FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps Part 18

More from my story, Cyborg Sleeps. Here we check in with Director Gattell and Constable O'Hara, who now has a first name (Rachael) because she's going to play a much bigger role than I thought at first. As you'll see, she's heading for very deep waters here...

Part 18

Director Gattell felt exhausted by the long day and by the many unpleasant compromises he had had to make along the way. No matter what Asira must have thought of him, he knew that if someone else were to take charge now, it would be much less easy for her to come through this crisis period. He groaned. That reasoning rang hollow even to his own ears, let alone how it might sound to anyone else. It was an ugly situation that forced him to be so cold to his agent when she needed support and strengthening. He was wise enough to know that sympathy and kindness were not Asira's needs right now but equally his immediate concerns had not helped her either.

The cyborg project remained in safe hands, the other military and intelligence chiefs had agreed that disaster had been averted and that security on their activities had been maintained successfully. The media had run with the story and then moved on quickly to the next developments in the wars overseas, and it was already fading into the past as far as the public eye was concerned. Most of it achieved with the minimum of string-pulling behind the scenes, just letting the news agencies behave as they always did. Though it would require monitoring for a little while longer, it was now at a level where it could safely be allowed to drop from his personal attention and be left with staff a little lower down the chain of command.

It was almost a relief when the telephone rang and he answered to find a request for a cyborg agent to be inserted behind enemy lines. It told Gattell that his project was back in the loop and back in normal operation. After checking the requirements of the mission, he agreed that it was appropriate for one of his charges and approved the request, handing it off to the specialists who would determine which cyborg was best suited to the particular details of the mission and set in motion the process of bringing the briefing team to the facility, reviving the chosen agent and setting up the mission.

Work filled the rest of the day before finally Samuel retired to his private quarters, ate a simple meal and went to sleep.

***

Rachael O'Hara had spent most of the day in bed since the press conference, sleeping ready to take another night time shift. She was determined to figure out what had really happened at Syborne Way and why the government or military or both were covering it up. She didn't know how she would go about it – after all, this stuff only happened in movies and trashy novels and she was sure she wasn't like any of the heroes of those. She was just a cop who had happened to respond to the wrong call and now there was a big secret that involved Goddess knew what and it was going on in the midst of the innocent people of the Empire. It was her duty as a policewoman and defender of law and order to uncover the truth and, if necessary, expose the secrets that might threaten the values she new her fellow countrymen and women held dear. The task was, she felt sure, too big for her, but when Lady Destiny calls, you had to answer her with all your heart and soul and body. Rachael O'Hara would not shirk her duty and would find a way to work it out.

Of course, she thought as she changed into her uniform, it would be easier if police work was like they showed it in the movies, but for a constable like her there wasn't a lot of scope for creativity. Teaming up with Sgt Nicholls they had just enough time for a few words of familiar banter before they set off in their car to patrol the dark streets of the city and make sure that petty crime was discouraged by their presence, and respond to any calls they received. O'Hara was glad that Nicholls steered clear of the topic of the previous night's scene, because she was sure that he wouldn't see things quite the same way as she did and didn't want to have to hide her feelings from him. Indeed, she figured that if he didn't want to talk about it then it probably meant that he had also been leant on to forget the incident. Had she been less preoccupied then she might have remembered that Nicholls rarely spoke about something that as far as he was concerned had been resolved with an arrest and charge, and that this was (for him) no different. But instead she was seeing everything now as though it had some bearing on the cover-up because she was so focussed on needing to investigate it and not knowing how to do so.

It turned out to be a busy night and she had no chances to think in any depth about what she was going to do, or to start doing it. By the time her shift was over an hour or two before dawn she was tired out and needed to sleep again, so after eating a small supper/breakfast she showered and went straight to bed.

My nightmares

I have dreams. Some of them pleasant, some of them strange or weird, most of them "lucid" in that I know I am dreaming and can affect the course of the dream. And some of them, inevitably, nightmares. The nightmares, certainly for several years now, have all tended towards a single theme based around fear.

The fear that comes through in these dreams, these nightmares, is always the same. What is happening in the dreams is abandonment, and this is what in the dreams I fear the most (I'll talk a bit about relevance to real-life later).

There tends to be a second theme of having to move and either not having anywhere to move to, or else having some reason why I can't move quickly enough (f'rex, having too much baggage that needs to be moved with me), but that's less frequent.

In the nightmares I have, there will be a person or small group of people on whom I rely, and whom I trust deeply. They may be real-life people, like my parents, or a friend (or group of friends) I know in r/l. They may be fictitious people that my dream has invented either to be friends or to be some supposedly dependable organisation. Either way, in the dream they are people to whom I know that I can turn when the going gets tough.

Then, of course, the going does get tough and, for one reason or another, the reliable, dependable, trusted people turn around and say to me "Uh-uh, not this time!" I think some of the most horrible nightmares I have are where the reason the going got tough is because I had some kind of falling out with these trusted people - some kind of emotional outburst from me and then it's revealed that they never really liked me, or set off because they've suddenly overstepped a boundary and hurt me emotionally in that way. And then I need to deal with a situation, one that often involves some kind of physical threat (a common example in my dreams seems to be a threat of homelessness) and the people that once I trusted to have my back suddenly aren't there or aren't willing to help. They abandon me to flounder in this situation by myself. In one recent dream (and this is another feature that sometimes resurfaces) it was a "homelessness" situation and the friends I had relied upon refused to help but instead helped me to pack up my belongings ready for me to be chucked out of my home!

In real-life, I am unemployed which means I actually am dependent upon others. I have some pretty tough challenges to make ends meet each month and I am sure that this anxiety feeds into those dreams. I don't have very many friends of the type in this dream, and none of them would turn me down if I needed their help, I am sure! But I think one of the scariest things about these dreams is that they are so close to real life in this sense of being on the edge of disaster and having to depend upon others to be a safety net. In the dream, of course, just as I start to fall, the safety net is taken away. The fact that it's people rather than things (that is, the dreams aren't dreams of falling and seeing a safety net disappear; they're dreams of having people fail to catch me) perhaps says something about what I fear most. But is it that I trust things and not people, or is it that I have no trust of things to save me so that I fear my trust in people may sometimes be misplaced? Personally, I'm not sure what my deep underlying emotional position is on those questions. I do know that my temperament is slanted towards relying on my own efforts rather than others' because of having been let down in that past, so maybe that is where these dreams originate. I think also there's a strong link with my history of depression. That is a disease that can make me feel very isolated indeed.

I hate having these nightmares, because they challenge and strike at the deepest beliefs I have about safety and security, especially around other people. My own mind is, it seems, my most effective torturer at times.

Isn't that "love"?

So, on CollarMe, I glanced through profiles that I hadn't seen before (and blimey, that site lives up to its shoddy reputation so often!)   One of the bland-but-supposed-to-be-profound statements that fill so many profiles there caught my eye.   A Submissive had posted (back in July, according to the date stamp on the message):

Submission on all levels is giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting them not to.

Well, to me, this is something that I associate not with "Submission" but "Love". I long ago accepted that loving someone, or being in love with them, means giving that person the power to hurt me on a very deep emotional level. If you care about someone then they can hurt you, it's that simple.

And when I love someone, it's because I trust them. Even though I say that I go into a relationship open-eyed and knowing that it could very well end up with me feeling hurt deeply (if briefly, see my philosophy about bouncing back), I also open up only because I feel safe to do so. I trust whoever it is not to hurt me.

I'm not Submissive. But when I love, I do so deeply and that means I apparently fulfil the criteria in that statement. Power exchange and S/M have nothing to do with that. Being the Top, the Dom, the sadist, does not magically insulate me from having a human heart, from the figurative demolition or having my metaphorical innards ripped out. Far from it! And I don't believe that being 'nilla and in love would be any different.

It is very tempting to think that there is something uniquely profound about D/s in particular, and who knows, maybe there is - or maybe it just feels like there is because to those who kink that way it would naturally feel so much more profound than things that don't match our kinks. Lord knows that I have felt that sense of profundity about it sometimes, too. But this statement - this one I know is not unique to D/s.

It may be that other people experience love differently from the way I do, and that's just people being different from one another, and no way is righter or wronger than another. But I know that I'm not the only one who loves this way, and kink or 'nilla, gay, straight or neither/both, poly or mono, there are examples who match those criteria regardless of power relations.

(Incidentally, I also hate the line "The one who is in control of a relationship is the one who has least invested in it" because that again would seem to negate the possibility of me being Dominant...)

And finally, that "on all levels" bit smacks horribly of "twoo-ness" - the idea that if you're not doing it like this, then you're not truly doing it at all. You don't need to love (or submit) on all levels to be vulnerable and to trust the person to whom you're vulnerable.

So I'm not sure if I'm saying anything deeper than: Love the way you love, kink the way you kink, do what feels profound to you and your partner(s)/SO(s)/fuck-buddie(s)/whoever you're with. Live life. Be happy.

Which, let's face it, has tended to be a nice way to be (although far from profound to say it).

"...and it never did me any 'arm"

"It never did me any harm."

I hatehatehate this phrase.

I can't really talk about the reasons for this post without breaking my solemn promise to myself not to talk about certain matters on any public blog space. As it is, I'm kind of bending the rules of that promise to make this post anyway.

On the training programme the Jobcentre have me attending, though, somehow it got into "what's wrong with kids today" and the tutor and a couple of the other members of the group were "of a certain age" and wouldn't you know - the tutor ended up coming out with this classic justification for violence against young people.

And now I am in tears because of it.

I honestly don't know how to deal with this situation, I feel too emotionally drained and bruised to handle it myself. I want to talk to her tomorrow on or after the course. Or I want to send an email tonight explaining why it was a problem for me. But I don't know if I can drag myself through the further heartache that doing so would involve. I don't know if I could deal with it if she didn't immediately understand my problem with it.

"...And it never did me any harm".

Fine. You came through unscathed. That's wonderful for you. But you don't get to make that judgement for any other poor sod who had to live through that shit. You lived your life, you dealt with it, fine. That's your truth. But you can't assume that the next person came through okay. And you certainly can't assume that the people you're suggesting should be punished this way would all be unharmed by it!

So, please, just STFU about "it never did me any harm", or I will be sorely tempted to do something that DOES do you some bloody harm. Got it?

***

In the end, I did decide to send an email. Here is a suitably-edited version (to comply with my promise to myself as far as possible). My activist streak prodded me into action!

I'm not sure how to raise this issue, but I feel like I have to deal with it somehow.

When I was head down on the desk and you asked me if I had a migraine, I was not completely truthful in my answer. Although I was truthful [about one cause], I had actually been deeply affected by the discussion earlier about physical/corporal punishment of children, particularly your laughing it off with "...And it never did me any harm."

[Specific stuff I don't want to talk about publicly, thanks] In general terms, I feel that people who have been victims of child abuse and have largely dealt with it in adulthood, should also be able to expect [Company] to be a "safe space" to enter and not have to deal with hearing things that could trigger panic attacks, flashbacks or other harmful episodes. I don't believe that customers of [Company] should be expected to disclose this sort of thing in their past, which means that you wouldn't know what sort of issues people might have around these potentially traumatic types of life experience. While I appreciate that you feel unharmed - maybe even helped - by the experiences you had, I don't believe that you can make that judgement for other people about their experiences.

I was unsure whether I would even be up to writing this email. I have truthfully been in tears this evening... For that reason, I felt that I owed it to myself (and to any other people who might have similar issues surrounding this topic) to let you know how it affected me and why I was unhappy.

I don't want to make any big fuss or get you into trouble over this, because I appreciate that it's not something that you would necessarily anticipate being an issue for other people, and because you have been a great help in many other ways. But at the same time, the issue is important to me, both on a personal level (as I've mentioned) and as an advocate/activist.

***

ETA: The tutor replied to my email promptly in the morning.   I did not have time to read it before attending today's session (26/11/2010) but from her manner face-to-face it was clear that she had taken on board my points and she handled herself very professionally.

Her email reply was as follows:

Thank you so much for your email. I most sincerely apologise for any
distress I have caused you. This was unprofessional on my part and for
this I am most ashamed and hurt that I have disappointed you. If you
want us to have a chat at some stage please feel free to ask me.

I am inclined to read this as being a cut above the frequent non-apologies that some people and organisations will give (and in my reply I complimented her on that point).   It is concise, there are no attempts at excuses, the lapse in professionalism is acknowledged.   While I'm not sure that it's appropriate for her to say she is "hurt" (being ashamed of the lapse is reasonable, I feel, but seriously, I was the one who got hurt here!), and the apology is more directed at the distress than the cause of the distress (and therefore misses my broader point), by accepting that it was unprofessional she has acknowledged that this is about what she said, not about my reaction to it, and there is a tacit commitment to be more professional.

I'm going to say that this is now resolved to my satisfaction.

***

I shall be far more restrictive about the types of comment I allow through on this post, as I am sure you can appreciate.

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps Part 17

Continuing the saga of Asira Y. In this part, Bena and Asira regret or resent the conversation they had in part 16.

Bena wondered why she had thought sharing her secret with Asira had been a good idea. After leaving the medical centre, she had finished her work routine for the day and returned to her Temple cell in a mood of hurt bewilderment. She had been sure that the cyborg agent would respond well to her offers of support, but instead Asira had worked hard to push her away. To some extent, of course, she had expected that; she'd been prepared and ready to stick out the initial suspicion and guardedness, and in fact felt as though that part had gone well.

The decision gnawed at her as she settled back into the sparse, if comfortable, living quarters that were normal for working members of the Priesthood. She knew she didn't have to be friends with every damned member of the base, and above all this one, who had made it clear from the first moment they met that there was bad feeling between them. Maybe the Director's interference had been more effective than Bena was willing to admit – or indeed, possibly, than he had intended. The incident with Asira's newly-added cryptoscopy revealing the fact that Bena had stretch marks had shaken Bena a little, she had to admit, and maybe that moment of having secrets unmasked had made her feel vulnerable, and therefore closer, to Asira than she ever would have had the spellcasting been of as different type.

And now she felt as though she had been suckered into revealing her deepest secret, the thing that she had shared with the fewest number of people in the world. The Director surely knew about the pregnancy incident, he probably knew more about what had happened to the baby than Bena herself did, but he couldn't know what Asira now did, he couldn't know the truth of what it had all meant. And now she had opened up to a woman whom she had (stupidly, she felt, despite trying to tell herself otherwise) assumed would understand because of a shared victimhood. And Asira had not understood. Had not accepted the similarity. Had instead blamed Bena for getting into the situation in the first place, for being weak, for being... lesser.

“Why did I do it?” Bena cursed herself as she shuddered by her bed, furious with herself for following an emotional whim that she wasn't even sure any more that she understood herself.

Ten years on, and though it was clear that her career had never really recovered from the pregnancy, Bena had thought that she had put it firmly in the past, come to terms with it and left it behind. And yet some strange soldier woman with goodness knew what technology built into her had by chance managed to break it all down and bring it all back. She had somehow ended up letting herself believe that this distant, detached person had been the right person to tell, with whom to share her story. And now, having been cut down, having felt that cutting, right to her core, she knew that it was not dealt with, she had not come to terms with it – it could still hurt her. And now it seemed like pure madness to have believed that Asira could possibly understand – that the remoteness was anything other than an antisocial attitude brought about by her unimaginably different life. Bena realised that she must have some deep-seated desire to share and be understood, but why had she come to such a foolish conclusion that Asira would be the one to do it with?

***

As she waited for the unfamiliar sensation of "normal" sleep to overtake her, Asira was asking herself much the same things. Why had Bena seen fit to share with her of all people? It wasn't like she was trained in empathy or counselling or any of the things that might be useful to someone who needed to share a story like that. She felt angry that Bena had dumped this issue into her lap, had expected a reaction that she was unable to give, had compared her weakness to Asira's battle. Somehow, Bena's departure seemed to her like a criticism. She refused to admit to herself that she had done wrong, and yet the knowledge that she had perhaps hurt Bena was lying just behind the anger and frustration, and continued to fester there. It was easier to use it to fuel her own resentment than deal with it openly.

Slowly the painkillers she had taken began to take effect and consciousness sagged from her body like a coat slithering from slumped shoulders onto the floor, and Asira no longer had to worry about the question. Her last thought was "Huh, a bed, this is strange…"

Yesterday was Transgender Day of Remembrance

And, poor ally that I am, I didn't even know until this morning when I saw all the USAian blogs I read had commemorated it.

Clarisse Thorn has put together a few links that are really useful and interesting. The explanation of "cis-" to which she links is particularly good.

She also links a piece by C. L. Minou, guest-posting at Feministe:

...it seems that nowadays some trans folks are turning against TDOR. Not just the various observances of it, but against the entire concept of having a day to remember the murdered trans people of the previous year. “It’s depressing,” say some. “Where is the positive day?” say others. “Why do we only talk about the depressing deaths, when trans people have accomplished so much?”

Minou has her answers to these issues(well worth reading carefully), and I'd like to add my own, as a somewhat gender-complicated cis-dude (check out "My sexual orientation" in the sidebar!) Minou talks about the TDoR being a reminder to the more privileged of trans folk that they, too, could become victims, and not to push the weaker, the poor, the disadvantaged, under a bus.

I kind of want a day like TDoR to send a message beyond the communities who created it. I want it to send a message as far as possible to cisfolks as well as transfolks. 179 murdered human beings is 179 too many, and I want cisfolk to look and see what their attitudes do. We remember, hoping that others will see us remember, and maybe begin to reflect upon the issues. There are those out there, of course, who will be unmoved. Who will think of these women and men, "good riddance!" because to them it is as though it happened to a stranger in a foreign land, and for whatever reason they fear or hate the idea of fluid gender, and the human representations of that. But then, those are the people who commit these murders and, far too often, get away with them. They get to hold these views unchallenged, and to commit these acts unpunished, because everyone else turns a blind eye or tacitly accepts the excuses they make (such as the so-called "trans panic defence" where discovering a date has different parts than expected somehow excuses battering her to death).

Remembering that this hatred costs lives - 179 that we know of in the past year - is not trivial. Reminding cisfolks that hatred costs lives is not trivial. Innocent victims, many of whom have no political agenda, have died. We remember them, and we can hope that in remembering, we show this to the cisfolk who need to see. Which is why, even though I'm a day late (and needed to be reminded about the day myself), I still post now to say "I remember".

We shouldn't leave young kinksters out in the cold

Clarisse Thorn posts (with permission of the author) an email from a 16 year old young woman who, with her boyfriend (also 16) is taking her first steps into kink, and who says she has known for a long time about her desires but:

...I don’t enjoy labelling myself, but I suppose you would call me a submissive.

As I’m sure you can relate to, this poses some problems for me. I’ve always thought of myself as a strong, independent young woman.

...

It’s very difficult for me to come to terms with this other side of myself, that, while it was always there, never really intruded on my actual life, if you see what I mean. Now it does. I’m saying these things I’ve thought about a lot of my life, and doing some of them too. There’s a level — well, two, the rational level and the physical one — where I’m completely OK with it, but another part of me — I suppose the emotional part — is entirely disgusted. If it was just the pain, I could deal with that. It’s this desire for submission that makes me feel sick about myself.

...

All I’m after is a sense of personal integrity. Perhaps in the end that can only come from myself, but, it would be nice to be told I’m not completely mad!

This person's message to Clarisse is a plea for a supportive environment in which to learn about what it means to be kinky. Clarisse has replied as best she can, but it seems that the resources aren't quite there when they need to be. For fear of the social (read: tabloid) outcry that might ensue, kink communities shy away from welcoming those under the age of 18. Even as we send out these positive messages of "consenting adults in private", the young becoming-adult people are locked out even as they are first coming to grips with what this stuff means, and for all the positive messages it still leaves people whom society is busy telling, "you're sick and wrong" to fend for themselves in coming to terms with those negative messages and how they stand in relation to themselves. To find, as the email writer says, "a sense of personal integrity". Lord knows, those messages caused me enough pain before I finally found the BDSM community and got that.

Ideally, I would like to see kink-positive sex education in schools, teaching kids it's as okay to be sub or Dom as it is to be gay or straight.   I don't think that's going to happen soon, though.   Equally, I don't think the tabloid obsession with smut, scandal and sensation is going to change any time soon, so the threat will still hang over the kink community if they reach out to younger folks openly.   And yet, something needs to be done because people like Clarisse's correspondent don't deserve to suffer the angst that is so eloquently expressed in that email.   And, it's far better (especially given the risks, physical and emotional, inherent in many types of kink play) if teens who are eager to explore this side of their sexuality, have somewhere that they can go and ask, and get personal, specific-to-them, answers.   Advice that will help and work for them.   I needed it aged 26 when I first started exploring this for real, and teens no less so, I'm sure!

I don't know what the answer is.   One of my more pie-in-the-sky thoughts is having a parent/kinkster evening where young kinky folks can drag their parents along and both learn together what it's all about and parents can see nothing untoward is happening to their growing-up-so-fast babies (somehow I think that would not actually work out very well, but I dream of a world where most parents are accepting enough for that to be of some help!)   I suppose I think of Scarleteen and wonder if a kink-specific version would be helpful - although the email writer says, "[Clarisse's] blog, as I’ve said, has been a great help, but reading something like that, wonderful as it is, isn’t the same and doesn’t have the same power to reassure as a more personal dialogue."   Which is a fair point.

I don't know what the answer is.   I don't like the idea of older kinksters pushing 16-18 year old kinksters under a bus just because we're afraid of the tabloids and so on, but at the same time, the "moral panic" phenomenon can be very dangerous still for our community.   But an answer should be found - must be found, surely?

Don't destroy, rebuild!

Via Clarisse Thorn's 'Love Bites', two stories about the ways in which sex-positive people are not quite what radfem and anti-sex work people would have us believe.

It sometimes seems as though those radfems especially want us to believe that sex-positive and pro-sex worker campaigners are all selling the "happy hooker myth" and either ignoring or deliberately hiding the wrong things that happen in sex work.   It's often claimed that only the emotionally or sexually abused could possibly choose certain lifestyles.

Sex blogger The Beautiful Kind publicly came out last month, with an extensive article (with interviews with her parents and ex-husband) in the St. Louis paper Riverfront Times revealing her real-life name and face.   It's a frank piece including biographical information concerning early traumas relating to sexuality, much as those radfem theorists would have expected.   The thing is, though, it seems to fall down when you look at a person who has, through her exploration of sexuality and writing about it, developed into a much more stable person, who is bringing up a healthy and inquisitive child (see the article).   Maybe it's true that if we got rid of nasty traumas in childhood then kink, power-exchange and so on would all disappear within a generation or two, but equally you could say that if we got rid of disease then hospitals would disappear within a generation or two.

Clarisse picks up especially on the issues around being an out sex blogger bringing up a child, quoting the original article on these matters.   Everyone except TBK herself wanted to remain anonymous, and no connection to her daughter was to be made at all, even though there was still the fear that someone might make the connection:

"I'm most afraid of anything happening to my partner or my daughter," Holliday says. "I don't want them to feel the heat of my courageous decision. If anyone says anything about me, and it's true, I'll own it. They can't shame me — 'Oh, she's a slut.' OK."

Although there's bad stuff in the story, it has a happy ending, and that ending involves kinky or alternative sex. It seems as though the biggest problem now is the people who want to make sure it doesn't stay happy!

Another activist, sex worker and sex-positive campaigner, Serpent Libertine, has written about some of the bad experiences she has had in sex work. She says:

I have had quite a few negative experiences in my years as a sex worker and almost exclusively, those experiences were when I was working for other people. Managers, agents, agencies, pimps, panderers, whatever you want to call ‘em, these people are almost always fuckin’ lazy assholes who seek to profit off women’s work.

 Serpent Libertine draws some conclusions about what can be done to stop these people operating in incredibly shady ways:

The best thing the internet did for sex workers was allowing us to stop depending on these pimp-like agents and establishments and work independently. We no longer needed these people do do our advertising, answer the phones, and pretend to do some sort of screening process that we had little knowledge of.

...

Friends I know who have worked in the brothel system say the same things. The owners instill all sorts of rules and regulations and workers are treated no better than if they were working illegally. So obviously, a decriminalized system that would allow workers to work independently is the only way to go.

...

I found a way to eliminate those from my life and never will I work for any type of agent, manager, or establishment in this industry again. This is what made the difference from me being a scared, depressed sex worker to a emotionally stable and fully independent worker who loves what she does.

The problem is not solved by changing how you criminalise sex work.   The problem is that sex work is illegal in the first place, meaning that sex workers cannot utilise the same protections against exploitation that everyone else has.   The Nevada model, as Serpent Libertine points out (and several others have as well), actually encourages exploitation because of the narrow conditions under which a sex worker has permission to work, which puts power in the hands of those who provide access to fulfilling those conditions (i.e. the brothel owners) and takes it away from the worker (the classic Marxist knock against capitalism in general, but I digress...)

The point being that we can recognise that in sex work as it currently exists there are problems, even quite deep structural ones.   As Serpent Libertine explains, the internet is helping to get rid of some of those already.   There is no need to try to destroy sex work through this or that law (and history suggests it's not possible anyway).   We can instead look to rebuild, tearing out the useless and exploitative structures and putting more power into sex workers' hands.   With more people coming out, as The Beautiful Kind did, the issues that still make sex work a trap (in that it is harder to exit than to enter, still) can be eroded - it's mainly social stigma that keeps "respectable" businesses from hiring ex-sex workers so we need to stop that being an issue.   And with changes that put more power in the hands of sex workers who want to work, the exploitation and unethical treatment that Serpent Libertine highlights in her piece can also be priced out of the market.

Which is my best face?

So OKCupid has a feature where you can submit your profile photos to be assessed via a peer review system, as long as you also review others' photos.   Being an online thing, this isn't "peer review" in the scientific sense, but rather in the "Reality TV" sense.   What happens is, you submit your pictures and then to get your report you have to assess 160 other people's pictures - 80 pairs, choosing each time which one you prefer (the exact wording is "Choose someone to date, 1 or 2").   On the left are the 4 pictures I have on OKCupid.
My question is: can you guess which one was the most preferred, across all categories?   Every self-identified category of person (except, curiously, "Guys aged 31+") seemed to prefer one of these pictures to the others.   Conservatives liked it, as did "Girls aged 18-22".   Nerds and Extroverts both liked it.   Liberals and "Girls aged 31+" both didn't dislike it (although it wasn't very popular with those groups, it was more popular than the others).

Scroll down past the photos for the link to my full report...

What answer did you get?

It turns out that the sword-wielding guy in front of the bookcase is popular with self-identified extroverts, nerds and conservatives. Guys over 31 preferred the guitar photo (self-identified "overachievers" also least disliked the guitar, according to the survey).

I had honestly expected the brightly-lit bandanna-wearing outdoors guy to be the winner but apparently not.

You can look at the whole report from the survey here, where it's revealed that 23 out of 87 people picked one of my pictures over that of someone else (which suggests that there's maybe not a hugely reliable statistical inference to be drawn from these categorised results, but it's fun anyway).

I'd love for people to explain to me how come the pictures got ranked the way they did (bandanna guy finished LAST!) - did some pics get put up against absolute hotties while others were up against more plain individuals? Is it something to do with US culture (since most of the respondents seem to have been USAian)?   Might it be that bandanna picture finished last purely because it's the only one where I'm wearing my glasses?

One last question for my dear readers: would you prefer this pic over the others?

Buy my music on bandcamp!

Continuing my attempts to make money out of the skills I have, I have signed up to bandcamp, a website that I know a few of my friends or acquaintances use to distribute their music.

So far I only have two tracks available, which are: Softly - an acoustic guitar improvisation based on a backing riff that I had developed a while back. And Cyborg Dawn, which I can't figure out how to classify (suggestions welcome in comments). Again, I developed a riff - and then a second riff to go with the first one, and added layers until I felt it was full. I did not know my voice could reach those high notes in there. I think it falls somewhere between chill-out, metal, classical and folk music. The feel of Cyborg Dawn reminded me of my Cyborg Sleeps story, particularly the intro, which is more like a poem than a story anyway. However, because the music is very different from the character of Asira, I didn't want to link the two explicitly by naming the track after the story, so I called it "Dawn" instead of "Sleeps".

You can download the tracks and artwork I made for them at Snowdrop Explosion on bandcamp. Both these tracks are available for free, but if you like them enough to pay for them I could really (really really) use the cash right now!

I intend to add the filk album still advertised in the sidebar here (with download I can make it cheaper, too) and also see if I can put together an EP or album of some of my other stuff (including one or two of the BDSM songs I've written). But the latter may take a while (I haven't even recorded all the tracks yet!)

Time to move on...

So SNS has dumped me.

It'll take me a day or two to work through it all, but I usually bounce back from this moment and go back to "single and seeking" mode (which is, after all, where I spend most of my time). For now, though, I'm listening to Marc Orchin and Bonnie Burden's version of "The Rose" ("When the night has been too lonely/ and the road has been too long/ and you think that love is only/ for the lucky, and for the strong..." etc - I've often felt that way!) and wishing I had chocolate ice cream in the flat.

For all I disbelieve in horoscopes and astrology, I typify my star sign of Cancer in my sense of hearth and home and just wanting to settle down with someone. (I recall reading that I also typify my Chinese horoscope sign, the Horse, since Horses tend to go head-over-heels in love at the first sign of interest - I wouldn't say I'm that bad but I certainly fall for a person quickly when I do.) Point being - I want commitment and I hold back from it only to make sure (hopefully) that the other person feels the same way. It mystifies me when gender-essentialists insist that it's only women who need commitment from every relationship, who confuse sex with love, who need the luvvyduvvy stuff; I wouldn't say I confuse sex with love, but I'm certainly looking for a committed relationship and (regardless of the deep sadism in my soul!) yearn for the coupling of a nice cuddle and tenderness as well. But men are supposed to be the ones who don't like to commit, who are just after a shag, who don't get "romance" for its own sake and all that. That's not me - but then, by some people's measurements I am apparently not a man, despite the physical evidence to the contrary and my own internal identification as such.

SNS told me that she isn't ready to be a girlfriend at the moment (meaning a steady relationship) and to be honest, I was kind of prepared for that. Her kink experience went, when we started seeing each other, from 0 to 60 in almost no time at all and part of me felt that maybe she would feel some need or desire to see what else is out there before saying finally, "this is the man that I plan to entangle". After all, as kink goes what I gave her may have been pretty mediocre for her actual desires but when you go from 'nilla to kink and kink is what you're built for (i.e. you're "orientationally" kinky) then everything must feel absolutely amazing and better than anything ever (slight exaggeration, I suppose, but that's kind of how I felt when I first got to do kink in r/l). Rather like blundering around with candles for ages and then finding the lightswitch to turn the electric light on. But once you get used to the new brightness, discriminating between the pretty and the not-as-good-looking becomes that much easier as well (NB - "pretty" is a metaphor here only: I'm not in any way suggesting SNS called me ugly!). So, as I say, I had kind of prepared myself for the possibility that she might feel that she wasn't ready to pick me over all others, and that's cool.

Of course, it's left me hurt. When you start to love someone, you leave yourself vulnerable to that and that's the deal. I'm okay with that hurt, because it's the price I have to pay each and every time. The alternative is to be calloused and never to give myself again, which is unbearable to me - definitely a "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" kind of guy, me.

Michele Welborn sings, "You can use me/ I don't bruise easily" - for me the first part is true (I wouldn't say I feel used by SNS exactly, but the sentiment holds). But I wouldn't say that I "don't bruise easily" - I hurt deeply and hard. I recover quickly, though. I console myself with the line "Pick myself up, dust myself down, move on to the next bear trap." The meaning is NOT that women are traps for the unwary, but rather that I go into a relationship prepared for the possibility it might not last and that the next one will hurt just as badly. And, as explained, I gladly accept that risk, that price.

With this philosophical outlook, of course, I find it very hard to feel any lingering resentment or animosity towards someone who breaks up with me. SNS and I have agreed to keep in contact (she even wants to come here for casual play once in a while, and I have some DVDs I promised to lend her, too) and I am sure that we will remain good friends. Even those with whom I have lost contact remain in my heart, I figure I don't stop loving someone just because we're not a couple and we've both moved on; it's just a different kind of love.

So my best wishes go with SNS and hope that she finds her fulfilment of her kink with as many or as few men and/or women as she desires. And I go back to seeking mine...

New story: The Heartless Witch

I've just posted a new story at my "Tales of the Midnight Isles" blog, where I'm trying to develop my own myth/legend universe inspired by British history and Tolkien and what-have-you. The story is called The Heartless Witch, and that title is a literal reference (read the story and you'll see what I mean - it's also kind of inspired by a couple of Neil Gaiman stories).

I'm kind of bothered that, when I had finished and I looked back at the storyline, I thought "Hang on, this might actually be just a new version of the 'scorned woman' misogynist trope in horror". I'm rather pleased with the story despite that concern, and I liked the idea of having there be a stay-at-home husband while the woman goes off doing the fighting! But if the literal descriptions were taken as an allegory for the emotional heart then it might well be considered problematic (I did consider reversing the genders from the original conception but in the end decided that it could still be just as misogynist if it was a Heartless Wizard instead). I'm comfortable with the story as it is, but felt I should at least acknowledge that these concerns might exist! I actually had as the starting point the scene in Linna's garden and then spun the rest of the story to make sense of it.

Incidentally, I think Linna is childless because she used magic to keep herself that way, at least until she had honoured her vow to the High Coven.

I suppose I should note that witchcraft in this story has nothing to do with Wicca or paganism in the real world - the Midnight Isles story universe has its own explanation of magic and so on.

Porn and ethnicity

Via Womanist Musings comes a link to a CTV Winnipeg report titled Members of aboriginal community voice concerns over pornographic website.

The article continues:

Members of Winnipeg's aboriginal community are speaking out against a pornographic website featuring only native women. They believe the women featured on it are vulnerable and were targeted.

Lisa Michell of the Women's Memorial March says the site furthers stereotypes of aboriginal women. The site advertises "casino girls," "reservation hotties" and "welfare chicks."

The specific accusation in terms of exploitation is that the website's owner deliberately targeted aboriginal women with addictions, or who were unaware of the nature of the consent forms they were asked to sign.

I cannot speak to the truth or otherwise of those accusations, but the accusation about stereotyping is certainly true of a great many porn sites that offer images and videos of women of a particular racial background or appearance. Never mind whether they actually belong to those groups; porn is about physical appearances and fantasy all the way through, so if people fit the fantasy image of group X then that is how the porn featuring those people will be marketed.

And I think that a lot of the time when a person deliberately seeks out images of women from a certain racial background (in his mind, of course, they are from it even if they aren't actually) then a lot of the reason for having those fetishes is because of assumptions and stereotypes that the porn user holds about what qualities a woman from that racial background is like, whether physically or in sexual behaviour. Yes, there are some who do get off specifically on the physical appearance of (say) very dark skin, but most associate race with some other characteristics beside the physical features. Certainly they will find the porn marketed along the lines of those assumptions. I would like to say it isn't so, but as a consumer of pornographic materials for nearly 10 years I know that everywhere you go to look for porn, you will find sections specifically aimed at meeting racial fetishes and it is always the same, whether online or in sex shops, the way that the products on sale present themselves.

Without a doubt, this is a really big problem with porn as it is made and sold today. I would hope that workplace discrimination laws could and should be employed to combat this sort of crap being spouted but because porn is a marginalised industry, paradoxically it means that the law is less able to regulate it or deal with these problems. I would like there to be much better guidance for consumers of porn so that businesses who perpetuate these stereotypes and racist assumptions can be boycotted easily while those who create porn without resorting to such lazy tactics (and who look after their employees and performers properly) can be promoted and supported.

In practice though, although I can avoid buying or using the porn that carries these offensive racial stereotype adverts, most businesses selling and distributing the stuff don't seem to bother to make a distinction, and don't seem to care to discriminate between this and porn that (while people may have issues with it in other regards) is not racially stereotyped. And if all or most businesses are equally bad, ethical shopping is pretty hard to do. (Of course, this is where the anti-porn folks say "so don't buy any porn anywhere! Ha-ha!" but that's not really going to work as a mass consumer movement, not with porn or any other product, so it's not likely to have a real effect.)

I make no bones about it: I am pro-porn and think that it has positive uses (I also think it has negative uses, such as when kids are using it to learn about sex - but then, when I rule the world sex education will have classes explaining just why porn is not like real sex). However, I think that it behoves us, as pro-porn activists, to be active against porn as well, or rather, against the many problems that are real and are genuinely a part of the way porn is presented and made these days. The business isn't going to stop being racist like this of its own accord (if, as I believe, those racist assumptions are the very reason why people buy the product, it would not be a good business model to change it without outside pressure!)

***

I said at the start that I cannot speak to the truth or otherwise of the accusations that the website targeted vulnerable women. I would like to believe that it is not true. I also think it would be naive to believe it is not true, at least without a lot of further investigation. Certainly, the excuse used by the site's owner of "If they didn't want to do, they wouldn't accept the money. That's the way I look at it," sounds suspect to me (just like, "if she doesn't want to be a waitress in a greasy-spoon café then she wouldn't take that job" sounds a bit dodgy reasoning). Again, the description of how the women were recruited raises questions: "He says he walked through the area looking for referrals and paid young women to have sex with him, which he filmed for his website." This conjures images of seeking women out on the street - and who are most likely to be out on the street during the day? Those without jobs and possibly without homes.

I don't know the basis of the allegations - I don't know if it's the same assumption that "no woman would ever willingly do that!" or if there's real grounds for concern. For all I know, the women that were filmed were all middle-class backgrounds doing it for fun and a story to tell their mates. But could a website owner be unscrupulous in the quest to make profit? Of course, and when you're dealing with a marginalised industry that exists in a legal grey area, one cannot assume that everyone will be a nice person! I repeat, for clarity, that I have made no assumption about the guilt or innocence of this guy (to the extent of avoiding naming him here, even though the news article does) and of course, "innocent until proven guilty" is the baseline to work from. I have reasons to be suspicious of both sides of the story, and that is where I leave it.

Pick-up tips, feminism and the sadomasochist

This post is inspired by reading Hugo Schwyzer's The pro-feminist pick-up artist: rethinking a blind spot (found via Clarisse Thorn's Love Bites) and by reading Clarisse Thorn's post BDSM vs. Vanilla, Part 1: Why I Pretend I Don’t Date Vanilla-But-Questioning Men. (The "Love Bites" link is well worth a look in its own right, lots of useful links and interesting talk stuff there; apparently that and Hugo's post came out of a face-to-face meeting between those two bloggers.)

When Hugo writes in his post about

But in talking with Clarisse, I realized how often I’ve been unnecessarily contemptuous of those men who have sought out techniques and strategies for approaching women.

...

I have my strengths and weaknesses, and meeting people and finding lovers seems to have been one of the former.

But it’s almost axiomatic that folks who are good at something often have a hard time empathizing with those who aren’t. And I confess that I’ve often assumed the worst about those men who have sought guidance from “pick-up artists” and who are interested in learning seduction techniques. My feminism combined with my own lack of experience to make me reactively suspicious of any man who seems too eager for “tips” on “how to meet and mate.”

I am one of those men for whom talking to women - or specifically, bridging the gap from friendly conversation to "asking her out" and "romance" - was a problem. It still is, if I'm honest, that's how come all of my successful attempts to get involved sexually with another person have come through online dating services! (And when I have decided I'd like to ask a woman on a date in face-to-face communication, I have tended to spend at least a week preparing myself for it, planning how to pick the right words and the right moment!)

Regular readers will know that I am very critical of assumptions of male confidence and competence in approaching women, for example in my riposte to "He's Just Not That Into You".

There is, of course, another barrier for me, and that is the need (the sexual orientation, even) to have BDSM as part of the relationship structure. Dominance/submission, sadism/masochism, these are not optional extras for me. (Bondage is an optional extra for me, but it's also a huge amount of fun and keys into the control element of D/s, so I think that's worth having too!) Clarisse Thorn writes:

...guys in the BDSM community have already overcome their sexual stigma at least enough to actively seek the community out — which is a big deal, even if they don’t feel S&M as quite a core, innate desire the way I do.

For me, I'm writing from the flip side of that observation - as the guy who has "overcome [his] sexual stigma", but also, I see it from the other angle of gender - a woman who has sought out the BDSM community (at least online) has also had, to a certain extent at least, to overcome sexual stigma (and arguably there is a lot more stigma for her to overcome!) It makes broaching the topic of "relationship" and "sexual desires" that much easier for me to know that this barrier has already been crossed - both in terms of "we are both kinky, so we may have compatible desires", and also in terms of "the stigma/social barrier of talking about sex has already been crossed so I do not have to take that leap".

Saying that sounds horribly like the "horny net guy" (HNG) approach to kink websites (which is basically "hurhur, horny women, hurhur, they must be easy sluts, hurhur"). I must make the disclaimer here that women in fetish clubs, BDSM communities, and on BDSM websites have all the same rights as regards being picky about with whom they will discuss such topics (let alone actually do the stuff they talk about!) Respect and enthusiastic consent of course remain key concepts of good BDSM practice, even when you're still at the meeting people stage - i.e. if she's not enthusiastic about talking with you, there's a good chance you should stop bothering her! Incidentally, I have a vague memory of a video of a convention panel with (I think) Amber Rhea explaining how nerds can talk to women at conventions - with the classic line "we're nerds too!" - that covered a similar idea of making sure she's available and willing to talk first. I can't seem to find a link for it though.

The point is, a big social barrier to starting a conversation about "what are you after, would you like to try it with me?" has been lifted (if the answer is "no", or even "I don't even want to talk about it with you", then good manners mean you change the topic or back off entirely - although backing off entirely advertises the fact that you were only after one thing!) Ideally of course, you have a conversation about many things and then (because kink is a shared interest as well as a sexual preference) the subject will work its way around to BDSM anyway and - if it's going well - may get to specifics of "you and me, babe, how about it?" (although worded with a little less corniness, one imagines!)

I'm still shy (generally speaking, not just with approaching women!) so it's not even half the battle won - as I said, all my success with women has come from dating sites - specifically, BDSM personal ad/dating sites. However, acknowledging this side of me and knowing that it is acknowledged (because of meeting through the kink community, online or off) allows a certain level of confidence about myself and who I am. The whole stigma thing is much less of an issue.

As Clarisse writes, Vanilla<--->Kink is much more of a spectrum than a dichotomy (in fact, it's probably multi-dimensional, too, although whether it's orthogonal is debatable). Most people have some element of kink in their love lives and "vanilla" or "kinky" is relative to one's own perception of sexuality and one's own preferences. For some, the thought of fluffy handcuffs is incredibly kinky and naughty; for others, they are vanilla play and really not their thing. But (again, as Clarisse explains in her post) there's a mindset that goes with embracing kink as sexuality (even where it is expressed as preference rather than orientation) that makes the emotional engagement much easier to manage.

I like to make a statistics joke about my kink: "I'm not just deviant - I go way beyond the standard deviation!" (If people want, I can make a post all about how the mathematics ties in with concepts of kink, vanilla and whatnot, but I won't bother if it would just bore you all.) Being some distance away from what is considered "normal" with my sexuality, makes bridging the gap to those who have not explored this far from the average somewhat tricky and generally I would shy away from it, just as Clarisse writes: "Sometimes people ask me, 'Can you date vanilla guys?' That question has a very complicated answer." But essentially it's "no, because..." (her post explains about the "because", and all the exceptions to the "no" that she has). For me, it's "no" partly because I don't know how to bridge that gap and frankly, although vanilla sex can be fun, without the D/s element for me it quickly becomes boring. Just as, in Clarisse's experience, kink becomes boring or just off-putting, for those vanilla guys with whom she's tried to maintain a kink relationship: "Doing something new can be exciting, but if it’s extreme and a person isn’t personally drawn to it, then in my (sad) experience, that person won’t retain enthusiasm for it."

I feel like I've rambled to an awkward stop at this point, and there was probably some point I was going to make to round it all off. I can't remember what that might have been. I think, like Hugo, I am not "going to write a seduction manual for male feminists." (Kinky feminist men in my case!) I think that stuff about acknowledging and accepting if a woman doesn't feel like talking to you is as far as this post has gone in that direction! As (or if!) we move towards a more feminist social universe then I think it will become easier, just because that stigma about sexuality in general will help (that is, for both men and women, wanting to have sex with someone will become less awkward to communicate!) And vanilla doesn't mean "boring" if vanilla is what you like, and kink can be if it isn't. That's all I've got!

FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps Part 16

Sorry for the delay in getting more parts of this story posted (although I haven't written a lot since the last post was made, there were still parts written but not posted so I have time to make some more progress).

In this part, Bena reveals perhaps more than she should to Asira about her past, and Asira is a little bit of a cold bitch about it.

Part 16

They played in sullen silence for a while, or at least, Asira did. Bena did nothing to break the silence, but her manner was much lighter than Asira's. The only words exchanged were those necessary for the game: "stick", "twist", "bust". But eventually curiosity broke through Asira's anger and mistrust.

"I still don't get it. This can't be fun for you, what do you want?"

Bena smirked a little, and treated the direct question as part of the game since Asira was dealer at that point: "Twist, please."

Asira flicked the card viciously at her playing partner. But the question was still preying on her mind.

As the hand played out, she reminded Bena, "You said it was for you to know and me to figure out. Well, if I am going to figure it out I need a starting point. So give."

"Alright, here's a clue. There's something we have in common."

Asira snorted, "You're really a cyborg too? No, wait – I'll get this – you're a crack shot with a pistol. No, I know – you just feel like getting on the Director's nerves as well as mine!"

"Cold. Warmer but no. And I couldn't care less what the Director thinks, or if he finds out that I'm here. Sixteen left."

"Sixteen what? And, wait, the pistol shooting was the closest guess!?"

Bena didn't laugh but with open and straight face replied, "Sixteen questions, of course. If we're playing 20 questions, of course. Which we're not, I suppose, unless you want to. And yes, of those guesses I'd have to say that since I am definitely not a cyborg, then the pistol shooting is closer than any of the others."

"So it has something to do with guns?"

"Not guns, no."

"But weaponry, then?"

"Only a little bit."

"Now you're just being annoying again."

"Yeah, but at least I'm good at it!"

Asira snarled.

"Come on, you've already got a good start, you just need to broaden your questions. Oh, by the way – twist."

Asira considered the puzzle while dealing Bena another card.

"Alright, next question: is it something to do with being a secret?"

"Yes!" Bena's excitement at the guess was palpable, and Asira got the impression that this was somehow closer than she had imagined. It was a surprise, and she found herself sinking into thought about what it could mean. While she considered the information, she announced "dealer twists… and bust." She dealt the next hand and planned her next question before opening her mouth again.

"So – you were the secret?"

"In a way, yes. You've already seen a clue to it"

"Whose secret?"

"Figure out the secret – you have enough now – and I'll tell you."

Asira heard something new in Bena's voice – the confidence with which she had conducted herself all the time seemed to waver a little, or was tinged with sadness. Though she still did not want to let herself like Bena, she no longer felt annoyance or anger towards her, but still – curiosity was the biggest emotion right now, and the puzzle was set. She could treat it like an espionage assignment to figure out the best way forwards. As she thought this, suddenly, a piece fell into place.

"You said I'd already seen a clue. But all I saw of you of note was the cryptoscopy response on your robes. The stretch marks. Your pregnancy was a secret? But why would that be something we have in com- oh."

Bena sat in silence, letting Asira keep thinking and talking aloud.

Asira continued after a pause: "It was unwanted, a result of a – rape?" Bena shook her head slightly, not quite enough to say "no" but still a negative. Asira thought for a second longer.

"Not rape, but almost… and something in common… my CO, your teacher at Seminary?"

Bena nodded. "I don't know about your CO, but yes – one of the High Priests lied to me and had sex with me." Her voice grew bitter for a moment with the memory: "I was his secret sex toy, I suppose, but I got pregnant and, well, at my Seminary, they were old-school. Abortion meant you were tainted by death and murder: you couldn't enter the Priesthood with that on your soul. And caring for a child makes it impossible to learn it all. Priestesses are encouraged to have children after we're qualified, but before – it's an end to your career before it's started. So I gave it up for adoption, and never told anyone who the father was.

"I thought we had it in common because the men who attacked you wanted the same thing from you as the priest wanted from me. And cared about as much as he did whether you wanted it." The bitter note returned again to Bena's voice as she finished.

"My CO is a better comparison. But I didn't fall for it." Asira's tone of voice betrayed her contempt for Bena. Bena in turn couldn't keep the hurt tone from her voice:

"You were a soldier, I was a starry-eyed teenager fresh from school. I didn't know about anything, and I was in awe of everything and everyone. Huh, maybe I was wrong to share this with you. Let's get back to the game."

After a few more hands were played, Bena announced that she had to return to her work. Asira was surprised to feel saddened for the loss of her company.

Lovely theory, too bad it's wrong.

Match.com (highlighted this weekend by Yahoo's news alerts) has a couple of articles by Laura Schaefer on "5 Tips for bonding with her" and 5 ways to understand him better" - predicated on certain findings on differences between the brain structures of men and women.

I call this theory a load of rubbish, if I want to be polite, and utter shite if I want to be a bit cruder. I shall now proceed, dear reader, to explain why.

In the intro to the "bond with her" version, Ms Schaefer writes:

Wouldn’t it be a relief to finally understand what is happening behind her pretty eyes? Why is it, for example, that the woman in your life is serene one moment, apocalyptic the next? How can she remember details about your life you don’t even recall? And what’s with her taking everything so personally? Chalk it up to female brain chemistry. Here’s how to tailor your courtship to her cortex, hippocampus, etc.

Some of the points are complementary, so there are really fewer than 10 points. I'll summarise them here:

1. Men's hippocampi are smaller than women's hippocampi. The hippocampus being associated with forming of memories, men forget things you told them like where you work while women remember lots of "first time we..." type things.
2. Women's brains have "a greater density of neurons in parts of the temporal lobe cortex, which is the area of the brain associated with language processing and comprehension." (Laura Schaefer uses Dr Larry Cahill as a source and references research by Dr. Godfrey Pearlson). This means dudes talk less while chicks just totally dig poetry; that women "choose words with such care" whereas men "don't get hints"; and that women read more into a statement such as "I'd rather watch sport" while men miss the underlying meaning when a woman says something.
3. Guys are happier bunnies than women because their brains produce more serotonin, (according to a study done at McGill University) so guys - share your happy to cheer her up; women, don't expect him to get all weepy over stuff!
4. Women's brains have a bigger percentage devoted to regulating emotions, so women know how to chill out instead of getting aggressive all the time like those violent, thuggish dudes do all the time!
5. Women use the left part of the amygdala while men use the right part, so dudes remember breakfast this morning while women remember emotional stuff that happened ages ago; men remember the key central points while women remember the fine details.

Now, I am sure some of you will already be leaping ahead after reading that and have your own stories about why it's all bollocks, but I'm going to stick to refuting it from my own experience.

Point 1: Memory formation. It is true that at times, I am somewhat forgetful, and details slip past me - but the example of "If on your first date he can’t remember where you work, even though you told him all about it when you met" given by Ms Schaefer hardly seems fair, unless you automatically assume the bias in point 5. I might very well forget that, but that's because my brain is taking in other stuff - the details mentioned in point 5! But the "first time we..." things, dates and such, I am not so bad on those, in terms of remembering what we did, said, details etc. The other example given is the famous one about dudes not noticing when a woman has her hair differently. I learned (taught myself) to spot these things (because we're told that it's important to a woman for a guy to notice it).

Point 2: Language use and "hidden meaning". True story: I used to struggle a lot with missing people's intended messages and have worked hard to be more alert to the non-verbal cues and such that people are sending out. But I am not able to distinguish between genuine hints and stuff that might be hints but aren't. A lot of the time, still, I process something and I feel like it means something but I don't know what - often, if I think I'm missing an important cue, I will ask what it meant.

SNS at the moment says I over-think everything. Often, the messages I think she's sending are, in fact, non-existent. I pick up on stuff that isn't there and either am puzzled by it, or read it as meaning something and of course, no such intention is there. Which sounds like what women are supposed to do to men!

As for language use - I love poetry, I love great prose and I love writing and composing stories, speeches, poetry, song lyrics. I am rather proud of my verbal dexterity, in fact. I will often pause because I want to pick exactly the right word for what I wish to express. Often it comes naturally, but if it doesn't I'll work at it until I get it right. SNS on the other hand again says that I over-think things when I pick up on her language use and read stuff that just isn't there. I would try not to, but this is my natural level of language engagement. Does this mean I'm really a woman!?

Point 3: Serotonin levels. I suffer from depression, guys. I had to take SSRI tablets for a year to deal with this. SSRI stands for "Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor". That's because my brain doesn't produce enough serotonin without assistance. And yet, I could be happy at times even with this problem of not having enough serotonin in my brain (funny, that - I could do it even before I had the tablets, too).

From this we can deduce that the advice is, at the very least, predicated on the dating people being neurotypical humans. Given that 1 in 3 people will be affected by mental health issues at some point in their life, the chances of dating at some point someone who is non-neurotypical in some degree seems quite high.

Point 4: Emotional control. Again, I have learned this skill. I needed to, because I was once a very violent young man and that would have led to a lot of trouble if I hadn't found a way to regulate my amygdala or whatever the fuck I'm doing when I say "okay, that's how I feel - now what do I do with it?" And it's fair to say that I have known more than a couple of women who were somewhat impulsive and ready to start a fight (at least verbally, and sometimes physically).

Point 5: Types of memory. I'm off the chart here, I haven't even learned it I just do it. Emotional stuff is what makes an impact for me, and I process things emotionally, no question about it. Friday night I went to my first fetish club night and honestly, I couldn't tell you very much about what I did, but I could give you a fairly detailed rundown of the emotional development of the whole evening with flashes of detailed pictures in my mind's eye with each significant point. My memory of what I did is keyed to how I felt about it and what I remember happening as I felt it. Again, am I actually a woman?

***

Of course, none of this goes against saying that on average the brain structure observations are true. But it's absolutely useless to assume that they will be true of all possible pairings of a man with a woman (or for that matter, a butch with a femme - btw are there different terms for gay men, or can we apply those gender terms equally? I should look that up!) And of course, the astute reader will have noticed that my refutation depended on several points where I said "I learned/taught myself to do this". What that indicates is that the human brain is a very flexible computational device and is capable of adapting beyond its base architecture to handle all manner of different procedures. In other words, the brain structure i a lot less significant than a lot of people would like us to believe; what matters is what we teach others and ourselves to do and believe about our abilities to do.

In other words, gender differences are far more down to social structures and socialisation in general, than they are to do with any underlying physiological or neurological differences between men and women.

Which, of course, my gentle readers already knew!