Yo, it's been a while since I've posted. Big changes around these parts, and I've been busy moving house (twice, don't ask), restructuring my relationship, sending my novel to agents, and vanilla blogging for pay. Life happens!
However, today I have rants. Yes I do.
Fetlife, for the uninitiated is like Facebook for perverts. It's facebook with no fucking superego. You think Facebook status updates are TMI? Wait until you find out that someone you once hooked up with is in the Bestiality forums looking for a Great Dane for fun times. And for all the hawt 'n sexy gonzo porn people post, there's also castration pics and various stuff that you wish you NEVER FUCKING SAW and will never get out of your mind again.
Kinky people are by nature, drama queens. Hence there is a lot of wank on Fetlife, and I try to keep my presence on there to a minimum so I don't claw my eyes out. Hence, I share with you some of my biggest fucking pet peeves:
1. Trophy pics
I used to take/distribute nude photos in my early twenties. A lot of this had to do with losing a bunch of weight, buying my first digital camera, being young and sort of naive, and living in a place where I didn't have a lot of dating options, so I got a lot of my jollies by swapping dirty pics with strangers. I've also been in several relationships with "artists" where creative nude or semi nude pics and video were taken with artistic intent- and in one case, used to try slut shame me by a mentally disturbed ex, who posted them to facebook.
Here's the thing- I am comfortable with my body, being nude, and being seen nude. I am not comfortable with third parties exploiting that for their own ends.
A lot of wannabe playboys on Fetlifes post scores of pictures of their conquests- explicit and often humiliating (and potentially life destroying, considering that Fetlife has extremely lax privacy settings) pictures of women they've fucked. If these women have given their explicit consent to post these pictures, that's they're business. I suspect, a lot of the time, they haven't, and that's just creepy and gross, and a violation.
Hence, I don't share my nude pics anymore, and I don't post nude pics to Fetlife. Not worth the risk.
2. The castigation of young male dominants
The BDSM scene has a disturbing amount in common with Fundamentalist Mormonism in a particular regard- many older male dominants feel entitled to a stable of young, nubile subs, and make a practice of alienating and humiliating younger male dominants, rather than mentoring and supporting them. It's classic jockeying for alpha male status- the younger men present a threat to their privilege, so they virtually stomp on them in forums, or spread rumors about them in the scene instead of presenting direct feedback.
The usual arguments given are that young (typically anyone under the age of 30) Doms are never experienced enough, they lack introspection, they're only looking to get laid, they don't understand the rules of the scene, yadda yadda etc. and therefore do not have the right to call themselves dominants. You know what? I've met plenty of men in their 30s, 40s and 50s who also have these problems. And for some reason, these arguments don't apply to the 18 year old subs these older dominants favor, or the young female pro-dommes who frequently trade on their youth and looks as much as their topping skills to attract clients.
One of the hands-down best Doms I've ever played with, and whom I am still friends with to this day, is only 24 years old. He was twenty one (and I was twenty seven) when we were dating. His play was hot, inventive, safe, sane, and not bogged down by a lot of protocol and bullshit. The idea that it is automatically "safer" to play with an older Dom needs to be called out for the bullshit that it is, and people should evaluate who they play with on a case-by-case basis.
3. The stigmatization of monogamy
For some reason, it seems that within the kinky and queer scenes, monogamy has fallen out of fashion. I suspect a lot of folks spent their formative years in dysfunctional monogamous relationships and have idealized polyamory beyond what is necessarily realistic. Being raised in a progressive city, I had the inverse experience of having many early dysfunctional poly experiences and coming to the conclusion that it's no longer a style that works for me. I am hardly a traditional monogamist- I have no problem with my partner viewing porn or flirting, playing publicly with a partner, or even playing with others within clearly defined boundaries after a relationship has been deeply established, but the idea of dating free-for-all and multiple emotional entanglements does not appeal to me at this point. And for that, I am told I am somehow not emotionally evolved, despite the fact that I have been through all kinds of experiences. That my desire to form a deep bond with one individual instead of hopping from honeymoon period to honeymoon period and spreading myself across several people makes me somehow jealous and possessive. I know myself well enough to understand that a monogamous relationship with a vanilla person would never in a million years wouldn't work for me, and there is something of an assumption that if you want monogamy in a kinky context, you want to be in some sort of codependent 24/7 power exchange situation. Is it possible to desire a monogamous relationship with a man, as a woman, but still be kinky and queer identified? It's amazing how narrow minded unconventional people can be.
And if I have to hear one more argument about evolutionary biology that monogamy is inherently doomed, I will cut a bitch.
4. Vultures
This is a more specific complaint about Facebook, though it has a degree of gravity on Fetlife as well.
Ok, I will say up front- I am sure there are male vultures as well, but as I am a mostly straight female, I wouldn't know. The vultures I have dealt with have been by and large young, insecure women.
The Vulture's express purpose in life is to try to sabotage your budding monogamous relationship with someone new, and to come around and scavenge your relationship carrion post-breakup. Sometimes they're your partners ex, sometimes they're a person who wasn't interested in dating your partner until competition presented itself, sometimes it's a "friend" that your partner isn't interested in dating and feels bitter as a result. It's icky and I don't know why these individuals choose to prey on other people's relationships instead of ya know, finding their own. The vulture existed prior to social networking sites, but Facebook has made their shady M.O. a whole lot easier.
Classic vulture tactics? Posting old pictures of themselves with your partner and tagging them to make it look like they have "something going on." Constant, thinly veiled "harmless" but creepy flirtatious comments left on your partner's wall. In a recent relationship I basically stopped looking at my partner's wall altogether because the vulture infestation was so bad, and he was unwilling to acknowledge why this creepy shit made me uncomfortable, dismissing it as jealousy (and to be fair, a lot of people like this attention and are unwilling to set clear boundaries). The only problem is, sometimes the exact same shit happens when you're been legitimately cheated on and lied to, and being told it's "jealousy" is a diversion tactic.
One girl in particular felt the need to personally comment on anything I wrote on my partner's wall, as if we were involved in some non-consensual facebook threeway. The vulture's goal is to plant seeds of doubt in the hopes of breaking you up. It's shitty and unethical. Would you walk up to someone in a monogamous relationship and openly hit on them in front of their partner?
Facebook is basically poison for relationships and it's entirely likely that I will choose NOT to be facebook friends with future partners for this very reason. Who needs this drama?
The moral of this story? I should spend less time on the internet.
Showing posts with label cheating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheating. Show all posts
5/20/10
Rethinking Cheating in Sex-Negative Culture
I was recently blown away in not one, but two different posts in a certain community I frequent that involved the issue of cheating. The first post was trying to mock the idea that sometimes, if someone cheats, revealing the act to their partner can be a selfish, destructive act. The other post was discussing this incident, which is clearly about a privacy issue, but because infidelity was involved, quickly turned into an unimaginative and predictable series of tirades about how wayward spouses deserve to have their privacy violated, even by large telecommunication companies.
The basic gist of the comments in both posts boiled down to these "truths":
If two people in a relationship have decided that they are only interested in being monogamous, that is entirely justified. But the lack of recognition that lifelong monogamy isn't a choice someone makes once, then forgets about - as opposed to a choice that is made on an ongoing, daily basis - is kind of ridiculous. In one of these posts, a commenter sarcastically faux-whined, "Monogamy is hard!" But that's the thing. It is hard, for most people! Particularly in long-term relationships where infatuation has waned, and passions have shifted. I mean, let's not do a disservice to all these couples who have made a commitment to monogamy and stuck to it, pretending that it's what comes easily and naturally to most people, because that's a load of shit. In doing so we're negating the sacrifices and hard work that lifelong monogamy entails for most people.
But back on topic, why do people freak out about cheating so much? "Because cheating is a horrible thing!" Yeah, I know it is. One of the first things that happens in a discussion about cheating and ethics is those who are of the "Cheaters are worse than Hitler!" camp start claiming that anyone who disagrees with them obviously has never been cheated on, or are even likely cheaters themselves.
I've been cheated on, in a very serious relationship, over a period of time. I've been directly lied to even when I confronted the guilty party with hard evidence of their cheating. I never suspected that this particular ex would ever cheat on me, and since we'd explicitly talked about the possibility of opening up our relationship if one of us ever had the urge to cheat, I trusted completely that he'd have no reason to do this. I was utterly shattered, disgusted with my own naivete. I came to loathe what really should be considered a good quality in myself: my trusting nature.
But the funny thing is, having the benefit of hindsight, I realize that being cheated on was far from the worst thing I endured in that relationship. There are many, many ways people can hurt each other. Many of them are purposeful, and while it's true that some people do use infidelity to lash out at their partners, generally it's more about the desire (emotional or sexual) of the person doing the cheating than anything else.
"But it's a breach of trust!" the cheaters-are-evil brigade say. Yes, it is. So is, say, buying a car without your partner's permission. Yet the trope about the guy who brings home an expensive financed recreational purchase is not treated as nearly as big a transgression as the dreaded cheater. Cheating is placed in a special category of extra-horrible-wrongness. And sex-negative values has everything to do with it.
Part of the problem is the way sex and love are conflated. Women in particular receive strong messages that for them, love has to be present for sex to be worthwhile or good. That old cliche about trading sex for love actually is fairly spot-on as far as societal messages go. And I know that for some people, sex is only satisfying and meaningful when in the context of a loving relationship. Yet a brief glance at human history does make it pretty clear that this isn't the norm. I suspect that most people have the capacity to enjoy sex within a variety of different dynamics.
But for some reason, the idea of sex divorced from love is terrifying to many, so we get the idea that people who are truly "in love" don't have any desire to have sex with other people. The extreme end of this view are the deluded folks who get upset at the mere idea of their partners masturbating to images or even thoughts of other people. "Committing adultery within the heart," as a sin, which is basically some crazy idea of thoughtcrime that denies most people's basic experience as sexual beings. I remain convinced that the conflicts some couples have over porn viewing has a lot less to do with a feminist critique of the porn industry or women's-bodies-as-commodities and more to do with a physical and sexual insecurity so deep that the very thought of our partner getting off to an image other than our own is profoundly threatening.
This isn't to say that I want to blame people - and women in particular - for their insecurities around this issue. We are bombarded with so many conflicting and fucked up messages about sex, desirability, body image, and relationships that it's amazing any of us can retain any sense of sexual self-esteem whatsoever. Yet I have a hard time believing that the neurosis would be so deep and painful if we weren't buying into the "sex = love" message. "If they really loved me, he wouldn't look at porn, because I would be enough," is not an uncommon refrain. (Some of the folks who say this even admit to looking at porn themselves!) But there's this fucked-up romantic ideal that we carry around with us that if we are the sexiest, most awesome lovers ever, our partners will fall so irrevocably in love/lust with us that they simply wouldn't have any interest in anyone else. For the rest of their lives. Of course, nobody can be the perfect love/lust object, but we hate ourselves for not measuring up, regardless. And then sometimes we take it out on our partner, or random strangers on the internet who have the gall to confuse the narrative by challenging deeply-held notions about sex and love.
Why even bring up porn and masturbation habits in a discussion about cheating? Because cheating is relative. It is not uncommon to find people who describe porn-viewing as cheating. Others draw the line at "netsex" or phone sex or flirting or kissing or non-physical "emotional affairs" or god knows what. Cheating, we're told, is a black and white issue: always wrong, never justified, and always a symptom of a "deeper issue" in the relationship, yet we don't even agree on what cheating is! It occurs to me that "cheating" is whatever event that trips up your own insecurities or jealousy to the point where you feel threatened. Given that insecurities are personal and vary from person, it makes sense that the definition of what cheating is varies as well. What doesn't make sense is that once we decide what cheating is, we allow for no gray area with regards to why someone cheats, or whether it's always a horrible, relationship-threatening event.
People cheat for a ton of reasons. Sometimes the cheat inadvertently because they didn't have a common understanding of how their partner was defining cheating. Sometimes they cheat because they don't want to be in a relationship, but have not been able to break it off. Sometimes they cheat because they are horny, or have issues with sexual compulsion or impulsive behavior. People cheat because they are afraid to ask for what they really want in their relationship, or because they are afraid their partner will leave them if they do. It may sound crazy to many, but some people cheat because they want to stay in their relationship and are unwilling to go without sex. Do any of these reasons justify lying to your partner? No. It would be far better if we lived in a magical world where relationships are simple, and honest communication is rewarded with empathy and understanding. That's not the case, and it's frustrating when discussions about infidelity are derailed with reductivist, black and white thinking that don't allow for the full range of human experience and emotion in favor of demonizing cheaters regardless of the situation.
What I don't get is why people who don't want to cheat and don't want to be cheated on are so insistent on keeping the narrative around cheating so, well, narrow. Doesn't it make more sense to explore and understand other people's motivations and desires so we can better understand what leads people to cheat - and, if it's important to you - how to avoid situations where you or your partner are more likely to do so? Just shaming cheaters as irredeemable and malicious doesn't help relationships or prevent cheating. It just makes people less likely to talk about it, and the culture of silence around sexual desire that isn't socially-sanctioned just leads to a cycle of guilt. Jimmy Carter may have been mocked for talking about his own non-monogamous desires in the famous 1976 Playboy interview, but he had a point that's worth considering today, dated language, Christian trappings and all.
"Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness."
The basic gist of the comments in both posts boiled down to these "truths":
- There is never any scenario where cheating is "ok" or morally neutral or the lesser of two evils. Ever.
- Any and all lying in a relationship is unhealthy, destructive, and bad.
- People who love their partners would never, ever cheat.
If two people in a relationship have decided that they are only interested in being monogamous, that is entirely justified. But the lack of recognition that lifelong monogamy isn't a choice someone makes once, then forgets about - as opposed to a choice that is made on an ongoing, daily basis - is kind of ridiculous. In one of these posts, a commenter sarcastically faux-whined, "Monogamy is hard!" But that's the thing. It is hard, for most people! Particularly in long-term relationships where infatuation has waned, and passions have shifted. I mean, let's not do a disservice to all these couples who have made a commitment to monogamy and stuck to it, pretending that it's what comes easily and naturally to most people, because that's a load of shit. In doing so we're negating the sacrifices and hard work that lifelong monogamy entails for most people.
But back on topic, why do people freak out about cheating so much? "Because cheating is a horrible thing!" Yeah, I know it is. One of the first things that happens in a discussion about cheating and ethics is those who are of the "Cheaters are worse than Hitler!" camp start claiming that anyone who disagrees with them obviously has never been cheated on, or are even likely cheaters themselves.
I've been cheated on, in a very serious relationship, over a period of time. I've been directly lied to even when I confronted the guilty party with hard evidence of their cheating. I never suspected that this particular ex would ever cheat on me, and since we'd explicitly talked about the possibility of opening up our relationship if one of us ever had the urge to cheat, I trusted completely that he'd have no reason to do this. I was utterly shattered, disgusted with my own naivete. I came to loathe what really should be considered a good quality in myself: my trusting nature.
But the funny thing is, having the benefit of hindsight, I realize that being cheated on was far from the worst thing I endured in that relationship. There are many, many ways people can hurt each other. Many of them are purposeful, and while it's true that some people do use infidelity to lash out at their partners, generally it's more about the desire (emotional or sexual) of the person doing the cheating than anything else.
"But it's a breach of trust!" the cheaters-are-evil brigade say. Yes, it is. So is, say, buying a car without your partner's permission. Yet the trope about the guy who brings home an expensive financed recreational purchase is not treated as nearly as big a transgression as the dreaded cheater. Cheating is placed in a special category of extra-horrible-wrongness. And sex-negative values has everything to do with it.
Part of the problem is the way sex and love are conflated. Women in particular receive strong messages that for them, love has to be present for sex to be worthwhile or good. That old cliche about trading sex for love actually is fairly spot-on as far as societal messages go. And I know that for some people, sex is only satisfying and meaningful when in the context of a loving relationship. Yet a brief glance at human history does make it pretty clear that this isn't the norm. I suspect that most people have the capacity to enjoy sex within a variety of different dynamics.
But for some reason, the idea of sex divorced from love is terrifying to many, so we get the idea that people who are truly "in love" don't have any desire to have sex with other people. The extreme end of this view are the deluded folks who get upset at the mere idea of their partners masturbating to images or even thoughts of other people. "Committing adultery within the heart," as a sin, which is basically some crazy idea of thoughtcrime that denies most people's basic experience as sexual beings. I remain convinced that the conflicts some couples have over porn viewing has a lot less to do with a feminist critique of the porn industry or women's-bodies-as-commodities and more to do with a physical and sexual insecurity so deep that the very thought of our partner getting off to an image other than our own is profoundly threatening.
This isn't to say that I want to blame people - and women in particular - for their insecurities around this issue. We are bombarded with so many conflicting and fucked up messages about sex, desirability, body image, and relationships that it's amazing any of us can retain any sense of sexual self-esteem whatsoever. Yet I have a hard time believing that the neurosis would be so deep and painful if we weren't buying into the "sex = love" message. "If they really loved me, he wouldn't look at porn, because I would be enough," is not an uncommon refrain. (Some of the folks who say this even admit to looking at porn themselves!) But there's this fucked-up romantic ideal that we carry around with us that if we are the sexiest, most awesome lovers ever, our partners will fall so irrevocably in love/lust with us that they simply wouldn't have any interest in anyone else. For the rest of their lives. Of course, nobody can be the perfect love/lust object, but we hate ourselves for not measuring up, regardless. And then sometimes we take it out on our partner, or random strangers on the internet who have the gall to confuse the narrative by challenging deeply-held notions about sex and love.
Why even bring up porn and masturbation habits in a discussion about cheating? Because cheating is relative. It is not uncommon to find people who describe porn-viewing as cheating. Others draw the line at "netsex" or phone sex or flirting or kissing or non-physical "emotional affairs" or god knows what. Cheating, we're told, is a black and white issue: always wrong, never justified, and always a symptom of a "deeper issue" in the relationship, yet we don't even agree on what cheating is! It occurs to me that "cheating" is whatever event that trips up your own insecurities or jealousy to the point where you feel threatened. Given that insecurities are personal and vary from person, it makes sense that the definition of what cheating is varies as well. What doesn't make sense is that once we decide what cheating is, we allow for no gray area with regards to why someone cheats, or whether it's always a horrible, relationship-threatening event.
People cheat for a ton of reasons. Sometimes the cheat inadvertently because they didn't have a common understanding of how their partner was defining cheating. Sometimes they cheat because they don't want to be in a relationship, but have not been able to break it off. Sometimes they cheat because they are horny, or have issues with sexual compulsion or impulsive behavior. People cheat because they are afraid to ask for what they really want in their relationship, or because they are afraid their partner will leave them if they do. It may sound crazy to many, but some people cheat because they want to stay in their relationship and are unwilling to go without sex. Do any of these reasons justify lying to your partner? No. It would be far better if we lived in a magical world where relationships are simple, and honest communication is rewarded with empathy and understanding. That's not the case, and it's frustrating when discussions about infidelity are derailed with reductivist, black and white thinking that don't allow for the full range of human experience and emotion in favor of demonizing cheaters regardless of the situation.
What I don't get is why people who don't want to cheat and don't want to be cheated on are so insistent on keeping the narrative around cheating so, well, narrow. Doesn't it make more sense to explore and understand other people's motivations and desires so we can better understand what leads people to cheat - and, if it's important to you - how to avoid situations where you or your partner are more likely to do so? Just shaming cheaters as irredeemable and malicious doesn't help relationships or prevent cheating. It just makes people less likely to talk about it, and the culture of silence around sexual desire that isn't socially-sanctioned just leads to a cycle of guilt. Jimmy Carter may have been mocked for talking about his own non-monogamous desires in the famous 1976 Playboy interview, but he had a point that's worth considering today, dated language, Christian trappings and all.
"Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness."
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