Sexuality, Love, and One Man's Feminism, Part One
There are intersections of identity, and then there are intersections of identity. And the place where my politics and my sexuality meet is a great big traffc jam of identity.

Politics and Finding Love
Talking to my therapist recently, I realized that the intersection of my politics and my views on romance is somewhat more labyrinthian than I thought it was. My therapist had pointed out that it is the case that sometimes our politics and our romantic relationships can find themselves at odds. For instance, there have been times when I have been told by a lover that my raising my voice at her is much different (i.e. less acceptable) than her raising her voice at me. This claim is legitimate, it seems to me; as a general rule, when men raise their voices at women, there is an evocation of a pre-existing power dynamic which I want to avoid. And as a feminist, I think it's important that I keep this power dynamic in mind when arguing with anybody--and 'anybody' includes a lover--and to recognize and subvert it whenever I can. But having to keep this in mind in the face of being yelled at by a lover can be an extremely difficult thing to do--keeping myself from raising my voice is one thing; keeping myself from responding in kind to somebody to whom I am vulnerable in the intimate way that a lover can be, is really hard to do. Worth the effort, I think, but still difficult.

Another example: My politics, to the degree that they include queer theory (and to some degree feminism in general), make me sort of predisposed to like queer/queer-minded women--and that includes romantically. Sadly, the number of queer and queer-minded women who might like dating a man (even a feminist man) can seem at times to be vanishingly small. Yeah, yeah, more whining about how I can't find love because I'm so darn progressive. It's sort of self-serving and self-congradulatory. Still, it is sometimes how I feel. (And, actually, I doubt that the number of femnist women who want to date feminist men is vanishingly small--more likely the general ways that I meet people just don't lead to meeting queer-minded women who like men like myself.) To the extent that my politics shape who I'm attracted to romantically and sexually, and to the degree that my politics are feminist and queer-friendsly, it feels like I'm limiting my chances of finding love, romance and/or sex in a very real way.

Politics and Getting Some
So all of this can get incredibly complex for me to think about, much less for me to live through. But then it occurred to me, that mixed up in all of this was something that is on the surface a wee little bit simpler to think about, but maybe just as important: How my sex life is tied up with my politics, and how my political bent has made my sex life itself, as well as my relationship to sex and to my lovers more complex.

Disclaimer: Pretty much everything that follows is based upon generalizations, almost all of which have exceptions, even in my own specific examples. That is, when I talk about 'lovers' who are into x,y and z, it's a certainty that there are exceptions. So if any of y'all know any of my lovers, or think you do, or want to, keep in mind that any generalization I make here might not apply to any particular individual.

As I have worked on this post over a couple of days, the more I think about how my feminism and my sex life come together (no pun intended), the less I think that it actually is any simpler than, say, how feminism affects my lovelife in general. Part of that is because sex and romance are intextricably intertwined, I think--at least they are for me. But part of it is that the intricacies of feminism and sex are myriad. I'm not going to try to address them all. I'm going to focus on one in particular.

First off, there's what I'll call, for want of a more precise phrase, the expressed 'desire for a dom' that my lovers have routinely suprised me with. I recognize that there are several technical ways that those in the BDSM community use the term 'dom', and that I'm likely misusing it here. I'm going to use it as a blanket term to cover a general feel for the power relationships that my sexual relationships have seemed to default to. The way it works is this: From the very start, though I am shy and often slow-moving when it comes to sex, I am often the initiator. This goes for the first kiss all the way down to the first roleplay. It's not that simple, of course, because there is never (one hopes) just one initiator. Rather, the move into sex is as layered as sexual attraction can be, and all involved usually are initiating things--maybe some more obviously than others. But the fact still remains that I seem to run into a standard expectation that I be the initiator--at the very least--and the dom a good deal of the time.

Of course, it's not the case that only men can be doms. And it's not simply the case that dominating somebody sexually is being more 'masculine' in some way. But, of course, the whole dom/sub dynamic, in its myriad forms, doesn't take place outside of culture. It is informed by sexism, by feminism, and, in my case, by my personal views of masculinity. That so many of my sexual relationships have felt one-sided in this way isn't that strange, I suppose. In a way, it's just an extension of ways that our gender roles affect our interactions--it's still the case that men are more often expected to ask women out than vice-versa (I wonder if it's the case that butch women are more often expected to ask femme women out?). That men are more often expected to be the initiator sexually sort of grows right out of that, if we let it. And then, if dom/sub roles come into play at all, it's not suprising that we can easily attatch some gender roles to them as well. It seems to me that even when men are subs and women are dommes, there is something going on with genderfucking there--it is hot for all involved partly because it flies in the face of the norms of gender roles.

Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me
Which brings me sort of back to my relationship to being the initiator and/or dominant sexually. I'm happy and thankful that a lover in my early sexual life with other people (which, ahem, wasn't as early, really, as my sexual life with myself!) taught me that the standards which I had created for myself regarding sex with women--egalitarianism in all things, processing, not being demanding, not assuming anything (I was always the guy who asked a woman I was attracted to if I could kiss her)--while important, ought to sometimes be thrown out the window. And not only after processing it all. Sometimes, she explained, a woman likes to be kissed without the asking part. Don't men? And I'm talking about kissing here, but of course there was more to it than that. And, thankfully, she was willing to show me about the 'more to it than that' stuff as well.

But this was also, in a way, the beginnings of some of my confusion about sexuality, gender, feminism and masculinity. Because, in a simplistic way, what she was helping me to understand is that she wanted a thoughtful, respectful, feminist guy--but she also wanted him to slide right into what I see as a stereotypically negative gender role: The man who takes what he wants and cares only about himself; the man who is in control, who needs to be in control; the man that I desperately do not want to be.

Again, all of this is oversimplifying. There are all sorts of nuances that I'm not delving into. And it may be that within the nuances I'll find some solace. But as it stands, I am frustrated by my inability to navigate this stuff emotionally, and to find lovers who will navigate it with me long-term. I know that the may exist--I've had a taste of lovers who will navigate this stuff with me, as I will navigate the other side(s) of the issues with them. But I think it's rare, and it's not the sort of thing that one can really figure out alone, I think...

More later.
Filed under:Feminism, Masculinities and Therapy.

Allergic to Happiness?
The relationships between my body and my emotional states are (understandably) inextricably intertwined and complex. But sometimes the cause and effect is so simple that I don't even really recognize it for a long time. When I first got contact lenses, I loved them, though they were difficult to put in and take out. A few months after that I started feeling really tired all of the time. I couldn't understand my exhaustion, I (being something of a hypochondriac) kept thinking I had some thyroid problem or some such. I would sleep a lot, but mostly it was just like I was tired all the time. In class I would yawn consistently. I would want to close my eyes. I would rub my eyes a lot.

Wait. My eyes?

And that's when I figured out that what was happening was that my contacts were drying my eyes out, which my brain was interpreting as he needs sleep. When I changed brands and started using eyedrops, no more sleepyhead. In fact, I sometimes still use eyedrops to wake up. So, it's kind of like method acting, except unintentional.

I'm discovering a similar relationship between depression and allergies to pollen-ish stuff. One symptom of depression for me is an acheyness in my face. That sounds weird, I know, but it is a pretty definite way in which I feel depressed. When I'm depressed, my eyelids feel heavy, I feel like I have huge weights on my lower lids, my face feels puffy. Part of the listlessness that can come from depression for me is how my whole face feels droopy--my whole body too, but I feel it more in my face. I get a sort of tunnell-vision when I'm depressed, too, and--strange as this may sound--it sort of feels like it comes from my face being unmovable to some degree.

All of these things are difficult to describe. Pehraps I can get better at describing it as time goes on.

The interesting thing for me is that I also feel a lot of this when I'm perfectly happy, but having some reaction to pollen. Springtime usually consists of some adjustment of my sinuses and such. Usually I do adjust, but for a while my face and body feel achey, my eyes feel heavy...many of the same things that I feel when I'm depressed. And the thing is, I think I sort of become depressed as a part of that. Not to a huge degree, but there it is. My face feels lazy, I feel lazy...and the connection between lethargy and depression is a close one for me as well.

What to do about it? Well, recognizing it helps, because I can think to myself, "Hmm...actually, I think I just need to take an allergy pill or exercise a bit (which seems to relieve the symptoms for a while no matter the cause)". But here's another thing--I think knowing this I might just try to do something like face exercises or something. This seems all-too-new-agey for me, but I think it might help. I think that one of the reasons that, say, laughing makes me happier might be because it mixes up my face a bit, gets me out of that lethargy somewhat that my brain associates with a droopy little face. Maybe smiling some might make me happier? Or, maybe even frowning some might!
Filed under:Health and Therapy

Laughter as Medicine
I've noticed that things must be getting better in my little brain, because I've started to laugh more. (Don't worry, the anger, bitterness and tears still come, it's just mixed in with a little gafaw once in a while.) It's been a steady progression throughout the past few months, after having seen very little of it for almost a year. Part of what broke me out of my non-laughing stupor, I think, was going down to visit Chuck in LA a few months ago. He's one of the funniest people I know, and it's pretty much impossible to not laugh around him, given that fact--combined with the fact that we have such a long history. So perhaps I had a little bit of a breakthrough while I was down there--the combination of being out of town, with an old friend, and being around a funny old friend.

But also I'm just feeling more confident with myself in general, and the humor flows from that, sometimes. I find myself making jokes outloud when I'm alone. This is how my humor is, actually--constantly turning over ideas, emotions, phrases, and turning them into something that amuses me. More than any other time in my life, I've become more self-conscious about the number of jokes that fall flat (with others--to me I'm *always* fucking funny). And yet, I'm also starting to once again notice that people do chuckle, and occasionally chortle. And once in a while, I get a gafaw back.

I sometimes wonder--maybe I'm a little bit off that I think it's healthy that I can make jokes (outloud, at times) to myself and get a good laugh...and that I've missed that.


Filed under: Therapy

Polyamory, Deal-Breakers and Possibility
Deal Breakers
Archaic gender assignments aside, I love the fact that Lucy knows where to draw her line. We all have our 'deal breakers', I think, and the scope and forcefulness of whatever qualities/abilities/preferences we want others to have vary as well. But it makes sense, because to be discriminating (if I may invoke a usage not used very often today) is, in this case, simply to acknowledge that one has preferences, and is not willing to compromise on some of 'em when it comes to relating with others.

Sometimes I feel like my deal-breakers are petty and trite. And sometimes they are. Sometimes the deal breakers are just defense mechanisms ("I would never be friends with somebody who would do that to me!" could be a healthy way to look at things, but it could also be a way to avoid remembering being hurt, whether one was wronged or not.) But a good deal of the time, deal breakers are sincere attempts to say to the world (or, ahem, to a potential friend/lover) "This is what I want." Perhaps to challenge them to be that way, or perhaps as a way of saying goodbye.

Lucy may refuse to want to listen to obscure classical music; we might call her petty for that--if she really loves Schroeder, why not learn to love that stuff (you can learn it while you cook and make him laugh)? Well, maybe because she doesn't want to. He wants that in somebody, she doesn't want to be that person, so....BOING. (And we're ignoring for the moment, of course, that S isn't what Lucy wants in a...er...boyfriend?) Sometimes our preferences might seem petty--but that doesn't reduce how powerful they can be. It brings to mind lots and lots of letters to Savage Love: Sometimes desires for a particular kind/frequency of sex can be strong enough that people just don't want to live without. I think sex is just one facet of our lives that shows that the lines that we draw around what ought to be a deal breaker and what ought not are complex and interesting.

The Poly Thing
For instance, it often comes up in forums with other non-monogamous people as to whether or not nonmonogamy ought to be a deal-breaker. It seems to come down to how strongly one identifies as nonmonogamous. That is, for some people, it's central to their identity, and is also therefore a deal breaker. And some people have to learn that the hard way. Repeatedly. Just like the stereotype of the gay woman who finds herself constantly attracted to straight-identified women, there are nonmonogamous people out there who constantly find themselves attracted to monogamous-identified people (and possibly for some of the same reasons). And of course there are lots of monogamous people who have to learn the same lesson about what counts as a deal-breaker for them. For others, nonmonogamy isn't as central to their identity--it may be closer to a want than it is closer to a need. Or it may simply be one of equally desirable options.

Identifying as non-monogamous can feel quite freeing. When I first discovered that people practiced non-monogamy consciously, for the various reasons that they do so, it was one of the few times in my life that I could actually identify with people who feel like they've had some sort of religious epiphany. It was like the sort of 'aha!' moment that one gets when figuring out a logic problem or some such, but of course the emotional connections ran deeply, so that the 'aha!', rather than being a quick, sharp spurt, seemed to resonate and echo throughout my thoughts for weeks and months afterwards. It was an extremely pleasant sensation, though slightly uncomfortable as well, becasue it did remind me of some sort of religious experience, and, well, I'm not used to such things.

It's hard to even draw analogies to how I felt, because it really did (at the time, at least) feel like a singular sort of experience. Which is sort of silly, in a way, because part of the whole center of the experience was recognizing not only a way of looking at how I felt about love, but also recognizing that some other people felt that way too.

I guess you could say that, once I discovered that conscious nonmonogamy was something that other people did, I started to change how I identified as regards nonmonogamy, and it became one of the centers of how I think about who I am. It became a deal breaker.

The Possibilities are Endless...and Limited
At first, conscious nonmonogamy seems to offer up the world. If you read The Ethical Slut and agree with the central ideas there, you finish reading it and you just know that your cup, it's gonna runneth over. And I think there is real potential for such things--I have experienced them briefly, and don't see any real reason why such feelings couldn't be extended in my case (and there certainly people who have had long-term nonmonogamous relationships, which is one of the reasons that reading The Ethical Slut can have such an effect--realizing that the people who wrote the book made this work). But of course, like any epiphany, the devil is in the details. And I knew this going in--I'm a relatively practical guy a good deal of the time (or, ahem, pessimistic and skeptical?). But one thing I hadn't quite figured out from just thinking about this stuff, but did start to figure out once I got into it in my own life, is that, while the potential for love and being loved is huge with nonmonogamy, the potential for finding love, if nonmonogamy is a deal breaker for you, at least feels greatly reduced.

For instance, if I meet somebody who seems interesting and attractive, and they don't know me through friends or some such, the chances that they will identify as nonmonogamous are pretty darn small. And this is in the SF Bay Area. I can't imagine what it would be like if I lived in, say, Idaho. So the potential for just meeting somebody and hitting it off and finding some love that way is just not very great. (But then I think to myself--I think I've gone out on only a handful of dates where I didn't meet somebody through friends anyway, so it's not cutting my chances of finding love much at all.) And it takes some of the fun out of life, actually, because I end up not flirting as much, not entertaining possibilities as much--if the chances are so small, then you get into a 'why bother' mode. (I imagine this is just a little slice of what it is like for anybody who is in a very small minority regarding relationships--people who are gay, for instance, have to deal with this sort of thing every day.)

And yet...it's still a deal breaker for me. At some point, whether or not it reduces one's chances of finding love doesn't matter--if I don't want it, it doesn't matter how it affects my chances of getting what I want. For some things--like listening to obscure classical music--I wouldn't mind changing what I like. But this feels more fundamental, feels more like something that I wouldn't want to change, even if I could. And maybe I just need to hang out with more nonmonogamous people--then the flirting could just fly.

Filed under: Therapy

Potential Lovers, Run for the Hills!
Been doing some thinking lately about my self-described 'loner' status. I don't think I was never under any illusions that I was a loner in some 'cool' way. Just always saw it as one of various options. Somewhere along the line in my life I developed a conception of myself as a loner. And I had a nice little set of reasons for the fact that I was a loner, mostly loosely based on being an only child for a good part of my life. From there, of course, I learned to like adults better than other kids, blah, blah, blah. As I might explain this to a new friend or lover, they would nod knowingly. Explanations accepted, loner status, check. It was all very cut and dried, tied up with a nice little ribbon.

And, of course, it's not that simple.

One of the interesting things I'm learning about myself lately is how powerfully shy-in-groups I can be. Hanging out in new groups where I know few peole is pretty hard for me. It's not hard in the way that I spontaneously combust when I think about it; it's hard in that wallflower-inspiring sort of way. I have to make myself talk to other people--my natural disposition is quiet/stareatthewall/runaway at such things. Unless, of course, a school-like atmostphere is encouraged, and then I can raise my hand and speak; for some reason that's feels safer. (Thus my recent visit to the East Bay Atheists group wasn't quite so intimidating, though it had some of the same flavor as other outings I've had lately.)

And when I do make myself talk to people, it doesn't always work out very well for either of us. A recent conversation I had at a little party I went to recently:

Me: (after hearing she needed a beer badly after a rough day) So, why was your day so rough?
Her: (laughing, taking a swig)Not rough, just very, very looooooong.
Me: Ahah. (pause) (more pause) (can't think of the next thing to say)
Her: (wandering away...)

Of course, she could have said something back or whatever--but the point is, there's an easy opening there: "What did you do all day?" or some such. And this is an opening that I just couldn't see that night.

It can be even more painful than that. While I was waiting in line for the restroom the other day in a cafe, the woman behind me started talking to me. Now, this isn't the most comfortable place to have a conversation--and we were both sort of shifting from one leg to the other--but still:

Her: So, are you a student?
Me: Nope. Yes. Well, sort of. Finishing my master's, but not very quickly. (and then...) Why do you ask?
Her: (taken aback by my question)Erm, well, I don't know, it's just a good guess in a cafe.
Me: Yes, I guess it is. So how about you?

So I pulled that one out barely in the end, actually asking a pertinent question, but first I had to sort of freak her out by wondering why she asked if I was a student. It might have been an ok question, but it came out like: "Why are you talking to me?" I go meta with people before I go regular, it seems. Ack.

But shyness does not equal loner-ness. I imagine that many shy people don't want to be loners at all--though they may latch onto lonerness because that's easier (?) than trying to not-be-shy. So there's more to my percievd lonerness--I really do enjoy being alone a good deal of the time. Too much socializing and I go pretty crazy. This is true for most people, of course (I think!); it's just that the level at which I achieve 'too much socializing' is disturbingly low. Hanging out with a group of people for more than a couple of hours is exhausting, for instance. (Sometimes in a good way, but still...)

No where is this little quirk of mine more apparent than in my romantic relationships (looking into the past and future, now, because there certainly isn't anything to look at in the present). To a person, I think I have been quite a bit less social (in various ways) than anybody I've ever been romantic with. And a cursory look through the seive I like to call my memory (I think Lex got all of my memory brain cells), I think I've been mostly less social than any of my friends, too. Maybe a couple of exceptions. And when I say 'less social', I know it's complex, but I mostly just mean 'would more often just be alone than with anybody else' as well as 'doens't feel comfy in groups'.

And the thing is, that's sort of changing. I'm either recognizing something I didn't recognize before, or I'm just changing, or both. Probably both. I still tend to prefer to be alone a good deal of the time, but now I also tend to need some social time in a way that I don't think I ever have before. And it's a scary place to be, what with lots of friendships up in the air (cause or effect?). But here I am.

Still, Lucy's advice to the world might be appropriate in my case, nonetheless, since I'm likely still less social than most of the women I might be romantically interested in:

Filed under: Comics as Life and Therapy

Maybe I Blog Too Much
It's been suggested, sure. It's even been suggested by me. And I've thought a lot about quantity vs. quality in this writing, why I feel the desire/need to write here anyway. There are myriad reasons, of course, and some of them are 'better' than others, but I think one central reason comes down to this:

I just feel more sane when I write.

I love it when people comment, I like knowing people are reading and maybe even getting something from what I write (even if what they take away is an example of how not to be or something!). But, even if I never knew that somebody else read what I wrote--the possibility that they might is what, in part, makes writing here different from writing in my private journals (which, silly of me, I think nobody will ever read). That doesn't mean it makes me proofread or think harder or whatever, really--but it does mean that I'm writing not only for myself; an imaginary audience is still an audience.

Still: I just feel more sane when I write.

Maybe others feel this way about dance, or singing, or sex (ok, I suppose I feel this way about two out of three of those things, too); I happen to feel it strongly when I write. The catharsis is a great pleasure, and as long as I'm getting some pleasure and not hurting anybody (trying not to--though I don't always succeed) in the process, I doubt I'll ever stop, really. I don't like essentialist definitions, even simple ones about parts of myself, but sometimes I do feel like I was just born this way:


Filed under:Blogging and Comics as Life, and Therapy