Welcome back!

I stay away from a lot of feminist blogs because, well, reading them often hurts my soul. In fact other than perusing Feministing and Feministe, I leave it up to Ren, Trinity, Amber, and Caroline to keep my up to date on what is happening vis-a-vis sex and feminism. These ladies have the patience of saints because they manage to spend a lot of time reading the same angry arguments about sex work and responding to them over and over again.

For a long time I knew that there was some fundamental lack of clash in the debate. An ideological space where the competing ideas could not be resolved because they are operating on different planes. Many radical and second wave feminists take a strong social constructionist view of gender and violence against women. Many sex positive feminists see this as lacking in nuance and denying the autonomy of individual women. But, that distinction has been on the table for a long time.

Today I started thinking about another one when I was reading this post of Caroline’s. She links to a blog where a very brave woman discusses her incredibly damaging and negative experiences in the sex industry. That woman believes that she is dismissed by sex positive feminists as being a “sad case” – that her experience is the exception and does not invalidate sex work. On the flip-side, many former sex workers that had positive experiences feel their voices are drowned out and silenced by radical feminists who claim they are apologists for the patriarchy.

The problem is that these arguments still aren’t truly clashing with each other. Two claims are being debated as if they are a single one even though they are neither directly related nor mutually exclusive.

Claim #1: Sex work is wrong.

Claim #2: There is something wrong within sex work.

The “within” is very important in that second claim. It distinguishes the idea that sex work is on face something to be rejected from the claim that there are problems in sex work that need to be remedied. I don’t know a single sex worker that would not concede the second claim. Of course there are individuals, perhaps even the majority of individuals, who are severely adversely affected by sex work. But, one claim does not automatically support the other because Claim #2 is a quantitative claim that describes a current problem whereas Claim #1 is qualitative and makes a value judgment. The material conditions of sex work can change and Claim #2 would be eroded but for those that support Claim #1, no change would be sufficient. By definition sex work is wrong and no number of pleasant personal experiences could change that.

So, yes, I desperately abhor the abuse and mistreatment of sex workers. I loath the deeply disturbing and violent treatment that sex workers face. As a separate issue I am, of course, concerned about the trafficking of human beings or the exploitation and rape of children that cannot consent to entering the sex trade. I can see all of these things and I can still say that sex work should exist and can be healthy. I can believe that it will never disappear and so it must be prepared, not just to make the best of a bad situation but to create joy out of a vocation that should be honored instead of denigrated. I honor the voices of women that have experienced pain or violence in sex work and I don’t think that they are tokens. But, I think that their experiences provide a backdrop for an important change and®evolution, not for a dismantling of an eternal system.

(Also, go read the 11th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy)

This is the third post in my series of interviews on masculinity. I think that some clear patterns are starting to emerge in the responses that the men are presenting. Today, we have D of the blog Narration by D.

D’s responses focus largely on the body and the physical realities of typical masculine vs. feminine forms. By characterizing himself as androgynous, D seems to separate himself from masculinity both sexually as well as physically.

This photograph was taken by D’s wife Thursday.

When was the first time you remember being aware of masculinity? How old were you? What was the cultural climate or influence?

The first time I was aware of masculinity would be when I first tried to play organized sports. Sports reeks of masculine ability, and it sums up the masculinity in competition. I noticed that most of masculinity revolves around establishing yourself in the pecking order. I suck at sports, built thin, gangly and uncoordinated. Strength and stamina are prerequisites of masculine power and sports, sadly.

I was about 8 I think. My sister was very good at sports, much better than I was. Small midwest town. Sports are the big thing in the town. That is what school pretty much revolves around. My parents were very supportive of reading and education, but they did love the sports aspect of my sister.

Do you think of yourself as masculine? Why or why not?

No. I have never felt very dominant, nor do I have a masculine build. I have what would be typical ‘feminine traits’. I’m a peacemaker and hate competition. I have middle child syndrome written all over me. I am passive and compromising, touchy feely, not what I would consider masculine. I always felt that I look more androgynous than masculine.

How does your masculinity relate to your sexuality (be it your orientation, preferences, or expressions)?

Well, I find I am attracted to women that have a very feminine look. Very curvy, not really thin and boyish. I am also almost always attracted to dominant women. I am very non-threatening to women. That was a problem in school. I’ve also always been bi-curious. I like the thin, lithe boy types – kind of the opposite of what I like about women.

Some people have asked me if they can answer the questions. Absolutely! I look forward to hearing from as many people about this as possible. You can answer the questions and email your response to lumpesse AT gmail DOT com or you can post them on your own weblog. There is no need to link back to me (although I certainly don’t mind) but I would love if you sent me a link so that I could link to your responses here. The only thing I ask is that the comments of each post be left to discuss that particular post, so don’t post your answers in the comments.

So the other day I was thinking about masculinity. And then I realized I should probably think about it in conjunction with men. So, I asked a few guys to answer some very difficult questions about their relationships with masculinity. I’m amazed by the response so far and I hope that a dialogue will begin.

My first responder is an anonymous reader whose ideas I can really appreciate. It seems like being a “typical woman” is an acceptable choice for ladies but being typical in any way makes a man an oppressor. I think that his interview really reveals how there are thoughts beyond those typical responses. I want to thank him so much for this careful and touching set of responses.

When was the first time you remember being aware of masculinity? How old were you? What was the cultural climate or influence?

When I was very young I played “doctor” with my two female cousins, one of whom was my age and one of whom was as couple years older. We were probably 4 and 6. It wasn’t actually “doctor”. It was more like “stripper”. We’d take turns standing on a table in their basement and dancing around while taking our clothes off. It was erotic in the most innocent way imaginable. We knew we could get in trouble for it, and that their mother was right on the other side of the basement door, in the kitchen. I wasn’t there when they got busted, but I know they did get busted at some point. Presumably there were other boys they played that game with. The older cousin was the instigator, ringleader, and master of ceremonies. Also usually the first person to dance.

That was my first experience of “female” as an attractive “other”. I guess I knew earlier on that girls and boys were different, but only in some vague cootie-related way that never gave me much sense of “masculinity” as opposed to anything else. There was something about being a boy, about that thing between my legs, about how those two girls got interested when it got hard. Somehow I knew that was part of my SELF—my Identity. Also, I knew my dad had one, and it was important to me that I did too.

Cultural climate or influence: suburban Utah. I grew up in a suburb about 20 minutes north of Salt Lake City, and the cousins were another 15 or 20 minutes north. Something like 90% Mormon where I grew up. I wasn’t one, but they were (and still are). I discovered in my teen years that Mormon girls are just BUSTING to rebel, and given the slightest provocation they become complete wildcats. I imagine that my older cousin was playing some of that game (we were aware of the transgression this was), coupled with natural young-childhood curiosity.

Do you think of yourself as masculine? Why or why not?

I do, in a sense. I don’t really ever think about myself as masculine; I just am it. I’m about the straightest straight boy on the planet, and every woman I’ve ever been with has said so. I’m very much a Typical Boy. Minx has been mentioning lately about writing your own manual. I don’t need a manual, I need a pamphlet. I like boobs and blowjobs and having dinner cooked for me. I like protecting and pampering my women, taking them out and showing them off, buying them things. I like going out with the guys and drinking beer.

I guess the only place I’m not completely typical is that I’m not possessive or territorial about the people I love. I CAN be, certainly, but I’ve dealt with those aspects of myself thoroughly enough that they no longer dominate me.

Masculinity as I experience it is fraught with anxieties, but is loath to admit that it is. Femininity may be the same way, I suppose; I wouldn’t know. Here’s an example: I played golf yesterday with two female friends, and I opted to tee off from the Ladies’ tees with them, rather than all of us stopping at the Mens’ while I hit, then all of us going down to the Ladies’ for them to hit. I confess, on the hole where the groundskeeper was watching us tee off, I had a moment of concern about what he would think. I had even more concern about how I’d rationalize hitting from the “right” tee box without my friends knowing I was worried about not looking like a sissy to a stranger on a tractor. I know the male golfing buddies I usually play with would never let me hear the end of it if they knew I played from the Ladies’, but I concluded pretty quickly that that would say a lot more about their hang-ups than mine. The punchline is, I had one of the best rounds of my life, and I’m now hesitant to brag about that because I know I got about 700 free yards based on hitting from the “wrong” tees.

So, while I’m quite confident and comfortable with my masculinity and sexual orientation, there’s always the “guy thing” of appearing macho and never letting anyone question your masculinity. Which I hate, when I’m sucked into it, but find myself having concern for anyway.

How does your masculinity relate to your sexuality (be it your orientation, preferences, or expressions)?

As I said above, if there’s a thing a Guy would like in bed or most anywhere else, odds are very good I’ll like it. Naked girls. Blowjobs. Tit fucking. Doggy style. Facials. Mainstream porn is pretty much made for me.

And that just seems the natural and automatic thing to me, and I have to consciously try to have anything else not seem weird. We’re good friends with a couple—actually, the first people my wife and I tried non-monogamy with—the husband of whom is a true masochist; he can’t orgasm without also receiving pain. Initially I found that unfathomable and unpalatable. After being around them sexually for a while, I now only find it unfathomable. I still can’t imagine wanting that, but I now get that that IS in fact what he wants. He’d be a lifestyle submissive, actually, and be quite happy with that. She doesn’t want a pet, though, she wants a partner. They had some stuff to sort out before they got married, obviously…

Part of what it is to be a Guy is to be constantly… not quite “on the prowl”, but always having my antenna up. I notice women like crazy. I probably fall in love with some random woman on the street five or six times a week. And I seem to have a “type”—which you would identify right off if you saw a picture of my lady loves. Cute, dark-haired, geek girls. There was a girl working the counter at a bowling alley one night that I nearly invited home with us on the spot, and you could have laid her down next to my other two and had a matched set. (Which was, in fact, exactly my plan.) A woman I’m attracted to has to be my intellectual equal, but have a vulnerability or softness for me to protect. And she needs to be tough enough to take care of me when I need it too.

I don’t know… I’m not a Big Macho guy, despite how this likely sounds. I’m fairly enlightened regarding my emotions and needs (I’m poly! Hello!). But there’s still an aspect of my masculinity that somehow never quite emerged from the cave. There’s definitely something primitive inside me that wants to howl at the moon and dominate others with force and sleep with every woman I see. I keep that fairly well contained, and generally manage to express it only in socially acceptable ways (with the exception of: I’m poly! Hello!). But it’s there.

This is an interesting inquiry. I saw some things about myself, engaging in these questions.

I have a lot of things to say about what happened last weekend. I had a play date with Artemis Hunter and a wicked sadist that involved upwards of 4 cases of sex toys and kink props. I was a demo bottom for Artemis during her class on predicament bondage. We ended the weekend by attending an amazing play party where Jay cross-dressed and was molested by half a dozen pretty girls while I got to try my first full suspension. This post is just the first think I felt like writing about. The picture is what I wore under my clothes at the demo and what I was stripped down to.

We arrived early and were waiting patiently for things to begin when Artemis walked up to me with a red collar in her hand.

“I was wondering if you wanted to wear this play collar for today?”

I didn’t think much about it and agreed readily. She fastened it on me and went back to preparing her things.

The collar felt a bit tight but it wasn’t choking me. I don’t normally wear things on my neck so I was just aware of it all the time.

It seemed that other people were aware too. I was sitting with Jay and as we met people or talked to friends they all did something peculiar. They looked at him for approval before speaking to me. One woman that I had talked to online and was looking forward to meeting shook my hand and started to hug me before stepping back and asking his permission.

We must have looked confused and stunned and then I put it together. The collar.

I’ve never been in any sort of master and slave relationship and I don’t particularly intend to. The collar was just for show, a costume. And if it bound me to anyone (for the next few hours at least) it was Artemis. I quickly explained all of this. She hugged me.

I respect the decision that people make to live in 24/7 dynamics but it isn’t one I can fathom. Additionally, anyone that knows me, knows that I bristle at protocol. I respect it and keep quiet at appropriate moments but it isn’t something that I choose to practice.

So, other kinky folks, share your experiences of this with me. Do you wear a collar? Maybe just for play? Have you run into unexpected assumptions of protocol from friends and acquiantances in the scene?

I’ve been reading everyone’s Sex 2.0 wrap-ups the last few days and been trying to decide if I should podcast my thoughts or write them. I figure I’ll do both and you can hear more detail in the podcasted version that I’ll get to a bit later.

The event was an interesting one for me personally because I have never appeared publicly in relation to this blog or my work in phone sex. I was both excited and nervous but luckily I met some of the most amazing people during the process and therefore felt totally safe.

The weekend began for us on Friday afternoon when Jay and I arrived at our hotel, I had time for a quick cleaning up after the car ride and then ran to the airport to pick up Melissa who I’ve been waiting to meet forever. You know how you meet some people and they are nothing like you expected them to be based on their writing? Well, this was not the situation with Melissa. She is bright, cheerful, sarcastic, and carries this amazing presence given her tiny frame. After getting Melissa to the hotel I met up with Match for a drink before the pole dancing party.

The pole party was a blast, again I expected to feel self-conscious and worried but everyone was gorgeous and sexy and uninhibited and that sort of thing rubs off on you. This is where I met Mistress Maeve, who happens to be one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, she doesn’t do pictures but here is everyone at the party (excluding myself and Maeve.)

While I was pole dancing, Jay was at the Clermont Lounge with a bunch of people from the conference. The original plan was to head over there after the party was over but I was so exhausted that we headed back to the hotel instead. We went to a lot of trouble to get a nice hotel room with a whirlpool tub and all sorts of neat features but we didn’t use them at all and instead just crashed. I was surprised to realize that I had actually gotten sore from pole dancing. The front of my thighs were in rough shape because I guess that a lot of what I had been doing was basically squats.

We woke up bright and early, had some breakfast at the hotel, and headed to the conference. I got to see 1763 for the first time and was pretty impressed. When they said that the conference was happening at a dungeon, they weren’t just messing around. This place was, as they like to say on the internet, serious business. There were several rooms outfitted with lots of different equipment and the central space was huge and featured a giant shower in one corner (that Viviane quipped was the size of a New York studio apartment.) We arrived as Amber was giving the opening comments and then got to see Dacia give her keynote remarks. At this point it was time for the first session and I chose to attend Melissa’s. She trotted out her bag of tricks from being a sexual health educator and assigned us to perform roleplays of various sex and internet problems that people might have. I got the joy of performing a creative piece that Match and I developed to deal with jealousy that insignificant others might have over blog fans. I don’t remember much of it other than Match cracking everyone up with his request that I “@ him while I do it“. This was the first sign that Twitter was going to be a driving force of the weekend.

The next session I went to was run by Elizabeth Wood and was on Creating the Sex Commons. This was definitely the most thought-provoking and emotionally difficult sessions that I attended because we talked about responsibility. And I thought a lot about my responsibilities as a sex positive person when I step into a classroom and when I open a blog post and how (if ever) those two things are meant to interact. (I have written about this before). I also thought a lot about my responsibilities to my clients and friends and this session made me realize what important group of people were missing from Sex 2.0 – the clients. We were many of us there sex workers but none of us were paid consumers and I really wished that perspective had been present. Maybe next year!

After lunch I attended a session by the lovely Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly. Since Jay and I have struggled with our open relationship I thought that some tips might be helpful and Minx was encouraging and helpful while remaining quite realistic. I appreciated her sense of humor and grace in discussing icky emotions such as jealousy.

After this session, it was time for my own. I felt under-prepared but the vibe at the conference was so pleasant and open that I was really excited and confident anyway. In preparation, I had surveyed some phone sex operators and asked them about their personal phone sex habits and histories. I found out some interesting tidbits about the industry and how the average operator feels about phone sex. Some said that they regularly get off during calls, some said that they would never ever get off because phone sex doesn’t turn them on at all. Some said that they have NEVER done phone sex before being hired as a professional, others had done it recreationally for years. These statistics were interesting to my audience but what they really wanted to know was the nitty gritty of the job. How to get started, how to promote yourself, what to do to get the caller to tell you what they want and make them happy. I enjoyed sharing my expertise and it seems like there might be some more bloggers cum phone sex operators on the scene in the near future. Certainly a lot of women decide to do phone sex (as themselves or as a character) and the blog and promotional efforts come later. This is a logical way to go about things but I’m really grateful for the route that I ended up taking. This blog is too important to me to be reduced to a pure marketing effort. The minimal planning that I did for the session went out the window when I realized that we had run out of time just on me answering questions.

The last session that I attended was Viviane’s sex blogging session. Since I’ve been doing this for a few years, I had covered most of the ground that she did but it was amazingly informative. I can imagine that people just starting out with blogging got an amazing leg up because Viviane was sharing things with them that it took me years to figure out. Also, she is hot and amazing and brilliant so I wanted to bask in her presence.

Honestly, the day ended too soon. As it was wrapping up I was wishing that there was more but luckily the social opportunities had just begun. More on that later but for now check out Sakura Sarashi’s account of the evening and Sunday as she was with me the entire time.