Like much of the internet, particularly the lady-oriented bits of it, I found myself reading Katie Roiphe's Newsweek cover story this morning. It was sort of like watching a train wreck, really: I couldn't STOP reading it. Now I can't stop reading reaction to it, which is also like watching a train wreck.
I know a lot of people don't like Roiphe. She's not my favorite person in the world, either, but she wrote a piece for Slate once titled "Does Everyone Think Single Mothers Are Actually Crazy?" that really resonated with me, so I am more apt to defend her (despite her history of dismissing date-rape as a thing that doesn't happen) than most people. That's a round-a-bout way of saying that I don't diss everything she writes out of hand the way some people do.
And this piece is no exception. Roiphe is really a pretty smart lady. There are more than a few good points made: Sexual desire is not beholden to political correctness; fantasies are generally about leaving behind the world you're living in. And, snob that I am, her jabs at the awful prose that is Fifty Shades of Grey make me snicker to myself. Because, honestly, it is awful writing. If you want literary female-submission porn, there are far, far better-written stories than Fifty Shades of Grey. REALLY. This shit is like Twilight all over again, and it offends me most as a writer, or someone who considers herself an aspiring writer. Or something. Bad prose is offensive, ok?
The basic problem with all of Roiphe's assertions can be summed up thusly: she's talking about modern women and their sexuality when she ought to be looking at modern life in general, and pressures on and fantasies of both sexes.
Fifty Shades of Grey is enormously popular! No one can deny it. It's become a bonafide sensation. There's a pretty good piece on Jezebel explaining why this particular piece of words strung together is perhaps not as culturally revealing as we would all like to think it is, because the rules of supply and demand and also the unspoken power of cache apply.
But ok, that would be boring, so let's run with the idea that this particular story, with its themes of submission and losing one's self, IS popular because it stirs up some latent need or desire in the collective unconscious. I'll bite that hook. I happen to think that the allure of sexual submission does, in fact, come from pretty much that exact set of desires: the desire to let go, to not be in control, and ultimately to not be responsible for whatever happens. Roiphe backs up this reading of our culture at large by referencing a scene from HBO's new comedy Girls in which one of the characters, waiting for an OB/GYN appointment, briefly fantasizes about having AIDS because such a diagnosis would free her from the responsibility of ambition and making something of herself.
I think we can all identify with that urge.
And that's where Roiphe goes wrong. We ALL can identify with that urge. Men, too. The urge to leave behind responsibility and just float for awhile is not uniquely female. And the fantasies that we engage in that run along this theme are not uniquely sexual: for all that it occurs in a gynecologist's office, the scene in Girls is not at heart a sexual fantasy. The desire to shed responsibility for a while comes up in even the most mundane daydream about going on vacation. Hell, I get excited about the prospect of my dad taking my kid to my sister's house for the day because it means that my walk home from work is conducted without the specter of responsibilities to be shouldered immediately upon returning home. It's an hour of time that is normally scheduled and deadlined which is suddenly, utterly, blissfully free, and that is SUCH a great feeling. But not in the least a sexual one.
By pegging this completely natural desire to leave it all behind as (one) only for women, (two) sexual in nature, (three) universal and (four) irrevocable, Roiphe has done a serious disservice to all of us. Men, in Roiphe's world, exist only to cater to the fantasies of women. They don't get to have any of their own. They don't get to want to indulge in the fantasy of giving it over and giving up control for a while. I would love to hear Roiphe explain the prevalence of the FemmeDomme in popular culture, if men don't even want to give up control. Women, in Roiphe's estimation, are all exactly the same, with exactly the same fantasies. The popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey translates to an absolute universal: since a lot of women seem to enjoy reading this, all women want to experience this. And, like Freud before her, Roiphe assumes that everything can be reduced to sexuality, when the truth of human behavior is actually far more complex. And while I myself indulge in some pretty hefty abnegation-of-responsiblity fantasies, at the end of the day, I do enjoy my autonomy and personal-decision-making capacity, and I'd really like it a whole lot if the culture I lived in would acknowledge that I am both capable of and have the right to make all personal decisions for myself. This is why I am a feminist. Just because I, like everyone else, sometimes would like to not make any decisions, doesn't mean I never want to make any decisions. Submission fantasies do not mean that feminism, with it's basic demand that women be viewed at all levels as complete human beings, is wrong.
This is where some of the feminist criticism of Roiphe, and of BDSM in general, breaks down, for the record. They take the opposite position, and they're equally wrong: feminism does not mean that submission fantasies are bad. If feminism is the struggle to gain credence to that women are people, then the ultimate feminist goal is a completely humanistic view of all people. And that means that women, as much as men, have the right to daydream about being free from pressure now and again, and even to achieve that feeling through whatever means they deem fit.
Of course, the larger context of this piece of Roiphe's matters. It's a Newsweek cover story. The headline reads "The Fantasy Lives of Working Women" and the accompanying image is of a naked, blindfolded women with suggestively parted, perfectly painted red lips and perfectly sculpted coiffure. She is slender to the point of emaciation through her neck and arms, but with hints of a generous, voluptuous bust. The image is titillating, and rife with the kind of impossible beauty standards we as a culture hold women to. The title plays on the language of "working girls" and delights in wallowing in the idea that women that own their sexual desires are sluts and prostitutes. Given Roiphe's own fascination with spanking, the association that women need to be punished for owning their sexuality is unavoidable.
The content of the article is sadly narrow. The context is utterly infuriating.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Even-Keeled I Am Not.
I'm a little bi-polar. Note bene: I don't mean that I've seen a psychiatrist and have a diagnosis in my permanent medical file or ought to be on a lot of medications. I have a friend who is actually bipolar, and I'm not that. What I mean is, more so than the average person, my emotional state goes up and comes down with very little regard paid to external stimuli. Happy things will make me happy, and sad things will make me sad, but sometimes happy things make me less happy because I'm in the nadir of my natural emotive cycle and sometimes sad things make me less sad because I'm sitting pretty atop the zenith of that cycle.
When I'm "up" (which ought not to be confused with happy, because they're not really the same thing) I am fast. I talk faster by at least a factor of three, and sometimes as high as a factor of ten. I am wittier; my brain moves fast enough for me to come up with those charmingly barbed bon mots that we all love Violet Grantham for. I am constantly looking for new stimulation when I'm up. I meet new people at an alarmingly high rate. Sometimes I take reasonably alarming risks. I feel invulnerable, you see, so I can totally split that hash joint with some random man who is completely unconcerned by the fact that I cannot understand him outside the tiny dive bar in a city where I don't speak the language. Nothing will happen. I am fast, I am quick, I am capable and I'll get myself out of whatever happens. Nothing's going to happen anyway.
(In my defense, nothing ever has happened. For the record.)
When I'm down, I am slow. I speak slower than average. It takes me whole seconds to find the words I mean to say. I do not want to meet people. I want to lie in my bed. I want to watch movies that I have already seen again. I want to reread favorite novels. I become a worrier, half-way convinced that the roof over my head is going to collapse at any moment. And I become defeatist, because I am convinced that while the roof is going to cave and crush me, there is nothing I can do about it. Going outside would be too much effort, you see, and my bed isn't outside, anyway. I have no energy for getting out of the way of whatever impending disaster my worry-wort brain has settled upon.
(In the interest of fairness, none of the disasters I've predicted when low have happened, either.)
There are people that only know me when I'm up. They met me when I'm up, and I only see them when I'm up and flitting about like a manic social butterfly with my tiny butterfly feet in every pie I can spy. There are lots of these people. It's not really personal that they only know me manic, it's just that when I'm low, I tend to sit in bed. Not a lot of opportunity for social interaction when you're sitting in your bed, you know?
There are a few people, one or two, here and there, that only know me when I'm down. I can only imagine what they think my life is like. I count myself blessed beyond measure to have these people, even though most of the time I don't think about them at all.
And as I get older, there is an ever-growing number of people that know me both up and down. Anyone that knows me long enough is likely to come to the conclusion that I'm a little bi-polar. The longer someone knows me, the more likely they are to realize the full magnitude and interpersonal impact of my brain chemistry. I now know people that I've known for more of my life than I've not known them. This makes me feel old, a little, but it also is an amazingly affirming realization. People have decided to keep in their life for this long. They've done this even though I'm a little bipolar, and can't be easy to deal.
But I wonder, in these stretches of worrying and defeat and solitude, how all this up and down makes me appear. I'm horrifyingly image-conscious, when you come right down to it. I care very much how people see me and what they think; I put enormous and disturbing amounts of energy into cultivating public personas that are agreeable and likable and desireable. Or, rather, I do all that when I'm up. When I'm down, I don't have the energy, and so I withdraw from the world, and I often wonder what these absences say to people. It's impossible to determine how absence and silence affect perception, because in order to find out you'd have to appear and ask, breaking the absence and the silence.
Because I only stop to think about it when I'm low, I imagine that these retreats must make me seem unhinged, unreliable, flaky, flighty, unable to control myself. Something unflattering and damaging, to be sure.
I spent about three weeks, recently, UP. I was ON. I was HOT. It was great. It lasted forever.
Well, not forever, because I haven't left my house except to go to work or the grocery store since last Wednesday.
I fend off absolute despair by reminding myself, in mantra-like repetitions, that my emotional cycle is a cycle and I'll not be this tired, this uninterested, this uninteresting, this irritable forever. Acceptance really is the best check on anything. Accepting that I'm a little bipolar helps to moderate the lows. I have yet to figure out how to moderate my highs; I don't really want to, I guess. I suppose that feeling invulnerable will get me in trouble some day, but it hasn't yet. So why bother?
Maybe that's just the lows talking. Probably.
When I'm "up" (which ought not to be confused with happy, because they're not really the same thing) I am fast. I talk faster by at least a factor of three, and sometimes as high as a factor of ten. I am wittier; my brain moves fast enough for me to come up with those charmingly barbed bon mots that we all love Violet Grantham for. I am constantly looking for new stimulation when I'm up. I meet new people at an alarmingly high rate. Sometimes I take reasonably alarming risks. I feel invulnerable, you see, so I can totally split that hash joint with some random man who is completely unconcerned by the fact that I cannot understand him outside the tiny dive bar in a city where I don't speak the language. Nothing will happen. I am fast, I am quick, I am capable and I'll get myself out of whatever happens. Nothing's going to happen anyway.
(In my defense, nothing ever has happened. For the record.)
When I'm down, I am slow. I speak slower than average. It takes me whole seconds to find the words I mean to say. I do not want to meet people. I want to lie in my bed. I want to watch movies that I have already seen again. I want to reread favorite novels. I become a worrier, half-way convinced that the roof over my head is going to collapse at any moment. And I become defeatist, because I am convinced that while the roof is going to cave and crush me, there is nothing I can do about it. Going outside would be too much effort, you see, and my bed isn't outside, anyway. I have no energy for getting out of the way of whatever impending disaster my worry-wort brain has settled upon.
(In the interest of fairness, none of the disasters I've predicted when low have happened, either.)
There are people that only know me when I'm up. They met me when I'm up, and I only see them when I'm up and flitting about like a manic social butterfly with my tiny butterfly feet in every pie I can spy. There are lots of these people. It's not really personal that they only know me manic, it's just that when I'm low, I tend to sit in bed. Not a lot of opportunity for social interaction when you're sitting in your bed, you know?
There are a few people, one or two, here and there, that only know me when I'm down. I can only imagine what they think my life is like. I count myself blessed beyond measure to have these people, even though most of the time I don't think about them at all.
And as I get older, there is an ever-growing number of people that know me both up and down. Anyone that knows me long enough is likely to come to the conclusion that I'm a little bi-polar. The longer someone knows me, the more likely they are to realize the full magnitude and interpersonal impact of my brain chemistry. I now know people that I've known for more of my life than I've not known them. This makes me feel old, a little, but it also is an amazingly affirming realization. People have decided to keep in their life for this long. They've done this even though I'm a little bipolar, and can't be easy to deal.
But I wonder, in these stretches of worrying and defeat and solitude, how all this up and down makes me appear. I'm horrifyingly image-conscious, when you come right down to it. I care very much how people see me and what they think; I put enormous and disturbing amounts of energy into cultivating public personas that are agreeable and likable and desireable. Or, rather, I do all that when I'm up. When I'm down, I don't have the energy, and so I withdraw from the world, and I often wonder what these absences say to people. It's impossible to determine how absence and silence affect perception, because in order to find out you'd have to appear and ask, breaking the absence and the silence.
Because I only stop to think about it when I'm low, I imagine that these retreats must make me seem unhinged, unreliable, flaky, flighty, unable to control myself. Something unflattering and damaging, to be sure.
I spent about three weeks, recently, UP. I was ON. I was HOT. It was great. It lasted forever.
Well, not forever, because I haven't left my house except to go to work or the grocery store since last Wednesday.
I fend off absolute despair by reminding myself, in mantra-like repetitions, that my emotional cycle is a cycle and I'll not be this tired, this uninterested, this uninteresting, this irritable forever. Acceptance really is the best check on anything. Accepting that I'm a little bipolar helps to moderate the lows. I have yet to figure out how to moderate my highs; I don't really want to, I guess. I suppose that feeling invulnerable will get me in trouble some day, but it hasn't yet. So why bother?
Maybe that's just the lows talking. Probably.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Traveling Light
I bought myself a plane ticket to Spain for my birthday. I leave tomorrow. I intend to spend the dawn of my 28th year on earth in misty mountain solitude, listening to medieval chants and wandering around the oldest still-functioning monastery in Europe.
After that, I'm going to Barcelona to party.
I am refusing to take a suitcase on this trip (not such a strange thing, for me) but I am also resistant to even taking a backpacking pack. It's too big. I'm packing a duffel bag for this trip, the kind of bag one takes on a long weekend. A "weekender," the fashion people would call it. It's fake red leather, and my mother spotted it on the free table at Value Village Thrift Store two months ago and brought it home for me. It has no rips and no holes and the strap is still attached and the stitches are firm and the zipper works, so I'm not sure why it was on the free table, but it has a good home, now. This is a bag I will love.
I have my little duffel loaded up with clothes: underwear, cardigans, a cocktail dress. A toiletry bag. A current converter. I'll add a pair of fancy flats later tonight.
I have a backpack, too, a carry on, the backpack that has been on every single trip I've taken since I was fourteen and went to Oceania for three weeks. This backpack has been around the world. It's been to Australia and New Zealand, it's been to Spain before, it was with me when I got stranded in Morocco, it's been to Paris and seen the Mona Lisa, and it's held water and sandwiches while I hiked in the Schwarzwald. It's met my daughter's father. It's climbed Mayan ruins on the Yucatan, seen waterfalls in the Andes, gone to street parties outside of Santo Domingo. This backpack has been to New York City more times than I can count, seen the redwoods of Big Basin State Park in California, wandered around downtown Detroit. It's been to St. Louis and Indianapolis.
Into this backpack I will put my camera bag, laden with camera and lenses and lens filters and cleaning cloths and memory cards and a battery charger and a card reader. I will put my tiny pink computer, and its charger. I'll put my phone and its charger. I'll put in two books and a wallet and a passport and three packs of American Spirit cigarettes, in the yellow box, and a lighter. The lighter will also be yellow.
I've had butterflies in my stomach for days now, anticipating this trip. My insides are quivering in anticipation of being unattached for seven entire, glorious days. My wanderlust is ferocious, voracious, and stems primarily from a desire to have no attachments at all. My daydreams are always about taking off into the sunset and leaving everything behind. My fondest, most impossible wish is to start over, completely, from scratch. I want to disappear with my duffel and my backpack and never come back, never look back, reinvent everything about myself.
I can't do that. Having babies really puts a damper on your ability to disappear without a trace. Well, unless you're my baby's father.
(Heh.)
So, I take the next best thing: Whenever I can, I go somehwere alone. Like tomorrow.
I have many vices. Cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, pretty dresses, vintage hats, ridiculous high-heeled shoes, loud music, driving too fast. Some of these are probably even full-blown addictions. But of all my vices, and all my addictions, this is most certainly the worst. This is the one that could cause me to abandon everything, hit rock bottom, sever every tie. It would be so easy since the addiction is to rootlessness, restlessness, the ability to move on whenever the urge hits, to put one's life in two small bags and go, onward, forward, sideways, backwards, it doesn't matter as long as you're moving.
The addiction, you see, is to this fluttery feeling I get before stepping off into the unknown. I am addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the limitless vistas of possibility. This feeling is better than any drug, than any drink, than any touch. This feeling is better than any love. This combination of knowing everything theoretically and nothing concretely and being able to see everything and nothing all at once is better than anything else you can name. I would chase this feeling endlessly if I could. I would step off every cliff, climb every mountain, turn down every blind alley to find it again.
If I could. If only I could.
After that, I'm going to Barcelona to party.
I am refusing to take a suitcase on this trip (not such a strange thing, for me) but I am also resistant to even taking a backpacking pack. It's too big. I'm packing a duffel bag for this trip, the kind of bag one takes on a long weekend. A "weekender," the fashion people would call it. It's fake red leather, and my mother spotted it on the free table at Value Village Thrift Store two months ago and brought it home for me. It has no rips and no holes and the strap is still attached and the stitches are firm and the zipper works, so I'm not sure why it was on the free table, but it has a good home, now. This is a bag I will love.
I have my little duffel loaded up with clothes: underwear, cardigans, a cocktail dress. A toiletry bag. A current converter. I'll add a pair of fancy flats later tonight.
I have a backpack, too, a carry on, the backpack that has been on every single trip I've taken since I was fourteen and went to Oceania for three weeks. This backpack has been around the world. It's been to Australia and New Zealand, it's been to Spain before, it was with me when I got stranded in Morocco, it's been to Paris and seen the Mona Lisa, and it's held water and sandwiches while I hiked in the Schwarzwald. It's met my daughter's father. It's climbed Mayan ruins on the Yucatan, seen waterfalls in the Andes, gone to street parties outside of Santo Domingo. This backpack has been to New York City more times than I can count, seen the redwoods of Big Basin State Park in California, wandered around downtown Detroit. It's been to St. Louis and Indianapolis.
Into this backpack I will put my camera bag, laden with camera and lenses and lens filters and cleaning cloths and memory cards and a battery charger and a card reader. I will put my tiny pink computer, and its charger. I'll put my phone and its charger. I'll put in two books and a wallet and a passport and three packs of American Spirit cigarettes, in the yellow box, and a lighter. The lighter will also be yellow.
I've had butterflies in my stomach for days now, anticipating this trip. My insides are quivering in anticipation of being unattached for seven entire, glorious days. My wanderlust is ferocious, voracious, and stems primarily from a desire to have no attachments at all. My daydreams are always about taking off into the sunset and leaving everything behind. My fondest, most impossible wish is to start over, completely, from scratch. I want to disappear with my duffel and my backpack and never come back, never look back, reinvent everything about myself.
I can't do that. Having babies really puts a damper on your ability to disappear without a trace. Well, unless you're my baby's father.
(Heh.)
So, I take the next best thing: Whenever I can, I go somehwere alone. Like tomorrow.
I have many vices. Cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, pretty dresses, vintage hats, ridiculous high-heeled shoes, loud music, driving too fast. Some of these are probably even full-blown addictions. But of all my vices, and all my addictions, this is most certainly the worst. This is the one that could cause me to abandon everything, hit rock bottom, sever every tie. It would be so easy since the addiction is to rootlessness, restlessness, the ability to move on whenever the urge hits, to put one's life in two small bags and go, onward, forward, sideways, backwards, it doesn't matter as long as you're moving.
The addiction, you see, is to this fluttery feeling I get before stepping off into the unknown. I am addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the limitless vistas of possibility. This feeling is better than any drug, than any drink, than any touch. This feeling is better than any love. This combination of knowing everything theoretically and nothing concretely and being able to see everything and nothing all at once is better than anything else you can name. I would chase this feeling endlessly if I could. I would step off every cliff, climb every mountain, turn down every blind alley to find it again.
If I could. If only I could.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
There Is Nothing Wrong With Sex
Social networks make political commentary ubiquitous, so when I see things my friends say, sometimes I laugh and sometimes I cringe and sometimes I do both. A comment like, "This from a climate-change denier who thinks the world is 6,000 years old and that making contraception available encourages sex" will elicit both a giggle and a cringe. I mean, it's funny because it's so ridiculous, but that last line makes my head hurt. The lover in me immediately read that last bit, "making contraception available encourages sex" and went "WHOA, there, buddy! It doesn't matter if making contraception available does or does not encourage sex, because there's nothing wrong with sex."
And when I put that out there into the public sphere of the internet, I got this reply: "Might want to include 'consensual' and 'between adults.' " And my first reaction was something like, "Well, duh. Obviously." And I was just about to make some polite reply about a 140 character limit and all that noise, when I stopped. Because you know what?
Duh. Obviously.
"Non-consensual sex" is not a thing that exists, world. Non-consensual sex is RAPE. And rape is not sex. When did sex, as a word or an idea or an act, become so tainted that it has to be minutely distinguished from rape in public discourse? Is sex so dirty, so awful, and so much of a violation that it is inherently indistinguishable from rape? No. And it is both disturbing and deeply saddening to come to the realization that a lot of people might feel it so.
Sex is not bad. Sex is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with sex.
While I do think that at least some fear of sex stems from a deep-seated misogyny (you should read some of the things that Bukowski and Warhol had to say about sex and women, golly geez) I don't think it's a universal explanation. The woman that told me I ought to add "consensual and between adults" to my exhortation that there is nothing wrong with sex, for example: I don't think she hates women.
Rather, I think there's a strange modern conflation of love and sex, and also love and marriage, that ends up creating a bizarre triangle in which the points are love, sex, and marriage and everything becomes a tangled mess.
To wit, physical intimacy and emotional intimacy do go hand-in-hand. And it's not a purely female thing, as so many want to claim. Yes, women form attachments when they sleep with someone. So do men. Men are, in fact, capable of rich emotional lives. Sex is better, for both parties, when there's love involved, and trust, and respect. Anais Nin said, "Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy." And she was right.
Sex is often seen as proof of love, which is where things begin to become murky. "Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from." (Margaret Atwood) Feeling unloved really does feel an awful lot like dying, and because the connection between love and sex is so deeply instilled, the urge to go out and have a lot of sex to stave off that death, that desperation, that utter loneliness can be strong. Nothing in modern culture has captured the absolute soullessness of using sex as a bandaid like Steve McQueen's Shame. I was horrified to read reviews of that film talking about "normal human sexuality" and "unsexiness." The thing that makes Shame such a powerful film is that it is not about normal human sexuality, or sexiness, and yet its protaganist is still a sympathetic and poignant character. McQueen and Michael Fassbender together have created a space in which behavior that be would be considered depravity and degeneration in less capable hands is instead merely tragic. The moral judgment against sex itself is removed, and the obvious distress of the character is the moral grounding of the narrative.
Like everything else in the emotional landscape of a human being, there are greys and gradations in sex. If sex within love is ecstasy, and sex by self-destructive compulsion is tragedy, there are a million things in between those two extremes. All sex that occurs without the merging of hearts and bodies is not the desperate self-destructive behavior of Shame.
Which brings us to the other point of this triad, the other intersection tangled up in all this mess: the conflation of love and marriage. Let me be clear: I believe in love. I absolutely believe in love. And I believe in marriage. But they are not the same thing.
Love is a personal, emotional good. It is the thing that creates empathy in us, it is the thing that causes us to act against survival instincts and for a better world, it is the thing that allows us to see beyond the borders of our bodies and create meaningful connections in the external world. Marriage, on the other hand, is a purely social good. The benefit of marriage is the social stability it represents. But love is not marriage and marriage is not love. You do not have to get married if you love someone. And if you do get married, you do not necessarily love the person you marry.
I think that a significant portion of the "sex in marriage" movement could really be more aptly defined as "sex in love" if we could all just recognize that love and marriage are not the same thing. Way back when marriages were arranged, it was clear to everyone involved that a marriage was a social contract and that love had nothing to do with it. I don't advocate returning to such a system, mostly because of the way it treated women as chattel. But that doesn't mean that we need to dismiss the idea of marriage as a social good. Rather, in a world like today when marriage is not the only basis of social stability, it is even more important that we remember that marriage is merely a social good. One singular one. It is not a magic bullet that will solve any and all problems, either personal or political. Getting married will not make your life suddenly better; if you weren't happy before, you won't be happy long-term after the novelty wears off. And falling marriage rates are not to blame for the plethora of social problems we face (ahem, Grothman/Santorum/et al.). There are other causes, because while marriage is a social good, it is not the social good.
There is nothing inherently wrong with sex, whether meaningful or meaningless. Sexual identity and appetite, in all their varied forms, are not evidence of some other problem. We all need love, yes. And sex is not love. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have sex. And we all want love. But that doesn't mean we should all get married right now.
And when I put that out there into the public sphere of the internet, I got this reply: "Might want to include 'consensual' and 'between adults.' " And my first reaction was something like, "Well, duh. Obviously." And I was just about to make some polite reply about a 140 character limit and all that noise, when I stopped. Because you know what?
Duh. Obviously.
"Non-consensual sex" is not a thing that exists, world. Non-consensual sex is RAPE. And rape is not sex. When did sex, as a word or an idea or an act, become so tainted that it has to be minutely distinguished from rape in public discourse? Is sex so dirty, so awful, and so much of a violation that it is inherently indistinguishable from rape? No. And it is both disturbing and deeply saddening to come to the realization that a lot of people might feel it so.
Sex is not bad. Sex is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with sex.
While I do think that at least some fear of sex stems from a deep-seated misogyny (you should read some of the things that Bukowski and Warhol had to say about sex and women, golly geez) I don't think it's a universal explanation. The woman that told me I ought to add "consensual and between adults" to my exhortation that there is nothing wrong with sex, for example: I don't think she hates women.
Rather, I think there's a strange modern conflation of love and sex, and also love and marriage, that ends up creating a bizarre triangle in which the points are love, sex, and marriage and everything becomes a tangled mess.
To wit, physical intimacy and emotional intimacy do go hand-in-hand. And it's not a purely female thing, as so many want to claim. Yes, women form attachments when they sleep with someone. So do men. Men are, in fact, capable of rich emotional lives. Sex is better, for both parties, when there's love involved, and trust, and respect. Anais Nin said, "Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy." And she was right.
Sex is often seen as proof of love, which is where things begin to become murky. "Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from." (Margaret Atwood) Feeling unloved really does feel an awful lot like dying, and because the connection between love and sex is so deeply instilled, the urge to go out and have a lot of sex to stave off that death, that desperation, that utter loneliness can be strong. Nothing in modern culture has captured the absolute soullessness of using sex as a bandaid like Steve McQueen's Shame. I was horrified to read reviews of that film talking about "normal human sexuality" and "unsexiness." The thing that makes Shame such a powerful film is that it is not about normal human sexuality, or sexiness, and yet its protaganist is still a sympathetic and poignant character. McQueen and Michael Fassbender together have created a space in which behavior that be would be considered depravity and degeneration in less capable hands is instead merely tragic. The moral judgment against sex itself is removed, and the obvious distress of the character is the moral grounding of the narrative.
Like everything else in the emotional landscape of a human being, there are greys and gradations in sex. If sex within love is ecstasy, and sex by self-destructive compulsion is tragedy, there are a million things in between those two extremes. All sex that occurs without the merging of hearts and bodies is not the desperate self-destructive behavior of Shame.
"Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good." - Woody AllenThat grey world is where most of us live. We neither find "true love" nor do we descend into addiction. And in that grey world, there is nothing wrong with sex. Sex without love might be meaningless, as Mr. Allen says, but not everything in life must be pregnant with meaning. Not every conversation must be weighted, not every book must be serious, not every film must be exposing social thought constructs, not every sexual experience must be Capital-E-Ecstasy. There is nothing so inherently wrong about sex that it cannot be lighthearted and fun.
“It would be perfect if everyone who makes love, is in love, but this is simply an unrealistic expectation. I'd say 75 percent of the population of people who make love, are not in love, this is simply the reality of the human race, and to be idealistic about this is to wait for the stars to aline and Jupiter to change color; for the Heavens to etch your names together in the sky before you make love to someone. But idealism is immaturity, and as a matter of fact, the stars may never aline, Jupiter may never change color, and the Heavens may never ever etch your names together in the sky for you to have the never-ending permission to make endless love to one another. And so the bottom line is, there really is no difference between doing something today, and doing something tomorrow, because today is what you have, and tomorrow may not turn out the way you expect it to. At the end of the day, sex is an animalistic, humanistic, passionate desire.”
― C. JoyBell C.
Which brings us to the other point of this triad, the other intersection tangled up in all this mess: the conflation of love and marriage. Let me be clear: I believe in love. I absolutely believe in love. And I believe in marriage. But they are not the same thing.
Love is a personal, emotional good. It is the thing that creates empathy in us, it is the thing that causes us to act against survival instincts and for a better world, it is the thing that allows us to see beyond the borders of our bodies and create meaningful connections in the external world. Marriage, on the other hand, is a purely social good. The benefit of marriage is the social stability it represents. But love is not marriage and marriage is not love. You do not have to get married if you love someone. And if you do get married, you do not necessarily love the person you marry.
I think that a significant portion of the "sex in marriage" movement could really be more aptly defined as "sex in love" if we could all just recognize that love and marriage are not the same thing. Way back when marriages were arranged, it was clear to everyone involved that a marriage was a social contract and that love had nothing to do with it. I don't advocate returning to such a system, mostly because of the way it treated women as chattel. But that doesn't mean that we need to dismiss the idea of marriage as a social good. Rather, in a world like today when marriage is not the only basis of social stability, it is even more important that we remember that marriage is merely a social good. One singular one. It is not a magic bullet that will solve any and all problems, either personal or political. Getting married will not make your life suddenly better; if you weren't happy before, you won't be happy long-term after the novelty wears off. And falling marriage rates are not to blame for the plethora of social problems we face (ahem, Grothman/Santorum/et al.). There are other causes, because while marriage is a social good, it is not the social good.
There is nothing inherently wrong with sex, whether meaningful or meaningless. Sexual identity and appetite, in all their varied forms, are not evidence of some other problem. We all need love, yes. And sex is not love. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have sex. And we all want love. But that doesn't mean we should all get married right now.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Rejection is a Lesson
I think the hardest lesson in compassion is this: accepting that not everyone will want you. And, that's ok.
My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.
What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.
It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.
But still, but still, but still.
When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.
But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.
And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.
And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.
Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.
My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.
My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.
What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.
It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.
But still, but still, but still.
When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.
But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.
And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.
And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.
Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.
My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Personhood
Two of fifty states have now codified government-mandated sexual assault. Texas and Oklahoma, I'm looking at you while my skin crawls and my internal organs quiver in fear. Virginia is on its way to becoming the third member of this misogynistic, utterly abhorrent club.
Because it is incredibly unhealthy to be a rageball all the time, I am working assiduously at setting aside my anger at the very idea that the government is mandating vaginal penetration with a foreign object for women seeking a legal medical procedure. But let me just say that one more time, so that it sinks in for all of you following along at home:
I find some of the quotes from people defending these laws to be instructive as to the kind of mindset that makes things like this ok. For example, "They already chose to be vaginally penetrated." Again, setting aside the initial rush of rage, I can start to unpack that statement. Choosing to have sexual intercourse once makes anything that happens afterwards consensual. It's something like a chaste/virgin doctrine: once intercourse occurs (once the hymen is broken?) there is no protection for your ladybits. By breaking the seal (so to speak), you lose claim to any protections. Consent to sex is something that can only happen once, and it can never be revoked. Once you've lost virginity, you are ever-after "open for business" to anyone, including the government! It's the fallen-woman doctrine, gussied up for modern times.
Another came after a Virginia legislator was asked about exceptions for rape and incest. His response? "Sometimes incest is voluntary. The woman becomes a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman."
First of all, I am not kidding.
Second, can someone please find me a breakdown of "voluntary" incestual relationships versus molestation and rape by a family member? I would like to know more about this voluntary incest.
Really, I don't think this guy defines "voluntary" in the way that you and I do. Voluntary sex is any sex that happens because you don't kill yourself rather than be defiled. And sex, itself, is always a defiling act. Sex is dirty.
And that's really what all this is about, isn't it? The deeply-seated belief of many people that there is something inherently, irrevocably wrong with sex. The body is dirty, because it is corporeal and not spiritual, and acts of pleasure for the body are naught but devilish distractions from the work of cleansing the soul.
It's a sad, tragic outlook. My well of compassion is almost emptied, thinking about all these people that think the pleasures of touch and give are evil. Women are by necessity nothing but uteruses, because to acknowledge the entirety of a woman would be to acknowledge desire.
Sex is not shameful. Corporeal joys are not lesser than spiritual ones.
And the government has absolutely no right to be enforcing such arcane and deeply personal beliefs. You may wish to hold onto your notion of sex as something that is capital-W WRONG, but you do not get to codify your beliefs. Mandating sexual assault and making birth control inaccessible are inexcusable abuses of power. Women are more then uteruses, and our uteruses are not yours to make decisions about. I get to decide who and what enters my vagina, not a legislature. I get to decide whether I have sex, and whether I want the possibility of progeny to come from that sex, not a legislature. Those are my decisions to make because I am a complete person, with the ability to reason and choose.
You want to talk about personhood? Let's start with the personhood of women.
I am tired of constantly having to defend the existence of my brain, my character, and my capacity for moral decision-making. Women are complete beings. Accept it. And stop treating us as if we are not.
Because it is incredibly unhealthy to be a rageball all the time, I am working assiduously at setting aside my anger at the very idea that the government is mandating vaginal penetration with a foreign object for women seeking a legal medical procedure. But let me just say that one more time, so that it sinks in for all of you following along at home:
The government is mandating vaginal penetration with a foreign object for women seeking a legal medical procedure.Why is this ok? I'm seriously asking. I want to know why this is ok.
I find some of the quotes from people defending these laws to be instructive as to the kind of mindset that makes things like this ok. For example, "They already chose to be vaginally penetrated." Again, setting aside the initial rush of rage, I can start to unpack that statement. Choosing to have sexual intercourse once makes anything that happens afterwards consensual. It's something like a chaste/virgin doctrine: once intercourse occurs (once the hymen is broken?) there is no protection for your ladybits. By breaking the seal (so to speak), you lose claim to any protections. Consent to sex is something that can only happen once, and it can never be revoked. Once you've lost virginity, you are ever-after "open for business" to anyone, including the government! It's the fallen-woman doctrine, gussied up for modern times.
Another came after a Virginia legislator was asked about exceptions for rape and incest. His response? "Sometimes incest is voluntary. The woman becomes a sin-bearer of the crime, because the right of a child predominates over the embarrassment of the woman."
First of all, I am not kidding.
Second, can someone please find me a breakdown of "voluntary" incestual relationships versus molestation and rape by a family member? I would like to know more about this voluntary incest.
Really, I don't think this guy defines "voluntary" in the way that you and I do. Voluntary sex is any sex that happens because you don't kill yourself rather than be defiled. And sex, itself, is always a defiling act. Sex is dirty.
And that's really what all this is about, isn't it? The deeply-seated belief of many people that there is something inherently, irrevocably wrong with sex. The body is dirty, because it is corporeal and not spiritual, and acts of pleasure for the body are naught but devilish distractions from the work of cleansing the soul.
It's a sad, tragic outlook. My well of compassion is almost emptied, thinking about all these people that think the pleasures of touch and give are evil. Women are by necessity nothing but uteruses, because to acknowledge the entirety of a woman would be to acknowledge desire.
Sex is not shameful. Corporeal joys are not lesser than spiritual ones.
And the government has absolutely no right to be enforcing such arcane and deeply personal beliefs. You may wish to hold onto your notion of sex as something that is capital-W WRONG, but you do not get to codify your beliefs. Mandating sexual assault and making birth control inaccessible are inexcusable abuses of power. Women are more then uteruses, and our uteruses are not yours to make decisions about. I get to decide who and what enters my vagina, not a legislature. I get to decide whether I have sex, and whether I want the possibility of progeny to come from that sex, not a legislature. Those are my decisions to make because I am a complete person, with the ability to reason and choose.
You want to talk about personhood? Let's start with the personhood of women.
I am tired of constantly having to defend the existence of my brain, my character, and my capacity for moral decision-making. Women are complete beings. Accept it. And stop treating us as if we are not.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Pinterest and Techie Gender Bias
The hip new kid on the social media block is Pinterest. Ubiquity, thy name is Pinterest. Suddenly, the site and discussions about the site are everywhere. Someone in my twitter feed joked a few days back about how grateful they were that tweetdeck allows you to censor your feed by keyword, so they'd removed anything with the word "Pinterest" in it.
(Whoever you are, you're probably not reading this blog. Because I'm talking about Pinterest. GET IT? IT'S FUNNY.)
So. What is Pinterest? It's a virtual corkboard. You have one (or several) boards that you can theme any which way you'd like, and what you do is pin images of things you stumble upon on the Internet to this virtual corkboard. The pin includes a link taking you back to the original site. It's an image-based link-cataloging service. It's del.icio.us with pictures. There is absolutely nothing gender-specific in its concept or its design, which is oft-noted in pieces about the site with titles implying it's just for women.
Why is everyone talking about it? Well, it's proven itself in a very short time to be a phenomenal traffic-generator. But I don't really understand the techie-stuff. I get that it's a big name player because it is capable of driving traffic to sites, and that means those sites pay attention to it and its users because it wants that traffic, because I understand basically how the internet works and how to make money off of it.
(There's a reason I don't try an "monetize" this blog. I mean, I love you guys, and I love you guys for reading it, but I just don't get enough traffic. See? I totally understand the internet.)
So, I'm not real tech-oriented and that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about gender and Pinterest. Because, OH MAN.
Props to The Atlantic for writing the only gender-neutral piece on the explosive popularity of Pinterest that I can find. Credit where it's due.
And now we can get into the bizarro male-oriented world of tech blogs.
The one-liners in some of these pieces make my head spin:
Perhaps it's really the "fly-over country" thing that these tech blogs object to, but you wouldn't know it from titles like "A Guy's Guide to Pinterest" or even "Gentlemint Offers a Manly Alternative to Pinterest." It would appear that what galls is that ladies like it.
So, while women were capable of taking Facebook, with its petty start, and make it their own (currently something like 58% of Facebook users are female), men are not capable of doing the same with Pinterest? Or, because Pinterest has been embraced by women, it is doomed to some sort of niche-internet? How disappointing. I was pretty sure men had more creativity than that. The casual marginalization of something popular among women is both offensive and deeply disappointing.
Pinterest is not tumblr for ladies. It is not for ladies, period. It's for anyone that wants visual link-organization. And you may not be looking to plan a wedding or construct an elaborate shopping list, but you can still use the site. And you may not want to use the site, because we all could probably do with one less social network rather than one more, but the reason you don't want to use is not that it is "for girls." Or, maybe it is, but if that's the case, I really don't think we should be friends anymore.
(Whoever you are, you're probably not reading this blog. Because I'm talking about Pinterest. GET IT? IT'S FUNNY.)
So. What is Pinterest? It's a virtual corkboard. You have one (or several) boards that you can theme any which way you'd like, and what you do is pin images of things you stumble upon on the Internet to this virtual corkboard. The pin includes a link taking you back to the original site. It's an image-based link-cataloging service. It's del.icio.us with pictures. There is absolutely nothing gender-specific in its concept or its design, which is oft-noted in pieces about the site with titles implying it's just for women.
Why is everyone talking about it? Well, it's proven itself in a very short time to be a phenomenal traffic-generator. But I don't really understand the techie-stuff. I get that it's a big name player because it is capable of driving traffic to sites, and that means those sites pay attention to it and its users because it wants that traffic, because I understand basically how the internet works and how to make money off of it.
(There's a reason I don't try an "monetize" this blog. I mean, I love you guys, and I love you guys for reading it, but I just don't get enough traffic. See? I totally understand the internet.)
So, I'm not real tech-oriented and that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about gender and Pinterest. Because, OH MAN.
Props to The Atlantic for writing the only gender-neutral piece on the explosive popularity of Pinterest that I can find. Credit where it's due.
And now we can get into the bizarro male-oriented world of tech blogs.
The one-liners in some of these pieces make my head spin:
"Well, there's a reason it's not called Dude-terest."
Really, readwriteweb? Really? Are you really trying to say that things must be named in gender-specific ways so that we all understand who is supposed to use them? One, that's pretty insulting to just about everyone, and two, it doesn't actually make sense, since I cannot for the life of me come up with a way that "pin" is female-centric somehow.
"Pinterest is Tumblr for Ladiez."
Really, gizmodo? Your writer is trying to mitigate the blow of all that misogyny by claiming some sort of special privilege by sort of being ironical, and also maybe having a lot of female friends. Sort of like "I have a lot of black friends?" I can't tell. But let me just get right to the point: Ladies use tumblr. In fact, tumblr has perhaps the most even-steven gender split of any social networking site, at 51% men and 49% women.Essentially, what is going on here is that contrary to what is generally accepted to be the case for new technology, the early adopters of Pinterest are women. Young women. Whereas Facebook is at least partially grounded in the horribly anti-women idea of comparing female faces for hotness, and Twitter's early adopters were heavily skewed towards men and coasts, Pinterest is being embraced first and foremost by young women in fly-over country.
Perhaps it's really the "fly-over country" thing that these tech blogs object to, but you wouldn't know it from titles like "A Guy's Guide to Pinterest" or even "Gentlemint Offers a Manly Alternative to Pinterest." It would appear that what galls is that ladies like it.
So, while women were capable of taking Facebook, with its petty start, and make it their own (currently something like 58% of Facebook users are female), men are not capable of doing the same with Pinterest? Or, because Pinterest has been embraced by women, it is doomed to some sort of niche-internet? How disappointing. I was pretty sure men had more creativity than that. The casual marginalization of something popular among women is both offensive and deeply disappointing.
Pinterest is not tumblr for ladies. It is not for ladies, period. It's for anyone that wants visual link-organization. And you may not be looking to plan a wedding or construct an elaborate shopping list, but you can still use the site. And you may not want to use the site, because we all could probably do with one less social network rather than one more, but the reason you don't want to use is not that it is "for girls." Or, maybe it is, but if that's the case, I really don't think we should be friends anymore.
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