Re: "How You Guys -- that's right, you GUYS -- Can Prevent Rape"

Now, let me say at the start that I understand where the author is coming from. I've more friends than I would like who've been raped, some on a regular basis. I'm very well aware of how it can mess someone up. So please put aside the "oh noes he's attacking the rape victim" shtick.

The author, however, completely does not seem to grok the raper's perspective here. She tries, really, but all it amounts to is a emphatically third-party, analytic, "these things happen from other people" sense. Classifying rapists by motive: anger, power, or sadism. Seriously, wtf - do you think ANYONE reading this is going to say "oh right, I'm a sadist, that's why I'm likely to rape someone; I should stop that"?

The rest of it is equally either preachy (rape is bad! [norly?]) or otherwise unempathic (describing the "false" masculinity of machismo purely on a "my values are better than yours" level).

I have two simple suggestions that might actually work. For males.

1. Make consent, in the form of active participation, emphatically macho, and the lack of it ridiculous.

AKA "If you couldn't make your partner BEG you to fuck them, you're not a real man."

2. Practice (solo or with a partner) backing off from horny mindstate.

This is somewhat of an extension of the tradition Masters & Johnson type technique. Essentially, males more than females (me included) can get very single-minded once in a horny mindstate. With low enough inhibitions, and a lack of expectation / need of partner's active participation, that can lead to rape - i.e. where you just want to have sex, and you literally can't stop thinking about it, things start to cloud up in the drive towards climax.

Practicing getting horny and then just doing something else entirely helps with that, and can make hearing "no" or any variant thereof (e.g. anything that's not "YES PLEASE NOW") a lot easier to take and act on. It also has the major fringe benefit of making for more controllable, longer-lasting, more enjoyable sex for both partners.


FWIW, these are both things that I practice.


Sorry that it's not quite as neo-feminist as the original article, but I think it's a lot more realistic.

And as a side note: why is it that these things are always written by female rape victims, and not male ex-rapists... yet claim to be aimed at helping potential rapists avoid it? This seems utterly ludicrous to me.

http://www.glumbert.com/media/consent

Very amusing video. ??SFW; nothing explicit but plenty of verbal innuendo.

I just watched Shortbus (... in spanish. grr unlabeled dubs. :().

It was ... quite beautiful, really. Familiar, in that I know a lot of people who are like various characters in the movie, and ongoing parties that are somewhat similar.

Nice to (for once) have a movie that, though it depicts both kinky and vanilla sex explicitly, does not depict it kinkily as it were, which I cannot say for the majority of mainstream movies in which it's treated with a sort of strange dissociative shame / fetishization, even without being explicit. And yes, the sex is fairly hot... but it manages to be a Real Movie also, with the sex secondary to the dramatic content. And even in the sex scenes themselves, it's the emotional content that still predominates, not "ooh omg omg the sex!!!". Amazing, for a mainstream film, ne?

I suspect that my reaction is somewhat different than that of a normal mainstream audience person's though, given that I'm actually familiar with such parties & people, poly, etc... so I'm curious how much of that is my projection of my own views on sexuality, rather than inherent to the movie itself.

Now to get the full (and English) version - hopefully with the documentary etc that's on the full DVD...

Negative for urinary WBC & RBC; urinary, rectal, & throat chlamydia & gonorrhea; and HIV. No test for herpes 'cause I am not now and have never displayed any of the usual STI type symptoms (unless you count the occasional pimple-type bump on my lip). And I'm already immunized against hepatitis A&B.

Yay health.

Just did a major merger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_and_bottom_in_sex_and_BDSM

Made no sense for that to be five separate articles.

It's pretty rough so far but should sort out quickly.

http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1685

Some of you should like this. Long, historical-social analysis. (To quote Lehrer: "I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it.")

Via raccaldin36.

*submits undeletion request*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_March_29#Autocoitus

Please go vote there if you want it to stay up.

(If you must know: No, I don't. But I think it's interesting enough that it should stay in WP, especially since there are articles on autofellatio, autocunillingus [not even possible as far as anyone can tell!], etc.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocoitus (any of you done it? If so, I haven't heard about it... yet)


In unrelated news, it's interesting how many MtF-direction trans-ish people I know. I can think of seven offhand, pretty sure I'm forgetting a couple... surely that's more than one would expect from the usual distribution? Hm.

(Triggered by having listened to the podcast about it from polyweekly [which I get via iTunes]. I recommend it btw; the few episodes I have heard so far are entertaining and intelligent, and the vocal intonations are very soothing / curl-up-able. Sorta like Ira Glass. *laugh*)

Is there anything taught beyond the basics? If so, what?

"Basics" to me (apart from just general sexuality) means:
* breath exercise
* PC muscle
* eyegaze holding
* up-spine-down-front cycle, & figure-8 or large-circle w/ partner
* breath-sharing (cyclical or parallel)
* mutual lotus position
* general acceptance of ebb-and-flow, enjoying things along the way / non-goal-orientation, having fun just giving or just receiving, general body-responsiveness tuning

Certainly all that is wonderful stuff and there is plenty of depth to get in each... but is it just that?

Granted, this is also moreorless the full scope of my knowledge. Hence why I call it 'basic'; I don't think that much if any of what I've taught myself over the years or picked up along the way is all that esoteric or 'advanced', i.e. requiring mastery of the basics before it can be done successfully. Moreso with tantra, since I've not had nearly as much practice at it as I'd like, so don't think of myself as even particularly self-trained (and I have never had any outside training). Most of what I know is really just a natural extension of my private practice; I would expect that I am therefore missing some major partner-dependent elements and don't know what they are.

It makes me somewhat disappointed to be told I'm going to be taught something, and have it just be the same old bits that seem ... obvious. Always good to be reminded of course, and helpful to set up situations that encourage focusing on it...

'course, the reminder makes me feel even more pouncy than I have already been lately...

As I mentioned, I saw Hedwig last night. And I've talked to a few people who seem more or less strongly genderqueer, in both directions.

I'm not sure I quite understand it - the whole idea of gender as something salient. For most people it seems like a background guide for normativity - more explicitly so for guys trying to be 'masculine' and thus choosing whether to do something because it is or isn't 'masculine'; I haven't heard many girls say something equivalent to 'that's not something real guys do'.

Genderqueer folk are somewhat confusing to me in more or less the same way; they do have a salient gender they want to be more like (which perhaps doesn't happen to be the one they're born into), or maybe vacillate, or construct a new one from components of each, or aim for something specifically off spectrum. I don't know how much of this is for self and how much is impression management; probably always both to some extent because gender is so strongly influenced by how one is treated, so if one is treated as an X then it's nice if X is what one identifies as also. And if anything, it seems that trans folk are more likely to be more strongly gendered than nontrans; viz. drag queens often aiming for an over-the-top view of femininity, or butch girls aiming for something fairly macho.

I don't particularly find it confusing that they would have an identity that's not what they're born to, or that they would find things dissonant if identity and treatment or behavior don't match. That's totally understandable really. I just don't understand why the strong mental genderedness in the first place.

As for myself... I'm pretty definitely physically male, and have never wanted to be different. (It's a lot simpler, for one... poor uterus-bearers, getting kicked in the stomach a couple days a month just for having the option to then go through childbirth.) To the extent that I'm not completely dysmorphic*, I like my body. But nothing on the masculinity / femininity / genderfuck plane has an attraction for me. I don't think of myself as 'neuter' either, just... whatever-I-am, I suppose. It's not something that particularly affects me except when I extrospect like this.

I'm not sure how I compare to any of the usual genders; Audrey and V both described me a couple times as being some gender of my own, and they had more time to observe what I'm like naturally than most people. I find it rather hard to do that comparison myself for some reason. I've been told that the sort of stillness I have is a more masculine one, for being center-outward; that if I am arrogant, that it's an odd sort that doesn't seem to play the usual dominance / posturing games. For that matter, I don't seem to have an automatic monitoring sense of that meta-communication (which has been occasionally problematic); I mostly just try towards truth and understanding, not to have some effect on an audience. (This is probably something I should change, as it's rather maladaptive socially.)

* And I am sometimes very body-dysmorphic; it can feel like a very very strange shell with which to interact with the world, by which to be perceived, etc. I have never really felt comfortable with my reflection; it doesn't look like 'me', but then I have no good concept of what 'me' would look like either, so I can't say why it doesn't...

Generally I seem to be drifting more towards neutrality over time, with one exception: that simple-complex thing I refer to as "calm brilliance". That is something I very strongly identify with, feel dissonance when / inasmuch as I don't match it, and very intentionally try hard to shape myself towards. I suppose that's a lot like gender, ne? And it's a sweeping enough identity to be of the same scope as gender. This is far more central to my self-concept than anything else I can think of and so it's hard to overstate how important it is; perhaps that's why I often feel like I can't get others to understand "me". It's an unusual thing to identify by, and a hard one to explain or understand except through gnosis. Hmm.


It seems to me that this view of gender (or lack thereof?) is what "makes me" bisexual. Like most people, I generally am attracted to people who are similar-complementary to me (or who fit my self-concept at least). Gender is one aspect of that; I've always gone mostly for androgynes of one sort or another, people who aren't strongly gendered in any particular direction. Where they are gendered, I find it curious in about the same way as I would any other aspect of them I didn't identify with myself (like an interest in some hobby I don't share): something to learn from and about, and neutral to attractiveness.

I'm not sure how this meshes with my definitely increased recent preference for guys. Perhaps it's just sexual curiosity, but it doesn't seem so (though that's definitely an aspect; libido is running high lately); there is some aspect of gendered attraction specifically that clearly means I'm making some sort of male/female sex distinction, which means that my self-understanding of gender per above is missing something.... which makes me more curious.

Starting a relationship again feels... strange but very much what I want (difficult as it is to admit strongly wanting anything). Reminds me a lot of the beginning, with Audrey. Trying to keep some semblance of grounded nonattachment, but that's proving rather hard. I guess I'll find out how it goes, ne. It's been a long time since I heard someone call me きみ; still has the same effect. And all this is totally human/normal, but both very melty/enjoyable/restful, and dissonant with my stillness-identity. Confusing. Which explains why I (unusually) feel a need to talk it out.

WWBD? Meditate, recenter into calm brilliance, make all possibilities fully okay, and wait. *wry smile*


I wonder how often others have this sort of complex inner life. It's hard to tell; most people don't talk about it, and that doesn't tell me whether it's there or not. For that matter, I don't normally talk about it; most of it gets expressed here, as I find writing much easier than talking for most things, and very few people actually ask me questions that would get at it (and want to hear the answer).

I've been told occasionally by others that it's unusual, but they rarely are talking about themselves too, so it's hard to know if they're right or not. Maybe it's one of those things everyone thinks they're unique in, and most people are just not used to talking about.

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths

Parody of: Homosexuality in America: Exposing the Myths

Well done, too. And comes with annotated references & an overview of how to do it.

http://gardasil.com

Mostly important for (and marketed at) women, because HPV -> cervical cancer. Only works against 4 types of HPV but still sounds like a good thing. ~$250.

Edit: $250... per for 3 doses. And probably not under insurance. :-/ (Thanks, ambyr, for the correction.)