[thechat] Mostly (was: Handling a knife like a pro) (was: Cooked carrots)

[Judah McAuley]

Erik Mattheis wrote:
>> If you're planning to participate in a*al ri*ng, since you should have a
>> fairly wide piece of latex, ala a dental dam, or a big swatch of Saran
>> Wrap over your arse, this isn't an issue. See? Safer sex education in
>> action.
>
>
> Aw, that takes all the FUN out of it! I could achieve the same effect
> with saran wrap, a cantaloupe and microwave oven.

Suffice to say, an aroused, writhing human being and a microwaved
cantaloupe are not the same thing.  Not even close.

> Would you disagree that the majority of sex-related distresses stem
> from a thought "I can't let myself feel this way / I don't deserve
> this", etc? People that are afraid of commitment think they don't
> deserve commitment from another, people that are freaked out about
> being attracted to their own sex care more about their
> parent's/society's/whatever's image of them than their image of
> themselves ... etc. etc. I'd bet my bottom dollar that most (a BIG most
> of) sexual hang ups go hand in hand with generally putting the approval
> of others over approving of one's self.

I would argue that this is certainly a big part of things, but not all
of it.  Gaining your own self approval is a big step toward having a
healthy life and relationship, but self censorship is a big deal as
well.  Society projects a number of images that can't be tracked down to
a parent/lover/teacher etc.  Those images get internalized and form a
set of barriers that define what is acceptable to consider.  The fear of
disapproval from others takes place inside that sphere.  By challengine
the social forces involved in sexuality we can not only tackle the issue
of self approval, we can also break down the artificial barriers that
help define what is considerable within the realm of sexuality.

>> Oh, yeah, dude. Porn for women is just so mainstream (not)
>
>
> So you're advocating that woman use porn? To what end? Most of my
> female friends use porn ... most of them prose ... I think it's because
> I run with a crowd that generally is comfortable with pursuing whatever
> it is they feel like, not because they heed any taboo ... a caveat, I
> do admit I'm an elitist ... however from everyone below me, I think
> they'd be better off if someone taught them to accept their stupidity
> rather than become comfortable using porn.

I'd advocate everyone who wants to use porn ought to use porn.  I'm not
sure if "use" is the right word though.  Partake of?  Daly in?
Regardless, I think that naked people are neat.  I like sex.  I like
naked people having sex.  I like it when one of those people is me.  I
like it when all of those people are figments of my imagination,
projected onto pictoral, graphic, text, moving or otherwise
representations of people.  Other people like projecting these figments
onto non-humans.  Not my thing, but to each their own.  And to what end
you say?  Then same end as all sexuality: pleasure, enlightenment,
satisfaction, boredom, frustration, revenge, etc.

>>  and poly has been mentioned/portrayed/sung about in mass media about, oh, 50 times at
>> last glance at the running list of such sightings.
>
>
> Does "poly" mean simultaneously having multiple partners?

Not exactly.  Poly is short for Polyamory (see:
http://www.polyamory.org/)  Polyamory is a Greek/Latin bastardization
meaning "Many Loves".  It's a relationship style that emphasizes what I
like to call "responsible non-monogamy".  It explictly rejects the idea
that the only moral relationship style is monogamy but it does not
reject monogamy itself.  Poly points out that there aren't many cases of
true monogamy.  That is, people rarely have one single relationship for
life.  Most people are engaged in serial monogamy, being sexually
monogamous with a number of people one after the other.  The high
perponderance of cheating in supposedly monogamous relationships goes to
show that actual monogamy is even rarer.  Taking this as a starting
point, Polyamory posits that love is not a finite resource and that with
communication and understanding there are responsbile, moral ways to
maintain partnerships (sexual and otherwise) with multiple people.  It
argues that there is no fundamental reason that a person should be
"completed" by another person and that people are complex enough
creatures that they may have many different relationships with many
different people to fulfill their "whole person".  Of course this is an
idealistic portrayal and real relationships are much more convuluted.
But the basic idea is to resovle the fundamental conflict in
relationship by acknowledging the various forces at work and trying to
deal with them in a sensible way by elminating jealousy and emphasizing
communication.

> If so, I assume you are tacitly excluding country and rap music from
> the "mass media".
>
> As far as newspapers and TV news shows: this is not news because it's
> not news. Headlines like "Husband Has Multiple Lovers, Wife Files for
> Divorce" and "Circle of Gay Friends All Have Sex with Each Other and
> Everyone is Happy" only increase circulation for publications like The
> Onion.

I think that you are confusing cheating, swinging, and polyamory.
Cheating is a bad habit, swinging is a sex game, and poly is a
relationship style.  Cheating makes headlines, swinging pays for
newspaper ads, and poly isn't mentioned much.

>
> No, my thinking cap is firmly on and I assert that, "A Hollywood cliché
> goes 'Beginning as a shallow individual, our hero realizes that true
> love can not be predicted by that someone's  social status, sex,
> beauty, age, or anything else other than the person themselves just as
> they are.'"

As in Cinderella, Pretty Woman, etc.  The point that Sabrina was making
is that the object of affection (almost always a female) who is going to
"rise above her station" (which I believe was the plot in a recent
Jennifer Lopez film) is almost exclusively beautiful and young.  The
explicit story is that the hero can see something in the girl that no
one else around them can.  But the implicit story is that the audience
is clued in because they can already see that the girl (Cinderella,
Jennifer Lopez, Joey Lauren Adams, Julia Roberts) is beautiful.  Harold
and Maude was truly a fantastic movie because it rejected that
convention.  It also really grossed out a number of people.  It is
definitly an exception to the rule.

> <em>
> although an ocean lay between
> I feel her heartbeat as if
> it were my own saturated
> pulse of desire
> </em>
>
> That is the first poem I've written for anybody. Seriously. Took
> perhaps 15-20 seconds, like it was inside my heart my whole life just
> waiting to come out. I kinda think I was subconsciously thinking about
> my best friend's girlfriend and my own sister, though.

Nice poem.  Might want to have a chat with you friend and his girlfriend
though.  As for your sister, just remember that inbreeding is bad, but
the social consequences are even worse.

Judah