being the verbal contortions of a reluctant subgenius and recovering uberslacker

Tears of Compassion

2009-09-20T00:56:32Z

I mostly lost the ability to cry in the 90's (side-effect of Prozac, or just coincidence I don't know), but in the last couple of months I've shed a lot of tears while sitting in meditation. I get really opened up, and eventually I start feeling deep loving compassion for myself. That makes tears. Or I have a momentary glimpse of how much *everyone* is suffering due to the conditions of their mindbodies, and that makes tears. Or I see how strong and loving they are in the face of their suffering, and *that* makes tears.

They aren't exactly tears of sadness, and sometimes they are tears of love. When I do metta meditation ("may I be happy, strong, full of effort & compassion. May I find ways to share my happiness with others...") tears of beauty can fall.

Meditation is a strange practice. I sit on a cushion for an hour, and my mind parades its carnival-like garishness for 55 minutes. For 5 minutes the spectacle might slow down a bit and I become engrossed in watching the breath or bodily sensations. Perhaps for 5 or 10 seconds, if I'm lucky, all mental verbalization stops and it's just profoundly quiet. In short, I'm not particularly good at one-pointed concentration.

And yet the practice works. The ugly cognitive distortions of depression and anxiety lose a little force. Instead of the harsh language I sometimes use to address myself ("cunt, faggot": words I don't use on others even in extreme anger), I start addressing myself with love ("darling, I'm here for you"). I don't really do this consciously, and it's certainly not some kind of self-improvement trick. After trying to sit equanimously with my body sensation for long enough, love arises. My internal voice gentles.

For the most part, that love is still primarily self-directed. I have inklings of compassion towards others, but it's not easy for me yet to follow through on them. But I do recognize that my happiness is contingent on learning the dilligence to be strong and centered for others.

I cried during my August meditation retreat to think that I'd spend the next year and a half learning to skillfully touch people who are in pain. Learning to let the very flesh of my hands press down through skin and muscle and connective tissue, and help bring back circulation, un-set adhesions, stimulate hormones, and all the other physiological and emotional benefits of skilled touch. I started getting kindof attached to that idea of myself-as-healer till I saw the folly of it.

It's strange getting attached to the idea of being a massage therapist while practicing a meditative discipline that trains one to be cool towards bodily sensation. Much of the pain and fatigue I experienced while sitting up to 11 hours a day in meditation was due mental restlessness, and once I recognized this, the pain and fatigue transmuted into mild annoyances at worst.

Massage only treats at most an inch deep into the physical body (plus physiological after-effects), while the root/radical solution for alleviating physical and emotional pain seems to me neurological or psychological. Massage is a band-aid, and sometimes the wounds we try to cover require the mental equivalent of arterial cauterization. If not heart transplant.

Still, there is need for band-aids too, and there is need for feel-good touch. A lot of people don't get touched at all, let alone skillfully. It's fanciful egotism on my part to want to have deep healing impacts on people. It will suffice to merely touch them.

I've deferred massage school for a semester. I need to do more deep healing of myself first. I need to shed more tears on the meditation cushion, and learn to cultivate ardent habits of mindfulness and compassion. I will be spending the semester working at two meditation centers: one of SN Goenka's Vipassana centers and Stone Circles, a center for social justice activism and spiritual training.

I can feel so beautiful and empowered and full of potential when I sit in meditation with regularity. It's a wonder that I let my practice die these past two weeks, but I'm back. With a lot of help from a lot of people (authors I haven't met, one author I did meet, a meditation teacher who called me today, friends who themselves sit or have provided space for me to sit, the list is long...) I'm back on the cushion.

muffled murmers of isolation though gender-closet doors

2009-05-17T09:47:01Z

I just had two guys declare to me that they like to wrestle because they enjoy "boy contact" or "male bonding". One of them booked a wrestling session with me (which incidentally earned me the first $100 bill I've ever owned), and the other is a potential client who's been corresponding by email.

Other similarities between the two men are that they are both bi- (or gay), married to women, and seem to want to keep anything about wrestling secret from the wives. They also both profess to *not* want sensual wrestling. But either they want *some* sensuality, or they assure themselves of a homophobia-free partner by responding to adds in the M4M erotic services section.

What's going on I wonder? A friend who professionally does domination and domination-wrestling sessions said that it's pretty typical for a client to not really know what they want or how to ask for it. Is that because they are so deep in their various closets (gay/bi closet, kink closet, marriage closet, gender closet) that they don't even know what they are trying to pay for, but taking a leap of faith that it must somehow bring relief?

I'm don't anymore feel self-improsoned in these closets to anywhere near the same extent, so these men's experiences seem like something an alien species might experience. Hwo could you *not* tell the wife that you're bi-? That you like wrestling/martial arts/hula hooping/rock climbing, or any other activity that she's not into? That you want to negotiate around possibilities for various forms of play (in all senses of the word) outside of the marriage dyad?

Why do straight and straight-cultured bi-men self-impose restrictions on touch? I do it myself. I like casual touch with non-homophobic straight guys: a hand slid lightly down the shoulder, a hug instead of a handshake or fist-bump. In many places outside the US these things are normal parts of straight male culture . And yet I'm very hesitant to even so much as ask consent to touch straight seeming male aquaintances unless I *know* they're not homophobic.

To what extent do straightish women experience self-censorship on touch, I wonder?

In a letter printed in the april 28 2009 New York Times Science section, a reader writes:

"I agree with Tara Parker-Pope.. on the importance of friendship in overall health and longevity... not only the verbal intimacy that many girls and women openly express... [but] also the comfort of touch, as in looping... [arm into arm walking down the street and] hugging spontaneously... that nurtures the body and soul".

No duh, but why the gender specificity, I wondered? The reader goes on to write, "Perhaps if society's mores begin to change... men, too, will be able to enjoy healthier and longer lives".

Which makes me wonder if the two male wrestling clients I've talked to might actually find it safer (though still cruelly loaded with various layers of ambivalence) to seek erotic labor than real touch between men?

I wish I could tell them to blow apart any parts of sexism, homophobia, and the gender binary that don't fit them. To tell them to go to men's cuddle parties, gay bars, out-dancing, hold a friend's hand, kiss someone because you had a great conversation with him. Wish I could tell them -- if it helps them reconstruct their versions of "masculinity" -- to wear skirts and dresses, and to maybe sometimes do their wrestling or weight-lifting or motorcycle riding feeling the way they feel a woman might. And to --for fuck's sake!-- gender-play with their wives.

But I suspect the closet doors are too thick. It's only with the support of freinds who -- in mainstream societal terms -- are radicals, that I feel at all enabled to do any such things.

Perhaps the simplest thing would be to ask each of the two men's consent to put them in touch with each other.

Goddess grant me the love and courage to connect with men, inclusive of myself, without prejudice.

another historic national election

2009-02-03T05:14:51Z

Hurt in the name of love (present)

2008-11-29T22:32:29Z

So given the psychosexual bullshit that I previously posted about, why the fuck am I still expected to give a shit about what my parents have to say about my sexuality? I came out to my dad about being bi about a year ago, and he's completely scared by that. What bothers me is how much emotional turbulence his lack of acceptance causes me. I've felt emotionally estranged from him for the past year because of this (we were pretty close until then), and I felt compelled to reach out a bit this thanksgiving (He'd made noises recently about how worried he was about "the other thing", which when I asked "what other thing?", he didn't name).

I told him as much as I thought he needed to know, without backing myself into defensivity about my sexuality. I told him that I'm not promiscuous. That being bisexual doesn't mean that I can't be fully satisfied in a relationship with one person. That I don't *need* to have romantic relationships with both sexes simultaneously.

It's been a couple of days since I sent him that, and there's been no response. That's unusual for him, but perhaps he's out of town or something. The problem is that *I'm* fucking worried about what his response will be. I still want to be accepted by him, and his *not* accepting my sexual orientation somehow hurts me.

Anyway, it took me until age 37 or so till I found people that don't believe that there's any one proper way to do sexuality. I seem to move between straight and bisexual identities (it's perhaps typical for many bisexuals to *not* settle on a single fixed identity), and between being sexual and asexual. Occasionally I dress androgynously. Occasionally I do fetish.

My friends think that all that is perfectly fine. For reasons I don't understand, my parents just seem to want to have me be hetero-married with kids, and perfectly normal. Perfectly normal is not at all what they were towards me sexually and emotionally, and now I have to bear the emotional brunt of having them project normativity onto me.

I don't want kids. There's many reasons, but primarilly it's that I don't want to inflict this kind of pain to people that I cause to be emotionally and materially dependant on me.

I'm writing about this using bland phrases like "emotional pain". That level of language doesn't do this stuff justice.

A more objective way of looking at it might convey some of what's needed: I'm 38, went to some really good schools, including 1.5 years of grad school, and yet make $8/hr, am still partially dependant on my parents, have never had a long term romantic relationship, have had only four relationships in my life in any case, and find myself frequently unable to complete tasks i've undertaken. Basically I'm broken and dysfunctional.

A less objective way? You know the place you go when you are being really intensely anally penetrated and there aren't words around any more, just raw experience? Go there and then turn on a tap of scalding betrayal and emotional control. Sit in front of an LCD a few days, weeks, or decades later and try to make words about it. Without a lot of effort and skill, it'll probably end up a lot like this post.

Causing hurt in the name of love (prolog)

2008-11-29T21:58:12Z

This is background history about childhood sexual/emotional abuse that I've written about before.

I have no idea if it's a false memory, but I remember my father sexually assaulting me when I was a child of pre-school age. It didn't feel bad at the time, in fact I think it felt like any other kind of cuddling to me, so it's only in retrospect as an adult that I call it "assault". In any case, I was quite close to my father through my teens. This is because he brought me up, having taken active or passive measures to physically and emotionally remove my mother from my life after they had separated when I was twelve and moved to separate continents. I think he thought that I was better off just forgetting about my mother, even though I'd visit her twice a year.

Unfortunately the sexual wierdness did not only come from him. In my teens, my mother was tacitly sexually controlling of me. If she found come soiled underwear of mine, after I'd masturbated, she'd ask me why they were wet. It's fucking obvious to any mother of a teenage boy why her son's underwear is wet, and asking like that only serves to try to embarrass the child into bridling his sexuality. It did embarass me, but it certainly didn't make me stop either. Just made it feel deeply wrong and shameful that I masturbated.

But at night she'd invite me into her bedroom and wanted to cuddle even at times when I was hesitant or reluctant. Again, total cluelessness on her part that my reluctance was due to sexual discomfort. At one point, when I was 15 or 16, I sexually assaulted her during one of these sleepovers by making explicit the implicit sexuality of the interaction: I reached between her legs on one or two occasions without her consent. I didn't force myself at all, and her reaction was to sleep with a pillow between her legs, but *still* continue ask me to sleep in her bed when I *really* didn't want to.

I call that sexual assault becuase I didn't have her explicit consent, and she really didn't want me to, even though she never talked about it, and it clearly bothered her. For years and years, I lived with the shame of being someone who manually raped his own mother, and really it's only now that I'm seeing the experience for what it is: she was the adult, she insisted on having me in her bed when I had my own bedroom, and she allowed things to physically progress between us untill I was aroused enough to actually respond to her. I still consider what I did sexual assault, in the sense that I sexually acted without full consent, but I also consider her joint efforts to both curtail my sexuality and to physically be close to me a rather abusive use of my body and emotions. Mind you I didn't have my first romantic kiss with a peer till I was 21, so the shit happening with my Mom was entirely her own doing.

why wealthy white men can't be feminist leaders (or can we?)

2008-11-21T16:56:16Z

In short: they can.

Yes, this is a radical revision of my previous post, which was written in haste in the wee hours of a long day.

The point I wanted to make in that post is that any kind of deep critique of mainstream culture requires a lot of work to truly understand and embody in one's own political/personal life. When one comes it it from outside of the group that's making the critique, it's all the more difficult. It's rather easy though to *claim* to support equality, while still holding onto one's own privileges. If one truly wants to empower an oppressed group, and one belongs (or can pass for belonging) to the oppressor group, one must work harder than others to not bring enculturated and systemic tactics of oppression along with one's good intentions. One must be careful to see that one does not use the power (money, influence in the mainstream world) that one has to rise to leadership at the expense of those with less power. And that's a really hard thing not to do.

The critique applies inwards to self-organized movements as well as outwards. As those within a movement rise to leadership positions, especially ones that require forging power relationships with mainstream groups (media, lobbyists, politicians, corporations...), they risk being infected with opressive ideas and tactics.

How does one avoid this? I personally have no idea. I *don't* avoid it. I use the class privileges I have (money, education, sex) to get by in life. Given more personal dicipline and rigor, I could obviously mitigate my reliance on un-earned and oppressive privilege, but as yet I lack the will to do so. I'm stuck at the level of being complicit in some of the stuff that irks me -- but does not yet fill me with sufficient outrage: wholesale incarceration, systemetized sexual brutality (rape, assault, & gender normativities), and an economy that thrives on wars, starvation and poverty.

I'm OK that 2 million Americans are incarcerated, as long as the people who pan-handle me on the subway are polite, don't smell too bad, and take "no" for an answer. I'm OK that 1/5 women are sexually assaulted, as long as I can whack-off to youPorn videos. I'm OK that the Congo is war-torn as long as I can text my friends on my cell-phone.

I'm ok, man. I really am.

male feminist experts? penis women?

2008-11-19T08:57:47Z

EDIT: I do hereby repudiate and renounce this opinion. At least the part in emphasis.

Call me sexist, but I harbor suspicion about male feminist writers. Foucault is one whose name gets thrown around a lot, and since I've yet to read him, I'll reserve judgement.

In theory, if you accept feminism as being a critique of institutionalized and/or culturally encoded power structures, there's no reason a cis-man can't really do feminism in all but perhaps the most embodied kinds of body-knowlege. But what kind of feminist man takes the next step and proclaims themselves an expert not only on how patriarchy oppresses men (both directly, and indirectly through the oppression of female parents, children, and peers), but inserts their voice to speak on behalf of women, when women have been doing that just fine for themselves?

I'm not saying that a man can't come up with original ideas that fall into feminist theory or experience. I'm saying they should STFU and let a woman tell the story, except insofar as it deals with male experience.

More precicely: in the academic dicipline of feminism, men clearly can equally contribute to scholarship, but as a political movement that still represents a situation of inequality, men need to tread really lightly in order to be visible allies but not take up positions of power.

Why am I talking about this? The Book of Lilith. When a presumably cis-male physics professor writes a feminist-marketed novel with a nude woman on the cover, I cry foul.

Related Note:

Kindof like when a supposedly liberated non-gay man jokingly comments on wanting to see a friend's breasts "cuz they're amazing", or proclaims himself *wink* *nod* a "breast man".

It's fine and heathy for men and women to express subconscious body-type preferences if they do so in at least a semi-critical way. But it takes more than just hipster irony to be truly critical, and I don't know... The phrase "breast man" is plain suspect until the phrases "breast woman" and "penis woman" are in common usage. And even then... stop the madness.

Pride

2008-11-02T12:23:01Z

At the sexual violence survivor advocacy training, they had us publicly sit or stand in accordance to our answers to mildly embarrassing and invasive questions of the type that service providers usually ask of clients: "did you use a condom the 1st time you had sex?", "have you ever gotten drunk or high before having sex?", etc. The questions came in quick succession and there was barely time to fully understand the questions, let alone to put intellectual filters on before one found oneself sitting or standing more on the basis of affect than rational truth. It was experiential learning at a visceral level to feel what it's like to get asked these questions.

One question was a bit different: "have you ever had sex with a member of the same sex?". There were fewer of us standing than I expected. The prevailing emotion in me though, was pride.

I could analyze that as a reaction against shame & heteronormativity, but I do enough of that. Sometimes you just have to own your pride.

homo/sex phobic reactions

2008-10-30T05:49:17Z

I caught myself reacting to internalized homophobia a couple of times in the last week.

First incident: I was sitting on a subway station bench waiting for the downtown A train one night, while reading a manual about doing advocacy on the behalf of survivors of sexual assault. Needless to say, my emotions were riled-up a bit by thinking about the statistic and repercussions of "one in six" (the likelyhood of a woman experiencing sexual assault in her lifetime in the US).

A fellow standing on the platform a few yards from me was moving his body to the groove of the song he was listening to, and was rapping out the syncopated refrain: "Kill the faggot. Kill the faggot".

I fantasized about tackling him onto the tracks, but in reality glared at him enough to make him remove his headphones and glare back.

"You were singing 'kill the faggot'," I accused.

I wasn't really angry enough to *want* to be in a fight, although I certainly would have engaged in one if he'd come at me with more homophobic hate-speech. Instead, he simply went on the verbal defensive, and debated with me, "It's a song. I can listen to whatever I want. I don't know you. I have nothing to do with you, you can live any way you want. I'm going to sing whatever I want. If it's bothering you, then tell me".

"It is bothering me. You can certainly sing whatever you want, but think about what you are saying. Why be hateful to people who've done nothing to you"

"I've been hearing it for 600 years [he's Black]. Don't tell me about being hateful".

I let the matter, because it was instantly obvious that he wasn't being willfully homophobic. The "faggot" in his song may or may not have been gay, and most likely wasn't. Any of the words, "asshole", "bitch", "nigga", "motherfucker" or "pussy" might have been used in its place, but "faggot" most likely rhymed better.

Later on in the train, he belabored the point, asking me "are you a homosexual or a faggot?". His point was that since I don't think of myself as a faggot in the pejoritative sense, I really ought not to have taken his words personally. I didn't bother to argue that "kill the faggot" is undeniably violent and hateful speech. However, I did realize that my angry initial reaction was rooted in elements of classism and racism (I know I would have confronted him purely verbally and without implied physical threat if he'd looked more like a Columbia student) as well as internalized homophobia.

The man's macho use of "kill the faggot" threatened me. It attacked at least a couple of the ways in which I've internalized masculinity: when a man is called a faggot in this context, regardless of his orientation, he is being called passive, weak, bulliable, and inconsequential.

Second incident: On my break at work today, an Orthodox man cruised me pretty hard. I was by turns friendly, flirty, and polite. I was somewhat interested in engaging with him intellectually. His own agenda though -- which I didn't really get till I reflected on it later -- was probably to fuck. I engaged in face-value discourse while he was using coded sexual probes: when he commented on my having a feminine face, I thought that was interesting. When he asked about my hours at work and my living situation, I thought he was being friendly the way some other customers are. AFAICT, he was in fact telling me that he likes to top "I'm a gentleman, but I'm a man... what about you? You're a gentleman right?" and figuring out if I had a place to go to "So you live with friends? You have different rooms? etc".

Sigh. Part of me was interested in what the man had to say. Part of me was dissapointed that while he was chattting me up one the basis of my personality, he really just wanted a willing asshole or mouth to stick his cock into. Part of me felt a bit sorry for him (he kept on saying "God Bless you" to me in a way that seemed to imply "I know what it is to be gay and despised by God"). In another context, in another lifetime, I might have simply responded that I don't fuck for free, and what exactly was he interested in? But this was at work.

During this whole time, a co-worker was looking at us somewhat accusingly. If I'd been flirting with a female customer, he wouldn't have batted an eye, but I guess he didn't like that I was being flirty with a clearly older orthodox man. And caught in his gaze, I felt various forms of guilt. I really don't like it when the heteronormativity that oppresses me is my own self-generated homophobia.

I'm real shabby at being queer aren't I. :-(

100K: coda

2008-10-03T07:42:26Z

Even though it was wet for most of the race, and the rain really came down hard for a few laps, I had a really fun race. Doing the full 100K actually felt easier (and was actually faster) than the 70K training skate that I'd done a week prior to the race.

I guess I don't feel like I accomplished much though. Last year I trained *really* hard for the San Fransisco 100K, but wasn't able to raise the travel expenses to go to the race. I really impressed myself that year with my discipline and focus in training for the race. I felt like I could accomplish pretty much anything, that my willpower was sufficient to take me through to whatever ends I honestly wanted to achieve.

This year, in contrast, I was much busier with work, and trained far less than I did last year. If I felt tired in the morning, I'd just sleep in and skip my skate for the day. I did that more often than not. It was a half-assed training regimen. My technique is apparently a lot better than it was last year though, and so even though I'm not as physically strong as in 2007, I'm faster and more efficient.

That's not the worst part though. OK, so I trained less hard and had an easy first-time 100K. Gives me a goal to beat for next year.

The worst part, the dirty fucking secret that I don't tell people, is that I almost missed the NYC 100K & Skate marathon for the third year in a row. In 2006 I trained for the 21K half marathon, and since it was raining on race-day and I'd never skated in the rain, I went to the race without my skates to cheer and support the others and to hand-out water and bananas. In 2007, I trained for the 42K marathon, and although it was a really nice day, I fucking overslept and go to the course after the race had started. Once again I was handing out water and bannanas. This year I ended up going to sleep at around 4:00am (before a 7:30 check-in time). Basically I was going to blow it off and not even go to the race. But for some reason I took an Adderall just before sleeping, and I managed to wake up at 5:30 or so, and make it in time for the race.

I'm happy I made it. I'm happy I finished the race with energy to spare. I'm happy to be a skater. I'm unreasonably happy when I skate.

I'm *not* happy that I'm such a fucking flake that I can decide to blow of three years worth of training for the sake of getting some sleep. I missed many a flight and a few job interviews too because of that kind of behavior.

In the American Dream ethic where working hard is a pre-condition for human dignity, I probably ought to be incarcerated if not outright euthanized.

In the face of my character deficiencies, the 100K skate seems like a hollow, trivial thing to count as an achievement.

I love skating, but I despise myself when I'm not actually doing it.

Lap Times:

Pos	Bib	Lap 1	Lap 2	Lap 3	Lap 4	Lap 5	Lap 6	Lap 7	Lap 8	Lap 9	Lap 10	Lap 11	Lap 12	Lap 13	Lap 14	Lap 15	Lap 16	Lap 17	Lap 18	Lap 19	Total
3	7	12:24	12:45	13:19	13:29	13:51	13:13	13:33	14:02	13:43	14:58	16:48	15:30	14:18	15:01	15:10	16:13	18:02	15:30	15:50	4:37:41

i can't fight for things i don't understand

2008-09-26T23:18:01Z

i don't know the experience of being poor. indeed, if i were to become poor overnight, i would have no ability to negotiate day to day health and survival. i wouldn't know where to stay or what to do. food is relatively available on the street, but hunger tends to make me shut down and not want to forage.

i don't know the experience of being incarcerated.

i don't know what it is like to make six figures in the financial industry.

not knowing these things, i feel hollow and incincere when i parrot the progressive mantra that we are better off investing 700 billion in the long-term welfare of our children and human capital than in CDO's or whatever it is that our government wants to invest in.

i do know that power and power-seekers will tend to control our economy and cultural paradigms. people who hate power or who fear it will never change society beyond their individual, local acts. political and economic systems, along with the cultural assumptions that sustain them, will, by definition, be those things that make people powerful and keep powerful people and institutions in power.

if i had first-hand experience of poverty or incarceration or any other form of social injustice, perhaps i'd have the passion to fight against it despite all odds.

as it is, i have more to lose in terms of material wealth and psychological comfort than i have to gain from a sense of implementing love and justice.

a life of love and integrity seems too difficult and scary for me. materialism, mediocrity, and self-indulgence have worked ok for me so far. i'm not happy, but i'm not failing at anything either. i'm getting by on my own terms, and why should i be expected to transcend my own limitations?

100K Journal

2008-09-24T03:22:58Z

Prudence or lack of will? I was halfway into a planned 80K skate today, when I decided that I was starting to feel pretty cold, and that my boot -- which is brand new and not broken in -- might end up bruising my foot. What went through my mind was: "I don't want to get sick again" (I had a cold over the weekend, which I'm just about over) and "if I bruise my foot, I'll have a hard time at work tomorrow" (I work in a cafe, and am on my feet for the whole shift).

I'm not happy at having cut off my training. Both physically and mentally, I really needed the 80K skate today. In my daily life, I'm a wimp about a lot of things, and I certainly lack even the rudiments of self-discipline that others have. But with skating, I been able to find a sort of mental resillience that's really unusual for me. Last year I did a similar planned 80K training skate in Prospect Park, and cut it short at around 60K. I was hypoglycemic, shivering, barely able to make myself walk to a restaurant. I'd definitely reached a new physiological limit for me that night, and given that I was skating alone, it probably was very wise for me not to have explored that limit any further.

Today was different. With my new skates, I'd chewed up my previous 4-lap personal record by more than three minutes, and I really wasn't physically tired. I just listened to the mental excuses to stop. And when it comes to attempting to skate for 5 hours or so, it's exactly my response to that kind of mental chatter that'll make or break my skate.

Problem is that my excuses today were good excuses. Getting sick now wouldn't do me any good towards Saturday's race. Nor would getting a foot injury. Had it been earlier in the season, it may have made sense to have pushed it, simply to get the mental training, and dealt with the physical consequences with lots of TLC afterwards. As it is, perhaps prudence was the right choice.

Today's lap times:
(Laps 1 & 2) 51:37 (26:18 laps)
(Laps 3 & 4) 56:30 (28:15 laps).

Totally lost my form on the last lap. Much toe flicking, wasn't bending knees enough, and was flexing laterally at the waist (a no-no in classic-stride speedskating).

perspectives on cross dressing

2008-09-17T19:49:42Z

caveat: what follows is purely personal experience, and isn't at all meant to describe anyone else's!

I had a mildly unpleasant experience today. All four of the women's garments I own (3 ankle length skirts, 1 kneelength dress) are obnoxiously sheer. I really like the look and feel of the swishy skirts, but lord forbid I'm backlit right? So I had to buy something called a "slip". Now I bought my skirts from street vendors without having to try them on, and the dress at American Apparel downtown, which seemed like a pretty friednly place for a guy to shop for atypical clothing. But the slip I had to buy at a mainstream bargain department store, and that presented some problems.

For one thing, I had to go to the Ladies floor. Slaes woman there first told me that they didn't have slips, and then reconsidered and sent me down a floor into the lingerie dept. It's bad enough being a guy shopping for himself in the women's section, but it feels much worse in the lingerie section. For one thing I'm surrounded by alien contraptions like push-up bras that I have no interest in, don't really understand, and yet which by my proximity to them, defines me either as shopping for someone female, or else a creepy ne'er do well.

Salesperson there was a lot friendlier though, and when I said I had a blue skirt, she checked the stock for me to see if they had anything in white, and when they didn't she put up a black slip under the blue shirt she was wearing to see if it would be ok. I still felt mildly defensive the whole time, and my voice must have sounded half an octave lower than normal, because I was trying hard *not* to present as anything queer.

Of *course*, after I bought it, the checkout people forgot to demagnetize the tag, so the alarm went off on me as I was leaving. Felt like a gender alarm to me. lol.

Aside: While it fits fine, I really dont like how constraining it is. My skirts are all flowing enough that I can move any way I like in them, but I don't think I could even dance while wearing the slip, let alone do something like run. I'm not impressed. Takes much of the fun out of wearing skirts.

The real point of this anectdote though, is about the anxiety/discomfort I felt while shopping in a women's section. I probably feel a similar anxiety when I publicly wear a skirt (although frankly, this is NYC, and most people don't even notice). Anxiety leads to psychological arousal, and so I wonder if the feelings of gender-euphoria I can sometimes feel from being cross-dressed, might not actually stem from my just having a heightened sense of awareness and anxiety. It's perhaps a milder form of how people do scary things like ride roller coasters or see scary movies in order to feel good.

Maybe the fact that I feel good in a skirt has a lot more to to with that, than it does with my actually enjoying the experience of presenting androgynously.

And it's also really hard for me to separate out my heterosexual attraction to female architecture from actually wanting to present as non-male. Both motivations exist for me, I think. When I focus of my physical apearance, it's more the former, and when I focus on cross-dressing as a means to express my *disatisfaction* of status-quo heterosexual gender roles, it's the latter.

I can think of ways in which cross-dressing -- for me -- is an excersise in falsehood: there is shame involved with being recognized by neighbors, roomates, etc, and shame-seeking may play more of a role in this that I credit. There's also a way that I use cross-dressing as a kind of fatalistic branding of myself as a freak/wierdo/loser, and when I have friends that accept that, I'm basically pre-screening friends who won't challenge me or hold me accountable. Ultimately the biggest mistake is to reify either of these phenomena into a gender variant self-identity. I need to stick more closely to verbs: "I am wearing a skirt, I like how the fabric flows, I like how friends treat me", and stay away from nouns of self-identity: "androgyne, non-masculine, feminine".

To be fair though, I also need to apply this same analysis to the act of not-cross dressing. How does *that* make me feel? In what ways can I manifest my personality as atypically masculine while presenting as a male? To what extent is choosing the safety of a default male presentation every bit an excercise in reification and falsehood as cross-dressing would be?

Last word: it's just fashion. While I could *possibly* be comfortable in a head-to-toe feminine outfit, and while I find masculine clothing practical enough, I *really* dig the demure-skirt and t-shirt look. It just feels like *me*. Much moreso than goth or emo or corporate or hipster or leather/fetish.

What I need now is a skirt that I can inline skate in, which doesn't show an obnoxious amount of leg (so running "skorts" are out).

100K: day6

2008-09-17T16:46:40Z

Body image: The way I feel about my body's aesthetic depends a lot on what I'm doing with it. I hadn't trained athletically much between may and September, and as a consequence, I started feeling pretty icky about my body. It felt (and looked) frail and too thin. To add a strange bit of insult to that injury, I don't have much body fat (usually a good thing right?) so when I see myself wearing a dress, my arms look spindly but also all too obviously mannish. I wanted to have more muscle mass, and yet the cross-dressing corner of my brain wanted to cover up what little muscle tone and definition I had with fat (it's all imperfect subjectinve perception; many athletic women have far more muscular and defined arms than me, and they look absolutely fine in a dress -- in fact I really like that look. on other people at least). blah.

Well, I've been training for a few weeks now, and while it really hasn't changed my body's physical appearance, I feel a whole lot better about how I look. My legs are as skinny as ever, but instead of perceiving them as merely weak and ugly, I see them as skater's legs, with hundreds of kilometers of exertion etched into them, defining a snaking sartorius and beautiful brown clefts between the superficial quads.

On Tuesday I did my first group training since early in the summer, and although I've been feeling like my technique barely even qualifies as speedskating, at least one of the other guys who's seen my skate since last year, thought I was looking a lot less sloppy. Good to know.

Yesterday I skated my first 70K of the season. There was construction in the park, forcing me to walk for a bit each lap, so I'm not sure if a 70K with no rest would be a lot harder. It took me 4hrs 41 minutes, and it was close to mindight when I ended. Started getting kind of cold and lonely. I feel like I can probably do 80K or even 90K this weekend, and with the 100K next Saturday, that means that I'm probably actually going to be able to finish the race!!

Training Details: not much to note. My technique gets sloppy when I start feeling phychologically tired, but the interesting thing is that even at 60K, when there was a biker to chase, I could turn it on and move into a much more efficient, speedy stride. I really need to work on combating psychological tiredness, and focus on maintaining a steady active push, rather than giving up and going into a toe-flicking coasting mode.

My left foot seems to be supinating too much, and I might need a frame adjustment.

Sometimes doing a short bit of double-pushing seems to help me get my classic stride back.

I'm rather weak on the hills, opting for a slow steady ascent, which really pulls down my lap times. I don't know if it's worth attacking the hills though, becasue that probably just makes me too tired on the flats.

100K Journal, day 1

2008-09-08T05:45:31Z

Inertia is more exhausting than actively moving forward. This is clearly true phsychologically, but as far as climbing hills on inline skates is concerned, I experience it at a very real physical level; if I decide I'm tired and need to slump down and take it slow up the hill, that takes way more energy than actively skating up the hill either by moving my arms and legs faster or by using supporting muscles to modify my technique to be more efficient for climbing.

I don't know if there is a metaphor that can be taken from that and applied to how I often slump down and rest when faced with emotional or physical barriers to living my daily life, but I really wish there were one.

Difficulty is quite often a myth. I haven't skated more than four or five hills this season, and I didn't do more than five or six last year when I was much more actively training for the 100K. Inspired by Fransisco's training article that advises doing hill repeats when training for ultramarathons, today I skated ten hill laps in a row, (at a sustainable, easy pace). Somewhere around the fifth one, I decided that it would be too hard, and maybe since it was my first time this season doing hills, I ought to call it quits. Lap eight was particularly tough mentally, since it was all too easy to celebrate the fact that I'd already done more than I'd ever done, so why keep going?

I remember thinking that if I stopped, that I'd never be able to skate the full 100K. I remembered the determination I had for training last year, and how it was perhaps the most focussed and intense I'd been about anything in my life. I recognized how far short from that mental toughness that I was today. In 2007, by November I'd trained consistently enough despite rain, pain, cold, late nights, and dysthimia that I trully felt that I could accomplish anything in life I set my heart on, as long as I dug deep into the same reserves of perseverance that skating 100K requires. That attitude seems alien to me now, like reading an inspirational self-help book that quotes Lance Armstrong about the value of never giving up.

Doing ten hills was way easier than doing 100K (after all, 100K is like doing 10 hills with an additional 8k in between each hill!) but it did reqire me to go into a similar mindspace where I somehow make myself immune to the rationalization of having done enough to deserve a break, and to negative self-talk that makes things harder to contemplate doing than it is to actually do them). It all sounds very much like something out of cognitive behavioral therapy, but it's not. It's not at all. Cognitive behavioral therapy never worked for me. Skating does.

***** Technical notes ******

I didn't move my left frame out at all like I though of doing in my last post. Current set-up seems to work really well.

I discovered the value of pushing *forwards* on flats. Much of my power was lost due to letting my feet drift back during my push. Really trying to push *forwards* makes a lot of things easier: makes me go faster over short distances, allows me to feel a positive reaction force off the ground from the instant I start pushing away from the center-line, and that allows me to have a more controlled weight-transfer and fall. Also gives me a naturally faster cadence and I'm starting to finally land on my outside edges again.

Hill technique:

There are two or three that I used:

really trying to lift my feet, stride forward and land my foot on the back wheel as if I were reaching to step over a stick in the road
landing my foot on an outside edge pointed perfectly forward, and then doing a short heel carve forward and out during the glide. Makes the glide feel really efficient, and the overall feeling was like I was underpushing without worrying about the outward push at all
just gritting my teeth and pumping my arms and legs faster than they'd naturally want to go

Times: I did a slow warmup loop that culminated in a hill climb (26'45), one more untimed hill, and then the following splits:

6'44.6
6'35.0
13'46.3 (probably two laps at 6'52 ish)
6'33.1
6'53.9
6'45.6
6'33.7

Since there is a hard left trun at the bottom of the hill, I basically coasted down the hill standing up to use air resistance to slow me down. This gave my legs much more of a rest than if I'd been in a tuck.

NYC 100K training journal: 0

2008-09-06T07:24:18Z

Did a single 9.6K lap today, 25'30. Slower than last night's 24'54, and much slower than my P.R. of 23'32, set on 6/16/08, when I was training more consistently.

I'm at about the same level as I was at this time last year (although with far fewer marathon or longer distance skates under my belt). Last year I didn't start skating further than a 40K marathon until late oct/nov. So it looks dubious that I'll reach this years goal of 100K in time for the race on Sept 27. My only hope really is if I end up re-gaining fitness and technique over the next three weeks, rather than simply building it.

Why was I close to 40secs slower today as compared to last night? A few possibilities:
1) I'm tired from last night. (Unlikely, since it was only a single lap each time)
2) Frame adjustment. Moved the front of my left frame in about 2mm. This gives me a better feeling glide, but my whole foot seems to collapse outward too much. Might have to try preserving the same toe-in angle, but adjusting the whole frame out a millimeter or so.
3) Hill technique: last night I was more aggressive on both hills. Today I tried double-pushing up most of cat-hill, which felt easier than knee-driving, but perhaps it's slower?
4) Cadence: tried a slightly faster cadence today, rather than the very deliberate strides from last night. My PR of 23'31 was from a fast cadence, but, perhaps I had more sound technique to begin with.

According to Empire Speed's coach, Fransisco, I should add some things to my training:
1) Once a week long skates of at least 70K (7 laps). Easier said than done while managing both the park's closed-to-traffic hours, the rains, and my work schedule.
2) Hills, once a week. Ten laps of the great hill. Yeah, fun. But I think there's major gains to be had in using correct hill technique, so this one's important for me.
3) Sprints. I guess I could chase bikes every now and then, even though I don't feel quite as ready to do this as I did last year around this late in the season.
4) Nutrition, hydration, rest, etc. You mean coffee and two bagels don't suffice for my daily calories? *sigh*.

my 1 cent about john edwards

2008-08-11T09:10:55Z

I just don't care.

I *will* care when an openly non-monogamous politician emerges on the scene. sadly such a cerature is likely to be a libertarian of the "let the oppressed have the freedom to stay oppressed, so long as *my* rights aren't infringed upon" variety.

i will care when an openly non-monogamous, gay, *woman* runs for office. Or a trans man. Or anyone who by being who they are, is invulnerable to blackmail by moralists.

people said the country wasn't ready for a black president. people say it's not ready for a non-christian president. people say one must pander to the familly-values crowd, *even as a progressive* in order to get elected. and the fools go ahead and pander.

when will people realize that proscriptions against coveting one's meighbor's wife became archaic the night that one's neighbor's wife gained her rights of sexual self-determination?

ok, I'm not so anti-monogamy as that. I believe strongly in trying to adhere to fidelity, whether it be a polyamorous contract or a monogamous one. It's true that cheaters ought not to be excused lightly, since they chose to put themselves in a situation of hurting their partners.

I wonder what does more harm though? The cultural dominance of monogamy as the only option, or the prevalence of failed monogamy?

PS: I'm not even polyamorous!! I'm an agnostic. Maybe even an "atheist", in the sense that I don't think any kind of romantic contract will stand up to 'till death do us part' standards.

A 'commandment' on love for the post-buddhist 21st century: Love, and in loving, know that all meetings end in partings, and in parting, don't stop loving: endeavor, therefore, with all thy heart to minimize un-needed suffering from the inevitable pain that follows loving.

inside-outside dichotomy

2008-08-09T14:02:19Z

I saw a man wearing a dress the other day, coming out of the Alvin Ailey II show. Thought to myself a) that it was unusual, b) that he didn't look particularly attractive, and c) that it was pretty cool nonetheless.

If I were to wear a dress, I suspect I'd look a bit like Tyler Perry doing Madea. Ugly, out of place, off-putting, monstrous. Basically with man-face and a man-body, dresses simply do not work unless you happen to be Kurt Cobain or similarly sexy.

Why deliberately make myself uglier to others in order to 'feel pretty' inside?

Instead of wearing feminine clothing, I really should be trying to embrace being male-sexed and male-gendered, in ways that feel authentic to me. I shouldn't need the disguise of feminine clothing in order to have the courage to simply be me, and not conform to cultural norms that don't benefit me. Cross dressing is easy. Being a real person is a challenge.

Not that I won't cross dress ever again. (Wait, that's inaccurate... I've never cross dressed. I've worn a skirt, & t-shirt, sans make-up... that's not cross dressing, it's just wearing a skirt, I think). Anyhoo, the point is that focussing on clothing and/or external mannerisms is, well, too superficial. I need to express my core personality though the content of my speech and actions.

That's all.

PS: As of the last two days, I'm noting signs of self hate and proto-depression starting up again. Gotta stay on top of that.

the "manscara" post

2008-08-03T18:00:13Z

Of the top 3 scroogle scraped google hits for the search "manscara", were two predictably androsexist ha-ha funny columns in UK newspapers (the worse of which was in the usually high quality Guardian), and a short article that penetrated to the heart of the matter published at the fashion site styledash.com. The styledash article, focuses not the idea of men wearing makeup but rather the ridiculous re-branding of formerly feminine products as somehow testosterone-safe: "If you're man enough to go buy -- never mind wear -- eyeliner, you should have already embraced your inner-make up diva."

It is interesting that we need a marketing campaign before we decide that something is "ok" for us to buy. This seems particularly evident when products cross previously defined oppositional-gender lines.

On the one hand, I'm cautiously happy that some stereotypically feminine fashions are crossing over right now. It may help demystify femininity, and perhaps reduce the kinds of sexism that arise from keeping males culturally separated from behaviors and gender-expressions that are deemed feminine. The more men pretty themselves up, the less able they will be to deride femininity (and by associated-guilt, females) as frivolous.

On the other hand, this kind of approach to buffing away at sexism is rather simple-minded. Members of one class (in this case men) ought not to have to walk in another class' ballet flats in order to realize that class boundaries help create, recreate, and enforce hierarchy and oppression.

In practice, I suspect that normative gender roles are far more powerful than changing fashions, and that cross-gender fashion trends, once they become mainstream enough, will simply be swallowed up and made not to matter. While I'm not particularly hip to fashion trends, I think I've seen this happen with skinny jeans (which used to be feminine, and now can be written-off as 'just being emo'), faux-hawks and wide, studded belts (which used to be gay male signifiers, but I think are becoming increasingly gender neutral), and most evidently to me, in those wide leather watch-bands that everyone is wearing today: to me they scream 'fetish', and yet they are just a conformist fashion trend, and at least some portion of their wearers have little clue that their choice to wear their watch right- or left- handed brands them as sub or domme.

Coming back to my own current confusion about the meaning(s) of cross-dressing, I really don't want my "scruffy bloke in a dress" gender presentation fantasy (think Kurt Kobain, I guess), to come off as emo/goth pretense. Although the look is really hot (in the sense that I go for it), I think my body type happily might lend itself to really femme-ing it up as well.

feelings

2008-07-28T06:59:15Z

I think I was way harsh on myself in my last post. My thinking is closely tracking what I'm reading in Serano's book, and my previous post was motivated by her chapter on the transexual dissonance between the sex one's brain expects one's body to be, and the actuality of one's body. (Serano theorizes a biological basis for subconscious sex, because it helps her make sense of her own experience, even though she wisely stops short of claiming that this theory actually reflects reality). Reading about her gender dissonance made me cry (and mind you she only gives two or three personal anectdotes, all presented matter-of-factly with a minimum of sentimentality, in a book that is about ideas, and not at all a memoir). She explains that her lived experience of gender dissonance "most of all... felt like sadness... a sort of gender sadness -- a chronic and persistent grief over the fact that I felt so wrong in my body". When she decided to transition, the dissonance had escalated: "it hurt more than any pain, physical or emotional, that I had ever experienced".

So in the face of something that severe, my own seemingly elective gender-playing seemed gauche and rather callous of both transexual and transvestite experience. Strangely, though, I didn't think to ask why the phrase "gender sadness" seems to echo in my own soul, different as my experience is from Serano's, or why exactly I was crying reading about her wrapping a lacy curtain around herself (in the body of a then 11 year old boy with long hair), and staring at herself stunned for over an hour. It's a pretty fucking deep empathy on my part for an experience she relates in a less than one third of a page of straightforward decription. I suspect that my "seemingly elective gender-playing" of today indeed stems from something prickly about gender that's been bothering me since my own childhood.

I should have kept reading, for Serano's very next chapter focuses on what she calls "oppositional sexism": ideas about gender that not only essentialize two binary genders, but that underlie homophobia and transphobia, and that create false heirarchies even within movements of queer activists: gay trumping bisexuality; transexuality being more 'real' than variant non-binary gender expression; or queergendered people being more radical than transexuals.

Ultimately, Serano concludes, lived experience trumps any theory: "an impenetrable wall.. exists between our own *experiential gender*, which we live,... and the genders of others, which we merely percieve or make presumptions about.... It is time... to move beyond the insolent rhetiric of gender entitlement and one-size-fits-all gender theories".

In other words, Serano gives my felt experience of gender far more leeway than I was giving it myself. Binary gender prescriptions have hurt me plenty. It doesn't matter if it's due to my reacting against social prescriptions or due to something innate to my gender identity. What matters is that I don't assume that what makes sense for me gives me any right to invalidate, project upon, or prescribe for someone else's gender identity.

While cross-dressing in certain safe contexts may give me some kind of unearned privilege, and that's one motivation for me to do it, it's not the important thing. What's important is to not self-invalidate my own hate for singular, binary prescriptions of gender expression. Yeah, I'm not transsexual, but that doesn't mean that US mainstream society's definition of 'male' doesn't fuck with me and wear me down every day of my life.

It's about time I started fighting back.

Politically correct cross-dressing?

2008-07-26T06:57:50Z

Cross dressing by a man who is not genderqueer (that is, someone who does not feel a dissonance between his subconcious sex and his physical body) has two possible political meanings:
1) to disrupt the normativity of binary gender, in solidarity with genderqueer folk; or
2) to take pleasure in appropriating a few carefully chosen feminine signifiers, without having to be female, and without having to give up male privilege.

I'm a little wary of the latter. I certainly enjoy wearing skirts, and if I ever get around to buying a few dresses and makeup, I'd enjoy wearing that as well. But what if it turns out that I *enjoy* wearing feathers on my head and war paint in a mockery of Native American garb? Should I go out and do that too just 'cuz it feels good?

While I think cross dressing is far more acceptable in progressive queer-friendly circles than appropriating the garb of a completely different culture just to look cool or feel good, I'm not sure there's a difference between the two.

Clearly if someone is sincerely genderqueer, I encourage them to behave however it is that they feel that the negotiation of their subconscious sex and their external sex moves them to behave. But when it comes to guys who are not gender dissonant dressing feminine, I get a bit suspicious.

Perhaps I'm saying that unless I'm willing to live 24/7 as a woman, subject to all that entails, for at least some period of time, I have no right to play at dress up. But really, by *playing* at dress up, I demean trans-people, for whom there is no choice in the matter, and I falsely steal a moment or two of fun from the feminine spectrum without paying the necessary social dues.

Perhaps I'm setting too high a bar for myself. But perhaps not. Every see frat boys dress up in their girlfriends' clothing for a Halloween party? Far from disrupting gender roles, they actually manage to reinforce them.

Reading Julia Serano's book Whipping Girl has helped me a lot. There are three levels at which one is gendered: one's brain-sex (or subconcious sex, as she puts it) -- the sex that one's brain expects one to be; one's physical body; and the gender roles projected onto one by other people. Gender dissonance occurs at a private level, when one's brain expects one's body to be of a certain sex, but bewilderingly (to one's brain), one happens to inhabit a body of a different sex.

My brain sex and my physical sex are both male, and there's no dissonance there.

As for the gender roles that are projected onto me, well, they don't always accord with how I'd like to behave. I'm suspicious as to why though. Seriously suspicious that cross-dressing is analogous somehow to the 'hot-bi-babe' phenomenon wherein homophobic males fool themselves that they enjoy watching 'lesbian' eroticism. Cross dressing feels too straight to me, too heterosexual, too male. But the alternative, to be a man dressing as a man, isn't any alternative at all. The only authentic, honest, alternative for me, I think, is to dress with gay signifiers.

(but gay boys can cross dress, so why can't I), complains my mind. Answer: because I'm not gay. I'm bi, but I live the majority of my life passing for straight.

I *really* don't want to self-censor my gender expression, but the sad truth is that I'm trying to pick up street cred by claiming to be queer, or a sex-worker, when in reality I'm just a dabbler, who gets out as soon as the going gets mildly uncomfortable. That's not called being queer. It's called being scared.

now i'm nothing

2008-07-17T13:53:50Z

I've noticed in myself lately a tendency to not identify with any of my interests or activities. At its best, this grants me a certain amount of freedom to try new things and continually self-define myself, but most often it just reflects fear and lack of commitment.

Here's a list of things that are deeply important to me that I nonetheless tell myself "I'm not", for lack of sufficient skill or experience: a figure skater, a sex-worker, a scientist, bi-sexual, a feminist, a speed-skater, a martial-artist, an activist, a meditator, kinky, a blogger, a computer programmer, a naturalist.

And some things I do feel I have sufficient experience to claim the labels of: Homo sapien, masculine (though not exclusive of potential femininity), heterosexual (though definitely not exclusive of being bi), queer (that which explains the caveats in the preceding items), educated, empathetic, Bluestockings volunteer.

Perhaps it's because I feel I don't have parents. Seriously, even though I was brought up by both parents until they divorced when I was 12, and was raised by my dad after that, I feel like *I* emotionally divorced them both in reprisal for their bitter divorce. And so other things in my life are easily discardable. Nothing is precious enough to me that I need to suffer being defined by it, or risk the possibility of losing it.

However, I think my dabbling in many things and committing to none pre-dates my parents' divorce. I remember quitting childhood activities like judo or soccer (not to mention being utterly uncommited to doing homework) even though I was OK or even good at them (I won trophies in each of my first three judo tournaments, and yet since I was very lightweight and easily bullied both in Judo class and out of it, I allowed myself to be defined as a wimp and quit the sport).

I'm emotionally high-maintenance. I require a tremendous amount of affirmation and acceptance from someone before I'm willing to commit myself to being mentored by them. Mentorships, I think, are what can most easily make the difference for me. I'm very hesitant to commit myself to activities, but I will gladly do it in order to preserve or nurture a friendship.

Instead of the all too ready cognitive excuse of "I suck at this", I'd profit from reminding myself that "I love someone".

Sadly though, muses, mentors, friends and lovers are hard to come by and keep, especially for someone with as diffuse an identity as mine. Hence my search for communities. Hence my love of and for Bluestockings as a collective entity.

i smashed myself to pieces
i am gonna fuck myself up
i'm sifting through the ashes
oh what i have become
i gave myself away now i'm nothing
i let it slip away now i'm nothing
all that i can do is break myself in two
i fucked it all away now i'm nothing
wave wave wave wave goodbye
wave wave wave wave goodbye ~ "Now I'm Nothing", NIN

wrapping up a few threads

2008-04-08T09:25:42Z

so the key to my staving off depression seems to be skating. Specifically the high-intensity work that happens when I inline speedskate, but figure-skating too. The hard excercise seems to re-regulate everything from my appetite to my moods to my sleep schedule. magic.

last week I was at a gaybar called "the cock" and I heard Electric six's song "gaybar" for the first time. kindof like the perfect place to debut that song right?

well i've just been reading about the phenomenon of Slasher fan-fiction ("slash" as in the punctuation in spock/kirk). It's mostly written by straight women, and in the introduction to her book Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, Majorie Garber asks whether such phenomena call into question the way we ("we" as in all of you out there who aren't some confused flavor of bi) categorize bisexuality as a discrete alternative to "gay" or "straight". Perhaps, she proposes, we shouldn't think in term of homosexualtiy and heterosexuality, but rather we should just start with sexuality. It makes perfect sense to me, 'cuz I don't have one set of organs and orifices of sex and affection for gayness and a duplicate set for straightness.

There's one me: one dick, one heart. They don't understand why I have to feel and act one way in this bar/room/cafe/bed and another way at the one down the road.

So tying together Electric Six, Slasher fandom, and just general genius social satire is my pick for video of the week:

porn is not necessarily free of violence

2008-03-31T09:02:54Z

One mistake (among many)in articles i've read by John Stoltenburg (founder of Men Against Pornography), is that "objectification" is an all-or-nothing act, rather than one of degree. When we look desirously at a lover, we are probably objectifying hir. Certainly when we gaze at a stripper on stage, or at a physically attractive person on the street we are privileging a person's physical appearence over hir subjective experience.

Where Stoltenburg gets it wrong though, is in asserting that any of that results in complete objectification. When I look at a naked body on display, and when I respond to it sexually, I'm *not* denying that there is a person involved, and I'm certainly not denying that that person can at any moment choose to have hir subjective experience privileged over my experience of gazing at hir body.

All the same, sexual objectification (and its extreme, gazing at porn) should not be let off the hook uncritically.

The anti-porn crusaders may simply have misidentified the victims. It's not the porn actors that are victims. It's not women as a whole (yes I've looked at a fair amount of porn, and yes it's conditioned my mind, and yet no, I don't expect or want my own interpersonal sexual experiences to resemble anything like the expereince of whacking-off to images, and emphatically no, I don't consiously look at female friends, colleagues, or presidential candidates as being "a collection of tubes to fuck"). Unconsiously, the jury is out and if you can sceintifically make a case that porn makes me hurt women, I'll accept it.

The real victim, though, is the consumer of porn. *When* I'm engaged in whacking off to porn, I've turned into a rather mindless collection of reactions to visual stimuli. It's not *that* terrible, but it's also not *that* far off from the man who sits on subways whacking off in public to women, staring fixedly at them, unable to interact with them in that moment as anything other than visual images.

When it comes to masturbation, my (relatively new) ethical principle is to only fantasize about people who've explicitly or implicitly given me consent. Implicit consent includes sex-workers and ex-lovers with whom I haven't had some sort of catastrophic falling-out with. It includes complete strangers whose images I might remember, but whose individuality I'll never have to engage with.

It doesn't include people I know who I don't know in a sexual context. Out of regard for me, it ought not to also include random images, celebrity images and the like.

The problem with porn is that it can make us brain-dead. I used to think that was true in my naive 20's and having gone through a decade of increasing sex-positivity, I'm starting to think that it's true once again. It's not an unmitigated evil, I don't want to ban it, and I don't even want to stop using it. It has positive aspects as well, some of which include education and expansion of one's sexual imagination. The more I use porn to explore things I'm not easily attracted to, such as gay scenes, gay SM, realistic SM with dominant men and submissive females (personally I *strongly* prefer engaging in the opposite), safer-sex scenes, scenes with body types I don't inuitively respond to -- the better.

*Sigh*.

I really don't understand myself. I'm a conservative bi-man wrapped in a progressive straight-boy, wrapped in a kinky polyamorously polymorphous pervert, wrapped in a traditional heterosexual monogamist.

I just want a lover who's *more* fluid and expressive than I am, and I'll be fine.

I haven't said that out loud (that I want a lover) in a while. Do I really want one?

*Sigh*

Maybe not. I do want more contact with more friends. That's it. Problem is that *they* mostly want lovers, and that precludes me from their life, and then I have to find a lover of my own.

I don't know, I'm rambling incoherently like a total fuck cuz it's 5:00 am and i haven't slept yet, and i'm hungry.

More thoughts on exhibitionism, feminism, and sex-crime.

2008-03-31T06:08:45Z

shesanightowlWrote a provocative response to my post about gaybars and subway exhibitionists. So here's an attempt to figure out what I really think:

Hmmm. Ok. I don't think that in all cases individuals ought to publicly and explicitly confront those who bother them, since safety, expediency and efficacy are clearly most important. In any case, I'm not sure I *really* meant (and I surely don't mean it anymore) that there was an onus on the two women to speak up against the exhibitionist in an uncomfortable (and potentially unsafe) situation that was imposed on them.

I just wish we lived in a culture where we are better versed in the varieties of sexual consent (and the necessity of being frank and open about asking for, giving, and whithdholding consent) than we are about sports teams and shoe-styles. My own confusion about the issue (I wrote and re-wrote tis response several time over already) is testament to how confused our culture (and I) am about consent.

Also since I don't know what was going on in the women's own minds, it's rather dumb for me to accuse them of being subject to patriarchy just because they said nothing; their utterly ignoring the guy and going on with their conversation may have been a potent enough assertion of their own identities.

I, however, very much felt I *was* a tool of some sort of social power structures. Probably multiple, conflicting ones, which is why I didn't know how to act. I'm in favor of consensual deviance from hegemonically-correct sexuality, and I think that people ought to be able to get away with public sex on an uncrowded late night subway car without being arrested. By contrast I'm *not* in favor of sexist-oppression (when I'm aware of it) or of non-consensual aggression or sexual acts.

But given the sexism of the culture we live in, the shit I saw on the subway wasn't "just" an act involving three unsexed, ungendered people and a fourth observer:

I don't think people should masturbate *at people* in public like that. It's fucking rude. However, as an act in-itself, stripped of all gender implications, that's all I think it is -- deeply rude. It becomes sexual aggression only because rape-culture frames it as such and makes it so.

Don't make the same mistake I originally did though, and think that makes the act harmless. Given that we are living in a sexist culture, the man's act *is* one of sexual aggression. It's not feminists' pointing out of this that perpetuates rape culture. (They might do better to point it out in ways that don't victimize women though).

I'm still really confused, although surprisingly I'm finding the conventional feminist reading reading of the events to be more and more acceptable.

Maybe there's a reverse asymmetry involved: while the man's act should be seen as one of sexual aggression (against the women directly, but also against the ideal of a harmonious society), the women can choose not to feel aggressed-upon.

Upon further reading (see here, here and ask alice!), I think that I might have the most sympathy with the *psychological* (rather than feminist or criminal justice) reading of exhibitionism, and perhaps my actions were in line with that?

Ask Alice says that NY state has a 3-month prison term for misdemeanor public lewdness, and while I suppose that's ok in this case (it's not like I can get him to seek counseling, but perhaps a judge can), I'm very wary that "public lewdness" could be used to prosecute a whole host of activities in ways that I'd feel are oppressive.