Call that a gender-based assumption?

At the weekend, the Guardian "Weekend" magazine ran a feature titled "Call that a job?" Three examples in particular interested me, involving very young children and indicating tropes surrounding gender identity and the ways in which gender is understood by adults and learned by children.

These columnists were fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley (whose "replacement" was daughter Pearl, aged 4), beauty writer Sali Hughes (whose "replacements" were sons Marvin and Arthur, aged 5 and 3) and music critic Alexis Petridis (whose "replacement" was daughter Esme, 4).   Each columnist gave an introduction explaining what they felt about the experience of inviting their children to help with their job for a day.

Sali Hughes writes about the experience that:

Every morning we have a ritual where I sit on my bed and put on my make-up while my sons, Marvin, almost six, and Arthur, three-and-a-half, watch television next to me. Whereas I would sit transfixed as my grandmother applied her rouge and Yardley perfume, my kids barely look up from Scooby-Doo.

As a mother of sons and a feminist, I was keen to avoid gender stereotyping but, as any parent will tell you, there's a certain hardwiring, whether or not you indulge it. When I'm filming my beauty tutorials, they head straight for the camera equipment.

However, she immediately observes that:

Arthur loves having his toenails painted ... and yet Marvin, just 28 months his senior, is already horrified at the suggestion. It was only two years ago that I was shrieking at him for raiding my make-up bag and covering himself, and my white bedsheets in pink creme blusher. Now he'd sooner eat slime.

The question that springs to mind is, "What happens between the ages of 3-and-a-half and nearly 6?" One pretty major answer, in the UK, is that you start going to school. And peer pressure becomes a factor. Anyone who says peer pressure doesn't start from day one of school is living with rose-tinted memories. However well feminist parents teach non-gender, if their children are aware of having gender, then gender norms will be imposed on them by the children of people who are not raising their children with feminism in mind. Not to mention the attitudes and influences of the more gender-norm-enforcing teachers at their school. As the famous saying puts it, it akes a whole village to raise a single child.

Sali Hughes' assertion that gendered differences are something "hardwired" also seems dubious when we look at the attitudes of 4-year-old Pearl, who was playing as a fashion writer for the day

Pearl's mother, Jess Cartner-Morley, reports that Pearl's attitude was:

"I'm quite busy after school. I haven't finished my colouring"

"But it will be fun! You can choose clothes for us to wear, and we'll be in the magazine together."

"Mummy, that's not very fun. Going on roller-coasters is fun. Eating popcorn and cake is fun. Choosing clothes is not really fun."

"There's a shop where I work that sells cake. We could go there afterwards."

Pause

"Do I have to have my hair brushed or try any new vegetables?"

"No. I promise."

"OK, Mummy."

Pearl, also before school age (although it's possible she might have been going to playschool or kindergarten), seems gloriously unaware that as a girl, she's supposed to love clothes shopping, being groomed (having her hair brushed) and such things! That said, Jess tells us that, "...she has recently outgrown the nylon princess dress phase. (Three months ago, I would have been turened into a dead ringer for Grayson Perry.)"

Again, we have a point of comparison by age and gender. Pearl's brother, aged 8, is assumed to have a different perspective:

But if it were up to Alfie, my eight-year-old, I would be wearing an Arsenal home kit and an Arsenal away kit. So it falls to Pearl.

Again, why might an eight-year-old boy think the only thing to be seen wearing is a football strip for one's favoured team? Can it really be hardwired, or is it something about how one learns (and is expected) to display one's sense of belonging and one's place in life? Similarly, women are taught other ways to show their allegiance and their station.

Alexis Petridis, the music critic, talks of doing his best not to force his parental interests on his children, and bemoans the tendency for others to seek to influence directly the music chosen by their kids. He writes that, "part of the joy of discovering music as a child is finding it for yourself, independent of or, better still, contrary to your parents' wishes."

Nevertheless, he seems happy with most of 4 years old Esme's choices, with the exception of a track by Katy Perry (namely, California Gurls), of which he writes:

It isn't just that Perry appears to make records with the specific intention of annoying me - audibly cynical and dead-eyed, it'sa pop music made by people who hate pop music and those who like it. It's that she makes records that hymn things I don't want my kids - both girls - to grow up thinking are cool: honking lads mag faux-lesbianism; using the word 'gay' as an insult; the disconcerting combination of lollipop-sucking ickle-girl-isms and décolleté sexuality. Yet you don't want to be one of those huffy numpties who picketed the Anarchy In The UK tour, convinced that their children's sense of morality would be irrevocably shattered if they saw the Sex Pistols live.

I needn't have worried: if you can't over-estimate a four-year-old's capacity for listening to the same thing over and over again, nor can you over-estimate their capacity for dropping it like a hot brick when something else comes along.

Alexis seems to have some of the right intentions, but more importantly, seems to have a slightly better idea of how gendered socialisation starts and works. Both that it comes about from social constructions (Katy Perry) and that it is not necessarily direct or immediate (both the remark about the "threat" of the Sex Pistols, and observing that Esme at the age of 4 is not absorbing too many messages from Katy Perry yet but instead losing interest very quickly as soon as something else comes along).

This is not to say that gender programming holds off until children reach school age, and it is not to say that earlier influences are unimportant - but it does say that they are far harder to track, and they are clearly not based in some form of "hardwiring" that determines that between the age of 3 and 6 boys automatically lose interest in make-up and clothing, even if they liked it before.

The question that bothers me is how four-year-olds Esme and Pearl will find themselves gendered and socialised when they start at school. The articles weren't meant to be about gender differences and how they emerge, and there were no examples of early school age girls to compare with these pre-school girls, as we were able to compare Alfie and Marvin with Arthur. So we don't get to see if Pearl's boredom with clothes and hair might suddenly turn into avid interest when peer pressure becomes a factor.

Either way, I have always disliked seeing the defeatist attitude of some "feminist mothers" like Sali Hughes that, when they find their sons like "typically" boy-ish things or their daughters like "typically" girly things, it must mean that there are after all some biological imperatives that cannot be overcome; and that the best feminism can do is fight to even the balance once they have followed their gendered destiny. I have so often read about feminists who believed they could raise their children free from stereotyping but then found that it didn't work that way. For one thing - a certain percentage of children will, even free of gendered programming, choose "stereotypical" interests anyway. And, as I've already explained, it isn't only the family that produces the child, but so much depends on the socialisation received outside the home, from friends, television and at school. To declare, because the parents weren't able to overcome the weight of all that other programming, that gender is innate after all seems to me to be somewhat short of the methodical approach that leads to understanding.

It is, however, exceptionally hard for us to escape in society.

EDIT TO ADD: Another point of reference on these issues is Matt Kailey's piece over at Womanist Musings about the young child Storm being raised without gender prompting from parents.

Pro-wrestling is worse than porn

The post title is a little tongue-in-cheek (a bad move if you're wrestling, I don't have enough data from which to say whether it's a bad move in porn or not).

The point of it is that there's an anti-porn campaigner (Shelley Lubben) who keeps a record of all the deaths by drug overdose or suicide, of performers or ex-performers in the San Fernando Valley porn industry, and uses the apparently relatively high rate of these deaths as an argument to ban porn.

Via Yahoo's recommended stories this morning when I logged in:

Over 25 percent of the performers from Wrestlemania VII have died.

The piece reports that:

The Wrestling Observer newsletter discovered that 14 of the 51 performers at the event have died in the past 20 years, with many of the deaths attributed to drug use.

The list of wrestlers who have died since 1991 include some of the biggest stars in the sport like Savage, Andre the Giant, Miss Elizabeth and The British Bulldog. Causes of death include suicides, murder and heart attacks, some the result of years of anabolic steroid use.

Should we ban pro-wrestling, on this basis? Clearly, it takes a heavy physical and psychological toll on performers, just as is claimed to be the case for porn. Arguably, the toll is even greater (the percentage reported here outstrips easily the reports on Lubben's site).

Obviously, it is tragic that men and women have died young after performing in an entertainment industry like this, just as it is tragic that men and women have died after performing in the adult entertainment industry. However, people make their choices for their own reasons. The best we can do is to give them the tools to make choices freely and with foreknowledge. The health problems especially that seem to be related to pro-wrestling (heart conditions particularly) are things that one would hope in general would form part of people's education before they decide to follow a career in pro-wrestling. Just as I think that the realities of how porn is made ought to be part of sex education classes in school, so that teens who may be thinking that when they are 18 or 19 or 20 that they may want to perform in porn (or may end up thinking that way once they reach majority), are forewarned and able to make a more fully informed choice about their life's path.

People have the right to make their own mistakes; I do believe that society (as any good friend would) should support them if they fall flat on their faces (that's why I believe in the NHS, for example, providing health care even to people who make very poor choices such as smoking heavily). Mistakes have consequences, some severe some less so. But once you have given a person the information to make their own choice, then it is their life to live, and their mistake to make. I don't know if the wrestlers knew when they started their careers that there would be potential health risks further down the line, and I don't know if they would have chosen a different path or not had they done so. The same goes, in general, for porn performers and the consequences they face.

The best we can do is give people the information to make their own choices and then not judge them if they choose differently from the way we ourselves would (or would have them choose).

We can also work hard to make sure that entertainment industries (whether pro-wrestling, porn, or whatever else) change to a better culture for performers, and where porn in particular is concerned, that society shifts so that the costs are lessened and those who enter porn are more likely to have the tools to deal with what's involved.

In honour of the world not ending at the weekend

A really bad pun:

I met a woman the other day, and she was so hot, kissing her was like the end of the world. Her name was Thea Puckerlips.

...

I'll get me coat.

Further adventures in pick-up updates

So, the saga continues, and I insist on recording everything of any note whatsoever here, so that one day I can look back and laugh at my fumbling early steps (or else realise that it's never going to get any better!)

Yesterday's adventure was going to the Big Town, where I again managed to wander around and not managing to make approaches (everyone looked really hurried yesterday, I don't know why that was, but it felt wrong to interrupt them). Finally, at the bus stop an opportunity presented itself when one woman was waiting for the same bus as me, and it didn't turn up. She had a discussion first with someone else that I was well-positioned to overhear (and in her eye line so she knew I wasn't being nosy by overhearing). So, when the other person caught their bus, I went over and opened, "Waiting for the ## bus? Me too!" And conversation ensued. She was much older than she looked (she mentioned casually that she had a granddaughter, I was reading her as early- to mid-thirties!) so again, that was enough for me to read it as not a viable pick-up opportunity per se, but still good enough for me to get used to the idea of striking up conversations with random people. Once we had a little rapport going, I admired her tattoos, we talked a bit about how they can be addictive, and my thinking I might or might not get one. We shared a moan about "foul-mouthed kids today" (like they've ever been anything but, really, and there's plenty of adults who are worse - I also kept to my principle that it's not the language but the volume that bothers me) and it was generally a nice chat. In the bus (crowded with noisy kids)

Like I say, it's getting used to the idea that you can have a conversation like this. I still need that opening remark, the thing to say immediately after "hello!" But this is getting better. It's only a matter of time until I actually get it right that someone is my age or thereabouts, and then I can see if I can make this work to get an actual date or something! (And urgh, how many times did I use "actual(ly)" in that sentence?)

Resolution 3 goes into action - I insist that cricket is kinky

Some people may recall that at the beginning of the year, I made three New Year's Resolutions. The first one is on-going, and the "pick-up artistry" stuff is part of that. The second is on hold for the moment. The third, however, has finally been put into practice.

Thursday evening is the cricket club nets. I packed up my pads, bat and gloves and toddled off down to the sports ground where they play, and joined in.

I surprised myself by being able to catch the ball sometimes, and being able to bowl on target sometimes. I chickened out of padding up and having a go at hitting the ball, because I felt I was making enough of a fool of myself with the ball already. Nevertheless, it was a very positive experience. One of the guys said that they might give me a game or two soon, which would be good. It is about a decade (maybe a bit more recently than that) since I did any serious practice of cricketing skills, so it was nice to be able to find that some of the actions still worked a bit. There was enough of running around chasing the ball to get me my cardiovascular workout as well (not to mention the slog all the way back up the hill to get home).

People - even kinky people - look at me weirdly when I talk about the joy of the sting of leather on skin, regarding catching a cricket ball. But for me there is something sexual in it, that keys into my masochist wiring. I get a thrill out of it. In a way, it is similar to the physical pleasure of giving a bare-hand spanking. I am sure one of the reasons I love doing that so much is because as well as hurting my partner, it hurts my hand back too. It stings, it excites, it sets the nerves tingling and the emotions whirring. So does catching a cricket ball. (When you do it right, anyway. When you do it wrong, it hurts in a different way and, knowing you've done it wrong, it feels like a punishment and therefore not fun pain.)

I don't get a hard-on from it, it is "sexual but not sited in the erogenous zones". But it is that same sort of sexual joy that masochism gives me in other instances.

And I have missed my cricket kink so much. I'm very glad to be back in amongst it.

So long, suckers! (Or possibly not)

Via a link provided by Feministe, I have learned that the End Times are upon us, starting May 21st 2011. Of course, since Biblical days start with sunset the previous day, arguably that means around 9pm on May 20th for people at my latitude. Of course, we don't know what meridian the LORD will be using either, although it's a fair guess he'll choose the Jerusalem meridian, so that'll be a couple of hours earlier at the Greenwich meridian, around 7pm.

My faith is pure and strong in Christ Jesus, and He reigns in my heart. I do not fear the rapture, since I trust in God, and feel confident in Him. We are all poor sinners in this world, but repentance and faith alone save us, and I have both before the awesome might of the Father, and the mercy of the Son's glorious sacrifice on the Cross, and the love of the Holy Spirit.

So, when the rapture happens, I fully expect to be one of those taken.

I can only say, "So long, suckers! See you bitches from Heaven!"

***

Of course, I do have one or two doubts about the Biblical reasoning used in the eBible Fellowship's figuring (especially as much of the Bible is full of figurative and exaggerated language). For one thing, Lord Jesus contradicts them directly:

Luke 21:8 (New International Version)

He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them."

(For more on Luke 21, see my earlier post, What Luke 21:28 DOESN'T mean)

Matthew 24:36-44 (New International Version)

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Jesus says that it is impossible to know the day or the time beforehand, because, "...about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son..." If the eBible Fellowship claim to know the day, then they have been deceived by the Devil and are leading people astray.

This message is given also in the Parable of the Ten Virgins:

Matthew 25:1-13 (New International Version)

“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

“Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

“‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

“Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’

“But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour."

Says the eBible Fellowship:

2 Peter 3:6-8 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The context of 2 Peter 3 is extremely important! In the first few verses, God refers us to the destruction of the world by the flood during Noah’s day. Then we find an interesting admonition that we ought not to be “ignorant” of one thing, which is, 1 day is as 1000 years, and 1000 years is as 1 day. Immediately following this bit of information is a very vivid description of the end of the present world by fire.

What could God be telling us by identifying 1 day along with 1000 years?

But elsewhere, they quote Daniel 12:9 ("He replied, 'Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end.'")

Reading on from Daniel 12:9, we find some more specific information:

10 Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.

11 “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. 12 Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days."

Now, Christ's death and resurrection marked the end of the requirement of sacrifice, because Jesus took upon himself the burden of all humanity's sin. Thus, "the end of the daily sacrifice" must be the date of Christ's resurrection. And we know that Jerusalem was, indeed, surrounded by foreign armies just 30 years later (this is "the abomination that causes desolation"), as Rome punished the Jews for an uprising and destroyed the Temple there. By the same logic that "a day is as 1,000 years", we see that in fact we have well over a million years still to go. Indeed, the time from the rapture to the final triumph of Christ is here given as 45 years!

Not only this, but the great scholars of the Bible already proved that the genealogies in the Bible add up from Adam to Christ Jesus only to 4,004 years. So how is it possible that the eBible Fellowship make it nearly three times as long? They have the Flood taking place before the Creation could have done (and Creation itself, as I said, nearly three times as long ago as it really must have done!) This is like when the scientists found stars that appeared to be older than the universe, and had to revise their model of cosmology to find out why.

Not only that, but they rely on the date of Pentecost for their determination of the day. Pentecost, as we know, is a moveable festival, fifty days after Easter. Wikipedia also tells us that its Jewish equivalent (Shavuot) is fifty days after Passover, which in the Gospel chronology is a couple of days before the Resurrection, and Easter is no longer calculated using the Jewish calendar (and is calculated in different ways by the Eastern and the Western churches), so it seems like an extremely dodgy basis for calculating the date of the rapture (unless the eBible Fellowship have a reference telling us which calendar to use, I suppose).

So, by the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the words of the Hebrew prophets, I find much reason to disbelieve the calculations of the eBible Fellowship. I shall, instead, be always alert and (as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians, to which the eBible Fellowship referred) be of the day, always prepared because we cannot know the day or the hour.

So, if it is the rapture on May 21st, then so long suckers, but it probably isn't.

Pick-up Progress Update 5

It's ten days since my last update on this project to get talking to women out there in meatspace, and who knows, maybe eventually being able to chat them up! All while negotiating my feminist sense of ethical behaviour and my deeply Introverted personality, and my non-normative body shape (I've decided I really like my butt, even though it is very big - but anyway).

In those ten days I have managed to make just two (2) bona fide approaches. The rest of the time I have been striking out quite badly in my internal "game" and simply not being ready to make any move.

Approach 1 was on Friday, I think. I noticed a logo on the woman's polo shirt and that gave me something (anything will do) to hook an initial comment onto. Unfortunately, logos tend to be placed over the left breast, and even though I introduced the reason first and then was allowed to look, I got the strong impression after that that she was feeling uncomfortable about the situation, which left me to accept that she wanted to leave and chalk it up to experience.

Approach 2 took place yesterday; as I steered my trolley down the stationery aisle in the supermarket, I saw a woman eagerly examining different types of coloured pens, pretty much the way that I sometimes do. Easy opening line for me!

"Hi, are you a fellow stationery addict?"

*laughs* "yeah, a bit! I can't have enough!"

And the conversation started. Within a couple more lines, though, she mentioned that she was coming up to her exams - given that there's no university very near here, that meant I had guesstimated her age someone higher than it really was and my interest flagged slightly. The point at this stage is still to build up confidence in conversation, so a few more exchanges (although I ruled myself out by stating that my last exams had been a few years ago now). It felt like a good encounter, she seemed very cheerful to be talking to someone about it. She did end it fairly definitely by the way she walked away and, although I could have followed her and tried again, that was obviously going to be a bad move and, even if it didn't appear creepy to her, would certainly not reflect well on me in general. The upside was that I had managed to start and sustain a conversation with an attractive young woman, even if it was not exactly sizzling stuff.

I definitely need some other venues than the supermarket, because it does not seem to be an easy place to make connections. Trouble is, there aren't many obvious places around town to do it. As discussed in my first update, suitable bars are not numerous either.

One of my failed outings (failed as in, I failed to approach any of the women I saw) was to the other bar in easy walking distance. There, I found a noisy group of regulars, a band setting up to play and not much else. Within minutes, I felt the Introvert shutters coming down as I shrank into my shell; when a pair of women turned up a short while later, it felt more like a chore than anything else and I couldn't quite shake myself out of my rut enough to try to approach. I soon noticed myself "looping" on that idea anyway (see comments on my last update), so I stayed to listen to the band for a few numbers and then headed home.

In terms of successful approaches, I'm still counting on the fingers of one hand but it does feel as though a gradual sense of what it feels like to have it go well (and crucially, to start it at all) is beginning to build.

Initial concepts in the multivariate libido function satisfaction branch of mathematical analysis

The following is a rather amusing (if incredibly nerdy) exchange that I had with commenter Dimitri over @ Figleaf's Real Adult Sex.

Figleaf asked:

If man Y wants sex for five minutes a day seven days a week...

And woman X wants sex for 30 minutes twice a week...

Who's got the lower libido, Y or X?

Show your work.

Dimitri and I took that last line to heart, and we showed our working as follows, generalising for all sexual partners (regardless of gender presentation or genitalia) A and B. Dimitri's work is presented in blockquotes.

A note on terminology here: where I used the term "object" that refers to a mathematical object, which can be anything like a number, a vector, a matrix, a function or whatever.

§1

I would like to present the following heuristic.

Let A and B be two sex partners with differing sex drives a and b. Now consider the imaginary people A' and B', where A' and B' have the same sex drives as A and B, respectively, but, in addition, are are perfectly ethical. Let b be the sex that A' and B' would actually have. If c is equal to either a or b, then whichever of a or b is equal to c is by definition "less sex", and, correspondingly, the partner with desire for sex equal to c has the lower libido.

This heuristic is derived from the well-known theory "The one who wants it less has the power" and its corollary "The one who has the power wants it less".

To apply it to situation given, consider that the man and the woman would, if ethical, have sex twice a week (because it is unethical for the man to expect sex to happen more often), for thirty minutes (because it is ethical for the woman to expect sex to last longer). Therefore the woman's libido is lower in this case.

Note that there is not a strict order on libidos. For instance, if in the given example, if the woman also wanted some particular behavior that the man did not, she would no longer have a lower sex drive. Proof: In general, it is not ethical to ask your partner to perform a specific sex act. Therefore, man prime and woman prime (the imaginary ethical analogs) would not perform that act. So c would not be equal to either a or b, and neither partner would have a higher sex drive. However, this would not be the case if the sex act the woman desires was oral sex (and the man did not desire to provide it), because--as is well known--men are, under ordinary circumstances, ethically obliged to perform oral sex on their female partners if these desire it.

Finally, the libido ordering will differ under different standards of ethics. For example, if one falsely believed that the 1950s "wifely obligation" ethic was correct, one would by definition also believe that the woman in the provided case had the higher libido. The one with the higher libido is the one who does not "have" to be accomodated.

§2

It seems to me that c could be equal to zero: if A' and B' both desire sex but on different days or at different times from the other, then c = a x b = 0.   In the situation described in the OP is considered, then A' and B' have sex at most twice a week, for five minutes, because it is not ethical to expect anything of a partner that that partner has no desire to give (i.e. if one partner wishes to stop, then it is not ethical to continue); if A' wants sex on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday but not at the weekend, while B' wants sex only at the weekend, then c = 0 again.

It follows that, if c is sufficiently small then A and B are sexually incompatible, and this can be generalised for all a, b and c.   Consider some entity a', such that person A will not be satisfied unless c is at least in that proportion to a (it is already shown that c is either equal to or less than the smaller of a and b), and some entity b' that stands in relation to B and b in the same way as a' does to A and a.   Thus, a x a' represents the amount of sex A needs in order tobe satisfied, and b x b' represents the amount of sex that B needs in order to be happy (although it may be suggested that this is unethical, and so A' and B' would not stoop to such manipulative tactics).   Whichever is lower represents the ability to settle for less and thus deny the other satisfaction.   But if one or both is greater than c then the relationship will not be able to satisfy both partners; if neither partner can be satisfied (that is, ( c < (a x a')) AND (( c < ( b x b')) ) then the relationship will end, or both partners will seek sex from elsewhere.   If (a x a') < c ≤ (b x b') then B wants sex more, but also has the power since B does not want this relationship as much as A (whose needs are satisfied by it, while the needs of B are not).

Where (a x a') > b, then B will not willingly satisfy the needs of A, and they are sexually mismatched; the same goes for reversal of roles.   Where A is female and B is male, this situation has traditionally been labelled as nymphomania.

§3

The introduction of the minimum satisfaction vector really clarifies likely relationship outcomes.


In light of that variable introduction, I am reminded that the OP references what the two parties want (as an ideal), not their minimum needs (as SnowdropExplodes noted) and not what they are up for. I think that introducing another variable will clarify the situation by removing the need for a shared ethical framework; call it the vectors a'' and b'', representing the maximum, in all dimensions, that one A and B are up for sexually. So (I define) a'' x b'' = c.

Now if a'' x b'' = 5 minutes twice a week we have the situation of totally sexually inflexible  persons for whom a=a'' and b=b''--and if, in addition, a''=a' and b''=b' then we have, quite literally, an unsatisfiable equation between totally sexually demanding and totally sexually inflexible persons, and I don't have high hopes for either of their futures. On the other hand if a'' x b'' = 30 minutes twice a week I am ready to call Y from the OP the one with the higher libido. The converse holds as well.
That said, in the case of the man who prefers sex to last only 5 minutes we are most likely dealing with imaginary numbers, which would require a more complex analysis.

§4.1

The introduction of a'' and b'' gives us two inequalities to resolve:

a' ≤ c ≤ a'' and b' ≤ c ≤ b''.

(Shifting my notation to match Dimitri's - a' here is the same as (a x a') in my original definition)

Where a'' < b' or b'' < a' then there is a mismatch as described in my first post; one side cannot be satisfied, while the other has intolerable pressures put upon hir (that is, there is no solution to the inequalities).

Let us define a "hard limit" of A as some aspect (n) of the objects, such that a(n) = a'(n) = a''(n) = 0.   Let us define an incompatibility between A and B to be an aspect of the objects that is a hard limit for a, but where b is greater than zero.   The inequalities can only be solved where b' = 0 (that is, where B is willing to do without sexual activity (n) ).   We can see that there will also be (m) such that b(m) = b'(m) = b''(m) = 0.   Thus, c ≤ a ≤ b.

We can generalise into a continuous variable from the discrete "hard limit" defined above, so that for all aspects (n), the inequalities a'(n) ≤ c(n) ≤ b''(n) and b'(n) ≤ c(n) ≤ a''(n) must be satisfied, otherwise there is a "soft limit" incompatibility.

Since doubts have been raised about the specific values mentioned in the OP, let us generalise the case such that a(t) = 6b(t) but b(f) = 3a(f) where t is time taken for sex, and f is frequency of sex (that is, A wants sex to last 6 times longer than B, but B wants sex 3 times as often as A).   If b''(t) ≥ 6b(t) or if a' ≤ 1/6 a(t) then it is trivial to see that there is some value of c(t) that will satisfy the inequalities.   Supposing A can be satisfied by 2/3 of the ideal duration (that is, a'(t) = 2/3 a(t) ) but B can only manage (or tolerate) doing three times as much at a time (that is, b''(t) = 3b(t) ).   Then b'' (t) = 3b(t) < 4b(t) = a'(t) meaning that the inequality cannot be solved.

In general, the ideal would be to maximise the distance of c from a'' and b'' (that is reduce the amount that is being asked of A and B to satisfy each other) and minimise the distance of c from a and b (that is, to keep things as close to both partners' ideals as possible), while satisfying the inequalities.   For this instance (t), then c(t) could take many values, but an example might be c(t) = 4.5b(t) = 3/4 a(t).   In the figures given in the OP, that would mean sex lasted 22.5 minutes on average.

Similar considerations can be made for (f), such that it might (for example) turn out that c(f) = 2a(f) = 2/3 b(f).   Using the figures from the OP, that adds up to doing it 4 times a week.   This compromise would mean that X and Y end up having 22.5 minutes of sex 4 times a week, which is 90 minutes a week; more than either of them actually wants!   But Y says, "Her libido is so low: I work really hard to make her happy, and she STILL won't put out for me as often as I'd like!" and X says, "He just hasn't got the stamina to keep me truly happy, his libido is so low" (or, more frequently in today's society, "His libido is so high: I put out for him so often, and he STILL isn't satisfied!" - a similar conversion can be performed for Y's statement).

§4.2

If, instead of looking at (t) and (f), we use some object (g,v) where a(g,v) is "frequency with which A wants to have sex of duration v", then this paradox can be resolved.   In the OP, then Y(g,5) = 7 and X(g,30) = 2 , where v is measured in minutes, and (g,v) is measured in days per week.   (Strictly speaking, v should be defined as an interval, since time is a continuous variable, so that it has parameters "lasting at least as long as v(1)" and "not lasting as long as v(2)", or v(1) ≤ t < v(2). )   Going back to the general case of the ratio of the two durations being t(1) = 6t(2) and considering the inequalities discussed above, if b''(t) < t(1), then setting v = t(1), we get b''(g,t(1)) = 0 meaning that A will never get sex lasting as long as zie truly wishes.   Similarly, for v = t(2) then if a'(t) > t(2) then a''(g,t(2)) = 0.   This means that A always wants sex to last longer than B's ideal.
Considering the interval v described above, is there an upper limit v(2), or is v(2) necessarily infinity?   That is, if Y has sex with X for 30 minutes, then is Y satisfied since 30 > 5, or does the longer duration potentially lead to a loss of satisfaction?   (Up until now, the assumption has been that there are physical limits to duration; this is considering the specific question of satisfaction limits).   This question can be generalised for any A and B, and any t(1), t(2).   It seems, from anecdotal evidence, that there is in fact a satisfaction limit so that v(2) can be less than infinity.   That means that if Y satsifies X's needs fully, then it is possible that Y cannot have his own needs fully satisfied (because 2 days out of 7, he might be left unsatisfied by sex, if his v(2) < 30).

***

For all that this mathematical representation may seem slightly silly, there are some very serious concepts about sexuality, negotiation and so on wrapped up in the concepts discussed - for example, how to optimise the sexual relationship, discussed in §4.1, is an important thing for partners to be able to do; obviously, the solution presented in §4.1 is not optimal, but finding a "close enough" approximation to the optimal is very important. I discussed a mathematical representation of the hard limit, and the concept of a''(g,v) also captures the essence of the "soft limit" (which here is given a different definition than in §4.1, although I think that the two definitions are equivalent), where g defines some activity that is a soft limit for A, and v is some object that describes the conditions under which A is willing to do g.

This analysis also raises the issue of "enthusiastic consent"; given an upper limit a'', at what point between a and a'' does consent (willingness) cease to be "enthusiastic"? Presumably there is some function w(a) across S (where S is the space of all sexuality) that for any point in S indicates A's willingness to engage in that particular type of sex with that particular frequency and duration. Outside of the boundaries set by a' and a'', then w(a) = 0. Within those boundaries, w(a) presumably must exceed some value in order to be considered "enthusiastic". With the optimisation problem for c, the question then becomes how to optimise w(a) x w(b) within the conditions described by a', a'', b' and b''.

In BDSM terms, a checklist for A is a sampling of w(a) for various values of g.

There is also the point to consider that w(a) can change with time.

***

I recall reading about the incredibly complicated equations that have to be performed to track a ball in the air and catch it, that the human brain performs automatically (based in part on experience). Looking at what goes into making sex happen in a mutually enjoyable way for two people, I think that the human brain is an amazing piece of computational equipment.

And I never did end up answering the original question; my answer is that without more information, the problem is unsolvable - the answer depends on objects not mentioned. Considering that Y may want sex more frequently, but X wants sex for longer, we're not told how much they want sex at all. If X really really enjoys sex and wants it really badly (even if it's only twice a week that she feels the urge) whereas Y thinks it's nice, and wants that nice feeling every day if he can get it, but doesn't really feel a need as such, then X has the higher libido. But if it's Y who really wants it and feels he has to have it at least every other day, and ideally every day, whereas X enjoys a long, leisurely fucking session but isn't hugely invested in it, then Y has the higher libido.

London Sex worker film festival

Just posting this here to signal boost as best I can, something that I think is a pretty awesome sex workers rights event.

With the tagline, "Because sex workers shouldn’t have to be dead to be on film," the first ever London Sex worker film festival is being organised by London Sex worker Open University. It's on 11th June 2011, 13:15 to 17:30, at RIO Cinema, Hackney. It looks as though I will not be able to go myself, even though the programme looks pretty fascinating, but I think for those who are interested in these issues, it seems like a good thing to support.

Understanding ourselves as being seen by others - some philosophy and tonight's Dr. Who (Spoilers for those who may not have seen it yet)

[As mentioned in the title, this post will contain further down spoilers relating to the episode of Doctor Who that showed on BBC1 tonight - if you haven't seen it but want to, I suggest stopping when you get to the discussion of mirrors in SF.]

A few months ago now, Maymay wrote a piece examining the concept of gendered gaze in relationship to pornography. In it, he referenced a concept from the work of Jacques Lacan that really struck a chord with me (I looked up what I could find on the internet and was unimpressed by Lacan in general).

The idea of the "mirror stage", and more particularly, the phrase used to describe this as, "Observing the observation of the self." The link provided by Maymay (and that I have used here) did not strike such a chord, but I did find something in that phrasing that rang a bell.

That was the idea of understanding ourselves as being gazed-upon by others. In particular, what I took from the concept was the idea of how it feels to understand oneself as being seen in a particular way by other people, especially when that is different from the way we think of ourselves as being. (That may or may not be what Lacan was getting at, but I can't quite conjure it from the words on the linked page, or any of the other information I found before, even though there are similarities that could be identified.)

Anyway, all of which is the backstory of how I come to be writing this piece. The ideas about "being gazed-upon" rattled around my brain for a few months and gathered some momentum and form and now I'm going to make some attempt to get those ideas out into the world.

From my own perspective I have had quite an uncomfortable time coming to terms with the idea that others see me differently from how I see myself. It is a very threatening experience because we often use our self-image to build ourselves up and to feel better about who we are. If someone sees us as other than we see ourselves, then that can feel like they are denying our very existence. It can bring into sharp relief parts of ourselves that we really don't like very much, and would not like at all in someone else. It can make a person seem to themselves like "a bad person."

I believe that most people work very hard not to confront the images of ourselves that are reflected back, unless they come from sympathetic "mirrors" (i.e. people - such as loved ones). Of course, believing a sympathetic mirror will only ever show us what we want to see is sometimes setting up a situation in which a person will suffer a much harder-to-dismiss reflection, when that sympathetic mirror reflects something they don't like.

In activism, this is easy to see in action. Perhaps the best discussion of this remains the "'What you did' versus 'What you are'" video by illdoctrine:



The part about how famous people try to flip it into "what you are" so that it's easier to dismiss? That's basically what this is. It's understood that being sexist or racist or transphobic or homophobic or whatever is "bad", so when people have reflected back to them how they appeared to someone else ("what you did was racist"), there is a tendency to dismiss that criticism somehow to restore the self-reflection rather that the other-reflection. Some people on some types of oppression actually truly believe that what they said was okay - some of the "fundamentalist" organisations seem to believe that it is being accepting of homosexuality that is a mark against you, so they take pride in the hideous reflection. Others choose to say, "What I see in your mirror is not the real me" - that's the "what you are" conversation that the video talks about.

But this tendency isn't just about privilege avoiding or dismissing criticism (that's just the part of it that appears with respect to social justice activism). It's anything that challenges or is different from our self-image that makes us feel okay in the world.

For me, there are several such things. The item that directly made me choose this post, tonight, is the exchange of comments @ Figleaf's post about male body hair (on the back, especially). I very much dislike my body hair and would like to be rid of it forever if possible. It runs very counter to my self-image and the physical expression of my self-identification on several levels. I don't like the look, the feel, and I don't like the explicit masculinity that it symbolises. In fact, one potential partner saw me, at least partly based on my body hair, as very manly; that was a real shock to me because I have a very strong feminine side and identify that way at least some of the time. Being gazed-upon felt very uncomfortable then, because I felt like a part myself was being erased or destroyed.

Another example is the difference between how I feel when I wear a smart suit compared to how other people read me. I feel like a performing monkey, dressed in a silly bowler hat and bow tie, being made to perform tricks for the small change thrown by passers-by. But I can be read as looking really quite professional - like a businessman, in fact, and certainly if I choose to project confidence (instead of focussing on that monkey) then I can make that image stick. However, beneath that projection of confidence, there is still the self-image that is a problem.

On the other hand, for all that I have constructed a self-image of myself as attractive and strong, there are times when I see clearly my fatness and understand the ways that some people will not see my attractiveness because of it; I see myself through their eyes and it is a very hurtful image of oneself to have.

There have been times in my life as well where my actions or my projection of myself into the world, have been reflected back to me and I have seen suddenly with stark clarity that I have not been the great company that I wish to be, or believe that I am. Depending on the situation and my mood at the time I have done the "denial" or "I'm right" things a lot, as I think most people do. I have also sought to mend my ways sometimes. I think I do that most often now. There is also the possibility of understanding that sometimes people will see me as being at fault through no flaw in my own projection but simply that they do not like something about me as a simple person-to-person thing. It still takes effort to find the frame of mind to avoid understanding that reflection of myself as being a criticism, rather than just "That's something that means I don't want to know you." For myself, I have to work hard to reflect strongly this individual quirk of my mirror, that I dislike smoking immensely, but at the same time hold no criticism of those who choose to smoke (although I do ask that they show consideration for my lungs and not smoke when I'm around - tobacco smoke makes me feel physically ill as well as it being unpleasant).

All of which leads me to some areas where I have seen similar ideas in SF and fantasy fiction. If you're avoiding the Dr Who spoilers, this is where you need to stop reading and look away!

The strongest example I know uses a literal mirror, albeit a magical one. It is a story from Terry Jones' Fairy Tales, called "Simple Peter's Mirror" (a great book, btw, for many of the other stories as well as this one). Simple Peter helps an old woman find her lost ring, in exchange for which she gives him a mirror that shows him how others see him: "And that's a great gift, you know: to see ourselves as others see us." The woman doesn't see Peter in any particular way, so the mirror shows no reflection. Peter asks the next person he meets where his reflection has gone, and this person calls Peter a foolish goose - and then, when Peter looks in the mirror, he sees - a goose! The rest of the story is Peter's quest to be seen by others as Simple Peter, and not a goose or any of the other roles (good as well as bad) into which he finds himself cast by others, and shown in his reflection.

The Simple Peter story is a story of control: Peter finds himself gazed-upon and therefore sets out to control the way others gaze upon him, and to be accepted as "who he is", in his own eyes. I think that it is very hard for people to realise that sometimes the things people see us as are also the "real me" and the demand to be accepted as "who I really am" is sometimes trying to reject what people tell us about our true selves and pretend it isn't there. I rejected the purely masculine image that a potential girlfriend reflected to me, but she reflected a true image - I do have that masculinity as well as the femininity that she did not see. (My fear in that situation was that when she did see the femininity, she would reject me - and I may have by my actions made that a self-fulfilling prophecy.) In part, my desire to lose my body hair is about this type of control - seeking to influence how others view me.

Of course, controlling how we are seen is important; in many ways it is a vital part of our day-to-day existence (for example, that business suit example above!) It's an integral part of the PUA and dating advice, and to a certain extent one gives oneself the best chances in life by deliberately projecting certain impressions. However, that is not really the type of "how people see us" that I am talking about really; that is instead about the impressions, the surface-level stuff that you need before people can get to know how they see the person (as opposed to the physical carriage). What I am talking about more is the model of the personality and the person as a whole, that you get from interacting.

The other key example I have is from Joan Slonczewski's "Door Into Ocean", which is one of my favourite SF books of all time, and a feminist classic (although with the "boy becomes a key figure in the women-only community" aspect, I wonder about there being a touch of the "What These People Need Is A Honky" trope underlying my attraction to it). Slonczewski's female-only culture has a rite of passage to enter adulthood, of choosing one's name. This name-choosing, if I understood it correctly, was about identifying a trait that all recognised in oneself, and crucially, that was a negative trait. There was a cultural norm that all of adulthood was then an attempt to live down that name (so a woman called "The Impatient One" would spend her life developing patience so that many years later a stranger might meet her and wonder why she called herself "Impatient").

Unlike Simple Peter, whose names were shown to him by the magical mirror, this explicitly requires one to come by one's own self-awareness to the understanding of how others see one, and the traits that perhaps one most often hides from oneself. The goal is much more about self-improvement here, but again there is an undercurrent of seeking to take control of the reflection that others present back to us. Where Simple Peter seeks to control everyone else's perceptions by projecting something that would make them see him as he saw himself, the women of A Door Into Ocean seek to change others' perceptions by changing themselves (and thus also changing how they see themselves).

Which leads us, finally, to tonight's episode of Doctor Who. You've had enough warnings now, so if you haven't seen it but read on and have it spoiled for you, you have only yourselves to blame!

The central concept of the episode was that the TARDIS' soul is transported into an organic body (a woman, but given that the TARDIS is always described as female, that's not a surprise as such). This means that for the first time, the Doctor and "his" TARDIS can have a conversation.

We learn as a result of this, that while the Doctor describes the situation as he has stolen or "borrowed" the TARDIS, in actual fact the TARDIS views herself as having stolen the Doctor. The Doctor tries to reject this notion, because his self-image is very strongly about being an autonomous (and rebellious) agent in the universe; the TARDIS, however, wanted to see the universe and the Doctor was, "the only one mad enough to do it". (We also learn that the TARDIS' name is "Sexy", because that's what the Doctor calls her when there's no one else around.) So, Sexy gazes upon the Doctor as he gazes upon her, and her perception of him challenges his own perception of himself. However, theirs is a close and intimate relationship and by the end of the episode (Sexy returned to her TARDIS body) the Doctor seems to have accepted that he was stolen by Sexy, just as he stole her; he has not (apart from an initial attempt) sought to take control of how she views him, but has accepted her view as part of the overall truth.

The episode is full of little snippets of people viewing others, or the world, differently from how they view themselves - or how others view things. When Sexy asks if the Doctor means "the pretty one", the Doctor means Amy and says "yes"; but Sexy thinks Rory is the pretty one. When Sexy describes how she and the Doctor met, she says, "I was old, already a museum piece when you were young. And the first thing you said when you entered and saw me was, 'You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.'" The Doctor saw her differently from how others did, and we can guess, from the way she saw herself; but she appreciated his love for her, and she showed her love for him as well through their long years of travelling. She and the Doctor are presented as being made for one another (they both had the same desire to see the universe, after all), even if they have their disagreements (some of the quarrels in the episode were beautiful).

Moving on from the elements that are strictly relevant to this post, the fact that the Doctor and Sexy the TARDIS are long-term lovers, does rather throw up the question (unanswered in this episode) of what Sexy thinks of River Song and the Doctor's relationship with her. Presumably she approves, as she could simply make sure they never met otherwise, but is it a grudging acceptance or willing accomplice? Is it, in fact, a threesome? (in other episodes, Sexy the TARDIS seems to get on quite well with River whenever River is at the console, for example!) We know that Sexy views at least the human companions of the Doctor as "strays" that he "brings home with him" - possibly she viewed Romana (another Gallifreyan) slightly differently. (It does raise the question, how did she feel about Rose Tyler's absorption of her energy in the finale of Season 1 of the New Who?)

The best bit is that it casts a female character (the TARDIS) as being at least as in control as the Doctor ("You're unreliable. You never take me where I want to go!" "Yes, but I take you where you need to go."; as well as her scheming to "steal" the Doctor). Amy could have had a bit more agency though, I felt.

Summary of my exploration of Newmahr's "Playing on the Edge"

This post is to serve as a "contents" page for all the analysis, responses and emotional dramas that I discussed, based on my reading and understanding of Staci Newmahr's Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk and Intimacy, her book based on four years of research as a participant-observer in an SM community.  I occasionally referenced her 2008 academic paper covering the same research, "Becoming a Sadomasochist Integrating Self and Other in Ethnographic Analysis", published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (Volume 37 Number 5, October 2008).

Here, I list the posts, first by the more academic responses to the chapters in turn, then by some offshoot ideas that I wanted to explore, and finally, the emotional crisis that was sparked by chapter 8 tangling with some unresolved issues that I had thought were resolved but hadn't been.

First, my notes on the introduction, where I discuss the limited applicability of Newmahr's research to my own experience, and discuss why I was unhappy with Newmahr's decision to stick with the older term "SM" instead of "BDSM" - Newmahr's later implication (in Chapter 3) that SM is "truer" than D/s seems to me to be linked to this decision.

Then, the book itself. I wrote about the chapters in reverse order, so my thoughts on "concluding notes" and Chapter 8 came first, and my responses to Chapters 1 and 2 made up my most recent post:

• Chapters 1 and 2 - the "People" section of the book
• Chapter 3 - part 1: Play, symbolism and communication
• Chapter 3 - part 2: What is the relationship of SM to sex?
• Chapter 4: Fringe Benefits - The Rewards of SM Play
• Chapter 5: Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs – Gender Performances
• Chapter 6: Reconcilable Differences – Pain, Eroticism, and Violence
• Chapter 7: Collaborating the Edge - Feminism and Edgework
• Chapter 8: "What It Is That We Do"
• Concluding Notes: Erotic Subjectivity and the Construction of the Field

These were the off-shoots to see what sense I could make of overlapping the pain discourses with the SM archetypes from chapters 5 and 6:

• SM Archetypes And Pain
• Archetypes, Pain and Compatibility

There were also the highly personal and emotional reactions and developments from Newmahr's development of the theories of intimacy and edgework. The following links tell the story arc of the emotional drama that I worked through, with Newmahr's help and using concepts from her book to re-frame the crisis and restore my balance:

• I think my sadism is broken
• More expressions of a broken top
• Saving the zombies - "I Can Choose Not To Play"
• Staci Newmahr's "creative representation" - how my approach differs
• For anyone still worried about where my head is at... I am doing well, and thanks for worrying.

That final post is now 4 weeks old, and my "kinky mojo" is fully back in action.

***

These are the main points that I want to summarise as catching my interest, or having interesting questions for further development, or that struck me as indicating gaps or points for further development. I think Newmahr's research and the book she's written, are very powerful and useful, and the main problem is purely that so far, it's the only such research out there. Almost all my disagreements or questioning are therefore not criticisms or diminishing from the value of what Newmahr has written, but more like points for clarification and further research:

I had questions about causes, interpretation, of traits in Caeden, as "social awkwardness", and wondered whether there is a greater tendency for kinky folks to be introverts, or not - later, I wondered whether the public play scene might attract more extroverts, so this area of research would be fascinating to look up. (Chapter 1)

Discussion of the "essentialist" interpretation of origins of BDSM (Chapter 1)

Differences between my experiences as a less public player, and in a different type of scene (more rural/commuter towns; and UK-based instead of US). (Chapters 1 & 2)

I had a disagreement over the relationship of D/s to SM - disagreed with statements such as, "Pain is also about power", "D/s performs dominance and submission where SM performs conquest and defeat." (Chapter 3)

Newmahr's discussion of power exchange, and my challenge to the idea that it is illusory. (Chapter 3)

Relationship of BDSM to sex, concluding that it is "its own kind of thing" (quotation is from my post on chapter 3):

The understanding of BDSM as a physical desire on a par with sexual desire but not sited in erogenous zones, also makes sense of the understanding that, "SM was neither a precursor to conventional sexual activity, nor a replacement for it, but an end unto itself."

Because it is like a sexual pleasure but something different as well, it can be understood as its own kind of thing - "an end unto itself". (Chapter 3 and Chapter 6)

Reversal of interest->learning or learning->interest causation.   I observe the former, Newmahr describes observing the latter. (Chapter 4)

Discussion of BDSM as "serious leisure"; question about "recreational activity" terminology - "But the community to which Newmahr refers is the public play community and their activities. Rather than saying 'heterosexuality is a recreational activity,' this is more like saying, 'going out on the pull is a recreational activity'" (Chapter 4)

Whether BDSM roles replace/re-create gender, and in what ways it does or doesn't: "After all, there are other dimensions of power and victimhood that can also provide reference points for understanding BDSM archetypes." For example, "Benevolent Dictator" as either "Emperor" or "Mother". - "'Gender is about power' does not necessarily imply 'power is about gender.'" (Chapter 5)

Looking into other possible archetypes that Newmahr may have missed - the "Exploratory Bottom" and the "anti-Martyr" script. (Chapter 5)

Discussion of the erotic-violent dualism, and the SM community's "discourses of pain". (Chapter 6)

My curiosity led to investigating theoretically the relationships between Newmahr's conceptions of gendered roles, pain discourses and SM role archetypes - I would be curious to see research observing thousands of scenes and analyse these relationships in more detail. (Chapters 5 and 6)

Newmahr's challenge to the intellectual community:

A broader, cleaner focus on the social criteria for, and construction of, both violence and eroticism is necessary to understand these relationships far beyond consensual sadomasochism.

...

The inadequacy of our language in the discussion of experiences of desirable violence anchors SM to its marginal position, both in society at large and in academic work.

Development of "feminist" edgework as collaborative and emotional edgework (Chapter 7).   This is a very powerful analytic tool! My questions about it were:

• To what extent is BDSM "voluntary", and do essentialist narratives negate the voluntary aspect of edgework?
• To what extent does the theory also describe LGBT experiences, and if there are differences, what makes that so?
• Doesn't collaborative, emotional edgework theory also apply in some degree to all dating, both vanilla and BDSM, and if not, what makes the crucial difference?

Development of the "hidden things shown" theory of intimacy, and my suggestion that there are two different types - sending and receiving - that can be at odds with each other based on a couple's differing interpretations of a situation. (Chapter 8)

My question of, "How different is 'different enough' to constitute intimacy, and is there a way to tell for sure whether something is or is not 'different enough'?"

I challenged Newmahr's conception of intimacy as representing competition and conquest, or experiencing it as being "always a victory", and also questioned public SM play as sharing intimately with those watching as well as with a partner, suggesting that this might be an emotional experience that is different between different people, or that my introversion and private nature mean that I respond differently to the "public" intimacy that Newmahr describes.

As an analytic framework, Newmahr's definition of intimacy is powerful, for example in understanding violent and/or sexual crime (a point she makes herself).

Newmahr on the people of SM - my responses to chapters 1 and 2 of "Playing on the Edge"

As we come to the beginning of Newmahr's book, I feel as though the first two chapters need to be taken together to re-examine them in the light of what follows.

In Chapter 1, Newmahr describes the people she found, and a huge amount of this resonates strongly with my own personal experience, and I see it reflected in several people I have met through BDSM. Many of the key elements that Newmahr identifies hinge on marginality of various kinds, which forms both a description of the people, and Newmahr's explanation of what the SM community means (particularly to those who are a part of it). Since this does resonate so strongly, I am going to use my personal experiences to talk about what Newmahr's findings mean to me.

Possibly the strongest point of disagreement I have is on Newmahr's assertion of the role of "Incidental Androgyny", a concept that readers may recall resurfaces in her analysis of SM archetypes and gender. Even there, I found much that was recognisable. It was just on a few points that I wanted to ask questions or raise challenges.

One of the most obvious dimensions of exclusion that Newmahr identifies, and indeed the one she says she noticed first, was body shape. Specifically, the number of fat people. People who read my blog regularly know that I self-identify as a "tubby bitch" (referencing both this dimension, and the "incidental androgyny" dimension in a single phrase!) I think of the people I have met in BDSM and it doesn't seem to me like a great percentage of them share my girth, but equally, several of them might be considered on the larger end of the "normal" range (and yes, I know that that term is associated with a value judgement in modern society, and that definition of "normal" is often not closely related to the mathematical concepts related to the normal distribution!) I can certainly see how an outsider coming in for the first time might perceive my community to be predominantly overweight.

Where fat was not an issue, other variations still tended to site the bodies of the people Newmahr met as outside the norm: Newmahr cites examples of extreme height (both excess and lack of), and unusually large breasts.

Newmahr suggests (and from the stuff I've read about fat acceptance and disability awareness, this sounds like a commonly-recognised argument) that this led to society "other-gendering" the non-normative bodies of people before they joined the scene.

This leads to the argument that:

In Caeden, these everyday performances of masculinity and femininity are rare… Rather than a gender-bending effort or sex-role ambivalence, this nonconformity appears as the absence of either aspirations or traits necessary to conform to conventional gender standards."

...

Neither butch nor femme, these (usually heterosexual) women and men do not follow or overturn the rules of gender presentation. They simply live outside of them. …this 'incidental' androgyny is less an actively constituted gender than what we are left with when we do not 'do' gender quite so fully or quite so well.

As someone who identifies as a "failed" man, in that I do not seem to know how to perform masculinity well, Newmahr's discussion of "gender-incompetent bodies" rings strongly true for me.

The question that bothers me, and where I feel as though Newmahr is missing something (which may say more about the specifics of the community she studied than about any flaws in her analysis), is where trans folks fit into this, and other concepts of deliberate gender-play (such as "forced feminisation" and crossdressing), which seem to have a strong element in UK BDSM. Newmahr discusses that women in the scene generally in their daily lives did not make much effort towards normative beauty standards such as make-up or clothing choice.

As I say, maybe there was not much crossdressing of any kind as a kink in the Caeden scene; maybe at the time, there were no people who openly identified themselves as trans. It is difficult to remember how much trans rights have moved (and how far they still have to go, of course) in the past decade, and I am not familiar with the situation in the USA or how that has changed in that period.

However, the role of "forced feminisation" in particular is something that I think should be opened up to feminist analysis of the type that Newmahr engages in with her study. Personally, I find forced feminisation to be extraordinarily misogynist in nature, with the apparent assumption that one of the most humiliating things to have happen is to be rendered feminine. With gender/SM orientation combinations, I would like to explore all four (male top, feminine top, male bottom, feminine bottom) but when it comes to bottoming, humiliation - or even the hint that I am "supposed" to be humiliated by something - is a real hard limit. However, I feel that the idea is so prevalent that a male bottom crossdressed is being subjected to humiliation, that even though I do not view being feminine or female as in any way a humiliation, feeling confident that the top shared my view and respected my femininity as a bottom would be very hard.

The impression I have in general is also that there are (in the Uk scene anyway) conscious efforts at gender performance (or non-gender performance, in the case of projected androgyny) that is different from what Newmahr describes in her work. While the incidental androgyny that Newmahr recognises is a basis for this, my suspicion is that there is either conscious resistance of this or deliberate embracing of it (I also think that some of my own gender performance is deliberately embracing other-genderedness of my non-conforming body). It would definitely be interesting to have an outsider's view in the way that Newmahr represented such an outsider initially.

It is worth noting, on that last point, that IIRC there have been a couple of non-hostile news/magazine reports in which a reporter attended a fetish club, and similar observations about appearance turned up in their reports.

Geekiness

This was a dimension that I found at once surprising to be identified, and yet, when I thought about the shared interests at the munch I attend, it really is something that seems to have a high prevalence in kinky people, based on personal experience.

Newmahr references this strongly both in discussing peoples self-identity, and in discussing the sense of community.

She notes several points where the overlap might have an explanation, such as some of her respondents explained the overlap in terms of use of the imagination, or imaginary worlds, and the suggestion that, "Outsiderness cultivates open-mindedness, which in turn reinforces outsiderness," with the idea that the unusualness of science-fiction could prepare the mind for the unusualness of BDSM scenes, enabling much easier acceptance. She also offers:

Generally claimed with pride in Caeden, geekiness serves as the explanation for several aspects of SM interest: the affinity for complicated techniques and well-made toys, the stamina to practice skills to the level of mastery, and the desire and ability to deconstruct meanings and experiences of SM."

I am somewhat unconvinced by this, and wonder how much of this conclusion is drawn from her respondents, and how much is her own rationalisation. While I recognise many of these factors either in myself or in my local community, I question that geekiness serves as an explanation for them - at least, I do not feel that it is a significant factor in my own exhibiting of those traits.

"Coming Home"

Newmahr explains the importance of the sense of community in large part in terms of its importance as a place of "being understood". This is a large element in terms of what distinguishes insiders from outsiders (which is a key point in any community's self-identification as a community).

Newmahr concludes Chapter 1:

Entrance into the community provides immediate reassurance that kindred spirits – and bodies and minds – exist. This observable validation suggests to participants that their interest in SM must somehow be connected to their other marginal experiences. By providing them the chance to cast SM as the (essentialist) explanation for why they have been different all along, the community reaffirms a broader and farther-reaching identity of marginality. This identity trumps the pre-community sources of nonconformity and highly values living life 'outside the box.'

Early in Chapter 2, she discusses one respondent's decision to join the community in similar terms:

Despite Seth's conceptualization elsewhere of BDSM as a primal need, he entered the SM scene in order to find companionship – to be touched. With his acute awareness of loneliness that came from feeling like an outsider in all other social situations, Seth's decision to join the SM community was fuelled, consciously, by a desire to join a community.

I am, again, sceptical about this framing of the attraction of BDSM communities - again, my own personal story could equally draw on the SF community (and especially filkers) as the community I joined in order to "be understood" in the way that Newmahr discusses Seth doing. At the same time, is it not the case that all choices of who to hang out with, are based in part on how much we feel that those people relate to us well, and understand us? That would make "being understood" a null phrase. Like the rule for assessing a politician's speech, always ask oneself, "Would someone say the opposite as a self-description?" Since I cannot imagine many people saying, "I want to be a part of a group where I cannot make myself understood," it seems as though this is an example of such an argument.

Of course, I have over-simplified Newmahr's text to reach that point; the key element is not "being understood", but precisely, the feeling of not being understood elsewhere. Newmahr describes her respondents' personal narratives and histories as, "[They] did not feel like outsiders merely at an awkward point in their lives; they were outsiders throughout their lives." Later, she states:

The feeling of social acceptance many people reported upon entering the scene, then, was an acceptance not of their SM interest, but of their more general outsiderness.

This leads to a curious question for me.

That question is, "What, precisely, about the BDSM scene makes it a point of being understood, that could not be found elsewhere?"

My personal narrative that draws me to BDSM is that my understanding of my BDSM sexuality meant that I felt extremely othered and not understood about my sexuality, and it is precisely to be able to accept this big part of who I am that I am drawn to join a community of others. I do not know enough history of gay and lesbian rights to know whether or not similar communities formed for similar reasons, although here seem to be echoes and discussions of that sort in LGB rights debates in the blogging world. The principle of the "support group" is nowadays pretty common, too.

More to the point - again, my personal narrative is that when I felt outsider-y because of my geekiness, I joined the SF fan community (a little bit - enough to feel like I wasn't a freak for liking the stuff!) and particularly, the filking community (a lot more, because I am more of a music-geek than I am an SF-geek, and I am quite a lot of an SF-geek!)

So the question in my mind is, "Why BDSM, and not SF, or MENSA, or whatever organisation exists for the marginality you've experienced?" My "why?" is clear: BDSM itself was a dimension of feeling marginal!

On that point, Newmahr discusses the ubiquity of the "how-I-found-the-scene" story:

Reflections like this are typical in Caeden; the 'how-I-found-the-scene' narrative seems obligatory in introductions and discussions of identity, and the metaphor of the SM community as home is a widely accepted component of community discourse.

And later, offers:

The paths people take to the SM community in Caeden reveal the interdependence of identity formation, community seeking, and community building. Some, like Laura and Jack, sought the SM community specifically in order to validate and share an SM interest they had already recognised.

Evidently, I am more like the Laura and Jack mentioned here!

One respondent explained it differently:

For Kyle, it might as well have just happened to be SM. Interestingly he does not ask why people come to SM, but instead frames human behaviour in terms of surrendering (or not) to social inhibitions. SM interest, in this view, is not at all rare, but pursuing it is; therefore, the scene consists of people who have the courage and, presumably, the impetus, to seek it out.

I have to say that there was a period of my development in BDSM when I felt like this. I now consider that view to have been immature and, to be honest, quite offensive. My favourite formulation comes from Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, writing for the character "Sam" in their Doctor Who novel, "Vampire Science": "Maybe they're not forbidden desires. Maybe I just don't bloody well desire them!" (Not talking about BDSM, but the quotation is sufficiently non-specific as to be applied to a whole range of similar suggestions!)

The reason I reject (and indeed, dislike) Kyle's formulation is that I have heard a similar argument put forward by the polyamory community to explain why more people aren't poly and frankly, I just don't see poly as being a good idea: it's not that I regard it as "forbidden", I just don't particularly desire it, and view the potential costs as too great (I struggle to manage one-on-one relationships, and view poly as being potentially too great a complication for my poor brain to handle). What really brought this home to me was when I tried a similar argument about BDSM on a 'nilla sex-blogger and was given the same thing back - "It's not forbidden - I just don't get anything from it, thanks."

Newmahr argues that:

Regardless of whether SM exists as one of a multitude of new 'flavors' of life one might (or might not) be inclined to try, or as a preexisting proclivity for the activities themselves, Kyle's observation is consistent with the life stories of my respondents.

And supports this later by saying,

Regardless, the 'how-I-found-the-scene' stories are constructed and retold precisely because many people view their discovery of the scene as a pivotal moment in their lives. Although some narratives are constructed around top/bottom identities, many are not. Moreover, among narratives in which an essentialist SM identity figures prominently, many are tales of finding the scene and meaning in the community, quite apart from topping and bottoming specifically. the members of this community tell stories of coming to the community not because they felt like sadists and masochists, but because they felt they were different.

This simply does not match what I have heard from anyone I have talked to about finding SM identity. While I have heard a "This is what I was missing all my life!" narrative, that does not seem to be finding the community first, and then an identity within it. Typically, the story was being introduced to it by a partner, or stumbling across some BDSM literature or erotica, and finding it sparked a reaction that was new and intense. Otherwise, people describe being into it from very young ages, and it playing a part in childhood playground games.

Interestingly, I suspect that this may in part be a difference due to the public play scene that Newmahr studied, and the more private lifestyle that I prefer. Newmahr notes that:

The open-mindedness that is taken for granted among community members is clearest when outsiders venture into the community for the first time. While some newcomers integrate fairly seamlessly, others, particularly those who do not appear to necessarily live lives on the margins of social acceptance, find that the scene is not what they envisioned.

After reading Newmahr's book, I suspect that I would feel extremely put off by the styles and manner of the Caeden scene. While Newmahr discusses the debate of whether public play is necessary to be part of "the scene" (most people felt it was not), I think I would feel like an outsider there. The social situations described in Chapter 3, for example, would certainly have put me off. I would still have attended social events from time to time but suspect I would not have felt at home in those social groupings, the way I feel at home with my self-identification as kinky.

It occurs to me that those people who are keen on trying BDSM as, "one of a multitude of new 'flavors' of life," might be much more likely to approach via the public play scene, and thus would fit in more easily (being open-minded and adventurous types!) than I would have done.

Social Awkwardness

Under her heading "Geekiness", Newmahr describes the Caeden community as exhibiting several social behaviours that she considers to be signs of social awkwardness:

Pervasive social awkwardness in Caeden includes excessive fidgeting, disclosure of highly personal information to strangers, and behaviours that would suggest an inability or disinclination to listen to others (such as avoiding eye contact and nodding randomly while engaged in one-on-one conversation). This social awkwardness is normative in the community, but more extreme examples – what would likely be considered social ineptitude outside of the community – is also common. For example the tendency to speak one's mind bluntly and without qualification is typical, and, importantly, usually appears to escape notice. Further, what would elsewhere be called 'boasting' is a primary means of communication in Caeden; popular topics of conversation include what the speaker does well and what impressive things the speaker has done. This communication pattern is an accepted part of the discourse of the community; it is not identified as bragging and does not prompt negative responses.

...

During my time in the field, I frequently found myself unable to communicate effectively through normative bodily cues. Backing away from a speaker who was standing too close often resulted in the speaker closing in on me, and even walking away sometimes led to being followed by the busily chatting "offender."

The first thing that struck me was that for someone studying cultures, to ascribe a value judgement such as "social awkwardness" to differences in relating to one another seemed to me to be slightly odd. There are social norms in different areas of the UK that to people from other parts would be considered "social awkwardness" (I recall tales of when my father, from a working-class Northern background met my mother's middle-class Londoner parents for the first time, for example!) I am sure that there are similar cultural differences just within the USA. Then there's the way that us Brits perceive people from other English-speaking countries (and that's before we even get to people from other cultural backgrounds than that!)

Interestingly, Newmahr writes that:

It is not unusual for community members to have relatively little everyday contact with people outside the scene. Even among people with conventional work lives and contact with their families, many report that their 'vanilla' (people outside the community) friendships have dwindled or disappeared since joining the community.

This implies that it really is a separate culture of its own. This isolationism also seems not to be all that prevalent in UK BDSM communities, and in fact, I have seen many discussions about the socially awkward people who "spoil it for the real BDSMers".

Further evidence of Caeden's isolationist culture is given when Newmahr discusses the amount of time devoted to the "scene":

Players are able to, and many do, successfully arrange their lives around scene activities – politically troubling as the term is, avoiding 'normals' is often achieved through participation in the Caeden SM community... During any given week, there are at least five SM-related events one can attend, of varying types

In her introductory "creative representation" for chapter 2, Newmahr describes how each event can end up taking up nearly a whole night.

This intensity is completely foreign to my experience: I think the local region has on average 1 or 2 events a week (depending on how far you're willing to travel; for those who are less able or willing, the number is smaller still). If we travel to London, then maybe it's twice that.

Thus, we might argue that the Caeden community members are socially adapted to the society in which they largely live and experience other people: the Caeden community. The differences in my local community, which has much more contact with non-kink folks, may have something to do with this.

I was interested by the traits that Newmahr identifies, and whether they do show adaptation to the specific needs of SM community life, and put some thought into this. The traits mentioned were:

1. Excessive fidgeting
2. Disclosure of highly personal information to strangers
3. Behaviours that would suggest an inability or disinclination to listen to others (such as avoiding eye contact and nodding randomly while engaged in one-on-one conversation)
4. The tendency to speak one's mind bluntly and without qualification
5. What would elsewhere be called 'boasting'
6. Not responding to "normative bodily cues"

I don't think fidgeting can be explained as adapted behaviour in this context, and the "normative bodily cues" that Newmahr discusses may or may not be.

Remembering that BDSM community membership is already a disclosure of highly personal information (at least, that's how I experience it - it's a public declaration of sexuality!) and moreover revolves around sexual conduct, it seems reasonable to suggest that the boundaries of what constitutes "highly personal" and "stranger" in that context may feel quite different.

This goes back (or forward) to the questions I posed in discussing Chapter 8, about intimacy:

The big question to which I kept returning as Newmahr built on this argument was this: How different is "different enough", and what happens when two different people have different ideas about how different is "enough", and therefore take differing feelings of intimacy from an event? Is there a way in which we can look at something and say whether or not it is "different enough" to constitute intimacy? If there isn't, what follows from that?

Perhaps surprisingly, given my openness about my BDSM identity, one of the people who got to know me best described me like this:

[Snowdrop] takes time to get to know because he is a private person and quite shy to start with. Given time and when he comes to trust you, you get to know the real [Snowdrop].

Information that I share on this blog, or in kink-specific environments, is coded differently for "highly personal" than the same information is in vanilla spaces (and regular readers will know that I occasionally allude to certain topics that are completely off-limits even here).

This is closely linked to the reasons for "boasting". In Chapter 4's discussion of status in the community, Newmahr writes:

The reinforcement of good reputations is considered good etiquette rather than poor taste. Participants speak very highly of good players with such frequency that it seems obligatory to do so.

It seems evident from this that there is some importance attached to people knowing what someone is good at doing: both the speaker and others. Given the risk element that is inherent in most types of SM play, and the fact that people are involved primarily for pleasurable experiences, the purpose of the community is served most effectively by having this communication in the open. It could be that it is an adapted social norm within the Caeden community. Similarly, being open about certain types of "personal information" might be read as an essential part of accomplishing the purpose of the community.

Arguably, the "bluntness" is a further example of this kind of communication adaptation: the primacy of clearly communicated consent puts a premium on being open and direct about communication in general. It should be added that such directness was one of the biggest things about my father's personality that caught my maternal grandparents off-guard. Differing levels of directness seem to be one of the commonest causes of (mis)perceptions about whether a culture is "rude" or "polite", with cultures who are more direct being coded as "rude" even though they really are not any different, just communicating differently (this suggestion goes back at least as far as Deborah Tannen's "That's Not What I Meant", so I don't think I'm saying anything too unusual here). The same friend who described me as "shy", also said, "I love [Snowdrop]'s honesty, although he's not exactly one to sugar the pill!" - I put that down to the socialisation I received from my parental background.

Interestingly, many of the traits that Newmahr identifies as "social awkwardness", seem to reflect in various ways the information about Introversion given by Carl King's 10 Myths About Introverts.

For example, on being "blunt":

Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.

I wonder to what extent the stuff about neurotransmitters and overstimulation might also reflect things like fidgeting, lack of eye-contact and so on.

I don't know of any proper research into any correlation between introversion and kink identity (I'm on Kinky-Ass Introverts on Fetlife and there don't appear to be any references to it there, though I haven't looked carefully), but I do get the feeling that there may be a correlation. If so, then maybe Newmahr's identification of SM specifically as a site of general acceptance and people who "get it" may be based in this neurological/personality trait - as a place where for once, us Introverted types don't have to struggle with an Extroverts' world.

(It would also provide a curious route into talking about essentialist narratives of kink origin, if it were true!)

Interestingly, on a thread about "People that talk too much" on Kinky-Ass Introverts, one commenter noted:

Kind of just...space out when people blab on. Most of the time its about something I cannot relate to (example: sports, television) so I have to nod a lot and raise my eyebrows so I don't come off as rude (well that sounds rude lol). Over all Its just annoying when you cant get a single word in.

(not sure if any one else gets this but...)It gets worse when they come RIGHT up to you where you can actually feel the heat of their breath and their spit hit your face. What ever happened to "personal space?"

Two points that Staci Newmahr noticed in Caeden. The K-AI commenters seemed to relate to the personal space issue particularly, but also seemed to relate to it happening in vanilla spaces as well as kink ones:

It's true that different people have different senses of the right amount of personal space in a conversation. But when the introvert takes a step back to put more space in between, don't follow with a step forward.

To which someone replied:

I hate it when people do that too, or when they point out that you just took a step back and are kind of jerks about it.

It is interesting that Newmahr identifies "nodding randomly" as indicating disinterest, where here it's suggested as a way to indicate interest that isn't felt. One thing I know I do sometimes is nod and try to look expectant - this is my attempt to butt in politely: "I have something to add to that point, if I may?"

To conclude: I recognise a lot about the kinksters I know (and about myself) in Newmahr's description of the Caeden community; the strongest differences are on the "how-I-found-the-scene" narratives and what they mean. I was also troubled by the association of "social awkwardness", but intrigued by what it might imply about connections with introversion.

On origins, I think that there are several different ways in which people end up in BDSM; I think there are essentialist causes and there are other, social or personal, causes later; Newmahr's consideration in the 2008 paper that her shift in perspective suggested, "One can indeed learn to become a sadomasochist." I think all these routes are possible, and trying to trace the root cause of my BDSM interest leads as far back as I have memories, but I know people in the scene who have "learned to be sadomasochists."