I think it's the irresistible urge to say stuff in public.
Please don't think I'm a bad person. I have a friend whose brother is gay. He's supportive of gay rights, and he likes his brother's partner a lot, but he's still kind of squicked out at the idea of men kissing eachother (not women kissing eachother). He asked specifically about how I feel about women kissing other women, and I said that I was comfortable with it. Now here comes the part about me being a bad person. There's a certain type of overweight badly dressed lesbian whose sexuality squicks me out generally, and I find doubly hard to handle in pairs.
3: I'm squicked out a bit by both of those, too, though much less than I used to be. Progress! All sexuality is kind of gross, though when you think about it - like from the perspective of an alien, or a child.
I'm more squicked out by the use of the word squick, though. I haven't lived in America for a pretty long time now, and I noticed in the last year or so it's suddenly become ubiquitous on the American internet. I hope it's a fad. It sets my teeth on edge for some reason.
It just seems very obvious to me that female sexuality is way more fluid in the way he describes. What confuses me is how much of that is just the way women's sexuality works 'naturally', and how much is due to the tremendously greater prejudice against male homosexuality than lesbianism. How many bi men would there be if male sexual experimentation was as fashionable as female experimentation?
3: I don't think it makes you a better or worse person one way or the other, but do you think you're disturbed by lesbians you find unattractive expressing sexuality, or women you find unattractive expressing sexuality? Like, would it be less of a problem looking at someone who looks like the lesbians who bother you kissing a man (in a making-out, rather than perfunctory, manner)?
My guess is that you're not so much expressing homophobia on that front as controllingness about what sexual women are allowed to look like, and you notice it coming up more with lesbians.
5: From personal experience in Samoa (well, direct gossip) and reading about, e.g., ancient Greece, my estimate is if you take the social pressure off, you get lots of male bisexuality by our standards. Don't know if it's exactly the same as the amount of female bisexuality, but much more than we have here and now.
5: Those were my thoughts as well. I can't watch the video since I'm at work, but if he's arguing that women express much broader variance in gender-coded behaviour, that's fine. Who would dispute that? Now why that happens to be the case could be debated till the cows come home, with likely no progress being made.
This is a very unlike-me thing to argue, but I do wonder what having internal genitals has to do with the socialization of sexuality. As a woman, I can get turned on by a whole host of things and not even really need to be aware myself if I'm not paying attention, and certainly no one else around needs to know. I don't have to want to act on any of those feelings, either. (Certainly not all of those women being aroused by gay, straight, and bonobo porn actually want to have gay, straight, and bonobo sex.) Male sexual desire is more physically public and potentially socially dangerous. That is, even if it's socially learned, might it not have the effect of making men less likely even to be open to the possibility of getting aroused by alternative sexuality?
8: He's arguing using the widely cited study that women regardless of avowed sexual orientation, respond to lesbian porn, straight porn, and bonobo porn, while men only respond to the porn of their stated orientation. The study looks at physiological responses, so it can get beyond conscious sexual orientation.
The connection to nature/nurture issues is more tenuous though. It may be that ancient Greek and contemporary Samoan men will exhibit a more female pattern of arousal to porn.
Just last night I went to a gathering of women faculty from my department, and everyone was telling funny/sad/interesting stories about past relationships, and I joined in about something and realized a bit too late that it was a story that involved several incidents of group sex, bisexual on my part, and right as it came out of my mouth, a woman on the other side of the room stopped and said, "Oh my God, so you're saying, let me confirm, that you have fucked girls and guys, and at the same time? That's something you've done?" I look around like oh shit what a way to meet people, what have I done... What's funny is that all the women in the room over 35 or so (whose own stories had been far more... involved) react like, yes, we understand completely, go on, and the few women closer to my age wrinkle their noses like I farted or something.
10: I believe that same study also found that self-described homophobic men get the most aroused watching gay porn.
9: I've had a similar thought -- that because male arousal is visible, men effectively get biofeedback training in not becoming physiologically aroused in socially inappropriate contexts. Not that it works perfectly, necessarily, but the "Oh, shit, I'm getting an erection in the boys locker room, everyone else in the eighth grade is going to think I'm gay" experience seems as if it would reduce the tendency to become aroused for 'inappropriate' stimuli, and it's not an experience that girls or women have.
What's funny is that all the women in the room over 35 or so ...react like, yes, we understand completely, go on
They are more acculturated to academe?
I guess 11 was maybe because I'm an overweight, badly dressed lesbian?
14: We've all been in "academia" beyond college for 10 or more years. How long does it take to realize that gay sex happens? The other issue, I think, is that all the older women have either never been married, or gotten divorced, or been really promiscuous when young, while the women my age seem to have been very focused on their work before marrying. I sometimes feel I'm the only single person over the age of 22 in the city, but I have some sisters among the 50-60somethings.
It may be that ... contemporary Samoan men will exhibit a more female pattern of arousal to porn.
Grant proposal!
Almost every academic I know has been either married or otherwise long-term coupled up since age, like, 21 or so. Being single is an alien notion to them. So 11 doesn't surprise me at all.
It's very strange to me, but I've noticed the same thing. Of the young faculty here, I only know two other single women. One is a lot like me--bi, anti-marriage, anti-drama, etc.--and we both feel pretty alien in these parts, where everyone else our age acts like they were assigned their spouse at birth.
16, 18: What kind of academics are we talking about? There's a subset of academics who move into the career as a natural evolution from their high school, straight-As, parent/authority figure pleasing selves. These types are some of the most conventional, bourgeoise people you'll ever meet.
One is a lot like me--bi, anti-marriage, anti-drama, etc.--and we both feel pretty alien in these parts
Clearly, you should hook up.
Almost every academic I know has been either married or otherwise long-term coupled up since age, like, 21 or so.
Are you just thinking physics/hard sciences, or academics in general?
There's a SNL sketch with Will Farrell and Rachel Dratch as a married couple who are pretentious, hedonistic college professors. They generally show up in places like hot tubs talking frankly about sex in a way that makes all the other characters uncomfortable. I thought it was a pretty good parody of something you see in the humanities a lot.
Are you just thinking physics/hard sciences, or academics in general?
The former, really -- I don't know that many humanists, and probably most of the ones I know are married to scientists...
It's a little awkward, because it seems like the standard smalltalk/"tell me more about the place" topic in job interviews is schools or daycare, so when people learn that I'm not married it gets a little weird. "Oh, yeah, this is a good town for single people, you can, um, or, yeah, great town."
21.last: It's a funny parody, but it's not something I recognize from actual academics. I tend to see either icily professional couples who are both PhDs and you'd never guess they have sex, or the more artist/muse relationship, which is usually also sterile, with the PhD-having partner leaning heavily on the non-academic spouse for comfort, while also giving heavy doses of "the wife doesn't understand me at all." Occasionally I've seen the lover-lover thing a bit with (overweight badly dressed) lesbian couples, and I think it's a nice change of pace. Generally, you'd think most academics were just Barbie-smooth inside their pants.
I'm not really seeing any professional work context anywhere in the USA, outside the sex industry I guess, where people would be like "oh hey bi threesome no big deal awesome story" at a work party. I mean, I work in a place where n one would care that much at all and the powerful folks aren't straight and some are single, but it would still be out of line unless one had transitioned from "colleague" to "friend."
23: You really can find both. The department where I did my PhD was full of mousy, homebody singles, or people in boring long-term relationships. Drug use and heavy drinking were largely deprecated. Meanwhile, I'd go out and hit the pubs with the English faculty grad students from time to time and it was all conversations about ass-fucking, and 5 or 6 pints in, it was, casually, "Oh, do you want to see if we can get some ecstasy tonight? I might have a friend."
24: For context, I really hadn't started this line of conversation, which was mostly among decades-long friends. It wasn't like it was a professional meeting about pedagogy and I jumped in and was like "yo i did sum chix."
|| Dumb bleg: seeing a friend for the first time since her mom died 4 months ago, since they spent the summer away. Condolences were emailed, flowers sent. Should the death be acknowledged in person?
|>
Dan Savage just gets more and more annoying. This is just bad science reporting, if you ask me. Doesn't seem to jibe at all with what one hears about going on at Boy Scout Camp or in the restroom stalls occupied by Republican legislators. As written above, I'd say it's not as much of a question of male sexuality being less fluid (although, it's really not that much fluid) -- more that most men are socialized to be very constrained in how they acknowledge their sexualities. If Dan Savage doesn't have two MTF friends who formerly identified as gay men, it's probably because they can spot him as a transphobic jackass a mile off and want nothing to do with him. I mean, if you want to do a study, how about studying some gay male advice columnists who are so paranoid about having to think about vulvas that they'll distort their entire worldview just to make it seem as though it would be impossible for them to ever get off, except in the most cliched, corporate Pride-sponsored way?
27: Yes. I would say something along the lines of "I've been thinking about you and your mom a lot for the last 4 months, how have you been doing?"
27: Yes. Even an earnest, "How have you been? I've been thinking about you" is wanted, I think.
27 -- 'How are you holding up?' doesn't seem intrusive to me.
Ok good. I feel better with a game plan. Thanks all.
23, 25: My adviser totally shocked her intro to film class (which I was enrolled in) by asserting that "After all, the only thing in life that really matters is who we fuck, and who fucks us." Thankfully, I am not privy to any gory details of her and her fellow-professor husband's sex life.
The sex lives of people I work with are a total mystery to me. Which is A-ok by me.
Me also. I just keep off that website.
"After all, the only thing in life that really matters is who we fuck, and who fucks us."
There speaks someone who has never gone without a good night's sleep.
I've been thinking about you and your mom a lot for the last 4 months
Reading the latest comments in reverse order, this sounded like it would mean something really different from what it does.
37: What, you mean she's overprivileged? Not half. She's still funny though. Actually, the class was FAR more shocked later in the semester when she averred that she did not care if people recycled their various detritus or not, and implied that she herself did not recycle. (In fact she does, she was just winding them up to make a point.)
38: The phrasing could indeed be less clunky.
I really did not like classes where teachers tried to wind everyone up, because I can't learn when I'm emotional and I reacted very emotionally to those triggers, especially if it was at all political. I'd leave afterwards and my heart would still be pounding and I'd think "That was a total waste and now I'm all riled up," and I'd be annoyed.
I don't like lies. But I think shocking truths are not so hard to find.
Sometimes I think I liked math classes because they were so extremely efficient. Definition! Theorem! Definition! Theorem! Look how well organized the knowledge was transmitted.
I'm happy to learn about shocking truths and emotionally difficult topics. But if I get provoked, then I get tunnel vision and get jerked out of the learning experience, which I found frustrating.
I was completely unwilling to take sociology or political science classes for this exact reasons, which I otherwise would have wanted to take.
44: So you don't learn anything here?
No, honestly the only reason I can engage here is because everyone is 99% on the same page, so no one is challenging basic notions of decency, so I can enjoy the conversation. Also it's easier for me to manage my emotional distance here.
It is different when everybody is in different rooms.
7: assumes that ancient Greece didn't have any social pressures going in, as it were, the other direction; unlikely, I should think.
I'm by no means an authority, but I seem to have read more pop science than Savage.
According to various articles I read, women need to be able to get wet when they're about to get raped (to avoid becoming infertile or dying.) Therefore, you get vaginal secretions when you're not actually sexually aroused, defined properly.
Lots of other pop science articles, and I think actual science, ignores that wet doesn't = sexually aroused and comes to nonsensical conclusions.
Apparantly test subjects secrete more when shown a picture of a bonobo with an erections than a handsome but non-erect man.
"wet doesn't = sexually aroused"
One could perhaps have sensed that without any experiments.
49: Fair enough. 7 should have been written to say that in the absence of social pressure against male homosexuality/bisexuality, or the presence of positive pressure for it, my experience and reading suggests that we'd see a lot more of it. What I meant to say is that there's pretty good evidence that the pressure against it has some effect on rates, rather than the pressure being irrelevant to how men 'naturally' act.
26 -- ah. Perhaps the real problem here was the assumption that it's cool to talk about one's sex life in general at work parties. Can't see that ending well for anyone, but especially for anyone whose sexuality is even a tiny bit alternative.
41
I really did not like classes where teachers tried to wind everyone up, because I can't learn when I'm emotional and I reacted very emotionally to those triggers, especially if it was at all political. I'd leave afterwards and my heart would still be pounding and I'd think "That was a total waste and now I'm all riled up," and I'd be annoyed.
Perhaps the point was to try to get students to develop a thicker skin so they could maintain a proper scholary detachment. You can't really learn to be a good surgeon if you flip out whenever you see a little blood. Similarly there are lots of subjects you can't properly study if you can't handle any hint of political incorrectness.
I don't want to be employed in a queer-hostile or sex-negative environment. My work, and the work of a lot of academics, is often about non-normative sexualities, and I think it's crucial that sex not be treated as something those people over there do, as if the scholar is not also a human being with a body, a history, and stories. It's very easy for a work environment to become heteronormative by default by encouraging silence from all but the heteroblissfully partnered.
I do come, of course, from a PhD program that is famous for being populated by several very well-known writers whose work on representations of sexuality are tied up very closely with their own narratives of sexual experience. From the outside world, that probably sounds gross somehow? But I have to say, it's the only work environment I've ever been in where I felt safe and non-marginalized and completely unharassed.
You can't really learn to be a good surgeon if you flip out whenever you see a little blood.
I also have no desire to learn to be a surgeon.
52: ah, right.
heteroblissfully
Wonderful word.
41 is foolish. Look, I teach people how to do complicated things under stressful conditions. And the way you do it is not to teach them while stressing them out, because people don't learn well while stressed. You teach them in a calm environment. Then they practice in a calm environment. Then, when they are competent enough to perform the task more or less routinely, you start introducing stresses. Yes, surgeons have to be able to handle the sight of blood, but you don't sit people down in a lecture theatre and start teaching them about (say) dangerous drug interactions or the physiology of muscle tissue while screaming at them and spraying them with pig blood.
FWIW, the studies in question measured blood flow, not secretions. This is generally defined as physiological arousal. More conscious or cognitive states are given different labels.
Both men and women become physically aroused while being raped. This can be a very confusing thing for male rape victims, who find it difficult to deny that fact that the had erections and even ejaculated while being attacked.
It makes more sense to say that physiological arousal can happen in situations that one doesn't want than to say that erection and ejaculation doesn't count as arousal.
If you do that, YouTube it please.
It's a little-known fact that Gallagher got his start in medical education.
56
I also have no desire to learn to be a surgeon.
Probably shouldn't be taking surgery classes then. If you don't want to approach some subjects in a detached scholarly way then you shouldn't take classes in which that is encouraged.
62: He switched to watermelon because of AIDS.
From personal experience in Samoa (well, direct gossip)
hrrm. And indeed, gossip retold to a woman, even worse. I think you'll find, dear, that if a real man of science were to study the question, he would discover that Samoans lived exactly like conservative Christians at home. No shut up, I mean like conservative Christians say they do, at home.
I think what dsquared is trying to say is that it is different, very different, from the home life of our own dear queens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement
Explanatory link.
41 is foolish.
I meant of course to say 54. 41 is solid.
55 makes sense and seems right. I'm just pushing a little on the idea that this is a professoriat-specific issue, as opposed to just a feature of ordinary normal bourgeois life with ordinary normal bourgeois conventions.
Actually, I guess I do disagree that silence about sex lives in work conversations automatically leads a workplace "to become heteronormative by default," although I can see how that can happen. That is the case if the powerful people are all straight, but there are work environments (like mine) in which many of the powerful folks are gay. Hard to be too extremely heteronormative if the dude cutting the checks openly sleeps with dudes.
67 was the best link in the history of the internet.
62, 64: Did we ever link here to the article that revealed Gallagher's act now revolves around his identity as an extremely right-wing, racist, queer-hating Christian?
71 -- yes. It's a great article. "The last days of Gallagher" or some such.
68
I meant of course to say 54. 41 is solid.
So what do you think the professors in question were trying to do? You don't think there is a strain in academia which thinks it is good to expose students to different ways of thinking?
If you don't want to approach some subjects in a detached scholarly way then you shouldn't take classes in which that is encouraged.
If you want to encourage scholarly detachment you shouldn't scream at people and spray them with pig's blood.
75: That is an empirical question requiring study.
75
If you want to encourage scholarly detachment you shouldn't scream at people and spray them with pig's blood.
I don't think that's what we are talking about actually. More like revealing the existence of atheists.
Here's one Gallagher article. I kinda remember reading something else.
I need a classroom with floor drains, a friendly butcher, a federal grant, six atheists, and two hundred deluded students.
74. I think the professors in question were trying to inflate their own egos. Ajay has pointed out the pedagogical cretinism of this approach already. If people need to be able to react fluently and fluidly under stress they need to have a clue about the available options first.
A friend of mine recounted his son's experience in training to be a vehicle engineer in the RAF. They're trained to service vehicles in sheds; then they're trained to fix vehicles in sheds when they don't know what's wrong with them; then they learn to fix vehicles in the open, in different weather conditions under increasing time constraints; then they learn to do all that with people trying to distract them while they do it. Finally, for the test, they have a vehicle in a field with an unknown fault and they have to fix in in 10 minutes while somebody sprays live ammunition about. If they were asked to do that on their first day it would be a stupid waste of public money because they'd all fail.
77: You can reveal the existence of atheists without adding additional winding-up-ness, whether supplied by pig's blood or lies.
FWIW, the studies in question measured blood flow, not secretions. This is generally defined as physiological arousal. More conscious or cognitive states are given different labels. ... It makes more sense to say that physiological arousal can happen in situations that one doesn't want than to say that erection and ejaculation doesn't count as arousal.
Yes and no. This is one of those cases where it's unrealistic to expect everyday usage, or science reporting aimed at general audiences, to conform to the specialized definitions in use within particular disciplines. It's unrealistic because "arousal," unlike "electron" or "GDP" or "habitus", is not only a common word, it's one used in talking about rather fraught situations, and hence one whose usage is unlikely to be easily shifted by definitional fiat by the professoriate.
What actually happens is what we see here: a paper talks of physiological arousal, with or without appropriate qualifications; the popular reporting picks up on "arousal," which simply does not mean "heightened blood flow / erections / ejaculation" full stop--independent of cognitive or emotional states--outside of a specialized literature; and this reporting is then used to make heavy-handed interventions in a politico/ethical dispute about what counts as "normal" or "natural" sexuality.
Because of this, both researchers and popular reporters ought to be more deflationary about the terms they use. Since you can't expect reporters to do this--hype sells--it's incumbent upon the researchers to go to extra lengths to pre-emptively block this sort of thing, as best they're able.
That said, I suspect that the sort of person who thinks measuring blood flow to the penis, etc., tells us a huge amount about sexuality, may often be the sort of person most likely to conflate different aspects of arousal, and most likely to believe that physiological response is the only "real" thing there.
Fascinating and relevant to arousal.
The whole website is worth a gander.
From personal experience in Samoa (well, direct gossip) and reading about, e.g., ancient Greece, my estimate is if you take the social pressure off, you get lots of male bisexuality by our standards.
I've sung this song before, but I feel like "pressure" here is lumping together three things (which are legitimately hard to untangle). The first is social disapproval of male-male sexual acts, or of male-male sexual desire. The second is disapproval of bisexual or homosexual identity, as a character trait one can claim or have ascribed to one. The third is the tightness of the linkage between the first and second--how many cocks you can suck and still be straight, to put it baldly.
Since the 60s, I feel that there's been: a moderate decrease in social disapproval of male-male sexual acts and desires, a massive decrease in the social disapproval of male homosexual identity, and finally a large increase in the perceived connection between desire/acts and identity. Men who have sex with men but refuse to be labeled "gay" or "bi" are laughed at, pitied, and looked at with suspicion. (And this isn't a terrible heuristic, statistically speaking, since many of the reasons one would have to reject the identity despite one's conforming acts & desires are bad ones; again, think of Republican legislators with wide stances.)
Somewhat paradoxically, even though social disapproval of homosexual acts and desires is currently more prevalent than social disapproval of homosexual identity--gay men can be prominent and positively portrayed characters in mainstream TV/movies, but are rarely presented as sex objects or truly desiring/desired beings--I suspect that, for at least some people, it's the perceived link from acts to identity that keeps would-be guy-fuckers from, in fact, fucking other men. It's not just another kind of sex you can have; it suddenly turns you into another sort of person, which is a much more threatening thing, even if one is fully on board with "there's nothing wrong with being gay!" in an abstract sense.
how many cocks you can suck and still be straight, to put it baldly
No more than 2/year with a lifetime total of 5. That's obvious. Let's not make things more complicated than they need to be, you eggheads.
|| Dear Mineshaft,
If someone who purportedly loves you sends a text reading, "And if I am so awful and mean, you should know I haven't even reached for my heavy artillery," this is, objectively speaking: (a) a threat, (b) evidence that s/he has some psychopathic tendencies, (c) a good reason to run like hell and never look back, (d) all of the above, or (e) something else entirely?
|>
An announcement that he intends to start masturbating, of course.
Insufficient evidence for anything beyond (c), but (c) is all that matters anyway. This person shouldn't be in your life.
(c) above all; and one or more of all the rest.
86: Heh. Speaking of which, time to go for a dose of yoga and body-image anxiety at my gym in the Castro...
(c). Case 1: If you actually felt they were being awful and mean, and they feel like they were restraining themselves, there's a basic incompatibility there that isn't going to get better. Case 2: If you hinted that their behavior was harsh, and they took it as "you're awful and mean", they're a big ol' drama queen.
I don't think it's an actual threat, particularly in case 2. I don't think it's evidence of any dangerous level of crazy in the absence of other red flags.
87: Yes, c. I am always amazed by how much evidence my friends are willing to discount that the person they are dating is mean and hateful. The person basically says, "It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. This is as nice as I get, because this is me trying to woo you, just so you know, and I can't help but treat you this badly even while doing my damnedest." And my friends will ask me, but do you think maybe s/he's like maybe exaggerating? One time s/he was friendly and respectful for a few minutes and it was great!
I don't know how people stand being treated like that for one minute, much less a whole relationship.
92 feels totally right to me.
It's worth noting that people often have very different perceptions of what constitutes being awful and mean -- one person's mild venting can be another person's verbal abuse -- so objective standards aren't very helpful IMO. But that's beside the point. If there's a serious incompatibility between you about the perception of what's mean and what's not, and you're feeling like you're being mistreated and there's an announcement that there's worse in store for you, run away because it's unlikely that things will get better.
Of the young faculty here, I only know two other single women.
wow -- I'm out of touch. AWB, have you made the transition from grad student in NYC to professor in the provinces? If so, congrats!
It makes more sense to say that physiological arousal can happen in situations that one doesn't want than to say that erection and ejaculation doesn't count as arousal.
I think this is right, and furthermore the discussion of sexuality is much confused by pulling more cognitive/contractual concepts like "consent" into claims about arousal or desire. There are these genuine ambivalences in sexuality that get sort of papered over when you do that. If you think of three things -- genuine arousal, genuine desire to do something, and genuine consent to do that thing, I think all three can be quite disjunct in sexuality and no one fully necessarily implies either of the other two.
If someone says they could be meaner, I'd believe them.
95.1: Yes! It's a one-year position, not tenure-track, but it is otherwise a real asst. prof. position with benefits and a humane salary, etc. It's a big shift in my quality of life, and I'm still a bit thrown by it.
92, 94: These are both right. Based on the information given, there's no way to tell if they really were mean and are wrongfully denying it, or if you wrongfully have accused them of being mean and they're reasonably denying it and pointing out that actual meanness would have looked very different.
But either one of those situations is one where the two of you should back away from each other, either permanently or with the situation to be re-evaluated if one of you cops to having been unreasonable in the heat of the moment.
97: And suggests that singles events should be held only in terrifying venues.
I think if the asker had posed the question as, "Hey, I think maybe I was too sensitive and a bit harsh," that would suggest one thing, but the asker has already lumped this person in with "the Crazies." Whether this person is actually crazy or the asker is being unfair, why would the asker desire to date someone they think is crazy and possibly threatening? Sounds like the asker is requesting permission (why?) to DTMFA. Who is going to say the asker really ought to try to understand where this person is coming from and work it out to save this obviously important and loving relationship?
87: I actually think you have to know the context here. Sure, in 90 percent of cases it would be a huge red flag, but can't one *imagine* a context (e.g. midst of a heated argument, other person was being a dick as well, person immediately regrets it afterwards, "artillery" may have specific contextual meaning we don't know) in which it would just be a single regrettable outburst? The internet tradition of totally context free relationship/psychological advice expressed with absolute, overbearing certainty drives me a little nuts sometime.
My guess is that the "crazy" in this scenario is probing to see if the asker is truly a masochist, because s/he is prepared to dish out some super pain if the asker is into that. Actually, it sort of sounds like the asker may in fact be a masochist into super pain, but isn't sure if it's a good idea to actively and consciously pursue the development of super pain.
Sounds like the asker is requesting permission (why?) to DTMFA.
More or less. Or just validation. The asker apparently has a very hard time walking away from such things.
102: More context would have been nice, but given the multiple-choice format I went with what seemed most likely.
Dating The Crazies, got some more context for us?
Actually, it sort of sounds like the asker may in fact be a masochist into super pain, but isn't sure if it's a good idea to actively and consciously pursue the development of super pain.
The asker should probably give this some thought. Though the asker is very much not enjoying the super pain, the asker seems to keep coming back for more of the same.
The asker apparently has a very hard time walking away from such things.
To each his/her own, I guess. Feeling like I'm being treated like shit by an unpredictable and malevolent-seeming person is a real turn-off for me. Or at least, after spending a year in an actually-abusive relationship during college with a homicidal psychopath, it's not ambiguous to me what is to be done when someone plays a card like this.
Well (yes indeed with the caveats that neither I nor anyone else here save DtC actually knows the situation) my thought would be that it's going to be difficult to work on whatever issues you may have w/ masochistic relationships in general in the context of an ongoing relationship you don't enjoy being in.
And I don't think it actually matters that much who was *really* being mean. People have really different perceptions on this and finding some objective standard of mean-ness won't help you much as a practical matter. You feel like your partner's cruel, he/she has said that he/she is inclined to dish out more of the same, you feel like this sucks. Get out!
100: or, taking 81 into account, singles events should be held in moderately challenging venues, but any subsequent dating should gradually escalate to the point where live ammunition is spraying about.
Then you're ready to get married and have kids.
108: Yes, exactly. Relevant to this conversation, how many dicks do you have to suck (probably in risky, possibly scary circumstances) before you consider the possibility that you might be gay (and want a safe environment in which to consciously explore your homosexual feelings with a like-minded partner)? Likewise, how many hateful, terrifying relationships with psychos do you have to accidentally and mysteriously get sucked into before you confront your masochism and seek ways to explore your masochism in a safe, mutually satisfying environment with a like-minded individual who shares your interests?
66 was so good I briefly suspected 65 of being a set up.
got some more context for us
I don't know that I could really sum up 6+ months of drama. The above was in the context of breaking-up/maybe-down-the-road-when-we're-in-a-better-place text discussion. The ex said something about just beginning to understand how sensitive I am to hurtful things. I said I thought the ex had known this all along. The ex said the last 6 months felt like I was going to announce any day now that I only have a year to live. (I had some serious health issues earlier in the year. These weren't fun for me, either.) I said "Ouch" and something like, sorry it's been so rough for you, take care, goodbye. The ex said things about my reaction there being crazy and reading mean into everything. I said that I know I am above-average on the sensitivity scale and that the ex maybe needs someone with a thicker skin. The ex responded that I am oversensitive and I have no intention of changing no matter how much it hurts the people around me. This is, in fact true. I said that I was sorry I wasn't who the ex had hoped I would be. The ex informed me of the afore-mentioned unspent heavy artillery. I blocked the ex's cell phone number.
I am now wallowing in my misery.
I think 83.3 is misguided. Obviously people who work in a specific field are going to have technical terms which they use a lot, and making up words is hard so people use normal words. 99% of research is never reported on in the popular press, so you can't expect researchers to police their day-to-day language based on how reporters are going to take it out of context during that once-in-a-lifetime (if you're lucky!) episode. It's reporters who are doing this wrong *every day*. I don't think it's fair to say that the onus is on researchers to try to thwart reporters from doing what reporters do. Instead what you need is science reporters who were trained as scientists.
110 latter is sort of what happened to me, so I don't mean it to sound condescending. In a long, trusting, intimate relationship I got the chance to deal with and process my masochism and, frankly, I eventually got bored of it. (For someone else, maybe they would realize that's really who they are and what they want from life.) But I don't think I would have been able to process it if I hadn't had the chance to do it in a daylight fashion, in that my partner and I could discuss what was going on and why we were doing it and not let it control how we treated each other otherwise. It was a hell of a lot better than just mysteriously finding myself in relationships with unpredictable selfish jealous psychos.
I think "masochism" is inaccurate. I think maybe a bit of a savior-complex ("I can fix this miserable wreck of a person") mixed in with low self-esteem ("Maybe [it is my fault/I do deserve it/it is all in my imagination].") And a stubborn refusal to admit that I was dead fucking wrong 8 months ago when I thought this was perfect.
112: Mean people love to say you're just too sensitive, or that they're training you for life (no matter how old you are) because there are REALLY mean people out there, or they could be a LOT worse, so be grateful. It's not true. You wouldn't be friends with someone who said mean, insensitive things to you. Why would you date them?
I realize I have what some people in my life have referred to as an overdeveloped sense of my own dignity, but I've always thought of myself as a human being, and wanted to be treated like a human being, since I was a very little child. Maybe it's a too-high bar to expect to be talked to like a human being, but it doesn't seem too high for my friends or my profession. It's just, apparently, too high for dating. So I don't date.
115: That's exactly what I said to myself while staying with the psycho. I could help him! The bitterness of that particular fantasy was that he ended up so, so much worse off than when I met him. Dating crazy people does not make them seek professional help or deal with their problems; it just helps them hide their dysfunction from everyone else by burying it in you and fucking you up.
It's just, apparently, too high for dating. So I don't date.
Yep. And I made an exception because I was sure this one was different. I'm such a dumbass.
118: Oh OK, I know this one too. Start forgiving yourself now for having put up with it, because that shit takes the longest time. I think I was five or six years out before I stopped crying tears of remorse and self-loathing about having stayed with him for so long. This is just your life now, and you can only make new decisions.
What if somebody is really nice, except when they have been drinking? I think that will be the kind if thing that works out fine.
And I made an exception because I was sure this one was different. I'm such a dumbass.
Nah. It's perfectly normal to want companionship, and you reached out for it. That doesn't make you a dumbass, it makes you human.
Not knowing the whole story, no offence etc., etc., but this:
The ex said the last 6 months felt like I was going to announce any day now that I only have a year to live. (I had some serious health issues earlier in the year. These weren't fun for me, either.) I said "Ouch" and something like, sorry it's been so rough for you, take care, goodbye.
does sound a little oversensitive. It's not apparent to me that the point of his statement was to insult you, cause you harm, or be mean. Of course, this is exactly the kind of thing that context can totally change the meaning of so it's impossible to say. And his subsequent insistence on really bringing home his dissatisfaction with your sensitivity is definitely a bit dickish.
And if it helps, DtC, I can share the breakup mix I spent last weekend putting together on Spotify.
Actually, my comment at 122 is totally pointless, so forget I made it. Bottom line is that breakups suck. My sympathies, DtC.
122: If I still had the exact wording, it was clearly dickish. There had never been any claim that I was dying, the scary/miserable phase lasted for about a month, and the health issue has been resolved for 3 months.
123: Yes please!
Josh seems really proud of his breakup mix.
126: Did I mention it here? I thought I only mentioned it elsewhere, and even then only to provide context for annoyance at Spotify's ads.
I thought you had? I don't know. The fact that I can't keep track of these things only makes my famous discretion all the more remarkable.
I have a breakup mix, but it involves Chex cereal and melba toast.
Oh shit, I did mention it here. Goddammit.
127: That young man needs to open his mouth a bit wider when he sings.
Further to anecdotes of my adviser: You have to remember that this was in a big (80+ students) survey class, first thing in the morning, in a discipline that many undergrads regard as consisting solely of "gut" courses. So trying to prise the collective eyelids of the class open long enough to shovel some theory into their fragile little minds took more than the ordinary amount of effort.
109: Isn't this the formula for the "romantic suspense" sub-genre of romance novels?
I remember one of the things that made me realize how necessary it was to disconnect from my bad relationship was thinking, if I had a child with this man and he treated that child this way--getting angry about little things, unable to control violent rages, acting suspicious and vindictive and manipulative--how would I feel about that? I realized that if I got pregnant I would immediately have an abortion or run away and raise it myself if I could be sure he would have no contact. Then I realized that I was terrified and so upset about this guy treating a child who didn't even exist this way, when I put up with it every day and called it love. I don't even want kids, but for some reason that image of how he would be as a father made it clear why I had to leave.
I very much do want kids. And it's been clear for plenty long that it wouldn't be with him.
So my context-free two cents: half the problem is having an emotional conversation by text. I mean, the individual messages sound unambiguously hurtful but I do imagine emotional misreadings might pile up as the exchange gets longer and more heated.
(I understand the temptation. I hate talking on the phone.)
Not that this is helpful now. But you've already blocked the guy so I think you mostly want to know if you did the right thing. Considering the other stuff you've said: yeah. Considering only the text conversation: probably yeah.
re: "gut" courses, isn't this one of those regionalisms? In high school I think we called them "bunnies."
Er, and it meant easy courses. I left that out.
What region uses "bunnies" as a term for gut courses?
Kentucky and environs I guess. Or maybe the dark region known as high school. Or else I made it up. I am at this point subtracting value.
I've heard "gut" used to describe an easy class before.
If Thorn could attest "bunny" I guess that would settle the matter of geography, given 142 from my compatriot.
We're supposed to stop when we subtract value?
Just multiply with someone else who's subtracting value. Your offspring will be positive.
6: I've never seen anyone dressed the way I'm talking about who wasn't gay. But you're still probably right, LB.
I've never heard "bunny" or "gut." So there!
I've never heard either term used to describe course before. I would have guessed "gut" referred to breadth requirements that most students in the class don't want to take, but sit through anyway.
101: Everyone else is probably right,but I do know that I have a terrible temper and can say really cruel things--mostly to people I'm close to, and sometimes motivated by tough love. But there are a few people (not family, but my BF) who put up with it, because they know that there is a decent person in there, and they know that I'm trying to get better.
Don't ever take for granted that they put up with it, BG. However decent the person in there may be, and however sincere the efforts to get better, an uncontrolled temper coupled with cruelty is a really, powerfully damaging thing, and putting up with it is really an awful lot to ask of someone you love.
OT: living in a college town has its upsides and downsides. There's a really nice performance space, where we get to see all kinds of music and theatrical productions for very little money, for example. On the other hand, the students who live up the street have decided to celebrate Labor Day by roasting an entire pig. In their front yard. Now, I know that consuming pork is "hip" and "with it", and I know, further, that my vegetarianism marks me for death under the coming Perry regime, but seriously, do people have to perform their food consumption in this way? Not only does it smell pretty gross -- because the wind is blowing in exactly the wrong direction -- but it's an eyesore to see this poor pig slowly rotating on a spit.
I will totally do pro Bono legal defense for those kids. God for I'd we would live in a world where you can't roast a pi on your lawn on labor day.
Roasting a whole pig is something you may be less likely to see in a college town than elsewhere.
They did kill the pig first, right?
BG? You're the same person who started this thread (and, IIRC, has started just about every thread about queerness) with some statement about how like it would just be really great if queer people were never fat or badly dressed because you just can't stand seeing ugly fat unfashionable people in your life. I wasn't going to say anything, but fuck I'm so sick of this driveby shit, all under the banner of "Of course I'M not homophobic or transphobic. I just really wish for them that they'd dress better and be more sexually appealing to ME." Fuck that. What you say matters. You can't just hang out under these self-labels of "I'm a fantastic person who can say any shitty thing and still be considered perfectly decent." It's not decent. It's mean.
Two people on facebook recall "bunny." Both from my town. This is the five dollarsiest thing I have ever beaten into the ground. I neglected to make labor day plans and am bored. I started watching La Belle Noiseuse and then it dawned on me that Disc II wasn't special features but rather the second part of a four-hour movie. So that started to feel like homework and instead I started canvassing about "bunny" because god knows that's fascinating.
I wish someone would breed a much stupider pig. As it is, they're smart enough that I feel really bad about eating pork (although I haven't stopped yet, on account of the deliciousness).
I clearly recall a whole thread about how transwomen are like fine and everything as long as they're not in your locker room or using the same toilet as you. And other comments about how you think someone is a bad person because her shoes were scuffed or whatever. All that stuff really adds up to a picture of what matters, you know?
God for I'd we would live in a world where you can't roast a pi on your lawn on labor day.
A garden is a lovesome thing, God for.
Two people on facebook recall "bunny." Both from my town. This is the five dollarsiest thing I have ever beaten into the ground.
My uncle (Western PA) used to refer to super easy Trivial Pursuit questions as "bunnies".
158: What if they piped reality TV into pig barns.
162: I like it. Reality TV and Chris Matthews.
Do you want them stupid or begging for death?
Then they won't be all upset about dying.
158: honestly, I have no problem with people eating pork (or anything else they want, for that matter). Actually, I ate meat myself for the first time in about fifteen years the other night. It was very yummy, though I felt lousy afterward. But there's something weirdly aggressive about roasting a whole pig in one's front yard, don't you think? Or maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Maybe placing one's food consumption front and center, rather than hiding the death of Babe/Wilber behind closed doors, is the ethical thing to do.
I wonder if I'd feel better about the rotating pig if it were skinnier.
I know it makes me a bad person and I'm sure I'll look back in bafflement at myself in 30 years, but I find trans issues really hard to wrap my head around.
I think the problem is that I just don't have a strong sense of gender identity, and so I find it hard to imagine what it's like to have a gender identity that's mismatched with your body. By contrast, I have a sexual orientation, so it's relatively easy for me to imagine what life would be like if I had a different sexual orientation. (Of course, I know my imagination isn't accurate and there are lots of gay issues that I know I don't grok, nonetheless at the basics I get what it's like to be attracted to one gender but not another one.) It's really hard for me to think of having a strong gender identity as not being evil and sexist. (E.g. frat boys and high school jocks have strong gender identity and they're correspondingly evil and sexist.) I find it much easier to empathize with someone who's gender queer or opposed to the gender dichotomy, but I find it really hard to grok what would make someone think they could only feel like themselves with a different gender and body. It seems to me that it's very prejudiced and stereotyping to think you need to be gender x to behave in way y. Just keep your body the way it is and behave in the way you want.
Sometimes it can help to talk to some trans people and ask them about their experiences, rather than trying to imagine yourself as a trans person. I am not trans. My feelings about trans people, in the abstract, were pretty confused. Then I remembered that, because I am not trans, it's not fucking about me. Now that I know several trans people and have watched them go through several stages of confusion, self-loathing, change, acceptance, normalcy, I feel pretty strongly about it.
Also: trans people get beat up and raped and yelled at and marginalized and fired like fucking crazy before they pass. You just wouldn't do it if it was some fad or gesture. It really does not improve one's life in ways most of us would recognize. But imagine--it's still better than dressing and performing your own gender? I'm willing to say that's just beyond the reach of my cisgendered imagination, and not my fucking business to tell people how to live.
rather than trying to imagine yourself as a trans person.
Almost anything works better than trying to picture myself without my balls or penis.
I mean I certainly don't think I should tell people how to live. But somehow it falls into the same basket to me as say being a hoarder. Changing genders seems unhealthy and strange to me, but people do all sorts of unhealthy and strange things that I don't understand but which ultimately aren't my business.
Now I've gotten all het up about the right to a front lawn labor day pig roast. You've hit my my inner reactionary nerve. You'll take my tasty pork party from my cold dead hands, professor! Maybe I could buy and learn how to use a shotgun for dramatic effect. Some things really are worth fighting for.
On the other hand, I just gave some money to a pro-trans legal clinic last week! Trans folks really the last truly persecuted minority in America. Except for us meat eaters in the Dutch Cookie's world, of course.
I guess 173 illustrates the point better... I don't get a lot of non-trans people either. Really? Having balls and a penis dangling off of you is the most crucial part of your identity such that almost any other change is easier to imagine? WTF?
I've grown very fond of attached to them.
I mean, aside from Mom. But she says I'm a great kisser!
176: So the fact that it's impossible for you to imagine makes it "unhealthy and strange"? Not that you would tell people how to live, mind, just that how they live is unhealthy and strange.
What am I supposed identify with? My brain?
So if I'm understanding, the expectation is for trans people, in the face of everyone else in the world thinking gender is strictly about genitals, to be the bigger person and say "I know I'm a man/woman and that's enough." This strikes me as a little bit callous, especially given the inevitable response.
I have the idea that for most people (though not my closest trans friend, who is trans but also self-proclaimedly genderqueer) passing is still too important, I think both for inward and outward reasons.
To begrudge them the means to match the outside to the inside better is about a discomfort with the medical part of it, right? Which, granted, is hard to empathize with. I've certainly never wanted to alter my body in a significant way to align it with my self-concept. I just have to say "I don't know what it's like and it doesn't matter" on this one. Why should I care if someone takes T or whatever?
175: easy there, great white hunter. There's not need to git yer gun. Actually, I don't think the state should take their right to grill whatever they want wherever they want away from them. I just found the spectacle of a huge pig being cooked up the street from me odd is all.
183.1 is a good point. I.e. even if "trans" would cease to make sense in the feminist utopia, it still could be something very valuable to people today.
I just found the spectacle of a huge pig being cooked up the street from me odd is all.
The fact that the word "treyf/traif" doesn't appear anywhere in this thread is what I find odd. Bad Jew!
Yeah, my older trans friends who are more settled in, are actually a lot less anxious and offended by pronoun misuse. Oddly, it's usually after bottom surgery and starting to pass that trans people, IME, don't really give a fuck what you call them. The world can be a really scary place if you're trying to pass and you know you've got something to hide.
According to one friend, it wasn't so bad when she didn't pass at all. Lots of threats and a few violent encounters, but she looked like a dude in a dress from three blocks away. A few years of hormones and that distance started to shrink, and things got really terrifying when people realized she was trans while already in striking distance. It wasn't just like she got beat up once; she got *used* to being beat up. She was raped some number of times greater than two, that I know of. And if you asked her, she'd shrug and say whatever, that's kind of part of the territory, and, emotionally, it's not as bad as how her parents treat her now.
Now that she passes pretty well, she is kind of this whole new person. She laughs a lot, is less scared of meeting new people, walks around at night--all these things she would never do four years ago.
In a situation like that, where some decent medical care totally transformed someone's experience of life, I just don't understand the "whatever, I don't get it; they're just crazy" position, or why that's not obviously damaging.
184: There's not need to git yer gun.
Now if they were growing wheat or some other cereal grain in their front yard...
Oh, and also: she went on a date for the first time in her life this year. She's in her early 30's.
189: Well, at least she dodged that bullet for three good decades...
It's tempting to push Halford's buttons by arguing for atheists as another truly persecuted minority in America, but that's obviously not comparable to transpeople. But surely all sorts of racial minorities, not to mention minorities in sexual orientation, are still persecuted? What does "truly" persecuted mean? Transpeople have it the worst by far, I'm sure, which I guess was the point.
Roasting a whole pig is something you may be less likely to see in a college town than elsewhere.
Not Chapel Hill.
Though it wouldn't be spit-roasted. It would be split in half and in a cooker. Like so.
Hrm, certainly it's hard to begrudge anyone who's never had a date doing something that worked.
But there's something weirdly aggressive about roasting a whole pig in one's front yard, don't you think?
Yeah, use the back yard.
Not Chapel Hill.
But, while Chapel Hill is a college town and Chapel Hill is a place where it is common to cook whole pigs, Chapel Hill is not a place where it is common to cook whole pigs qua college town. They are the same in number, but different in account.
where you can't roast a pi on your lawn on labor day.
Not saying he's totally irrational, but trying to square the circle? Fugget about it!
The pig-roasters just need one of these, and you wouldn't have to see the pig at all. I actually had my choice of two pig roasts yesterday (not in a college town).
161: My uncle (Western PA) used to refer to super easy Trivial Pursuit questions as "bunnies".
I think the term has fallen out of use, but in my youth a "bunny" was a nickname for an easy layup in basketball.
I first heard "gut" via my wife (NYC & upstate New York). We had some other (non-rabbit) name that I am frustratingly not remembering. Have also heard "blow off course" and "joke"--but neither are really slang terms.
Isn't there some deal in New England where you cook the pig sort of buried on the beach, out of sight of vegetarians, after fishing it out of the sea or do I have the details wrong?
Skiing also has bunny slopes for beginners.
cotoplanes globosa has been observed to demonstrate strong preferences for rich, organic food that has freshly fallen from the ocean's surface, and uses olfaction to locate preferred food sources such as whale corpses.
199: I think the term has fallen out of use,
And I am wrong. A quick search turns up many contemporary uses in newspapers.
193: Oh, yuck.
My country cousins -- it was my mom's phrase, for descriptive purposes! don't blame me! -- up in NH are fond of roasting a pig on a spit for special occasions. My understanding is that it takes many, many hours to do this, and it's presumably increasingly fragrant as time goes on. I've never witnessed it, though for a while they parked their pig-roaster at my mom's house, to her chagrin*: it was a homemade thing constructed out of an oil barrel (hopefully not previously used for petroleum), cut in half lengthwise, with hinges, etc. Ugly as sin, but it got the job done, I gather.
* Chagrin in part because the neighbors found it unsightly, and muttered. But then they all mutter about one another up there.
"Gut" was in use at my college, but I'm pretty sure I learned it first here.
193: I went to SC this summer briefly and didn't get to eat any pulled pork. it's tragic! I'll have to make my own, but I can't do more than 2 small boston butts at a time, or one big. you'd think that's enough, but you'd be surprised by how much pulled pork people can eat when they've never had it before. oh well, good excuse to have a party.
200: that's in the south too, but we don't do it on the beach, nor use mer-swine. you dig a pit, and...line it with rocks? um...and have a huge fire in it, and let it burn down, and put a whole pig down in there, and then the guys* at the party stay up all night drinking beer and smoking weed and snorting coke and tending the fire lovingly and then when morning comes, it's done! I know you're all thinking, why not start in the morning and have it done for supper? in my experience answers have ranged from "it's too goddamn hot to be tending that pit all day" to "we was all too hungover" to "just didn't get around to it for a while."
*plus the mysterious alameida once she got to be 15.
193: I think that is the more common way to roast a pig here also. At least, there was a story in the paper about that type of roaster just last week.
204: yankees know how to make a pig-roaster out of an old oil drum and roast whole pigs? my world-view is cracking to pieces. please tell me you mess it up somehow, parsimon, like eating boston brown bread out of the can on the side, or something. no, I'll just stipulate it's not roasted properly because: yankees.
not that I don't like a good clam chowder from time to time, or a raw clam, or a fried clam, or corn on the cob, or a lobster roll, but...I think that's kind of it. if you wanted me to start in on southern food I would be limited only in my willingness to sit here typing. OMG CROWDER PEAS. and don't judge me, some of my favorite relatives are yankees! it just squicks me out to think of them in the kitchen.
191 -- like, regularly blatantly denied work based on their identity. Kicked out of places of public accommodation. Beaten up and under a constant threat of violence based on identity. Subject to social disapproval even by mainstream liberals who would never personally result to violence. It's closer to the gay scene pre-Stonewall than it is to the plight of any other major minority group. I actually had no idea how bad it was until AWB started advocating here, and then I met up with some folks who run a legal clinic here. Comparisons to atheists or pig-roasters are actually mildly offensive, given the context, although comparative victimology is probably the stupidest game liberals play.
Also, true fact: last time I went to a pig roast, it was two months ago for a church party and the pig was cooked by H/arrison F/ord's son. Suck it haters! It was in the backyard, not the front, however.
I haven't had good pulled pork in ages. Sigh...
Halford, I'm glad to hear that. You're a guy who is in a position to do people some real and needed good.
205: Merriam-Webster has 1948 listed for first use of "gut course". mentioned as its first use, and American Slang has it at 1911. But just found this reference in a 1908 issue of the Yale Courant:
He knows that there are girls and he is accustomed to speak of the new athletic acquisition as taking a "gut course in Art."
Internationally acceptable link for 214. Possibly still not viewable outside of Canada and the US.
208: please tell me you mess it up somehow, parsimon, like eating boston brown bread out of the can on the side, or something.
I'm afraid not. I'm pretty sure they do it at least to their satisfaction, which is probably pretty good. It involve a lot of partying and beer-drinking and tending. The menfolk begin the process early on in the day. To go with, you have homemade boston baked beans which have been made from scratch and cooked for hours as well. Also, like, macaroni (NOT pasta, are you daft?) salad and stuff. Corn on the cob.
209: I don't think you're supposed to eat clams raw, alameida. Rather, steamed (can't stand them myself, but that's just me). There's a burying-in-the-beach slow-cooking process for them not unlike that described for 206, which is probably terrific fun. 200 may be conflating that New England clambake thing with the pig roasting.
Interesting epilogue. I'm looking at the browser history, and apparently when he was using my laptop last week he looked up a "sober living" halfway house. Not sure how to process that. Maybe Moby had it right, supra.
I assume drinking and ball-protection are the fundamental sources of human behavior.
I don't think you're supposed to eat clams raw
Raw littlenecks are delicious.
Drinking, ball-protection, and the need to avoid raw shellfish.
220: You're damn straight they are!
I'm exhausted (not from frumpy lesbian making-out, alas?) and don't know if I can respond to the twenty billion things I want to. First, DtC, I know we aren't supposed to guess but especially if you are who I think you are, if you have reason to believe that "artillery" isn't just metaphorical, don't write that off. Don't get gaslighted or convinced that change might actually help at this point. All of this sounds incredibly unpleasant, but I've had to live through the threat-of-violence breakup thing and won't discount it.
I can't help essear or Smearcase much, as I'd only heard bunny as seeming like it was coming directly from the ski reference. I'd also heard "gut" somewhere but thought of it as dated. We used "blow-off" in my high school and college.
Lee would be totally appalled if I talked about our sex life, which is occasionally annoying to me because I'd find it useful to be able to talk through some things with friends online, but oh well. Instead I'll say that just tonight she saw something about Chaz Bono and said, "Wow, she really looks like a man." And I of course replied, "That's because he is a man." I was really stunned, but on the other hand I know she's uncomfortable with a lot of LGBT stuff and even the word "queer." It's still surprising to me.
And Mara called one of the transwomen at church "him" yesterday, which made me horribly embarrassed even though I'm 99% sure Mara is entirely sure she's a woman and this was just a pronoun problem just like the other three times she called a woman "him" that day, but apparently I'm (over?)sensitive.
Drinking, ball-protection, the need to avoid raw shellfish, and the desire to not look stupid in church.
Like when I had to forcibly restrain my son to keep him from yelling at his excellency because of the smell from the incense.
Also, Moby, I had a series of dreams last night in which you were narrating everything that happened with humorous quips. I woke up in part because that seemed so weird but then I couldn't get my dreams to stop doing it when I fell back asleep.
Never heard of bunny courses or gut courses.
The series on transgendered children that was all over the place about two years ago fundamentally transformed how I think about trans people.
My favorite break-up song is "Ain't That Lonely Yet" by Dwight Yoakam.
NEXT!
Oh, also per 27: when I hugged my friend I said something like "I've had your family in my thoughts over the summer" and then she responded as though I'd said something completely different, which threw me off balance because I'd had my line planned for hours, and so I checked out of the conversation wondering if I mumbled or had mis-delivered it, and if I should repeat it. So basically I way over-analyzed a throw-away moment. Well-played, Heebie.
Meh. Inadvertently deleted the response I started. In short, Thorn, I am certain he meant artillery in the sense of truly nasty emotional abuse rather than firearms. Though there is an episode of violent, or at least seriously physically dangerous behavior, involving the ex-before-me (involving a car, the phrase "lucky to be alive," and apparently no memory between "started screaming" and "woke up the next day"). No cause for concern unless you hear me start to talk of giving him another chance...
228: It's like heartburn. You need to sleep with your head elevated a few inches to get it under control.
Never heard of a bunny course. But notable gut courses (and "gut" was the term used) at my quasi-alma mater included Rocks for Jocks (Geology 111), Nuts and Sluts (Psych 111), and Clapping for Credit (Mus 111).
I don't think you're supposed to eat clams raw
Littlenecks, cherrystones, razor clams, anyone?
I've heard courses called Math For Poets.
Tom Lehrer (who, I recently learned, has a Erdös-Bacon number of 6, the lucky bastard) taught a class he describes as "Math For Tenors".
237 Back when I did a (horrifying) arts admin internship at an opera company I developed a theory that every tenor you meet thinks he's the smart one.
Also 230 sounds exactly like something that would happen to me.
151: Yes, I know that, and it's why I'm grateful that there are people in my life who put up with it to the extent that they do. My temper is not generally out of control, but I do experience real periods of rage. Mostly I wander restlessly or beat up on myself,but sometimes it comes out and I take other people's heads off.
Re: bunny/gut dichotomy
Actually, I'm not sure I ever heard anyone else use the term "gut" during my undergrad years either. However, I'm not entirely convinced that many of my classmates possessed the power of speech above a few simple grunts and whistles. I'm sure you will all be shocked to learn that I often deploy deliberate archaisms in my spoken speech as well as in writing. Antimacassar. Siam. Prussia. Autogyro.
On cruelty, my aunt once lashed out at me cruelly when I was about 19 and telling a story which hinged on ethnic stereotypes. The story was in somewhat poor taste, but I somehow really thought the stereotypes were unique and insightful in this case, and she really roasted me alive. It fundamentally altered the degree to which I trust her.
Of course I'M not homophobic or transphobic. I just really wish for them that they'd dress better and be more sexually appealing to ME."
AWB, I didn't mean to get in a fight with you. I'm quite sure that I have some internalized homophobia, and I'm sure that I'm probably more transphobic in many ways. I was just trying to be honest, because I don't believe that it's possible for me to change unless I acknowledge my own shortcomings in an honest manner. This may not have been the right forum in which to do it.
And AWB, I've met you, you are not, by conventional standards, either fat or ugly.
Can't believe Halford used... artillery to make out with that... roasted pig that... was for... poets.
This may not have been the right forum in which to do it.
AHEM.
Things that I find way too amusing, Pitt Police blotter edition:
"Pitt police assisted city police with a stabbing on the 3200 block of Ward Street."
I think there's a geology joke about "intrusive dikes" somewhere around here, but I'll leave that for Stormcrow to figure out.
Just found out that a colleague lost her home in the current fires.
243: But you have acknowledged these and similar feelings in the past, over years here, and nothing seems to change, so I'm not sure I believe you when you say this is something you actually feel needs to change, especially when you preface your comments not by admitting you have a problem, but by insisting that you don't. "Don't think I'm a bad person!" And to 245, I would far rather identify as a fat ugly dyke than with people who judge people as being fat ugly dykes. No contest which side is more appealing.
Yep, people and pets are all fine. This was the generational family home on the big ranch, which I don't think was anyone's primary residence anymore. Nevertheless.
No contest which side is more appealing.
Definitely the gap in parade quality is vast.
256: I've seen that in person. It's epic.
They aren't parading just for you to objectify them.
Really? What about the Teamsters from today's parade?
One of my resolutions to be a better radical last year was to be a better ally to transfolx. I haven't lived up to the standard I would have liked, but I think I have been on an upward trajectory. There's still a great need for money and support for CeCe McDonald, if anyone reading is so inclined. Everyone here has been really impressed with her positivity and strength in the face of the many indignities which she has suffered recently. The support she has received so far has been really heartening, and it does seem to be growing, if not as fast as one would hope. While transgendered people need more than just emergency support, it remains true that it's a lot easier to get into an emergency situation than it is to get out of one for many of them. As Halford points out, most of the decks in society are stacked against transgendered people, in CeCe's case, as an African-American, the vulnerability to persecution is only magnified.
I really hope that I am not going to have to be talking about this case and making appeals in 1 or 2 or 10 years. The more we can have her back now, early on, the less we'll have to fight later.
www.supportcece.wordpress.com
It's epic.
Maybe the contingent at the full-on Pride parade was; Dyke March this year was underwhelming. And Dolores Park before the march was kinda disappointing too. Virtually everyone wearing rainbow colors was with someone of the opposite gender.
Maybe the contingent at the full-on Pride parade was
That's what I saw, yeah. Maybe it was the contrast with the rest of the parade? Maybe, also, it was how drunk I was? Anyhow, it was great.
I do fear that with female gender fluidity being what it is, we are losing the radical old stone butches. At least, I've heard some young transdudes and gay women talking shit about our queer foremothers, who look older and older every year. I mean, of course, I'm glad there's a place for fluid gender and sexuality now in a way that there wasn't when they were kids, but I am not looking forward to having to explain real oldschool butchness to my students in fifteen years.
but I am not looking forward to having to explain real oldschool butchness to my students in fifteen years.
Get some hand puppets made while the image is fresh.
I actually just got a haircut that could easily pass for a hard old butch thing, depending on styling.
Virtually everyone wearing rainbow colors was with someone of the opposite gender.
Fine by me. Without straight people wearing rainbow colors we'd still be having secret meetings in basements.
"I don't know what it's like and it doesn't matter"
Yeah, this. I really don't have any empathetic understanding of what it means to be transgendered because it's outside of my personal experience of identity and gender in a way that (e.g.) same-sex attraction just isn't. While I'd met a handful of trans people before, I couldn't really say that I knew any of them much beyond "we've met". In the past year though, a couple have come into my social circle and once you get to know somebody on a "I'm studying this, I work here, I grew up there, I listen to this, this makes me laugh" level, you honestly don't spend any time thinking about their genitalia. And by "you", I mean me. And by "any time", I mean not any more than I do about everybody else I know.
Regarding pig roasts, my first experience of one was in Chicago, in second grade. I attended my then-best friend's family's Fourth of July bash, when they rented out the park pavilion and roasted a pig. Said friend's family hailed from Mexico.
[Goddammit. I have to hit post before I walk off for an hour.]
The one trans lady I've been acquainted now for almost 20 years did in fact get a lot of shit verbally when she was changing over. Although it seemed to go easier for her that it sounds like it has for others because she was very overt as insisting that she be called she when she was still a he, biologically speaking. The usual male types were very obnoxious about needing to point this out in advance before one met her, and I think women tended to be bitchy about the bathroom situation. I never heard of her being attacked though.
191: But surely all sorts of racial minorities, not to mention minorities in sexual orientation, are still persecuted?
The 'most persecuted minority' list keeps growing because they're pushing people they let off the list back on it through the back door.
170: I find it really hard to grok what would make someone think they could only feel like themselves with a different gender and body.
I can totally grep the notion that I might've been happier as a woman! Then I could have grown up to be a fat badly-dressed diesel dyke on a big motorcycle and that would be awesome. (I am not in the least bit sarcastic here, I promise.) Ha! Mad Maxine! Lesbian Avenger!
184: I just found the spectacle of a huge pig being cooked up the street from me odd is all.
Well, since it has been a common practice in the agricultural villages since ever, basically, I think the sight being unusual is merely an indication of our society being the weirdos in historical terms. That said, Neb is right, they probably should've done it in the back yard to avoid annoying the neighbors. But given that, I don't see it as being any different than regular barbequing. Same thing.
225: if you have reason to believe that "artillery" isn't just metaphorical
I have used the phrase metaphorically!
Them: {describes doing stupid thing}
Me: 'Well, that was fucking stupid.'
Them: Exclamations to effect of how could I say that and etc.
Me: 'Jeez. Well, I'm glad I didn't use the heavy artillery.'
I think that the phrase doesn't matter one way or another - if you're calling them crazy, get away from them. Things never end well when it's gone that far, and if you stay in it for ever and ever, this may in fact be an indication that you are as crazy and maybe crazier then they are. And two crazies together really doesn't end well. (Thus, if you can stay away from them because you're wary of them, you can always say to yourself that maybe contributing to amping up their nuttiness is bad for them, and you should get away from them to do them a favor. Martyr/saviour types can usually cope with that formulation of an excuse to split.)
I think this would've worked better an hour ago.
max
['Dogs. I swear.']
Along the lines of 268, probably the easiest and most effective way for people with no particular time or resources to do something for queer people is just stop creating a safe space for homophobes and transphobes. "I dunno; I just don't get it you know" is usually meant to get you to say, "Yeah, no one does; they're just freaks, right?" and all you have to do is say, "Actually, it's not that hard to get." Treat them the way you'd treat someone who made a racist joke. It's hard, because sometimes the transphobe is your friend or your family. But I don't let my dad tell jokes about Jews or black people around me; why would I let my friend tell a tranny joke? It's fucking sick, and I'm tired of being asked to let it slide just because someone "isn't ready to accept" that some people are humans who deserve dignity.
Fine by me. Without straight people wearing rainbow colors we'd still be having secret meetings in basements.
Oh sure, but it was a little odd that the breakdown was *so* skewed. (I had precisely this conversation with my friend while we were watching the march; she was simultaneously pleased that acceptance has come so far and a little sad that it wasn't the same vibe she remembered from days gone by.)
Huh, I didn't know stone butches weren't recruiting any more (was discussing forest regeneration today), I thought my ambit had narrowed. How does greater fluidity lead to fewer rôles?
I come across a decent number of stone butches, mostly through soccer.
274: Who knows; maybe it will go retro and be the hottest thing next year. I've had sex with a few young super-dykey chicks, but they're harder to find than they used to be.
I'm all for acceptance, but 275 is just inappropriate.
Inappropriate? I'd say impressive, given that soccer players don't use their hands.
I have some empathy with what it would be like to be trans. I wanted to be a boy when I was growing up. I'm less connected to that now, and usually in the land of androgyny or female, but I still have a visceral memory of that.
That's what I get for being earnest.
275 reminds me of this post and the blog it's from more generally. (I feel like the author would fit right in here. Now watch, one of the LA contingent will say they know her.)
283: She's not a big user of social media, but LinkedIn tells me that I know people who know people who know her.
I was pleased to find out that my all-male alma mater has a pretty straightforward trans policy, which is to consider applications from transmen.
That's what you get for being Ernest.
I used to want to be a boy too. When I was 7 or 8 I used to get mistaken for a boy and loved it. (And now my 8 year old gets mistaken for a boy.)
I didn't know stone butches weren't recruiting any more (was discussing forest regeneration today)
This seems like a complete non sequitur, but I am guessing the link is via large, burly people in lumberjack shirts?
||
I made a labor day mix for y'all.
The Canals and the Bridges, the Embankments and Cuts
1. "Slack Motherfucker," fIREHOSE
2. "Navigator," The Pogues
3. "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer," Johnny Cash
4. "The Day John Henry Died," Drive By Truckers
5. "Letter to a John," Ani DiFranco
6. "Cotton Patch Blues," Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.
7. "Cumberland Gap," Woody Guthrie
8. "Erie Canal" Bruce Springsteen.
9. "A Shanty-Man's Life," Dan Zanes
10. "This Ain't No Picnic," The Minutemen
11. "Farewell Nova Scotia," Dan Zanes and Donald Saaf
12. "Take This Job and Shove It," Johnny Paycheck.
13. "Need a Job," Beefeater
14. "Career Opportunities," The Clash
15. "Which Side Are You On," Billy Bragg
16. "Union Maid," Pete Seeger, Si Kahn and Jane Sapp
17. "All You Fascists," Billy Bragg and Wilco
18. "Ladies' Auxiliary," Arlo Guthrie.
19. "We're in the Same Boat Brother," Leadbelly
20. "Solidarity Forever," Pete Seeger.
|>
249: I think there's a geology joke about "intrusive dikes" somewhere around here, but I'll leave that for Stormcrow to figure out.
Intrusive dikes are hot!
(You see what happens, essear? You see what happens when you fight a stranger in the Alps try to force it?)
279: Likewise. Though I think for me personally it was more a recognition that boys were less limited in certain things (hanging from trees, playing football, not being ladylike) that I would have liked to be less limited in rather than actually feeling like I was more male than female.
One thing I've been thinking about is (privilege talking, I guess) I'd never thought about my sexuality being offensive or a gross-out thing to people. Lee is very hesitant about even minor kisses, hugs, hand-holding in public, bu I think both of us had always thought of that as more a safety thing, that to do otherwise would be a provocation. I hadn't really thought about the extent to which we might be making people queasy, and doing so feels very weird to me.
287: in population ecology, "recruitment" is the # of new individuals of a species that form a new age cohort. "Reproduction" isn't specific enough because your adults could reproduce but have all their offspring die or leave.
"Reproduction" isn't specific enough because your adults could reproduce but have all their offspring die or leave there's always some lonely dude who thinks of a silicon-filled doll.
170, 269: I'm kind of in the same boat with finding trans identities hard to empathize with -- not that I have a negative response, I just don't feel that I understand what's going on enough for empathy. I don't feel as if I have enough of an attachment to my gender identity that I can get a sense of what it would be like to feel that it didn't match my body. But not understanding what's going on in their heads describes how I feel about most people doing most of the things they do, which mostly doesn't (and always shouldn't) interfere with being polite and supportive where appropriate.
292: fuck making people queasy. make out in the park with lots of tongue action. I realize it's impossible to set safety issues to one side, here, but I'm stipulating a case in which the only danger is someone else getting squicked out, in which case you two should be making out like there's no tomorrow. (I appreciate that in your actual case lee is unlikely to want this.)
I really think it mostly boils down to many people just dont like to see making out or think about someone else having sex. (Seriously, have you seen what legs and hips that arent taut and toned look like when they move?!!?!?!)
But, like many things, there is a hot person exception.
the extent to which we might be making people queasy
Those people aren't feeling queasy about *your* sexuality; they're uncomfortable with their own. I can understand getting a queasy feeling about sex that involves pain or blood/shit, because that's a pretty base-level survival mechanism. People get queasy thinking about surgery for the same reason (I don't, but I get that people do) and I suspect that may drive some of the difference in reactions to same-sex attraction and transgenderism, especially if your entire understanding of it is surgical reassignment rather than the whole spectrum of experience. I mean, plenty of people get queasy at the sight of earlobe spreaders.
re: 291
I wonder if that's age or location dependent? My sister and her friends weren't limited in those ways. In fact, if you look at photos of us from the 70s and early 80s, it's not really until we hit puberty that we are dressing or acting that different. We, the boys, didn't really play football that much with the girls but in all other rough-and-tumble respects, there just wasn't that much of a difference.
I wonder if this speaks to the rise of gender conformity that's come up in the past on Unfogged? Princesses, etc.
296: Yeah, I think I actually posted here when for the first time she kissed me goodbye on the front porch as we headed out to work one morning. She's fine with some making out in bars since people who go to bars deserve what they get. She's also never had any kind of hate-crime action, though she suffered some discrimination and a lot of ostracism when she first was outed in high school. But on the privacy front, she moons people, which I definitely think is not okay.
I don't really mean to pick on BG here, but it was just sort of shocking to read her comment because I absolutely don't think about that. And maybe I should.
292: And this is why it seems completely uncool to me to go around throwing out comments like "i'm not a bad person but it just grosses me out when fat ugly women kiss." Even if the person who says it grants you the wonderful favor of saying "no, i didn't mean *you* dear, i meant those real fat ugly dykes over there." I don't want to fucking think about whether my sexuality is gross to someone, even though I guarantee you that it is. I have to worry about some moron maybe getting all stomach-churny at the thought of me having sex? I don't need that.
I remember the first night I had sex with my girlfriend, she got really terrified about me kissing her in public. We were in Park Slope, for chrissakes. It's the lesbian capital of the world. And honestly, I don't know if she was afraid of us getting beat up or of just grossing people out. (She is a lot taller and bigger than I am, and I think she feels more "seen" than I do.) Ugh, I hate thinking about this shit.
And when people see non-hot opposite gender couples holding hands, they see them in a non-sexual way. They dont think about them having sex. But, for some stupid reason, when they see the same sex couple, they automatically try to imagine them having sex.
296: I don't think that actually works for Lee and Thorn -- the privilege going on there is that they're both quite attractive (at least in pictures) by conventional standards, so probably not likely to inspire the gross-out reaction b-girl was having. Which seems to me to be driven largely by disapproving of unattractive women being sexual, although I think she thinks it's more socially acceptable to express the gross-out if it's driven by homophobia.
I do agree with AWB that it's really not the sort of reaction that it's important to be able to express honestly -- finding other people disgusting is generally the kind of reaction which you can most appropriately keep to yourself and not dwell on.
298: Okay, I'll admit I get queasy about coprophagy stuff. I'm fine with the idea that others who like it do it, but I can't even make this a long comment because I hate even thinking about it. We all have our triggers, I suppose.
(When I say "doesn't actually work" I don't mean they shouldn't make out, I meant that their making out in public probably wouldn't actually gross-out and annoy the people you'd want to gross-out.)
Actually, to confess to squeamishness, earlobe spreaders here. As part of a really attractive person with a whole look, they don't really bother me that much. Someone who's less than perfectly presented, though, if the plugs are bigger than quite small I really don't want to look at them.
I'm not sure what my problem is, but they do creep me out. Still, none of my business what other people do to their earlobes.
...finding other people disgusting is generally the kind of reaction which you can most appropriately keep to yourself and not dwell on.
As near as I can tell, learning that lesson (in a variety of contexts) is half of adulthood.
303: We have over the years gotten a fair number of unsolicited and often creepy comments from straight guys who clearly do like imagining whatever goes beyond having our arm's around each other's waists or whatever it was that they saw us do, and I think the pale skin/dark skin thing is a part of that too. I think we definitely fall in the unfashionable clothes zone, but are not heavy enough to inspire discomfort there.
And I know I've said this before a lot, but to AWB's lament that butches are disappearing, I really think that's only/mostly happening from the upper middle class on up. Working class and especially black/Latina lesbians are still very much into stud/femme, to the point where we've gotten a certain amount of bafflement from people at church for not considering ourselves part of those teams.
I agree generally with the person who said that straight people can best show solidarity by making homophobic statements out-of-bounds.
Also, for a LONG time, the only homosexual couples that straight people in suburbia saw were flamboyant ones. The rest stayed hidden.
As more opposite sex couples are out in the open, people realize that they are just like them.
"I dont minds gays. I just dont think they should FLAUNT it around." --- in part, this was a horrific statement, but, it also partially resulted from the only public gays being very showy, demonstrative ones.
On butchness: Yes, I would be sad if there were no stone butches anymore too. I've always found that page in Fun Home, where Bechdel sees the butch delivery-person/trucker at the diner, and has an epiphany that she's no longer going to be bound to the gender norms she's known so far. I like the aspect of butch identity that is all about "Let's cut the crap and get down to the heart of the matter right now, I got places to be!" Very refreshing in the radical scene. At the same time, I want people in general to be liberated. So if young queer women coming up are feeling like the most liberatory thing for them is to identify as genderqueer or genderfucked or some other not-butch performance of gender, then that's what I am going to support. But I don't think we should rush to count the butches out just yet. I think there's A LOT of class & race dynamics in play here. I think the whole people-who-would-have-been-butches-20-years-ago-are-now-identifying-as-trans thing is perhaps not as widespread as it may initially appear. There's just aspects of whose narratives of queerness get the publicity that tend to skew our perceptions. Also, to the Princess phenomenon: I see many many girls in the local Mexican and Ecuadorian communities who are getting the full-on princess treatment from Day 1. You can't tell me a lot of the ones who wind up being queer aren't going to look to some of those models that create a traditional butch aesthetic & cultural position.
I suspect there's a fairly common but not-quite-conscious thought process along the lines of "people I don't find attractive shouldn't have sex, and people I do find attractive shouldn't have sex with people who aren't me." Because, as noted above, sex is gross. Well, not so much gross as ridiculous. If you've ever continued to watch porn after you've come, this becomes apparent, and those are professionals with hair/makeup artists and a film editor.
If you've ever continued to watch porn after you've come, this becomes apparent...
A similar realization happens when you walk into an Arby's when you're full.
I'm tempermentally and aesthetically (though not politically) pretty conservative, and have also become kind of an exercise nut recently, but I really don't get being grossed out by the thought of people of any kind having whatever kind of sex they want, and never have. Go for it! I mean, I think folks should exercise and eat better and not be obese because they'll feel and look better, but if two obese people want to get it on, why the fuck does that have anything to do with me?
I guess it seems sort of pointless to me to note that someone else's sexuality is silly and/or gross because pretty much all sexuality is silly and/or gross by default.
It only doesn't seem that way when whatever lizard brain response kicks in to tell us that it's teh hawt. But absent that, kinda silly.
314: Something to do with having a strong visual imagination? I don't have a gross-out reaction to pretty much anything that I'm not actually looking at, including things that I'm sure would revolt me if I was. I probably wouldn't enjoy looking at non-pretty people having sex, but it's never come up if you don't count sex I was participating in, and thinking about it doesn't make me 'see' it.
I'm with 314.
Went to a hike-in hot spring in Idaho yesterday; brought my bathing suit, wife didn't. She took a bunch of pictures: those with my white whale physique gross out even me.
That said, I can't imagine caring (other than because of a threat of violence; that was missing) what the 6 people (all at least 25 years younger) who joined us thought about either of us.
No PDA, although the wife sat on my lap -- both more like lounging, because of the configuration of the bottom. The granite rocks were kind of slimy: I was glad to have the suit, and the wife glad to have me.
I wanted to make a joke about how you shouldn't be discussing the configuration of your wife's bottom online, but given the nature of the thread it just seemed terribly likely to go wrong.
brought my bathing suit, wife didn't.
Very European of her.
316 says all I can think of on that aspect of the topic.
On reflection, I think it's right that the stone butches are endangered, though I hadn't noticed because almost all the people I know in that category are about my age. But I'm pretty old now. There's no obvious replacement cohort.
Does that matter? I'm inclined to think not so much. Sex and gender self definitions and cultures change all the time and always have. I've no idea what the kids are up to deez dayz - they're not up to it with me, so my interest is limited, but I don't see why the semiotics of gender should be set in concrete any more than anything else.
I've always gotten queasy whenever I think about having my torso held underwater in a rocky area and being eaten alive by hundreds of small crabs. Or really, eaten alive by hundreds of small anythings, but crabs make up most of the nightmares. It would bother me to think too much about any sexual act that simulates that. Being eaten by large animals is not something I would enjoy, but the thought alone doesn't bother me.
323: It probably depends on what movies you saw as a kid.
There's an episode of I Shouldn't Be Alive about a guy who gets his legs trapped under a rock in a foot of water that urple probably shouldn't watch.
320 -- Of the 6 young Americans who joined us: 4 suits, 2 not. Naked ones were the skinniest, I think. And those showing the most, uh maybe leadership is the right word.
I've gone naked at the hike-in springs down the road. A couple of the pools have more of a sandy (coarse crushed granite, really) bottom.
I've always gotten queasy whenever I think about having my torso held underwater in a rocky area and being eaten alive by hundreds of small crabs.
I shouldn't ask, but is there occasion for this thought to come up often?
325: I don't even know what that show is, but you're probably right. Just yesterday a crawfish was pinching my toe that I guess got too far under a rock and then stood still for too long and I swear if I had been unable to move away I would have passed out (not from pain, which was marginal, but from visceral unease).
Believe it or not, that wasn't meant to be as OT as it ended up. It was intended as a response to 317/318, implying that I think LB has it right.
In that case, you could think of aquasocks as foot condoms.
I've always gotten queasy whenever I think about having my torso held underwater in a rocky area and being eaten alive by hundreds of small crabs.
If it makes you feel any better, I am pretty sure that the crabs wouldn't touch you in this situation. They're generalist scavengers - plant matter, carrion, maybe shellfish; they wouldn't start eating you if you were still alive. They might nip you but that's more a defensive reaction.
It would bother me to think too much about any sexual act that simulates that.
One drawback to the grotto, then.
On a kind of related note, I stopped watching those shows where people noodle for catfish after I realized that I was only watching to see if somebody would lose and arm and that there's no way they would air the footage if somebody did lose an arm.
Someone at one remove from me returned to town from M2F surgery this weekend. Was a college football player, then a Seal, then in law enforcement. Now a very successful businessperson. I'd like to think the balance has shifted just a little bit.
It would bother me to think too much about any sexual act that simulates that.
You know, I was thinking that this seemed like a really unlikely sex act, and then I remembered the bit in Tampopo with the prawn. Not actually nibbling, but prawn-related sex. So, it's all out there.
One drawback to the grotto, then.
I'm almost positive that underground sex grotto's were discussed in an old thread. But since I'm at work I'm afraid to search since I'm not sure I want a record of me searching "underground sex grotto's".
I don't recall that shellfish were involved in the conversation though.
I don't recall that shellfish were involved in the conversation though.
Then again, I have no way of knowing whether any of the unfogged posters are shellfish or not.
"Otto blotto grotto pronto" should get it without needing to search for anything with sex in it. I don't know if those are really less embarrassing search terms.
I knew that grotto in the Pitti Palace in Florence had a purpose.
Of course it has a porpoise. What else would you expect in a grotto?
340: it would be embarrassing if a colleague were to realise that you don't know the proper plural of "grotto". (And used a greengrocer's apostrophe!)
343: good point. LB, try "otto blotto pitti grotto pronto".
338: sounds like Jan Morris...
336: they wouldn't start eating you if you were still alive
Per the link in 202, like sea pigs. They're there for you after your body gently floats down to the abyssal plain.
Land pigs will kill you if they get the chance. What did we ever do to them?
If urple were to find his torso wedged on the bottom of the abyssal plain, he might have more pressing (ahaha) problems than sea pigs.
What did we ever do to them?
I can't speak for your people, Moby, but I know mine.
Is 347 just a joke, or did Moby miss the link in 193?
I've now read the link. Sea pigs came up as one of the answers to "what terrifying creature are you?" A bloblike scavenger about the size of a guinea pig is terrifying now?
If you're pinned under a rock on the abyssal plain, sure it is.
They don't even look terrifying. Spider crabs would be worse, surely.
350: I only eat humanely-sourced, organic pork, unless the other kind is cheaper.
I'm not sure I want to know how you have an enema competition.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemas.
Then again, I have no way of knowing whether any of the unfogged posters are shellfish or not.
I'm jusht lookin' out for number one, man.
306: I heard that. I get an almost irresistible urge to put my finger through the hole those earlobe-spreader things make, no matter how it comes together as part of a look. It's super distracting.
356-360 gets claps. Yay!
Had lunch today with Small Town's only butch dyke under the age of 60 today and we lamented the sad state of queerness in Small Town. She encouraged me to join the LGBTQ group on campus, and that's where I'm like ugh not really.
Like I would be willing to be a faculty adviser maybe? But frankly I find young gay people to be at a phase in their lives where they really want labels and answers and gay monogamous normativity and I'm not going to be a useful presence for them.
No? I'd think just being visible as a different option might be a good thing for them. Not that you should do it if you don't have the time or energy, of course, but I doubt you'd be useless.
I'll think about it. It's weird coming from a place where I'm among the least queer people I personally know to a town where people meet you and immediately ask what your husband does, despite no evidence of the existence of such a person.
labels and answers and gay monogamous normativity
Wow, we've known really different young gay people. The gay students I've gotten closer to and kept in touch with do not bear this out at all.
Had lunch today with Small Town's only butch dyke under the age of 60 today and we lamented the sad state of queerness in Small Town. She encouraged me to join the LGBTQ group on campus, and that's where I'm like ugh not really.
AWB, how would you define butch dyke, or old school butch? My last roommate was near my age, kept a short buzzcut, and came off as mannish in most regards, enough that she had been given a hard time in a public bathroom at least once, and I'm wondering how she would compare.
enough that she had been given a hard time in a public bathroom at least once,
Possible even if you're not actively trying to present as a butch dyke. Kind of a shame I wasn't -- I clearly have the bone structure for it.
I don't know. I couldn't really pass for butch even with my boy's haircut right now, although a few people have started asking me how I identify sexually. I'm not good at describing it, because it's not just a style of clothes; it's also a way of moving and acting in the world, very chin out and up, very cool-guy.
I was the LGBTQ sponsor here for awhile until the group disbanded due to in-fighting.
298, 306, 363: People are confessing to squeamishness? Okay, here goes: badly tended toenails. Ones that are, say, overly long and ragged, and worse! were painted like two weeks ago and are now all chipped, and there seems to be toe jam or something.
A while back -- maybe a year ago? -- I had occasion to spend several hours at the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, and man, there were a lot of people wearing sandals who just shouldn't have been unless they'd taken care of the toenails. I tried to look away, I did not judge, I wondered, I said to myself, "Huh", I thought about numerous other things (there at the D.M.V. for hours, after all), I noticed someone else's feet, had a conversation with myself about how many different kinds of people there are in the world. But there it is: squeamish about certain states of certain feet.
I have toe nail fungus (three nails) & a new drivers license.
I got to this through 3 Quarks Daily, so probably y'all've seen it. Still:
As one of the audience members, Tushar Pahwa, walking out after a show puts it, "Bol is a ubiquitous film- whether a Muslim family in Lahore or a Hindu family in Bihar, everyone can relate to it. Women and transgenders are disrespected in India and Pakistan both. I just hope people start to speak up after watching the movie. It was a good gift for Eid.
Parsimon just got her hippie card REVOKED.
375; Thanks! I'd read about the movie, but not there. (And not with references to Mummy Punjabi, which I now desperately want to see despite or thanks to knowing nothing about it but the title.)
It might be worth noting that there are plenty of cultures where transgender identities seem much less problematic than gay ones. Iran, for instance, approves of (and I think pays for) sex change operations, though I can't imagine that's an easy life. I'm pretty sure some of my coworkers were ewwwing over Chaz Bono, but I put my headphones back on rather than eavesdrop more. I think the thread consensus was that it's the job of straight people to fight that kind of thinking, and I can just push them to be happy when lesbians in interracial relationships get to adopt their foster children or whatever. I do pick my battles, really, bur I feel a little guilty about it.
I've accepted having feet that cannot be seen at the DMV.
376: I know. It's a problem, and I'm working on it.
I was sad that I had no license until I went to the DMV.
They should just sell antifungal cream at the DMV.
Then everyone can be the desenexated driver.
Maybe I'll just see if I can't get my dentist to pull those nails out.
Moby, I know you've said before that you have toenail fungus, so I hesitated to write all that. It was intended to be humorous. I'm sorry if it was offensive. My housemate has toenail fungus as well (it also shows up on his knees and other places from time to time), and he treats it as much as possible with creams and at times some kind of oral medication. His toenails do not look like the ones at the DMV, though, and yours probably don't either. Maybe I'm just digging the hole deeper, though.
"I trained myself for a long time and snapped more than 10 kg of nails, although my family is not supportive. I trained myself secretively," he said.
384: I wasn't offended in the least. Please tell me you were joking about knee fungus.
Knee fungus is a turnoff, I'll admit.
I just don't want to know that parts of me that are well ventilated can get mildewy.
386: Oh, good. Not joking about the knee thing. I don't know exactly what it was -- related to the fungal thing in some way, like scabby stuff around the kneecaps that seemed like more than just rough skin patches. He got a prescription for that, oral medication, and it cleared up. Some people are just prone to this sort of thing.
Some people are just prone to this sort of thing.
Not me. I've always been told they broke the mold when they made me.
389 makes me want to consult my doctor. 390 also, but only because I laughed.
I have several TG (MtF) co-workers that I know about. The thing I keep wondering about is how they "count" as women in tech. One the one hand, it's a male-dominated field, and not being all-male is valuable. On the other hand, much of their education, and experience as tech people, was as males. Is their male-background-female-presence a good thing, or is it too different from that of most female candidates to be helpful?
391: I wish I remembered more about why my housemate reported that the knee thing was related to the toe thing (and the dandruff, I think). I'm pretty sure the doctor said so, but I can't swear to my memory of this.
I'm off now, watching the Firefly series via Netflix.
I'm off now, watching the Firefly series via Netflix covering the house in Lysol for unrelated reasons.
the knee thing was related to the toe thing
The toe thing's related to the ankle thing...
Paging essear: Kristen Bell appears in the first season of Deadwood. Who knew?
I knew. And she plays a really interesting role, too. Sorry for not bringing it up before. (You do know about Party Down, right?)
In other TV-related news, for the first time I have a Tivo instead of a generic DVR, and its decision to spend the entire day recording like 15 hours worth of "recommendations" that I don't want to watch, from Beverly Hillbillies to NCIS, disturbs me.
I would watch a show that consisted entirely of Bell and Craig Ferguson talking to each other.
I'm certain I have watched more than fifteen hours of The Beverly Hillbillies .
You do know about Party Down, right?
I didn't until now. Unfortunately, I have a hard time watching shows that feature K/en M/arino. Still, I'll give it a whirl, if you think I should.
Speaking of TV, does everyone here realize what is going on with Louie? The show is fucking incredible.
Oh man, is it great.
Season one, anyway. Really great!
I would watch a show that consisted entirely of Bell and Craig Ferguson talking to each other.
Seriously. Why does he bother having other guests?
I've never even heard of Louie.
403: I tried watching a couple of episodes, but it didn't really do much for me. Part of it's that I don't do well with comedy of embarrassment, and a fair amount of the humor in the episodes I watched was based on Louie making an ass of himself.
Seriously, everyone here needs to watch Louie. Not hilarious, exactly, but a dark and funny and really bold show: moment for moment he has one of the purest licenses to do art that I think has been on American TV ever, certainly network or basic cable. And very much in the general sensibility of this place.
The bit of Louie where he's talking to Dane Cook was really good. That's about all I've seen, but a recent mefi thread about Louis C.K. has convinced me I should probably check it out. Evidently the later episodes leave the earlier ones in the dust.
392: "There are so few women in the industry that we have to make our own," is the joke about trans people in the computer game development biz. I have no useful answer for you.
392: In my tiny experience (n=2), I liked working with a trans person who did not hew to (a new set of) traditional gender norms; and did not like being lectured on how to hew to traditional gender norms (by the other MtF). I dearly hope it wore off the second woman.
392: In my tiny experience (n=2), I liked working with a trans person who did not hew to (a new set of) traditional gender norms; and did not like being lectured on how to hew to traditional gender norms (by the other MtF). I dearly hope it wore off the second woman.
I would like to live in a world where the only oppressed minority is people who have earlobe spreaders.
The bit of Louie where he's talking to Dane Cook was really good.
The following week's episode with Doug Stanhope was amazing TV, though not exactly funny.
the later episodes leave the earlier ones in the dust
It has gotten steadily more adventurous, but this is the opening scene from the second episode ever, and clearly signalled that this wasn't going to be a normal sitcom.
415: It would be easier to put in the earlobe spreaders as part of the oppression.
I loved and didn't love Party Down. It had a million funny lines and Lizzy Kaplan and Kristin Bell and Jane Lynch, but it kind of hit that Waiting for Guffman place for me...apparently because of my sense of humor, people are surprised when I don't like something because it's uncharitable, but I just sometimes get bummed out at sardonic humor aimed at what seem like easy targets. The guy who's the boss in the first season, they just set him up for a lot of cheap drubbing--same for Kristin Bell, actually. I still recommend the show to people, though.
I too was made uncomfortable by how pathetic Ron Donald is, but I loved the show anyway.
Am I the only person who gets Ron Donald and Ron Swanson confused? If I think about it for a second I know which is which, but if I just mention one without thinking about it first, I have to pause and check that I have the right one.
There are a couple Louie episodes up for free on FX.com, including one that has a (feels like) 5 minute dialogue-free scene of him looking around the subway, and another similar long take of him singing "Who Are You" to mildly embarrassed daughters. Seriously amazing that they let this get on commercial TV.
(i also recommend Justified and Sons of Anarchy as FX shows, but as fun trash with badassery, not serious stuff)
Having tried to watch Louie last year under the expectation that some of it would be funny in some way, I am now wiser and am prepared to try watching it again expecting nothing more than the gut-wrenchingly sad realism it has revealed itself to be.
Louie is incredible television, and has just steadily gotten better and better, and it was great to begin with. It is sometimes less funny than it used to be, but it's always good.
I echo the praise for Louie. So great. Also Party Down. Also I hope someone here has started watching Wilfred. It's fucking fantastic.
Seriously amazing that they let this get on commercial TV.
I think the deal he made with FX is that he gets like no budget, but complete creative control.
I absolutely love it, even if I squirm at gags like "Louie is raped by his dentist!"
He actually has to get approval for some stuff. He said in an interview that they asked him to tone down the poker scene.
