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Archive for the ‘feminism’ Category

We took a walk tonight. Sand came in through the air-holes in the tops of my new shoes. I’d anticipated that, so I didn’t wear them for the beach part of the walk, but then there was unexpected sand.

We saw a Komfort branded travel trailer and decided if we ever took to the road in comfort, we would call it our “CumFort”. At the time it seemed really funny.

I have heartburn right now which is really annoying because I haven’t eaten anything deliciously bad for me today. It doesn’t actually burn, it’s just like a heavy lump of mild pain in between my back and the middle of my chest. Like if you could swallow it down it would turn into an ass-ripping turd the size and shape of a small cannonball.

Then it was dusk and we heard music and decided to investigate. There was only one number left so they let us in for free. We were exactly where I like to be: on the periphery, behind the partitions, peering through little windows. The stage was full of men with their instruments, and when they started playing them I felt like crying (don’t worry; I feel like crying about everything I like sometimes). They all took turns making their math sounds with their mouths and breaths and hands and hammers, and I could move around a little without being obnoxious because of where we were, on the edge in the back. It was beautiful and every voice was different and “special” and all of that shit, like the little guy with the silk pants and baritone sax got the most cheers next to the guy playing vibes. That made me want to play vibes too, not because he got the most cheers but because I’ve always wanted to if always means for the past 16 years. But there’s not even room for my piano in the new house and I hardly ever play it anyway so whatever.

When Delia found a ten dollar bill in the pocket of her vest she hasn’t worn in awhile, I immediately thought ICE CREAM CONES, but then I remembered I’m not eating that kind of thing. At least not today. Now that I have heartburn I resent not having the ice cream. Found money in my head LOOKS like a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy with some salty bloody meat on the side or ice cream or salt ‘n vinegar chips in bed plus chocolate cake and three different beverages.

There were 10, 20, 30 . . . probably 40 people on that stage. Every single one of them was a man, talking their math language to each other, showing off their chops. I loved it, but I get sick and tired of people not giving a shit about how obvious it is that something’s wrong and acting like we’re assholes for noticing it. That isn’t why I felt like crying, though. I felt like crying because I loved it/them. It just would have been nice if there were even ONE FUCKING WOMAN up there. I would like to see more stages filled with ten, twenty, thirty women or more. But I guess then they’d all start talking at once and smiling and hugging and ruining the whole thing? I don’t know what the problem is, I just know that there is one. And it has something to do with Amy Winehouse . . .

I dreamt of a crowded seniors-only trailer park vacation spot where we went to get away from it all but then we were in my grandma and grandpa’s trailer or something (note: in real life my grandpa is dead and they never lived in a trailer park). I had to pee but every bathroom I went to was full of specialty handicapped nursing home toilets with heightened elevator-seats made of yellowed plastic, and equipment like stainless steel rails, hoses, sprayers, etc. I didn’t want to sit on any of them and a frustrated old black man (I think he was sort of like my dad, who was a deeply tanned Irish in real life but not black) was chasing me (slowly, with a hobble) out of his bathroom(s) that were for him to use, not me.

I came into a bedroom with a hospital bed. My grandma was in it, sort of gyno-exam style, with two female assistants handing her implements on a tray. My old old grandma had a pair of tongs or forceps, a long piece of sinew or thick brown dental floss or something and different needles to thread it through, and a scary circle of metal she was fashioning into a clamp (diameter: between a nickel and quarter). She was in pain but focused on the task at hand which was customizing the thin metal circle to act as a cinch on her cervix to keep everything inside. One of the women held a mirror between her legs and I was horrified by how painful this procedure was going to be for my grandma who apparently had to do it every night before bed and try to sleep with a sharp metal clip digging into the tender flesh of her insides.

A cat jumped up on the bed and its tail swished against the implements. I expressed concern over this, worrying that the implements weren’t sterile and Grandma would get an infection. She brushed me off and prepared to reach into her vagina and pinch off her loosely-gaping cervix. I saw hair and blood on gauze. I protested to one of the nurses “what about rubber or silicone or something softer . . .” as the nurse just shook her head, letting me know that YES, there were alternatives to all of this daily torture but the medical community didn’t care about my grandma. They had bigger fish to fry.

Then an overweight trailer-parky lady won an opportunity to confront the HEAD of the doctors. We walked into his operating theatre where she started yelling at him about what my grandma had to endure and that he had the power to help her and stop withholding the special silicone rings.

He looked at me with utter disdain as he snapped on latex gloves and reminded me that we need to think about the soldiers on the front lines and THAT was what he cared about and how dare I be so selfish when there is a war going on. The men, the heroes, the stupid stupid women crying about their soft trivial cunts, lying in cozy beds. I couldn’t get the words out about how she couldn’t possibly sleep, the agony she was in. I wondered how he could treat us this way when she’d won the contest; how could he humiliate the winner on national television and not even LISTEN? Did this happen to all of the winners in their confrontations? Maybe it was my fault for being there with her. Maybe my presence made it null and void.

We were loud and fat and the other doctors in scrubs didn’t even look at us. I felt ashamed. Our place in the world and the futility of struggling against it was very very clear to me then. We were the cats contaminating the sterile atmosphere, endangering the lives of the heroes and progress in the war just by distracting them with our voices, needs and complaints. Stupid and selfish.

*****

Not a dream: my cousin died of cancer at the end of April and I never cared much one way or the other whether we were to kill Osama or not. But I do seem to care how and that even though I see people talking about it, I haven’t randomly seen anybody worrying about us killing his “human-shield”/wife or killing three of Qaddafi’s grandCHILDREN-under-twelve. I know this is nothing unusual, “good” guys killing kids and other civilians and apparently only the stupidest of idealistic bleeding heart peacenik liberals would question whether or not its worth it to the point where I had to google it to see whether or not I dreamed that, too, since it seems to be a matter of so little concern that I haven’t seen any mention of these murders in my social network though I HAVE seen plenty of OBL talk. It seems pretty obvious that we (as a general population) don’t consider those kids human or valuable or much of anyone to mourn. WE’RE FUCKING HEROES BLAAAAAHHHH! Do you feel safer now? I don’t. Not at all. I don’t believe anybody is safer anywhere; there is no army or bomb we can trust not to kill kids and the other people we pretend we’re helping. BUT OH MY GOD WOMEN WHO HAVE ABORTIONS SHOULD GO TO JAIL (if you google the Qaddafi grandchildren story get a load of how few stories even MENTION these kids were under twelve – not that if they were thirteen or over it would be a-okay, it’s just hilarious when the pro-”life”rs don’t seem to mind these things, but sucking out a blob of cells is MURDER)!! Fuck the world.

So I’m kind of depressed and just want to watch Star Trek, that much-ridiculed series of shows that actually has a fucking moral compass. What would Jean Luc Picard do? None of this bullshit, that’s for sure. Though the whole Robin Hood redistribution of Qaddafi’s wealth plan sounds sort of cool. Definitely a Captain Janeway kind of move.

Note: I am not writing this to change people’s minds or get in arguments or anything, I’m simply sharing my feelings with those who are curious. Because this is my blog. I understand why some people have different feelings and perspectives on this/these issues.

Also, I feel much better after sitting on this post for a day. I’ll try to post something more jolly soon, I just wanted to make a record of this nightmare.

While we drove towards the woods along the water, that song came into my head and I started singing it:

Know Where to Run To, Baby

Know Where to Hide . . . .

It’s not a favorite song of mine and nobody I grew up around was “into” that sixties Motown girl group music. I don’t know any of the rest of the words . . . none of them. Even though I’m sure I’ve heard that song all the way through a bunch of times. And my whole life until three days ago I completely mistook the meaning of the words I thought I heard. It was just on that drive, randomly singing it to myself, that I realized she’s saying “NOWHERE to run to, baby . . . NOWHERE to hide.”

All of this time I thought she was a very savvy woman, entreating me and other girls to always know how to get away from someone, to always have a secret place to lay low the way she does. I thought she was smugly proclaiming her wily escape artistry. Like, “you should know where to run to, baby . . . I sure as fuck do.”

I feel depressed now. Oh well. I guess the snow chain percussion threw me . . .

The curious part to me is why all of a sudden I should be able to hear the difference between “know where” and NOWHERE. Why did it dawn on me now? And the amazing/hopeful part to me is that it can take years, but people really can learn things you thought they were incapable of understanding.

Now if someone would just write and sing the song I thought I was hearing all along . . .

I loved this song when I was, what, eleven years old? I loved the sound of it and the message was alluring, too, even if most of the words and allusions were beyond my ken. The invisible man in drag?

The video really doesn’t look familiar to me watching it now as a grown-up so I doubt it played a role in my developing appreciation for fetish (EDIT: actually I’ll bet I *did* see it on Night Tracks; we didn’t have MTV until years later), but the eighties seemed so much more fertile for that kind of thing than the 90’s and now the unsubtle yet even more repressed new century. Spandex! Stepping on toothpaste tubes in heels! Upskirts! Aggressive arm waving! Women shaving their faces! GLOVES!!

Guys in 80’s music videos seemed to want to wear makeup like us and be dominated by us and liked it when we were all weird and bossy and mercurial. And had strong prominent jawlines above their shoulder-padded triangular torsos. In that respect, it was a magical time to grow up. There were no lesbians depicted on tv yet, but there was Jo on Facts of Life and VIDEOS made it seem like being grown-up would be fun in a dramatic minor key with razor sharp cheekbones everywhere.

Have you noticed us getting up earlier and going to sleep sooner on our cams? That’s (partly) because starting September 3rd I’m going to get up early to head over to the cabin we’re (good news!) officially renting to do off-cam no-internet work sans distractions. Normally I quickly grow disgusted with a morning-person routine, but now it seems totally different knowing there’s a purpose to it.

It rained heavily on Thursday. If I hadn’t gotten up at seven in the morning, excited about the possibilities of such early rising once the cabin time begins, I’d have never known there was any blue sky to be had that day. I’d have missed seeing this moon:

Blessing Bestowed from the West

There’s a place – a real live place – where women artists can apply for residencies. Actually, there are lots of places like that, where those kinds of people can get free lodging in inspiring locations to focus on their work, but the one I’m thinking of is SUPER DREAMY . . . fucking storybook-land perfection in terms of its tiny private artfully-crafted houses (each resident has one all to herself) and woodland setting.

Most shockingly dreamy of all is the way the women are catered to; the small handful of residents (women, all of them!) have a chef who prepares crazily wonderful dinners for them every night. There are pictures proving how thoroughly stocked the kitchen is with racks of zillions of containers of spices and rows of carefully labeled provisions and specialized pots and pans used to make what appears to be an ABUNDANCE of food every night just for these six or seven women. Meats and comforts and fresh green things and berries and sauces and fanciness and desserts and lots of colors and textures on big plates and side dishes.

On top of all that, the chef ALSO prepares individual baskets for each resident full of her favorite foods to help sustain her throughout the day while she works in her perfect little house. And there’s a garden full of plants someone else tends that each resident gets to pluck and cut flowers and leafy things from. FOR INSPIRATION AND SHIT!

I know that being there wouldn’t be actual utopia, but it does provide a model to ooh and aah over. I think it’s awesome that a very teeny-tiny percentage (wish it were more) of talented women in the world get to experience opportunities like that, to be told that their own self-directed art is so valuable as to warrant a few days . . . maybe even a whole month(!) . . . of concentrating on nothing BUT the work she most wants to do and that she will be sheltered and reliably fed to delicious excess if she likes so she can take care of her work while someone else takes care of her basic needs with sensual generosity.

Same time as picture above, but looking 80 degrees to the south.

What an exquisite fantasy! But it seems so decadent, like I know that I personally could never warrant such treatment. It’s a nice daydream but it actually makes me nervous to think about having such a giant privilege bestowed upon me. I’m nervous enough about the idea of renting this cabin, feeling like I need to prove that I “deserve” it. That I’m worth blowing more money on when I already have so much.

And then I remember that my grandma made my grandpa dinner every night to his specifications. Dished it up and brought it out to him. It wasn’t fancy, but she SERVED him. And every day she fixed him a box lunch even on the days when he was only working in his garage out back, a one minute shuffle away from the back door. I know times have changed, but when I was growing up I never fucking once saw a man prepare and serve a grown woman food. NEVER ONCE outside of restaurants (which I rarely saw) and pancake breakfasts at the Masonic Lodge where it was a wonderful novelty to see the men with aprons on, coming out to the long tables to pour coffee and bring us our hotcakes.

It wasn’t just my family that was like that. Most people my age and older grew up seeing men (and children) waited on at home and women NOT.  I suppose gender-blind egalitarianism is the ideal I should desire (and I do in some ways) but part of me needs to experience the balance of intimate privilege tipped dramatically towards women to undo what I learned by watching. I wasn’t brought up to BE that kind of woman who waits on men — not at all; I wasn’t taught with words to do it  — but that’s what all the women in my family DID to one extent or another and the men DID NOT. You have to be crazy to think that kind of learning is something you can just erase with your intellect when you grow up or even along the way with words of “you-go-girl” encouragement.

Looks promising upwards and eastwards

Even though I never grew up wanting to be a woman who takes care of a man, once I outgrew the entitlement of childhood I came to FEEL that having someone take care of me wasn’t something I deserved or could expect the way a man in my grandparents’ and parents’ generations could and that the only way to live my life just-so, to my specifications, was to live alone. I didn’t think this on a conscious level, but I think the past ten years (and then some) of webwhoring have involved more conscious efforts to recognize and reconcile this conflict; I want to work — to do MY work and do it MY WAY — and have someone else take care of the housekeeping and cooking. For my work to be the most important thing I do and everything else to be relegated to the distraction pile which I should be able to demand someone else pick up and put away. To believe that my work is so important that I should be angry and frustrated when I do not have the tools or environment to do it properly. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT MEN OLDER THAN I AM GREW UP EXPECTING AND DOING. And so what if their work wasn’t important or they would bankrupt the family with their business schemes? You didn’t fucking criticize the work, jobs or dreams of men. You just didn’t unless you wanted to be the evil villainous bitch in the story.

I shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting to have as many places to do my work alone as my grandpa did: a garage, a basement, a toolshed, a closet where he kept his Black Velvet and other private treasures, and a windowless office he hardly went into that nobody else was allowed into that was always at least 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. My grandma didn’t have any place in her house that was her own like that, just like my mom didn’t have a special place in our tiny house for herself like my stepdad had a whole room for his model train. And if Grandma fucked up some shit in the kitchen Grandpa would go ballistic on her ass. So I guess maybe I SHOULD feel guilty about wanting all that man-privilege since being an abusive asshole came with the territory. I don’t know. But on Friday morning I’m going to work alone in the cabin AND I CAN HARDLY WAIT!!

Also? I’ve drafted a new personal ad for a slavey-houseboy type. Not putting it up for awhile though as that’s a whole time-consuming process in itself. I also keep wanting to blog more about how going to college totally distorted my idea of money and assessing the worth of an investment in myself, perhaps making me approach financial risk-taking in a more “manly” way than I would have otherwise.

More morning moon pics to come?

*****

So. I don’t anticipate members and fans seeing a noticeable change in focus on our sites because of this and will probably see more exciting stuff on cam rather than less since we have to cam more to pay for everything. One of the good things (in terms of “earning” my cabin keep) is it’s already making me more disciplined and focused in how I prioritize things, clarifying what needs to come first (which is really REALLY challenging when you have boatloads of everything to do and have an easily-overwhelmed mind like mine). Right now at the top of the list is simply getting ahead on shooting and getting updates lined up, so that’s what I’m going to get back to work on right now.

I didn’t do it on purpose, but I took some of these pics at exactly 2:28 am in 2/28. Technically, I took them at 2:28 on 3/1 but I don’t switch the day in my head until after I’ve fallen asleep.

Full Moon, February 28th 2010, 2:28 am

I intended to post these images of the crone moon along with a tribute to pianist Martha Argerich and wax on about the furious potency of certain women as they age, and that I have never seen or felt any man hold a candle to a woman like her. Maybe I was going to write about how watching her almost makes me believe in a pantheon of goddesses. I think I might have intended to use her as just one example of why feminism is still relevant to me: that women of talent, of fury, of power, and of age are so invisible to us and when we do notice them, they’re despised and/or part of a fetishized niche: curiosities collected by people with very special interests.

Triple Goddess in the form of YouTubed Martha:

I’m not somebody who believes the only way to celebrate age is to exhibit disgust for those who are enchanted and aroused by youth, I just think think the imbalance of visibility and admiration is grotesquely skewed to a point that pains and mystifies me. I want MOREMOREMORE grey hair and widened wisdom and that patient look of years of practice you can see in Martha’s eyes. Like she could summon up thunderbolts and DESTROY YOU in the blink of an eye and go right back to playing with smoking fingertips except that destroying you would be a waste of her time so maybe she’d just wink and shuffle off to mist her orchids and you’d know that she knows exactly how many pounds of bullshit you’re full of.

The mastery of older women. I want to be surrounded by that and bow before it at least once a week. Towards that end I seem to be in certain kinds of love with a stout greying-haired dyke with twinkling eyes who told me about oxytocin and makes me want to beg her take me golfing. Even with ten other people in the room listening to her I feel like she’s talking directly to me and I’m drifting towards her, ready for our bosoms to melt into each other. You know that feeling like you’re RIGHT ABOUT TO KISS SOMEONE even though she’s halfway across the room? I can imagine breathing our mouths into a soft little seal where she could magically keep talking, ministering to me, reeling me into a quiet place removed from everyone else’s noise where I could even become blissfully deaf to myself. Every time I see her now I can feel it, melting into her at the mouth and the chest and the belly. I don’t think I’ll do anything about it because I’m pretty sure she has cats (or A cat, at least, of course) and I’m too young and scattered to waste her time with my crushing, but a somewhat-younger woman can dream. And melt and drift and submit.

February Full Moon Dancing

I didn’t get around to digitally memorizing the most recent full moon in March, but I was CLOSE with a camcorder in a windstorm at night while clouds raced across her wake of light without losing any speed. And then there were too many of them and only my eyes could appreciate the glimmers of shine that were still visible from down here on the ground.

*****

Note: I hate the words “pics” and “vids”, but those abbreviations work really well and are more popular search terms, so I stick them in my blog entry titles anyway (also to alert folks following my RSS feed that it’s a multimedia entry and maybe worthier of a click-through).

Once upon a time in the eighties I read a story in Cosmo about a woman who got stuck on a plane sitting next to a guy who whipped out a porn magazine in flight, putting her in a Very Uncomfortable Position.

There was a pretty good piece in The Washington Post about the same thing happening with porn on mobile devices (stupid WP makes you have a login to read, sorry). Normally most coverage of publicly-consumed porn is really biased and weird, but they did an okay job of it: TECHNOLOGY INCREASES CHANCES TO SEE PORN IN PUBLIC.

Listen. I will defend every adult’s right to buy porn, to make porn, and to think whatever taboo sexual thoughts they want, but when you shove it into someone else’s face, you’re sexually assaulting them. You are forcing them to engage in a sexual encounter with you and your fucking porn without their consent. Is it to the same degree as actually jacking off on them on a plane or frottaging(sp?) them on a train or taking your own dick out and shaking it at them? Of course not (and I totally understand FANTASIZING about doing all of those things or FANTASIZING about those things happening to you), but I personally would press charges against someone who did that next to me. It’s unacceptable.

Of course, I say these things having been resentful at times when I wanted to pull up a NSFW blog or my own site when we’ve been on the road and in internet cafes and had to limit myself or do a lot of alt+tabbing, but that’s a far cry from the guy in the story who started watching hardcore, audible porn with not only the woman right next to him, but HER KIDS, too. The thought of it honestly makes my blood boil and my imagination to immediately go to a place in my head where I’m kicking this man’s teeth in and beating him about the head with his fucking laptop.

The shocking part to me is how many people (let’s face it, mostly MEN) think they’re entitled to publicly entertain their dicks wherever and whenever they want. How can you POSSIBLY think that’s okay? AND WHY ARE THEY GETTING AWAY WITH IT? Frankly I think we’re all obligated to publicly humiliate (to an extent that goes beyond what some of them are probably after in the first place) and legally dog these idiots.

Is there a grey area where I’d be more forgiving? Yeah. I know sometimes when you’re rowdy with another person at dinner or something you might flash some pictures on your cell phone at your buddy and someone might see it from a distance, but when your bubble is touching a stranger’s bubble either physically or audibly, you just do NOT insert sex into said stranger’s bubble. If you’re many seats away from anybody and nobody can HEAR your porn, I think that’s less of a big deal. If you make a valiant effort to hide it when someone approaches, I think that’s okay. And personally I wouldn’t care if someone masturbated next to me on a plane as long as they didn’t expose themselves or touch me or make eye contact with me and they did their best to hide it.

I think that I’ve masturbated under a blanket on a plane just to relax so I don’t know . . . maybe I’m drawing my lines in very subjective ways. I know I’ve had conversations in restaurants that were really graphic, loud, and could easily have made people uncomfortable but I think I’ve never done that with kids around. I hope not, anyway. Plus, I *love* listening to other people have conversations like that. UNLESS it’s guys talking trash about women or anybody calling people names. I have been known to ream people out for that. But it’s still different to talk about a sexual encounter and have people overhear you than start HAVING a sexual encounter with your porn and force people near you to have it with you, whether you intend to or not. And when your loud conversation disparages and insults people it’s kind of the same thing; you’ve drawn total strangers into your bullshit in a hurtful way.

I’ve also been known to have very noisy sex in apartments and not been modest at all about closing curtains when I’m naked or fucking in my own home to the point where I’ve been chastised by property managers and I don’t think people should have to be quiet in the summer when they’re fucking with the windows open to let in cool air at night (god, I love that sound). But I still think that’s different — there are walls, even though they’re penetrable and rendered mostly symbolic, that symbolism is something every civilized person should be able to recognize that establishes distance and literally marks the boundaries of what’s inside and private and what’s out. It’s an entirely different thing, however, if you stand in your window or  your yard making eye contact with schoolgirls as you’re masturbating. That is ENGAGING people and forcing them to participate in your scene. NOT OKAY. Same with listening to loud extreme porn where a neighbor or passerby could hear the sounds of people in pain or engaging in kinky roleplays (I wish I could find the link to a story about someone calling the police on his neighbor because it sounded like he was raping/killing a woman when in actuality he was “just” watching violent porn for hours at high volume). On the other hand, I think it’s perfectly allright for people to masturbate in their cars on their lunch breaks or whatever, with or without porn, as long as they’re not standing up through their sunroof and ejaculating on their windshield or making whatever they’re doing and/or watching visible to people close by.

Then of course I have to admit I’ve exposed myself in public places, mostly for pictures but sometimes just for the pure fun of it. Again, I’m worried that I have a double standard even though I’m 99% *convinced* that when I’ve done it it was DIFFERENT . . . safe and wholesome even when sexually suggestive. Somehow I just don’t believe a nude Trixie is threatening or dangerous or harmful, and I especially don’t think anything is “assault” if you are in a park or something but attempting to be discreet and someone stumbles upon you. If you’re lurking in some bushes, though, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to come along so you can expose yourself to them, then THAT is fucked up. I have masturbated in a library, but I didn’t *want* to be caught, so that makes it okay, right? I mean, I would have been mortified if I’d gotten caught! But for some reason I feel perfectly content telling everyone about it, even my friends only an hour after the fact.

So what about the way I have explicit nudity and sometimes sex acts on the front page of some of my sites (like this blog) without a warning page? Is that just as bad? Of course, I still think that’s different. Is it just because it’s ME and what I want to do? I don’t think so. People who don’t want to see porn can block my sites and I have also added metatags to make it easy for my pages to be identified as adult. Also, I’m not SITTING DOWN next to strangers in public places and making them watch and listen to movies of me masturbating and fucking. Anyone who sees me online still has the control to close their browser.

Then again, I’ve taken my top off on a hot day when driving in heavy traffic. I still had my bra on, but I *so* wanted to take it off and felt very irritated that I could get in trouble for that. I still do. I don’t know how anyone could have a problem with rush hour boobs. Or rush hour masturbating. Just don’t LEER at people, you know?

*****

The whole time I’ve been writing this, comparing these different scenarios, I’ve been torn. I want to be honest with myself and challenge myself to think critically about whether or not my boundaries and judgments are consistent, correct and safe BUT I wonder if by doing that publicly, I’m letting everyone off the hook and confusing issues that are actually very clear.

I could mull this over all night, about how it’s different to shove sex in someone’s unwilling face in a confined space versus being off-trail in a state park giving a pal a handjob when someone stumbles upon you and you quickly try to cover up and the other people are easily able to turn around and go the other way. I could sit here and list all of the reasons why it’s BEYOND inconsiderate to make other people watch/listen to porn (and why it’s especially wrong, I’m afraid to admit [and simultaneously uncomfortable with my hesitation to boldly say], when a MAN does this to a WOMAN and/or kids).

*****

Confession: some of the phone sex calls I’ve taken and gotten off to hardest were from guys with this “problem”, or who at least fantasized about acting on those urges. Guys jerking off in their apartments watching the girls walk home from school in short skirts. Guys jacking off in the parking lot and exposing themselves to their coworkers and other ladies just trying to drive away. Guys sitting in internet cafes with hardons.  I mean, pretty much all of the stuff I get off to hardest is taboo stuff I’d never want to happen in real life.

So how do I feel (almost) completely comfortable saying that if I caught somebody doing these things in real life I’d kick in their teeth, BUT when someone confesses it to me on the phone I just coyly call them naughty, FEIGN shock and disgust, and furiously masturbate myself to orgasm?

I don’t think I’m (a big) part of the problem, but I know a lot of people would beg to differ.

*****

The Washington Post article kind of blows off this behavior as just “too much information” or “socially inappropriate” or shaped by our mobile device culture making people self-absorbed, inconsiderate shitholes (TRUE), but I still think it’s much more sinister and criminal than that in ways that the men MIGHT not get (or totally DO get and that’s part of the thrill). And fuck if I have the patience to explain it right now. Let me know if you want me to, though, and/or if you have some links to people who already have and/or if you want to take a stab at it yourself.

It boggles my mind how I can peck out this many words and still leave so many dangerous gaps.

I went on a google adventure and discovered a guy who loves enormous clits and uses the word “hermaphrodite” to describe women endowed with them. That’s his definition of hermaphrodite: women with prominent clits. It was all worth being exposed to his weird-ass opinion, though, because I got to see a photo of Linda Might, “The Queen of Clits”, who I’d never heard of before.

Jesus, I’d love to have myself a three-inch clitoris.

Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about all of this hermaphrodite bullshit and wishing I could grasp EXACTLY what is so fucked up about these rumours (and people’s responses to them) and articulate that fucked-upedness accurately.

I can’t stop thinking about being in our local candle store and hearing three people engaged in a discussion about Ann Coulter in which one person “informed” the other two that Coulter was “born a man”. Yeah, she’s a tranny! The two women gasped, one declared she’d always SUSPECTED as much, the other asked if he was SURE . . . and he WAS. He was SO FUCKING SURE. He insisted it was true. He backed it up with things he’d heard on Air America.

I wanted to interrupt and tell them they were wrong, but went home to check JUST IN CASE. Because there also seems to be something wrong with just ASSUMING those tales are false. Is it a growing acceptance/awareness (or heightened fear/paranoia/continued ignorance) of transgender that fuels these bullshit stories? Is it just a contemporary expression of misogyny / new way to express or justify hatred and disgust of genetic women people find contemptible or disturbingly sexy (ex. Jamie Lee Curtis)? Maybe, but there’s a weird ambiguity about the way a lot of people talk about these urban legends, like teenagers who WANT to believe in ghosts. One part wishful thinking, one part pure bullshit, and another part pure fear.

Standing in the store I mostly just listened even though they said some stupid shit that made me want to say, “HEY — my girlfriend is transsexual; maybe you should watch what kind of moronic crap you let stream out of your mouth in front of strangers.” Instead I called the store after I got home and verified that the Ann Coulter as Tranny story IS INDEED a myth, told them WRONG. But that seemed to miss the point, too. Even if she HAD been born with a dick, that doesn’t explain her away or make sense of her. That knowledge, if it were true and we could attain it, wouldn’t somehow put her in her place the way people seem to want it to.

Oh well. I’m sure more brilliant minds than mine have got this sorted out and published somewhere with a lot of fancy words and complicated double-talk that will never do anything to help make the average American get it. Someday maybe it will all get straightened out, but in the meantime women-who-confuse-us are the new Richard Geres and Rod Stewarts, with bellies full of cow semen and hamsters up the ass. The tabloids have proof that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake, and we think if only someone would publish that photo of an infant Ann Coulter sporting a pre-op malignant penis, we could win this argument!.

As a feminist and a sex positive person I probably should DESPISE Twilight, but I don’t. I read the book (and only the first one so far) because it takes place near here and I saw the movie because the previews made it look way better than the book . . . I felt compelled by curiosity, local interest, a desire to know more about a pop culture phenom, and because I TOTALLY WANTED TO.

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The book? Meh. It was entertaining, mildly annoying from a local’s perspective, and mind-boggling since I wouldn’t have STOOD for so many pages of overt chastity when I was a tween reader myself in the eighties. A sign of the conservative times, I guess; I am DAMN glad I grew up with Judy Blume’s Ralph-named penises and totally taboo rape scenes in Flowers in the Attic.

The movie? LOVED IT. I mean, I seriously fucking LOVED it. The previews drew me in because it looked dark and funny (there wasn’t a trace of self-aware humor in the book, so that was an improvement already) and I wanted to see the flying scenes. It was just an all-around great movie-theater movie — pretty, entertaining, moody . . . familiar.

Here’s the deal about Twilight: no matter how loathsome it may be from a political point of view, that movie (and the book for other people) delivers exactly what a lot of young women crave and feel romantically. It’s extremely exciting and beautiful and “sexy” in a vague, inexplicit, totally hysterically emotional way. Beautiful boy looks at beautiful girl and they are CONNECTED, locked together . . . anticipating . . . SOMETHING totally INTENSE!!!!

You can criticize that all you want, but when you do, you’re trashing the (natural) fantasies of lots and lots of young woman. When I watched that movie I really didn’t care what the implications were, I cared that it DELIVERED visions of something deeply desired by girls. After you finally kiss? Something very exciting happens, kind of like exploding into a flying spell into the sky!! Yeah, it’s fucking stupid, but that overwrought anticipation of something that gobbles you up entirely and transcends the mundane is part of most young women’s hormonal pre-teen/teenage experience. What’s next isn’t sex, it’s MAGIC!!

I had orgasms and the anticipation of sex on the brain a lot as a young woman and I *probably* wouldn’t have liked that movie as much then as I do now (my generation’s Twilight was Legend, which I thought was a enchanting for two minutes then a total fucking bore except for when Tim Curry as the devilish dark beasty was going to do whatever dirty things he was going to do to Mia Sara), but I still had to celebrate it for being pure fore-fore-foreplay and girly fantasy with pretty menacing shadows.

In general I’m becoming less and less tolerant of myself and other people making fun of what women want or theorizing that the politically incorrect, unempowering things women want are *entirely* constructed for us artificially. There is nothing fake about girls wanting to fly around on the back of a strong beautiful sparkly vampire boy’s back or to be a vampire and run-really-really-fast/fly themselves (I haven’t read the rest of the books so I don’t know if she eventually gets there or not, but clearly there are OTHER female characters who do).

I don’t know why it should make people cringe that girls want to immerse themselves in the fantasy of being in tragic love with such a creature or that the public version of this particular popular story is g-rated (except for the violence, of course — this IS America, after all). Personally? I watch a lot of porn but there were scenes in this movie that were five billion times more agonizingly erotic than anything XXX rated ever could hope to be. It was a brilliant fucking tease, and there’s nothing hotter than having no release. I don’t give a fuck about the stammering heroine and her shortcomings; she’s a blank slate and nobody else cares much about her either because it’s a fucking FANTASY. Do girls really need a fucking role model in every single fantasy they have or are they entitled to be thrilled and entertained and suspend contact with reality just like everyone else? I also *almost* don’t care about the scariness of fantasizing about a creepy stalker boyfriend who sneaks into your room at night and stares at you while you sleep; yes, it’s totally gross and weird and dangerous. But a lot of us have had that same exact unrealistic fantasy and it made us feel good (in more ways than one). That? It’s human nature. And I’m sick of women being shamed and cautioned into censoring their own fantasies because we’re apparently too stupid to distinguish between fantasy and reality. IT’S A STORY ABOUT VAMPIRES. Can we tell reality and consequences to fuck off for a little while?

If anyone wants to post relevant links like feminist critiques of Twilight, etc. feel free. I honestly have clicked off of just about all of them without giving them the time they probably deserve simply because I’m not in the mood for dissecting it, but I totally understand if other people are (and that my “arguments” are ill-informed and based totally on suspicions and raw emotion). One of the good ones I clicked off of made interesting observations regarding the popularity of abstinence-only sex “education” and Twilight. I don’t know why I’m just not in the mood to care a whole lot this time around (I was certainly pissed enough about The Girl with a Pearl Earring that I almost walked out of the theatre) unless it’s as I said above; that girls deserve to have their desires spoken to and to enjoy their daydreamy fantasies regardless of how unrealistic and bizarre and dangerous they might be. So yeah — *I’m* not very interested in getting into a discussion about it in comments, but I totally understand why others might be so more info and other people’s perspectives and discussions are still welcome.