The Safest Sex …is the kind you have with your brain

Seriously, it sounded pretty fun until:

this is a party for bisexual & gay men. and for women who are not fat. hetero men and fat women may attend, but only if they bring a woman with them who isn’t fat.

I don’t care if this guy thinks I’m fat or not - ewwwww. Why would I want to be naked with anyone who feels comfortable issuing gendered decrees about body shape?

Is this what porn would look like in a progressive utopia? Closeups of people’s faces as they masturbate to orgasm? It’s been a long time since I’ve watched something so hot without a tinge of sleaziness (except for the mild sleaze of copyright violation).

There’s something about the rows upon rows of thumbnail shots, faces on pillows, that says: Humanity! It’s so beautiful and vast and strange, isn’t it?

Andrea’s link to Ernest Cline’s spoken word piece on nerd porn reminded me of a rant I’ve had brewing for a while now:

I hate when people sexually objectify my spicy brains. I have a profile up on a certain Internet dating site; some of my least favorite messages are the ones that say “Ooooh, when I see [quoted snippet that makes me look smart] it gives me a big boner!” Not that they often use such unimpressive language, but seriously, if I’m smart enough to appreciate the difference between “boner” and “physiological reaction”, I’m also smart enough to appreciate that there is no difference. Or at least, none that matters.

In fact, there’s not much difference between “Hey, nice tits! Wanna fuck?” and “Hey, nice brains! I’ve got a boner!” Both are straightforward expressions of sexual interest, with some elaboration about what happened to incite that interest. That’s not a bad thing - after all, this is a dating site, where my profile explicitly states that I’m interested in fuckbuddyships as well as romance and invites a blunt approach. What’s bad is when people who get turned on by my brains assume that this makes them morally superior to people who get turned on by my tits, or that expressing sexual desire for my brains is somehow less intrusive than expressing sexual desire for my tits, or better feminism. When they express appreciation for the sexiness of my brains, but don’t engage with my ideas. When they ask about my work or my education (both prestigiously nerdy) or my hobbyist engagement with academic feminist theory, and then before I’ve finished two sentences switch the conversation back to something more comfortable - like their work or their impressive intellectual hobbies, or how other men might be intimidated by such a smart woman but not them, no ma’am!

Not everyone who’s turned on by spicy brains is like this, of course. But enough people are that I’ve come to recognize the distinct experience of being treated as a potential trophy by geeks who assume I’ll spout POSIX-compliant foreplay commands (rm -r pants; finger root; mount /). It’s no less insulting than being treated as boobs on a stick.

When Ernie says to smart women that “it doesn’t matter if you don’t think you’re beautiful - you are beautiful”, he’s still setting himself up as an arbiter of female attractiveness whose opinion, for some reason, matters. He gets cheers from the audience for wanting to alter the entry requirements for the Club of Hawtness, which is all well and good (I do share his aesthetic) but let’s please keep in mind that this is fashion, not revolution. Revolution means putting the Club of Hawtness out of business, peeing on its liquor license, and burning the building to the ground.

Is there any way to suck on a saran-wrap coated clit, without ending up with a mouthful of saran wrap and no clit? Yes, I am using lube on the other side.

Seriously, licking is great and all, but suction is… uh… it’s better. I’d make a cute slogan but I can’t think of anything that rhymes with suction.

Speaking of crap arguments I’ve been hearing other people make about the gender binary, try this one:

1. Philosophically, I’m opposed to the gender binary
2. I don’t really think about my gender, I just think of myself as a person
3. Ergo, I am genderqueer!

I’d appreciate the thought, if only the second point weren’t such a standard-issue component of cisgender privilege (and male privilege, too - generally the only time I, as a ciswoman, think about my gender is when I’m encountering sexism - but iirc I’ve heard this argument from more ciswomen than cismen, so who knows).

Or I’m back, anyway; I can’t speak for my ostensibly erstwhile cobloggers. And my apologies, Darkdaughta, for leaving you to languish in the moderation queue for so long!

Since last posting:

• I feel like using a double-ended dildo for double penetration (triple, really, if you count the lovely man on the other end) has vaulted me into the next level of sexual technique, like I’ve earned a brown belt* or something. So I suddenly have to admit that I’m the sort of person who might actually purchase a sex swing - which is not to say I think a sex swing would be a good use of my money, if I’m going to throw down that kind of cash I’d rather buy some nice floggers or a violet wand or a swimming pool full of lube, but I’m headed right towards the sex swing advertising target demographic of creepy old swingers. Must readjust my self-image in a way that sufficiently distances me from the various & sundries…

  Anyway. For any het couples interested in this sort of thing, an 18″ double dildo with an articulated spine (kinda reminds me of action figure mechanisms) works better than you’d think.

• An awful lot of people have been throwing down the “bisexual identity reinforces the gender binary!” line - not here, obviously, but out in reality. To which I say: Pthhhhbt! Bisexuality doesn’t reinforce the gender binary any more than heterosexuality reinforces patriarchy.

  Pansexuals (et al.) who criticize bisexual identity, while leaving the heteros and homos alone, are just another group trying to make my sexual preferences fit their preconcieved mold. In this case, the mold apparently dictates that bisexuals are evolved people (almost evolved as the pansexuals!) who are actually attracted to personalities, rather than bodies, and their support for the gender binary is the final obstacle to their identification with pure evolved mind/heart/spirit-based sexual attraction. And what-the-fuck-ever: like most people I am attracted to physical appearances. Some people like one kind of gender / gender presentation, some people like two kinds, some people are turned on by gender ambiguity and fluidity and transgression, some people don’t give a shit about gender and are superficial about other things; I happen to like two genders. Ambiguous gender presentation doesn’t often make me hot to trot, and occasionally I find myself attracted to trans and genderqueer people qua one gender, but not as their preferred (non)gender. The first time that happened, I was surprised, because I wasn’t used to thinking of my sexuality as something so super-gendered, but it’s a pretty clear feeling. So… yeah. I have strongly gender-dimorphic patterns of sexual attraction, therefore I am bisexual, QED.

• Now that I’ve ranted, I’m curious: do pansexuals (et al.) commonly experience people trying to force their sexual preferences into completely inappropriate molds? If so, what molds are those? I’d guess y’all get the typical “confused bisexual” speech, but what kinds of oppression do you feel from people more comfortable with the middle of the Kinsey scale?
• And oh, yes, that girl I mentioned… success! :D

*OK, I suppose the brown belt was for having plain ol’ anal sex, hur hur. But whatever; working out an elaborate ranking system reminds me too much of junior high.

So the real reason I’ve been digging into the world of crap sex ed is that there’s this other girl I’ve been seeing - and this time, yes, my cunt is feeling it and cross your fingers for me, but she has herpes. Trying to get sensible information about the risk of genital herpes transmission via cunnilingus, and the effectiveness of saran wrap in mitigating same, is like searching for hens’ teeth in a heterocentric haystack.

A paper by Anna Wald et al. is pretty typical. Dr. Wald and her co-authors studied 528 monogamous couples where, at the beginning of the study, one partner had HSV-2 (the virus that causes genital herpes) and the other did not. And that’s how they described it in the article’s abstract: “[a] total of 528 monogamous couples discordant for HSV-2 infection”. It’s only in the methods section that we find out that for the purposes of the study, the only sex acts that count involve penile-vaginal or penile-rectal contact, so there were probably no dykes in the study population.

And then there’s Peter Leone, who writes in the journal Herpes that:

The benefits of suppressive therapy appear to be no different for men and women but men who have sex with men may not see a similar reduction in transmission. This is due to higher rates of transmission and possible differences in susceptibility associated with receptive anal intercourse.

Earth to Peter Leone! Not all gay men have anal sex (and not all gay men who have anal sex do so as bottoms), and lots of heterosexual couples do. It’s sloppy, stereotype-reinforcing writing to use “men who have sex with men” when you actually mean “people who take it up the ass”.

Channeling my inner bitter dyke, here are my requests to the medical research community:

• If you studied a set of monogamous heterosexual couples, say so - preferably in the abstract. Ditto if your study group included heterosexual and homosexual male couples, but no lesbians, or whatever.
• If you didn’t examine oral sex, say so - preferably in the abstract. When I see words like “sex” or “sexual transmission” without extra qualifiers, I assume oral sex is included.

At the moment I’m concerned about HSV-2 transmission via cunnilingus, but in general it’d be nice to see more specific research on the risks of fellatio as well. Because honestly, that’s when condoms are most bothersome for me; I can’t be the only person who has no trouble using condoms consistently and correctly for cocks in my nether orifices, but is kind of a safer sex slacker about latex-flavored blowjobs.

It’s like those emails full of cute things third graders have put on their history exams, but it’s about sex, and one example isn’t enough for a chain letter:

A really bad odor which comes from the vagina can be due to a tampon which has been forgotten or to a vaginal infection with corynebacterium. This infection is not serious but your partner needs to see a genealogist to get a treatment for it. [1]

I need to end things with this girl I’ve been dating for a couple weeks. She’s fun and I like her to bits, but my cunt just isn’t feeling it.

Realizing that I’m not attracted to a man never causes me much angst. But realizing that I’m not all that attracted to a woman inevitably sends me into a tailspin: what kind of shoddy excuse for a queer am I, exactly? Maybe I should stop kidding myself and admit that I’m straight.

There’s a scene in But I’m A Cheerleader where the camera (an envoy for the gaze of the movie’s lesbian-but-totally-clueless-about-it protagonist Megan) heads right up another cheerleader’s skirt and goes oinga-boinga-boinga. The audience knows what’s up, of course, but Megan thinks such ogling is just part of every girl’s life. And why shouldn’t she? Society is completely supportive of the idea: billboards, magazine covers, television, they’re all plastered with women’s bodies screaming look at me! I’m sexy! Sexy sexy sexy look look!

I live through that scene, oh, every fucking day. The camera goes oinga-boinga-boinga and I completely fail to connect my absent-minded drooling over another woman’s body to my sexual orientation. But any little failure to drool - oops! I must’ve been going through a phase, better take that rainbow button off my purse.

Obviously I blame The Patriarchy® for confusing me with its poorly targeted sexual objectification (seriously, how was I supposed to know I’m not the intended audience? Teach me to devalue my own gaze more next time!). But I don’t think that’s all of it:

• We tend to view sexual orientation in terms of the gender we’re not attracted to, or least attracted to. I think this is because it’s easier to express an “eww, yuck!” than a “yes, please” when it comes to sex, especially deviant sex and/or sex that comes bundled with the fear of rejection.
• I haven’t had a proper relationship with another woman; I’ve had plenty of successful relationships with men. And I can rationalize this - there are more straight/bi men than queer women in the world, monogamy, blah blah blah - but now that I’m finally at a good explore-y place in life, I feel ashamed to be taking remedial dyke classes.
• On some level, my sexuality really is gender-asymmetric. Women turn me on, for sure, and generally I’m attracted to a broader spectrum of women than men - but the few men I am attracted to are much more likely to produce those magical twittering knives in th’ gut.

But I can’t ramble too far into my personal angst without losing my sense of narrative structure. To reiterate, then: I’m sick and tired of questioning my sexual identity at every turn, I want to stop, but I can’t. And my need to establish my own queerness is a dangerous subconscious motive to have when dating.

The end.

This is a link dump post. I have more to say, but damn the day for being only 24 hours long!

Before linking to anything on BDSM and feminism proper, let me just nodnodnod at Bitch | Lab’s take on a more-or-less unrelated discussion:

In comments, another assertion is made: “You know there are some feminists (and pro-feminists) out there who have actual substantive critiques of porn and other forms of sex-work and who don’t characterize the sex-positive position as any of the things Anthony lists.”

Fabulous! Let’s see some examples. And I don’t just mean name names. I mean quote specific passages.

[…]

One of the reasons I wrote this rant is that I’m tired of unsubstantiated claims. Assertions are only that: assertions. It’s nothing but a big circle jerk with everyone standing around, stroking their assertion.

I think we should be talking about BDSMs in the same way we talk about feminisms. It’s a tent / multidimensional spectrum, which includes some shit everyone deems unsavory; I have about as much in common with 24/7 lifestylers as Susie Bright does with Andrea Dworkin. Or maybe less - 24/7ers on the whole seem to be completely fucking bats.
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