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Sep. 15th, 2009 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erdaI started reading this book, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, last week.
I'm only on the third essay, but so far it's pretty good.
Reading the first essay, All Mixed Up with No Place to Go by Nico Dacumos, made me feel better about the way I don't seem to fit in anywhere. I am most comfortable politically on the far, far left as far as social issues go, but I seem to be surrounded by lesbians there, and I always feel like they will position me as misogynistic because, hee, try as I might, I just can't work up any enthusiasm for having sex with women.
Given that I truly believe we are all born bisexual, I guess I feel deep down it's illogical to be as obsessed with men as I am.
Anyway, that's a whole different issue than what I wanted to talk about, which is the second essay, Friction Burn by Stacey May Fowles. It's all about how she likes to be hurt and humiliated sexually, and it just about made me cry reading it. I don't know. Are men more fucked up in their sexual attitudes than women? This poor woman had men break up perfectly good relationships with her because they couldn't accept what she liked and wanted sexually. I don't mean that they didn't want to participate in her kink, I mean they rejected her as wrong and sick and broke off the relationship over it.
I cannot imagine doing that. I mean, if my partner told me about some kink they had, whether I shared it or not, I would just be so touched that they trusted me enough to share something so intimate with me. I wouldn't feel obliged to participate-hee, though I probably would at least try it out. I have never been able to understand why people equate what you do in bed with who or what you are outside the bedroom.
Is it a guy thing to treat women this way, a variant of not respecting you in the morning? Are women able to free themselves from this kind of bullshit more easily than men? Perhaps because what we are taught about sex is so absurd and unworkable that it is easier for us to reject the whole kit and kaboodle of sexual nonsense we are taught, kind of the way Catholics seem quicker to throw off their entire religion and go straight to atheism more easily than liberal Protestants? (No offense to Catholics; my family is littered with lapsed Catholics who embraced atheism.)
I felt so bad for the author reading this, though in the end she found someone who shared her kink and that she could be happy with, so maybe it's good those other guys rejected her. I just wish they hadn't made her feel so wrong. Sex is one of the few really good things in life. Why does it have to be so complicated and hurtful?
I'm only on the third essay, but so far it's pretty good.
Reading the first essay, All Mixed Up with No Place to Go by Nico Dacumos, made me feel better about the way I don't seem to fit in anywhere. I am most comfortable politically on the far, far left as far as social issues go, but I seem to be surrounded by lesbians there, and I always feel like they will position me as misogynistic because, hee, try as I might, I just can't work up any enthusiasm for having sex with women.
Given that I truly believe we are all born bisexual, I guess I feel deep down it's illogical to be as obsessed with men as I am.
Anyway, that's a whole different issue than what I wanted to talk about, which is the second essay, Friction Burn by Stacey May Fowles. It's all about how she likes to be hurt and humiliated sexually, and it just about made me cry reading it. I don't know. Are men more fucked up in their sexual attitudes than women? This poor woman had men break up perfectly good relationships with her because they couldn't accept what she liked and wanted sexually. I don't mean that they didn't want to participate in her kink, I mean they rejected her as wrong and sick and broke off the relationship over it.
I cannot imagine doing that. I mean, if my partner told me about some kink they had, whether I shared it or not, I would just be so touched that they trusted me enough to share something so intimate with me. I wouldn't feel obliged to participate-hee, though I probably would at least try it out. I have never been able to understand why people equate what you do in bed with who or what you are outside the bedroom.
Is it a guy thing to treat women this way, a variant of not respecting you in the morning? Are women able to free themselves from this kind of bullshit more easily than men? Perhaps because what we are taught about sex is so absurd and unworkable that it is easier for us to reject the whole kit and kaboodle of sexual nonsense we are taught, kind of the way Catholics seem quicker to throw off their entire religion and go straight to atheism more easily than liberal Protestants? (No offense to Catholics; my family is littered with lapsed Catholics who embraced atheism.)
I felt so bad for the author reading this, though in the end she found someone who shared her kink and that she could be happy with, so maybe it's good those other guys rejected her. I just wish they hadn't made her feel so wrong. Sex is one of the few really good things in life. Why does it have to be so complicated and hurtful?