Tag Archives: sex

Let’s talk sex.

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I tend in this journal to write a great deal about topics that deal, directly or indirectly, with sex. I wrote a lot about polyamory and BDSM, for example.

This is not one of those posts.

Instead, I want to cut right down to the heart of good old-fashioned sex. You know, knocking boots. Bumping uglies. Making, as Will Shakespeare said, the beast with two backs. Screwing. Banging. Humping. Fucking.

When it comes right down to good old-fashioned fucking people are, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked up.

A man noted for his nontrivial intellect and, occasionally, nontrivial cynicism on another mailing list I read recently said that, when it comes down to brass tacks, the real reason there is such unified and consistent objection in American society to legalized prostitution has less to do with moral concerns, or concerns about public health, so much as the unspoken truth that prostitution screws up the economics of sex.

People, particularly women, in American society are presented with cultural ideas that tell them there is an economic exchange in sex. Women give men sex, and men pay for that sex by giving women love and romance. It’s a tidy, neatly-packaged arrangement; the men get laid, which is what they want, and women get love, which is what they want. Each side has to give up something to get what they want, but hey, that’s what any economic exchange is all about.

Prostitution, he says, throws a monkeywrench into this convenient arrangement. If men can exchange currency for sex, then they no longer have to pay for sex with love and romance and fidelity. This is deeply threatening and offensive to women; if men can pay for sex with money, then women can not use sex to get love and attention, so how can they get what they want?

There is a certain amount of truth in the notion that women in American society often see sex as a way to get the love and romance they want. Romantic relationships are often defined by and predicated on sex; a partner isn’t really a partner until you fuck. And having fucked, now there are certain expectations associated with that fucking. Men are the pursuers of sex; women are the gatekeepers of sex; when the woman decides to provide the sex, she gets things in return, such as fidelity and devotion.

Don’t say you don’t know what I’m talking about. You may not do this, but I bet you know someone who does.

So the woman puts out, and in return she exacts a price in emotional support, in love and exclusivity. And, frankly, if you see the world in this way, everyone loses. It’s an attitude about sex that is predicated on false assumptions and poor understanding of human beings, and it tends to make those people who internalize this foolishness get twisted up in a number of ways.

Sex is often seen in a light different from any other human activity. I don’t know any reasonable person who would say “My partner let someone else cook for him; he must not love me any more!” or “My partner likes another person’s cooking; why am I not good enough for him?” Any person saying something like this would likely be recommended for counseling; yet if we’re talking about sex, people nod sagely and say “HAh, yes, the bastard, clearly he does not love you, for he is getting his sex elsewhere. Best to dump him.”

And you see the damage it causes all the time. People place their value and their worth as human beings on the fact that their partner is not having sex with anyone else. People’s self-esteem and sense of dignity gets all wrapped up in sex. Should their partner look at another woman, there can be only one explanation–it’s because they are not valued, not “good enough,” and their partner is seeking to replace them with someone “better”–whatever “better” means.

It’s fucked up.

Even the attitudes people have about porn rest, I think, on the notion that sex is what you pay for love. If some guy can go and get sexual gratification without paying for it at all (isn’t the Internet great?), then what need does he have to spend love to get his rocks off? If some guy is in a relationship, and he watches porn, then the woman better feel threatened, because now he may withdraw his love from her. He doesn’t need to get the sex from her any more, so why should he pay her in love, right?

This attitude is insulting to both men and women. It’s insulting to men because it starts with the premise that men don’t want love and romance and intimacy; they have to be tricked or cajoled into giving it, with the promise of sex. It’s insulting to women because it debases their position to that of a common merchant, a person who sells sex to get what she needs–and there’s not even any money in it for her, at least not directly. And the price it exacts in self-esteem and self-confidence is devastating.

And buried in there somewhere is an inconvenient truth, one who divide the world into the pursuers and the gatekeepers of sex, don’t like to acknowledge…Women like sex, and men like intimacy.

There is no need to buy one with the other. There is no need to exchange sex for intimacy; and in fact, the two have nothing to do with each other. Women and men like sex; women and men like intimacy; the one need not be predicated on the other. And certainly one’s self-image need not rest on the foundation of sexual exclusivity–a slippery and uncertain foundation indeed. When anyone places their self-esteem on external factors, especially factors controlled by another person, then that self-esteem will always be precarious and uncertain.

On another forum, a message I read described how absolutely devastated a person was when she discovered her boyfriend wasn’t a virgin. It reduced her to tears; because if she is not her boyfriend’s only sexual partner, then what makes her special? How can she ever hope to feel special?

I can’t really quite apprehend how it is that the idea of specialness got so wrapped up in sexual exclusivity, but I don’t think it’s healthy. Predicating one’s ego on the sexual past or sexual activity of another person seems harmful and destructive to me.

And it keeps getting worse. Not only is sex the vehicle for getting love and value, but love and value flow only from one specific type of sex. Any other sex is perverse, coarse, crude; sex in this position shows love, sex in that position does not. Ergo, if he loves me, he will have sex with me in this position; but if he wants to have sex with me in that position, it means…disaster. He doesn’t value me; he doesn’t care about me; I am worth less as a person.

Now, my tastes may be unconventional, but I am quite capable of calling my partner a dirty, filthy whore in the midst of sodomizing her, and still being in love with her. Love, you see, is not a question of what position one’s body is in at the moment of coitus, or which part of my partner’s body my cock is in. Love is greater than that. You see…

…and at this point I will ask all those peculiar species of feminists who believe that there is only one ‘right’ way that women ‘should’ be to leave the room…

…I have lovers who like being called a filthy whore while they are being sodomized.

I do it because it gets me off, and it gets my partner off. A nasty little fact of life, this: not all women have the same tastes. Sex is supposed to be enjoyable; and sex is most enjoyable when it presses the buttons of all of the people involved.

And here’s another dirty little secret:

Sex and love are not the same thing. If I love someone, then I still love her even if she’s on her hands and knees and I’m yanking her hair and calling her my dirty little slut. If I don’t love someone, then no amount of candles and rose petals scattered across the bed will make me love her. All sex done when i love someone is an expression of love. Even the raunchy, dirty, hair-pulling, name-calling sex. Love does not depend on the words you say during sex; love is not counted in terms of candles and rose petals. If you have love in your heart, it is there regardless of what you’re doing while you fuck. If you do not have love in your heart, the rose petals and candles won’t put it there.

If you want to draw a distinction between “fucking” and “making love,” fine. The distinction is in what’s in your heart, not what position you’re in on the bed, or on the floor, or in the back of the closet with your wrists bound to the bar and your face pressed into the winter jackets. The distinction is in your heart. If you and your partner love each other, then you’re making love no matter what you’re doing.

Predicating your sense of self-worth on the number of candles around the bed or the number of seconds your lover spends gazing soulfully into your eyes is stupid, destructive, and insulting. Your partner loves you or he doesn’t. If he loves you, the number of partners he’s had and the positions in which he likes to do the deed don’t change that. If he doesn’t, you’re not going to buy his love with sex.

Get over it. You’ll be a happier person, I promise.

The electromagnetic force as a sex toy

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So, a short time ago, I posted about a body modification that involves implanting tiny but powerful magnets in the fingertips to give someone the ability to feel magnetic and electrical fields. As infinitely cool as this is, the downside is that the NdFeB magets used for the first handful of experiments along these lines tend to cause infection, as the body tends to corrode and destroy them.

I was talking about how amazingly cool the idea of a direct electromagnetic sense is with an old buddy of mine yesterday morning, and he pointed me to a site called Amazing Magnets. Amazing Magnets sells tiny NdFeB magnets that you can buy in lots of 100 for $5.

Now, these magnets can’t be implanted without Very Bad Things happening. However, my friend had a brilliant flash of insight: perhaps something like a cruder version of the magnetic sense could be had by taking these magnets and embedding them in a second skin of liquid latex.

And, of course, that started my thought process down the road to perversion.

Leaving aside the idea of a new sense for a moment, it seems like it might be fun to place magnets all along someone’s back, or chest, or thighs, or breasts, then cover that person in liquid latex and have some fun. A degausser or a bulk tape eraser passed a few inches over the subject’s body might produce some very…interesting sensations. Especially for a person who is blindfolded, bound, or both.

And S has some liquid latex.

I think I’m going to buy a bunch of these magnets.

Random musing of the day

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Men and women both enjoy looking at magazines filled with photographs of scantily-clad women in sexually suggestive poses. Men want to fuck the models in the photographs; women want to be the models in the photographs.

Discuss.

Getting Off: the Quest for the Orgasm

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So we’re partying at Shelly’s new pad in Gainesville, and the conversation turned (as it always does) to sex.

I’ve had a vasectomy; best $150 I’ve ever spent. Prior to that, I always relied on mechanical or hormonal birth control, and with condoms now at a buck apiece (or more!), goddamn if that doesn’t get expensive after a while. And you know, people just don’t think about the amount of money they spend every year to get off.

So, I’m curious…

Oh, for the love of God…

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News item of the day: Woman blames security flaw in Mozilla web browser for destroying her relationship.

From the article:

“This privacy flaw has caused my fiancĂ© and I to break-up after having dated for five years… Firefox should be respecting every single area of privacy per user on one system. It’s not doing that,” the woman writes.

Now this here, folks, is an outstanding example of how people absolutely hate to take responsibility for their own feelings, responses, and emotional reactions.

The bug in Mozilla did not cause the breakup. Insecurity caused the breakup, together with poor communication skills on the parts of both people involved.

The woman says she and her ex were together for five years. Well, if they were dating for five years, what in the name of all that is holy were they talking about–the weather? Whose turn it was to wash the car? Clearly, neither of them was talking about the parameters and assumptions of their relationship, else she would have known that he was visiting online dating sites, and he would have known that she was not OK with that.

She learned something she did not know, because they were not talking. What she learned triggered insecurity on her part, which she did not deal with gracefully because she does not take responsibility for her own emotional responses. She did not talk about her feelings and the fact that his behavior violated her boundaries and expectations, because they both lacked decent communication skills. And somehow, all of this is…

…Mozilla’s fault?

Amazing.

Some thoughts on humiliation play in BDSM

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One of my particular turnons is relatively uncommon (at least in my expererience), and that is humiliation play–D/s scenarios that involve some degree of eroticised shame or embarrassment or humiliation. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about that over the past week or so, and I think my approach to humiliation play, and the reasons it appeals to me, are unusual even for those people who like it.

The appeal of humiliation is very difficult to explain to people who don’t understand it. It seems to be one of those things that either you get it or you don’t, and if you don’t, it’s just degrading and objectifying and awful. Certainly I’ve known plenty of people who have a strong squick response to humiliation. Many of my partners have (and do) enjoy humiliation play, though, and I’ve been talking to people around me who have an attraction for humiliation play to try to get an idea about what makes it tick. (Why? Because I like understanding myself and those around me; I like understanding how people experience the world. The unexamined life is not worth living, as Snoop Dogg used to say.)

And in talking with my friends and partners about the appeal of humiliation play, I get the sense that the appeal for me is very different than the appeal for many other people.

For some people, humiliation and shame provoke a very visceral response; under the right circumstances and with the right people, there is an immediate sexual arousal attached to it. Shelly hypothesizes that it’s possible this is just good old-fashioned Pavlovian conditioning at work; we grow up in a society with a strong, almost Puritanical streak that teaches that sexuality is something shameful, and a lot of people go through periods of intense shame during puberty…especially if they grow up in repressive or sex-negative environments (Catholic schools, I’m looking at you here). It starts off with feelings of arousal and sexuality provoking reponses of shame and guilt, and those two emotional experiences become linked, so eventually feelings of shame become coupled with feelings of arousal.

This seems plausible to me, and does seem to match with the experiences of some of my past partners as well.

For other people, it seems to be the powerlessness and the sense of helplessness or objectification associated with many types of humiliation play that really do it. I can understand this; on some visceral, irrational level, which has nothing I can see to do with anything in my past or any of my experiences, powerlessness (and, conversely, control) crank my motor. It’s not associated with any kind of trauma while I was growing up; it has nothing to do with any past event, or with trying to work through problems in childhood; for whatever reason, a strong psychological control dynamic just gets me off. It’s a purely irrational thing that in some ways is like what I imagine having a foot fetish or a crossdressing fetish to be like; something that makes no sense to a person who doesn’t have it, something that has no logical reason; simply a quirk in the wiring or whatever that makes this particular stimulus really, really arousing.

I think there’s likely an element of this in people who like, for example, Daddy/daughter relationships, or who like resistance play or sexual objectification in any other form–just a good old-fashioned sexual fetish, not particularly associated with anything outside itself.

And I have talked to a few people for whom various types of BDSM, including humiliation play, is a direct response to some specific form of trauma. I’ve known people who explore BDSM as a way to get through or to gain power over some event or some part of their lives that was harmful or damaging–and I think thewre are both healthy and unhealthy ways that people do this. (There’s a term that’s used in the psychiatric community–I learned it in one of my cognitive psych classes back in the day, but don’t remember it now–for the act of processing damaging or traumatic experiences in ways that actually deepen and reinforce the trauma, with the belief that they are working through it when in fact they’re making it worse.) I think BDSM can be a positive and healthy way to explore, deal with, and ultimately regain control over some traumatic experience, though I also think that a person who’s not careful may in fact end up just hurting himself more.

But none of these things is really the reason I like humiliation play.

Now, there is an element of that irrational, almost fetishistic arousal for me, make no mistake. From either the giving or the receiving end, humiliation play really gets me off.

But that’s not why I do it. Humiliation play gets me off, but it isn’t a fetish; I can get off in many other ways, and humiliation play is emotionally risky, at least for me. If it were simply a matter of having an orgasm and being done with it, I don’t think I’d do it.

For me, the real appeal of humiliation play is as a vehicle for emotional intimacy.

When I am engaging in some kind of erotic scenario built around humiliation or shame, from either side but most especially from the receiving side, it exposes me emotionally to my partner in a way that nothing else I have experienced does. it strips away any emotional defense mechanisms I may have and lowers all of my emotional boundaries. The person you see when you see me i that context is me, undefended, completely exposed. As a tool for emotional intimacy, it can’t be beat; there’s no bullshit, no filtering any of my responses; what you see is what I am, completely unfiltered.

For that reason, I can’t do humiliation play with a casual partner, or with a person I’m not in an intimate, stable, long-term relationship with. I use it precisely because the emotional vulnerability creates a vehicle for intimacy; for me, it’s that, not the orgasm, that really matters. The fact that it gets me off is what makes me able to do it in the first place, because no doubt about it, that kind of vulnerability and emotional exposure is pretty scary shit–if it weren’t for the fact that I eroticise humiliation, I’d never have started down that path in the first place. But from the people I’ve known and spoken to, using humiliation play for the primary purpose of exploring emotional intimacy seems very unusual. It seems those people I’ve known who enjoy it have some other primary motivation–which might be something as simple as “it gets my rocks off”–and anything else it does is something of a side effect.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Freaky, freaky, freaky stuff

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Beneath the cut is an image created as part of a French AIDS awareness poster series, which has been making the rounds of the Internet lately. It’s work-safe, at least in the sense that there’s nothing particularly indecent about it (it was designed for public display, after all), but…

May be triggering, especially if you have a spider phobia. You’ve been warned.

Teeth and sex, World of Warcraft and sex, math and sex, and other canoodling

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I used to believe that nothing could quash my sex drive. Being too tired? Hell, Shelly takes advantage of me in my sleep. Being sick in bed with mono? Slows me down a bit, that’s about it.

But it appears there’s one thing, at least, that’s all but guaranteed to quash my sex drive: the pain of a broken tooth.

Last week, before it started hurting too badly, S and I had a date, and I discovered to my surprise and delight that she still has her genuine Catholic schoolgirl uniform from the days when she was a genuine Catholic schoolgirl, and so we played a variant of Naughty Schoolgirl and Stern Headmaster that might be called “The Naughty Schoolgirl Confesses Her Sins,” and much fun was had by all…

…but since then, nothing. Ow ow ow.

I got a referral to The Best Oral Surgeon in the World (seriously, this guy is really, really cool), and the tooth is now fixed and has almost completely stopped hurting. It was a messy procedure; I won’t disturb you with the details because they would…err, disturb you, but I now have stitches in my mouth and a new appreciation for the capabilities of a handheld drill and a good old-fashioned lever. At any rate, I’m almost back to normal, for some value of “normal.” Which means that Shelly and I may be able to try out the carrot-shaped vibrator feorlen gave me last week; it has digital controls and lights up at the end. 🙂

Being in pain, or jittery and hazy from pain meds, or both, doesn’t appear to affect my ability to play World of Warcraft, however–something I’ve been doing a great deal of over the past few days. I’ve virtually stopped playing my warrior since he’s reached Level 60 (the highest level the game currently permits), and have been playing my warlock instead; he just reached Level 59, and I may get him to 60 tonight if I play.

The warlock is the only high-level spellcaster I have. Spellcasters in World of Warcraft use mana as energy to fuel their spells; a character has a certain amount of mana, which goes down as he casts spells and then goes back up again over time. As a character rises in level, he gets greater amounts of mana, but he also begins using a wider variety of more powerful spells, which consume mana more quickly, so the amount of mana scales pretty closely with the mana requirements of his new spells.

However, I’ve noticed that at very high levels, the rate at which mana regenerates does not scale with the amount of mana a character has; above level 45 or so, it starts taking a very long time for mana to come back after a fight. (There are potions and drinks things you can buy that speed the rate of mana recovery, but they’re expensive and take up space in your inventory.) What that means is that by the time a spellcaster reaches level 55 or so, he’s spending a considerable amount of time–sometimes several minutes–after combats, waiting for his mana to regenerate.

I’ve also hit something of a brick wall in the book on polyamory I’m writing, and progress has slowed dramatically; I’ll add a few pages over the course of a week, then not work on it at all for three weeks or so. (Yes, this does relate to World of Warcraft; bear with me.)

Since I want to stay in the habit of writing, even if I’m not working directly on the book, I’ve started writing fiction–specifically, erotica. I haven’t ever tried writing fiction before, so it’s been an interesting experience. What I’ve started doing is writing while my character is regenerating mana; I keep the laptop next to the game computer, and switch back and forth, typing on the laptop while my character is regenerating mana, then switching back to the game when he’s ready. It seems to work pretty well; I’ve already got some stuff posted on Literotica.com and have so far accumulated an average reader rating of 4.93 out of 5.00 for quality, not bad for my first piece of fiction evar.

A strange side effect, though, is that I’m beginning to eroticise World of Warcraft, and playing is becoming an arousing experience. The human mind is a weird, weird thing.

And speaking of eroticising unusual activities, I just want to reiterate that having a girlfriend who is aroused by math is the hottest thing evar!

A while ago, I found an online sexual glossary that had a lot of definitions I found problems with (for example, it defined “polyamory” as something like “group sex between multiple people”). I dropped an email to the site owner, taking issue with the definitions in the glossary. He emailed me back immediately, and not only responded very positively, but also sent me a T-shirt.

We’ve emailed a few times since then, and he’s asked me if I’d be willing to write reviews of the various sex toys and stuff his company sells. That should be fun, I think. I’m considering adding a reviews section to the Symtoys site, y’know, because I don’t ever have enough to do.

And speaking of which, I’ve done yet another significant update to my own BDSM dictionary and polyamory glossary because, y’know, what else is there to do after oral surgery?

Tomorrow, hanging out with Shelly and S, and then camping with Shelly and smoocherie and her partner fritzcat66! Then next week, Front 242, and then the following week, Shelly’s other partner merovingian will be in town! *delighted*

And in the final piece of good news, alias_node isn’t going to die. 🙂 It’s not cancer, but rather an incredibly rare (and treatable) bacterial infection called Lemierre’s syndrome. They figured it out in time, and while he’s up for some misery that’s probably going to make a broken tooth look like a casual midafternoon stroll through the Golden City beyond the Elysium Fields, his prognosis is most excellent. Which is most excellent.

God hates gays? Not quite.

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Do Gays Cause Hurricanes? by Janis Walworth

Do “Unnatural” Acts Cause Natural Disasters?

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, recently warned Orlando, Florida, that it was courting natural disaster by allowing gay pride flags to be flown along its streets. “A condition like this will bring about … earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,” he said, apparently referring to his belief that the presence of openly gay people incurs divine wrath and that God acts through geological and meteorological events to destroy municipalities that permit gay people the same civil liberties as others. (Robertson also warned Orlando about terrorist bombs, suggesting the possibility that God may also employ terrorists.)

Before Pat and his Christian cronies get too carried away promulgating the idea that natural disasters are prompted by people who displease God,they should take a hard look at the data. Take tornadoes. Every state (except Alaska) has them – some only one or two a year, dozens in others. Gay people are in every state (even Alaska). According to Pat’s hypothesis, there should be more gay people in states that have more tornadoes. But are there? Continue reading →

Sex and math, and sex

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Ugol’s Law states that no sexual fetish is unique–that is, if something turns you on, then someone else, somewhere, is turned on by the same thing.

Shelly is currently in school, pursuing a degree in chemical engineering with an eye toward using it to get a doctorate in biomedical nanotechnology. More and more universities are offering graduate-level degrees in nanotechnology, mostly interdisciplinary degrees that bring together people from medical, physics, and chemical engineering backgrounds.

As you might imagine, her coursework involves rather a lot of math. And, as it turns out, Shelly is uncontrollably aroused by math. No, there isn’t a word for it (I looked), but math gets her hot. Really hot.

And she’s started doing her homework on my body, using a fine-point marker pen to work out problems on my back. Which is beyond hot. By the time she’s finished with her homework, she’s usually uncontrollably aroused and very aggressive. I won’t bore you with what happens afterward, except that it involves numerous implements, floggers, and other things which might offend those with delicate sensibilities. In fact, I went in to the office today with a complex problem in analytical geometry written on my back.

So it should come as no surprise, then, that the Intellectual Sexiness Test meme that’s been making the rounds these days says: