[Note: I'm on vacation in what may be very limited internet service so this is a pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing post. I may not have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
Belle de Jour, who seems to be actively blogging again, channels the dominant "no-sex" class paradigm so I won't have to.
...one thing I am rapidly learning is that outside the world of the call girl, it is a truth universally acknowledged that men need to be made to feel as if they've battled for every last sexual favour granted them, no matter how usual. Read the quote in context here.
Remember it's *men's* paradigm -- a point she brings home nicely in a footnote
* Lest you think I'm laying all blame for this state of affairs at the doorstep of women, I feel obliged to clarify - certain men encourage this behaviour. I've known men to walk away from a sexual dynamo only to end up panting at the feet of a frigid hag by choice. Clearly, in some minds, girls who have less sex must have pussies that are lined with gold. If you're one such chap, here's a free clue: the M1 still goes north regardless of how many people drive on it, 'kay?
That sounds about right. We created it, we enforce it (sometimes *very* brutally), and in classic no-win-situationism we then blame *you* for it with words like "gatekeeper," "frigid," and then saying we're "scoring" or "getting lucky" when (miracle of miracles we imagine) we "get" sex!
(As usual I don't know why people keep blaming *feminism* when the real problem, over and over and over, is so clearly *anti-feminism.*)
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may be very limited internet service so this is a pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing post. I may not have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
I spend most of my time talking about the *descriptive* elements of the dominant "no-sex" class paradigm: men's irrational but persistent conviction that women are "fair game" for leverage for sex because they have no authentic sexual agency and thus no interest in sex independent of those who seek to "get" sex from them. But there's another side, a *prescriptive* side where various personal, social, and legal punishments are designated for women who *fail* to meet the class expectations created for them.
Case in point? Laura Woodhouse of The F-Word Blog
Yup, once again the onus is being placed on women to prevent rape, with men entirely absent from the equation, this time in the Malaysian city of Kota Bharu:
Authorities in Kota Bharu have distributed pamphlets recommending that Muslim women do not wear heavy makeup and loud shoes when they go out to work in restaurants or other public places. [...] The goal of the modesty drive was to prevent rape and safeguard the women's dignity, said a spokesman.
Policing women's appearance and pre-emptively blaming them for rape in one fell swoop? Ten patriarchy points for you, sir.
I think looking at these declarations as warnings *against* rape is missing the point. I think instead they serve the functional purpose of *authorizing* rape as a tool of punishment for transgressors.
So I'm afraid that while Feministe is possessed perhaps of more generous expectations when she says of the same municipal circular
If the Kota Bura Municipal Council is actually interested in preventing rape, perhaps they should focus on the rapists.
I'm afraid the Council *really isn't interested* in preventing rape, they're interested in *using* and *encouraging* it as a form of social control of women.
And I think, by the way, that this is a *very* big deal. When wretched jerks say of an assault victim "well, she was asking for it" I suspect what they mean is "*we* were asking for it." Time to start calling them on it.
%#)!*&$
So I'm sitting here, outdoors, with a really sketchy internet connection, between two sets of summer-rental ski condo buildings, barbecuing supper on an unfamiliar "community" grill, and wondering how I could possibly pull of a convincing Half-Nekkid Thursday photo with (now) just a few minutes to go before we go altogether out of range. Heck, I don't even have my regular camera out. There are dozens of people walking and (woah) golf-carting around (I'm not used to this kind of environment) and while I have to agree with the family members who booked this trip that it's a great "base camp" for checking out the upper Idaho panhandle area (if you ever get a chance Priest Lake, where we excursed on our excursions today, is an amazing, and amazingly remote area) it's still not exactly the kind of time or place that you'd think would support out-in-the-open, hours-before-sundown even semi-pseudo-kinky photography.
But then I remembered something I read a while back... I thought it was from Sinclair of Sugarbutch but maybe not since I can't find it now... about how a partner's hands are often the first, and also often the most long-term reliably pleasurable part of their anatomy and I thought...
Y'know, it's really true. I can't remember exactly which "bases" are which in the classic first-base, second-base scenario (clarification's welcome in comments, of course) but it does seem like almost every sexual encounter that's led to intercourse, and many, many others that didn't, involved someone's hands -- mine or a partners -- sliding under each other's shorts legs, hands slipping beneath waistbands, hands slowly sliding down zippers, or unbuttoning buttons, fingers patting and tapping and seeking, gripping perhaps or dipping depending on who finds what, and then stroking or circling, palming, pressing, faster and more rhythmically... growing slowly slippery early on, or pulsingly slick near the end, and then gentling, stroking, soothing, as breathing slows and often-shy smiles bloom.
And that's when I realized I could photograph one of the most lascivious parts of my body in broad daylight with impunity. :-)
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may what's proving be very limited internet service. I've been mostly relying on \pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing posts. I'm taking the opportunity to use (limited) access here in a car-repair waiting room to try to catch up on a couple of ideas, but I may not still won't have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
Speaking of legalizing prostitution, on the way out of town last Friday my partner and I heard an interesting set on a local interview program at our local NPR affiliate. It was about the problems faced by underaged women in, at least the Seattle area and, I'm assuming, much of the rest of the world.
The interviewer (sorry, I was driving and couldn't take notes) said first that a huge number of underage sex workers in the area are associated with street gangs that use them to raise money, keep each other "satisfied," and measure each other's relative status (the intra-gang exchange part, in particular, strikes me as unambiguous "trafficking.")
She said it's a huge problem for these young women because whereas they're pretty clearly victims inside a criminal enterprise (in fact as minors they're *expressly* victims) they're also *legally* criminals and therefore subject to arrest and prosecution rather than mitigation through social services.
Gang members, like all pimps, use the illegal status of prostituted girls to *bind them closer* to them rather than drive them away.
The woman who did the research said based on her interviews, research, and analysis the #1 need for these young women is safe housing -- a perhaps unusual, and certainly little mentioned, need in most discourse on the subject.
Evidently most recruited girls are homeless. Ironically (or perhaps not) they're kicked out of "good" homes in suburban/exurban communities where (as happened to the niece of a friend) the advice of church and community leaders is "cut them loose and kick them out, they're already damaged goods."
At any rate, their legal status is a problem in a variety of dimensions including, duh, the fact that girls with active or recent criminal pasts aren't terribly welcome, nor are they in any position to be terribly trusting of authorities. Nor, incidentally, are they necessarily terribly interested in testifying against the men who prostitute them, both out of direct fear of violence or death and indirectly out of the commonly-pimp-inspired belief that their pimps are their "boyfriends." None of the above combine to make them accessible to law enforcement (who's key mechanism tends to involve plea bargaining, not ways out for those who want out.)
Any rate, one more reason why straight-up criminalization isn't working as well as advertised. No, I'm not advocating that child prostitution be legalized (as the title of this blog should make fairly clear.) But it *does* suggest that if you want to actually *help* those involuntarily in prostitution the solution probably *isn't* to just leave it illegal and let shame and fear take it from there.
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may what's proving be very limited internet service. I've been mostly relying on \pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing posts. I'm taking the opportunity to use (limited) access here in a car-repair waiting room to try to catch up on a couple of ideas, but I may not still won't have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away.
I generally say sarcasm and irony are indications of either powerlessness or a sense thereof. This post contains sarcasm, which suggests my level of feeling about the issue of what to do about prostitution and trafficking in the face of exceptionalist accusations of "pro-prostitution cheerleading" in the face of perfectly reasonable concerns about the still-pending amendments to the Wilberforce/TVPA bill by... interest groups with perfectly respectable anti-trafficking credentials. --fl]
Jhak of The Human Trafficking Project says
The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) recently released, *Rights to Survival & Mobility: An Anti-Trafficking Activist's Agenda*, a new report highlighting the disproportionate impact of human trafficking on Asian and Pacific Islander women and girls. Human trafficking is the third most profitable underground enterprise, rivaling the drug and arms trade. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that the largest group of persons trafficked into the U.S. are from East Asia and the Pacific.
Now on the one hand that sounds like a great, credible women's organization with boots-on-the-ground, there-but-for-fortune-go-I attitude towards trafficking.
Unfortunately?
"This is an extremely critical time to discuss the impact of human trafficking on API communities, especially in light of the pending reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act," says NAPAWF's Anti-Trafficking Project Director, Liezl Tomas Rebugio. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007, HR 3887, offers extended protections for foreign domestic workers but also attempts to transform anti-trafficking legislation to prostitution legislation. Specifically, HR 3887 expands the Mann Act--a federal law that prohibits the transportation of persons across state lines for the purpose of prostitution--to include prostitution activity within states, and calls prostitution "sex trafficking". Essentially, this creates a new federal prostitution crime and identifies all prostitution as "sex trafficking", even if *force, fraud or coercion* is not present.
Yup, unfortunately if they prefer the current approach that serves their *actual client demographic* instead of 100% anti-prostiution-only gender-essentialism they're mere "dishonest pro-prostitution cheerlead[ers.]"
Want proof? Why, just listen to their "pro-trafficking mollycoddling" in the *next* paragraph.
This limited approach to human trafficking is a strategy that NAPAWF is highly critical of. *Rights to Survival & Mobility* broadens the discourse on human trafficking to include root causes, such as poverty, gender-based discrimination, globalization and militarism. Furthermore, NAPAWF links the anti-trafficking movement with other social justice movements such as worker's rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights and human rights.
And after all *everyone* knows that worker's rights, reproductive justice, racial justice, women's rights, and human rights are *all* euphemisms for pimping.
Photo by Flickr user Niffty. Used under a Creative Commons license.
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may what's proving be very limited internet service. I've been mostly relying on \pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing posts. I'm taking the opportunity to use (limited) access here in a car-repair waiting room to try to catch up on a couple of ideas, but I may not still won't have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
Quoth the Monty Python sketch
Second Bruce: Here! Here's the boss-fellow now!
(Enter fourth bruce with English person, Michael)
Third Bruce: 'Ow are you, Bruce?
First Bruce: G'day, Bruce!
Fourth Bruce: Bruce.
Second Bruce: Hello, Bruce.
Fourth Bruce: Bruce.
Third Bruce: How are you, Bruce?
Fourth Bruce: G'day, Bruce.
Fourth Bruce: Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce a man from Pommyland who is joinin' us this year in the Philosophy Department at the University of Wooloomooloo.
EveryBruce: G'day!
Michael Baldwin: Hello.
Fourth Bruce: Michael Baldwin, Bruce. Michael Baldwin, Bruce. Michael Baldwin, Bruce.
First Bruce: Is your name not Bruce?
Michael: No, it's Michael.
Second Bruce: That's going to cause a little confusion.
Third Bruce: Mind if we call you "Bruce" to keep it clear?
Source: University of Adelaide Library; Monty Python script for "The Bruces"
Amanda Schaffer, Slate.com's Medical Examiner column, has a nice article debunking a pair of books in the evidently bottomless genre of "mars/venus" pseudoscience. This time by "reluctant" feminists but that's almost beside the point. We already know that people *want* there to be a difference, preferably large ones, nevermind how surprisingly little supporting research there might be. (I think it would be a lot more interesting if someone would just write a book about that.)
Given the radical proposition that both men and women are *people,* it should come as no surprise that roughly equal numbers of men and women are anorgasmic and/or asexual. But it perpetually surprises us as much, maybe more, as the news that except maybe in childhood men and women have virtually indistinguishable verbal skills and word usage.
And therefore it shouldn't surprise us that men and women, people all, should be equally eroticized by sensations associated with submission and masochism.
I mean, compare the difference between the following snippets, first from Holly of The Pervocracy, who says
Submission's easy to explain. Pain's hard. It's not just about giving up control, it's about giving up control and being betrayed. If D/s is a trust fall, SM is a trust fall where you hit the ground. Still thrilling, and with a competent top still safe, but... fuuuck, it hurts.
I've heard people say things like "masochists transform pleasure to pain," or "it's not pain, it's intense sensation." Really? Is that what it's like for you? Maybe it is. But for me, there's a lot of real, no-euphemism pain in the experience. Certain types of pain are straight-up pleasurable: very mild slap 'n tickle, pain during sex, and sometimes pain that's sufficiently severe and extended that I get a little out of my head. The meat of a scene, though, hurts me.
So why? Dunno. I don't think it's any kind of negative or self-destructive impulse; hitting makes me happy! I do get a little high afterwards, but it doesn't happen every time and I don't think it's the primary motivation. Ascribing it to The Patriarchy is too ridiculous for words. Maybe it's just one of those random oddities that people are born with. Like an eleventh toe.
As opposed to Richard of Down On My Knees who says
That people who aren’t gifted with masochism can’t grasp it never surprises me. They don’t have our special superpower that transforms “Ouch!” into something rewarding.
This afternoon I thought of one aspect that is especially obscure.
If, like me, you are a certified pain slut then pain can feel good in itself as it happens. Well, sometimes. Not necessarily when you push toward the edge. At least not straightforward obvious pleasure. I’ve yet to evolve the vocabulary for the experience.
Or not at the time. Certain pains don’t lend them to immediate gratification: a hot ointment, like IcyHot, that causes a terrifying tingle. Nor when you endure a quality or level of pain solely to please the top. The reward comes later. I remember evenings when the happy afterglow to a series of a demanding scenes didn’t kick in until the following morning.
Oh wait! There's not much difference there at all is there? Oops!
Which brings me to a point Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon brings up (all emphasis mine, but note especially the bold text)
Not too long ago, a friend of a friend joking-aggressively asked me while we were out and about what the difference between misogyny and sex is. Mind you---we were sober. So I kind of blinked at him and was like, “Come again?” I know the game Bait The Feminist, but this one didn’t even make a lot of sense. He tried to clarify, but it wasn’t helping. I kept thinking he was trying to imply that feminists think straight male sexual desire itself is somehow anti-woman, but he knows that I can’t possibly think that, so I was confused. Later I thought about it and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt---maybe there are men out there who really do struggle to find a way to desire women that doesn’t have a backlog of misogyny and resentment towards women. God knows that our culture doesn’t do much to help men out in this regard, and in fact encourages men to resent women for being desireable, and to rectify the dissonance between feeling vulnerable towards women because you desire them and feeling superior to women because of your social station by making the act of intercourse a symbolic conquering of the female body. In case that sort of heady language is confusing, a good deal of porn simplifies things by making women choke on cocks, look generally uncomfortable, get double-pronged in painful-looking ways, get spat upon, and get called names like “slut” and “whore”.
Here's the deal. You *can't look* at Holly's post without recognizing that there's *some* foundation to all the popular tropes of androcentric porn: women women really, even *really* really get off on pain even though it just hurts. I'll go even further and say that anyone who denies, for instance, Holly's experience or fails to support her is denying not only her sexuality, or her gender, but denying the radical proposition that *she's* a person. So for someone to say I'm denying, or disputing, or disrupting, or disrespecting those women who get off on pain, humiliation, and submission, no matter how "extreme" I could in all fairness accuse them of deliberately misreading my position. (Not that I would, of course, I'm just saying I *could.*)
But here's the other deal. You can't look at Holly's post next to Richard's virtually identical post without recognizing the deep truth of Amanda Marcotte's post: Women have no monopoly on masochism, men are equally equipped to be enthusiastic masochists and bottoms, no more women than men overall are masochistic and/or subservient and yet... the bulk of popular porn in terms of downloads, in terms of rentals, in terms of "most favorited" on upload sites like YouPorn or RedTube, in terms of "have to see it to believe it" blooper sites specializing in sexual and nonsexual pratfalls... are about hurting, humiliating, and dominating women to one degree or another.
In keeping with the Monty Python sketch at the top I'm tempted to call it the "all women are named Bruce" fallacy. And, while we're at it, the "no men are named Bruce" fallacy. Except, of course, that someone would point out that *no* women are named Bruce, and that not that many men are either.
One might be excused, however, for assuming that a disproportionate number of porn producers, let alone consumers, are named Bruce.
It would certainly explain the data better than the next 80 best-sellers claiming men and women are from such different species it's a miracle of both Church and Science that we can interbreed at all.
[Note: Note also the thuggish homophobia mocked in the Python sketch. Although note also the not-too-veild colonialist contempt by Englishmen for Australian erstwhile colonials.
Also note: I highlighted the text in Marcotte's post, "I kept thinking he was trying to imply that feminists think straight male sexual desire itself is somehow anti-woman, but he knows that I can’t possibly think that..." Yeah, that would have confused me too. Most feminists I know really don't think straight male sexual desire is anti-woman. I think that would actually be *anti-feminist" attitudes towards straight male sexual desire are anti-woman instead. After all *they're* the ones who think men are just so flipping superior we can ruin women just by touching them with our pee-pees. All the more reason to prefer feminism, eh? --fl]
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may be very limited internet service so this is a pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing post. I may not have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
Things I love about boxer shorts:
Useless fly
That lets in curious fingers.
Wide legs
Wide enough for an exploring hand.
But mostly,
You underneath!
(25 words)
[A regular commenter, P. Burke, left this 25-word post after my 25-Words-or-Less meditation on women's underwear. She says she's pretty much on hiatus with her blog and agreed to let me post it here instead. --fl]
Going back to a much earlier (2006!) post about the language of orgasms, another good reason to seek a more active, verb-ish, non-noun-ish way to express orgasms is that something you *do,* as opposed to something you just "have," carries less status-related baggage associated with it.
I've mentioned elsewhere that too often orgasms are used as a way to keep score. How many you have can become all that matters. Give your partner one? Score points! Couldn't have any? Eeeep, you lost! Give your partner several? More points! Sometimes it's like some kind of pinball games except what are you supposed to do with all those points? Win a free turn? This is perfectly consistent with something you can have or give, but it's possible to fetishise orgasms just like it is to fetishise all sorts of other things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all trying to devalue orgasms. They're wonderful things to do with yourself or someone else, or to do for someone or have someone do for you, and of course it can be disappointing (not to mention frustrating) when you aren't able to do them yourself or for your partner. I'm just saying orgasms aren't things!
Or put it another way, orgasms exist in the singing, not in the song. They exist in the notes played as they're played. They're the strings plucked, they're resonances and vibrations. They are themselves acts of creation, not the transcribed results (the "score?") of those acts.
Photo by Flickr user rexheer. Used under a Creative Commons license.
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may be is very limited internet service so this is a pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing post. I may not have won't have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
So I'm starting to wonder how much of modern Western sexual progress has coincided with modern Western "bourgeoise" trends in housing. We're staying in a little summer-use ski condominium/time-share thingie that was arranged for us by friends. Unbeknownst to us it's a seriously one-room plus bathroom affair. That's fine as far as it goes, and it's a perfectly pleasant place, but while there's enough room for an adult and two children once you fold up the hide-a-bed couch there just isn't any privacy at all!
And I'm *still* being spoiled! We have only two children. The room is still quite a bit bigger than a lot of much larger and much more affluent families have in Japan to name just one other country. Neither nor both of our parents, nor any of our brothers or sisters live here either, as is often the case in, say, Moscow. And still being spoiled because even when I was very poor (nutritional-deficience poor, sleeping under interstate overpass or culvert poor, hitch-hiked from somewhere-on-the-Hudson New York to Philadelphia and back in a day because I couldn't afford a long-distance call for a correct address poor) I at least had the privacy of being on someone's couch, or porch, or back yard while they were in their bedrooms.
The idea, though, of ever being able to play a real adult disclosure/conversation-starter sex game with a partner is out of the question, however, even with all this one-room room. For that matter (at least to my sensibilities) sex of *any* sort is out of the question unless we sent the children off to the little rec center (oops, at least one parent must accompany...) or playground (oops, at least one parent must...) or... or...
I don't know how people do it. Which isn't, incidentally, a judgment call of any sort. I just, literally, don't know how it's done. If you know from first, second, or third-hand I'd love to hear it.
The first thing I can think of would be long showers together. What about you?
[Note: I'm on vacation in what may be very limited internet service so this is a pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing post. I may not have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away. --fl]
Red of The Red Sneaker Diaries reviewed an (almost -- turns out you've got to be hetero) very-cool sounding sex game that doesn't just facilitate sex, it facilitates exploration and communication about interest, boundaries, and adventurousness.
Sex Is Fun comes as an unassuming deck of cards. The cards divide into twelve piles – six for the guy, six for the girl (yes, that is the one negative to this game – it’s for a heterosexual couple – no two ways about it). The piles are all different topics: “Pillow Talk”, “Touch Test”, “Oral Action”, “Sex Play”, “Kinky Action”, “Act It Out”. Game paly is very simple. The first to go picks a card and acts on it, then the other player reacts, and a point is assigned based on the outcome. The preverbal ante can be upped by playing an “I Dare You” or “Prove It!” card, upping the number of points on the line. At the end of the game, most points wins. Simple really. I’ve said it before, simple is sexy.
Read the quote, and find links to the game vendor's site, here.
The solution, it seems to me, isn't so much to lament it's heterocentrism as to encourage them to develop sequels and/or extensions. (Hey, it works for games for children such as Killer Bunny and Carcassonne so it can work for games for adults as well.) And in terms of serving customers who could use it most? Tell me there's one relationship expert who can say (with a straight face and any credibility) that straight people need less work on real adult communication about sex than people of other, perhaps more necessarily aware, persuasions and I'll back down. :-) Seriously, even if it's only the first step it sounds like a step in a good direction.
I'm off on vacation for nearly two weeks in northern Idaho and southeast British Columbia. The former has lots of clothing-optional lakes, rivers, and streams. Idaho? Not so much. And as usual for places I seem to vacation connectivity promises to be unpromising. I've left a few posts for publication later on just in case but I *should* be able to connect at least once a day. Possibly by dial-up only.
I may not have much opportunity to reply to comments but you're comments are still very welcome. I'll reply as soon as I can. You're some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you're always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other's comments while I'm away.
While I'm out I'll be reading Umberto Eco's On Ugliness
See you sooner or see you later but one way or another I'll look forward to seeing all of you.
Photo by Flickr user tapperboy. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Still following up on the twenty questions I found at Amorous Rocker of Not Your Average Chick that I decided to answer one at a time instead of all in a rush. So...
10. Bite or Suck:
Usually when someone says "bite me" they're being... well, non-gender specific, maybe but still not exactly polite. On the other hand they also say "you suck" so I guess that's a wash. Which is sort of a nuisance since both can feel wonderful under the right circumstances.
When I was very young and learning about sex from a variety of pre-1960 and therefore not terribly helpful medical, anthropological, and psychological texts (with the occasional almost-a-stroke-book pseudo-academic works thrown in) I learned the following about the Kama Sutra: "The book contains five chapters about what we'd consider "normal" foreplay and sixteen chapters about biting, scratching, and slapping one's partners for erotic effect." And yes, I'm sure I have the exact numbers wrong but not the approximate proportions. It didn't sound very tempting** and so I generally left off all that.
My loss, as I've learned since beginning to read other anonymous and then not as anonymous bloggers of kink.
Still, given a choice between the two I'd choose suck. And lick. And kiss. And mouth. And breathe warm breath across spots tender and mild. The latter, by the way, seems to work as well on recently spanked, bitten, or scratched spots as not... but not in my case if I'd agreed to pick only one. :-)
And again that's given *my* choice of one. A choice I'd rather not make.
I haven't been bitten much but if it's not oversharing once you arouse me to a certain point I adore having my nipples bitten. But then at that point I adore having them sucked as well. You hear every now and then people praising little nips during fellatio. My experience has been that it's... not so great. The side of my neck works well and so does the very top inside of my thighs. And while I've really enjoyed being bitten on the arms and shoulders it wasn't the sensation itself but the shared level of emotion, combined with a willingness to sacrifice a little comfort in the interest of not alerting parents.
Sucking though? I love, love, love fingers and toes. When I suck yours. When you suck mine. Not hard so much as warmly, wetly, and deepy... mmm, that's lovely almost any time. Earlobes? Yours or mine it's also wonderful. The inside of arms, yes, and all up and down the throat and shoulders and neck, too.
Breasts? I actually don't go in so much for sucking, or at least not the classic baby-nursing style though it's a lot of fun to slurp as much of your nipples and breasts as I can with a gentle suction and then swirling my tongue around and around. And around. But I love licking breasts even without suction at least as much. I don't know about you but I've noticed most people I've tried it with go deeper into haze when I kiss, or lick, or stroke the curves of the breast just below and to the outside rather than right over nipples. And, as I mentioned above, there's blowing gently over wet flesh first to chill it and then re-warm it again with hands or lips or tongue.
And speaking of lips and tongue, does anyone else enjoy licking and sucking their partner's lips during kissing? Gently biting there works wonders too, or would if not for that darn choice. It's always the lower lip that gets the mention for sucking but I've noticed the inside of most people's upper lip is a marvelous erogenous zone for that.
And of course there's all the different non-bite-y things one can do during cunnilingus. I used to think that eating a partner was end-of-the-world, I-could-die-happy paradise, and while I've gotten over that a *little* in the sense that I'm no longer outright fetishistic about it I still... mmm... what was I saying? Oh yeah, something I've wound up doing especially during side-by-side (as opposed to top or bottom) sixty-nine, you know, where you're each pillowing the other's head on your thigh, is gently slurping... ok I mean *sucking* an inner labia deep into my mouth and then swirling the flat of my tongue across the inner surface. Like maybe a lot of people I can get pretty distracted during sixty-nine but doing that doesn't take a lot of concentration. The only risk is that it tends to really distract the other person.
As for me? Well, fellatio tends to work in waves for me (I think this is true for a lot of people during oral, men and women) so one minute every nerve ending is on fire and a minute later I feel almost numb... although fortunately after another minute it's back to... where was I again? Anyway, when I'm cycled down it's wonderful when you pop me out of your mouth and tongue or slurp on the large, loose, soft vein along the side. You're not going exactly lose my attention no matter what but that's definitely going to keep it till my tide comes in again.
Anyway, I'm not going to say of biting that I could take it or leave it -- there are too many nice ways to do it to give it up completely. But sucking? I'll take that in a heartbeat. And give it just as quickly. Any time.
How about you?
Tony and Peggy Comstock of Comstock Films may not catch as much unnecessary grief for producing Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless as he did for Ashley & Kisha: Finding the Right Fit or Damon & Hunter: Doing it Together but in a lot of ways what he's doing is way more radically "transgressive" of social norms.
Contrary to popular belief sex doesn't stop at 25. Nor does it stop being beautiful. And since most of us live for the better part of a century *past* 25 that's a darn good thing. Time people stopped treating it like it was a circus side-show or, worse, like it didn't happen at all.
As the Comstock motto says "Real People, Real Life, Real Sex."
Photo "Fishermen's Memorial" by Flickr user ricardo.martins. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Y'know, it's not like I'm a prostitute, it's not as though I'm a customer. I've known a couple of people who've been (out, non-closet) prostitutes at least once in their lives, and I've become friends or acquaintances with a handful more online, but not that many. Thanks perhaps to the internet, and persistent police patrols and neighborhood watches, and maybe the rise of "escort" the old urban highway sidewalks a mile from my home is no longer athwart with "hitchhikers" in too-short skirts with too-long sleeves and too much makeup covering too many bruises nor are there as many single-occupancy, older American cars slowing and stopping to "offer rides." I'm not tremendously libertarian. While I don't specifically object to prostitution I strongly believe they're not a solution to any known problem including all the standard "problems" they're supposed to be solutions to.
So why do I care? This paragraph might seem like a digression. It's not. The photo accompanying this post is of the Fisherman's Memorial at Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle, for generations the home port for the main body of the Alaskan fishing fleet. (In a lot of ways, going back to the days of the Alaska Gold Rush, Seattle's lower-48 proximity has made it the mercantile capital of Alaska.) The memorial lists the names of all the many fishermen and women who've been lost at sea in what's widely considered one of the most dangerous professions in the nation. It's a sobering list... so many lives lost, so many of them young, and each the beloved of so many surviving parents, friends, partners, children. And yet...
And yet in the last 30 years or so more prostitutes in the Northwest have died at the hands of serial murderers, casual murderers, pimps, customers, and occasionally the random passer by than are listed on the Fisherman's Memorial.
More street prostitutes have died in America than loggers (they're not "lumberjacks" here.) More prostitutes have died than coal miners. More have died in the modern era than have construction workers, steel workers, perhaps even police. Certainly more than have firefighters.
Even more have been robbed, beaten, raped, mutilated, *left* for dead but survived. And most of them too have been young, and each of them were beloved by surviving parents, friends, partners, and children.
And yet there is no memorial to prostitutes.
Not surprising. Not surprising because prostitutes aren't seen as people. Not surprising because the condition of their labor is the condition that makes them vulnerable -- forced to the margins, to darkened streets, to warehouse districts, to docs and warves, to airport rows, to gaslight districts. Not surprising because when police cruise by they must melt away... not just for fear of arrest but for fear as well of shakedowns for "complementary" "services" in order to *avoid* arrest.
It's not just in the Northwest that prostitutes are the victim of choice. Today I read from Renee of Feministe that another murderer, or murderers (though it scarcely matters how many) has been stalking shadowed-from-the-law prostitutes in the Niagara Falls area of New York.
When you think of the Niagara region immediately the mind turns to the majestic falls. Some who have spent more than an afternoon here will think of places like the Welland Canal, The Skylon Tower, Fallsview Casino, Clifton Hill, and maybe even the dearth of reasonably priced hotels, and restaurants. The aforementioned sites are the Niagara region you are supposed to think about. It is what you will find printed in all of those handy little pamphlets, that the tour guides like to give out. Yes the safe family destination, where everything is bright and sunny. What you will not hear about are the women that have been killed here since 1996. What if I were to whisper these names in your ear?
31-year-old Dawn Stewart - her skeletal remains and those of her six-month old fetus were discovered in March 1996 in a wooded are of Pelham six months after her disappearance.
26-year-old Nadene Gurczenski – her body was discovered in a Vineland ditch in May 1999. She had a two year old child. Cause of death undeclared.
32-year-old Diane Dimitri - her body was discovered in a ditch outside of Welland in August 2003. She had four children. Beaten to death.
26-year-old Margaret Jeanette Jigaru - her body was discovered in the parking lot of Princess Margaret Elementary school in Niagara Falls in July 2004. She had a four year old son. Shot in the back of the throat, execution-style.
22-year-old Cassey Chicocki - her body was found in a wooded area off of Whirlpool Rd. in Niagara Falls in December 2005. She had suffered the loss of her 3 month old child and the suicide of her brother in the few years just prior to her murder. Beaten to death, her teeth were in her stomach.
29-year-old Stephine Beck - her body was discovered in a Vineland ditch , one concession south of where Nadene’s body was discovered 8 years earlier, in march of 2007. Stephine was 14 weeks pregnant. She died of strangulation.
36-year-old Shari Bacon - found beaten to death in Sean Paul Christie’s apartment in April, 2008. She had to be identified by her tattoos.
Do they resonate with a kind of familiarity in your memory? How about if I said the name Kristen French? The difference between Kristen French, and the aforementioned women, is that French was a young school girl brutally murdered and raped by the serial killer Paul Bernardo, and the other women were all sex trade workers who were brutally raped, and murdered. French is memorable for her innocence and potential, while these women are forgotten for their occupation, and addictions; yet were they not all women, all worthy of justice?
These are just the women whose bodies have been found.
I care about prostitution because *what ever else* you care to say about them, or the job the do, or the "legitimate" customers they service, nor how you feel about how they should or shouldn't work...because they *do* work, or how their customers should or shouldn't seek them... because they *do* seek them, nobody deserves working conditions so desperate that they have to fear a police car more than they must fear the cars of the men they *hope* seek only the service of their bodies and not the use of their lives.
At least in America, at least since the "sexual revolution" (and really since well before), at least since the economic and social value of women has increased beyond the utility of their bodies, the profession of prostitution has been dwindling. Some estimates say up to a 90% decline since the dawn of the 20th Century. One can imagine that for all the scandal and fuss and fulminations of "family values" politicians, and religious and moral activists, that in time their trade will die away... or if not die away then transform into a profession that's almost unrecognizable by today's standards and inconceivable even 50 years ago.
And while we wait for that eventuality the remaining sex workers -- still mostly women though there are many men and many transsexuals as well -- work in conditions women of 100 years ago would find little changed.
I think prostitution should be legal, legal not so they could be "regulated" or "inspected" or (as in Singapore, evidently) forced to take penicillin every three weeks, but so they could form associations, so they could network, so they could come far enough out of the shadows to be seen and *protected* rather than preyed upon by police, so they could *call* the police when they felt threatened, robbed, beaten, or preyed upon, enough that they can safely *join* crusades to eliminate the (competing-for-their-business-if-nothing-else!) scourges trafficking, of pimping, of prostituting of the unwilling, the unwary, the unwell, the undocumented, and the underaged and all others for whom the work is thrust upon instead of undertaken with a will.
As I've said I don't think prostitutes solve any problems, including the problems they, their customers, and society since antiquity imagine they solve. And as I've said I believe that as society progresses the services they offer, under the conditions they're sought today, will grow ever less demanded of them.
But I don't think their interests nor the interests of their moral, ethical, gender, or social antagonists are served by keeping them shadowed and preyed upon.
And *that's* why I care. I've never known any of the victims who've been murdered, or robbed, or raped, or beaten. But ya know what? I don't know any of the fishermen listed on the memorial at Fisherman's Terminal either. But I care deeply about their well being as well. Enough so that I'd oppose efforts to decertify their unions, associations, and benevolent societies, or to outlaw their profession. Why should I, or anyone else, oppose similar treatment for an even more dangerous profession. You want to eliminate prostitution? So did Gary Ridgeway. He eliminated somewhere between sixty and eighty. Someone in Niagara Falls is eliminating them, possibly, as I write. Your way, no matter what, is better than theirs. Why not make it so that while you do your work the Ridgeways, and Pictons, and Niagara's Michael Durant were less able to as well.
It's not just the Northwest, it's not just the Niagara area. Chances are it's your area too. And if it's not your area? It's not because it's not happening, or hasn't, or won't. It's because, as Renee says
One of the things that angers me the most about the sparse reporting that has taken place on these brutal homicides, is the fact that these women are constantly only referred to as sex trade workers. Yes, that was their occupation but does anyone’s job make up the totality of their identity. It is a way of devaluing their humanity. To the world at large they don’t constitute a loss because they are represented as dirty, foul, carnivorous vaginas seeking to profit through dirty acts. “Good girls” don’t sell sex, and “good girls” don’t become addicted. Yet there was a time when they must have danced in the rain, built snowmen, or even just enjoyed the warmth of the suns rays as it kissed their bodies. As long as we continue to see them as what they did rather than who they were, there will never be a push to achieve justice for them.
I care because like Renee I stopped being able to look away.
Wonderful how your undies look stretched tight
Around your hips, yes, or
Around your thighs, or
Around your knees, and
Especially
Around your ankles
(24 words)
So, does only one sock still count as "half-nekkid?" I mean, at what point do you stop being half dressed and start being mostly naked?
HNT: 
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
Very quick question:
What is it specifically about women athletes that they need to bare, oh, maybe 25-30% more skin compared to male athletes?
People have been talking about women's outfits at Wimbledon as if they were high couture when they're actually... mostly *short* couture. At least compared to men at Wimbledon who all seem to wear the same basic white polo-style shirt with long-cut shorts.
Same with beach volleyball. Men manage to function in these *enormous* jams-style shorts while as of 8 seconds ago women players can't work in anything heavier than bikinis.
Oddly women's and women's basketball, baseball, football, and track uniforms are all roughly equal size and length and meanwhile Men's pole acrobatics outfits cover *much* more than do women's.
Anyway, while after holding out for at least a generation Wimbledon has evidently finally started awarding the same prizes to men and women players, it looks like women players are still getting the short end of the skirt.
So! I don't play tennis, or even watch it, and wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't had a Williams' sister match on the screen at my gym yesterday. So I could just be totally off about this but is it all about fashion or is there really some kind of performance reason for the differences between men's and women's athletic outfits? I promise I'm not *knocking* the difference, and except for women's volleyball players (who, randomly Googled photos suggest) might spend more time dealing with wedgies it doesn't look like there's a performance hit one way or another. I'm just wondering if there's a practical basis to it or if I'm just being ignorant about sports again.
Update: Doh! And two seconds later I run across this post from Jezebel.
Second Update: Never mind. On further reading it looks like he's not proposing that LPGA women golfers wear bikinis *during* tournements. He just wants "comely" ones to model bikinis on the side.
Quick follow-up on this post about whether women prefer jerks. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon raises another problem with the spread-your-seed evolutionary "justification" for contemporary male promiscuity
...there’s the weird implication that having more sexual partners=having more offspring, which is actually anti-true nowadays (it’s easier to talk someone into having kids if you stick around), and I’m skeptical if it ever was a better strategy than actually cultivating relationships.
Read the quote in context here.
Ok, so I still think Marcotte, like Jill Filipovic have the better argument (jerks are more likely to lie about how often they "score") but let's play with this idea a little further.
Yeah, that's *always* been an issue for me. Humans evolved a *really* long time ago compared to even our "dawn of history" sensibilities (as recently as 40,000 years for Homo Sapiens S. to maybe a million or so for people so genetically similar you'd probably notice only superficial differences like hair or skin.) And of the "uncontacted peoples" who most closely resemble our really pre-historic ancestors there's enough differences in social/domestic organization that you can't really characterize one as more "evolution-based" than any other.
Oh, except that family organization tends to be, um..., matrio-centric in the sense that no matter how they tend to be treated by other men they tend to form cohesive networks of support with each other such that they're not particularly *economically* dependent on specific men. That doesn't mean you can't have, or don't have, or should or shouldn't have patriarchy -- it's obviously pretty prevalent! Instead it's that generally speaking the oh-so-important-to-sociobiologists, decision-driving survival of offspring probably had *waaaaay* more to do with one's relationships to other women (one's owns or one's "in-law's") and perhaps her brothers or brothers-in-law, fathers or fathers-in-law, and so on than her specific father-of-all-her-children partner. And *if* you were going to go dragging in species similar to ours that's more what you see anyway.
So what? So the point is that *if* women have a magical "genetic" preference for bad boys (as opposed to a more social/intellectual/decision-making-agent aversion to used car salespersons, phone-bank fundraiers, NiceGuys™ and other poseurs) then it might be something more along the lines of "the less outside interference the better." Which, if you consider that the biggest threat to women and children seems to be the men in their domestic lives, makes a lot of sense!
Bottom line? "Bad boy" behavior doesn't have to be a *male* survival technique. Facts on the ground suggest it *could* be a way of signaling that *if* pregnancy results from a tryst with a "bad boy" the woman can be confident he won't be as likely to stick around to be a health- or life-threatening burden on the mother and her kinship group.
So, any anti-feminists still want to keep playing this game?
Photo "Better the Devil You Made" by Flickr user mafleen. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Jill of Feministe says of the recent "jerks get laid more often" research meme...
Unfortunately, this study is being interpreted as “women like assholes.” Well, no. Let’s think this one through: This isn’t about how often someone gets laid, it’s about how many sexual partners someone has — those aren’t the same thing. If you’re in a relationship, chances are you’re sleeping with fewer people than a sexually active single person (yeah, there’s cheating and there are open relationships, but generally, couples at least attempt to be monogamous).
...
I know it’s easy to forget that sometimes women have sex just to have sex and not because they actually like you that much, but it happens. It’s not always a matter of bad boys wooing vulnerable women into bed and then leaving them; it’s often two people who are both interested in just sex picking each other and calling it a day. Of course, there are no doubt some women who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks; there are also some dudes who are suckered in by narcissistic jerks (just as a Nice Guy). But sex isn’t always a trick men play on women.
What kind of men women choose to partner with is probably a better indication of what women actually like.
I think why people link this to the "women like jerks" notion is that long-term relationships not withstanding it really is often the case that more "nice guys" than jerks are likely to leave a party alone... but as Jill points out that's not the same thing.
Also consider that a) contrary to maybe men's expectations the opposite of "party girl" isn't so much "buff dude with car and job," it's more like "unencumbered man who's not going to overly complicate your life" and b) what makes you think "nice guys" aren't jerks? They're they ones pretending they just want to show you their etchings and read Playboy or Maxim or whatever for "the articles." A "bad boy" might be a bad *choice* but at best you know he's whispering sweet nothings. At best prospective partners of NiceGuys™ have to parse whether the whisperings are sincere... assuming things ever get to the whispering stage. The problem with NiceGuys™ being that, like phone solicitations from alumni associations, charitable groups, and progressive political action groups, no matter what the *say* they want, you can be pretty sure that before the end of the conversation you're going to get the "by the way we're asking for..." shift of topic.**
I think the tricky part about the "girls like goons" meme is that NiceGuys™ and actual nice guys imagine the answer is to themselves behave badly when, I've noticed, the *real* value of "bad boys" vs "nice guys" is straightforwardness.
[** The fundraiser call analogy might be extended further if you realize that, whether the caller knows it or not, the bulk of fundraising efforts go to... more fundraising. Compare this to the "self-esteem" building "requirement" for men to obtain multiple partners and you see that no individual contribution (a donation to the caller, sex wth the suitor) produces much in the way of actual benefit to the contributor and... eww! --fl]
Still following up on the twenty questions I found at Amorous Rocker of Not Your Average Chick that I decided to answer one at a time instead of all in a rush. So...
9. Rough or Gentle:
Hey this is a fun question. I'll start out by mentioning a lesson I learned from... somewhere a long time ago about roughness and gentleness between the sexes. (Yes, even I agree that anatomy creates *some* differences between men and women.) Anyway, the advise was to keep in mind that men tend to touch women's clitorises they way they like to be touched (very firmly) while women tend to touch men's cocks the way *they* like to be touched (fairly lightly.)
Learning that worked wonders for me both ways. Oh yeah, and here's the rub... doh! sorry about the pun! Anyway, one consequence of each of us touching the other the way *we'd* like to be touched is that it really *only applies to cocks and clitorises and not our entire bodies, our brains, or our lives! Women touching men gingerly doesn't mean you're hung up, you're doing exactly what makes sense. Similarly men aren't necessarily knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, we're just doing what we think would work best. (And yes, communication can work wonders there.) But the thing is that just because we like you to hold the shafts of our cocks much more firmly doesn't mean we won't melt the same way you may if you softly nibble our necks. And just because you want us to stroke your vulvas way more gently than we stroke ourselves doesn't mean the rest of you is made out of fragile flower stems either.
So that's one part of rough vs. gentle.
Another? Sometimes I want to send the buttons of your blouse flying and pulling the tattered sleeves down to your elbows to pin your arms as I devour you where your shoulders reach your neck, other times I want to spend an hour going button by button and warmly, wetly kissing each inch of newly bared skin.
Sometimes, when you're crampy, I want to deeply knuckle the bones of your hips and tailbone, and then a minute later I want to gently rest my palm over your lower belly to let the warmth of my hand soak through your skin.
Sometimes I want to gently fingertip your nipples till they crinkle, and then gently soften them again with my warm palms. Other times, when your lips are molten hot against mine and our breathing is short and sharp I want to maul your breasts with open hands, and catch your nipples hard between my fingers.
Other times (ok, more often than not) I'd rather tip our hips towards each other so knowingly, slowly, and so gently expert in our familiarities that the distinction of inside and out, while exquisite, are almost impossible to tell.Every now and then, though, I might want to pull you up to your knees by your naked hips, lean over you with my bristled chin scratching your neck and cheek and gravel pirate-like about being unsure whether to have you like a woman or like a boy as the curved underside of my cock presses against your perineum.
Sometimes there's the rough carpet in the back of a station wagon or van when the weather outside is frightful. Other times it's nice to feel air wafting gently across us while we're underneath a single sheet while the weather outside's delightful.
All in all I'd hate having to choose just one. You?
Phoebe Connelly of TAPPED talks about *big* generational shifts
It started with a conversation I had with two organizers about the potential for organizing via text messages. One woman asked, "So, do either of you have a landline?" I haven't had a landline since 2002, and it occurred to me that I'm probably at the tail-end of the generation that, at some point in the past, had their own landline. Sure, many families still have them, but most people in their twenties, I'd wager, only have a cell phone. When did the cut-off happen? I'd guess it was around 2001 that kids graduating from high school never actually got their own landline; they'd leave their parents' house, and (if they didn't have one already) they'd get a cell phone. I doubt I'll get a landline again,
But as social networks explode, aren't we going to hit a point where a large number of high school students have lived a very public online life: Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc? Will there come a time when employers Googling a prospective hire turn a blind eye to your online record because, hey, everyone was young once? Perhaps this generation hasn't hit yet, but I'd guess this will be the case for the the high school class of 2006 and beyond.
It's a fascinating question, one that's related to my post about the evolution of "contemporary community standards" since 1973 and one that Susan Mernit gave a presentation on in 2006. If *graduated* by 2006 seems pushing it then surely those *born* then are probably going to be as baffled by the buzz behind "Half-nekkid Thursdays" as our parents or grandparents were by "23 Skiddoo."
Photo by Flickr user goosmurf. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Still following up on the twenty questions I found at Amorous Rocker of Not Your Average Chick that I decided to answer one at a time instead of all in a rush. So...
8. Fast or Slow:
Hmmm... another very open-to-interpretation question! The very short answer? Slow please. At least at first. And at middle. After too. Middle to end? That's *very* circumstantial then isn't it?
Longer? I can be very fast about "bases," cupping your ass sometimes before we even kiss, lazily contouring your breasts, shoulders, and arms soon after we begin to kiss... pulling your nearer leg towards me. But then if that's fast, well, I also tend to wait longer to kiss -- I'm not obsessive about it but I *really* like the "three date" rule. And usually by three dates you've got an idea what each other's interests and boundaries are.
Another kind of fast vs. slow? I'm getting over it but if I slip I can wind up taking forever... sometimes in a good way as in the time I'll spend kissing from your collarbones to your inner knees. Other times not so great as in your "gagging for it" as Abby Lee put it and I'm oblivious. (Hey, if I wasn't the world's biggest dupe of men's dominant no-sex class paradigm would I be so impatient to subvert it?) That's where you can just grab me by the hand, or ears, and say what under some circumstances be outright romantic: "do you really need a hint?" (That's often all the hint I need.)
Another kind of fast or slow? One of the funny things about porn is how *fast* everybody goes. It's like an aerobics class. I could just be living in subjective time but it never seems like I move anything like that? (It's off topic a bit but I also don't go in much for that "thump-thump-thump," banging away, no clitoral contact sort of sex, at least not once we've settled in for a stretch. I'm pretty likely to roll you up on top of me and... um... sort of trapping your pubic bone between my pubis and the base of my erection while my hands on your hips to feel how you're moving and then matching your hip's movements with my own.)
Another kind? Is there anything nicer than taking the time to dip, dip, dip, going an inch further each time? Wow I love how that feels!
Another kind? I really enjoy oral sex and have since before I'd done anything else... or even anything at all! If I'm *too* slow to move on you can grab my hands, which I'll usually have up stroking your belly or breasts, and pull me up.
If we do tie-up games I'm usually *very* quick to untie you after, and should you tie me instead I'd prefer the same courtesy.
It's funny but I'm not sure quickies count either way -- at least for me they're never so much spontaneous as capping off a moment where both parties have been thinking, and possibly "no-we-shouldn't-there's-no-time"ing it for a while first. And so if the quickies themselves are fast the lead up (and the implicit promise of a long follow-up some time later) can be marvelously slow.
Let's see... oh yeah, and for readers who've said they enjoy tapotment... ok, percussive foreplay... ok, spanking, I'm inclined to begin with slow massage and then fast and very light, loose-fingered slaps to get your circulation going, then assuming we hadn't negotiated something different first I'd go pretty slowly, each swat followed by slow rubbing to ease the sting (in my hand too, remember.)
Oh, a final fast or slow: even though I've sort of since learned better, after sex I'm *very* fast to jump up and bring back a soft, warm washcloth. Gently sink your teeth in my lip or keep your legs around me if you'd rather I slowed down. On the other hand I'm usually exhilarated afterwards and therefore I'd probably be very slow to fall asleep even if wriggling, snuggling, and talking after sex *wasn't* fun.
Speaking of community standards, Christina Page of RHRealityCheck.org puts in a single paragraph what ought to be the foundation of all discussion of contraception policy in America.
Most American families want (and have) two children meaning women spend about seven years, on average, getting and being pregnant and about 23 years preventing pregnancy. Planning a pregnancy leads to dramatic declines in both maternal mortality and infant mortality. Indeed, the countries on earth with the lowest maternal and infant mortality rates are those with the greatest access to and use of contraception. Those with the highest death rates are countries that deny women and families access to family planning—many are nations that took Saletan's route and simply ignored the fanatics into power.
Approximate years of fertility: thirty years
Pregnant or trying to be: seven years
Therefore trying not to be: twenty three years.
What's really irritating is the pharmacists in question are just as likely to have two children as anyone else so...
Interview after interview suggests that what "pharmacists for life" are really worried about is maintaining a "community standard" they see as somehow declining or debased *somewhere else.*
You see the same effect in Planned Parenthood and abortion-services provider clinics as well -- conservatives coming in insisting "they're different" because *their* pregnancy is different because *they're* not "those people" who have... what... *recreational* abortions?
%#%!#$~$~VB
Photo by Flickr user Robert Crum. Used under a Creative Commons license.
A 1973 Supreme Court ruling set the ground rules for obscenity prosecutions in the United States based not on an absolute or nationwide definition (since, Justices agreed, such a definition isn't practical and might not be possible) but on "contemporary community standards."
At the time "obscenity" might have been a vague concept but "contemporary community" was pretty easily defined. Large swatches of the now-ubiquitous interstate highway system were still under construction, airplane tickets were scarce and bloody expensive, even cable stations rarely had more than five or six channels and most of those were just local stations with better reception, long-distance phone calls were also bloody expensive, there was "top 40" radio and syndicated news but most stations were strictly local, and a bookstore magazine rack was considered huge if it offered more than 40 titles. Most people lived within a day's drive of their parents, and very often never moved from the towns they were born in. Outside of a handful of metropolitan areas, in 1973 "contemporary community" in other words meant "within the city or county limits."
More particularly, if a prosecutor was going to bring an obscenity charge he (most lawyers and almost all prosecutors were men back then) could be pretty sure a) what "contemporary community" and b) "community standards" meant in his community.
Twenty two years after that, in approximately the summer of 1995, the internet happened. Airlines had been deregulated and flights to *Europe* could be had for the cost of a 1973 flight in the same state. The nationwide telephone monopoly had been broken up and long-distance calls became so cheap that cell phones, then "no bigger than" a soda can, threw in long-distance for free. Newspapers were already in decline but "boutique" magazine publishing had exploded. Car mileage was way up, the 55-MPH national speed limit had been lifted, the economic upheavals of the 1970s -- "stagflation," union busting, the near irrelevance of factories and therefore factory jobs, Ronald Reagan's infamous admonition to say "fuck you" to your family and community and "vote with your feet" -- made Americans more mobile both in terms of travel and relocation. Pressure from Ted Turner's cable empire had finally broken down the broadcast/rebroadcast oligopoly and now hundreds of channels were available, many never "originally" broadcast over airwaves at all. The definition of "contemporary community" was becoming a lot more fluid.
Some thirteen years after *that,* here in 2008, the internet is ubiquitous and "contemporary community" may be even more ambiguous than "obscenity" was in 1973.
As we may or may not be about to find out... Via non-sex blogger Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly it looks like Defense attorney Lawrence Walters has an idea for an obscenity trial in Pensacola, Florida.
In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like "orgy" than for "apple pie" or "watermelon."...."Time and time again you'll have jurors sitting on a jury panel who will condemn material that they routinely consume in private," said Mr. Walters, the defense lawyer. Using the Internet data, "we can show how people really think and feel and act in their own homes, which, parenthetically, is where this material was intended to be viewed," he added.
I'm not sure Walter's strategy is going to work -- prosecutors in the case evidently plan to argue "how many times [community members] doesn't necessarily speak to standards and values" and therefore that the popularity of sex-related web searches in the local community has no bearing on whether the defendant was in violation.
And it's possible the prosecutors might prevail. Many similar self-described "Bible belt" communities have standards, church dicta, and often laws against alcohol sale and consumption... while overall consuming no less alcohol than communities with nominally "lower" standards.
My strong feeling, though, is that those kind of two-tone "standards" are set so high not in hopes that anyone will stick to them but in order to *cover up* what's actually... pretty normal activities with the consequence that, too often, the scandal isn't the activities themselves but the sometimes extraordinarily brutal attempts to a) punish and b) circumvent and c) avoid punishment for circumventing and d) so on.
I happen to believe there probably *are* contemporary community standards for Pensacola. Google just happens to be just one inadvertent but universal demographic tool for determining what those standards *actually are!*
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Oh yeah, quick anecdote: Also back in 1973 there was approximately one well-known manufacturer of specifically-designed running shoes: Adidas. A few years later then-upstart Nike, which believed itself a hopeless niche player in the running-shoe market. Then at a trade show Adidas, in a confident show of clout, announced their annual running shoe sales worldwide... which the Nike execs in attendance realized was barely equal to their own *monthly* sales! Nike, who had been playing defensively and afraid they'd be crushed, had been the world leader in sales.
Rather than continue trying to follow Adidas's genteel, Eurocentric, and slightly leisure-class-activity footsteps Nike began aggressively pushing their own everybody-can approach. (For better or worse considering their occasional forays into gangbagger fashions and sweatshop manufacturing, but also positively their active promotion of exercise as a universal *recreation.*)
And my point being that *if* Pensacola, or any other community, based their policy on what is and, especially, what policies *work* instead of what they *wish* was and what policies make them *feel* really good** there might wind up being far less overall harm. And a lot fewer silly prosecutions.***
I'm obviously not a lawyer, and the contingencies of bringing prosecution can necessarily resemble watching sausage being made. So there may be more to this case than meets the eye, even in Pensacola. This post, however, isn't about the merits of the particular case but about determining, acknowleging, and therefore establishing *actual* community standards so we can create more grounded-in-reality policies that match those standards.
[** Hmm, reactive policy as porn... sounds about right --fl]
[*** Evidently the pornographers in question "had to be" charged under racketeering statues because... um... the statute of limitations on what they'd actually *done* had expired. And what they're charged with actually doing was paying actors and models which in Florida is evidently considered misdemeanor prostitution. As is, evidently, hosting routine non-child porn. *Conspiring* to pay actors and models and then posting the results, on the other hand, is a felony with a longer statute of limitations and so... that's what they're being prosecuted for. --fl]
