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.

Continue reading “Criminalizing Cheating” →

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.

This was the view from our Marco Island hotel room. I miss our short holiday!

Now I will have to work like crazy to finish everything before August 1. That’s when I will stop working and will do nothing whatsoever in preparation for my C-section.

It physically hurts me to see trees destroyed like this. Each tree is precious in our climate.

The corpses of trees have been lying around since last Friday’s tornado.

Evo psych profs are truly something special:

 

It’s very embarrassing to see somebody who is supposed to have some sort of education to discuss both weight and dissertation writing in terms of “willpower.” Poor freak.

I want to acquaint you with a blog post that will make it clear why I shun North American feminist theory, avoid North American feminist blogs as much as I can, and hide in the toilet whenever I see people from our university’s Gender Studies program.

The blogger in question addresses some really idiotic comments made by some aging freakazoid:

Does parenthood imperil the skills of a money trader? Apparently it does. Only, however, if the trader is female.

That’s the take of Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire who made his money as a hedge fund manager, in this comment while speaking to prospective hedge-funders at the University of Virginia: “Jones said in his experience having a child is a ‘killer’ for any desire to trade, adding ‘as soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it,’ while motioning to his chest, according to a video posted by the Washington Post.”

Obviously, a person whose parents hated him enough to give him a name that contains both “Tudor” and “Jones” had little chance of growing up normal and psychologically healthy. Yet, since Tudor is now an adult, his mental issues become his own responsibility and it is up to him to make sure that he doesn’t dump his psychological dirt on other human beings.

The linked blogger gives Tudor a proper dressing down, pointing out how ridiculous his generalizations about the nature of women are. I really enjoyed the post because it was funny, well-written, and intelligent. That is, I enjoyed it until I arrived at the closing paragraphs:

Recent studies have proven women to be better traders and money handlers, less inclined to take dire risks, more able to render profit to their clients. Perhaps they regard the money in their accounts as their “baby”, thus deserving of nurturing care? It’s a skill and approach many males could learn and profit from.

In response to offensive generalizations about women’s nature, the blogger thinks it is appropriate to offer a string of . . . offensive generalizations about women’s nature that in no way contradict Tudor Jones’s opinions.

I have had to read quite a lot of feminist theory for work and I can assure you that no patriarchal fundamentalist can emit as many essentialist statements about the nurturing nature of women and the 100% different nature of men as a regular American feminist. Many people have this completely pig-headed belief that feminism is about taking up the old essentialist generalizations about “men” and “women” and affixing the label “bad” to the former and “good” to the latter. This is the habit of lazy minds that can’t escape the comforting reliance on familiar binaries. Nothing more complex than “bad” and “good” is accessible to them.

The flurry of articles on Israeli soldiers posing nude and posting the photos online obscures from view the real tragedy. Namely, that young men and women are forced to kill their brothers and sisters to defend stupid nationalistic slogans invented by arm-chair politicians. What makes this situation even more bizarre, this tragic sacrifice of Jewish children is carried out in the name of making the Jews safe.

It is not surprising, though. Nationalism appeals to emotions and is incapable of withstanding an analysis from the point of view of reason and logic. People drive themselves into a frenzy of nationalistic fervor because if they stop vociferating for a second, the entire edifice of their nationalistic convictions will crack and collapse.

So we just heard that the state legislature will not be cutting a single dime of our funding. To the contrary, we will be getting extra money for a variety of projects we have underway.

I now solemnly swear never again to waste a second of my life participating in the favorite American pastime of “Apocalypse is starting right now; we will all die a painful horrible death immediately.”  I’m sorry, folks, I understand that this is an activity this culture enjoys passionately, but I’m not going to Americanize myself in that direction. From now on, worst-case scenarios should be savored outside of my presence.

First, people drive themselves to distraction with all these drama-queenish slogans of “academia is dying!”, “scholarship is becoming extinct!”, “nobody will ever get any jobs in any industry ever!”, “we will all be driven into prostitution, misery, and starvation!”, “humanity is doomed!” and then they guzzle anti-depressants like vacuum-cleaners. And the really hilarious thing is that these are usually the same people who ridicule the cheap masochism of Shades of Grey. Anastasia Steele at least gets to climax as a result of her masochistic fantasies. What do the regular drama queens get out of all their doom and gloom?

Please, folks, if I ever allow myself to slide into apocalyptic thinking once again, do give me the link to this post.