Opinions, art, debate
“Her prose is a jumping, her tone is unsparing, and her focus is wide.”
And you thought nobody liked me! Well, maybe that wasn’t you but somebody surely thought that.
P.S. Finally, somebody applied the word “pellucid” to my writing. For somebody who used to hear that her writing is clunky, Germanic, and pedestrian this is a big deal.
Of course, criminal prosecution of cheating partners that is discussed in the penultimate post is a ridiculous idea.
There is, however, a very easy way of avoiding ever being “coerced into sex with lies.” I will now share this recipe with the world for the benefit of humanity.
Drum roll. . .
Only consider having sex with people when you feel sexual desire to have sex with these people. Don’t make the desire to have sex contingent on what others tell you, only on whether you want it.
Ta da!
The moment you make your desire for sex conditional on anything whatsoever other than your sexual desire, you place yourself in the realm of unhealthy sexual practices. The result can only be sad. Desire shouldn’t be about what people do or do not say to you.
Of course, it’s your right to sell sex acts in return for money, gifts, promises of marriage, oaths of loyalty, etc. However, if you lie to yourself and others and pretend this is anything but a sale, don’t blame people for lying in response.
I often think there is a conspiracy to devalue any sort of political activism in the Western world. Everybody is too lazy to do anything of actual value, so they pretend to be politically active through engaging in circus-like stunts. All of these boycotts of Israel, demonstrations against greed, games with the gender of nouns, endless complaints about the dire state of things in every area of existence, etc. only serve to create an illusion of activism.
Then everybody is satisfied with having done enough for humanity and returns to a happy enjoyment of the status quo.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people stopped confusing immaturity with politics? Yes, I know, I’m an idealist, and an article from Feministe that reader Wirbelwind kindly showed to me demonstrates just how impossible of a dream this is. The article is a manifesto of a very immature person who believes that the world should service her immaturity by punishing every behavior that upsets her with prison terms. Today, she is upset that her boyfriend cheated on her and wants him to go to jail for that. Tomorrow you might sneeze too loudly in her general vicinity and she will want you imprisoned for causing her intolerable stress with this loud noise.
The painstakingly detailed story revealed by the pseudo-feminist in question demonstrates that her idea of what it means to be in a romantic relationship is less realistic than that of a 5-year-old. This is, for instance, how the relationship with the miserable boyfriend starts:
Before I engaged in a sexual relationship with my last boyfriend, Nadjeeb, I made the terms for my consent very clear: if we were going to become sexually involved, it had to be within the context of strict monogamy. Because he was also in recovery from alcohol and drug addition, I told him that I required full disclosure if he broke his sobriety, and I asserted my right to be informed if he chose to engage in sex with anybody else.
I have no idea how old this woman is but if she is older than 11, the text is very disturbing. Monogamy (polyamory / heterosexuality / bisexuality / asexuality, etc.) is not something you demand from a person in exchange for sexual services. They way adults enter into monogamous (polyamorous / heterosexual, etc.) relationships is by revealing to each other that this is the kind of relationship they want at this point in time. You can’t make somebody monogamous (bisexual / heterosexual, etc.) by making ultimatums or entering into trade agreements of the “I’ll give you sex in exchange for you changing your approach to sexuality.” This approach is a recipe for disaster, and, of course, the disaster soon came.
We didn’t officially consummate the relationship until about a month had passed, but, as I came to find out about fifteen months later, he had begun drinking, doing drugs, and having frequent and unprotected sex with other people behind my back almost immediately afterward. He put a great deal of effort into keeping me unaware of all of this behavior. He enlisted the help of his friends to cover for him and to tell me whatever lies were necessary to keep me in the dark; he came up with convincing excuses about why he couldn’t see me certain nights, or about why he was acting distant, and he participated in long-winded conversations about our relationship and my concern that he didn’t share my interest in a deeper level of emotional intimacy.
This story of “OMG, I trusted him so much and the jerkwad deceived me cruelly” is the favorite song of all deeply immature people. In reality, nobody can deceive anybody with whom they are having a supposedly close relationship about drugging, boozing, and cheating for 15 months. The only way one can manage not to notice such things is either by being stonily indifferent to one’s partner, or by pretending not to notice. The story’s protagonist even lists a number of signs that the monogamous relationship she convinced herself was developing between her and her boyfriend was nothing but her fantasy. With this degree of willful blindness, I’m sure she wouldn’t have noticed if the guy started shooting up and having group sex right in front of her.
Sex acts, for this blogger, are never a product of desire. They are only and exclusively a reward she sometimes gives to her partner when he begs her convincingly enough and demonstrates behaviors she approves:
In the midst of all of his secretive drinking, drugging, and cheating, he would repeatedly coax me into have unprotected sex with him. He used his clean bill of health and our monogamous status to persuade me to do this, and occasionally his arguments would work, and I would concede.
Yes, what a shock that the guy was seeking oblivion from such a passionate and profound relationship. Of course, in response to being manipulated and humiliated by the girlfriend, the boyfriend also becomes manipulative:
Again, there were times when his inconsistent and distant behavior gave me pause, but when I talked to him about it, he would become emotionally manipulative, sometimes breaking down into tears. He would talk about his fears of rejection and intimacy, the emotional abusiveness of his past romantic relationships, the tragedies of his childhood, and his troubled relationships with his parents—all part-truths that served to disarm me, elicit my sympathy, and make him sound all the more convincing.
The couple is playing a highly manipulative game of “Jump high enough and you’ll get the prize.” What shocks the story’s author is the realization that the boyfriend was playing the same game with her. And nothing shocks a manipulator more than the realization that she is being manipulated, too.
One of the “lessons” that stuck with me the most was this: in a particularly sex shaming moment, the instructor asked us if we knew what happened to us when we had sex “too much.” To demonstrate, she got out a Hershey’s chocolate bar and said it would represent one girl’s sexuality (she picked a volunteer. Let’s call her Claire.) Claire was told that she had “share” her sexuality with a few boys in the room by inviting them to take bites of her chocolate bar. (I can’t make this shit up, y’all.) So she shopped her chocolate bar around the room. The first few boys took bites, but soon the chocolate bar was more and more disgusting–chewed up and unsanitary. Boys 5-7 didn’t want to take any bites.
The real problem is that if at least several students in the class had normal parents who discussed sex in a normal way with them, the only person “shamed” in this situation would be the teacher. Normal kids would be rolling on the floor with laughter when presented with such a scene. I grew up in an extremely puritanical environment but I cannot imagine my classmates and myself just sitting there, absorbing this idiocy, and not making the lesson end then and there by roaring with laughter. I can also guarantee that the poor teacher would never live this down and would not be able to teach anything in this school ever again.
So the real question here is: what have these kids’ parents been doing to them all these years to turn them into beaten-down little robots who don’t even see how hilarious the whole thing is?
Once again it becomes clear that a child who can be bullied at school, in the street, on the team, etc. is a child who was bullied at home first.
Clarissa's Blog 