OK, I just read the first post from that weird sex-advice website, and it’s even more disturbing than the second one. Do you think these letters are manufactured or do you believe real people write them? Because it’s the second letter in a row that makes zero sense. See here:

Question: My husband and I have had an open marriage for the last two years. Up until five months ago, it was working beautifully. At that point, however, I was sexually assaulted by a former partner. Since that incident, I cannot stand sex with my husband. I completely flip out when he tries to initiate sexual contact. My skin crawls. I become panicked and feel repulsed. I just cannot handle it. Those times when I go along with it anyway leave me feeling enraged and disgusted.

I don’t think this is completely unheard of for someone who was relatively recently assaulted, and I am considering therapy to help me work through it. The immediate “problem” is that I have no difficulty having sex with my boyfriend. In fact, the sex with him is amazing and leaves me feeling loved and whole and wonderful.

This is breaking my husband’s heart. He has become incredibly jealous of my relationship with my boyfriend. He’s depressed. He’s angry. He accuses me of no longer loving him, and he wants me to stop sleeping with my boyfriend until our marriage is back to normal. I feel like a horrible person, but I just can’t do that. I need that outlet. I need that support. And I admit I have a hard time believing that my husband and I will ever be able to go back to the way things were before.

I feel like I’ve already lost my former partner (fucked-up though that may seem) and my husband. It kills me to think about cutting out the one positive relationship remaining. On the other hand, I do love my husband—very much—and watching him suffer like this is unbearable.

I know this is longish and people hate long quotes. But just look at the underlined part. If “this” is breaking the husband’s heart, one has really got to ask, how is the husband discovering all “this.” Is this person actually telling him, “You know, sex with you is disgusting but sex with my boyfriend is amazing and leaves me feeling loved and whole and wonderful?” None of this makes sense.

This is the second advice-seeking letter in a row that is plagued with contradictions and makes zero sense whatsoever.

Do you think  these letters are all fake?

What is really strange is that the sex-advice blogger from the previous post seems to think her “close your eyes and take it for a higher good” advice is somehow progressive and even transgressive.

Bizarredom.

You know what really, really gets to me?

If I were to share with you, my readers, something like, “I have this persistent cough that just wouldn’t go away. I feel like my chest is constricted and I wake up at night drenched in cold sweat.” What would your advice be?

I’m guessing that any person in their right mind would say, “Go see a doctor!” I’m also guessing that nobody would start diagnosing me over the Internet and telling me how to cure this ailment sight unseen.

If I told you about a dysfunction in any system of organs in my body, the advice would be the same: talk to a specialist. Several years ago, for instance, I complained of a chest pain on the blog, and a reader who happened to be a nurse told me in no uncertain terms that I had to go to the ER. And this turned out to be amazing advice: I had pericarditis and needed to be treated. But even that reader – an actual medical professional – was not presuming to prescribe treatment for me online. I think we can all agree this is the right approach.

There is, however, one area in our bodies where every Tom, Dick and Henrietta thinks it’s OK to diagnose and prescribe treatment left and right. Here is an example for you. A person asks:

Other than a recent, brief and dissatisfying encounter, my SO and I haven’t had sex in a very long time. At the beginning of our relationship, we were very sexually active but my desire over the course of the last few years has completely tanked. I still very much love and am attracted to my SO, but I worry about our future. How do I regain my mojo and how do I know if this is a sign that our relationship is reaching the end?

Obviously, nobody but a specialist can even decipher what “I’m attracted but don’t feel desire” means. All anybody can do is gently suggest that this person take this query to a sexologist. Sadly, there are many other people who would benefit from seeing such a specialist, too. And it is those people precisely who are interested in projecting their own deeply Victorian views on others. Here is an example:

Many of us have these romantic visions of what our sex lives are supposed to be like: spontaneous, plentiful, void of drama or misunderstandings, and perfectly matched in libido to our partner(s). That just ain’t reality, especially for the long haul.

Translation: “My sex is infrequent, routine, filled with misunderstandings, and always leaves either me or my partner unsatisfied. That’s my reality and the price I pay for the all-important privilege of being in a long-term relationship, and don’t anybody dare suggest life can be different.”

From the viewpoint informed by her own dysfunction, this dispenser of advice exhorts the poor reader to “keep trying” in a way that reminded me of “close your eyes and think of England.”

What really gets me is that people who identify as feminists keep offering this extremely outdated kind of advice. Years ago, I wrote about another feminist who blithely dispensed sex advice of the most offensively patriarchal and anti-woman kind anybody can imagine. It seems like there is now a re-incarnation of that woman-hating sex specialist. (Or is it the same person? I don’t want to believe there could be two of them prowling the world, dispensing their sexual wisdom.)

Thank you, dear Cliff Arroyo, for this great link. And just out of curiosity, how is it possible for a blog that has exactly 2 posts to have 296 followers? If somebody tells me this blogger is a bot, that will be a relief.

College Misery has a hilarious thread going on where people have to answer the following questions:

When did you lose your naive and dewy eyed view of the profession? When did you lose your academic innocence?

The answers are priceless. This one, in particular, almost made me weep with laughter:

Let’s see…I think it was on my last couple of years as a grad student, when I suddenly understood I was completely on my own. Not in the sense of being responsible for anything that happened in my career (or didn’t happen), but in the stronger sense that the people around me–advisor, department, research group, fellow graduate students–were all completely indifferent to whether I stayed in the profession or was never heard from again. That’s the reality of the career, maybe every career. The Universe does.not.care

The poor baby realized it was necessary to grow up. How totally tragic.

For some people, however, even that realization is yet to happen. Here is an example of somebody who is still sore over some grade he got a bizillion years ago:

I lost my innocence while I was still an undergrad, in my 4th year. At the end of term profs put the marks for all of the assignments, midterm & exam, on the course bulletin board (yes, this was before the Internet et al., and this was how profs “communicated” with students about a course). In the “final mark” column I noticed an enumeration error. A really big one. So, I went to the prof’s office, introduced myself, handed him a handwritten copy of my marks, and noted the error. The prof’s face drained of colour, and he angrily sputtered out “This is a big change. So I actually have to fill out paperwork to get your grade changed. DO YOU REALIZE HOW MUCH FUCKING PAPERWORK YOU ARE MAKING ME DO???”

It’s very heartening to see people who have experienced no greater tragedy that a grade mess-up during their BA.

Of course, I’m yet to lose my “naive and dewy eyed view of the profession,” so I’m biased. I’m also in a playful mood today, so let’s not take this post too seriously.