Feeling Sexy
Posted by Gabe | Filed under Harlotry, Sexy Vids/Pics
Tonight we went to a crossdressing themed party. Now, I’m not sure what crossdressing is for a genderfucker like myself, but it was a fun opportunity to dress up in clothes marketed to women. With a mix of my and Elizabeth’s wardrobe I was pretty nicely decked out. When we got home I stripped down to just my pink fishnet thigh highs. I have to say, I feel pretty damned sexy sitting around the house like this. And the view from here ain’t too bad either.
Mistress Matisse Is Just Plain Wrong
Posted by Gabe | Filed under Mono/Poly Resources, Random Ramblings, Relationships
For the last day and a half I’ve been trying to figure out how to address this adequately, and coming up short, so I’ll just say it like this..
Mistress Matisse fucked this up royally.
A recent Stranger column by Mistress Matisse attempted to tackle the phenomenon of mono folks dating poly folks in order to change them, to rescue them from their wayward ways and live the romantic story of loving someone so hard that they became who they “should” be. I’ve seen of this kind of thing happen. It’s disrespectful at best and damaging to a person’s psyche at worst. It’s something that needs to be addressed.
Unfortunately Matisse did so terribly, and in the process insulted a lot of people.
She starts off describing monogamous “cowboys” who date poly folks to “persuade them to sever existing relationships and embrace monogamy,” but then paints every mono person who dates a poly person as one of those people.
Instead of speaking of cowboys and cowgirls, her language drifts into “monogamist” and “someone who is clearly monogamous” while still attributing the cowboy behavior to them.
She says
Viewed through a monogamist’s gaze, dropping your lasso on a wandering heart is the stuff of songs, literature, and drama.
Not “through a cowboy/girl’s gaze,” which would make sense. She’s now expanded the manipulative behavior to all mono folks. So us poly folks are the fodder for the romantic fantasies of those monos, eh? The reason one of them would be attracted to one of us is because they can save us and teach us the truth about love.
She just defined monogamous ideals across the board as the fairy tale manipulative machinations of a Harlequin romance novel. If you only want to have one relationship at a time, this must be your drive.
She goes on to say:
Why the hell would a poly person get romantically involved with someone who is clearly monogamous in the first place? The honest answer is something like: hormones, misguided optimism and willful self-delusion, more hormones, and a little emotional masochism
And the only reason one of us would want to date one of them is that we’re horny and deluding ourselves. Right. It couldn’t possibly be valuing that person, up to and including the way that they love.
Where Matisse goes wrong in painting mono/poly pairings as cowperson/cow is in the expectation that a person of one relational orientation requires the same of their partner. Sometimes that’s true, and sometimes that’s not. In my case, obviously, it’s not. Some folks, in order to be fulfilled, need their partner’s to have the same sort of numerical setup that they have. But how I work and what I need from my partner are two different issues.
Think of it like this. I’m starting a band, and I LOVE Black Sabbath. I bring Sabbath’s influence to my writing and playing. My bandmates find their inspiration in other places, like Black Flag, Bop and Jesus Freaks like Larry Norman. But we’re willing to work together, we’re compatible as writers and musicians, and we find unique, beautiful ways to blend our influences.
My buddy, another Sabbath freak, is trying to start up a band too. He found a couple of guys to play with who really believe that Led Zeppelin started heavy metal. My buddy decides to go ahead and start a band with them, even though he can’t stand Zeppelin. He figures if he just plays them enough Sabbath, and explains why its so wonderful, he can change their minds.
Which one of these is going to make it past 3 practices?
Now, is it the love of Black Sabbath that dooms bands? No. It’s requiring of others what they’re not willing to give, and not being up front about that.
In the same way, monogamy isn’t the problem in the mono-poly relationships. Those can be done really well. The problem is approaching ANY relationship as a means of changing someone to fit one person’s ideals.
It’s obvious Matisse doesn’t think so. After moving away from the cowperson language, as quoted above, she then goes on to say:
I can promise you, if you’re poly and you’re involved with someone who’s not, once the hot sex cools off and reality sets in, every single problem that occurs in the relationship will somehow devolve to: You’re fucking other people.
Suddenly Matisse knows everything there is to know about the workings of every mixed-orientation relationship. She’s just guaranteed us all that every mono person in a relationship with a poly person requires that their partner love and fuck only them. There’s no room for differentiating between two related but different needs. Matisse knows better than Elizabeth does that Elizabeth HATES me fucking other people.
And that is complete and utter bullshit.
I’ve respected Matisse’s advice in the past. I enjoy the podcast she does with Monk. I read her blog. That’s why I’m so waylaid by her sudden lack of nuance. The abruptness of her shift from talking about disrespectful behavior to asserting that behavior exists where it does not makes me angry.
Had she stayed talking about cowfolk, she could have had some useful insights, maybe even helped a few people. That without even seeing it she equated all mono-poly relationships with manipulation and abuse is impossible to overlook and difficult to forgive.
The problem with terrible behavior is the terrible behavior, not the other attributes that the person exhibiting it has.
It turns out, Elizabeth doesn’t need to love Black Sabbath the way I do. She’s just got to love that I love them. She does, and we make beautiful music together.
Collars and Identity
Posted by blessed_harlot | Filed under Age Play, Kink, News, Relationships, Spirit Work
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
(Paul in his letter to the Galatians, 5:13-14)
I was given my first collar in 2006, by a church in Texas. It signified a bond between us as members of the body of Christ, and their acknowledgment and support of a unique vocational call for me. I had been a hospital chaplain for a few years already, and continued that work in their name for a few more years. As with any symbol that’s been around that long, that collar means a lot of different things to different people. To me, it came to mark me as someone in a liminal space. There is a strong differentiation in mainstream Christianity between clergy and laity, that I have never fully accepted. I wore the collar as a sign of servanthood: the education of a leader without the authority over others, the grassroots positioning of a layperson with the devotion that I hoped to find in my fellow congregants. Continuing a long theme in my life, I was “both/and”, combining categories often kept separate. I still have the right to wear that collar… though on the rare occasions that I am fulfilling the duties of that role I tend to wear other signifiers, like the collar-like stole.
I didn’t anticipate ever receiving another collar, until Gabe gave me one on Sunday, July 18th. This collar is specifically a signifier of a relationship between Gabe and one of my age play personas. So, he has a slutty twelve-year old sub! This collar is first a signifier that Lucy is Daddy’s, as Daddy is Lucy’s. Lucy has what are perhaps the most impressionable elements of my personality. She has a purity of desire that other parts of me can access through her, but don’t embody themselves. When she feels, she feels with her whole self. She is completely centered, or completely swept away; entirely in her strength, or entirely vulnerable… sometimes all at the same time. There’s no prevarication, no adult-like tempering of feeling or holding back, no going half-assed. The collar has that purity of devotion to Daddy, and more, without being less full of devotion. The collar reverberates through the rest of me as well, as it does through Gabe. The love he wove into it, and the love I give it as I wear it casts its own spell, and carries its own larger meaning… through us and around us. Symbols are powerful, and carry their own reality… especially when they have their own color, and texture, and weight on a body.
With most labels in my life, it’s been easy for me to realize that they apply both to my whole self and to only a part of myself. I am fully bisexual, but that label best describes one specific thread of me. I am fully female, though there are individual parts of me for which that label doesn’t make sense. When my vocation was minister, all of me was a minister, though being a minister was not all that I was. For some reason, this dance of the parts and the whole gets frequently gummed up in BDSM. There’s a lot of essentialist categorization floating around in the air. For some folks, if you submit or dominate, one of those is all that you are and you are always that. Obviously, there are those who think otherwise. And I believe there are those who want to think otherwise but get a little of this communal gunk rubbed off on their brain. It’s difficult to avoid entirely. I think this essentialism is a key dynamic in the “there’s no such thing as a switch” meme. It’s an inability to hold the paradox of the whole and the parts of an identity. Hard as it is to believe, it’s a reality that eludes a Venn diagram. When I am one of my ageplay personas, I am fully them, and they are a deep and authentic part of me. But they are not all of me. When I am subbing to Gabe, I am subbing with my whole self, though my whole self is not submissive. It’s the same paradox of being a partner, a friend, a massage therapist, a daughter, an office manager, a Christian, an anarchist and more, all at the same time.
This reminds me of one of Gabe’s favorite statements, from Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.
Living With Someone/Living Poly
Posted by blessed_harlot | Filed under Relationships
Moving in with someone else and beginning an intimate relationship with them has brought to light just how much potential for anxiety I have just below the surface. When I lived by myself I had a tremendous amount of authorship of my daily life, down to the smallest details. I knew what areas to avoid, what triggers to stay away from, and I could do so while still having a full and ever-growing life. This gave the illusion that I had overcome all that anxiety and didn’t have to handle it anymore.
There is a theory, however, that’s always felt instinctively true to me, that your fight or flight panic switch gets calibrated at a young age. If you grow up in an atmosphere that is primarily calm and peaceful, that primal switch needs a firm grip on it to set it off. If you grow up around highstrung people, in threatening or unstable surroundings, that switch is feather light and gets tripped easily. I think the latter is likely true for me. That doesn’t mean that I can’t practice peacefulness, and find ways to keep the air around that switch very, very still. I can, and at some points in my life I have. It just means I get to work a little harder at it than others might have to.
So I’m living a life now where the details of what I may be doing in any particular hour are shaped by a large number of factors, many of which are out of my control. That’s not a bad thing by any means. It just means I don’t have access to a major coping mechanism that I once used, and I get to develop new ones. They’re coming along slowly. One of the the first ones I got fluent in was leaning on Gabe. It was such a bizarre, wild, new, fundamentally thrilling thing to have somebody else I could rely on to take care of things, or to take care of me. I’ve not had that before — not from parents, not from any other lover. It was deeply healing to experience that. But it’s occurred to me the last month or so that I’m doing it too much. We are committed to communicating with each other, a lot, and so it’s easy to go to him first off about any worries I have. But he really doesn’t need to pour that much energy into reassuring me about everything, and I don’t need to be hit so hard if worries hit while I’m away from him. So, I’m not running directly to him with anxieties, and realizing I still have quite a toolbox of skills available to handle these things myself. I’m still getting my footing, but I didn’t realize how much I already knew.
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Another recent learning is this: being with a poly partner means being, by definition, behind on the news on certain subjects. Gabe’s relationship with Kristi has… gotten larger. A few weeks ago there was a palpable new commitment or investment in it for them. It’s very hard for anybody to find language for it. They are not headed toward any particular goal, and there’s not a lot of modeling for romances that are not inevitably heading toward marriage. So they’re feeling it out as they go. Changes grow in them, and they communicate with me as well as they are able, through words and other kinds of language.
It was disconcerting at first for me to feel this particular change. I didn’t know what it was. I don’t get direct data; I discover what’s bubbling through them secondhand. Then there were my anxieties about going somewhere we hadn’t gone before. The other times he’s had someone important to him, the bond didn’t grow this deeply, I don’t think. I always had the feeling that they were many steps away from the biggest kinds of commitments, like moving in together or weaving daily life together at that level. With Kristi, our daily lives are entwined. We see each other in some form or another at least 4 times a week, usually more. So the next potential step I should prepare myself for is….? Who knows. They don’t. The most disturbing part of this big shift for me was that I suddenly felt disconnected from my capacity to enjoy them together, and get all frubbly. Something was in the way.
Now, I very much enjoy the way our daily lives weave together these days, you understand. That’s not the issue. The issue this time was more “NEW-OH-MY-GOD-THIS-IS-NEW-WHAT-THE-HELL’S-GOING-ON-AAAAAA-WE’RE-ALL-GONNA-DIE”. Something like that. Nice, rational, reasoned concerns. One of the benefits of my metamour being all kickass and awesome and human and a friend of mine is that I can’t even try to paint her as either evol or perfect. I get an immediate, really good look at just how rational my current fears are. And these were not. At all.
So I hung on and prayed and waited. At some point I realized, again, how much he loves me. I started noticing it again, in his touch and his eyes all day. I realized again that I’m perfectly capable of addressing any needs of mine that come up and getting them met. I realized they all were getting met, and that the danger on my radar was some sort of ancient shadow not at all related to the present. I realized how much I was anticipating, and not living in the present.
And then I got to watch Gabe make something with his own hands for Kristi. And to be able to observe that… was something sacred that still brings tears to my eyes. The stuff that pours out of them is awesome and beautiful. So then all the frubble started flooding in again, pouring through whatever was in the way.
So, I’m in a bizarre state of being raw from the recently flushed fear, and high from the incoming rush of frubbles. It’s odd, but pretty good. I really do love my life.
Getting Good at Oral Sex
Posted by Gabe | Filed under Relationships, Sex Education
I joined reddit.com a few weeks ago, and I have to say I’m really enjoying it. I find that the discussion that happens in the comments on reddit tends to be intelligent, informed and nuanced, especially as compared with other discussion forums on the web. That I can easily bounce between /r/OpenChristian and /r/BDSMcommunity and feel at home in both is pretty impressive.
When I saw someone posting on /r/sex about his worries about his smaller-than-average penis, I was hopeful that the comments would be helpful and reassuring. Reddit, as has been the case so far, didn’t let me down. There are quite a few comments from women (who the poster specifically request give input) stating that penis size is not the measure of a lover, and that they’ve had mindblowing sex with men with smaller-than-average penises. All guys have some worry about the appeal of their cock, specifically around size, and these are just the kinds of comments I’d be hoping for from a general audience.
But, and you knew there was a “but” coming, one thing kinda threw me off. In the top comment as of the time of this writing someone says, “Become GREAT at giving oral, read up on it, same for fingering and everything else.” The sentiment was repeated by quite a few other women. The general thought here is that penetrative sex isn’t the be all, end all of a satisfying sexual experience, and I fully agree with this. Good sex includes all kinds of activities and everyone should embrace them.
What bugged me is the idea that by reading up on oral sex someone can become good at it. I know I’m going against an entire industry of publishing here (including that cultural juggernaut, Cosmo), but I really believe that you can’t learn to have good sex by stacking up a library of techniques you can draw from. Writing the alphabet on her clit with your tongue may give some interesting and pleasurable sensations, but that’s not where good oral sex comes from.
Good sex, oral or otherwise, is communication.
Being a good lover, and indeed, eating pussy well, doesn’t come from combining techniques in a way that will get other people off. Each vulva is unique. Each clit is unique. And, despite all the marketing telling us otherwise, each woman is unique. If you want to be a masterful cunnilingist, then the skill you need to learn is listening.
I don’t mean sit down first and have a discussion about what actions will help your partner come. I mean that before your tongue even touches her you need to be aware of her fully. You need to hear the words she says, the way she breathes, the sounds she makes, the way she moves. And with each touch you need to be aware of how she responds. Does she like hard pressure. Does too much suction cause her to pull back. Does feeling your teeth cause her to gasp? Is it a good gasp or a bad one?
Good cunnilingus isn’t a system. It’s a conversation.
And when you know how she responds to different things, and she knows how she responds to you doing different things, then the conversation begins in earnest.
In preparing for writing this, I wanted an impartial opinion on my own skills, so I asked my friend, theshadowsrose, if to the best of her recollection I was good at oral sex. Without knowing what I was planning to write, or the idea I was going to explore she said “[Y]es. You were responsive to what my body said I liked and were willing to be adaptable to its preferences.”
The thing is, that’s not how you become good at oral sex. That’s how you become a good lover. That’s how you become a good partner. That’s how you become a good friend. That’s how you become good at relating to other people.
Don’t read a book on good sex. Read (and be read by) your partners. They are the ultimate text on themselves.
Bodies Are Just Amazing!
Posted by Gabe | Filed under Go Read This!
I love bodies. I love all sorts of bodies. I love the bodies of the people who surround me. I love the bodies of the people at the grocery store. I love the bodies of the dancers at the strip club. I love bodies. Each one is a gift. Each one is unbelievably amazing.
I’ve come across several blogs that seems as though they want to communicate that same love. I’ll share them in the order in which I found them.
The Thickness: “an appreciation blog of chubby/thick women and their sexiness.” The Thickness focuses on celebrating a particular set of bodies, one that is often devalued in the popular discourse. It’s a mix of pro models and user submissions and reading the messages that come with the user submissions it’s easy to see the impact that this celebration has on people. It’s amazing and beautiful and you should add it to your reader.
Ordinary People is a mix of photos found online and user submissions, and it features… people. All sorts of people. All sorts of body types. The people here are the ones you see every day. It’s full of bravery, nervousness, boldness, pride, acceptance, sexuality and what the site owner terms “ordinary people.”
Everyone Should Post Nude Once is a new blog full of user submissions of full body nude photos. People can email their photos to the curator and have them posted anonymously. There are some specific rules to keep the blog on the safe side of pornography (no erections, no touching of genitals) which I find somewhat disappointing, but I appreciate the project nonetheless. The curator says “This blog is to celebrate the human form, and let people get over their inhibitions when it comes to nudity.” I’d love to see more variation in the shapes and sizes represented there, but that’s up to us to join in and start sending in our own pictures!
So yeah, I love bodies, and while I don’t often use “should” language, I really think you should love bodies too. I don’t think, looking at these three sites, that anyone is able to do anything less than love the bodies shown.
“Using Boobs”
Posted by blessed_harlot | Filed under Go Read This!, Theory Fuck
How many images do you figure you’re surrounded by every day? How many do you “ingest”, directly or indirectly?
Who creates all those images?
What various agendas and motivations might those creators have for making these images and showing them to you?
I believe these questions are important to everyone, but if you have a worldview that includes particular criticisms of our culture — the idea that there are fundamental ways that our cultures devalues bodies, as one example — then these questions become even more important.
This is why I enjoy blogs like Sociological Images, which I’ve linked to before. The SI writers have some worldviews that differ significantly from Gabe’s and mine; we have some differences in our basic operational definitions, and we likely see the path to healing or improving our world to be very different. But SI consistently puts forward some very thought-provoking ideas, and encourages its readers to flex their own critical thinking muscles on the world around them. I appreciate that.
I found this recent post of theirs to be truly fascinating: Using Boobs To Sell Car Insurance. They have posted three foreign commercials, all of which they consider to be objectification of women. I invite you to visit the site now, watch the videos and notice your own responses before reading further. What do you see when you watch those videos? What responses do you have, and why do you think you have those particular responses?
-=-=-=-
Now, here’s mine. To clarify from the start, I don’t believe that the depiction of a body, female or otherwise, is inherently objectification. That basic assumption threads through my response. While there’s plenty to be said about power dynamics in media construction, I don’t find that issue to be specifically relevant to my responses here, and so I have not addressed it.
I am especially fond of the first commercial. Having vehicles painted on boobs puts me in mind of the tenderness I feel in my own relationship to my car — it is a “body part”, an extension of personality for many of us, on some level. The shell we ride in dangerous, modern, high speed traffic is oftentimes a reminder of our bodies’ softness and fragility. There is a playfulness in the short film that I enjoy very much, as various hands collaborate on a dance reminiscent of Annie Sprinkle’s performance art piece “Boob Ballet”. Many of the SI comments on this commercial focus on a perceived threat in the brief struggle between two pair of hands. I got none of this message, as the posture of the women does not transmit to me concern or danger. Other comments found the lack of heads to be disturbing. I found the piece worked better without splitting our attention between faces and breasts; I also don’t feel a need to value a head more than other parts of bodies, which are just as full of personality and uniqueness as the faces we usually interact with. I saw erect, beautiful torsos playing a game that I was delighted to see.
I found the second commercial more problematic. Though it’s a personal opinion, there was not much aesthetically that I found pleasing, so I was left to focus on the characterization of individuals actually working for this airline. While I don’t find the sexy car wash girl inherently problematic as a character, to overlay that character onto every single female flight attendant actually working for the airline is to remove a lot of personal autonomy and individual choice. That’s not cool for me. Perhaps someone else can add to this?
The last commercial? It is absurd, and humorous for that reason. A scantily clad, oontz-filled dance to sell tires? I don’t know that the absurdity was intentional, but it’s fun. I’m aware that the lead dancer is rounder than the vast majority of Caucasian dancers in US media, and I enjoyed the small amount of diversity of bodies shown. The dancers are talented, but I can’t tell how much imagination the creators really put into their use of our time.
This is what date night is like around here
Posted by Gabe | Filed under Adventures IRL, Harlotry, Sexy Vids/Pics
Take two hippies, who happen to be exhibitionists, and make their date consist of buying a new camera and some body paints, and this is what happens!
A Painted Lady
Speaking of being hippies, Eliz and I are headed off to Bonnaroo this week! If you see us, say hi! We love making new friends.
Links
Posted by blessed_harlot | Filed under Go Read This!, News, Sex Work
It’s time to share some linkage. No, not that kind!
This first link… makes me so very sad. Apparently, the Australian Ratings Board is having an effect on the rates of certain plastic surgeries in the country. Some actresses are essentially having their labia minora removed in order to fit the Board’s definition of “discreet genitalia” for a film to qualify as soft core porn. This is an example to me of the profound damage that can happen when crass commercialization in porn intersects with a body-negative culture. (Sociological Images is a site I’d generally recommend as thoughtful and thought-provoking, though the main blogger is, for the most part, anti-pornography.)
Sociological Images: How A Ratings Board Is Driving Rates Of Cosmetic Surgery
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The second link is a lovely photo. I came across it stumbling, and it’s a great way to cap off May as National Masturbation Month:
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Lastly, I’m a big fan of weddings that are a unique and inspired reflection of the parties getting married. Here’s what can happen when someone in the family is circus royalty (LOTS of large photos):
Amy and Jesse part one
Amy and Jesse part two
No Idea (new video porn from Elizabeth!)
Posted by Gabe | Filed under Harlotry, Sexy Vids/Pics
I was out on a date last week, and Elizabeth decided to find some mischief into which she could get. Grabbing the video camera and an old silicone friend of hers, she set to making us all a movie. I’ve put it up as a torrent on Empornium for you all to download and enjoy. I recommend enjoying it with some lube handy.
Not only is this video immensely hot, it’s also everything that I think the best porn can be. Elizabeth creates a direct connection with her audience, talking directly to us, and presents herself with a depth of intimacy rarely seen in sexually explicit video. She inspires me to be better. She also inspires some amazing orgasms. Watch and see.
