On being a fat girl who likes skinny men...

(x-posted from School For Scandal.)

As a teenager, my biggest crushes were Iggy Pop and David Bowie. I fantasized about willowy goth boys, the lankier the better. My longest relationships have been with tall, very thin men. (I like short thin men too, though.)

Then in my late twenties I found myself going through a phase I’ve nicknamed “fucking fat dudes with beards.” I never really had a thing for fat dudes with beards, but there’s a LOT of them in Chicago, and they’re often slutty chubby chasers, so I guess it was inevitable that I’d wind up with a few, considering a few of them seemed to have made the rounds of all the chubby hipster chicks in Chicago.

So here’s the thing. I’ve always preferred thin men. Really thin men. Muscular or lanky, I don’t care. A+ if they’re a bit androgynous, or have long hair and good fashion sense. Blame Bowie. So why was I hooking up with these hefty dudes in ragged hoodies and neckbeards? Partly because it was easy, but mostly because I had this weird sense of INTERNALIZED FAT GUILT.

I am a fat person. Even at my most athletic I wore a size 14 (I wear an 18 now.) I will probably never be thin, and I’m pretty much okay with that. But I felt like a traitor for liking skinny dudes. Why couldn’t I be more attracted to my own people? Was it some sense of INTERNALIZED SELF LOATHING that made me want to fuck ectomorphs? So I hooked up with fat dudes instead out of some weird sense of moral imperative. A friend accused me of being “altruistic with my pussy,” and I’m afraid she’s right.

Here’s the thing- have you ever heard of a hetero MAN questioning his taste if he likes thin women because society enforces the notion that thin=beauty to the point that women develop eating disorders? I haven’t. In fact, I friend dumped someone when he claimed “anorexic women were his type.” Barf. Ok, maybe once I heard a dude say “I know I probably like skinny women because society holds them up as the standard of beauty, but I can’t help liking what I like.” Well, at least he was honest, but he wasn’t exactly feeling bad about his tastes, either.

So we KNOW that men are under pressure to be seen with skinny women as a status thing (hence the many, many straight men who fuck fat women on the DL, and the many cruel jokes about drunk men hooking up with fat women, as if NOBODY sober would want to have sex with a fat woman…) But conversely, are hetero women told that we need to have a thin man on our arm? Is this desire of mine driven by society ? Are ectomorphs being held up as the pinnacle male perfection? Not so much- skinny is often painted as wimpy and unmanly. On the rare occasion that straight women are encouraged to objectify men based on appearances, it’s typically some beef wad like Fabio or the Old Spice Man. But it’s still considered distasteful that straight women pursue men on the basis of physical attraction outside of romance novels and fantasies. Newspapers report over and over that the happiest marriages are between beautiful women and plain men, because the man idolizes his mate and she basks in his attention, knowing she’s got the upper hand in an otherwise completely sexist arrangement. Straight women aren’t supposed to choose men on the basis of appearances, we should be looking for a man with a good job (and maybe personality, intelligence and a sense of humor. But mostly money.)

FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

I’m sorry dudes, but appearance do matter, and straight women should expect more. Moreover, if you’re going to put “big rack” and “long legs” on your list of girlfriend specifications, I should be allowed to state that I like big dicks and manscaping. Women should be encouraged to find their partners (regardless of gender) physically and sexually attractive instead of just looking for a thick wallet or a big brain. I’m not saying that straight women should necessarily subscribe to mainstream standards of attractiveness, but figure out what you find physically sexy in your partner and go for it. I have a thing for skinny guys, and they seem to like me back, so maybe opposites attract. I don’t think society (unless you count the glam and gothic musical movements) is responsible for my tastes, and I don’t think I should feel guilty for liking what I like, or that I should apologize for being attracted to a body type that is different from my own.

I think society enforces the idea that fat people are sexually unempowered, and that we should settle for whatever comes along, whether that’s a person who is drunk or desperate, a pity fuck, or other fatties only. God forbid I have a PREFERENCE and a choice in the matter! God forbid I be attracted to men who weigh less than me! ZOMG I MIGHT CRUSH THEM IN BED!!! (Trust me, this has NEVER happened.)

But here’s the thing about Chicago- fat people in general have a lot of sex and a lot of sexual options here, because for the most part this is a city where it’s ok to be fat AND fuck a lot, especially for people in the punk and indie subcultures. Chicago is full of (positively) slutty fat people, fat sex workers, fat burlesque dancers, and others who have embraced their sexuality in a bigger body. I spent almost ten years living in Los Angeles and Japan, two of the most fat-negative places on the planet, and it’s really nice to be in a place where fatties can get their groove on without shame. (I even met a person who had gotten stretch marks tattooed onto her stomach as a statement of fat solidarity…there ya go.)

So here’s the thing- I swear I meet more girls in Chicago (and it may just be the circles I run in) who are “chubby chasers” than not. I know a handful of extremely promiscuous fat men who have slept with half the women in town. BECAUSE THEY CAN! In Chicago, being a fat dude is not a handicap for getting laid. So there is no reason for me to exclusively have sex with fat dudes out of some sense of FIGHTING OPPRESSION WITH MY VAGINA when they are plenty in demand in my town.

I like skinny boys. I am a fat girl. I own this. I am not a bad person for liking skinny boys as a fat girl. And David Bowie has a 24/7 open-ended invitation to hang out with me ANY TIME.

*Please note that I was terribly heterosexist in this essay and used “straight” as shorthand for people who like to fuck opposite gender people. If you like to fuck your opposite gender and other genders or identify as nongendered, etc, please don’t feel marginalized, I just wasn’t sure how to express “likes to fuck opposite gender and possibly other genders” without being insanely wordy.

Weiners and Consent

So the feminist blogsophere (still using it ironically) is still talking about Anthony Weiner, so I might as well, too.

The issue is that many feminists are taking issue with the idea, poised usually by liberals, that Weiner's conduct (having sexually-charged internet exchanges with various women) should not be relevant to his political career because it's a private sexual matter that doesn't violate any laws.  The feminist response is that it appears that he sent a sexually explicit picture to a follower of his without having established a consensual, sexual online friendship with her.  In other words: sexual harassment.

And I agree.  It's not cool to send dick pics to random women, period.  Weiner claimed it was "a joke."  The recipient doesn't understand the joke and claims to have never had any salacious interaction with Weiner.  But the other relationships, so far, appear to be explicitly consensual.

If it can be shown that Weiner was sending sexual images to women non-consentually, he is guilty of sexual harassment and should be forced to step down.   Although I find it funny that a man we pretty know is guilty of sexual harassment is regarded as an elder statesman and the same congressmen who were supporting Clinton during his shit are now calling upon Weiner to resign.  But that's just politics, gross, yucky poltics.

What bothers me about this feminist critique is how often it's tied into other moralistic, sex-negative critiques that I find troubling.  For example, in this excellent Shakesville post about the consent issue, a lot of the commenters diverge wildly from the topic of consent to shake their fists at Weiner for being a philandering asshole, for lying to his constituents, and in general for engaging in the consensual online sexual behavior as opposed to calling him out specifically for the behavior that wasn't consensual. This rankles me.

My husband  and I are not out about a great many things in relation to his work life, for good reason.  We're not out about having an open relationship, or our queerness.  Were he or I a public figure, I suspect we'd be even more closeted.  So if we were and some scandal came out about him having sex with dudes on the side, everyone would be up in arms about what a terrible husband he is.  I'm not saying that Weiner and his wife have an open relationship, but what I am saying is we don't know what their private boundaries are for this kind of behavior.  We know he told her about these online relationships before they were married.  That's it.

I find the hang-wringing about "poor Huma" to be shallow and kind of insulting to her.  By all accounts she's a pretty bad-ass lady.  What she does with this unfortunately public information is up to her, but it's not "feminist" to freak out about infidelity and act as if one woman's supposed private pain is somehow a political point.  Infidelity is not a feminist issue, no matter how you want to spin it.

Furthermore, there's a lot of "he's just a gross pervert," sentiment in the feminist blogosphere which I also find weird.  The consent issue is huge, and at the heart of the matter, but based on what I'm reading I can't help but feel that even if everything Weiner did was explicitly consensual, some progressives would have a problem with it, because "it's perverted" and "congressmen shouldn't act this way."  Weiner is a married dude who had some really boring, bland netsex.  This is exceedingly common behavior.  Dare I say it, it's pretty much normal behavior for a huge chunk of dudes with Internet access, if my experience on the Internet is any indication.  Does being a congressman mean a person has to give up all their sexual freedoms?  That seems ridiculous to me.  I don't think there's any job that should preclude a person a right to have consensual online flirtations and netsex.

I also find it strange that both in the media and on blogs, this is being spun as an infidelity, full stop.  I feel like it was pretty recently that the mainstream media was asking "Does this sort of behavior count as cheating?"  Apparently it's been decided now.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that netsex can't be cheating.  I'm just befuddled by the assumption that must be.  Some people think that viewing porn in a relationship is cheating.  I think it's a grey area that can be, depending on what the couple in question has agreed on.

At the end of the day, all that really matters about this situation was whether or not Weiner was sexually harrassing women who had no desire for sexual contact with him. I really wish that the moralizing about the other stickier, trickier issues around monogamy and private sexuality wasn't being lumped in with all that.

Consent: is it OK to go from No to Yes in one evening?

(X-posted from School for Scandal)

So, I am really lucky to have good health insurance and a great gynecologist. (I was seeing a GP before who was fucking useless.)My current gyno got me on continuous birth control on a low estrogen pill, as a person whose life used to be ruled by PMDD, this is one of the best things to ever happen to me.

So anyway, I visited her a few days ago for my checkup, and I told her about my plans to become a sex therapist. She told me about how she treats a lot of patients with sexual dysfunction and advises them to use vibrators (and referred me to her favorite vibrator shop). I love having a sex positive gyno (the first one I ever saw when I was a teen told me I shouldn't shave my pubic hair and that I needed to lose weight- I guess she was working at my high school's free clinic for a reason.)

I also told my Doctor about SlutWalk. She told me she treats a lot of women who have been dateraped and the advice she gives about consent is this:

"If you say no one evening, you need to stick to that no. You can say yes the next evening, but you need to be consistent with your consent, otherwise men think that if they push hard enough, they can turn a no into a yes."

I see her point (a similar technique is used to keep dogs from begging for scraps at a table) but if it's generally agreed that if you initially give consent and change your mind, you have a right to stop things without being judged. (I'm not talking about wishing you hadn't slept with someone the next day or retroactively changing your consent, I'm talking about actively communicating a change in consent at the actual moment.) So is it legit to say at the beginning of any evening, "I don't want to have sex tonight," and then after some heavy making out say, "I changed my mind, I do want to have sex tonight?" I think a mature dude should be able to handle this without assuming that he can turn every no into a yes. But is it, as my gyno claims, breeding messy boundaries? It certainly enforces the idea that women are responsible for preventing rape, rather than teaching men to roll with clearly communicated changes in consent without making assumptions.

I can think of one specific incident where I did this. It was on a second date with my previous boyfriend. We started making out and I told him I didn't want to go below the waist. The truth was, I did want to have sex with him but I set this boundary because I was looking for a relationship, not a hookup, and I wanted to take things slow. However, things got late, my train stopped running, and it was clear that I was going to sleep over, and I wanted to. So, I said "fuck it," and changed my consent (and clearly communicated this.) The next morning we talked about it over breakfast. "I did want to have sex with you, but I was afraid you would treat me weird the morning after if we did it so soon," I explained.

"Am I treating you weird now?" He asked, giving me a hug. And we did start a relationship, even though we had sex on the second date instead of the third, or fifth, or six months, or whatever society dictates as the appropriate time to have sex in the context of a relationship.

(An aside- anyone who casts you aside for having sex with them "too soon" is not worth being in a relationship with. Anyone you have to "manipulate" into a relationship, rules style, is probably not going to be a good partner. But it's probably a good idea to keep your expectations low in the beginning.)

So it was a weird situation because I initially said "No" out of fear of rejection, even though I wanted to say "Yes," and did change my consent over the course of an evening. I don't think this incident has made my ex into a date rapist, but I can see how with some less evolved dudes it might be problematic.

Very curious to hear what others think about this.

When Sex Is NOT Fun: The Conclusion

Buckle up for another long post, folks.  If it weren't for our Chicago correspondent, this blog's revival would be mostly about the "Sex is Fun" podcast, so I want this to be the last time I address Kidder, Jade, Lorax and the whole drama for a while, at least.  Which means I have lots of things to say.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, my first haterade post on Kidder got some attention from the "Sex is Fun" crew and they've continued commenting on posts both the Boy and I have made about their podcast.  It's like I'm talking to famous people!

A new podcast plopped today, and again, basic personality differences aside (Kidder's style will probably always rub me the wrong way - he's a Virgo, after all) I was relieved to hear what sounded like actual emotional growth, honest communication, and a genuine owning of shit by both parties.  In all seriousness, this is a podcast that should be listened to by anyone who is considering non-monogamy or is engaged in it.

I'd intended super-snarky post that I never got around to making, as new podcasts kept emerging which kept changing my viewpoint.  I was initially reacting to episode #276, in which I felt Kidder enlisted his crew to take Jade to task for fucking up with regards to her open relationship.  I thought that podcast was a trainwreck.  As a listener, I felt manipulated.  It was clear that Kidder was very upset with how things were progressing in his relationship, but was addressing them passive-aggressively.  After the initial wind-up post which I had intended to lead into an analysis of all the ways episode #276 was an example of Doin' It Wrong, I found I'd been linked to by Kidder, and tracked down the source: Facebook.  Where I got to witness Kidder's descent into social-media madness which had all happened a couple of weeks earlier.

I want to make something very clear. I am not now, nor will I ever be against people speaking publicly about the good and bad parts about relationships in general and open relationships in particular.   Quite the contrary: I think people should. I wouldn't have this blog at all if I didn't think that.  One of my biggest critiques of "mainstream" poly stuff on the Internet is that it rarely talks openly about the pitfalls and problems that non-monogamous relationships will likely encounter.  My problems with Kidder's relationship difficulties were not that he was talking about it, but rather how he was talking about it.

Kidder has admitted, repeatedly, that posting about his relationship problems explicitly breaking a promise he made to his wife.  And he did it anyway, because she'd broken promises to him and he wanted to know "what it would feel like."  In the latest podcast he was even more honest, and perhaps inadvertently admitted that since she'd broken promises, he felt he had the right to make her feel what he'd felt.

This is inherently, basic relationship 101 stuff that is NOT OKAY.  He was purposefully being vindictive, because he was hurt.  And because he's Internet-famous, everyone else heard it, too. He has yet to acknowledge this was a fuck-up, and something he should be apologizing for as opposed to trying to spin as a good thing because it lead to him getting support and hearing stories.  He could have heard those stories and gotten that support without being vindictive and punishing.  He didn't hit the "post" button thinking, "I'm sure this will save my relationship!"  Likewise, he insists on calling her paramour "her boyfriend" knowing she hates it.  It's punishment, pure and simple.  And while the impulse to respond tit-for-tat, to hurt your partner when they're hurting you, are all perfectly normal and understandable, that doesn't justify it.

In the most recent episode of the podcast, Kidder acknowledged that he'd failed to use "I" statements and blamed Jade a lot in a way that put her on the defensive.  I was really gratified to hear this, even if again, this is basic relationship 101 stuff that people should really have down pat before embarking on something as daunting as opening up a relationship.  But he still failed to make the connection between being mean and acting hateful towards Jade privately - which he showed genuine remorse for (a sign you're probably not actually a narcissist, Kidder) - and exhibiting the same behavior publicly.

So, that's why I was so irritated in the first place.  While again, I agree that people sharing their intimate lives via social media can be a good thing, I still also believe that doing so in the heat of the moment (and under the influence of substances) is a bad idea.  I am no stranger to this behavior, I've had an online journal since 2000 which has always made my partners uncomfortable because I tend to write about whatever I'm going through on said journal.  The difference is, I haven't done it publicly - it's always been accessible only to people I trust.  And since it's not, I don't use it punitively.  I try to walk the fine line between speaking my truth - which is enormously helpful for me - and not violating my partners' privacy. I view it much in the same way I would going to friends in real life for support.  I haven't always been sensitive to my partners' feelings in this endeavor, but when I have fucked up, it's been through genuine error, not because I wanted to publicly shame my partner.

This doesn't mean I censor myself, but I might censor who can read what I write, for instance, as opposed to putting it out there where everyone can see.  I might, in the heat of my anger, write something, but not post it, then reread in the morning to make sure I was posting my emotional truth as opposed to angry word vomit.  Given that Kidder and Jade seem to meet people who listen to the podcast/read their Faceboks, I can only imagine the amount of anxiety and awkwardness that comes as a result of Kidder lashing out the way he did, and as much as I think the last podcast was awesome, he has yet to take any responsibility for it.  Sometimes "radical honesty" can be code for "being a dick."

Those criticisms aside, it really was a good episode.  Jade's side had been missing for most of this and I was glad to hear it and some of my suspicions about the difference in the two sides was validated.  They spelled out some basic concepts anyone in open relationships should adhere to, along with the aforementioned non-blamey "I" statements, is validating your partner's feelings.  As I mentioned before, I am wary of validating crazy feelings that are based on irrational cognitions, but there comes a point, particularly in the delicate stages of opening up a relationship where it is super-important to validate your partner even if you think their feelings are nuts.  Jade apparently failed at this hardcore.  I've found it's also a good thing if you are the insecure party to acknowledge that hey, your feelings might in fact be crazy - but can you please validate me anyway?  That way your partner doesn't feel like they did something wrong (which will put them on the defensive) but you'll still get the validation you need.  And it's just honest.  It's useless getting into a tit-for-tat argument where you're trying to justify if your feelings are "correct" or not.  If you open up saying, "Hey, these feelings may be nuts, but they exist, can we deal with that?"  you're more likely to get the response you need.

I am sincerely glad that Jade and Kidder have talked it out, that Kidder acknowledged that Jade isn't the only person who fucked up here, and that Jade genuinely seems to realize that she was kind of being an asshole.  Too bad they couldn't not bring "Sex At Dawn" into it, which reminds me I never followed through on my Christopher Ryan interview.  Oh well.  His book sucks.

This is a win for all us partnered non-monogamous types!  Some of Kidder's Facebook fans have noted that for a hater, I sure am invested in all this.  Well, of course I am - I have been listening to the podcast for years now.  I wouldn't listen if I found it totally loathsome.  (Note: How often to I listen to Polyamory Weekly now?  Oh wait, I don't.)  I may have a lot of issues with how Kidder presents himself but I am always genuinely rooting for sex-positive people who talk honestly about sex, because I think it's important.

I also hope that a lot of the hardcore fans of SiF don't see Kidder as a guru (he's just a guy, guys) and realize there are a lot of ways to do non-monogamy, and what Kidder and Jade present is just one valid way of many valid ways. As Kidder and Jade admitted, they really are just newbs to all this.  I still think of the Boy and I as newbs, too.  Frankly, I'm way more wary of people like Tacit and Joreth of PolyWeekly fame who present themselves as experts while giving terrible advice based on limited experience.  In spite of the problems I have with how Kidder handled this, he isn't presenting himself as an expert and instead is being incredibly honest about his fears and insecurities and problems, which I applaud.  Both because it's cool and because it gives me blogging fodder.

Too much tl;dr?  Here's the short version:
1) Everyone will make mistakes when negotiating new boundaries of openness.  Expect it. It's not the end of the world.
2) There's a difference between discussing the hardships you're going through publicly and lashing out at your partner publicly
3) Be thoughtful when you engage social media to talk about your relationship problems.
4) Use "I" statements, always always ALWAYS
5) You can - and should - validate your partner's feelings even if you don't agree with them.  Validation and agreement are not the same thing.
6) Don't fucking lie.
7) Don't use your partner's current issues with you to air previously-unexpressed grievances.  Tit-for-tat is a way of taking the focus off their problems with you and blaming them instead.  Don't do it.
8) Own your own shit.

HTH YALL

What I learned from SlutWalk and Big Freedia

(X-posted from School For Scandal)

This was a helluva weekend- SlutWalk on Saturday, and a Big Freedia show on Sunday. For the unacquainted, Big Freedia is an incredible Transgendered "Bounce" rapper from New Orleans- a genre of music almost exclusively dedicated to shaking your ass. The mostly white, hipster crowd at the Do-Division Street Festival didn't quite know what to make of the glorious Queen Diva and her crew of rump shaking dancers, but before long, an ass-shaking dance-off was going down on stage.

So here's the thing. People- all kinds of people of all genders and colors, are on stage, doing incredibly lewd, sexy dancing- bent over, humping the stage, flashing panties and boobs as a self proclaimed "dick eater" spurs them on with a chant of "AZZ EVERYWHERE, AZZ EVERYWHERE!"

Is it sexy? Damn right. Are they showing off for attention? Of course. Are they only doing it for the attention? Maybe some of them are, but I suspect a lot of them are doing it because it FEELS GOOD.

Is it exploitation? Not really, going on stage is totally optional, anyone who wants to dance can dance and no one can tell them not to, and they dance because it's fun. Is it "Girls Gone Wild?" Not really, unless GGW had a "queer multicultural edition with occasional stretchmarks, cellulite and hairy armpits."

Nevertheless, there's a whole lot of scantily clad ass and crotches in the air. So what makes Big Freedia show different from your average hip hop video? It's the fact that the dancers are doing it for themselves. They are taking pleasure in the fact that shaking your ass does feel good, and it feels AWESOME to do it in public if you feel like you're not going to get raped/groped/harassed for doing it.

And yes, I shook my ass, and yes, I roamed around the street fair in a pink teeshirt, a pair of hot pink tights, motorcycle boots and black ruffle butt panties during and after the Big Freedia show. Because I feel awesome and sexy when I wear this kind of outfit in a place where I feel safe. I felt safe because I've got a big strong body, a confident kick ass attitude, friends by my side, and I was in a place where I knew harassment would not be tolerated. (And as soon as I left, I put my skirt back on, because I didn't feel safe outside of the confines of the event. Reality bites.)

To give an analogy: it's the difference between me kissing a girl at a gay bar vs. a straight bar. If I kiss a girl in a gay bar, nobody cares. It's a safe space to enjoy myself in this way. However, if I kiss a girl in a straight bar, all of a sudden men come out of the woodwork, wanting to take pictures, propositioning a threesome, staring, etc. The problem here is not that I enjoy kissing girls sometimes. I shouldn't stop kissing girls when I want to because it "asks for trouble." The problem is if I kiss a girl at a bar where an uneducated straight man thinks that I'm kissing a girl to entertain or titillate him (and to be fair, some girls DO but this should never be the automatic assumption), instead of doing it for my own pleasure, and assumes it's an invitation to harassment. Even if a couple of straight girls are making out with the sole intention of turning on straight dudes, it shouldn't be taken as blanket consent for creepy behavior.

My friend K. put it pretty succinctly when she said "the creepers ruin it for the gentlemen." As long as creepers are creeping, ALL straight men are going to run up against Schrodinger's Rapist.

So here's the thing.

A lot of people told me that I shouldn't dress sexy for SlutWalk. "Well, of course you can if you want to," they said. "But do you really want to enforce the notion that this is about titillation, and detracting from the anti-rape message of the rally?"

UGH, you're missing the point.

Don't get me wrong- I think everyone should wear what makes them feel comfortable, and I don't feel that dressing sexy is a requirement for SlutWalk at all. But you're just bad as that notorious Toronto policeman if you tell me "Don't dress slutty (AT FUCKING SLUTWALK!) because you'll attract the wrong kind of attention."

As a teenager, my mom discouraged me from wearing tight clothes, red lipstick, etc. because I looked old for my age and she didn't want me to attract the "wrong kind of attention." I know her heart was in the right place and she just wanted me to be safe. But it is only through questioning the idea that I must hide my beauty, my sexiness, and my spirit from others that I have found confidence and self love. If I'm gonna wear sweats, it's because I'm feeling lazy, not because I want to hide my fabulous ass (and trust me honey, nothing really succeeds in hiding my ass). As a grown woman, I'll wear a tight skirt if I damn well please. As a curvy woman, my body is OBJECTIFIED no matter what I wear. Nothing short of a burlap sack will hide my breasts, and I refuse to wear a burlap sack. I will take control of my sexuality and my appearance and wear what turns ME on. Being a woman in a sex negative society is never "safe" regardless of what you wear, but I refuse to be ruled by fear.

How often am I allowed to walk down the street in Downtown Chicago in a super short rainbow minidress and gartered fishnet stockings and feel TOTALLY SAFE AND CONFIDENT AND FREE? I am sure that some people considered what I wore to Slutwalk to be "slutty" but it was hardly playboy bunny gear, and as a fat girl, baring my thighs in public feels like an awesome fuck you to a culture that wants me to believe I am undesirable when we know it just AIN'T TRUE. I don't mind being looked at, flirted with, whatever as long as it is done in a way that is respectful and consensual. And Slutwalk gave me a glimpse of what society would be like if I could wear whatever I damn pleased without thinking "will this get me harassed if I wear it in public." And it was a DAMN GOOD feeling.



My point here, is the problem isn't shaking your booty for a crowd, or showing your thighs in public. It's the idea that doing these things means you're "asking" to be violated. So honestly, I think the MORE we create safe, inclusive spaces do these things that make us feel good (and no judgement if you don't enjoy dressing scanty and lascivious dancing- it ain't for everyone) the more we are moving away from rape culture and towards a sex positive culture where we can do what FEELS GOOD- even if it's *gasp* SEXY- without fear of shame, assault, or humiliation.

The Phone Sex Chronicles Part One: The Agency

This is part of a series of posts about working as a phone sex operator. I high recommend Christi Olson's "So You Want to be a Phone Sex Operator" as a jumping off point as well.

I started working as a phone sex operator in 2008, after I lost my nannying job (I was working as a freelance journalist and the writing money was never enough on its own) and needed extra cash. I had a couple of friends who had done it in the past, and one of them sent me a link to an agency where you had to leave a voicemail in a sexy voice and if they called you back, you were hired. I was trained by a woman with a thick Long Island accent ironically named Virginia. She told me she'd worked as a phone sex operator (PSO) for 8 months, which made me a touch incredulous. Her agency followed strict FCC guidelines- no underage, no rape/molestation/incest scenes, no drugs, no bestiality. If the customer brought up these things I was supposed to steer them away:

Client: "Have you ever fucked a horse? Horses have huge cocks!"

Me: "You know who else has a huge cock? My Black boyfriend!" (Big Black Cock, aka BBC is perhaps one of the most overplayed tropes in phone sex.)

Client: "That's great! You should really try horse cock sometime!"

As you can see, easier said than done.

I had to purchase a corded landline and headset, presumably to prevent technical difficulties with calls (I use a cell phone now with very few problems.) Finding a corded landline that can accept a headset was a chore in and of itself, but at least it was a tax writeoff.

The Agency was convenient in that I could log in any time, as long as I did a minimum of 4 hours of calls each week. (I never did). Other agencies required that you work a set graveyard shift schedule where you had to be on the lines regardless of whether not there were callers. I would dial a number in California and sit on the couch, anchored by the horrible headset and landline, and wait to hear the beep that meant a call was coming through. BEEP BEEP and then I'd hear the "tag" for the type of call- "female fantasy" was the general line, and the recorded announcer sounded Midwestern and apprehensive, almost as if she were saying "Female...fantasy?" Not as bad as the tag for the "Blue Asssian!" tag, complete with "me love you long time" accent. Two more beeps, and the customer was on the line.

By the agency's standards, I was NEVER allowed to admit I was an actress on the lines, I had to pretend I was a fun loving young girl who had won free call time as a prize for a wet teeshirt contest (hahaha BULLSHIT). I wasn't allowed to take regulars, although I did get the same callers more than once on occasion. My phone was hooked up to dozens of different lines at any given moment, so it was always a crap shoot who I'd talk to next. It was hard work shifting gears with every call- one moment I was a sassy African American woman named "Ebony" (yes I fully understand the implications of why this is horrible, and there's a great vignette about this phenomenon here), the next moment I was supposed to be a "Spicy Latina" named Eva. Yes, I felt like an asshole a lot of the time and was quickly developing multiple personality disorder.

I was paid on the average length of my calls, as system that was deliberately designed to screw the PSOs. The only was to make decent money was to maintain a call average length of 12 minutes or longer. Virginia claimed this was easy- you just had to make a lot of small talk. This is bullshit- if a client isn't in the mood for small talk, he hangs up on you. Most weeks I wound up making $10 an hour, which was horrifying when a customer whines that he's paying almost $5 an minute to the line. The reality is a lot of dudes will call and hang up if they don't like your voice/persona, which destroys your call average very quickly. The irony is they would immediately re-route the call to my line when he called again, which meant I got very adept at switching names/voices when I got instant callbacks.(Sometimes all that it took to keep this kind of repeater on the line was saying I was a brunette instead a blonde). The other problem was there was no way to build up a client base of regulars, who are usually the big moneymakers in phone sex- the repeat customers whose quirks you know in and out.

I never considered going freelance (which I now do through a PSO hosting website) at this time because I was too lazy to build my own profiles and just assumed it would be too hard to build a customer base. I still regret this- I make more in an hour as a freelancer than I did in a week as an agency girl and it is just so much better overall.

I will be brutally honest and say the agency sucked. I had my line disconnected without warning my first day when I took an adult baby call from a dude who wanted me to pretend to be his mommy and cuddle with him. Yes, the administrators would "listen in" on your calls- I guess this was part of why there was such a huge pay cut between me and the customer- they had to hire phone gestapo to make sure I toed the party line.

There was no actual sexual content to the call, but I was now in trouble with Virginia for unwittingly violating the underage and incest taboos (I don't consider adult baby roleplay to be either of these things). Virginia gave me a sharp dressing down, and the line was re-instated. The second time my line was disconnected was because I refused to get graphic on a scat call- I just assumed that this would be an FCC no-no. I was wrong- Virginia now yelled at me for not pretending to poop in some dudes mouth. The third time I was disconnected, I called Virginia and she didn't answer- she'd conveniently gone on vacation before disconnecting the line. One of the other managers informed me that I was the "lowest performing PSO" of 1,000 operators. I didn't believe this for one minute- the market had just crashed and the reality was my call volume was the lowest it had ever been, one or two calls per hour, which meant a lot of unpaid time sitting on a dead line. (So much for sex work being a recession-proof industry.) I worked for the agency for a year, and it was time to go.

After a two year break I returned to phone sex as a freelancer five months ago, partly for the extra cash, and partly because I missed the weirdness, the customers, and the stories I got out of it- stories were what make the agency worthwhile, and while I vastly prefer freelancing, I get way less batshit crazy on my private lines.

But the stories will have to wait for the next post.

Weiners and Santorum: A Yucky Day

I admit, I was one of those "delusional liberals" because I found the initial aspects of WeinerGate - which you all know is the accusations that U.S. Representative Anthony Wiener has been having sexually explicit photo and text exchanges with fans of his via various social media sites - to be super suspicious.  Here's why:

-Breitbart.  If you want to have any integrity, regardless of what side of the political fence you fall on, the default position when Breitbart breaks anything is to be skeptical.  He plays fast and loose with the truth, period.

-Weiner's reaction.  At the time his weird response to all this made it seem almost - as crazy as it may sound - that he was somehow punking Breitbart.  Because Weiner is a smart man, and a media-savvy one.  I figured that  the "bungled" response to the allegations must be part of something...smarter? 

But now it's looking a lot more like Weiner has had multiple sexual exchanges with women online, and I'm waiting to watch his press conference, which apparently has been hijacked by Breitbart himself for some reason I can't figure out whatsoever.  Can people do that?  "Oh, I just happened to be here, I'm on the podium now."  Even if he isn't lying this time, he's still a dick.

All this drama aside, I don't understand why this is a "scandal."  It's a scandal when a homophobic "family values" candidate on the right is caught betraying the values he attempts to enforce on others.   It's the hypocrisy, not the act itself.  I don't care if politicians cheat on their wives when they're not trying to impose their own hypocritical morality, period.  It has no bearing on their ability to advocate for their constituents if they are not holding themselves to a different standard than they would the people they claim to represent.

Having just listened to Weiner's press conference, I was surprised at how honest it was.  There was some of the expected lines about how he's deeply hurt his family and whatnot, but he didn't claim sex addiction or substance abuse, and said repeatedly he takes responsibilty for doing something dumb.  That alone is a pretty radical act for a congressman.

However, am I am absolutely befuddled as to why male politicans keep doing shit like this.  I am generally a subscriber to the theory that the vast majority of what we consider gender differences are the result of socialization.  I'm also a woman who really likes sex and has taken some minor risks to get the kind of sex that I want.  So I get horniness.  But I don't understand why, time after time, male politicians are able to so repeatedly risk their careers (and marriages, I guess) in pursuit of such banal sexual encounters.

Is it that it takes a certain kind of fucked-up personality to be a politician in the first place?  A sense of entitlement and an an aversion to risk-reward analysis?  A desire for validation?  All of the above?  Sometimes, a tiny, not-particularly-feminist voice in my head wonders if male sexuality and the male sex drive really is that different from women.  Is the pull for gratification is just so strong that in the moment, it's worth risking everything?

Then again, it's just as likely that the fact that male politicians keep getting caught in illicit encounters has less to do with their gender and more to do with the fact that we just have a lot more male politicians than female.  And we hold female politicians to a higher standard of scrutiny. 

As a fan of Weiner, I'm bummed that he handled this whole thing so poorly, up to this point, although finally telling the truth and refusing to resign, characterizing this as something between him and his wife and his family, is absolutely the right tack to take.  But as a fan I'm really disappointed that he was this stupid.  As a fangirl, I kinda enjoy the scandalous shots.  Even Breitbart had to admit that this skinny guy has a great body and apparently, quite a package.  The most unsexy thing about this is that he was still using an AOL account in the 2000s. 

To make today more disheartening to liberals, Rick Santorum, that frothy mix of you know the drill, announced his candidacy.  I'm gonna go have another glass of wine.


I'd like to note that I didn't use a Weiner pun, not even once.

When Sex is NOT Fun: Gin & Tears Edition

GirlAboutOaktown has had her say on the ongoing SiF meltdown. I was affected by it, but in a different way.

The first 20 minutes of episode #278 was really heavy. It was the most gripping, brutal 20 minutes of podcasting I've ever heard. It actually hurt to listen to, especially as someone who's gone through the torrent of emotions that starting an open relationship can bring. Seriously, if there's ever an open relationship/polyamory archive, this section of the podcast should have a permanent spot.

In that first 20 minutes, one hears a tremendous amount of pain in Kidder's voice. It sounds as if Jade was really trying to push his buttons. How else could she keep going on with it, aware of how much it was hurting him?

At about 20:20, though, the podcast took a dark, narcissistic turn. Up until this point, it was the hardest to listen to podcast I've ever heard, and I've listened to numerous German language podcasts. Once the mood turned, though, it was all about Kidder's rage and my sympathy dissolved. I started to wonder if he was just chumming up the waters for the sake of it. So he hasn't fucked anyone else because Jade didn't allow it. So he backed off his relationship with another member of the SiF podcast. That doesn't mean that Jade didn't let him have sex and emotional connection with someone else. She's been through a lot of the angst he was going through, but it didn't end up on Facebook.

As I said above, I went through a storm of emotions when my partner finally consummated her nearly 5 year long flirtation (and a little more) with a friend of hers. The night she called me to ask if it was okay to go ahead, I was 400 miles away. Immediately, I felt helpless, as if my world was drifting away and I was powerful to stop the changes. I pictured many ridiculous scenes, like the two of them sitting up in bed together, enjoying a post-coital cigarette after a mind-blowing fuck, talking about how it was the best thing either of them had ever done.

Then a funny thing happened. She started chatting online with me. It had been many hours since I last heard from her, but here she was. I asked her questions, and started to feel better that the same woman I loved was chatting with me now, and things were really the same.

When I woke up the next morning, I still had plenty of anxiety, so I put my mind to work to find someone to hook up with. It wasn't punitive. It was just that I wanted to remind myself that open relationships have benefits as well as difficulties. Sure, she was probably back to fucking him that morning (and she was), but that I could go have fun and it was okay.

The next time she hooked up with him, I was still anxious, but less so. The next time after that, even less so. One of the things I had realized early on that made it get better, was being able to spot the jealousy and weirdness creep in, and trying to remind myself that, while they were valid feelings, they were my own to deal with.

Kidder is free to own those feelings, but he has to learn to own them completely and honestly. She did some things that hurt him and his hurt was reasonable, but his reaction wasn't.

In his shoes, I would have been hurt by the New Orleans trip issue. He suggested that they go to New Orleans together for a little romantic getaway, since he had to travel there for work. She declined, citing money issues and needing to find a sitter. When she realized that the other guy would be nearby, she started making travel plans. That was pretty clueless on her part.

Jade also sexted the other guy about illicit office sex right after rejecting Kidder's advances in his office. This one is a bit different. While I can see how he'd feel hurt, if he looked at it honestly, he'd realize that much of what is sexy is built on fantasy. One may be really put off by the act of having anal sex, but in dirty talk, finds nothing hotter than going on about a spit-lubed double anal fuckfest. If our fantasies mirrored what we really do, they'd lose their power. Anyone who thinks I'm full of shit about this one, I defy you to be honest about whether you'd be willing to show your partner every bit of porn you've ever masturbated to.

I thought so.

To wrap this up for now, I'd like to suggest that maybe Kidder and Jade were not ready for this now, if ever. They went to a swingers' resort and did a full swap, started calling it an open relationship, and collapsed into poly drama in a record amount of time. It's like deciding to visit the zoo and then taking up bullfighting all in the same afternoon. Kidder is no sexual Hemingway. Maybe a bush league Bukowski, but only for the intoxicated rage.

The Phone Sex Chronicles: Prologue

(I wrote the beginning of this piece at an erotic memoir writing workshop taught by Susie Bright. The assignment was to write about your most recent sexual experience. This will be the first of a series of piece about working in phone sex. -GACT.)

Her name is Eriko. She’s 21 years old, Japanese American, a BD/SM switch, an amateur sex therapist, a student at UCLA or University of Chicago, depending on the location of the caller. I know Eriko like I know myself, though she is mutable, adapting to the whims of each phone John. She is the best selling character I’ve ever created, in all my years of writing. She is me, but she is not me.

I received a call to Eriko’s foot fetish line last night, $1.29 a minute, which works out to about $40 an hour after Niteflirt takes their cut. It’s more than twice than what I make hourly at my day job, and enables me to pay for luxuries like therapy and a membership at an exclusive gym. There’s always a sense of delicious anticipation after the caller hangs up, waiting for the pre-recorded Niteflirt femmebot to tell me how much I earned on the call.

There are two types of callers- men (and they usually are men) who want to talk, and men who want to cum, though these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The guy who calls the foot fetish line definitely wants to cum. Every cummer has a “key phrase” that will make them cum if you repeat it enough. The key phrase is the purest distillation of their fantasy, the rarefied erotic image that inches them closer to their orgasm every time I say it. The closer they are to coming, the more they want to hear it, over and over, until it becomes a rhythmic phone sex chant. I once spent 45 minutes on the phone with a man who wanted me to describe fucking his “big black cock” with my “big white tits," over and over. Anytime I began to deviate from the big black cock/big white tits dichotomy, I was firmly reigned back into his chiaroscuro tittyfucking fantasy. It was his key phrase, his core orgasmic image.

This foot fetish line caller doesn’t actually seem to have much interest in feet, but he certainly has a thing for whips. Having spent significant time in the BD/SM scene, I’ve always steered clear of real whips, knowing the amount of practice and skill it takes to wield a singletail without seriously injuring somebody. He says he’s married to a Korean woman, and she and her friends love to whip and humiliate him. I ask him if he likes floggers, caning, spankings or chastity belts, trying to mix up the fantasy a bit. “Just whip me til I cum, Mistress” he begs. I describe the whipping over and over, the loud crack of the leather hitting flesh, the burning red weals on his buttocks and back, my cruel laugh as I humiliate him in front of a room full of faceless Asian dominatrixes. The fantasy is getting monotonous for me, but it’s building him up to a moaning climax. And then, the auditory money shot: “This call lasted twelve minutes. Eight dollars and ninety nine cents will deposited to your account.”

I log off the line, getting ready for bed. I imagine masturbating as the niteflirt femmebot recites my payout in her electric voice, over and over, until I cum. No matter what the client wants, “$1.29 a minute” is Eriko’s key phrase.

(The photo above is of Japanese pinup girl Eriko Sato, whose name I borrowed for my phone sex character).

Sex is NOT Fun: Nor is This Super-Long Post

Kidder Kaper and Krew (this K thing is fun) found my last post and have responded!  12 comments on one post may actually be a record for us here at Sex or Television!  I was all set - a week ago - to write a scathing post detailing all the weird relationship stuff Kidder has put out there, but the most recent episode of Sex Is Fun has made me rethink this, because despite the fundamental problem that it's yet another  show entirely about Kidder and his life, actual self-awareness was demonstrated in the episode, as was genuine, heartfelt sadness that makes it very hard to continue in this vein of snark.

Fact is, my own personal issues with how Kidder runs his podcast and responds to people on the Internet aside, opening up your relationship is a fraught, terrifying thing to do.  If you have some time, and you're a personal relationship drama voyeur like me, I'd recommend listening to episodes #276 and #278 of Sex Is Fun. You'll be missing a lot of backstory, of course, some of which I'm still missing too, but it should give you a decent idea of the stuff I want to talk about.  And since I'm not going to get into the details of rehashing the history of their relationship troubles here, you'll have to listen to see how what I'm saying applies to their situation.

As I've written before, I don't subscribe to the theory, popular amongst Polaymory activists, that open relationships have to be 100% "fair" to be "good."  I am all for individuals and couples setting their boundaries and then communicating them to each other and renegotiating them.  I think that "irrational" or "unfair" boundaries are fine, provided the other partner is totally OK with abiding by them.  Where you run into a problem is when an irrational/unfair boundary conflicts with what the other partner wants.

Kidder, by his own admission, is really insecure, and has a need to "feel special."  I think right there that is a personality trait that is going to make moving forward with a seriously open relationship pretty tricky.  People with those needs, right or wrong, are often going to feel neglected even in a relatively happy long-term monogamous relationship, just because without "NRE" (poly-speak for "new relationship energy" which is a ridiculous term that normal people call "infatuation") it is human nature to fall into ruts, take your partner for granted, and so forth and so on.  When you open up your relationship to the possibility of your partner experiencing NRE with another person, that's like murder on someone who is already insecure and has a need to always feel like they are the most important person in their partner's life.

That said, I am not a huge fan of the idea that all beliefs and feelings are automatically "valid" just because someone feels them.  Having been in a relationship with someone who was seriously mentally ill and thus held completely ridiculous and inaccurate cognition as a result of his mental illness, I think it's ludicrous to say we have to honor everyone's feelings at all times.  Crazy feelings are crazy, and while we can feel sympathy to the person having the crazy feelings, it doesn't mean we have to validate the false cognition said crazy feeling is based on.

I honestly feel that in order to do any serious amount of openness seriously, both partners need to feel absolutely secure in how "special" they are to their partner without necessarily needing a huge amount of reassurance about it.  Because opening up is challenging even for the most secure people, really.  To this end, I'm not convinced that Kidder and Jade are really good candidates for having a more open relationship (apart from what they've been doing all these years that didn't challenge their relationship as much).  And it sucks for them, because they both obviously want a higher degree of openness but are unable to agree with each other's boundaries on how to handle that.  They both want an emotional and sexual relationship with other people that threatens the other person.

It's almost like the SiF people are at one end of the spectrum and the PolyWeekly folks are at the other.  The latter discusses jealousy in open relationships by refusing to deal with it or making pat remarks about how bubble baths and "taking care of yourself" is the cure to jealousy.  The SiF point of view seems to be that twinges of jealousy are to be responded with by demands on your partner and endless "processing" as opposed to any sort of introspection or willingness to try to work on and move past the insecurities that are causing said jealousy.  I will say, as someone in a committed relationship, that I am overall more sympathetic to the SiF approach because at least it is more likely to ensure the survival of the primary relationship, whereas the PolyWeekly folks are incensed by the very idea of a primary relationship, because it's not egalitarian enough.

I think there's a line in-between that isn't particularly popular and doesn't have some sort of cute catchphrase, but involves both respecting your partner's boundaries but a willingness to advocate for your wants; communicating when you're feeling insecure or upset with your partners actions but also being willing to endure feeling shitty at times and owning your own shit.

Here's an example.  The Boy and I started our path to what is now a pretty open relationship by having threesomes with other men.  None of them went terribly well, and I was frustrated after the last one and tired of the effort and the awkward sex.  I told the Boy that I'd actually be OK with him, in the future, having sex with men without me present, although we'd have to discuss the terms in more detail at another time. I also told him that I wouldn't be comfortable with him having sex with the guy we'd just finished having sex with, though.  (Hey!  Semi-irrational boundary!) 

The next day I checked the joint e-mail account the Boy and I had set up for arranging said threesomes, and saw that the Boy had e-mailed the guy we'd just had sex with about hooking up one-on-one.  I was shocked and furious.  I called him from work and demanded to know why he'd do that when I'd just brought up the possibility of him seeing other guys without me and specifically said I didn't want either one of us to have anything to do with that guy.  What did the Boy do?  He lied.  He claimed he hadn't sent that e-mail.  When he realized I had proof, he copped to it.  I was livid, sick to my stomach, threatened to break up with him, told him he'd just ruined any chance he'd had of being able to have sex outside our relationship if our relationship even survived.  At the time I felt righteously furious, now I realize I was being a little melodramatic.

This mirrors a lot of the kind of things that led to Kidder's current troubles.  He caught his wife chatting with her paramour and didn't disclose it when he asked.  My partner lied to my face about making a sex date with another person.  How did we get through this huge betrayal of trust?

We talked about it.  Not for days or weeks, but for like, a couple hours.  I realized the Boy and I had a miscommunication - he thought I'd essentially given him permission to fuck other guys, full stop, and was really excited by this new freedom. When I called him to confront him, he realized that he'd triggered all my fears and insecurities about having a cheating bisexual partner (as my ex cheated on me repeatedly with men) and panicked.  And because he didn't want to appear to be just like my ex, he lied.

Like Kidder, I wasn't mad that my partner wanted to have sex with someone else - I was upset that I'd been lied to.  And I felt like I'd granted him this gift, something that wasn't easy for me and in the very first instance he could, he fucked it up and proved himself untrustworthy.  Actually so far, I'd say based on the podcasts, that what I was feeling and what Kidder was feeling intially - why did you lie to me after I'd just granted you something awesome? - were very similar.  So dudebro, I feel ya there.

But instead of making a podcast where I got my friends to passive-aggressively rehash the wrongs my partner had done to me, I talked with the Boy and sat with my feelings, and was able to realize that his intention was not to betray me or hurt me.  And that my reaction - overreaction - to the Boy's e-mail put him in a place where he was terrified to admit to it because of my insecurities and past. It didn't take "three years" to work past, it took about a week or two before I was cool with him going off and fucking someone else.  And he did.  Crazy!

Of course, moving is easy to do when you have faith in your partner.  Despite the fact that he'd just lied blatantly to me, I still believed that on the whole the Boy was truthful with me.  What strikes me about these podcasts, particularly the latter one, is that Kidder does not believe Jade will be truthful with him.  Which is apparently borne out by the events that follow.  The question is, then, is Jade just a terrible lying liar who lies, or does Kidder's reactions - perhaps, dare I say, overreactions - to Jade's initial "disclosure glitches" help create an environment that almost guarantees she won't fully disclose to him?  That I can't say, because I am not Lorax, their relationship counselor. (Btw, guys, that's kinda fucked up, just sayin'.)

The latest podcast certainly makes it sound like Jade is a terrible lying liar.  But it's also clear that the amount of disclosure needed - full access to all chats, texts, Facebook pages, etc - is a bar that makes having an open relationship kinda tricky.  Kidder is defensive of his need to have full disclosure to be OK with the openness, but the full disclosure also gives him the ability to monitor everything obsessively and stew over real and periceved slights in a way that doesn't come across as totally healthy. I have, in theory, a "right" to know all of the Boy's activities online.  I have almost never taken advantage of that right because I don't feel a need to.  I trust him.  When I have, what I've seen has validated my trust.  I guess it's a different can of worms when what you see does the opposite.  If Jade is as untrustworthy as Kidder describes, then I don't see how they can even consider having any serious degree of openness in their relationship.  But in that case I also don't get why they even have a relationship.  Trust is important for a lot of reasons, not just because you're involving other people in your sex life.

I should note, for the sake of fairness, that I have violated the Boy's boundaries too.  I had (oral) sex with a guy without his permission, told him immediately a fterward, and to be totally fair, his reaction to it was so much more sensible than my response to his indiscretion.  This is the thing that is missing in the discussion of opening up on SiF - WHEN NEGOTIATING OPEN RELATIONSHIPS, PEOPLE WILL FUCK UP.  This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. There is absolutely no way to move forward with open relationships without a certain amount of fucking up, miscommunications, "disclosure glitches" and the like.  It's just the way this goes.  After gazillions of years lurking in Poly and Swinging boards, it seems that people run into the most trouble when they don't expect people to fuck up, and then are blindsided and really upset when it does happen, and then freak the fuck out.

What people don't seem to realize about open relationships, even if they claim to, is that it really does take a lot of internal work.  I don't mean endless discussions with your partner, but internal discussions.  I feel like someone in an open relationship should constantly be thinking about how they're creating their own cognitions, and whether those cognitions are based in reality or their own insecurities.  While it's apparent that Jade fucked up, big time, it also seems like Kidder created a self-fufilling prophecy, based in his own insecurity and fears that he isn't "special" where he was going to, from the get-go, interpet any behavior on Jade's part as proof of what he already believed.  Jade played her role perfectly, as the Boy said when we were discussing it this morning, almost as if she was pushing the buttons that would make him freak out the most.  It's the sad dance of bullshit that I think most of us in long-term relationships will somewhat identify with.  But to do openness successfully, you have to radically alter these sorts of programmed responses.  Sometimes it's more important to shut up and sit with your feelings as opposed to making demands.  Otherwise you're just going to end up in a war for control, which appears to be exactly what happened.

I mean, if either of us had demanded a partner cancel a date because we weren't feeling 100% secure and OK with it at that moment, I don't think we would have ever really opened up our relationship at all.  It takes your partner doing something that perhaps you're scared about, having it happen, and then realizing in the end that your survived and it wasn't that bad to feel cool about it next time.  Or at least, that's how it worked for us.  Our approach may not work for everyone, but we have a remarkably open relationship with few restrictions or need to monitor each other, and we both used to see ourselves as highly monogamous, insecure people.  And I've found that once you realize you can live through something you're terrified of and feel OK about it later, more and more boundaries you used to see as inviolable start to feel unnecessary.  I went from the point where I knew I'd never be OK with the Boy having sex with another woman.  Now I think it's something I could handle, although I know it would still intially cause me some distress and anxiety.

Let me make a terrible analogy: anal sex.  Although a lot of people like to claim that "if you do it right" anal sex won't hurt at all, the reality is that even with tons of foreplay, using small plugs and a ton of lube, and so forth, for most people, intially having anal sex with a penis-sized object will have some discomfort, if not "pain" exactly..  It'll feel uncomfortable and perhaps provoke some anxiety.  If you can slowly work past that, you might end up really digging it.  Or you might be able to do it, but not find it enjoyable and worth the discomfort and effort.  But if you stop at the first sign of discomfort, you're never gonna get that dildo up your butt, period.  Of course, you also have to have trust that your partner isn't going to shove that thing up there before you're ready. 

Or to sum up all this tl;dr: open relationships are not for control freaks and although it's trite, trust is paramount, but so is the willingness to forgive, a genuine desire to move forward, and actively try to give your partner the space to be trustworthy. It's a real leap of faith. The Boy has his own, somewhat different take on this (one that's a lot harsher on Jade, actually), so I'll try to get him to weigh in.  I still have a butt-load of opinions about how Kidder handled this stuff, particularly on his public Facebook, but I wanted to use this post as a way to maybe take some lessons from this volcano of drama that people could use to think about what kind of philosophical and practical approach they take to openness, not to tear Kidder a new one.  But I still might!  Anything can happen at Sex or Television!  I hope some of the people who came here via Kidder's Facebook page will stick around, because we talk a lot about open relationships and non-traditional sexuality in general here.  And I write posts that are way, way, way too long.