy with the experience. I'm surprised how many guys put a lot of effort into picking up chicks, then put no effort at all into pleasing the ones they succeeded with--even making it a point of pride to burn bridges. Every guy who turns into a clingy creeper or a callous douchebag the instant he comes is drastically reducing the number of women who will be up for casual sex in the future.

There's no point complaining that women won't sleep with you if you don't make the ones who do glad that they did.

Everything's gotta be good or bad for you these days.

iPhone app measures calories burned during sex

I dunno, man. I don't have sex to burn calories. I eat calories so I'll have the energy to have sex.

Also he seems pretty skinny in the photo, so while he might benefit from strength or cardio, he really doesn't have a desperate need to burn more calories.

Also this silly thing obviously wouldn't be very accurate and I'm taking it way too seriously. I guess I'm just annoyed by the idea that everything you do in your life has to be in service of your health and thereby worth. Some things are just ways to enjoy being alive, you know? It's like eating a delicious salad with really crisp fresh vegetables, then having some jerk come up and go "Good for you, that's so healthy!"




I've been reading Kate Harding's blog a lot recently, and while I don't agree with everything she says (she rejects deliberate weight loss entirely and has no problem with indefinite weight gain; I think weight loss is a valid--but not mandatory--choice and gaining weight is more concerning than just being stably fat), I like her and the community on that blog. In a world where I'm constantly being told I'm both the victim and perpetrator of a horrible epidemic, it's a place to hear that I'm really okay.

Man, I'm like a hippie vampire. I don't have nearly the niceness or the loopiness to be "accepting" of everyone, I just like to hang out with hippies so they'll accept me. It's terrible.

Butt Sex Thoughts.

Okay. Too many dour, thinky, unsexy entries. Let's talk assfucking. Let's even do it with bullet points. On second thought, let's use asterisks.

*I have a huge fetish for theoretical assfucking. The only porn site I pay for is Everything Butt and when I read erotica I look for stories with butt. If it's a story with other stuff then anal, I often come just as the characters get to the butt, just thinking about it. I'd say that 90% of the porn I've gotten off to in the last year is anal.

*This fetish doesn't seamlessly translate to reality. I like the idea of being assfucked, but the actual experience? Fun, but kind of awkward and not transcendent. The "oh God I'm getting my specific fetish buttons pushed SO GOOD" feeling doesn't come up the same way it does when I watch anal porn.

*I do get that "specific fetish buttons" feeling more when I'm having my butt fingered or penetrated with relatively unchallenging toys, or just stroked on the outside. I've only had full-on buttsex a single-digit number of times, so maybe I'm just not used to it, or haven't had practice relaxing for it--I think I just get distracted by the physical challenge and the intensity of the sensations.

*I hate it when guys are jerks about anal. If you go around acting like it's the ultimate conquest of a woman, instead of just another way for us to enjoy our time together, of course I'm not going to let you into my butt. Or anywhere else.

*I think the poop issue is way overstated by people who haven't tried it. I've never given myself an enema for sex and yet I've never had any ickiness. Your butt isn't constantly full of poo; poo only appears when it's time to have a bowel movement and you can feel it when that happens. If you don't have an urge to poop right now, you probably don't have any poop within penis-reach.

*My first ever anal experience was with a guy who thought he was fingering my vagina. I liked it just fine and was making happy noises, and he asked "hmm, what is that?" I was embarrassed (and kind of amazed that someone could not know, seriously) and said something along the lines of "think about it, genius," and he caught on. And stopped! The entire rest of the time I dated him he wouldn't touch my butt again. Jerk.

*My butt always feels weird for a while afterwards. Not painful, just... weird.

*I always wanted to pound a guy in the ass. Benny let me play with his butt sometimes, but he was pretty ginger about it; I couldn't let loose and pound. One of these days I want to find a guy who's experienced and gung-ho enough to let me do that.

*I don't think ass sex is going the "furthest" on some imaginary scale-o-sex that begins at holding hands and heads outward from there. It requires more trust and communication than oral or vaginal, it's not a first-date thing for that reason, but I don't think it's somehow the naughtiest pinnacle of all. It's just a fun alternative activity.

*I was once required by my work to go to a lecture on HIV/AIDS that was taught by, of all people, a nun. She went on at some length about the dangers of "rectal sex." Ewww.

*I also hate it when anal porn stories refer to the "colon," "rectum," "bowels," "intestines," anything to do with poop, or anything supposedly humorous like "Hershey Highway." Ass, butt, and anus will do just fine for my erotic vocabulary, thanks.

*I've always secretly thought the "ass-to-ass" scene in Requiem for a Dream is super hot.

So the whole Holocaust thing.

Maybe once a day my dad will point out something to do with the Holocaust. There are small reminders around the city: little plaques on the sidewalk outside buildings Jews used to live in, a memorial wall in a shopping mall built over a demolished Jewish cemetery, a hulking Nazi bunker right next to the fairground. I always get awkwardly quiet at these moments; I don't know what to say.

It's a lot more personal for him; his parents were Holocaust survivors (as were my mother's), and a lot of their siblings and family and friends were killed. My knowledge is third-hand, and sketchy; my father's parents didn't like to talk about their experiences and they died a while ago. I suppose my father knows but it's not information he volunteers. I was 20 before I even knew that Yiddish was his first language.

I'm the first generation of my family to grow up white. My cultural heritage is a factoid, somewhere up there with my blood type on things that people only learn after knowing me a while and never really care about. I've never had anyone insult or attack me for being Jewish or non-jokingly use a slur against me. Although I'm fairly well educated about it, I don't follow the Jewish religion much. I make no special effort to befriend or date other Jews. My Hebrew and Yiddish end at the swear words. I straighten my hair and dye it red.

So I'm uncomfortable talking about the Holocaust because I'm neither an insider who can feel anger or grief, nor an outsider who can offer sympathy and sorrow. This isn't exactly "look what happened to my people," but it certainly isn't "I'm so sorry what happened to your people." Maybe what I'm feeling is that after what my family went through, I should be a Jew. I feel uncomfortably guilty that people so recently would hold on to their faith in the face of death, and I'm giving it up just because it's kind of old-fashioned and inconvenient.

I suppose family guilt is the Jewishest emotion of them all.

Ugly Acceptance.

I've joked about it before, but this time I'm serious: we need an ugly acceptance movement. I'm not really qualified to be the standard-bearer, for obvious reasons, but I see the societal need.

Some principles of this movement:

-There's no such thing as ugly. No one has "ugly molecules" physically in their skin; it's all in the eye of the beholders and beholders vary a lot more than you guessed. All those weird porn sites with 600-pound women, 80-year-old women, hairy women, bodybuilder women, ad nauseum? They exist because someone is paying money for them, and they're not forking out $30/month ($99/6 months, BEST VALUE) just for laughs. So to call a person "ugly" really only means "ugly to me;" it's nothing intrinsic to them. This isn't a value judgement but a philosophical statement; ugliness can never be an intrinsic quality.

-The fact that perceptions of beauty are not evenly distributed among all possible traits does not prove that beauty is objective. Everyone on Earth could agree that Alyson Hannigan is more beautiful than Carrot Top, and she still wouldn't be more beautiful.

-Most people (self included) need to get a serious human-decency adjustment in the way they deal with people who are ugly to them.

-Note from the examples that came to me that ugly-hatred is bound up with a lot of other, less acceptable hatreds: ageism, sizeism, ableism, often racism. Thinking that a person is ugly because they're old is ageist; thinking that they're ugly because they're old and therefore it's okay to be a jerk to them is what ugly acceptance aims to fight.

-Sexism is also an ENORMOUS factor here; the idea that a woman's beauty is her worth is tremendously sexist and tremendously pervasive. A woman's beauty (to you) may be her fuckability (to you), but there's a whole lot women can do besides get fucked. Ugly women are so often treated like less valuable women, without anyone even asking how good they are at baking or hockey or civil engineering.

-No, you don't have to fuck uglies. Really. That's not what it's about. Your sexual choice is absolutely inviolate, a pure example of "management reserves the right to refuse service" no matter how petty or non-PC or silly or cruel your reasoning--I would never tell anyone they had to fuck anyone and certainly not a person they weren't attracted to. You don't have to look at ugly porn either and you don't even have to proclaim sexual attraction for uglies.

-But you can accept people in a lot of non-fucking ways that still matter. Give ugly people an even shot at being your friend, your employee, your political representative, your service professional. Treat ugly people in social situations with respect and uglyblindness. Don't tolerate appearance-based joking or bullying in kids or adults. Don't use "ugly" as an insult, and call out people who rag on the ugliness of people they weren't going to fuck anyway. Don't talk or think about attractiveness as an intrinsic, objective quality; don't participate in the constant rating of everyone's attractiveness.

-Saying "but X is beautiful!" about unpopular physical features misses the point. The point is that maybe it's really not beautiful to certain people, but so what? If they're not screwing or photographing/painting the unbeautiful, these certain people have no right to care.

-As far as media representations: art and marketing both have justifications for featuring statistically-beautiful people more often, and I can accept that. However I cannot accept implications in the media that the statistically-beautiful are better people, or that beauty is a massively important quality in all walks of life.



The language usage here is super-awkward, because unlike with other acceptance movements, I don't recommend anyone self-identify as ugly. There is such a thing as "generally uglier to most people than most people are," (and that's what I meant when I casually said "ugly" above) but it's a fuzzy category, often severely mis-perceived by the subject, and not really a helpful designation.



Ugly acceptance is a tough, tough thing to conceptualize; the distinction between "ugly" and "pretty" enters our consciousness about the same time the distinction between "up" and "down" does, and we come to think of it as just as fundamental. Saying that pretty doesn't exist thus feels, viscerally, as wrong as saying "down" is a matter of opinion. But, you know... ask someone in Australia.

No one's ugly. No one's pretty. Fuck who you like, but everyone's a person. That's ugly acceptance in a nutshell.

Critter-Centric Day.

We went to the zoo and it was awesome. Mostly because:

A) They let you feed the elephants! We brought a big bag of carrots and handed them to the elephants, who had amazing dexterity with their trunks; it's awe-inspiring to have a 5-ton prehistoric-looking beast delicately pluck vegetables out of your hand. They never dropped one.

B) There's a GUINEA PIG TOWN! An entire miniature town with houses and a church and a little watermill and it's all full of zillions of guinea pigs! There's even a separate kindergarten with a little school for the baby guinea pigs! They all go squeeky and run around and you can give them carrots too! It's the best zoo exhibit ever.

And then for dinner we visited my dad's friend whose friend had shot a wild boar (they're a nuisance animal in Germany) and we ate boar stew, which was the most delicious thing ever. It's kind of like pork, but much leaner and with a lot more flavor. Yum.



And the following story was told at dinner: "I vas taking meine kinder to der kindergarten, ja, and vun of de little girl's mama vanted to kiss her goodbye. But de little girl started yellink in front of everyone, 'Nein, mama, I don't vant you kissink me any more, not after you had Papa's peepee in your mouth!'"

GERMAN COSMO!

I have in my hands a copy of German Cosmo! I'm very excited. It's not a translation of the American one, it's locally written content.

I can't do a full Cosmocking today, because it's going to be super time-intensive with translation factored in, and I don't have the time right now. I'll try very hard to get around to it, though.

Observations I can make without understanding much of the text:

-It seems a bit less boy-crazy and sex-obsessed than the US version. There's only one article on sex and one on relationships, and about five on beauty products.

-It's textier than in the US. There's more complete articles, fewer blurbs and factoids. A lot of the dippy "features" of the US version--quizzes, the "Man Manual," the "Cosmo Gyno," aren't here.

-There are titties. Like with nipples and everything. And man-ass! No wiener, but every other part of the male body is well represented. Remind me to post scans when I get home.

-There's a ton of skin lotion samples stuck in here. Three lotion packets--one large enough for several doses--and one of foundation! It's all schmancy brands too! I wish US Cosmo had this much swag!

-Out of probably 200 people pictured in the ads and editorial, 2 are non-white (and they're in a "United Colors of Benetton" ad). US Cosmo is no rainbow coalition, but German Cosmo is whitetastic. There's plenty of non-white people walking around in Hamburg; it's not like they don't exist in Germany.

-Yeah, it's all mega-skinny people. No diet or weight-loss articles though.

-Their "sexy" photos are way genuinely sexier than the US version's inevitable tepid pictures of a man and woman in generic sexual positions with underwear on. I really must post scans.

Hamburg / Intentional Vanilla

(Experimenting with dual post format. Unsure of wisdom of approach.)

Today was ordinary. I went with my dad to work, we had lunch with one of his friends (he's a paramedic and we were trading call stories in "neither of us knows medical terms in the other language"-ese, which was fun) and afterwards we went for a long walk and went shopping. Which I enjoyed; I'd rather have a slice of life in a different place than do the Official Designated Tourist Activities. We're going to go to the zoo and do a boat ride and all that, but it's not "doing Hamburg" so much as just living in it for a little while.

This trip is a little like being a kid again, in a weird way. I don't have any real responsibilities of my own, I follow my dad around because I'd get lost in five minutes alone, I let him do all the talking, and (me not having Euros) I have to ask him for anything I want. It's not a bad thing, but it's strange; I'm so used to setting my own agenda.

For some horrible IP-confusion reason Google is now speaking to me in Finnish. At least with the German I had a chance at guessing my way around. Finnish just looks like Martian.

---------

Anyway:
You know who I really respect? I have a couple friends who are strictly-heterosexual, monogamous, and vanilla as the day is long--but not by default. They're aware of other options, they've either tried or seriously considered them, and they've realized it's not how they're wired.

I think it's cool when people are in touch enough with their own needs that they don't take for granted that they're vanilla, but they're willing to accept it and assert it even when well acquainted with the pansexual/poly/kinky world.

(And the pan/poly/kinky world can be kind of jerks about "vanillas," if you couldn't tell by the name. The versions of "whatsamatta baby, you uptight?" that I've heard used to accost people--generally women--who declare they respect you very much but it's not for them, are positively shameful. Clearly if you don't want to get spanked by somebody else's girlfriend you just have a narrow view of sexuality and are probably some kind of *ptooey* Christian.)

Holly.de

I'm in Germany! Crazy. Some websites see my IP here and automatically make everything Deutsch, which is a little confusing. I couldn't "log in" to Blogger, I had to "Anmeldung."

I miss my little guinea pigs.

But other than that I'm pretty good; I'm staying with my dad, but I have my own room and it's comfy.

Mostly I just flew today. Or yesterday? However days work. I don't really fit in plane seats. I guess I'm lucky that I'm short, so at least my legs fit the legroom, but my shoulders are broader than the seats. I'm not sure it's even a fatness issue, my belly and ass fit in the seat fine, but I have some seriously wide shoulders and I had to spend the entire flight with my arms awkwardly tucked in. Not comfy.

They gave me socks on the flight. There was a little toiletry kit with mostly sensible items--toothbrush, toothpaste, sleep mask--and goofy little red socks. I'm wearing them now. They're comfy.

I was really hungry and thirsty for most of the day because food costs money on flights now, the airport terminals had no water fountains, and everyone wanted pounds or Euros and until I got to Hamburg I only had dollars.

Ironically the hamburgers are terrible here.