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A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by Hugo Schwyzer for his article He Wants to Jizz on Your Face, but Not Why You Think. Without stepping into the latest internet uproar about Hugo and the various things people are saying about him online (feel free to google it, if you like), I think there’s actually more to be said about the topic of that post.
Hugo’s thesis was that, while facials can certainly be an act of degradation, they can also be interpreted as “men’s desire for that same experience of being validated as desirable, as good, as ‘not dirty.’” For some people, male sexual desire and male bodies are seen as dirty, disgusting, or unpleasant and men who have internalized these
Continue reading Where Does Validation Come From?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be empowered. It’s a question that frequently comes up in discussions about sexuality, sexism, porn, choice, and sex-positivity. I recently ran across this post on the topic by Jennifer Kesler which points out some of the ways in which this word is misunderstood and the effects that can have on how we think about our sexualities.
One of the things that Kesler points out (rightfully, I think) is that the word empowerment has been co-opted by a variety of people and forces that don’t have our best interests at heart. Rather than the original definition as “a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives,” it’s often used in
Continue reading What Does It Mean To Be Empowered?
I have a confession to make. Once upon a time, I was a Sensitive New Age Guy.
I suppose I should explain what I mean. As I’ve written in other posts, I’ve always been rather dainty. And in my struggles with the Act Like a Man Box, there were several years where, rather than rejecting the either/or dynamic of the Box, I tried to reject everything in the Box. This started when I was in college and many of the folks I was spending my time with were some flavor of feminist/dyke/lesbian. I got a lot of encouragement to reject masculinity, rather than the construct of the Box.
Looking back at it, I can see that this was partly because of the enthusiasms of
Continue reading Confessions of a Former Sensitive New Age Guy
A post on HuffPo Women from a few months ago is making the rounds again. Author Yashar Ali’s article A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not “Crazy” makes some excellent points on the ways that some men use accusations of craziness to control women:
My friend Anna (all names changed to protect privacy) is married to a man who feels it necessary to make random and unprompted comments about her weight. Whenever she gets upset or frustrated with his insensitive comments, he responds in the same, defeating way, “You’re so sensitive. I’m just joking.”
As Ali points out, this sort of behavior is “gaslighting,” a term which comes from the 1944 film Gaslight. In the movie, a man manipulates his wife
Continue reading Some Thoughts on “Crazy Women”
One of my favorite sex nerds, Dr. Debby Herbenick, recently retweeted something that I’ve been thinking about for a while:
true. “@hotaction: Everyone should spend some time looking at photos of naked old people because that’s what the future looks like.”
— Dr. Debby Herbenick (@mysexprofessor) December 18, 2011
Today is the 20th anniversary of the date that I met my partner. In the last two decades, we’ve both changed a lot. We’re both much more secure and solid in who we are. We’ve grown and challenged each other to overcome many of the habits that caused friction in our lives and in our connections with other people. We’ve learned many, many ways to support our relationship. And yes, our bodies have changed, too. While
Continue reading Getting Older, Getting Better
Last week, I was chatting with a friend who was telling me about her polyamory difficulties. Specifically, she’s perfectly happy having multiple partners, but some of the guys she’s met have tried to convince her to be monogamous with them and she’s rather frustrated with that, understandably.
Not my cat. Just a picture I found on tumblr.
Her story reminded me of the first cat that ever came into my life. Carter was a huge orange tom cat who terrorized the neighbors’ cats, and in once case, a Doberman Pinscher. But with people, he was sweet and friendly. In fact, he was so friendly that he managed to convince several people up and down our street to feed him. He’d always sleep at our
Continue reading Polyamory: Some Kitties Are Just Like That
One of the biggest challenges I faced as I grew into adulthood was learning how to deal with the fact that the word is full of uncertainty. I remember being a kid and being obsessed with the rules of games, with making things fair, with carving everything into this and not-this. From what I know of such things, that’s a pretty standard developmental stage for children. And one of the conundrums of adulthood is having to make decisions when we don’t have all of the relevant information.
Of course, one way to approach that is to try to gather as much data as possible beforehand, but while that’s often useful, it isn’t always possible. Sometimes, the information isn’t available. Or you don’t know everything
Continue reading Learning to Live With Uncertainty
Last week, some Republican Florida politicians pushed back against one of their number who wants to repeal some laws against unmarried (heterosexual) couples that live together but aren’t married. This law has been on the books since the late 1800′s but isn’t enforced too often. And while some politicians are hesitant to talk about it, State Rep. Dennis Baxley (R) said, “I’m not ready to give up on monogamy and a cultural statement that marriage still matters.”
He might be surprised to hear that I agree with him that I want marriage to matter. But I don’t think it means the same thing to both of us.
What marriage means to me is people making a commitment to each other to support, care for,
Continue reading I Want Marriage to Mean Something, Too
When I first became a sex educator, I figured I’d be learning a lot about relationships. Over time, I discovered that helping people explore sexuality also meant that I learned a lot about shame. So much so, in fact, that I went back to school and started learning about the interplay between sex & shame. I’ve been on that journey for about 10 years now and one thing that I’ve discovered is that the more I understand how shame works, the more I understand relationships.
Shame is one of the more difficult topics to talk about. Just discussing it can trigger it, especially if you have a lot of undigested shame lurking in your psyche. My grad school studies led me to work through
Continue reading If You Want To Understand Relationships, You Need To Understand Shame
Have you ever noticed the different meanings we have for the phrase “I’m sorry”? I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately because I’ve noticed how often some folks say it when they aren’t really apologizing. I’m not talking about those times when someone gives a false apology without actually changing their behavior. I mean those times when we say “I’m sorry for your loss” or “I’m sorry that this has happened.” It seems to me that when we use one phrase to mean a bunch of different things, it often makes it harder to communicate clearly.
Apologies are one of the most important tools we have to keep things happy and thriving. All relationships will have times of misattunement, mistakes, or moments of
Continue reading Some Better Ways to Say “I’m Sorry”
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