Talis Kimberley sings "The Steps of St Paul's"

The awesome folk/filk singer/songwriter Talis Kimberley (see also my review of her album from last year, and my cover versions of one of her songs) has written a song about the competing values of the "Occupy" protesters at the Occupy LSE camp outside St Paul's Cathedral in London, and the business minds of the people running the cathedral. Whatever my suspicions about the inclusiveness or effectiveness of the protest, I'm in agreement with Talis on the curious priorities of a church whose name comes form a guy who supposedly kicked the moneychangers out of the temple...

She asks for the song to be made as widely available as possible, so I'm also linking to the free download Bandcamp page for the rough recording she's added there.

SPOILER ALERT:

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The "nonsense lyric" she sings in the middle and at the end, is actually Morse Code for BBC...

More on "Occupy" and not having nice things

When I wrote this piece about why Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street was just nasty and wrong, and why trying to justify it by talking about your erection was even nastier and wronger, I thought (hoped) I was being rhetorical when I wrote:

And women have an issue, which is sleazy dudes perving over them and viewing them primarily as sexual stimuli (whether visual or tactile). This is a problem, because it is about feeling one's boundaries violated and it is about feeling one's physical safety threatened.

Renegade Evolution has collated a few stories to show that, in fact, women's physical safety is not only threatened, but violated, and Mr Greenstreet and his kind are quite happy to promote that. Women who experience sexual assaults are coming under heavy pressure to "not bring the movement into disrepute" by reporting these crimes against them. I have read enough stories posted by women about this kind of thing happening to them at so many Leftist/progressive/intellectual events, I sometimes despair.

I would like to imagine that the "Occupy" event in London is not like this, but I have no basis for or against it, and because of the pressures not to report the crimes, I might not hear about it - partly because I view the "Occupy" protests with a tinge of suspicion and distance anyway, and partly because I may very well not come across places where they are reported. My abiding suspicion is that this stuff is highly likely, because men of "the Left" so often do act like privileged arseholes on a regular basis.

Once again: this is why the Left can't have nice things. It's why protests fail. It's why solidarity on the left is a myth, or worse, it's a story used to oppress people who should be on our side! Until the automatic assumption is that the rapists and sexual assaulters are the ones bringing the movement into disrepute, there can be no forward progress.

Heck, Daisy Deadhead has a recent tale about being sexually harassed by a lefty dude because he disagreed with her on an issue!

We - the Left, that is - need to get our own house in order before we start whining about the shit that corporations pull. Anarcho-Leftyism is all very well, but somebody has to organise it and somebody has to keep this shit from happening. Otherwise, the society you build will be another case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[Edit To Add: it turns out that the Occupy Glasgow organisers called in the police as soon as the allegation of rape was made]

Jirka Väätäinen, Disney princesses, and "realistic"

Jirka Väätäinen is an art student at Bournemouth University, and Yahoo News service shows me that he has used photo manipulation to render versions of the Disney princesses as if they were "real life" women.   He's posted his images at a blog here.

This interested me a great deal, so I wanted to have a quick look at the original cartoon images, and JV's images, and see how realistic they look.   For initial reference, here's a "group shot" drawing that has several of the princesses featured in Väätäinen's work:

Let's start with Princess Jasmine:

This is Väätäinen's rendering of the princess.

Have a look at Disney's version here.

What differences can you spot?

There's one glaring difference, which is the difference between the drawing's waist size and the "real person" waist size. It was interesting that when I googled to find the Disney image, I found several cosplay practitioners displaying their Jasmine costumes proudly, and a few looked really very similar to the JV image (although some were obviously White). None of them looked remotely like the drawings.

Curiously, I couldn't find any images showing Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) dressed the same way as she's shown in JV's image of her - I did see several children dressed in a version of the outfit, and that one "group shot" drawing of the princesses together displayed above, but no scenes from the movie, which surprised me.

One thing did surprise me about Väätäinen's Sleeping Beauty, which is that she's blonde.   From the famous telling of the story, the wish was for a daughter whose hair was "as black as ebony" [EDIT TO ADD: it's been pointed out to me by a couple of commenters @ Womanist Musing's crosspost of this piece, that I have got confused between Sleeping Beauty and Snow White with this reference. Make of that what you will, and feel free to do your own research to see if you can do better with finding comparisons].   She's also got a longer torso than the drawing and, in her corset, actually looks less curvy than the drawing as a result. Although you'd have to argue that Sleeping Beauty the drawing is probably more realistic as a real person's proportions than Jasmine, she's still upholding an improbable (if not impossible) ideal.

Pocahontas, who's next on the sequence from Yahoo, is where we don't need a comparison piece from Disney to see that there's something... not quite possible about the body shape ideals that they display:

It looks as though her upper torso is becoming separated from her lower body!   Yahoo comments that it looks like she's "working some Barbie-like proportions", which really just goes to show how impossible it is.   Looking at the stills from the movie, you can see why JV has this problem.   The proportions of the drawing actually resemble those in the photo manipulation.

Not only is it a body shape and body ideal that is impossible to achieve naturally, it looks as though here, it's impossible to achieve unnaturally and make it look real.

When that's what our kids have to contend with, what chance have they got?

One thing that I found worthy of note, is that Pocahontas seems to be another one where it's grown-up cosplay more often than children.   One such image was very adult, ifyaknowwhatImean...

Yahoo next shows us Belle, from Beauty and the Beast.   Leaving aside the extremely dodgy relationship model that the story gives us, what about the images?

Disappointingly, we don't get a full-body image from JV, so we can't compare proportions in that way. Google images mainly focuses on Belle in her yellow princess' gown, while JV has again chosen her more workday clothes as his model, so finding comparisons was harder. This was the best I could do, and to be fair, it doesn't look that bad for proportions - and JV's image is pretty close. SInce I've started commenting on this - the google image search this tim had a fair number of both children's versions and grown-ups, with some apparently falling into the "sexy" category that typifies US commercial women's Hallowe'en costumes (a trend that I was dismayed to notice this year has crossed the Atlantic).

Next up is Esmersalda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

What is going on with that shoulder!? Her left arm also looks twisted into an impossible position (I don't know if a double-jointed person could manage it).

Here's a comparison still from the movie:

All the stills I could find featured Esmeralda in a corset or bodice, which doesn't appear in JV's image, and of course her waist is slimmer in comparison to the rest of her body as a result. It may also go some way to explaining why JV's image seems to have a weirdly twisted torso. The above image (and several others) have Esmeralda's breasts lifted and squeezed by her costume, and it looks as though JV has attempted to match that, leaving a strangely distorted figure. If anything, I think that this comparison shows the torturous and tortuous lengths ot which women are expected to go to look beautiful, rather than the impossibility of achieving a particular body shape.

For the record, I found only two cosplay images, both of them relatively unrevealing. No kiddies pics.

Ariel, "The Little Mermaid", next.

While one might quibble about the twisted arm position, JV's image is remarkably normal-looking** (if you ignore the fish tail!) - but it looks nothing like this:

There doesn't seem to be room in her body for her internal organs! That's really all I need to say on that. Costumes were mainly children's costumes of Ariel's human form.

I'm skipping over the Sea Witch image, because (apart from the fat-shaming point that she's evil and not thin) there's not a lot to say on that.

That leads us to Megara, a character from Hercules.

Looks real, although quite slim, doesn't she?

Let's look at the original:

Dear God in Heaven, you could scale JV's image by 50% sideways and still not be close!   And his image was on the slim side to start with.   A lot of young adults seem to like dressing up as Megara, playing with their "norty" side, we may surmise, perhaps?

The last princess that Väätäinen has rendered thus far is Mulan.   Like Belle, Mulan is not a full-body image, just the upper torso and head. Here's an image for comparison. I don't have any obvious remarks to make, although the body shape of the movie image's lower torso seems almost as if her sash has been pulled extra-tight to make her thin enough!

Again, there seemed to be mainly adult cosplay versions of Mulan, I didn't see very many children dressed as her.


**Normal here meaning "inside the standard deviation of the normal bell-curve"

BDSM and "Miss Insecurity"

Sharideth @ A Woman's Guide to Women: A Blog For Men writes about how to handle ethically a situation where the girl you're in a relationship is insecure, and seemingly has no idea of her own self-worth. A personality type she calls Miss Insecurity.

The second link talks about 4 steps to take to help her build self-worth. The first link talks about something else:

this is about avoiding a serious temptation when it comes to an insecure girl. the temptation to mold her into your own image…of what a girl should be.

And this post talks about how those intersect with the Dominant/submissive relationship dynamic within BDSM.

The first thing to spot is that a Mr or Miss Insecurity could be either Top or Bottom in a relationship. It's highly unlikely that zie would make an effective Dominant, although to please hir partner zie would probably try to do it. The need for affirmation and approval would, however, most likely make for a very unsatisfying experience for the submissive partner, and/or there would be rampant topping from the bottom.

I am going to be focussing on/using the pronouns for, female submissives who are also Insecure (as used by Sharideth), because a) Sharideth writes about Insecure women specifically (though the advice probably works for Insecure men as well) and b) I want to draw on my own experience and, as a mostly-straight male Dominant, dating female submissives is where most of my experience lies.

The structure of D/s is such that there is an inherent tendency towards the "moulding" of the submissive partner in some way - training her to the desires and will of her Dominant partner - whether it is "lifestyle" D/s or "scene-delineated" (i.e. bedroom-only), there is this idea of obedience and surrender. Indeed, many people in the lifestyle talk about it in terms that are similar to Sharideth's description here:

she will willing hand over her entire identity to please you. she’ll be anything you want her to be.

And yet, "Miss Insecurity" and "Ms Submissive" are not talking about the same thing. It is possible to be both or neither, or either one. A lot of subs in BDSM are quite adamant, "I'm a submissive, not a doormat" and by doormat, they mean something like Miss Insecurity. The difficulty is, sometimes it's not that easy to spot the difference.

Sharideth says:

it will be crazy flattering how far she’s willing to go for you, but up until you, everyone has taken advantage of her.

Now, one of the big buzzes of being a Dom in a D/s relationship is that "crazy flattering how far she's willing to go" deal. The distinction is that a sub doesn't allow people to take advantage of her (unless, of course, she is Insecure as well as being a sub). But that does make it hard to tell the difference and to know when you are with a sub or an Insecure woman. That is, to tell the difference between Dominance and taking advantage.

That said, there are telltales. One BIG red flag is the "no limits" sub. Limits are things a bottom will not do - a hard limit is "under any circumstances", a soft limit is "maybe, once I know you well enough and I'm in the mood to really be pushed beyond my usual boundaries". A sub who has no limits at all is someone who is saying she will do literally anything (and, in some cases, if you ask her hypothetically, "alright, how about if I want to nail your tits to the kitchen table?" she'll say "yes"...) When you get that sort of situation, you can pretty much be sure there's something going on and being Insecure may or may not be the only thing behind that. In general, being too eager to please early on is a sign, and I think the tendency to seek more praise is another. There is also the thing that Sharideth mentions, of:

her lack of self-confidence can range from mild embarrassment when given a compliment to laying out a well rehearsed laundry list of why the nice thing you said about her simply isn’t true.

So, you can spot the Insecure sub as oppposed to the submissive sub. It is just that being particularly vigilant is helpful.

Bearing this in mind, let's look at Sharideth's advice on how not to mould your Insecure girlfriend (submissive), and see what the issues might be when this is played in a D/s context:

1. say no – she will offer to pay for things, to clean your house, to do your laundry…she will all but beg to please to you. say no. assure her you have own your finances, personal hygiene and home maintenance under control…whether you actually do or not. physically restrain her if you have to, because your refusal just might send her into a panic attack thinking she’s not good enough to wash your socks or clean your gutters.

Well, let's get the obvious joke out the way about it being easier and expected to physically restrain a partner in a kinky relationship. Right, that's done. It has a serious application, though: the D/s dynamic makes laying down the law easier to do - it makes the Dominant partner's "No" easier to say in some respects. In others, it is harder, because very often domestic duties may be part of what is set out as the submissive's role, and it may be what she expects from previous relationships. It is hard to refuse a sign of submission from someone who is supposed to be submissive, especially if it appears to give her pleasure to do it, and you are used to accepting such gifts. However, in a D/s context I would describe the Insecure sub as attempting a subtle form of topping from the bottom when she does this. She is trying to define her place instead of letting you define it for her and, paradoxically, to avoid moulding her, you have to mould her. You say, "In my house, this is NOT your place to do these things. Your place is what I say it is." (That's where "physically restrain her" comes in).

2. reassure her – keep your voice kind and patient and with a bit of humor in it. she’ll be freaking right out, so make sure she knows it’s really not necessary for her to paint your kitchen. seriously, she’ll be coming out of her skin.

I think the kind, patient and calm voice - while remaining in charge - is key to a lot of Domhood, regardless of the personality type of the submissive partner (there are some who want/need you to force them and be loud all the time, but most respond well to the quiet Dominance at least some of the time). "...it’s really not necessary..." - Again, I think this is about defining boundaries and roles within D/s. Letting her know that she can serve and please simply by being herself in a passive way without having to do things for you, is an important part of D/s training, especially when you're dealing with a Miss Insecurity. In some ways the D/s dynamic makes this easier to do: because you can frame it in language of service and duty, there is a way to let her feel that she is still fulfilling her desire to please, while still giving her the space to be herself and not have to do things to please you. On the other hand, that same "helpful" thing makes it harder to make it genuinely her being herself for herself, because she is still behaving in a way she thinks you want her to.

3. serve her – do something good and manly for her. get her oil changed or do it yourself for extra man points. make her dinner or get take out and put it in your own dishes to pretend like you cooked it. if you do that, make sure she sees the take out boxes so you can both laugh and break the tension she will most surely be feeling by not being the one cooking you a six course meal.

Now, it sounds paradoxical to tell a Dom to serve his sub. That said, I am a Christian and my Lord, God himself became human so as to serve us - Christ Jesus knelt to wash the feet of his followers. So I am familiar in my cultural beliefs with the concept of the servant being served by the Master (regardless of what you accept or reject about religion, that imagery is still powerful within the Church).

How does that translate in D/s terms, though? Well, I talk about service and submission a lot with new partners, and one thing I talk about is the bathing ritual scene. When I bathe her, dry her, and tend for her, she is my submissive and I am making sure she is in good condition, and enjoying being in control because I direct where she goes, and she isn't allowed to do things for herself. When she bathes me, she is my submissive because I don't have to do anything for myself, but make her do what I want. In more general terms, when I appear to be serving her, I am really only doing it because that is the best way for me to get what I want from her.

Making dinner is one such thing, and it is a good one for me personally, because I enjoy cooking for its own sake, so her role in serving me is simply to be appreciative of my efforts.

4. protect her – she never says no. to anyone. ever. if someone is asking too much of her or taking advantage, step in and say no for her. shield her from those who would use her innate generosity and fear of rejection against her. and hold on to your dangly parts, because those people are going to be pissed.

This one, because of the language of possession that gets wrapped up on D/s and M/s relationships, has a ready parallel in BDSM culture, even where Insecurity is not involved. Staci Newmahr identifies this as the Benevolent Dictator archetype (which I discuss as being largely a given at some level in all D/s, and also compare to Mother as well as Emperor archetypes). It is also helpful because the possessive language of D/s gives a much stronger permission to say no to others: "my Dom/Owner/Master doesn't allow me to..." is a permission to say "no" and to set boundaries, while handing off the responsibility to another. Since Sharideth's advice is also about letting the "no" be handed off to a loving partner, this is similar. It does raise the problematic issue of "she's saying no in order to be pleasing to me", but at the same time, it means she is making a conscious choice to please one person over another.

5. watch your words – she is going to be listening INTENTLY for any clue that you might want something about her to change to suit you. continually reinforce those things about her you are attracted to. shore up who she is as her own person and the value there is in just being her.

This may just be the hardest of Sharideth's points to follow as a Dominant partner to Miss Insecurity. So much about being Dominant seems to be expressing one's will so that it can be obeyed and so she can change to fit that will! And yet, it is just as important and valid as the rest of it, even in BDSM. This is about supporting who she already is and the things you already like about what she does. Reinforcing her self-identity and personality in this way is a good part of the person-maintenance that an attentive lover or Dominant will do for hir partner regardless of Insecurity issues. This requires a balancing act that at once does that maintenance and keeps her fundamentally her, but also expresses what her role as your sub is.

6. be patient – this is all going to be very new to her and she will not take it well initially. she’d probably be more comfortable being held at gunpoint. it will be so foreign that it just might terrify her because she won’t understand her role. find ways to calm her down, to redirect her fear. help her to breathe. remember when Aragorn first meets Brego and the horse is losing his shit? it’ll be like that.

The specific thing of D/s and control makes this easier: as a Dom, having someone trust you to tie them up and do "nasty" things to them tends to give you some idea of handling nerves (and, if you've ever switched, then you'll have some idea of what those nerves can feel like as well). Control, again, means that, "she doesn't understand her role" is something you have a ready answer for. The manner of fulfilling that role is strange and unsettling, but the D/s structure, the concept of "slave training" and so on, gives a ready language for letting her know it will all be okay and that you'll be there to help her get the hang of this new thing.

7. be her partner – she is a natural helper. she needs to be contributing. plan times to work together on things. preferably something you have to give her instruction on so she can’t take over and do it all herself. because she will try. it’s important to let her know you are a team. that you do not expect any more from her than you do yourself.

"Give her instruction". Heh. What is D/s except "giving her instruction"? (Don't answer that - the answer could fill an encyclopaedia!) But things like protocol, ritual, postures to learn, and so on, are projects in which a sub can be expected to take direct instruction and can be brought back gently if she tried to pre-empt instruction. They are, however, somewhat one-sided: I instruct her and guide her to learn the new routines, but she does all the actions. It does emphasise the "team/roles" nature of D/s, but the issue with D/s is very often that what is expected of the sub partner is different from what is expected of the Dom partner, and often the sub is meant to "do" more and the Dom is meant to "decide" more. That's not how it's framed by some partners, but I'm running with what I'm familiar with.

So how do we deal with this in D/s? Probably the simplest thing is to do vanilla things of the type that Sharideth suggests. I think also talking about the philosophy of D/s as a partnership, and teamwork, helps.

Let's turn to "how to build her up" now:

1. teach her to say “thank you” – seems simple, right? wrong. she’ll hate it. at first. do not allow her to duck her head and mumble or qualify it. a direct, look-you-in-eye, thank you. after a while, she’ll find she likes the feeling of being complimented. this will translate into other areas of her life.
2. do not let her put herself down – stop her as soon as she starts. just don’t allow it. don’t be afraid to use a bit of force either. it could be good for her to know that devaluing herself upsets you. eventually she’ll look back on that and smile.
3. help her understand that “no” is not a dirty word – girls who have self-esteem issues can’t say no to anyone for fear of disapproval. it’s exhausting for them. beware though. you have to be strong enough to back her up and be there when she’s crushed by the hateful reaction she gets from those who are use to taking advantage of her. if you are serious about this girl, you may even have to shield her from her own family until she’s strong enough to do it on her own.
4. remind her that she is stronger than she feels – the need to remind her will start to become fewer and farther between. but for now, knowing that you believe in her will be what she needs to lean on.

My first girlfriend/sub was definitely in this bracket - you can read posts that reference her story under the tag Julie. I used all the above techniques with her, with a D/s slant to them. Here's how they worked:

As a Dom, I always lay down 5 rules that I consider vital. The 5th is:

[My submissive] will receive as much or as little punishment or praise as she deserves and needs, and must not ask for more.

This refers to point 1, and tangentially to point 2. It is about insisting that she accept as valid the praise I give, and also about insisting that she should not insist that she has failed when I say otherwise. If I say she deserves praise, then to reject it is to go directly against this rule. If I say she doesn't deserve punishment, then to insist she does is also going against this rule. I constantly had to remind Julie of this rule to start with, and make sure she did give proper thanks.

I also pointed out that by putting herself down in any way, she was casting negative aspersions about my judgement and ability to spot a good thing. She was not to prejudge my opinion by using negative terms about herself, but let me make my own mind up (which would, invariably, be positive - because that was precisely what she deserved and needed, as per rule 5). This, effectively, became rule 5(a). Thus, I pretty much laid down the law on the matter, in just the way Sharideth's point 2 suggests, with all the authority that my Domliness could wield.

Now, when it comes to D/s, "no" pretty much is a dirty word - within the negotiated confines of the D/s relationship. But that very fact often heightens for D/s practitioners the value of "no" in any other circumstance. For Julie, therefore, although "no" was not permitted with me in our relationship, the importance of "no", and setting the boundaries between what was acceptable and what was unacceptable (e.g. by use of a safeword), was emphasised heavily. The link I gave above is to a page called, "How a girl learns to say no"!

Finally, on point 4, this is exactly where I have been. Julie talked explicitly about feeling so weak, and I told her, "It is when we feel weakest that we are really proving that we are very strong."

The outcome, again, is for all to read on that link - she left me and found the strength as her own person to say "no" to jerks who wanted to take advantage of her. Last I knew, she was very happily with a Dominant partner who treated her properly and gave her loads of the BDSM she needs.

***

PS - this topic reminded me of this song:



(I don't recommend the attitude of the narrator in the song!)

What's my number, and what exactly is it?

Pretty much for as long as I have had an interest in dating as an adult, the sources I have read have talked about a person's "number", which is the number of people they've shagged - and what (if any) significance that number has.

One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned often in the same context is what we actually mean by the number, when people talk about it in the dating context. After all, there is even debate about "virginity" even means (presumable, virginity is when your number=0).

It is a known phenomenon that men will tend to claim more things "count" as sex than women do, when asked in surveys. There's some speculation that the reason for this is that men are socially expected to be more sexually active, whereas there is social pressure for women to be less sexual. Thus, a narrower or wider definition helps to feel more socially acceptable. If fellatio, cunnilingus and dildos don't count as sex, then a woman can have orgasms with 100 men (and give them orgasms), and still claim that her number is in the single digits, because that's how many of those men she allowed to put their penis inside her vagina. Similarly, if they do count as sex then a man can claim that each of the 100 women whom he's gone down on, even if only a few of them returned the favour, or cuntwrapped his penis.

So, these two similarly-experienced people (arguably, the woman is the more experienced) might meet, start dating, ask each other their numbers, and the woman says "half a dozen" and the man says "a hundred"! Assuming they then have sex along the lines that they've usually done it (so, he uses his tongue, and maybe a dildo, to stimulate her; she uses her mouth on him), then only one of them has their number go up!

I can make my number equal anything from 0 to 4, depending on how you want to define "sex".

• 0: The number of times I have ejaculated from partner's stimulation (here's why that hasn't happened)
• 1: The number of women I've slept with as well as had sex with
• 2: The number of women with whom I have shared PiV sex
• 3: The number of women with whom I have had any form of penetrative sex involving my penis (also the number of times involving her vagina)
• 4: The number of women with whom I have had penetrative sex involving either my penis or her vagina, or both

The more logically-minded will notice that there is some overlap between the items listed as my 3 and the item listed as my 4, and should be able to figure out by reference to my 2 that there is one woman out there who has had some part of me that wasn't my penis, inside her; and a different woman out there who has had some part of her anatomy that wasn't her vagina wrapped around my penis. To clarify these points: the part of me that wasn't my penis, was my fingers; the part of her that wasn't her vagina was her mouth.

So, what is my "number"? In mathematical notation, it could be expressed as [0 .. 4]. That is, it falls within the integer interval from 0 to 4. To narrow it down any further requires a more precise question than "how many people have you had sex with?" or "what's your number?"

When lyrics make you flinch - trigger warning for discussion of domestic violence

I've been meaning to mention this little niggling thing I have, for a while now, but never quite seemed important enough to get on with. it seems like such a little thing.

But now, I find that Yandie @ Inspiration strikes. In the Kneecaps. has written about a similar thing:

She writes:

just a random thing that sucks...

listening to a really awesome song.. then pausing to listen to the lyrics and finding that they're.. um.. well, a bit rapey.

She gives a couple of examples over there, and what I have been planning (or vaguely considering) is writing about something similar, which is lyrics that seem a bit domestic violence-y. There's one in particular that I wanted to mention, but I'm going to get to that in a minute.

A commenter @ Yandie's post noted the DV implications of The Beatles' Run For Your Life, and frankly, there are a lot of very misogynistic lyrics in The Beatles catalogue, both in terms of violence against women, and in terms of reinforcing gender roles.

Some songwriters write directly about DV, some of them write to highlight the problem and accuse society of not doing enough to stop it (Tracy Chapman's "Behind The Wall" springs to mind); some seem to revel in the idea of it.

The problem I have is with a song that is not obviously about DV (maybe that's why it makes me flinch particularly), and in fact, the line that hits me in the gut with it and makes me flinch isn't one that necessarily would get to everyone. Some people would hear it and think it perfectly innocent, maybe even sweet. It depends, I suppose, on what sort of context your mind provides for the words.

The song is McFly's "All About You". The lines are:

And...
I would answer all your wishes/
If you asked me to/
But if you deny me one of your kisses/
Don't know what I'd do

So hold me close and say three words like you used to do/
Dancing on the kitchen tiles/
It's all about you

Most of the song feels quite sweet, and the image of dancing in the kitchen together also, pretty romantic and lovely, I could love that. I love the song, I really do. It's just that one line: "If you deny me one of your kisses/ Don't know what I'd do". It twists and changes the meaning of the rest of the song for me, because to me, it sounds like a threat. I think my impression is coloured that way partly because the song has a crescendo for that passage. The stresses on "you", "don't know" and "do" in the performance, also may be adding to my feeling of it being a personal threat.

Some people, I am sure, hear that line and think, "Aww, he'd feel bereft and hopeless." I hear the same line and think, "Oh shit, he'd feel angry and violent, enough to break any boundaries of self-control."

When it's followed by "Say three words like you used to do ("three words" often means "I love you" in pop song terminology), my understanding of the song starts to slip from "wow, romantic, it's all about her" into "scary possessiveness, it's all about her". This line, in the context of the threat that I hear in "don't know what I'd do", now sounds to me like, "Why don't you love me like you used to? You should be a better girlfriend/wife/lover!" Then the image of kitchen tiles shifts from a bright, sunlit, rom-com movie scene barefoot waltz, to a forced interaction, and possibly her landing on that hard, tiled, floor after he hits her for not being responsive enough.

Even, "I would answer all of your wishes" becomes, in this context, "So you should be fucking grateful, bitch! You OWE me, because of what I'd do for you!" If taken as a whole, with this colouring, the romantic tone of the rest of the song just completes the picture of an emotionally and potentially physically abusive relationship.

Now, all that shift in perspective comes just from the strongest association that my mind produces for the phrase "If you deny me ... don't know what I'd do." Those words feel violent and threatening to me, and so a song that I really like and is quite beautiful in other ways, makes me flinch every time that line comes around.

On "Everyone knows that 'x' = 'sex'" and (not) taking the indirect route

In the past couple of weeks, an idea has come up again in my PUA/dating advice research. It's one that I reject quite vehemently, and at its worst I feel it ties into rape culture (but I don't want to talk about that so much). It's also one of those tropes that ends up making me feel like an alien.

A couple of weeks ago, a commenter at Clarisse Thorn's linked to this video from the RSA Animate series:



Steven Pinker is talking about direct versus indirect language, and how he thinks that works and reveals stuff about human minds. I disagree with almost all of it! Again, I don't really want to talk about the whole video and why I disagree with Pinker (if anyone wants me to explain my disagreements, say so and I'll do another post and we can debate it there).

What I want to talk about is the specific point at 1:45 in the video (also referenced at 6:30-ish):

"Would you like to come up and see my etchings?" That has been recognised as a sexual come-on for so long that in the 1930s, [a cartoonist whose name I don't catch] drew a New Yorker cartoon in which a man says to his date, "You wait here and I'll bring the etchings down."

...

People aren't naive and it's hard to believe that any grown woman could be fooled by the line about the etchings. None-the-less, there is something that is more comfortable about asking to see etchings than asking for sex. So what is going on there?

The deniability is not really plausible.

Well, I didn't (and generally wouldn't) recognise it as a sexual come-on (and, frankly, the 1930s cartoon doesn't make sense to me in that context - is he suggesting he'll just shag her where they are?) According to Mr Pinker, I guess that would make me "naive", and I guess it's just as well that I am not a young woman with an interest in etchings, otherwise I might end up with someone raping me (okay, so I am discussing the rape culture thing a little...)

A different commenter at the same thread on Clarisse Thorn's blog, writes:

An invitation for an intimate time alone with eating or drinking is the polite lie like the previously mentioned bait. It’s how we pretend that we’re not talking about if we like each other enough to be physically intimate – like we pretend that we’re going back to someone’s house to look at their antique camera collection, or ‘for a coffee’. Or that ‘My roommate’s out for the weekend, come over and watch a movie, I’ll cook dinner’ isn’t an invitation to have sex on the couch.

Similarly, Charlie Nox's "Feminist PUA" site (tagline "Refuse to Choose Between Being Nice and Getting Laid") has the following advice in a recent post:

“Hey, we haven’t done a movie marathon in a while. Want to come over and catch up on our bad 80′s movie watching?” Would be a perfect example. This is a version of the – “why don’t you come up and have a night cap.” No one involved is fooled – everyone knows that sex might happen. But that’s the important difference. Sex MIGHT happen. It’s not certain, no one is committing to anything, there’s no pressure.

Even in CN's watered down "might" happen version, I'm not with it.

Without being given these primers, I would never have found out on my own, except by virtue of being sexually assaulted (sorry, again with the rape culture reference), that "dinner and a movie" meant "shagging".

In a live situation (as opposed to theoretic discussion, where I have now been given these primers) I would STILL not get it. If my date says, "I have the flat to myself this evening, come over and watch a movie, I'll make dinner," then I expect to be watching a movie and eating dinner. I don't even consider the possibility of sex, if that's all that's done. Two exceptions spring to mind: one is that she and I have already discussed shagging together, and maybe have already done it, so I already know that it's something that might be established as a pattern; the other is that the invitation is given with enough non-verbal cues (as in, VERY obvious nudge, wink, air-quotes around "movie", etc - don't expect me to get it from vocal cues, I need exaggerated visual cues to get this). In either of these cases, I'm still likely to check my read of the situation - "So, should I bring condoms?"

There is a third option, which is exemplified by a scene in the movie Brassed Off (I forget the characters' names, or who speaks which lines):

A: Would you like to come in for coffee?
B: Sorry, I don't drink coffee.
A: I haven't got any.

Or, "Sorry, I don't like etchings" - "That's okay. I haven't got any."

Or, "I'm not really into movies" - "That's okay. I haven't got anything to watch them on."

Basically, if it's an offer that can't even possibly be genuine, then I'll look for the ulterior motive (i.e. sex), but otherwise I probably won't get it.

Let's flip this around: I don't get that "etchings"/"dinner and a movie at mine" is supposed to be code for "sex". I only know "coffee" is supposed to be because I have seen that one before and had it explained to me. So, when I offer to cook dinner and show my date a movie, and she says yes, then what? Well, I'm not going to be offering her sex, but she thinks that I am. CN offers the following manoeuvres as possibilities:

Mutually pretending like you aren’t planning to have sex is exciting! There is the tingle when he touches your arm (was that on purpose? accidentally? should I touch him back?). There is the rush when she puts a pillow on your lap to watch the movie (should I stroke her hair? touch her back?). People like the thrill and fun of building up to sex (when done well of course).

Now, given that I'm not planning to have sex if I've made that offer, but am a tactile and cuddle-loving person: touching, and "pillow on the lap" (I'm guessing the implication here is that she then puts her head on the pillow, but I could be wrong!) seem to be natural steps in a perfectly chaste but loving situation; and I would have no problem cuddling/caressing my partner and feeling it meant nothing more than that we were sharing an intimate and pleasurable time while watching the telly. I would not interpret these moves as sexual, unless (as already mentioned) we already had established in some explicit format (either discussion, or doing) that we had a sexual relationship.

So, what happens? Either a) she pushes it further, trying to make a non-sexual situation into a sexual one (because she thinks it already is one), and thus making me feel uncomfortable (which kills the mood), or b) she goes away thinking I must not find her sexy because I invited her for sex and then didn't make a move on her. CN says that the "dinner and a movie at mine" line is a good way to ensure there's no pressure, but for me there's far more pressure, because I am expecting one thing (dinner and a movie) and my date might be expecting something else (sex). That leads to tension, which is a form of pressure.

In short, if I'm "pretending it's not going to happen" then as far as I'm concerned, it's not going to happen.

Back to the RSA Animate video: At 7:40, Mr Pinker discusses economists' and logicians' concept of mutual versus individual knowledge, where individual knowledge is stuff that everyone knows for themselves, and mutual knowledge is stuff that everybody in the situation knows that everyone else knows.

It is supposed to be mutual knowledge that "coffee/etchings/dinner-and-a-movie-at-mine means, 'let's have sex'" (Steven Pinker discusses this at 9:45 in the video). If it's true that everyone knows that, then it is also true that the person you're inviting for coffee/etchings/dinner knows it, and therefore that if they agree, then they are agreeing to sex with you. But there's no guarantee that they know what it "really" means. These codes are socially-constructed and require someone to be familiar with the social context of the statements before the meaning is grasped. I had to learn what "coffee" meant. Until I saw these posts and comments, I didn't know what "dinner-and-a-movie" meant, and I never knew about "etchings" until I watched the RSA video. "Mutual knowledge" that is not explicitly stated is only an assumption, it is not true knowledge. In fact, I would argue that there is no euphemism 'x' for which it can be said that "Everybody knows that 'x' is code for 'let's have sex'", and certainly, that is the only way I feel able to proceed with wanting sex.

For this reason, unless I have clear and incontrovertible evidence that this particular dating partner, in this particular situation, knows that I intend "dinner and a movie at mine" to mean "I am setting up a situation in which sex is on the cards", then I am not going to assume that she has any idea or any clue that that's what it could mean, or that her "yes" means that she is open to the idea of sex with me.

So, sticking with the assumption that I was using this ruse to set up the possibility of a sexual scenario, I'm going to feel compelled to read her touch or her pillow on my lap as being chaste moves, just the way I would interpret them if I hadn't had an ulterior motive.

CN implies that the uncertainty is exciting and part of the sexual thrill of setting up this sort of situation. But for me it's the complete opposite. It completely kills the mood, kills any sense of sexual excitement, it just makes me feel dirty and wrong (and not in a good, sexy, way - in a creepy, horrible way).

CN says:

If what you want is to sleep with someone, coming right out and suggesting they come over to shack up is rarely a good strategy unless you have a pre-existing no-strings attached, call me up anytime agreement for sex. But if you want to have sex with someone you are dating, or a friend, or an ex, you will be far more effective if you employ a little strategic obfuscation of your motives.

As discussed above, a pre-existing sexual relationship is about the only time when I could feel confident and sexy while using obfuscation! With "dating, or a friend, or an ex" then anything other than an explicitly stated sexual motive (or understanding of my sexual motive) is going to result in me assuming they don't know, or don't want, sex to be involved. (Not to mention that, frankly, if my relationship with an ex is on a level where I feel I can't come out and say that I'd like sex with her, then I wouldn't want sex with her anyway.)

Now, CN does admit that:

Now, will this strategy guarantee you sex? Of course not. There are plenty of other ways you can make someone awkward and uncomfortable. And, if you don’t frame your invitation right, the other person may have NO idea what you’re suggesting. If this is the case, you’ll have a lot more work to do before something sexual will happen between you two.

That at least acknowledges the issue when I'm receiving the invitation: although when it comes to Yours Truly, "framing your invitation right", as discussed above, effectively means being explicit about something - either, we're already explicit about the sexual objective of the relationship, or we're explicit that the invitation isn't genuine (by use of nudge/wink/"air-quotes", or by admitting that the pretext is false - "I haven't got any"). What it doesn't recognise is that I'm never going to be confident that my non-verbal cues (or "I haven't got any" line) is going to clear up the situation for the other person; and anyway, I would feel as if making those sorts of gestures would creep out the other person far more effectively than just coming straight out with what I really mean!

Another thing it doesn't recognise is whether or not I feel awkward or uncomfortable in a situation, which is what I've been discussing here for the most part.

But this strategy will be much more likely to result in you being alone with the target of your affections. And being alone with them gives you a statistically greater chance of getting in their pants, than if you lay on your cards on the table and get met with a dial tone, a dodging joke or a firm declaration of friendship as your response.

Eh, I'm really not interested in having sex with a statistic, so "statistically greater chance" doesn't impress me.

And, I think it's important to be aware that my reaction to a sexual come-on after I've invited a date to "dinner and a movie at mine" is much more likely to be the personal, face-to-face conversation equivalent of "a dial tone, a dodging joke or a firm declaration of friendship" than it is to be either of us getting into the other's pants.

Now, that's all very well, blasting the idea that "everyone knows 'x' means 'sex'", and the idea that you can use 'x' as a strategy to build up to sex with someone. But there's a clear truth in the above statement by CN: it certainly is much more conducive to getting sexual with someone if you can get alone-together time with that person! So it's fair to say, "What's the alternative? What could I do instead?"

Now, to date, all my sexual encounters have come from a straightforward "lay your cards on the table" situation. However, those were also situations where the possibility and desire for sex had already been discussed explicitly beforehand and it was just a question of when we would feel ready and how it would happen. So we can put those to one side and think about a hypothetical situation, and put me in it and see what I might try:

Hypothetical: I've been dating a woman for a bit, we've gone on a few dates together, cuddled, kissed, maybe a little bit of more serious fondling after that most recent date or two - I think it's time to test the waters and see if she's looking to get fully sexual with me. So, how do I deal with that, without laying cards on the table (because I feel like she might be the type to react as CN describes)?

What I think I would do is make it a totally open-ended. That is, I would not offer any "pretext", but also would not mention sex. It would just be, "How about coming over and spending the evening with me?" It sets up no non-sexual expectations so I don't need to fear that she expects 'x' and only 'x'; but it still allows the pretence that it is some unspecified non-sexual activity that is proposed. Now, let's assume that she's cautious and thinks saying "yes" to such an open-ended invitation is still a little bit on the slutty side - a bit too obviously a pretext for a sexual situation. So she responds, "To do what?" At which point I say, "Let's see what we feel like," and give a couple of genuine possibilities (most likely including "I'll make dinner and we watch a movie", but I'd say that meaning "watch a movie"...) and add another vague term with a bit more of a hint, e.g. "or whatever we feel like" or "or something more, if you're lucky" - trying to pitch the vague term based on the tone of voice with which she said, "to do what?" If she still pushes for specifics, then (again, based on tone of voice and how it feels) probably make a joke out of the ulterior motive - "Ah, you got me, I really just hoped to get you alone and shag your brains out, but how about that movie?" Ideally, it wouldn't go that far - I'd hope she said yes after "let's see what we feel like", because it's still open-ended when she arrives, and we can then have a conversation, see how body language, touching, etc develops, maybe let the talk get sexual, and go from there... or, if she's not actually up for it (or we're just going slower than that), then because there were no promises either way, I can get out the DVDs or whatever and see what develops. (Although, as noted above, uncertainty about motives is not a good or sexy thrill for me, it feels creepy, so it needs to be judged very well indeed by her if that's the way she wants to go.)

That's about the only "obfuscation" approach I can see being comfortable with using myself.

Here's the TL;DR bullet points:

• There's no such thing as "everybody knows [x] means 'sex'."
• Uncertainty is not a turn-on for me
• I'll take you at your word if you invite me for dinner and a movie - if I don't make a move on you, it's not that I'm not interested in you sexually, it's because I didn't realise you wanted it, and probably didn't even bring a condom (and regular ones are too small, so having your own supply might not help there)
• If I invite you to mine for dinner and a movie, keep the flirting light and fluffy - it DOESN'T mean sex, and if you overdo it you might drive me away instead; but if I invite you over for "whatever we feel like", that's your cue to go for it, if you want to.

Enjoyed yourself? Don't dawdle to call!

Via Feministe, who got it from The Awl:

The Daily Mail **pause to spit** (I wouldn't have chosen that organ, but since it's where the sources above found it, I've gone with it) has a piece highlighting some market research commissioned by Match.com into how quickly people follow up a (good) date with a text or phone call. Sadly, they don't offer a link to the original research for us to drill down into them to see for ourselves the detailed structure of the numbers, and Google hasn't helped either with that.

The science reporting is appalling. For instance, I suspect that almost nobody chooses 11:48 as the time to send their text/make their phone call, but if you take the mean average of the times, that's what it comes to, therefore the Mail says, "the most likely moment is 11.48am on Monday" (after a date on Saturday night).

The hot quotation from the piece, that both The Awl and Feministe use, is this:

Kate Taylor, Match.com's relationship expert, said: 'The three-day rule might have worked when all we had were landlines, but technology has revolutionised how we date.

'When everybody takes their mobile phone everywhere, waiting three days to get in touch just makes you look snooty or, worse, like you have run out of credit.

That's not the part that interests me most, however. Ms Taylor also offers advice on what to send:

'If you like someone and want another date the best thing to do is send a brief, charming text asking if they'd like to meet up again, or call them. Keep it short and very sweet.'

Which is more or less what I would do in two parts: as soon as I get home, I want to call or text to say, "had a great time!" Then later, (Sunday if possible, Monday otherwise) follow up to talk properly, and see about planning a second date. (It's interesting to note that to a limited extent that approach sort of echoes the advice given by Mr Hudson here, about which I was sceptical.)

The reporting on the statistics of who contacts whom first after a date is intriguing (and a big reason why I would prefer to see the full report, not the bullet points from the press release).

It's reported that:

And when it comes to who does the asking, traditional gender roles in dating still hold true, with 22 per cent of women waiting to be contacted first compared to just 5 per cent of men.

Which makes it sounds as though 78% of women contact first, while 95% of men contact first. Obviously, that doesn't add up, and there has to be some overlap. So the interesting this is, what explains that overlap? There might be differing ideas of what "waiting" implies, such as "I'm not waiting to be contacted first, it's just they did contact me first, I was planning to contact them first at a later time," or, "I expect to be contacted first, but I'm not waiting to be contacted first for the first x hours after the date, but then after that I am waiting," or, "I wait for the first x hours after the date and then I bite the bullet and contact first anyway" - and so on. All of these have clear variables that might differ from person to person and might or might not have different (influenced by social roles) averages for different genders (and noting that genders may not be binary!)

Incidentally, if 78% of women are willing to contact first, is that really "gender roles holding true"? Even if 95% of men are willing (or expect) to make the first contact, that's still a lot of woman, and a lot more than half, certainly. Again, without drilling down into what these figures mean on the basis of what it means to be "waiting", we can't draw any conclusions about "gender roles". If the socially-accepted gender role is for the woman to wait to be contacted, then for gender roles to be holding true, they ought to be reporting at least 51% (and closer to 90%, looking at the men's figures) of women waiting to be contacted first, surely?

This comes to you courtesy of "Why we can't have nice things" - Greenstreet and his hard-on

I've been ignoring the Steven Greenstreet "Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street" thing because it's USA, and it's just so flipping perennial the issue it raises, I decided to save the spoons for something else.

Yesterday, Feministe blogger Jill Filipovic thought it worthwhile to point out a little something about how Mr Greenstreet has reacted to the criticisms that were inevitable, pointing out that he starts bad and gets worse with the rape-apology/rape joke line of reasoning.

Quoth Greenstreet: "An erection legitimises everything"

When challenged on whether this includes rape, Greenstreet doesn't retract the statement but ups the ante further: "It probably wouldn't be rape without one."

This, it has to be said, makes him look like a really sleazy, unpleasant person, and good on Feministe for pointing out.

Of course, the liberal dudes don't quite see it that way, and the mother of all troll threads ensued (read it for the lolz, or stay away because it will make your brain hurt!)

I don't really want to engage too closely with the trollish arguments, but, let's look at what happened.

BIG protest against economic inequality and injustice.

Dude takes pictures and videos of the "hot chicks" and posts them on a blog for all and sundry to peruse at leisure, because "hot chicks will attract people [pronounced "men"] to protests."

Apparently, suggesting that this might be an issue that puts women off attending protests is just "splitting the movement" because the economic issues are REALLY important and we have to FIGHT TOGETHER, and any way we bring more people (again, pronounced "men") into the movement is cool, and staying away because of it is just petty.

If you want people in your movement, you have to care about their issues. Pretty simple, really: like it or not, social justice is nearly always a quid pro quo deal, "you fight my oppressors, I'll help fight yours". If you start acting like my oppressors, then I'm going to say I'm not interested in helping you with your causes any more because I'd only be hurting myself and legitimising my own oppression! This is why I don't much like the term "ally" to mean "disinterested but supportive in general" and prefer it to mean "person who has a vested interest in the same cause as me".

And women have an issue, which is sleazy dudes perving over them and viewing them primarily as sexual stimuli (whether visual or tactile). This is a problem, because it is about feeling one's boundaries violated and it is about feeling one's physical safety threatened.

What Mr Greenstreet did was this: he acted like a sleazy dude perving off these women who were out in public. He took photographs and videos to perv off, and then he made those videos and photos public. He then used them to invite other men to come to the next protest for the purpose of perving off the attractive women whom he promised would be there.

Then people pointed out that this was probably going to put off women form wanting to be there, because most people don't like being perved over indiscriminately (I have heard comments about liking a specific individual perving over the person making the comment, but very rarely about liking anyone and everyone doing it). At which point, we get the rapetastic justification by Mr Greenstreet, thus making women feel even less safe at any event where he or people like him might be.

I said at the start of this post that initially I hadn't bothered commenting about this because it just seemed like par for the course these days and I didn't have the spoons. And that's the sad thing. This stuff happens all the fucking time in Left-ish movements, in which the privileged amongst us (which grouping includes white, male, straight-ish, cis-ish, able-bodied Yours Truly) so often trample on everyone else who might have been involved, resembling their oppressors, and then wonder why they have at best lukewarm support for their cause.

This Is Why You Can't Have Nice Things.

This Is Why The Left Fails.

As one genuine commenter ("L") at Feministe put it:

And, hint: it is not the people who claim sexism and racism that are dividing the movement, it’s the people that are being sexist and racist.

Somehow, I feel this song (one of my favourites from its period), is particularly appropriate:

When attracting her requires making her seem less attractive

I'm still receiving emails from the guy (Christian Hudson) mentioned in this post about "elation and buzz". Bear in mind that the ultimate purpose of these is to convince us (me) to buy the products featured (Mr Hudson's latest is "B4UTXTHER" (which I instantly read as Baut ex There, so that was a bit confusing marketing, like "The Oneders"...))

A couple of them interested me recently because of precisely why I had a problem with them.

First, Mr Hudson explained about the importance of having good "text game" to reel a girl in. The basic theme was pretty much, "...with good texting skills, you can give her a lot of little emotional experiences in between dates that keep her wanting more and more of you."

In more detail, Mr Hudson, explains:

Here's the point: in the gaps between the dates, her feelings towards you can change. Easily.

...

And furthermore, you should EXPECT her feelings towards you to drop off on the day following each date.

...

Now, the more time you've spent with her, the higher her "baseline" level of emotions will be. So after a good third or fourth date, the dynamic is going to change as you move towards a relationship and more regular hangouts.

But how do you get to that point and how do you deal with these gaps between dates?

...

See, let's say that all you had was the telephone and the date. You'd have five or six communications with her, from Getting Her Number to Second Date. So there's a lot of opportunity for emotional drop off. After the second date, maybe you have two calls leading up to the third date.

Lots that can happen in between those calls.

...

If, shortly after taking her number, you can use text messaging to establish a "stream" of communication with her, the pattern starts to look much more stable. A regular text exchange that's fun, playful, and challenging will be "embedded" into your relationship with her.

So when the first date is over, she's expecting to hear from you again, because that's the pattern you've established. It makes things a lot less formal, a lot more quickly, and lets you establish a much deeper relationship with less in-person time.

And perhaps most importantly, with good texting skills, you can give her a lot of little emotional experiences in between dates that keep her wanting more and more of you.

And here's the problem: my texting might keep her interested, by giving her lots of little emotional experiences and "keep her wanting more and more" of me.

But what does it do for me?

Firstly, for me and my experience, there is absolutely no substitute for direct conversation. The closer we can get to it, the better the bonding, the better the experience, the more positive I feel, the bigger my boost in attraction for her. This is why I like talking on the phone or on instant messenger online (and I prefer Skype to those). These are all real-time, or nearly real-time, communications (by which I mean, the response comes back nearly instantaneously, allowing time for thinking). On IM services, even if you have to wait for the other person to type their response, it still lets you know that they are typing, so it feels immediate and in-person. That gap where the screen says "[Hername] is typing..." is filled with anticipation.

Here's what happens with email, text and similar services: I send a message and then I have to wait in suspense for a reply. Suspense, and not anticipation (with IM, if there's a longer pause where there's no "she's typing..." message, also gets suspense). Worry, rather than excitement. Isolation, rather than connection.

It also takes a certain amount of effort. I am not brilliant with my fingers when texting, and it takes me time and effort to compose and then enter a message (despite the practice I have had, and I am fairly good, just not up to full speed by any means). It's a high investment in energy, and as noted above, it's also a high investment emotionally. So the time from when I send my text to her, until I receive her reply, is all time during which my emotional engagement and interest in her is declining rapidly. I get a "little emotional experience" from receiving her text, and then it drops off almost immediately as I focus on composing my reply. I compose my reply, and then send it off into the ether, and then spend the next however long in suspense, feeling "Why is she even worth this?"

So, in Mr Hudson's scheme, although she might be feeling totally into me by the time the second date comes around, I'm starting to think, "Is she really worth all this effort? Am I actually all that interested in her? Well, we may as well see how this goes..."

In short, my emotional arc has been the opposite of hers, and what Mr Hudson says is the arc of a woman receiving bad/non-existent text flirting.

Now, to be fair, Mr Hudson talks about seeing it as a problem:

But in all seriousness, I used to get annoyed by texting too, and looked at is as a "necessary evil" and something that I tried to hurry through in between meet ups. But as I began to see what a difference it made in the number of dates, and how great they went, my mindset began to shift to the one that I shared with you here.

I know it made a huge impact on my own dating life, and when a guy gets good at it (we like to say that he's become a "Texting Genius"), this is no longer something that gets in his way, but it's actually something he enjoys doing between work, classes, etc.

But this doesn't sound like the issue I have with it. My problem is simply this: when I have to wait for a reply, the waiting sucks. Emails I can wait for a few days before it starts to wear on me, but texting (which is supposed to be so quick) if I don't get a reply quickly, it already feels like a burden. When Mr Hudson claims, "when a guy gets good at it ... it's actually something he enjoys doing" that doesn't compute. The closest analogy I have is that I do a pretty good job of doing the washing up (it kept getting me lumbered with the job while I still lived with my parents), and I do get a nice pay-off at the end (clean dishes to eat off next mealtime!) but there has never been a point at which it became something I enjoy doing. When Mr Hudson talks about a correlation between texting and "the number of dates, and how great they went" - obviously, he's not talking about my experience and my emotional involvement. If the stream of texting comms has turned me off, then it doesn't matter how good she is, I'm still not going to enjoy the date! It's not going to go well, let alone be "great", unless she makes a lot of effort and really reawakens my interest.

To be clear: I do like using a bit of texting in a relationship, and it certainly has some things for which it's the only or absolutely the best way to go. Sometimes, it even works to produce the emotional boost (especially if she initiates the texting exchange). It is just that using it as a flirtation medium kills any passion I might feel for the relationship.

[Edit To Add: Incidentally, here's one woman who agrees with my way of doing things, whose post I saw just after posting this one - though she may perhaps not be in the age range Mr Hudson assumes his PUA students will be chasing after. Basically, she describes as her ideal almost precisely what is my favoured way of handling dating comms, though I like more 'puter-based IM convos than she does, I guess.]

***

By now, you've probably guessed what the correlation between the "texting" emails and the other email is: they both propose techniques that, while they may work wonders for her interest in me, would absolutely kill off my interest in her, making her interest entirely worthless to me.

The second theme is also about flirtation technique, and is actually from another PUA coach called "Bobby Rio", who has presumably paid to use Mr Hudson's mailing list.

Mr Rio wants to explain to us men, "What makes women fall in love?"

Quoth Bobby:

Women don't fall in love while they are with you...

Women fall in love while they are away from you... thinking about you.

...

Women love drama (how else do you think there would be 5 different Housewives of (insert city) shows on TV?)

If you want to keep her attention... you've got to provide her that drama she craves.

Ambiguity is a great way to do this. You are sending her mixed signals. You are showing her multiple sides of your personality...

Sometimes you make her feel like she excites you...

Sometimes you make her feel like you are losing interest and she bores you...

Sound cruel?

Well, if you think back on the girls you fell in love with...

Chances are she made you feel this exact way...

Chances are she sent a lot of mixed signals.

Am I correct?

In short, Bobby, no. You're completely wrong. Women who made me feel that way, lost me. I didn't feel in love with them, or interested in them. I felt frustrated and unhappy with them, and I decided they weren't worth the effort.

What's more, treating a woman the way Bobby suggests would also kill any attraction I had for her. Ultimately, I need to respect a woman in order to love her and to want her, and this advice seems to be telling me to disrespect her and manipulate her. And, let's face it, if she were weak enough to fall for this stuff instead of telling me to sling my hook the first (or, let's be charitable, second) time I tried to pull a switch from "excited by" to "uninterested in", then she wouldn't be worth having anyway! I deserve a woman with the strength to know that I should be interested in her properly, not playing games like this! (And, I deserve a woman who knows that she should be interested in me properly, and not playing games either.)

(Not to mention, judging what people like in the personal lives, by the television they watch, seems like a really monumentally dumbass thing to do on just about every level - just sayin'!)

***

So, as I was saying earlier, these piece of pick-up advice are all very well, and they may or may not work to attract "the average woman" (whoever that might be), and in particular, Mr Hudson's texting advice may or may not work on the vast majority of women. But the advice is all totally fucking useless if it takes no account of the emotional state of the guy using it, and in particular how he views the woman on the receiving end. Sure, manipulate (or, let's be generous to Mr Hudson, "stimulate") the woman's emotional responses towards you, but at the same time be aware of and manage your own emotional state and responses towards her, and keep them positive. (And how positive can it be if you're trying to "game" her with flips of "I'm interested/I'm not that interested"?) So, if texting her is making me grumpy and resentful towards her, then I'm going to stop texting and stick to comms that boost rather than diminish the attraction I feel, at least until I've got a solid baseline understanding of who she is and how attracted I am to her as a person over time.

How well does OkCupid "get" me?

[NB - I reference my Western star sign personality in this post. I do NOT believe in astrology, but it's just so useful to describe what I really am like...]

After the rather heavy stuff that came up in the last post about 3 very different "not a relationship" situations and one "not quite sure yet", I thought it was time for some fun introspection!

It occurred to me that often the very first page I turn to on someone else's OkCupid profile is the "Personality" section (I'm basically checking out whether it has the "More/Less Kinky" bar visible - more kinky means I'm interested, less kinky means she's very probably not compatible with me - no indication means I'd have to play it by ear!)

However, I didn't actually know what my "Personality" profile said. So, I decided to have a look and see how well OkCupid's "Personality" page matches my own self-image, and have a little think about why or why not.   Obviously, there's some selection bias in that if I don't want to give away an an answer on a question, or if I feel none of the options are close to what I feel, then I didn't answer the question so they can't use it to refine their description.

It turns out that there's only four "Less" items on my chart: a little bit "less Indie" (since I don't really know what they mean by Indie, I'm not surprised); somewhat "less experienced in love" (makes sense, since I haven't had a lot of relationships and even fewer of them lasted any length of time); a lot less greedy (I am a giving personality, I think!) and less "old-fashioned" (whatever that means).

There were quite a lot of "More" things that I am, here they are in order of descending "moreness":

• more artsy
• more energetic
• more kinky
• more dominant
• more competitive
• more sex-driven
• more adventurous
• more compassionate
• more spiritual
• more thrifty
• more kind
• more geeky
• more mathematical
• more political
• more creative
• more giving
• more literary
• more progressive
• more independent
• more trusting
• better mannered
• more sloppy
• more experienced in sex
• more introverted
• more aggressive

Being me, and knowing how kinky I am, I suppose I expected that to the at the top. But there's a lot more to my life than kink, so maybe it's not a big surprise it came third. I was surprised a little by what beat it, though.

Of course I'm artsy: I write and play music, I write stories and poetry and even occasionally attempt to draw stuff. However, "energetic" really doesn't sound like a word I would use to describe myself. In fact, on reading dating profiles where the woman wants an energetic guy, I usually think that disqualifies me (although I'd obviously want to know more if she wrote to me first). It's not that I'm lazy or have low energy, it's just that I don't see myself as buzzing around all the time or always on the go doing energetic stuff. I'm not quite sure how OkCupid got that one. That said, I must have answered a lot of questions in an "energetic" way to give that result, so maybe I should be more positive and contact those energy-seeking women after all?

"Dominant" and "sex-driven" probably come from the same "kinky" input that I already mentioned, although I really don't see myself as being all that dominant in everyday life. Assertive, perhaps, and certainly willing to have my say, but generally more inclined to want things smoothed over at the end of the day. "Alpha male" stuff isn't my style, and I'm alpha enough to tell people to fuck off if they're not okay with that ;-) So again, not sure where that comes from unless it's from the BDSM orientation answers I've given.

Competitive: again, that's not really a term I use to describe myself, but this time I think it's an issue of my self-image not matching what I'm really like: see for example, my recent attempt at playing sports again! If I'm honest, I am competitive, I just don't like to think of myself that way.

I don't know about adventurous - I guess I'm surprised to see it so high up the list, because in a lot of ways there are things that I like to be just nice and steady all the time, and typical Cancerian that I am, I like my little shell home and want to stay there more than I want to travel, for instance. But equally, there are areas where I am always willing to try new things or explore, and I'm not totally averse to travel and seeing other places (I just feel the best part is when you get home again!) So, yeah, that one's a puzzle to me not because I think I'm unadventurous, I just think I'm not so unequivocally adventurous as it makes out.

Being compassionate, spiritual and kind go hand-in-hand for me, so it's no surprise that they're bunched together. They are things that are important in my life without a doubt. They aren't always conventionally expressed, otherwise I think those answers would put me higher (it may also be that I skipped some because I didn't like the answers on offer).

Being thrifty - I wish! I have little choice but to count pennies, because being on a low income and reliant on the Welfare State at the moment, if I don't do it then I get into trouble. And, indeed, have done a few times and needed help to bail me out. I've got better at it over the years and learning from my mistakes, so I'm on a more even keel than I used to be financially, but still: personality wise, I am not thrifty, I have just had to adapt to circumstances.

Being independent is kind of part of the same block - there's several on a similar level at this point in the chart. I think I am probably as independent as I have ever been: the adaptation to become more thrifty is part of that. I am emotionally self-sufficient for the most part, and I am able to cope with the business of living by myself fairly well without too many dramas.

The rest of that block is divided into three categories: political, artistic, and geekery (I think there's a lot of overlap between them in my personality, too).

Politically, I am "political", "progressive" and "giving" (which goes along with "less greedy", "more kind", etc).

Artistically, I am "creative" and "literary"

Geekily, I am "geeky" and "mathematical" - I was curious to note that some people are "more/less scientific", but I don't have an entry for that one. I assume I would come up as "more scientific" if I did.

There's a sharp drop to the next "tier" of entries, so it turns out that I am significantly less trusting than I am independent, although (let us not forget) still "more" of both than the average.

I found this interesting, because I think of myself as generally willing to extend trust to others. However, again like the typical Cancerian, there's a pretty firm boundary point beyond which I rarely let people in - my shell, if you will, so I can see that my trusting nature also has limits on it and that it should come with caveats, as implied by the lower position in the chart.

I was surprised to find that "better mannered" was so low in the chart, though Partly this may be because I haven't answered many questions about manners. It may be because I have different views on etiquette than the people who set the criteria. I am very strong on respect for others, and as far as I can see etiquette and manners are really routines that originated to provide a space for that to exist, and in some cases an encoding of what respect for others would usually require. So I think I have pretty good manners, and always strive to be polite.

I smiled when I saw "more sloppy" on the list. I am not a natural housekeeper by any stretch of the imagination, and I am generally happy with something that functions well rather than needing it to look nice, so my fixes and so on usually look a bit rough and ready. I'm not a naturally well-dressed person, either, though I often make an effort when I go out. Sloppy? Probably a fair description, when it's so low in the chart as it is.

The last three are curious to me. Regular readers will know that I identify as strongly introverted, so to see it appear second from bottom in the "more" list is quite surprising to me. Could it be that my adapted behaviour to try to function well in an extrovert world has "muffled" the signal? Maybe I haven't answered the right questions to give a strong signal? I think of all the results in this chart, this is the one where OkCupid have definitely not got me accurately ("energetic" being another one I suspect may be way off, but I am less sure about that).

"Experienced in sex" also surprised me, because to be honest I would have thought my experience was less than average (but then, hasn't that always been the way that men are encouraged to want it more? - and women are supposed to worry about being more experienced than average). I have had sex with anywhere between 1 and 4 women (depending on how broadly or narrowly you want to define "have sex"), with most conventional definitions probably setting the figure at 2. I'm pretty sure that at this stage, I haven't had more than a dozen sexual encounters in my life. Just to be clear, I'm cool with these facts: it's better to not have sex than to have it when it isn't good, after all, and I have lots of hope for lots more sex still to come in my life! What I think may have skewed the results, is that, what with my diverse kink and general interest in sexuality, I have perhaps done a wider variety of sex acts than average, which may have pushed up my score on the "experienced in sex" measurement.

As for being a little bit more aggressive than average? I think I can live with that (there's a reason why the image at the head of the blog is me wielding two pistols, after all). Again, it's not something I like to admit to myself but if the truth be told, I am a bit aggressive, and I know that some people around me experience me that way and have made me aware of that. I accept this as part of who I am and work with it to try to keep it from being an issue for others.

So, the biggest surprises for me were:

"Energetic" being second highest!
"Introverted" being second-lowest in the "more" part of the chart
"Experienced in sex" being "more" rather than "less"
"Better mannered" being low in the chart (although still scoring as significantly more than average).

As noted above, the fact that I scored so highly for "energetic" may mean it's worth my while checking out (and maybe messaging) those women whose profiles say they want energetic men. That's probably the main thing I'm going to take away from this exercise, that I may have been unnecessarily narrowing my field.

(I'm still not going to message the women who say they travel all the time, though!)

Contacted by 4 women in 5 days

**TRIGGER WARNING** mentions/description of fantasies of life-threatening scenarios, and mention of mindset around receiving sexual/emotional violence.

This is the tale of the past few days of dating site adventures (yep, I'm back on the dating theme again).

Four women wrote to me, three of whom I either never saw their profile or would have skipped straight past while searching. It remains to be seen whether I would have been right to do so on at least one of them, as shall become clear. the fourth was a woman I wrote to first. For the sake of anonymity, I'll just call them A, B, C and D for this post.

Woman A contacted me on Plenty of Fish, and the situation there is ongoing so I don't want to say too much about it yet - this is where it remains to be seen whether I would have been right to ignore her profile or not if left to my own devices.

Woman B responded to my first contact message on CollarMe (which I guess was my first mistake). The truth be told, I entertained the possibility of hooking up with B long after it should have been obvious to me that it wasn't going to be a healthy situation for me to get involved with. This was a case in point of wanting to be wrong and ignoring the signs. In the end, she broke off communications because I wasn't able to be as nasty as she wanted - in a SM/humiliation context, wanting a lot of "nastiness" is not always a warning sign, but here, and with the rest of the context that I had for it, I think it really should have been for me and I should have withdrawn a lot sooner.

Woman C wrote a memo to me on the Informed Consent website, and the reason I wouldn't have looked at her profile was simply distance to start with, but I trust people who write to me first to know what they are doing when it comes to their own willingness to travel (I set out my limits for my willingness to travel quite clearly on my profile there). There were one or two points that needed to be clarified, or where I felt that from her profile details it sounded like I wasn't what she wanted, so I mentioned these and asked about them. She explained how I was good enough to overlook those little points, and we talked a bit about what we expected from a relationship. It turned out that our attitudes towards sex and/or BDSM play were too different and I told her that with regret I did not think it could work - out of respect to the values that she held, I had to say "no". This is the healthy way for it to work (or rather, not work, since it wasn't going to work out for us).

Woman D PMed me on Babblesex when I wandered into a "vore** fetish" chatroom there and I made a quip based on my nick and the theme of the room. Since her profile identified her as lesbian (she later told me that this was a smokescreen to keep the sleazy guys from contacting her), I obviously wouldn't have contacted her first! (I did wonder if she'd somehow twigged to my somewhat gender-fluid identification, see the "My sexual orientation is..." box in the right hand column...) After a chat about shared fetishes/sexual interests (including vore fantasies), we had a rather hot roleplay (inspired by the quip I made that first attracted her!) in which I played an alien sundew-type plant that captured her space explorer.   (For those who want to know more, I posted the transcript from the roleplay, with 'D's permission - and her online name! - at And You Thought I Was Sweet (link NSFW and that post is full of sexual stuff that some may find triggering, e.g. forced-sex fantasy, peril, etc).) We talked some more last night about various things and although it's early days yet, it looks like I could have found a great new friend and occasional cyber-fuckbuddy.

As I say, I'm not sure where things are with A, and I still have hopes for something very positive to evolve from that situation.   Until there's enough to make a commitment, though, the Quest Continues...

---

**Vore: fantasy/roleplay fetish involving being turned on by the idea of people being eaten by creatures, aliens or plants.

What do running dreams mean again?

So last night (the night before my big interview), I had an intriguing, at times disturbing, and (as usual with my dreams) quite odd.

The dream started with me sharing a house as I did back at university, and in the dream it was in the city where I went to university (although the geography eventually proved to be quite different, as it usually is with dream places).

I was assigned the flat at the highest point in the building (we did have separate flats), because I was the one with the least social capital in the group, it seemed. There wasn't a lot to the starting episode of the dream, but the two key events were both similar. Someone else entered my flat and rearranged things there. I found this disturbing - a betrayal, and an invasion of privacy and my personal space (I'm not going to draw any conclusions about how the dream related to that job interview that I was expecting!) The second time, the flat had been given a complete makeover, and my old and battered bed had been thrown out. The problem was, the makeover had not included a replacement bed for me to sleep on. I felt very disturbed and anxious about this fact, and so I decided that I would go out and try to find my old mattress, or a replacement!

This ushered in the next part of the dream.

I set off, naked (because I was getting ready for bed, I suppose, and I sleep in the nude usually), into the dusk to go and find where they had dumped my mattress, or to find somewhere that would sell me a new one. I was jogging or running through the streets, looking for likely dumping sites for a mattress (for some reason, I was sure that they would have fly-tipped the mattress, not taken it to a proper rubbish dump). I had bare feet and could feel them against the cold, wet tarmac of the pavement.

Early on, there was a police van and a police motorcycle approaching as I went to cross the road (the image was lifted straight from a memory of a protest march I was on, but the weather and time of day was different). I weaved between them, and dodged the officers' half-hearted attempts to catch me (they didn't bother to give chase). Then I was off to find my mattress!

There were several paths that I followed, largely staying away from the roads but choosing to go up the back alleyways - some of the surroundings were settings from the city I went to uni, others were similar but invented by my imagination. At one point, I went through a pub's beer garden that was out the back of the pub. There were people there, who looked quizzically at me but didn't seem perturbed by the naked runner.

Of course, there were hazards for a bare-footed runner in a run-down part of a dirty city. I dodged broken glass, used needles, and the like with care and ease as I accelerated on my course.

As my run went on, my pace became faster. The anxiety and anger that had fuelled me before faded with time, and eventually my original purpose faded into the background as well, and as they faded, I ran more quickly. It wasn't for the sheer joy of running, but just because I was running and there was no reason to stop, and I was naked and that was okay.

Towards the top of the hill, I came to a secondary school. It was now deep into night time, and it seemed natural to run through rather than round the school (and for some reason, I think I thought there would be a mattress in the school). It was a familiar school, it felt like one where I had been when I was young (but the layout wasn't anything like the one I really went to). I went through the showers and changing rooms for PE, I ran down the corridors. There were people there - pupils mostly, but a few teachers as well (what they were doing there in the middle of the night, I don't know). My pace increased again - I wanted to get out of there, away from the people who might not understand a naked guy running through a school full of young teens. I ducked through the loos (both boys' and girls' - in the dream they were directly connected, which seems odd now but seemed perfectly natural in the dream). I hurtled through them (my pace still steadily increasing as the dream progressed) and swerved down the corridor, towards the front door of the school, which was where I had expected to emerge when I first ever entered the building. By now, I could hear people talking about there being a streaker in the school, referring to me.

As I came to the lobby area, there were a few police officers and a gathering of teachers there, and pupils wandering about going to their lessons (it was finally daylight again now).

In the dream, I thought quickly. I wanted to show that I meant no harm, that I was just celebrating the movement of the human body in full freedom. That I was certainly not a threat in any way to the children at the school. So, I put up my hands in surrender.

Then I realised that this might actually send the wrong image as a naked man displaying himself openly (my cock was completely flaccid in the dream throughout). So, maintaining a posture that was proud and not at all embarrassed by my nudity, I moved my hands to cover my crotch, and waited for the decision of the police.

It never came, because at that point, I woke up.

***

I don't have a clue what it means. However, the emotional journey is an intriguing one, because of the parallels it has in my history. It seems to be going from a point of feeling insecure and dependent/subservient to others, through a sense of betrayal and violation by those others, to searching for a means of recovery, to being completely comfortable in myself but in a way that ultimately is not (yet) deemed socially acceptable. That journey, when I write it out like that, certainly sounds familiar when I think about everything I've written on this blog about my past, particularly about coming to terms with my sadism. However, I am not certain that that is actually what it is. Arguably, it could just as much be about the way I view the job that I applied for and what it would mean if I got it, or about any number of other things that I choose not to try to figure out right now. It was a dream, and an interesting story, with an emotional arc that resonates in various ways in my life. Let's leave it there.