For fuck's sake: in the news

This is an interruption in my series, which I will continue, but I felt the need to rant a bit, for the sake of fucking everywhere.

Porn Harms National Awareness Campaign
http://www.iphc.org/news/join-porn-harms-national-awareness-campaign

Apparently porn is harmful to our national awareness? So watching porn means you're less nationally aware. Regardless of the poor choice of words here, what the fuck?

"Pornography is destroying society. It is destroying the lives of those around us -and the church is not immune to the effects of pornography. It's time to take a stand. Join us in the fight to end pornography. "

I pasted that to my husband and then immediately afterward felt I needed to wash out my clipboard. With BLEACH.

So consenting adults performing sex acts for cameras is destroying society?

Let's see what their points are.


The program aims to spread awareness about four specific areas:
Pornography Addiction - So anything that can be addictive must be ended? Painkillers, alcohol, gambling? Sex? Right, all those, into the bin, on with it!

Harm to Children - I'm sorry, what? 'cause you're straight up linking standard porn with child-porn, or...what are you doing here? Parents watching porn isn't going to cause harm to children.

Links to Sex Trafficking - Some people in porn are in nonsensual situations. I get that. But porn isn't the problem. Removing porn won't remove the people from the situations. In fact, if it comes to court, removing the porn removes the evidence, yesno?

Violence Against Women - ..... I don't get this. Are we talking BDSM-themed porn now, perhaps, that somehow... promotes violence against women? Oh, you mean like my blog? 'cause when I say I like this stuff, I fucking mean it. Or are no-photo sex blogs even considered pornography? I'm unsure, but with these folks probably anything vaguely referencing sex is porn. Porn promotes violence against women less than your standard horror flicks do, because at least the woman in the porn are probably liking it.

I don't generally like watching porn for myself, but I certainly do appreciate reading it, and since being in/watching/reading porn is a choice made by consenting adults, it's not anyone's business to take that away.

Then there's this:
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/04/18/what-is-gateway-sexual-activity/

I despair. Hand holding is a gateway sexual activity now? WTF, people? These kids are going to figure out how their parts work. I was figuring this stuff out at 12-13, thankfully with books and not with another kid who could make me pregnant, since I knew enough to know that could happen, thanks to my mom's frank discussion with me.

Oddly she's FOR abstinence-only education in schools and now I wish I hadn't opened that can of worms at all.

What's your opinion on these topics?

Asshattery abounds

Every winter solstice, a good friend of ours has a party. It's an outdoor party, with bonfires, all different kinds of beer, hotdogs for roasting over the fires, and assorted other snacks brought by attendees. Sometimes, it rains, but the party still goes on, and we huddle ourselves around the fires with just as much cheer - only not quite so many of us.

I talk to people at this party that I don't get to see that often, and people attend who I probably wouldn't ordinarily talk to at all, but I would not, ever, miss it. That party makes my whole holiday season. We're usually the first ones there to help and the last ones to leave, just before sunrise, when we can still get ourselves home safely but only just. We don't ever get drunk, but plenty of people do.

It's not a lifestyle party, but my friend always says clothing is optional. No one's ever gotten naked yet, although we did hear some wild sex stories last time.

A man/boy has come the last two years, and he was just of legal age when he started. We know this boy from elsewhere, but don't see him that often anymore, although I see him on facebook. He has a few physical things wrong with him, and he often, often complains (read whines) that he can't get a girlfriend because of it.

I am here to tell you it's not because of that.

I'll call him Luke, because that's the kind of whining he does about girls. ("But I was going to go into Toshi station to pick up some power converters!")

At the party, Luke had had a few, and was whining to another young man, who we'll call Dave, about how he can never get a girlfriend.

Dave says: "You need to lower your standards. You only want the 10s and you could get some 5s or 6s."
Luke: "That's not true, I could go for a 5 or a 6."
Dave: "What's your definition of a 5 or a 6?" Here he named some girls they both knew, one of whom I knew, as being 5s and 6s.
Luke: "Oh, no, ewww, those are 2s."

Okay, here's my first problem. What the hell kind of conversation is this, where you debate about someone's physical characteristics as if that defines their personhood? Is this a thing guys DO? It must be. It's not something I ever experienced in my real life, I only saw shit like that on dumb TV shows.

Since he was doing it, I went ahead and took the trouble of rating Luke on my own personal scale of hotness, which is not something I tend to do.... but if y'all really wanna know, Luke's pushing it to rate a 4, even if he had all his bits. He kind of resembles Mark Hamill (as he looks now), but smaller and shorter and not saggy.

Dave reasoned it out that his and all sane people's version of "obtainable" levels of hotness were insanely low on Luke's scale, and what most people he knew would rate a 10 Luke would only pass at a 6 or so. "No wonder you can't get a date if you're calling the 10s 6s!" He said something about Luke needing to widen his dating pool, and then Luke... Luke. Gods, the boy can't have been this drunk? He didn't sound that drunk...

Luke said: "I'm a fatophobe. I can also only date white girls, because I could never date a girl that didn't have pink nipples."

The top of my head about blew off, readers. No lie. I know my mouth was hanging open in shock, and I was still processing all the previous parts of this conversation.

I am a white girl. My nipples are not pink, unless it's possible they change color just after being abused a bit. They're sort of a pale brown.

Not my nipple, but the color is about right

Like that, right? Maybe a little darker than that. One day maybe I'll take a photo. This photo, btw, came right from the bloody wikipedia "nipple" page.

So this asshat, this guy says he can only date hot slender white girls with pink nipples? What. The. Fuck. What's he going to do, get all the thin white girls who are clamoring for the coveted position of his girlfriend to line up and flash him their tits? Not bloody likely. Or, say a girl starts to like him because she's taken in by his everyday nice demeanor, asks him to go out for coffee with her. What's he gonna do? Say "show me your nipples first, biatch?" That won't earn him much but a slap across the face. If he's lucky she won't steal his leg while he's not looking.

This asshole would be lucky to ever get to see any girl's nipple, whether it be pink or brown or black or green.

Having a grocery list of physical characteristics for a mate is never going to get you very far in a relationship, even if you start out from a position of privilege-by-your-own-hotness.

My husband says that Luke'll learn, that he's young yet.

My husband and I were married by the time we were this kid's age.

If I had an inkling that my husband had ever had such a conversation? I don't know that I would ever have been comfortable with him.

There's a reason girls have body image issues, have trouble accepting themselves. Ugly little vicious assholes are living inside guys who seem to be perfectly nice in any everyday encounter.

Women are people too, asshat.

Bad writing hurts me the most

I have read some really awesome experiences. Some of them are so well written that I can cringe with the pain, rejoice at the pleasure... ride the coaster along with the writer. Especially if it's something that has really happened, that comes through in the writing and the experience is all the richer for it.

Sometimes, though, it's fiction. I like fiction too, I like to read about fantasies as well as reality.

Sometimes the stuff is so poorly written that the grimaces and grunts that come from me aren't in response to the pain that may be going on within the written piece, but physical responses to the poor quality of the writing itself. I can't handle it, and yet I have a thing in my head that leaves me unable to walk away from something once I've started it. It's horrible. My own special brand of masochism, I suppose. Except I don't like it at all.

Then when I see responses to these things that cause such alternate amusement and pain in me, they're overwhelmingly positive. I get that writers need encouragement, but they need feedback too. I can't give critical feedback amongst a swarm of "This is awesome!"

If it's something that happened, then there's all kinds of leeway for it. A historian can't be expected to create things that didn't happen or that can't quite be recalled properly due to the hormones flooding his/her brain. Good writing is still appreciated even here, even if the narrative itself is full of gaps. If it's fiction? Then I'm going to expect a bit more. If it involves human characters, I'm going to expect they'll behave in a human fashion, and that their body parts will act as normal human body parts do.

Erect human penises of an average or above size can not "slide easily into" human throats that are at an angle. It's not possible. So if there's a woman lying on her back and a man fucking her face while sitting on her chest, that's fine. But it ain't going all the way down, unless it's a tiny thing in which case it's not going into the throat at all. If she lifts her head and shoulders up and he lifts himself up, then that makes a better angle for throat penetration, but it requires her to have some motivation. She wants it. It requires him not to just thrust frantically from his happy seated position on her chest, but to put some work into it by keeping himself up higher.

That's just one thing that drives me crazy. If my brain is screaming to me "THIS CAN'T HAPPEN!" then I have a hard time enjoying the story. Now, if you want to make the guy an alien with a bendy cock that can go right 'round that bend? Awesome! Now we're talking, but don't make it ridiculous unless that's what you're shooting for. I can go with some hilarious porn on purpose. Or if we want to keep them human, he can get off her chest and stand behind her and the act of her tilting her head back for him will straighten her throat out. We all know this, right?

I think it's quite damaging to anyone identifying as kinky, too, that so much low-quality writing is floating around. Shiterotica, which elevates the whole sad situation to a level of hilarity worthy of MST3K, should not have such a wealth of material.

So I'm a newbie and I want to read about all these things, fantasies, reality, everything, I suck it all down. I internalize that image of a man sitting on a woman's chest and somehow, magically getting his cock down her throat. What's going to happen when I can't do it? When as a receiver I can't take a cock down my throat in that position, or when as a giver I can't get my cock down a throat in that position?

Fantasy death.

Horrible thing.

"These people wrote about it, surely they know what they're talking about. Something must be wrong with me!"

End kink exploration because it causes bad feelings.

Worst case scenario, of course, but it could happen. Don't we have some responsibility to describe things accurately? Is it not just as hot that a person has to lift up his/her head and shoulders to straighten out the throat and swallow a cock?

Monogamy

I adore my husband. He adores me right back. There is a wealth of interaction and emotion between us and the concept of putting another person there just doesn't do it for either of us. We are everything to each other. We've briefly entertained the thought of inviting another person for sex, but we just weren't quite sure what the point would be, and it didn't seem like it would be much fun for the person we had added. A threesome just for the sake of it? No.

I knew it would be this way when we married. We waited a long time before we started trying for a baby, because it was so amazing just being the two of us. Our child was wanted as an expression of our love for each other and we were devastated when we couldn't catch pregnant easily, but we didn't need a child to feel complete.

I know that some people do not feel that way. I'm fine with that. I would no sooner mock those feelings and choices than I would inflict pain on my child. I read this post and I cheered, because Holly struck my feelings dead on -  I am not stuck in my monogamous relationship, woe, poor me, because that is what is expected of me. I rejoice in my relationship because it fits who I am. It is a choice we have both made, to belong to each other exclusively, and it is every bit as fulfilling as delightful as any polyamorous bunch could ever hope for.

But as Holly's post also stated, polyamorous people can also get a little overexcited, even "evangelical" about their choices. Kind of like: it's so amazing you have no idea what you're missing you should really try it like this no no this is the best way I swear!

To quote briefly from Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed:

If you drew people as dots and the relationships between them as lines connecting the dots, the result would look remarkably similar to the topology of telecommunication networks like the Internet, wherein dots represent telephony devices (phones, fax machines, computers, etc.) and lines represent interconnections between them. However, a telecommunication network in which each device could only be connected to one other device—a compulsorily monogamous worldview—would not be very useful. Why buy a phone that can only call one other phone in the world?

People are not tape, but neither are they telephones. This bizarre need to compare people to random other objects that honestly bear no similarity does not work for me. I know a good metaphor when I see one, but this is not it. This network view also seems to assume that people in monogamous relationships have no other connections. Their 'compulsory monogamy' isolates them from the rest of the world, and how could such brainwashed automatons ever connect with anyone outside of their own limited worldview? Okay, so that last bit is my own gut reaction to the piece - the feeling of being attacked just for who I've consciously chosen to love. I get some irony in that, as my heterosexually monogamous privilege has taken umbrage, but it's more than that.

Those gut-punched reactions did color my reception of the rest of the piece, which does have some interesting things to say. It ends with these words:

If this is true, then cultivating the skill of empathy across the planet’s populace, as polyamorous culture actively endeavors to accomplish, is a prerequisite not merely for one’s own individual happiness, but also for the very survival of civilization—and our humanity.

I don't see planting the seeds of monogamy as an inferior sort of backwater, unenlightened relationship style as furthering this goal of empathy. How I choose to relate in my personal life - how anyone chooses this - is beside the point. No relationship choice makes anyone less of a person, so I don't see why it is necessary to denigrate monogamy in order to celebrate polyamory. Can't we have both, and whatever else tickles our fancies? I know that monogamy does not exactly need a champion, but it does need to be treated as a valid choice even by those who haven't chosen it. We cannot win any kind of revolution by splintering.

You're poly? Awesome! I'm monogamous, I'm awesome too! Let's have lunch!