She mentioned she hadn't ever heard anything like this before. I bet there's a whole bunch of weird shit that goes on inside relationships that never comes out, either because the relationships are ongoing, or because the weird parts are half-forgotten after it's over in favor of the better parts.

In retrospect this seems like an obvious observation.

Speculating blindly, he sounds like someone who had internalized the idea that women don't desire or enjoy sex so strongly that when he found himself in a relationship with someone who did desire him and did enjoy sex with him, he couldn't perceive it as sex. Women don't desire sex; so if a woman desires it, it's not really 'sex'. And so he stagemanaged a situation where he could have 'real sex', sex that qualified as real precisely because his sex partner didn't desire it.

This sounds sort of right. I think what gets internalized is that women, through a series of protestations and negotiations, trade the opportunity to have sex with them for something they actually want. So if a woman seems to just desire sex, one must be awfully suspicious of her because you never know what she's going to expect in return.

Until about age 20 I had the presumption that maybe 10% of female people enjoyed sex, and you were extremely lucky to get one of these as your girlfriend. Dating looked like something I shouldn't really try to do, if it would most likely lead to having to pressure my girlfriend into doing something she didn't want to, which I would feel bad about later.

It's pretty much my experience of men in general, though, that a man initiates sex when he wants it and either expects the woman to comply without arousal or works to get her aroused as well so they can have sex. If the woman gets aroused and attempts to initiate sex by trying to get the man aroused when he is not already in the mood, he will reject her. I have never been in a relationship in which I could ask for sex from a not-already-aroused man, no matter what I was willing to do to get him in the mood, if I made the request as explicitly as it is often made to me. When I have made explicit requests for sex, I have always been rejected or put off until he is already "in the mood." I have learned to keep my trap shut and be very very subtle and suggestive and non-aggressive about initiating sex with men. (One of the nice things about having sex with girls is you can be pretty aggressive about initiating sex with them and they don't get freaked out.)

Speculating blindly

My wild guess is that it had a lot more to do with his feelings about ML specifically, than general attitudes about women and sex. Even more fucked up, I'd say.

Speculating blindly, he sounds like someone who had internalized the idea that women don't desire or enjoy sex so strongly that when he found himself in a relationship with someone who did desire him and did enjoy sex with him, he couldn't perceive it as sex.

This isn't how the story struck me at all. Leblanc says this didn't start happening until a couple of years into their relationship, after "the sex dropped off precipitously" - indicating they'd had a lot more sex earlier on, presumably consensual.

It sounds to me a lot more like an exercise in power. He was feeling the need to exert power in their relationship and control over her. So her desire (the threat of women's desire! so uncontrollable!) clearly couldn't be validated, and in fact, had to be thwarted, perverted, in this fucked-up way where he was giving her what she wanted, but in a way that she couldn't enjoy it or even consent to it.

3 -- Morons. Have they never learned that you have to make hay while the sun shines.

I agree with Charley somewhat, except that it's hard to separate "his feelings about ML specifically" from the gendered ways it played out (i.e., the woman isn't allowed to desire).

This is reminding me of that odd story in the NY Times magazine a month or so ago, on someone studying women's sexual desire. It had a lot of speculation that women's sexuality is fundamentally responsive to a partner's perceived desire, rather than desirous in the absence of pursuit, which struck me as a load of horseshit. Still, that thinking seems to be relevant here.

4, 5: Sure, it had to be related to the specifics of the relationship with M.Leblanc, but it seems clear that somehow, the fact that she desired him turned into a problem for him, which seems as if it's got to be connected to a general conception of female desire somehow.

The relationship didn't start out this way, it became this way after years? That's different. If he acted this way to all women right from the get-go, that would be significantly crazier.

which seems as if it's got to be connected to a general conception of female desire somehow

Right, I agree with that. Just that I think it's more about control than about sex per se.

It had a lot of speculation that women's sexuality is fundamentally responsive to a partner's perceived desire, rather than desirous in the absence of pursuit, which struck me as a load of horseshit. Still, that thinking seems to be relevant here.

That part of the article about the female and male responses to the various videos was very striking. It almost presented the "lubrication" response as not particularly associated with arousal at all...rather, almost a defensive response, in preparation for any sexually charged situation that might lead to being raped.

Definitely, that would be crazier. Still, we seem to be looking at someone who saw (probably on some unarticulated level) a problem in their relationship, and took this means of solving it. Again, it seems as if it's got to be connected to some general understanting of how things are supposed to work.

I wonder how much of it is social conditioning, and not biology. IME, what that article says is true, in that women seem to find it flattering when someone desires them sexually, and it's a turn-on, but men don't seem to feel as personally gratified and aroused by female desire for them. But surely this has something to do with the ways that we're taught to view sexual desire, rather than brain-wiring or whatever?

11: Something I'd really like to have seen explained in that article, in relation to the discussion of how men are only aroused by stimuli appropriate to their stated orientation while women are aroused by anything, and so men's orientations are naturally set in stone while women's are fluid, is how they explain male situational homosexuality. From ancient Greece to boarding schools, it's not as though there isn't plenty of evidence for it.

But it's not about what's going on in his head, it's about how he's manipulating the power dynamics between them (consciously or not). She expresses desire, he not only refuses to validate that, but goes even further to undermine her desire in a perverse way.

15 to 12.

15: Yes, it's about power dynamics, but how does that make it not about what's going on in his head? The fact that the specific avenue he took for exerting power over her was to deny and attempt to end her desire for him has to be related to some sense that her agency in that area specifically was a problem.

I don't think Blume and I are far off. There are a lot of moving parts in any human situation -- and I think you'd have to consider ML's changing age/maturity/self-awareness as one of them. At the start of the relationship, she's pretty young. As she gets older (OK we all get older with the passage of time, but there are some ages where incremental changes are a very big deal, and that's the kind of place we are with this story) his need to dominate and humiliate became greater.

And of course they're having a relationship outside the bedroom as well, with dynamics bleeding back and forth.

If indeed the fellow was abused (as seems to be hinted in comments) then I think you end up dropping out the gendered aspect altogether -- it's about domination and humiliation, and if he was attracted to dogs, he'd be dominating and humiliating them instead.

13: As I said in 2, there's a strong inclination to be at least suspicious of a woman who claims to be interested in sex without getting anything in return. We have to take her word for it that she is really experiencing sexual desire -- unlike the reverse, where you can see if an erection is developing. So really, it's a matter of having trust/faith in one's partner.

We have to take her word for it that she is really experiencing sexual desire

Eh, I don't really buy this. Feminine arousal is physiological, too. Even when it is obvious that the woman is aroused, that arousal invites policing behavior.

there's a strong inclination to be at least suspicious of a woman who claims to be interested in sex without getting anything in return.

fixed that for you.

It's not obvious that the woman is aroused, if you don't trust her. I don't know what the physiological things are. Flushed cheeks? Blood rushing to the genitals? These are pretty subtle things, I never notice any of it except for how her behavior changes.

whups, from "inclination" to "return" should have been italicized.

and "bizarre" in there somewhere.

I give up.

But I really can't understand the guys that AWB describes.

yes, an inclination can't really be strong.

OK, back to work.

But the way you phrased it in your post - "he sounds like someone who had internalized the idea that women don't desire or enjoy sex" - is something different. Thinking at some level "that's not how it works" is different from thinking "this is an arena in which I can exert power over you."

I'm positing that it's not that "her agency in that area specifically was a problem," and more that her agency in general was a problem." That it plays out in the sexual realm seems not unusual for a romantic/sexual relationship.

2, 13, 19 -- God, I'm glad I missed that day in Orientation. (Apparently. Coming of age in the 1970s, I'd have put fear of women's desire in the same place as fear of monsters lurking just over the edge of the earth, where your ship might fall, if you sail too far. A quaint and utterly false superstition of the past. Who brought this stupidity back into the curiculum?)

"IME, what that article says is true, in that women seem to find it flattering when someone desires them sexually, and it's a turn-on, but men don't seem to feel as personally gratified and aroused by female desire for them."

This doesn't square with my experience--I've witnessed too many guys, myself included, get ego trips off being desired. The difference is more in how men and woman experience being desired. Men value desire as a validation of their own desirable attributes--for a man, being desired by a woman is evidence of his worth.

Women, in contrast, value desire more for itself, for the experience of being an object of desire.

This is a obviously a tremendous generalization. Any individual likes being desired both for the experience and for what being desired says about them. But on balance, I think, women seek more of the former and men seek more of the latter.

You know how children are often totally sadistic to each other when they play together, in a way that's a lot more unconscious than when middle school kids are sadistic to each other? I think many of us pass through the same stage in our first relationships: total sadism, totally on autopilot.

30 seems right to me. Yes, it is flattering to men to be desired, but it doesn't necessarily mean they want to act on it and gratify that desire. Someone here called it "counting coup" when I was telling one of my stories about male friends whom I desired who both wanted to keep that desire alive in me and make sure that we never actually had sex. I have always found this behavior baffling. If someone desires me and I'm not interested or available, I don't lead them on and entertain their advances to gratify my ego, knowing that I'll cruelly reject them in the end.

I suppose there are women who count coup in that way, too. I used to be friends with a woman who did that to my boyfriend at the time--was all teasing and physical with him for months until he kissed her at a party, and suddenly she had *no idea* how he could have thought that was what she wanted. But I guess I'd thought of that as her gratifying her ego at my expense, not really his.

(and "a party" s/b "my birthday party")

I think...if a woman feels desired, what she thinks is "Wow, he wants to see me naked. Should I grant him his wish? When and in what situation?"

...if a man feels desired, what he thinks is "Wow, she wants me to fuck her. Do I have the ability to grant her wish? That's a lot of pressure; I could be a big disappointment."

Hmm. It is a little weird to show up to a lively discussion over here.

That said, I think LB is sort of wrong. And I think Blume is right in 27. I think it didn't have to necessarily do with rejecting my desire, but rejecting my agressiveness and assertiveness in all ways. Because you know, we started dating when I was 17 and I'd never had a relationship before and I was eager to please and I wasn't particularly demanding. And as I grew up a little, a big part of that went away. Also, this person, though quite intelligent, was never much of an achiever, and I was. And we were at the same college, and I was winning awards, getting good grades, doing all kinds of interesting things. And he was going nowhere.

So I think actually, more than being that he wasn't turned on by my desire, it was the only way he could control me, because sex and affection were the only things I really needed from him. I got validation, friendship, intellectual stimulation, etc. from other quarters.

Does that make sense?

I think...if a woman feels desired, what she thinks is dependent on the woman in question.

...if a man feels desired, what he thinks is dependent on the man in question.

Come on people. Not that we can't discuss differences, but really.

Some men are from Venus, other men are from Mars.

Also, people seem strangely willing to opine on the psychological status of a boy we know very little about. I know this is teh internets, where going off halfcocked is part of the game, but all we have to go on here is a snapshot of a long relationship filtered through M.Leblanc's recollections, years after the fact. Relationships are complex, and even the people in them often don't understand everything--especially when they are young.

The gender and power narrative is, in some sense, an easy story for us to tell about dysfunctional relationships. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to apply it to situations where we can't get the whole story.

37, absolutely.

If Person A wants something from Person B, then Person B has power over Person A. And may be reluctant to actually give Person A what is desired, because it may turn out to be not nearly as great as Person A had expected.

There is an incentive for Person B to hold out, if
a) he is insecure about his ability to deliver, or
b) he enjoys the power dynamic.

Why do you think (I say "you think" because I haven't observed this to be the case) that maybe there's more males in the position of Person B, and females in the position of Person A?

Is 35 true at all?

And maybe I'm minimizing, but the idea that this person is extraordinarily fucked up is just wrong. People in relationships control each other in all kinds of ways. This seems particularly pernicious because it's sex. I'm not trying to excuse his actions, obviously.

And what I think is being glossed over is the part where I talked about me asking for sex all the time and not getting it. I'm sure that was perceived as me making him feel inadequate. And so, when he did want to sex me, it was like he petulantly didn't want to give it to me on my terms. Just like how if someone begs for something you want to give it to them even less.

But in this case it got screwed up because it was something he needed, to.

This is also the relationship between politician and constitutent.

"Please (outlaw abortion/allow people to form unions), it will make me so happy if you do that."

("Hmm, I bet if I do that, they won't actually reward me as much as I deserve to be rewarded. Better for me to keep them in a state of thinking they have to put me in power in order to get what they want.")

Is 35 true at all?

For some people, sure. For others, not so much. Do you think women never feel the pressure to perform well in bed? Do you think men always have the desire to fuck every woman who presents herself to them?

I'd say both men and women tend to experience being desired as both turn on and ego boost, except when it's unrequited and reaches the point of being annoying. As for the guy - I don't really get it. I can understand sexual desire dropping off, especially if there is other stuff external and/or internal to the relationship going on. I could also imagine that sort of sleep time behavior by someone who is inexperienced and in the fuck like bunnies stage of a relationship, but the two together? The least negative interpretation would be as a symptom related to ED issues.

And maybe I'm minimizing, but the idea that this person is extraordinarily fucked up is just wrong. People in relationships control each other in all kinds of ways.

This is kind of what I was trying to say in 31. That it's an early-relationships thing.

...if a man feels desired, what he thinks is "Wow, she wants me to fuck her. Do I have the ability to grant her wish? That's a lot of pressure; I could be a big disappointment."

This nails it. Being desired is a pressure situation for men in a way women don't get, a performance demand. If both people can relax and get more make-out oriented and sensual about it, that's fine, but sometimes relationship dynamics or insecurities on either side can make that hard.

It sounds to me like this guy wanted out of the relationship and resented not being able to break the bond. Passive-aggressive stuff. I was once in a relationship where I really didn't have / had lost my sexual desire for her and she was crazy into me and coming on to me all the time. It really sucked, and yes I came to resent her coming on to me. I broke it up fairly quickly but it really sucked there at the end. And it was about my connection (or lack of) with her, not about any resentment or fear of women's desire in general. Come to think of it, she also used to bring herself off with me when I wasn't into it as well, but I'm not up for calling that "rape".

This resentment/withholding dynamic can happen with both sexes, in fact it's practically a cliche.

Is 35 true at all?

IME, yes, always, but there is an observer problem here, in that just because I seem to always find myself in this situation doesn't mean it's universal, of course. In fact, one of my recent "counting coup" friendships sort of ended when the mutuality of desire came to the point that we actually had to talk about it explicitly, and he admitted that he was absolutely certain that he could not have sex with me because he was terrified that he couldn't live up to the sexually confident image he'd been giving me of himself. It was weird.

Man, I don't know what planet you guys are living on where women don't feel pressure to perform during sex. I'd agree that men feel such pressure more acutely, but seriously?

Of course, the pressure has not just a "am I good in the sack?" component, but "is my naked body acceptable" component.

That it's an early-relationships thing.

This too. I think a big thing in early relationships is having a ton of expectations of both you and the other person, how it's "supposed" to be all the time, and being very quick to feel insecure / frightened when you don't live up to your own expectations or resentful/angry when the other person doesn't live up to theirs. Combine that with sexual expectations that are often unexamined or hard to talk about and you get trouble. Early on you aren't used to riding the ebb and flow of emotions or desire and having faith that if the dynamic is off today it will eventually be good again later. Leads to things feeding on themselves and getting all amplified.

48 Weird because he was worried or weird because he said that meant he couldn't have sex with you?

49 is exactly right. There's the "am I cute naked" anxiety, the "will I do something weird that he doesn't like" anxiety, the "will I have an orgasm" anxiety (and what will he read into it either way), the "will he judge me if I act like I know what I'm doing" anxiety, the "will he judge me if I don't know what I'm doing" anxiety, &c. &c.

and he admitted that he was absolutely certain that he could not have sex with me because he was terrified that he couldn't live up to the sexually confident image he'd been giving me of himself.

I do find it bizarre that he is self-aware enough to know this is the connection, and still has so much fear that he can't be dealt with. Yes, you may be judged inadequate, and that is a terribly vulnerable position to be in. But it can either be intolerably vulnerable because too much of your self-worth is derived from others, or tolerably vulnerable because a sufficient amount of your self-worth is derived from within.

He clearly finds it intolerably vulnerable, and is willing to lose out because of it.

I know it's pretty common for supersmart people to be very self-aware about describing their problems but have normal, tremendous fear about addressing them, but I still am always a little surprised. (Partly because I can't stand stalling and would be very agitated not to be working on a problem that I understood well.)

So we're agreed that everyone has lots of anxiety.

I saw a study the other day that found that America is the most anxious country in the world.

Man, I don't know what planet you guys are living on where women don't feel pressure to perform during sex. I'd agree that men feel such pressure more acutely, but seriously?

Of course, the pressure has not just a "am I good in the sack?" component, but "is my naked body acceptable" component.

You already know he thinks your body is acceptable...for the most part, anyway. (secrets unrevealed while clothed include birthmarks, stretch marks, hair) Otherwise he wouldn't be attracted.

But the idea that someone would be good in the sack can be totally, TOTALLY wrong, the exact opposite of right.

So we're agreed that everyone has lots of anxiety.

Not me.

(Really. When I've had hard patches, it's taken the form of depression and unbearable lonliness, but not particularly anxiety.)

You already know he thinks your body is acceptable...for the most part, anyway. (secrets unrevealed while clothed include birthmarks, stretch marks, hair) Otherwise he wouldn't be attracted.

Sure, rationally, but that's not how insecurity works.

Also, I'm always really anxious about unwittingly setting off my partner's anxieties. I'm anxious about sex until I'm actually having it, when I suddenly get weirdly confident, and I forget that the person I'm sleeping with may be shy about his body, or particular parts of his body, or weirded out by certain things (not necessarily kinky, but, like, ear-kissing). I have messed that up several times.

55 is just wrong, man. Seriously? You must not have experienced being a non-skinny (or, hell, non-white, or non-conventionally pretty, or non-a million other things) before. Let me break it down for you. Dudes can be attracted to you, want you, even want to fuck you and actually fuck you, all the while never thinking for a moment that your body is objectively acceptable.

You know, not that I'm bitter or anything.

57: yeah, a lot of people feel naked when they don't have any clothes on.

57: I don't even think that's rational or right. Just because someone is attracted to you or wants to fuck you doesn't mean they think your body is acceptable. I've fucked multiple people who were perfectly happy to criticize mine.

59 yes yes yes. Sexual attraction to a body can be at odds with aesthetic appreciation of that body in ways that are really really annoying for that body's self-image.

56: forgot about Heebie. Of course.

59: very true. Women do not do that to men -- if a woman is with you, you can be pretty sure she's attracted. Women can't count on that with men.

On anxiety, aging is great cure. All your anxieties come true, but life goes on anyway, so why bother being anxious?

Anyway, about the male insecurity about performance thing, I dated one guy who, when we started out, said he wanted to wait to have sex b/c he was nervous about having it with me b/c of my perceived sexual confidence. I was like "dude, that is dumb. If you want to wait, wait, but not for that reason." We ended up waiting like 1 day, but it stuck with me as a reminder that my sexual confidence is intimidating.

(I'm basically the opposite of AWB--confident until it happens, then I become anxious)

Women do not do that to men -- if a woman is with you, you can be pretty sure she's attracted

Or bored, or settling, or trying to make someone jealous, or experimenting with power, or needing her self esteem validated, or really a billion other things.

And of course Rob is right.

Conflating "is attracted" with "thinks your body is acceptable" is a real mistake. I am sure men get this too, though less often. You think that every woman who fucks a fat man, or a short man, or a man who is disabled, thinks his body is acceptable? Enough that they wouldn't be embarrassed to tell their friends that they fucked him?

Women aren't too different from men in this regard.

66, Well, we were talking about situations where one person is attracted to another person. In that case, I would assume that my body has already been considered as one of the factors that led to the attraction, and that it may not be optimal but is acceptable.

All the situations in 65, where Person A has sex with Person B for reasons other than desire/attraction, weren't what we were talking about earlier. This came from talking about the power dynamic that occurs when one person actively desires sex from another perosn.

51: I dunno. It felt weird. If a guy is projecting a lot of sexual confidence and flirtatiousness, I assume it's because he's interested in acting on that desire. It makes for an odd double-bind feeling when the very tactic one is using to seduce someone is the thing that makes them incapable of acting on it. It must be a pretty common situation. And I'm also sure that the sexual confidence and flirtatiousness I project is both the thing that's attractive about me and also the thing that keeps those same people from wanting to sleep with me.

This thread makes me never want to have to find someone new to have sex with again. Are the convents still open?

69: I thought you were hooking up with Di.

This thread makes me never want to have to find someone new to have sex with again

I have always said that Unfogged was one of the best recruiting tools to the Emersonian view of relationships.

If the convents are closed you could found a beguinage.

71: Exceptions exist!

70: Well, yes, I meant no one new after her, of course.

And now, eb, I need to go google what the heck a beguinage is.

68 I agree that going to the extreme of declaring that you can't have sex is weird. But the situation of projecting a greater degree of sexual self-confidence than you really have during the flirtation and that in turn causing greater anxiety when it looks like it might lead somewhere seems very normal to me.

s/b: when the convents are closed, begin the beguinage

"Let the love that was once a fire remain an ember . . .
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only remember"

Or to re-work a famous comment: Persifleur seeks recluse for beguinage, repartee. No relationships need apply.

Ok, so there are some linking issues there.

Correct link.

More seriously, did anyone else hate the article that LizardBreath linked to in 8?

I found it, in a word, gross. The author clearly had this prurient desire in the researchers and couldn't help but sexualize them; their sexuality became almost more important than their research. (I don't have much issue with the researchers themselves, though I think a number of the studies are flawed). I also felt that towards the end, despite what everyone was telling him, he just wanted to come to the conclusion that all women want to be raped.

I'm trying to remember the other complaints I had about it; when I first read it I think I ranted to a (male) friend for an hour. He was of similar opinion but we think more alike than not so I was curious what others thought of it.

Men do not get off on bonobo porn, but women do. That information may come in useful some day, I'm sure.

83: Obviously this is just another inequality that we need to overcome. When the patriarchy is overthrown, men will get off on bonobo porn, too.

I generally agree with Parenthetical in 82. There was one line out of that article that sums up the whole discussion for me, though.

"The horrible reality of psychological research," Chivers said, "is that you can't pull apart the cultural from the biological."

If you like New York Times Magazine medical science cover stories in which the authors gratuitously sexualize their subjects, you're in luck once again.

82 I hated the illustrations more than the article.

87: Jesus Christ.

Oops. 88 to 86. Though I agree, the illustrations were pretty awful.

88: It's part of a new policy at the Times to introduce every woman with a description of her breasts.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose breasts quite pendulous, even for a 61 one year old, invited China to join the United States in an ambitious effort to curb greenhouse gases, as she toured an energy-efficient power plant in Beijing on Saturday.

OMFG yes. What was that opening paragraph: "Pity she has some undiagnosible and life-ruining syndrome, particularly given that she's got great tits."

If the woman gets aroused and attempts to initiate sex by trying to get the man aroused when he is not already in the mood, he will reject her.

Being a relationship where this is not the case is objectively awesome. I don't know why the class of guys who like sex overlaps with the class of guys that believe that women don't, but man, those guys are so not smart (or patriarchy-deluded, or whatever.)

m. leblanc's post is thought-provoking.

I hated the article too, and my mom even clipped it out and sent it to me because she found it interesting. I felt like the researchers missed incredibly obvious explanations about why women might feel embarrassed admitting that bonobo sex made them think about sex and was therefore arousing. Or just that none of the researchers ever had explanations involving how culturally, the observer is always male, and so women learn to be bilingual, so to speak.

86: it's a good thing she has such a great attitude (along with the perky breasts). Otherwise she'd totally deserve the whole thing.

93: Yep, and as I said above, I just wanted to grab the researchers by the lapels of their lab coats, and shriek "What about all those butt-fucking ancient Greeks? Doesn't your theory have to account for the amply demonstrated plasticity of male desire?"

I resolve that in the coming year I will learn to get erections when watching bonobo sex, if they're cute bonobos, and never to shame a woman if I find her stash of bonobo porn.

I lost interest in the article when I figured out that the bonobo porn wasn't being shown to bonobos. That would have been an interesting article.

It is an interesting part of the male experience that sometimes when a woman comes on to you, even when you might be very interested, perhaps especially when you are very interested, that the machinery balks. And the more you think about it, the less likely it is that the works will cooperate. This being generally an embarrassing experience for everyone involved, I can see why some guys may reject out of hand women's advances, being not sure whether said embarrassing experience will happen. This effect is unrelated to anxiety about the woman's confidence or experience and only marginally related to anxiety about your own performance (in the pleasing your partner sense)

65 got this already, but "Women do not do that to men -- if a woman is with you, you can be pretty sure she's attracted" is pretty much not true. In my experience the two are only poorly correlated.

I remember reading about an experiment where male chimpanzees were asked to choose between a juice box and a picture of a female chimpanzee in heat. The test subjects preferred the picture of the female chimpanzee in heat.

Personally, I'd choose the picture, too, unless I was really thirsty.

But they gave the same choice to male juice boxes, and the juice boxes generally chose pictures of aroused juice boxes over live chimpanzees.

94, etc.: That actually seems like a strong candidate for the "Worst Lede EVAH" contest.

"Mary Jones was once described as 'the hottest babe in three counties', but that isn't doing her much good any more, as maintenance workers painstakingly retrieve her remains from the malfunctioning milling machine she tended until yesterday."

A good friend of mine dated a guy who treated her very similarly to what m. leblanc is describing: he would wait until she was asleep to have sex with her. Sometimes she could just pretend to be asleep for him. But he would reject her if she acted like she wanted to have sex. They didn't go out together all that long, maybe six months to a year, which is longer than it should've lasted. I met the guy once, and he spent the entire time talking about designer chairs with my then boyfriend.

Forgot to add, the better solution is to figure out how to turn off the worry and the will and let things happen. But this takes a while.

"What about all those butt-fucking ancient Greeks? Doesn't your theory have to account for the amply demonstrated plasticity of male desire?"

Is that plasticity, tho? Your Spartans there were engaging in formalized pederasty - older (hairy) men ass-fucking younger (less hairy, presumably less masculine) men, or more correctly young boys. (Noting that the older, hairy men were not being ass-fucked by the young boys.)

Inverted example: gay (male) fashion designers (essentially) demanding that female models practice anorexia. Which has the effect of reducing body fat and thus secondary sexual characteristics, which tends to make young women look 'androgenous' i.e. more like young boys, and less like women. ('Real women have curves.') The male models are all buffed out, of course.

Whether the article sucks or not (I thought it just seemed to wander all over the place, that is, I just ignored all the parts I wasn't interested in), I suspect that the researchers got the 'men get fixated' effect correct.

max
['Men predominate in the paraphilias department.']

103: Aren't there lots of places where the norm is for young boys to screw around with each other before settling down with a nice girl? I feel like I've heard this about Brazil.

There's some of that in Samoa -- while you've got some men who socially assume a 'female' role, and who have sex with men, (a) some of the men they have sex with are otherwise straight, and (b) there also seems to be a fair amount of random teenage-boy homosexual sexual expression. I'm working off gossip, and I was an outsider so I may have gotten the wrong impression, but my impression was that it was fairly common, and was preferable to fooling around with girls because of the socially lower stakes, given that no one was going to get pregnant or have to get married.

69, 70, 74: Oh, I'm not expecting sexual fidelity or anything like that. Frankly, I'm not really into the whole "marital sex" thing anyway.

Well, we were talking about situations where one person is attracted to another person. In that case, I would assume that my body has already been considered as one of the factors that led to the attraction, and that it may not be optimal but is acceptable.

Hardly. I have certainly been attracted to people whose bodies I found inadequate Obviously, this is not something I would say to a person I was attracted to. Aesthetic beauty =/= attraction.

103: That's still pretty plastic. Whatever boys look like to a Spartan, they don't look much like adult women, and the cultural narrative as I understand it is that the boys were generally willing participants in having sex with hairy older men. Regardless of who's doing the penetrating, it's still sex.

(BTW, way back to the beginning of the thread, I should say that it looks like Blume and Charley were closer to understanding Leblanc's situation than I was, given what Leblanc said about it.)

What I found most interesting about Leblanc's post was the significance of putting a name to what happened -- identifying it as "rape" rather then "this bad relationship" or whatever.

98: I'd choose the picture, too, unless I was really thirsty.

For sure. Recent events show looking at chimpanzee porn is a hell of a lot safer than dealing with them for real.

In skiing, Lindsey Van took gold yesterday, while Lindsey Vonn took silver.

BONOBOS AREN'T CHIMPS.

GODDAMN RIGHT WE'RE NOT.

I went to a zoo with a bonobo exhibit for the first time a few months ago. They certainly lived up to their reputation, at least while I was watching.

114: Pervert.

(And don't bother asking me if I was turned on by it, like in the study. I was more just marveling at how, uh, vigorous it was.)

I think asking about it would be the truly perverted thing. And don't mind me, I'm busy reading about the purge of homosexuals from the State Department in the 1950s so I've got the term sex pervert at the fore of my mind.

sex pervert

I like thinking there are other kinds, like food perverts and philosophy perverts and art perverts.

I'm currently being annoyed that JSTOR doesn't have Cahiers d'Etudes Germaniques. I'm gonna have to like, go to the library or something.

Had you been fitted with the sensor? You would have known if you were turned on if you had been.

Are all knds of abuse perversions? Then you'd have alcohol pervs and verbal pervs and so on.

Hmm, no. Oh well, guess we'll never know for sure.

120: You know, there's some interesting biofeedback issues in this men are only aroused by what they say arouses them, women are aroused by whatever. You have to think that the years of being embarrassed by inappropriate erections as a pubescent boy have to lead to some level of control over the physiological signs of arousal that women never have occasion to develop.

121: I just accused John Yoo of perverting his professional skills a couple of posts ago. Does that make him a law pervert?

124 Given some of the methods he seems so fond of, I'd say he's pretty perverted.

119: Tell me about it. Fucking Arion has no electronic edition, either. Who do these people think they are?

82: More seriously, did anyone else hate the article that LizardBreath linked to in 8?

I had already cut-and-paste the brief descriptions of the researchers in the comment box a few hours ago, but had wandered away from the computer to masturbate to bonobos before I could turn them into a comment. The first one had just struck me as such a non sequitur:

While the subjects watched on a computer screen, Chivers, who favors high boots and fashionable rectangular glasses (I'd like totally fuck her), measured their arousal in two ways, objectively and subjectively.

[Lisa Diamond] with short, dark hair that seems to explode anarchically around her head (not really my type).

A compact 51-year-old woman in a shirtdress (damn, I knew I should have done this article 20 years ago), Meana explained

Maybe this is just standard NYTimes "humanize the researcher" stuff, but it stood out for me even beyond the content of the article.

oudemia, What's your take on the Spartan/Athenian thing? Or could you just provide a brief summary of Dover?

128: I think it was above and beyond. Particularly towards the end of the article, describing his long talks with Chivers and how she leans over him and takes his pen to write on his own note pad. It's screaming, look, I'm so cool this woman totally wants me. [And she's a sex researcher, so this must mean I'm hot stuff.]

129: ! How do you mean? The rivalry in general? The War? Sir Kenneth and I have exchanged letters -- his elegantly typed -- on dildos, ancient and modern, but I haven't read him on any explicitly Sparta/Athens topic.

Obviously, the straight guy subjects were fantasizing about the researcher.

"Wearing stripper boots my favorite bustier, I showed subject 3a a series of common garden vegetables. With each successive vegetable his arousal became greater, until it spiked and then suddenly diminished to almost nothin when I grasped a long, thick carrot in my lily-white hand. "

132: Link to that video by the Lonely Island here.

130: I did look up the author's book they mentioned, The Other Side of Desire; turns out it was just reviewed a few weeks ago in the Times itself. It was headed by a picture that I don't think would have made it in to your grandfather's NYTimes, and does seem potentially interesting (I know sympathetic Times review for one of it own, but a couple of other reviews said similar) although there are also some warning signs. Especially with regard to Roy (a husband who finds himself irresistibly attracted to his pre-teenage stepdaughter).

When Roy took an assessment to evaluate his level of desire for different age groups, his test results -- he was attracted to adult women, but slightly more attracted to adolescent girls -- put him in the realm of "ordinary male desire." and As Roy's boss told Bergner: "Everybody has these thoughts. The only thing that separates him from you and me is we didn't act on them."

134: What you have linked is in fact the second review .

which appeared in the Times. Gah.

"Hon, now that we're married, there's something I hope you'll want to do for me. Do you know what a "devotee" is?"

117:And I am readng about Musil & Salten and a different, tho ontopic variety of perversion.

One really vicious idea running thru the head relates to Dollhouse:if post-modern humans are people without qualities, unselves,vortices with jetsam...is rape and other crimes against humanity even possible? No fun, like brutalizing your rubber doll.

Never understood Story of O If you dehumanize your partner, wherefrom the eroticism? Eroticism comes directly from the thrill of surrender, surrender to the Other or surrender to your own internal Cyclops.

"Everybody has these thoughts. The only thing that separates him from you and me is we didn't act on them."

Me neither, but I have very wrong thoughts sometimes, thoughts I shouldn't share.

Jeez, like ToS Iam.

Dollhouse & Judith Butler?

WTF does Butler say anyway? Is self discovered, invented, performed, or nonexistent? Does the question have meaning? Got some Butler around here somewhere...

Giving an Account ..I think this is the book I have, somewhere. A good luck.

Performativity cannot be understood outside of a process of iterability, a regularized and constrained repetition of norms. And this repetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject. This iterability implies that 'performance' is not a singular 'act' or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of the production, but not, I will insist, determining it fully in advance.[10]

Echo? "Iterability?"

Whedon is smarter than any of us.

134: Oh! I read that review. I did not put two and two together. It sounded potentially interesting.

(I did however meanly comment that if the review author really thought being hand cuffed was so kinky that she perhaps was not the best choice to review the book. I thought hand cuffs were like, totally mainstream and vanilla at this point).

134: "pre-teenage" = "adolescent"?

I thought hand cuffs were like, totally mainstream and vanilla at this point

What do you mean, mainstream and vanilla? In the sense that more than one in a five hundred adults has used them? Probably not mainstream, then. In the sense that you wouldn't get fired from your job or socially ostracized for using them? Then yes, mainstream.

120: You know, there's some interesting biofeedback issues in this men are only aroused by what they say arouses them, women are aroused by whatever.

You don't believe the women when they say they are genuinely not aroused by bonobo porn or elderly lesbians? I thought the idea of separating the physiological lubrication reaction (present in these situations) from actual arousal (not present, as self-reported) was a quite interesting idea.

You have to think that the years of being embarrassed by inappropriate erections as a pubescent boy have to lead to some level of control over the physiological signs of arousal that women never have occasion to develop.

What do you mean, "some level of control"? Willing oneself not to have an erection?

I don't remember being aroused by a wider range of erotic material as a youth than I am now. The "inappropriate erections" you hear about are more like just at totally random times with no erotic stimulus at all.

In the sense that being tied up for sexual reasons shows up regularly in movies, tv shows, and other media directed at an otherwise sexually conservative audience without any discussion. As a source of humor, generally, but not with the horrified "you want me to do what?" that would follow from, say, a request to pee on someone in such media (if such a thing would be shown at all).

And really, you think only one in five hundred? Hm.

The "inappropriate erections" you hear about are more like just at totally random times with no erotic stimulus at all.

I don't thing zo

The letters to the editor about the article in 8 are generally worth reading, and generally critical.

I would have put it much closer to 1 in 50.

WTF is the title of the recent indie movie where the two teenagers find the chained up zombie in the basement?

I am trying to stay on topic here. Zombies, rubber dolls, and Dollhouse are on topic. Maybe Story of O with the masks.

Ok, so what is going on, for us as audience, with the zombie rape movie or Dollhouse? I do not think we are feeling empathy for a zombie, although it is possible that because the zombie is simply a better simulacrum than a rubber doll, we are deluded into projecting humanness onto it.

"Echo" in Dollhouse the base model when she is not on a job, has no memories, no personality, just enough free will so she can eat & walk. Her handlers say stuff like:"Would you like a massage, Echo?" "Yes, I will get a massage."

Echo is not in pain, not suffering, is very likely not capable of real emotional pain.

And yet we are outraged by the treatment and exploitation of this hightech rubber doll. Many of us are offended by rubber dolls. And sex robots? Why?

This is not empathy for a "victim" there may not be a victim, but a socio-culturally constructed disapproval of the perp's performative role as rapist.

I guess what I'm saying is that rape is a political act, which isn't new see Bosnia Congo etc but trying to change the emphasis away from the victim I think this is a remnant of the patriarchy but back to the rapist as someone who offends the polity who has committed a crime against society. We haven't liked the idea of socially-constructed roles & modes perhaps because we don't like being responsible for them. What does Butler say? Something like an individual can't create a self, only a society can?

The liberal Enlightenment idea of isolated moral agents acting on each other is such garbage.

And really, you think only one in five hundred?

If you include the entire spectrum of people who have sex, yes, sure, possibly.

If you limit yourself to those whose sexual behaviors are shaped by contemporary (media/porn-influenced) sensibilities, maybe not.

The "inappropriate erections" you hear about are more like just at totally random times with no erotic stimulus at all.

Yes, if your best friend's mother is totally hott, an erection is not only appropriate, but rather courtly.

And I've told y'all I am a bit of a prude. I don't approve of bondage or S & M games, even if there isn't a victim or anyone getting hurt.

The narrative being enacted offends me.

Yet there is no ''I'' that can fully stand apart from the social conditions of its emergence, no ''I'' that is not implicated in a set of conditioning moral norms, which, being norms, have a social character that exceeds a purely personal or idiosyncratic meaning

I should be watching the SciFi monster movies.

did anyone else hate the article that LizardBreath linked to in 8?

I was mostly annoyed by the undiscussed elephant of the methodology of the research. I just cannot believe you can get reliable data on a socially extraordinarily sensitive topic when a) you're apparently not trying very hard to diversify your pool of participants [they're self-selecting for relative audaciousness] and b) the research itself is physically invasive in a way that virtually never (Pap-smears and tampons excepted) occurs in the real world in a non-sexual context.

The letters to the editor about the article in 8 are generally worth reading, and generally critical.

Ah, thanks. Two of particular note:

By choosing as your cover shot a photo of a woman's face and then using additional photographs of women's faces and bodies in an article about women's desire, you are illustrating part of the problem. [...] Not one photo is taken from a woman's point of view. Not one photo reveals what she might see or want.

and

"Sex science" will eventually be viewed as we view "race science" today: as 19th-century eugenic pseudoscience produced to justify oppression. Sexology oppresses women and sexual minorities by describing their desires and behaviors as exotic and diseased. Genital plethysmography and functional magnetic resonance imaging are the latest technologies misused in the service of biological reductionism and neo-eugenics (euphemistically called sociobiology and evolutionary psychology).

I just looked at the letters as well -- having read only half of the original article, it would seem. I may or may not read the rest, but there are so many problems with it that that I can't engage it seriously. Not least: evolutionary psychology! (Women lubricate defensively.) What? Reaching for the easy explanations, are we? I really hate this sort of research.

I really shouldn't speak prematurely, as above. But honestly, the attempt to discover what's innate in female sexuality (and what isn't, I guess) is absurd.

I should go now, since this stuff drives me batty.

"If I could get 10,000 women to wear my sensors day and night for just one month, my algorithm would tell me what women really want. And once I knew that, I could control men, and achieve world domination."

143: No, while I may have been unclear, I didn't mean to question any of the subjects' subjective reports of arousal or the reverse. What I meant to say is that (some or most) boys spend a period of time becoming visibly aroused randomly, at moments where it's socially inappropriate, and are embarrassed by this. And that calms down after a period of time -- possibly just because it does as boys get older, but possibly also because there's a learning process going on. Even given that it's not a process one has much conscious control over, there could still be some semi-voluntary learned control, reducing the chance that one will get an erection when it'd be a social problem. And so you get men in these studies dutifully getting erections only at stimuli that are not embarrassing or confusing for them to be aroused by.

Women don't have the same incentive to develop the ability to shut off physiological symptoms of arousal, because they're not obvious enough to be embarrassing. Hence, women, even into adulthood, become more likely to be randomly physiologically aroused, even when not psychologically aroused. And so you get women in the same studies lubricating at the sight of a goat humping a VW bug, or whatever.

Now, I've completely made this up out of whole cloth; there's no particular reason to think it's got any relationship to the truth. But it seems at least possible.

158: I think Chivers has considered this, LB:

"For the discord, in women, between the body and the mind, she has deliberated over all sorts of explanations, the simplest being anatomy. The penis is external, its reactions more readily perceived and pressing upon consciousness. Women might more likely have grown up, for reasons of both bodily architecture and culture -- and here was culture again, undercutting clarity -- with a dimmer awareness of the erotic messages of their genitals. Chivers said she has considered, too, research suggesting that men are better able than women to perceive increases in heart rate at moments of heightened stress and that men may rely more on such physiological signals to define their emotional states, while women depend more on situational cues. So there are hints, she told me, that the disparity between the objective and the subjective might exist, for women, in areas other than sex. And this disconnection, according to yet another study she mentioned, is accentuated in women with acutely negative feelings about their own bodies.

Ultimately, though, Chivers spoke -- always with a scientist's caution, a scientist's uncertainty and acknowledgment of conjecture -- about female sexuality as divided between two truly separate, if inscrutably overlapping, systems, the physiological and the subjective. Lust, in this formulation, resides in the subjective, the cognitive; physiological arousal reveals little about desire. Otherwise, she said, half joking, "I would have to believe that women want to have sex with bonobos.""

I'm currently being annoyed that JSTOR doesn't have

But there are other services besides JSTOR! If it weren't for that I would spend a lot more time at the photocopier. Er, instead of at the printer.

160: No link to electronic resources comes up when I look up the journal in our card catalog, so I think I've gotta head to the stacks. Bah!

159: Eh, that's vaguely similar in that it addresses the differing obviousness of the physiological signs of arousal, but not really what I was talking about. The article doesn't address the angle that all the men she tested (that is, men generally) have a great deal of experience trying to avoid showing signs of arousal when it would be socially inappropriate.

That paragraph is wonderfully Second Sex-y. Men are the standard and the norm, women may have 'dimmer awareness' and be 'disconnected' from their bodies. The idea of looking at maleness as something that has its own contingent nature, with effects on behavior, doesn't seem to arise.

women may have 'dimmer awareness' and be 'disconnected' from their bodies.

Terrific Zombie Thread at Making Light

Better Link to All Us Zombies at ML

I think it's class war, not the first time liberal elites have worried about the "mindless ravenous hordes"

#157: certainly a more ambitious resolution than #96, but perhaps by that token less realistic.

162: LB, I'm generally sympathetic to the line of concern you're pressing here, but I think Chivers has this specific point covered. "External, perceived, and readily pressing on the consciousness." That sounds like an acknowledgment that male desire has its own contingent nature. "Bodily architecture and culture" for the women.

IIRC there are studies that show that men experience physical arousal without self-reported psychological arousal, isn't there? (Slight signs. "No, I do not find that gay porn interesting.")

Who's the Luddite now, DD? The road to science is always obstructed by conventional naysayers.

166: She's still got female sexuality problematized -- we don't perceive our body's signals, we're influenced by culture, and so on. Men aren't influenced by anything -- they readily percieve their bodies' signals which are therefore reliably in accordance with their psychological perception of arousal. There's no indication that anything outside a man, like culture or social pressure, can influence his sexuality: it's unitary and impervious to outside influence and he understands it perfectly because his body sends him clear signals, unlike those mysteriously fluid women who are swayed by all sorts of stuff.

I think we should leave the ladies problematized up the yinyang, and move on to problematizing the dudes' asses. If there's one god damn thing in the universe that needs more problematization, it's sexuality. It's nothing but problems.

It's the people who claim to have found solutions who piss me off. Probably I shouldn't feel that way, though, because in the end they just make things even more difficult than they already were.

That's the cunning of history for you, right there in your hand.

leave the ladies problematized up the yinyang, and move on to problematizing the dudes' asses.

Yep.

162

... The article doesn't address the angle that all the men she tested (that is, men generally) have a great deal of experience trying to avoid showing signs of arousal when it would be socially inappropriate.

Maybe I am unusual, but while I got random erections when I was younger I don't recall being particularly bothered or embarassed by them. And I think trying to will myself not to have erections would likely have been counterproductive.

Mmmmm. I think what is written is completely consistent with thinking that of course men's desires are influenced by culture, maybe even more so, and so their self-report of desire lines up very well with signs of physical arousal because of these facts (one might think that the mechanism of culture and shame would be actually stronger for men, because of the bit where the penis is on the outside, and that culture would be more able to work on that.) In other words, I don't see the step that says "men aren't influenced by anything" or "unitary and impervious" or the step that says one side has authentic sexuality, just the claim that men's reports and physical arousal line up very well, and that women's reports/responses don't, and some reasons why.

Yeah, usually I'd just say "Woo woo! Lady! I've got something for you right here!", and they'd blush prettily and pretend to be offended.

maybe i'm too restricted and backwards etc but i think that people in the west problematize too much sexuality
imo it's just physiology like sleeping, eating, exercising
if you love someone you will put up with whatever the other would want/need regardless who the other is, she/he
if you don't, you just can't be intimate with the person and that's all and putting sensors into vaginas and trying to interpret the findings are just strange and funny, it's not different from measuring gastric acid or something

putting sensors into vaginas and trying to interpret the findings are just strange and funny

Well, that's science for you. Scientists are just strange, you know? (Methodology problems or not.)

Not that I particularly want to defend the article, given how desperate the author seemed to be wanting really to write an intro for porn. The scientist, with the sexy glasses and the knee high boots and the deep compelling interest in knowing everything about sex. Oh, Dear Penthouse.

But I'm willing to believe that the research is much less interesting and much more careful in its claims.

I don't recall being particularly bothered or embarassed by them

I guess yours didn't cause you to tip over, then?

There's no indication that anything outside a man, like culture or social pressure, can influence his sexuality: it's unitary and impervious to outside influence and he understands it perfectly because his body sends him clear signals, unlike those mysteriously fluid women who are swayed by all sorts of stuff.

I sort of have a hard time seeing this as favorable to men, though. "Women are complex and interesting; Men are just simplistic sexual tools."

I'm a little teapot, short and stout.

Read, as you can easily see from reading Unfogged, our problematization of sex has made all of us sexually happy all the time.

Happiness is a problematic concept, too, Emerson.

Problematization itself is problematizable, but problematizers never think of that.

don't know you sound unhappy collectively in this kind of threads
i think m.leblanc's last explanation that her former boyfriend was a kind of loser and she was the high achiever and there was that, power inbalance in their relationship was maybe the most clear explanation of what happened to her, so the problem was not their incompatible sexuality or too daring female sexuality from her side and excalating from that, attempts of control, accusations of rape and mutual hatred etc,
but just other social causes, different characters
and that that her breaking up with the bf after moving out was easy, like, supports that
though then it becomes like a boring read and nothing unusual
well, what do i know though about other people's lives and feelings

131: I was totally unclear. Didn't he write the definitive summary of sexual practices in Ancient Greece.

What I remember, is that the young men in Athens weren't supposed to enjoy the sex with the older men, but that that was how they were mentored, but I'm fuzzy on that.

184: Yes, roughly. Whence unfogged's fondness for the word "intercrural."
The young men of Athens -- ephebes -- about to move into full citizenship status were initiated into all sorts of things as part of becoming full members of the polis. Part of this was the older man/younger man mentoring that was strictly professional, let me tell you. (As Halperin puts it, "Nice work if you can get it.") So yes, in theory, the sex in this particular iteration was supposed to be strictly business, and strictly intercrural, because the citizen's body is not to be penetrated (blah blah Athens is the bodies of its citizens blah blah). Yeah, riiiiight. I recommend David Halperin's short and eminently readable One Hundred Years of Homosexuality or anything by Jack Winkler.

Lots of good stuff in Foucault's History of Sexuality 1, 2, and/or 3.

Almost everything Foucault ever wrote means something different than what the Foucaultians say it does. It sounds scurrilous, but from his biography it seems that he was so happy finally to be loved and admired for who he really was, and to be "out" in the gay capital of the world, that he was a little overindulgent of some of his interpreter-friends.

I'll have to read the Phaedrus again. It seems so transparently erotic and seductive that I can't imagine how the good Victorians could possible have interpreted it otherwise.

Phaedrus's claim that the insincere lover who is just pretending is the best lover, because it's harder to pull off fake love, is sort of like the Kantian idea that action is virtuous only if you get no pleasure or other benefit from it. So the most virtuous man would be the one who hates everyone but does benevolent things out of a sense of duty.

A lot of people seem to accept Phaedrus's notion of excellence. After all, it takes more skill to sell a bad product, argue an erroneous position, defend a guilty criminal, etc., than to do the opposite. How can someone take any pride in getting an innocent man off?

Unfogged seems to be feeling especially classicist today.

If we only could wire up some of those Greek mentoring couples!

Yep, that's why we need time travel. So someone can go back and instrument the asses of Greek boys. Science!

And maybe I'm minimizing, but the idea that this person is extraordinarily fucked up is just wrong. People in relationships control each other in all kinds of ways. This seems particularly pernicious because it's sex. I'm not trying to excuse his actions, obviously.

And what I think is being glossed over is the part where I talked about me asking for sex all the time and not getting it. I'm sure that was perceived as me making him feel inadequate. And so, when he did want to sex me, it was like he petulantly didn't want to give it to me on my terms. Just like how if someone begs for something you want to give it to them even less.

I like ml's nuanced attitude about this situation.

It is difficult to gain too much accurate insight into this guy without seeing how he interacted with other women. Our perspective is so limiting (both here on UF and ML's perspective.) I've always enjoyed the novels like The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying that give us multiple views.

Switch genders in ML's story and the reactions might be very different. One was a sexual aggressor who pushed the relationship into an odd sexual dynamic due to constant demands for sex. (I'm not suggesting that ML did something wrong in real life, simply commenting on our reaction.)

I also agree with the person above who said that there are a lot of messed up sexual relationships behind closed doors.

Finally, I've found that sexuality is so changeable based on your interaction with your partner. The amazing dynamic between two people that makes it such a difference experience with each partner.

Some of the nicest couples I've known, made up of wonderful individuals who seemed happy together, turned out much later to have had terrible sexual problems. I think that we made a societal mistake by denying the very possibility that desire is a bad thing. Even Pat Robertson doesn't dare say that.

unhelpful anecdata re the gendering of physical attraction to the inert body

a london-based gay serial killer -- dennis nielsen -- was only turned on if his dates were cold and still, which he made sure of by getting them very drunk and strangling them (he was popular and well-liked at his work, and was an excellent union rep)

a tv documentary i once saw about paraphilias had a section on a cheerfully sardonic brunette in her early 30s (american, as everyone was in this particular documentary) who had been fired from a sequence of funeral homes for getting it on with the departed -- at one point she grinningly used the phrase "if the hearse is rockin don't come knockin", which if nothing else showed chutzpah

i don't know what this proves or even if it's relevant, except that people are not what you expect sometimes inside their heads, and that's always relevant

I also agree with the person above who said that there are a lot of messed up sexual relationships behind closed doors.

Hehe. That was me, in 1.

Hmm, after reading this thread, my sex anxieties are palpably diminished by the realisation of just what kind of Queen's bad bargains are walking about out there.

Perhaps I should maintain them so as not to fall into complacency.

Drat, we're supposed to be putting people off relationships, not encouraging them.

Sorry about that, Emerson.

192: I think that we made a societal mistake by denying the very possibility that desire is a bad thing.

John, sir, I'm not sure if that's tongue-in-cheek or not. If it's not, it's a silly thing to say.

I'm just suggesting that people should try to control their incessant surges of destructive raging lust for long enough to consider both sides of the question. Teach the controversy!

197: I don't see what is particularly silly about that statement. It isn't even a particularly uncommon sentiment, if you look at the scope of human history and its various cultures.

193: For the record, I'm fine with people having sex with my corpse. It'll probably be a little messy after they've yanked out the reusable bits for transplantation, but if that's not an obstacle, go for it. Cannibalism is fine, too. I draw the line at public display, though. For some reason having a bunch of strangers looking at my dead body bothers me. At least if it was still recognizable. Being skinned and plastinated like the museum exhibit would be OK.

I draw the line at public display, though. For some reason having a bunch of strangers looking at my dead body bothers me.

I'd be more bothered by having to look a the dead bodies of a bunch of strangers.

a tv documentary i once saw about paraphilias had a section on a cheerfully sardonic brunette in her early 30s (american, as everyone was in this particular documentary) who had been fired from a sequence of funeral homes for getting it on with the departed -- at one point she grinningly used the phrase "if the hearse is rockin don't come knockin", which if nothing else showed chutzpah

Kissed wasn't a documentary, tierce.

200: We treat everyone the same, Togo. We don't make any provision for granting special privileges to prima donna stiffs. We're a business, and viewer fees pay a substantial proportion of our expenses.

"Being skinned and plastinated like the museum exhibit would be OK."

I think you have to drink the plastic before you die.