Feministe

syndicated content powered by FeedBurner

FeedBurner makes it easy to receive content updates in My Yahoo!, Newsgator, Bloglines, and other news readers.

Learn more about syndication and FeedBurner...

Current Feed Content

“When you’re bored, just have sex.”

Posted: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:58:00 +0000

…so you’re telling me I should move to Sweden.

I don’t have quite the boner for Alexander Skarsgård that Feministe founder Lauren does, but um, that’s a very nice photo and this is a very nice sentiment:

Skarsgård: Also, I think part of the reason why there are so many musicians coming out of Sweden is you’re encouraged to play an instrument, or to sing and be creative, from a very early age, and it’s free. It’s a combination of a good school system and the long, dark winters. Because that means people sit in their garages and play music for five months because it’s too cold and dark to be outside.
Åkerlund: That’s the boning season. [Laughter] And then it’s spring, and that’s also boning season. And summer’s the best boning season.
Skarsgård: And that’s also why we’re so liberal and so cool with our sexuality — because we fuck a lot [laughter].
Åkerlund: How much time can you spend playing the drums?
Skarsgård: When you’re bored, just have sex.
Sometimes Women Have Scrotums.

Posted: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 03:10:50 +0000

So a new advertising campaign has been released for testicular cancer awareness clearly aimed at cis female-attracted men. It features Rhian Sugden, a cis female model, posing sexily for the camera, running her hands over her body, then pulling a scrotum out of her underwear and examining it.

Watch the YouTube video here, because embedding it isn’t working for me for some reason.

Transcript: Rhian, shot in black and white from mid-thigh up, poses for the camera. She is blonde and fits mainstream standards of very attractive. She is wearing a black bra, black underwear and black suspenders. Music plays. There are a series of fades into shots of her posing and various close ups of bits of her body.

She says: “Now… do you want to see me touch myself? You’re gonna like this.”

The camera pans down her body, flashes back to her face, then back to her crotch. She reaches into her underwear and pulls out a scrotum, then caresses it.

She says “Actually, this might be easier.” and removes the scrotum, lifting it into the air on her left side.

She says “OK, fellas, get your finger and your thumb, check around your balls. Not too hard, mind. Your balls should feel smooth, without any lumps. If you come across a lump or a swelling, you need to get yourself to the doctor’s as soon as possible. The sooner it’s sorted, the better.

The MCAC logo shows on screen, then camera cuts back to Rhian. She says “Now let me see you touch yours.”

I’m uncomfortable with the ad. I feel that, while done sexily, the “scrotum reveal” is played for humour, the “you weren’t expecting that!” moment. Putting aside the fact that it would have been censored, I doubt the ad would have been as well received as it has been if it had featured a trans woman demonstrating how to examine her scrotum. The punchline is basically that attractive women are not expected to have scrotums… but some of them do. I feel the ad uses imagery associated with trans female bodies for shock value from an audience that marginalise them.

But then, I’m not a trans woman. What do you all think of the ad?

Incidentally, there’s another version of the “using attractive member of one gender to raise awareness of cancer in another” advertisement floating around, this time being male models used to demonstrate breast cancer checking techniques to male-attracted female viewers, although I’m guessing they didn’t have a queer audience in mind.

Watch it here.
BDSM versus Sex, part 2: How Does It Feel?

Posted: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:30:32 +0000

Every once in a while, someone will ask me a question about something BDSM-related that I feel “done with”; I feel like I did all my thinking about those topics, years ago. But it’s still useful to get those questions today, because it forces me to try and understand where my head was at, three to seven years ago. It forces me to calibrate my inner processes. I often think of these questions as the “simple” ones, or the “101″ questions, because they are so often addressed in typical conversation among BDSMers. Then again, lots of people don’t have access to a BDSM community, or aren’t interested in their local BDSM community for whatever reason. Therefore, it’s useful for me to cover those “simple” questions on my blog anyway.

Plus, just because a question is simple doesn’t mean the question is not interesting.

One such question is the “BDSM versus sex” question. Is BDSM always sex? Is it always sexual? A lot of people see BDSM as something that “always” includes sex, or is “always sexual in some way”. In the documentary “BDSM: It’s Not What You Think!“, one famous BDSM writer is quoted saying something like: “I would say that eros is always involved in BDSM, even if the participants aren’t doing anything that would look sexual to non-BDSMers.”

But a lot of other people see BDSM, and the BDSM urge, as something that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex — that is separate from sex.

I see two sides to this question: the political side, and the “how does it feel?” side. Both sides are intertwined; when it comes to sex, politics can’t help shaping our experiences (and vice versa). I acknowledge this. And yet even when I try to account for that, there is still something deeply different about the way my body feels my BDSM urges, as opposed to how my body feels sexual urges. I don’t think that those bodily differences could ever quite go away, no matter how my mental angle on those processes changed.

I already wrote Part 1 of this post about the political side of this question. Now for Part 2 ….

The Embodied Side of BDSM versus Sex

Although Part 1 was all about how the divide between “BDSM” and “sex” is often nonsensical, or purely political, or socially constructed … that doesn’t mean that the divide does not exist. I once had a conversation about ignoring social constructs with a wise friend, who noted dryly that: “One-way streets are a social construct. That doesn’t mean we should ignore them.” Just because the outside world influences our sexuality, does not mean that our sexual preferences are invalid.

Some polyamorous BDSMers have very different rules about having sex with outsiders, as opposed to doing BDSM with outsiders. For example, during the time when I was considering a transition to polyamory, I myself had a couple relationships where we were sexually monogamous — yet my partners agreed that I could do BDSM with people who weren’t my partner. Those particular partners felt jealous and threatened by the idea of me having sex with another man, but they didn’t mind if I did BDSM with another man. Maybe the feelings of those partners only arose because they categorized “BDSM” and “sex” into weirdly different socially-constructed ways … but those partners’ feelings were nonetheless real, and their feelings deserved respect.

And there are also unmistakable ways that BDSM feels different from sex. There is something, bodily, that is just plain different about BDSM, as opposed to sex. I often find myself thinking of “BDSM feelings” and “sexual feelings” as flowing down two parallel channels in my head … sometimes these channels intersect, but sometimes they’re far apart. The BDSM urge strikes me as deeply different, separate, from the sex urge. It can be fun to combine BDSM and sex, but there are definitely times when I want BDSM that feel very unlike most times when I want sex.

The biggest political reason why it’s difficult to discuss this is the way in which we currently conceptualize sexuality through “orientations”: we have built a cultural “orientation model” focused on the idea that ”acceptable” sexuality is “built-in”, or “innate”. Some BDSMers consider BDSM an “orientation” — and I, myself, once found that thinking of BDSM as an orientation was extremely helpful in coming to terms with my BDSM desires. But one thing I don’t like about the orientation model now is that it makes us sound like we’re apologizing. “Poor little me! It’s not my fault I’m straight! Or a domme! Whatever!” Why would any of these things be faults in the first place? Our bodies are our own, our experiences are our own, and our consent is our own to give.

The orientation model is one of the cultural factors that makes it hard to discuss sensory, sensual experiences without defaulting to sexuality. As commenter saurus pointed out on the Feministe version of part 1 of this post:

Sometimes I think that we have compulsions, needs or “fetishes” that aren’t sexual, but lumping them in with sexuality is sometimes the most convenient or socially manageable way to deal with them or get those needs met. They might even physically arouse us for a variety of reasons, but that might be a side effect instead of the act’s inherent nature. Which is not to say that every act can be cleanly cleaved into “sexual” and “non-sexual” — of course not. But I think we lack a language around these needs that doesn’t use sexuality. I see a lot of groundbreaking work coming out of the asexual and disability justice communities in this regard (which is just to say that I find the folks in these groups are churning out some incredible ways to “queer” conventional dominant ideas about sexuality; not that they never have sex or whatever).

I think one answer to that is to just open up the definition of sexuality to include these things, but as someone who identifies vehemently not as “sex positive” but as “sex non-judgmental”, I know I don’t personally want all my shit to be lumped in with sexuality. It just makes me picture some sex judgmental person insisting that “oh, that’s totally sexual.”

I, Clarisse, can certainly attest that it’s common for people to have BDSM encounters that are “just” BDSM — “no sex involved”. For example — an encounter where one partner whips the other, or gets whipped, and there’s no genital contact or even discussion of genitals. (I’ve written about such encounters several times, like in my post on communication case studies.) And I’d like to stress that when I have encounters like that, they can be very satisfying without involving sex. The release — the high — I get from a heavy BDSM encounter can be its own reward.

I’ve also had BDSM encounters where I got turned on …

…but I didn’t feel turned on until later, or afterwards, or until my partner did something specific to draw out my desire. For example — I remember that in one intense BDSM encounter as a domme, I wound up the encounter and pulled away from my partner. We had both been sitting down; I stood up and took off the metal claws I’d been using to rip him up. (Secretly, the claws were banjo picks. Do-It-Yourself BDSM is awesome.)

Then I leaned over my partner to pick something up. I had thought we were pretty much done, but he seized me as I leaned over, and he pulled me close and kissed my neck, and I literally gasped in shock. My sexual desire spiked so hard … I practically melted into his arms. And yet if you’d asked me, moments before, whether I was turned on … I would have said “no”.

One way to think about it might be that sometimes, BDSM “primes” me so that I’m more receptive to sexual energy. It’s not that BDSM is exactly a sexual turn-on in itself; sometimes it is, but that’s actually surprisingly rare. Yet BDSM often … gets my blood flowing? … and seems to “open the floodgates”, so sexual hormones can storm through my body.

And just in case this wasn’t complex enough for you … on the other hand, I’ve had BDSM encounters where my partner tried to take it sexual, and I wasn’t interested. It’s almost like there’s a BDSM cycle that I often get into, and once the cycle is sufficiently advanced, I can’t easily shift out of it.

Sometimes, when I’m near the “peak” of the BDSM cycle, then being interrupted for any reason — sex, or anything else — is absolutely horrible. I’d rather be left on the edge of orgasm, burning with sexual desire, than be hurt until I almost cry. The emotion becomes a stubborn lump in my throat; becomes balled up in my chest. At times like that, it almost feels hard to breathe.

A while back, a reporter named Mac McClelland who worked in Haiti made a splash by writing an article about how she used “violent sex” to ease her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I briefly reported on the article for Feministe, but at the time, I didn’t share many of my thoughts about what she wrote. One thing I did say was that the reporter didn’t use any BDSM terminology — at least not that I spotted. She didn’t seem to conceptualize her desire for “violent sex” as a BDSM thing at all. Interestingly, a Feministe commenter named Jadey, who has experience with kink, also didn’t conceptualize the reporter’s article that way. Jadey wrote:

I don’t think she’s bad or wrong, and I don’t think her method of coping with her PTSD is bad or wrong. … [Yet] I’ve got a kink/BDSM background, but that’s not what she’s describing here. She’s talking about something far different, and I can’t understand the experience she describes with Isaac. It is … incomprehensible.

I want to stress here that I, Clarisse Thorn, have never been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (And I’ve undergone plenty of analysis, so I’m sure that if I had PTSD, someone would have noticed by now.) And just in case it needs to be said again, I’ll also stress that I have no intention of telling anyone else how to define their own experiences. And just in case it needs to be said again, there is a big difference between consenting BDSM and abuse; here is an article I’ve written about the distinction between consenting BDSM and abuse.

But unlike Jadey, when I read the original “violent sex” article, the reporter’s description of her encounter sounded a lot like some of my preferences … indeed, it sounded like some of the BDSM encounters I’ve had. For example, the reporter writes:

“Okay,” my partner said. “I love you, okay?” I said, I know, okay. And with that he was on me, forcing my arms to my sides, then pinning them over my head, sliding a hand up under my shirt when I couldn’t stop him. The control I’d lost made my torso scream with anxiety; I cried out desperately as I kicked myself free. … When I got out from under him and started to scramble away, he simply caught me by a leg or an upper arm or my hair and dragged me back. By the time he pinned me by my neck with one forearm so I was forced to use both hands to free up space between his elbow and my windpipe, I’d largely exhausted myself.

And just like that, I’d lost. It’s what I was looking for, of course. But my body — my hard-fighting, adrenaline-drenched body — reacted by exploding into terrible panic. … I did not enjoy it in the way a person getting screwed normally would. But as it became clear that I could endure it, I started to take deeper breaths. And my mind stayed there, stayed present even when it became painful …. My body felt devastated but relieved; I’d lost, but survived. After he climbed off me, he gathered me up in his arms. I broke into a thousand pieces on his chest, sobbing so hard that my ribs felt like they were coming loose.

… Isaac pulled my hair away from my wet face, repeating over and over and over something that he probably believed but that I had to relearn. “You are so strong,” he said. “You are so strong. You are so strong.”

Sounds extremely familiar to me.

Now, it’s not like I have BDSM encounters like that all the time; indeed, experiences of that type are relatively rare for me. But the reporter’s description doesn’t sound “far different” from what I’ve experienced. Certainly not “incomprehensible”. There’s only one big difference, actually: I’ve never had such an intense BDSM experience in which my partner also had penis-in-vagina sex with me. (I’m assuming the reporter means “penis-in-vagina” sex when she talks about “getting screwed”, but I could be wrong.)

Honestly, I’m not sure why I would want to combine vaginal sex with an experience like that. Vaginal sex strikes me, personally, as kinda incidental to what I’d get out of it. But maybe I’ll try it sometime and it’ll be the greatest thing in the world; we’ll see, I guess.

Sometimes I find that I’ve still got a “BDSM versus sex” distinction to work out, although I seem to have comfortably settled into the frameworks I’ve created. One of my very first blog entries, back in 2008, was called “Casual Sex? Casual Kink?“, and I spent the whole thing musing about whether I was more or less okay with casual BDSM than I was with casual sex.

These days, I find that I’m kinda okay with both casual sex and casual BDSM, but I much prefer those experiences within intimate relationships. Make no mistake, my friends: BDSM can include a great deal of love and connection … at least as much as sex.

To hammer the point home, let me tell you about what happened after I broke up with a much-beloved ex-boyfriend: Mr. Inferno. It was back when I was very focused on being monogamous with my partners. Mr. Inferno broke up with me, and a month or two later I had the chance to have an overnight BDSM encounter with another man, so I took it. There was no genital contact; the whole encounter was limited to this guy giving me orders, and hurting me until I cried.

But I remember, even as I slipped into the familiar emotional cycle, that I couldn’t let go: I couldn’t let go because I felt like I was betraying Mr. Inferno. He’d broken my heart, but on some level I felt like I still belonged to him. It was wrong, wrong, wrong for me to cry in someone else’s arms. The wrongness rang through me like a bell. It was so impossible, unbearable — all I could think was how it should have been Mr. Inferno. I choked on the tears. I couldn’t lose myself in them.

Later, I mentioned to my partner that one of my ex-boyfriends (not Mr. Inferno) had trouble dealing with my BDSM desires. “Ah,” my partner said. “That explains why you had trouble letting yourself cry.” I decided to nod; to let him think he knew what was blocking me off. It seemed simpler.

In the morning, I had breakfast with my partner. We hugged and split up, and I went for a walk until I found a local creek. I sat next to the creek and I closed my eyes and I let the helpless tears slip down my cheeks.

I’d felt (and I’d known others who felt) this way after the dissolution of a sexual relationship. But I had never imagined that such a reaction of intense bodily loyalty could apply to BDSM as well as sex. I hadn’t anticipated that I’d feel such heartbreaking, visceral loss just because I let another man hurt me.

So different, and yet so the same.
Bad Ideas.

Posted: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:57:25 +0000

Bad Idea #1: Running someone over.

Bad Idea #2: Running someone over when you are a police officer.

Bad Idea #3: Running someone over when you are a police officer and then stopping your vehicle on top of their broken leg.

Bad Idea #4: Running someone over when you are a police officer and then stopping your vehicle on top of their broken leg and then getting off of your vehicle and walking around for a minute without removing the vehicle from the person’s leg.

Bad Idea #5: Running someone over when you are a police officer and then stopping your vehicle on top of their broken leg and then getting off of your vehicle and walking around for a minute without removing the vehicle from the person’s leg and doing it all on camera.

Bad Idea #6: Running someone over when you are a police officer and then stopping your vehicle on top of their broken leg and then getting off of your vehicle and walking around for a minute without removing the vehicle from the person’s leg and doing it all on camera, especially when the person you ran over is a member of the National Lawyers Guild, meaning he is probably a First Amendment expert observing the protests to document police brutality and Constitutional violations. Not that it’s ok to run over a non-lawyer, obviously, but oh man did you pick the wrong guy.

One good idea? Donate to the NLG.
Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street

Posted: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:33:42 +0000

Steven Greenstreet is possibly peeking in your windows.

So, Steven Greenstreet, who describes himself as a “documentary filmmaker, video producer, 7D owner, comic book reader, sci fi nerd, atheistic troublemaker, and social media mercenary” but who I think is better characterized as a “creepy voyeur who is basically a more mainstream version of that guy who hid in a port-a-potty at a yoga festival” has created the delightful website “Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street.” Because that’s totally relevant to the cause, you know? I mean, dudes might not be interested in politics if there aren’t titties involved. Why else would we have the 19th Amendment? Next up: UpSkirtShotsOfOccupyWallStreet.tumblr.com.

He also made a video where he interviews some very astute and attractive young women who actually have Things To Say and were probably under the impression that they were being filmed because someone cared about the words coming out of their mouths. Nope! Here is Steven Greenstreet’s motivation:

A lot of fantastic media has been created about the “Occupy” movement. I was watching one video in particular and commented to a friend, “Wow, seeing all those super smart hot chicks at the protest makes me want to be there.” He replied, “Hmmm… Yeah, let’s go with that.”

We instantly went to Tumblr and made hotchicksofoccupywallstreet.tumblr.com. Our original ideas were admittedly sophomoric: Pics of hot chicks being all protesty, videos of hot chicks beating drums in slow-mo, etc. But when we arrived at Zuccotti Park in New York City, it evolved into something more.

There was a vibrant energy in the air, a warmth of community and family, and the voices we heard were so hopeful and passionate. Pretty faces were making signs, giving speeches, organizing crowds, handing out food, singing, dancing, debating, hugging and marching.

It made me want to pack my bags and pitch a tent on Wall Street. And it’s in the light that we created this video.

And we hope it makes you want to be there too.

“Pitch a tent,” good one bro. (Although I did kind of laugh at the idea that this video was created in the light of his pitched tent. Gross, bro). But he called them “smart” so it’s ok right?

So I know I’m all humorless and feministy about this, and why can’t dudes just enjoy the view at a protest without some lady getting all salty about it? It’s nothing against beautiful women — beautiful women are fantastic! It’s the dipshit fratboy vibe of “Ohhh yeah, let’s go to this protest thing because there are hot chicks there, and then we can make a video where we sound kind of, like, deep, you know? Because we can like talk about community and stuff and how even though these hot chicks got us there, we realized that there’s something, like, important happening, you know dude? I’ll wear my favorite Livestrong bracelet.” It’s the idea that women are at OWS to be oggled by dudes, or to inspire some polo-shirted nitwit to Care About Something More [than titties] (TM). It’s that he’s taking pictures of women without their permission or knowledge and posting them on the internet as masturbatory fodder. The one upside is that the Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street tumblr is like Steven Greenstreet’s very own I’m A Creep bat-signal (he may also be a 9/11 truther? Lots of warning signs here). May he never get laid again.

But it’s also that women at OWS are actually being groped and assaulted by creeps and criminals. There’s obviously quite a bit of tension between protestors and police, leading many protestors to try to handle crime and conflict themselves. To their credit, it sounds like protestors have reported sexual assaults immediately, but there’s a vibe that when it comes to other crimes, protestors should “handle it ourselves and not run to Mom and Dad and tattle.” Many protestors suggest using the force of public opinion to change bad behavior.

So far, the “use force of public opinion and not police” argument hasn’t extended to sexual assault — it’s been about things like stealing (and I’m not exactly the biggest champion of the NYPD’s ability to handle sexual assault accusations well, but I also don’t trust a random group of protestors to do any better). But when you get dude-bros like Steven Greenstreet in the mix who see women as boner-makers and not actual human beings who came out to voice their frustration with corporate America just like everyone else, “public opinion” shifts because the public shifts. It gets easier to brush off the complaints and experiences of boner-makers (especially when those complaints and experiences involve actual boners). I mean, if it’s totally ok to go all voyeur and photograph hot chicks without their consent in order to put them on the internet for other dudes to look at, why get mad at a dude who takes it a step further and gets a little grabby? He’s just pitching his tent at the protest, you know?
Because the whole “rule of thumb” thing is so three months ago

Posted: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:32:56 +0000

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month all over the country–even in Kansas. But someone needs to tell the city of Topeka that October isn’t actually supposed to be a celebration of domestic violence. If you wanted to observe it by, say, making domestic battery not illegal anymore, you’d probably be missing the point.

The background: Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that due to budget cuts, his office can’t afford to prosecute misdemeanors (including domestic battery) and will cease to do so.

The complaint: If the district attorney isn’t going prosecute domestic battery, the city (which already handles simple assault and battery on its own) is going to have to do it themselves, and they don’t have the resources.

The plan: Fuck that, right? If the city just repeals their domestic battery law, that makes it not illegal to beat your spouse, the city has nothing to prosecute, the district attorney is required to take over, and everybody wins! With the exception of the battered spouses, of course, but whatevs.

The result: Domestic battery remains illegal in Topeka, because it’s still illegal under state law–lacking a city ordinance only means that the cases have to be prosecuted by the district attorney, if the district attorney were prosecuting misdemeanors, which he isn’t, so they aren’t. Without a way to charge domestic batterers after they’ve been arrested, all the police can do is hold them for 72 hours until they’re nice and pissed off and then release them–as has happened to 18 people so far. According to NOW’s Karri Ann Rinker, police have confirmed that one man has already re-offended: Within 48 hours of his release, he assaulted his wife again, was arrested again, and was released again.

The aftermath: Ultimately, the county blinked first, and Taylor agreed to do his goddamned job already, saying he would review all misdemeanors sent his way and prosecute, y’know, some of them.

If there’s one thing that’s as trivial and ultimately insignificant as a knockoff poker chip from the Mississippi Belle, it’s battered women, amiright? God forbid you should decriminalize pot-smoking or jaywalking to try and save those extra funds–when people’s lives are at stake, that’s the time for the district attorney to stick his tongue out at the county commission, and for the city to play chicken with the district attorney. It’s just people you’re using as pawns, women and men and children, and arguably the most vulnerable ones under the law’s protection. Nobody important, certainly not when you have a political point to score.

“I think it draws a line in the sand,” says interim Topeka city manager Dan Stanley. “It says we will remove all ambiguity from the question, and we will negotiate from a position of strength.” The kind of strength, apparently, that you can steal from a domestic-violence survivor.

Happy October, y’all.
We Are the 53%. Or not.

Posted: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:01:57 +0000

Oh man this “We Are the 53%” movement. It is actually very sad! Basically, conservative pundit Erick Erickson has started a campaign called “We Are the 53%,” to counter the “We Are the 99%” and Occupy Wall Street movements. According to Erickson’s (very simplistic) math, 53% of Americans pay more in federal income taxes than they receive back in deductions or credits, and so 53% of people are subsidizing everyone else. Which is… where to even start? Even people who don’t pay federal income tax still often pay property taxes and payroll taxes; everyone pays sale taxes. And part of the OWS argument is that corporations and many of the highest-earning Americans are paying very little in taxes, due to a series of loopholes and tax breaks.

That aside, Erickson’s site is very very sad. It is full of people who are extremely unlikely to be in the 53% — people who work several jobs to stay afloat, who can’t afford health insurance, whose parents worked themselves to the bone while dying of cancer. Those stories are held up as “the American Dream.” It’s kind of sick, actually. There’s a nice parody blog dedicated to it.

Hippie-punching is fun, I guess, and that seems to be Erickson’s motivation — he’s more interested in telling the Occupy Wall Street folks to “stop whining” than offering any solution other than “poor people are lazy.” And he does it with a web site that includes a lot of poor people all talking about how the system has kind of screwed them, but they’re living the dream and they “did it themselves.”

I realize a lot of people don’t want to feel like victims, and part of the difficulty the left faces is categorizing experiences and exploitations in a way that still allows people to identify with a group — Sady’s post about, among other things, self-identifying as “middle class” hints at this. A lot of people want to be on the A Team, or at least the team of “most folks.” That was, to me, the brilliance of the 99% campaign — it recognized that there’s a lot of diversity of experience within the 99 percent, but it gave people a group identity to latch onto. The problem is, Erickson’s campaign, asinine and divorced-from-reality as it might be, appeals to a lot of folks’ view of themselves as better than the next guy — harder-working, not looking for a hand-out, subsidizing all of Those People who are complaining whiners. In reality, of course, a lot of the people on Erickson’s 53% blog are the ones being “subsidized” (if we adopt Erickson’s terms); they’re people who have received welfare and other social services, they’re people who are definitely not paying federal income tax, and they’re people who need more than they’re getting.

But they’re latching onto Erickson because I suppose it feels better to self-identify as a winner. I’m not sure how, besides the populist 99% message, we can change that dynamic. This comment by Richard Lawson on the Gawker post is interesting to me:

This air of the nobility of the underclass is so sad and, cornily enough, eye-opening for me. It’s quite a feat that the oligarchs (for lack of a less sensational term) really have convinced these people that their poverty is noble and righteous and, in this life or the next, will somehow deliver them. You think about that 16% of African Americans who are living in poverty, or the insanely high number of single women and children living as such across all races and ethnicities, and you realize how fully they’ve taken to heart the persistent message they’ve been fed, in ways both subtle and profoundly grand, that theirs is a necessary suffering, one endured so the country can continue to function in the supposedly just and impartial way that it does. To be teenaged trendy about it, these people have been glamoured by vampires, have bared their necks and welcome the pain as a gift. It’s so deep and so bedrock in national mentality that the only salve seems, honestly, to be some sort of genuine revolution. I kind of feel like a French person in 1788. I wish these people knew they had allies behind them.

And people like Erick Erickson are nasty, willfully blind classist monsters. To prey on people this obviously downtrodden is ghoulishness of the highest order.

It’s worth pointing out, also, that Erickson’s site features mostly white people. It features people who are used to being on the A Team. I don’t think anyone on that site would actually say that they feel an air of nobility for being part of the underclass; I don’t think they believe they’re part of an American underclass at all.
One woman is a total disaster; therefore, all women are total disasters

Posted: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:55:36 +0000

Dear God make this piece stop. Why, Cat Marnell, WHY?

GET IT TOGETHER, GIRLS: Every Goddamn Pharmacy in New York is Out of Plan B! Every ONE!

Yeah, I don’t want to go on the Pill or wear condoms either, but it’s like … come ON.

It is, like, come ON. Summary: Cat doesn’t like birth control. Any kind of birth control. Except Plan B. But she has noticed lately that lots of NYC pharmacies are out of Plan B. She concludes this is because too many women in New York are making irresponsible decisions, and they need to stop doing that. Cat Marnell’s evidence? Cat Marnell!

But WOMEN. We are clearly abusing [Plan B]. OK, at least I am. Once I took it three times in one month! And that is seriously extreme; I know; I know. So besides that horrible month — I was f*&king around with someone REALLY sexy; what can I say — I’d say that I take it once every, like two months, and OMIGOD I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M WRITING ABOUT MY SEX LIFE. I meant to be writing all of this to condemn all of YOU.

So I actually don’t really care if you take Plan B three times in one month. I would suggest that it’s expensive, though, at $50 a pop, and also stressful, and that there are better ways to prevent pregnancy. But the fact that one lady took Plan B three times in as many weeks? Not evidence that we’re all irresponsible sluts. Not even evidence that she’s an irresponsible slut! And even if she is an irresponsible slut (a term that could basically be applied to anyone, since no matter how responsible or un-slutty you believe yourself to be I promise there is always someone who is more responsible and more un-slutty and more holier-than-thou who would be thrilled at the chance to tell you just how much of an irresponsible slut you are), that’s not much of an argument against providing Plan B over the counter and without a prescription, as I’m sure anti-choice folks will use Cat’s article to argue. Irresponsible sluts deserve the right to prevent pregnancy too. And irresponsible sluts deserve the right to talk about their experiences and their choices, even if those choices make me, personally, cringe a little bit. It really is your body, and I will fight for your right to make whatever reproductive choices are best for you.

But I do care if you’re the health editor (HEALTH EDITOR, yes!) of a very highly-trafficked website and you (a) take the position that all of this science stuff is HARD and therefore you aren’t going to discuss it, and (b) you spread really dangerous misinformation about health issues. For example:

2) Birth control pills. NO. They will make me fat; they will make me “spot” (another thing I squeamishly just DON’T LIKE TALKING ABOUT; don’t worry, though, everyone else who works here does); they will give me acne; and quite frankly, they will NOT prevent me from getting pregnant! I know this because IT HAPPENED TO ME™.

No, I didn’t take my pills right; I forget things like this unless they are FUN pills, or what I BELIEVE, delusionally, to be a “fun” pill at the time; anyway, the point is, unless a pill gets me speedy or doped up as all hell I will NOT remember to take it, and then I will get pregnant! I JUST WILL. (IHTM™.)

So birth control pills are not my friend either, but Jesus H. THIS IS FACTUALLY INACCURATE. Not all birth control pills will make you gain weight or get acne or whatever. And frankly, they WILL almost definitely prevent you from getting pregnant, but you have to use them right. There are serious downsides to hormonal birth control — there are enough downsides to prevent me, personally, from taking the pill also. But that doesn’t mean every form of the pill is terrible and acne-causing and weight-altering for everyone and doesn’t work anyway. JESUS H.

Condoms. Nope! As if. I don’t know. I don’t sleep with that many people and so I just don’t do condoms!

This is actually scary to me. Cat. Girl. You need to use condoms! Even if you aren’t sleeping with “that many people.” It is totally your right not to use condoms, and I am usually the last person to be like “you really really REALLY should make this one particular choice pertaining to your own health” and plenty of people hate condoms and I understand that, but GIRL. PLEASE USE CONDOMS, OH MY GOD, I AM ACTUALLY WORRIED FOR YOU.

Abortion. This shouldn’t even be on the list though obviously I’ve had them. Abortions are not birth control and I hate them! I’m OBVIOUSLY pro-choice but I think they are terrible and wrong and I hate having them. And I mean terrible for everyone involved. It breaks my heart all around.

So before this paragraph I basically just thought Cat was sort of tragic and misguided, but really? Abortions are wrong and terrible and you hate having them? What, unlike all of the other women who LOVE having them because they’re so fun? CAT. GIRL. It is time for some real talk: You are totally entitled to your beliefs about abortion and anything else, and you are even entitled to be a huge hypocrite by believing abortion is morally wrong and is also murder but then have multiple. Believe me, lots of people embrace that same position. But you kind of veer into asshole territory when you go onto a highly-trafficked website and get all finger-waggy at other women for using Plan B or having abortions. Also, abortion is birth control — it controls the number of births you’re going to have. I know what you mean is that in your opinion abortion should not be used as one’s primary means of birth control, but that’s not what you said. IT IS YOUR JOB TO WRITE ABOUT HEALTH-RELATED THINGS. That requires actually doing some research and writing from a place of knowledge.

OK, my point is, I’m sleeping with someone new now and I’m going to be better about not letting anything happen. Women of New York City and the world: resolve to step up. Fifty bucks is fifty bucks — that’s practically a new fall fragrance! We should all stop letting dudes come inside of us and take some responsibility because I am feeling increasingly guilty about being an AVID participant in an abortion-friendly culture.

Head. Explodes.

I mean, yes, avoid abortions! They are expensive and not fun at all. If you are against abortion in principle, there’s another reason to avoid them! But oh my god “we should all stop letting dudes come inside of us” is not really the reproductive justice call to arms I was looking for, you know? The pull-out method can actually be ok at preventing pregnancy if you use it perfectly every time. That requires being with a partner you trust. That requires using it perfectly every time, which is something most people are not able to do. And even if you use it perfectly, you can still get pregnant. And it doesn’t do all that much for preventing the spread of lots of STIs.

I have no problem with pulling out being Cat’s go-to method of birth control. I’m not sure forgoing condoms is the best idea if you and your partner haven’t been tested for STIs and if you aren’t monogamous, but again, totally her call and her business. And I have no problem with her writing about her life and her experiences, as messy as they are. It is a True Fact that women are not perfect, and we sometimes (often) (always) make decisions that, when put on paper, look irresponsible or problematic or troubling. We shouldn’t deny the existence of certain experiences and choices, just because telling those stories could be anti-choice ammunition, or because we feel that one woman’s experiences make all of Womanhood look bad. We are human, and humans make mistakes, and what’s even a “mistake” is pretty variable depending on who you ask. So I’m not saying that women, even very public women, need to pretend to be perfect on the internet.

However. I have a big problem with the health editor of a major women’s site suggesting that all birth control except Plan B sucks, and so the women of New York should collectively have dudes come on our tits. Discussing one’s own experiences is one thing; universalizing one’s experiences and spreading misinformation is another, especially when the person doing the universalizing and misinforming is in a position of relative authority and influence.

Cat: Your honesty is commendable. But there’s some responsibility that comes along with an editorial position, you know? Please consider being a little more accountable to your readers. You don’t have to be PlannedParenthood.com, but at least don’t spread bad information.
On loving, and losing, little creatures

Posted: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 03:13:41 +0000

This weekend, I put my cat to sleep. It was not expected, and I’m pretty heartbroken. I also feel silly. There are larger and more important tragedies every day. We had three great years together, and for that I should be grateful. I know I gave him a really good life. He was just a cat. I don’t even like cats.

But oh man do I miss my little cat.

Percival was the first adult decision I ever made — my first real, long-term commitment. I got him a few weeks into my first real grown-up job as a lawyer, working at a law firm in Manhattan — a job I never thought I would be doing, and that still makes me feel far more serious and responsible than I actually am. I’m not sure why I decided to adopt a kitten; I wanted a dog but didn’t have the time, I guess, and a cat-creature seemed better than no creature at all. So I went on PetFinder and found the most perfect black-and-white tuxedo kitten named Che. He was super handsome, so my room mate and I went to the shelter to get him; she decided she also wanted a kitten, so she was going to get his brother. When we got there, there were four kittens in the litter — three healthy, shiny, gorgeous tuxedo kitties, and one teeny-tiny filthy grey kitty who didn’t match at all. The shelter lady swore up and down that the little grey was part of the same litter, but I suspect she was lying; I think he was probably from a later litter, but either all of his siblings had been adopted or for whatever reason didn’t make it, and she didn’t want prospective cat-adopters to think he was a lemon and look past him. Either way, my room mate and I each picked up the tuxedo kitties, cooed over them, and played with them, trying to select which ones to take home. The little grey one kept scooting towards our hands every time we reached into the cage. Unlike the other kittens, he was legitimately dirty, and his eyes were full of gunk, and his nose was runny, and he was slightly cross-eyed. The shelter lady told us he had ringworm, so we should be sure to wash our hands after touching any of the cats. I took pity on him, because it was clear that the pretty kitties got all of the attention and no one ever bothered to hold the messed up little grey one.

I picked him up and scratched him. He stretched his little face up toward mine, flipped his whole body into a reclining-on-his back position, nuzzled his face into the side of my boob and fell asleep purring.

He was mine.

I named him Omar Little after my favorite character on The Wire. That name lasted all of three days — little Omar was a huge cuddly wuss of a cat who, if he were a kid, would get regularly beat up on the playground. I re-christened him Percival. My room mate adopted one of his handsome tuxedo brothers, who she named Leopold. And then it was Percy and Leo in our dilapidated, tenement-style East Village apartment for the next eight months. In those months, I started working very intense hours, I broke up with my boyfriend, and I became increasingly unsure of the path I had chosen to take. Then I moved to Brooklyn with a different girl and took Percy with me.

I remember saying that Percy was the only thing I couldn’t ever leave behind; that he was the only real, flesh-and-blood commitment that I had, and that felt both intimidating and wonderful. He was my responsibility. He was the only part of my life that I didn’t have the full freedom to just up and walk away from. He was just a cat, I know, and not a child or a partner, but I was nowhere near having a child or a partner and he was my cat; he was my living, breathing little buddy who depended entirely on me for his survival. I said to my roommate that it was so strange to think that this little cat, who I got on a whim when I was 25, would be around for all of the milestones in the next 20 years of my life — that he would meet more boyfriends than my parents, that he would live in a home I purchased, that he would be a shared pet if I ever got married, that if I left New York he would be the only thing definitely coming with me. He was just a cat, but he was the one thing that for the next decade or two was not up in the air; he would be a constant presence, the one thing that wasn’t a variable. That felt really significant when I was 25 and working a job I wasn’t sure I wanted and ending a romantic relationship and just feeling entirely lost.

Percy was not a smart cat. He was possibly one of the least intelligent cats I have ever met. He fell off stairs, he was utterly incapable of connecting bad behavior to negative consequences (i.e., if you stand on the kitchen table where you are not allowed, you will get sprayed with water), he once poisoned himself by jumping up on said table and sticking his face on a bouquet of lilies. But his stupidity also made him the nicest, friendliest cat I have ever met. As far as he was concerned, human beings were petting machines, existing entirely to give him all of the attention and physical contact he craved (which was a lot), and also to sometimes feed him. I’m not sure it ever occurred to him that a person could do him harm — he would rush to the front door every time the buzzer rang, because delivery men meant guaranteed pets and scratches. If you were on the couch, he was either on your lap or on the couch backing right behind your head so he could put his face on yours. He slept in my bed every night, either right on top of my feet or in the little spoon position — he just had to be touching me. Shannon, my current roommate and long-term closest friend, is a teacher and gets up very early, so around 5:30 he would hear the bathroom door close, leave my bed and go wait for her outside of the shower (and sometimes fulfill his rubber band fetish by fishing into her make-up bag, stealing a rubber band, and then running around the apartment with it in his mouth before depositing it in his water dish). Then he would sit in her bedroom just hanging out until she got ready, and after she left would return to me. When I wake up, I roll onto my back for ten minutes or so before getting out of bed. Percy would hear the roll-over, and veeeeeery gingerly walk up onto my chest and lay down, setting his little head in the crook of my neck. I think he liked to feel my heartbeat on his heartbeat, and my breathing matching his breathing.

When I came home, Percy was always waiting at the door, ears perked, eyes wide. He would be so happy to have his girl home that his little brain would basically short-circuit, and he would jerk his head to the right two or three times before letting his whole body follow, collapsing on the ground on his back, stretching his legs in all directions. Every day, I would squat down and rub his belly — after work, at 4am when I was getting home from being out, at 3pm on a Sunday when I came back from brunch. Whenever I opened that door, he was there. When I had a Summer of Medical Disasters these past few months, which I won’t detail but which had me in an emotional tailspin as my entire body seemed to fail me piece by piece, he was there. Whenever he was there, he got a belly rub. That’s just how we did things. He’s just a cat. I feel silly for saying this. But squatting on my kitchen floor, petting my little buddy, brought me more comfort than anything else, right when I needed it most.

Percy was not a healthy cat. He was always scrawny and skinny and sickly. And the problem with having a weakness for sickly, damaged animals is that you end up with sickly, damaged animals. We went to the vet every few months because he was losing weight or not eating or poisoning himself with lilies or or or or. Half the time he got patched up, and half the time the vet just said “He’s just not a well cat, but there’s nothing medically wrong with him.” He wasn’t a thriver. He was a lemon. He was also sweet and cuddly and affectionate and good-natured. He warmed the hearts of cat-haters everywhere (including myself). When he lost weight, again, I didn’t think too much of it. He was always half-way sick without ever really being sick, right?

Until he was really sick.

I took him to the vet on Saturday because he was just too skinny and too lethargic; every day seemed significantly worse than the day before. A week ago, I could say that he wasn’t a kitten anymore; maybe he was upset that I had been traveling so much; he had lost weight before; most cats just lounge around all day, right? He had just had an x-ray and full blood work done in July, so I figured nothing too terrible could crop up in three months. I figured we’d go in, the vet would tell me he needed X medicine, and that would be it.

But when we went in, the vet took one look at him and she said, “I don’t think this is going to be good news.”

His gums showed signs of jaundice. His belly was full of fluid. When she did an x-ray, you couldn’t see any of his organs. His liver was failing. He had a kitty virus he had picked up in the shelter, that sometimes mutates into an incurable, untreatable disease in immunocompromised cats. It was not good news. There was nothing that could be done. The vet told me I needed to consider putting him down, right then.

I couldn’t do it.

I took him home. I wanted my room mate, who was as much his girl as I was, to have time with him. The vet said he maybe had a few days, but to watch him closely; this disease, she said, moved fast. She gave me a steroid to give to him. I predicted we had a week. That was Saturday.

Sunday, my friend P came over and we spent the day petting Percy and letting him sleep in the sun on the previously disallowed kitchen table. As I held my hand on his ribs, his breathing became shallow, and I thought he might stop right then and there. P started to cry. She called Shannon and told her to come home.

When P left, Shannon and I went on Percy Watch. My sister was visiting from Boston, so she sat with us too. We decided he was ok enough to make it another day; we would have one final night and then one final morning, where we could lay in bed and cuddle him and have some closure. He seemed ok, we decided.

And then he didn’t.

He couldn’t breathe very well — we started to see his tiny ribs heave and jerk as he tried to breathe through the fluid that now occupied most of his little body. He crouched, he rolled over, he sat — he was trying to get into any position that wasn’t uncomfortable. He started to cry a little bit. I’ll leave out the rest of it, because it’s sad and not worth detailing. He was on the kitchen floor. The three of us were squatting on the floor with him. I looked at Shannon and my sister and I asked them again and again, “Do you think he can make it through the night? What do you think? What do we do?” and no one could give me an answer. Shannon, who is 100 times kinder than I am and also 100 times tougher, finally breathed, “I don’t think he’s going to have a good night.” We looked at each other and I could tell she was trying not to cry; I could tell that she was trying to balance doing the best thing for an animal she loved with trying to do the best thing for a girl she loved. She was trying to find a way to choose us both.

The truth is, I needed one more night with him. None of this was expected; I couldn’t just put him down like this. He had to wake up with me one more time, and lay on my chest, and know that his people loved him. More than that, I needed him. I didn’t want to wake up without him. I wasn’t ready to let my little buddy go. And I could have had him a little longer, if I wanted — he probably would have hung on for one more night. I could have snuggled him Monday morning, and then rushed him to the vet. I needed him, and he was right there, and it was entirely my call.

Instead, I tried to do right by him. I don’t know if I made the right decision, but I took him in to be put down at 11pm on a Sunday. He probably would have made it through the night, but it would have been a bad night; the night would have been for me and not for him. Or maybe I’m just saying that to make myself feel better, since I made the call to cut off the life of a three-year-old cat who probably wanted nothing more than to just be petted and snuggled and loved. I don’t know.

He’s just a cat. The ambiguity of this decision, the question of when “it’s time,” the fact that there’s never an obvious or easy answer isn’t nearly as heavy with a cat as with a person. But on Sunday night it felt pretty heavy.

I carried him in my arms to the vet. He hated his carrier, and I wasn’t going to make him spend his last few minutes in it. He was an indoor cat, and his eyes were huge the entire ten-minute walk over. I like to think he was curious and interested in what was going on around him, and not scared.

When Percy died, I was holding him like a baby, and whispering in his ears and kissing his nose. He liked it when you whispered to him, I think because the smell and feeling of breath on his face felt good. My roommate couldn’t take being in the room, so she waited in the lobby. My sister stood next to me and rubbed my back. I told him he was my sweet baby, my little bunny, my good boy. I pressed my nose to his nose as the vet put in two injections. And that was it. He wasn’t alone. The fact that I didn’t leave him alone brings me more comfort than anything else, right now.

My apartment feels really empty now. I came home from work today and no one was at the door. I woke up this morning and I rolled over on my back and nothing else happened.

I feel silly writing this post. He was just a cat (and also, I’m not a big fan of the hyper-personal, hyper-emotional blog posts, at least when they come from me). People go through tragedies which are much worse, much more debilitating, much more incomprehensibly awful ever single day. I am a lucky bitch if one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my entire life is putting a cat to sleep. The truth is, I’ve gone through harder things, but none of them have been my call; this was hard particularly because it was my decision. That is still phenomenally, unfairly, offensively lucky.

But here we are. And here is this entirely awful, self-indulgent exercise.

This weekend, I saw a woman whose company I’ve long enjoyed but who I don’t know as well as I would like to, and we had a brief but good conversation. Last night she sent me a message on Facebook saying she enjoyed seeing me, and sending love, and saying a variety of things that warmed my heart in a moment where I felt like my heart had stopped. It was one of the first things I read after putting Percy down, and it was so wonderful and loving that I wasn’t quite sure where to put it. She had no clue about what was going on, and her message was entirely un-kitty-related. I sent her back a brief message saying it was good to see her too, and she couldn’t possibly know how much her message was just what I needed at that particular time. She wrote back, “We are always right on time and we always get the messages we need, you know?”

Yesterday, one of my closest friends who now lives in DC and who visited this weekend and was the person who finally said, “Jill, Percy doesn’t look right and you need to take him to the vet,” sent me a bouquet of lilies — a flower I love but that poisoned Percy a few years ago, and caused one of his many near-death experiences. She has also called and g-chatted and emailed multiple times a day since Sunday, and she has never once made me feel silly or self-indulgent for feeling sad. Shannon, my roommate, was home when I came home today — and when I walked in the door and started to cry, she said, “I did the same thing,” and then she started to cry too. Then I saw those lilies and I felt a little better. Then Shannon opened a bottle of wine and poured me a nice tall glass, and we made dinner together. I checked my email and saw that my mom had written to me, after I had emailed her last night about Percy’s death, since I couldn’t take saying the words out loud. My mom wrote that I was Percy’s mom, and I was good to him, and that whenever I saw a box or stairs or any of his other weird beloved things, I would think of him, and he would always be in my heart and I would always be in his. And she also wrote, “If you hear a thump, know that little Percy just fell off the stairs again.”

My mom is more “spiritual” than I am. She believes in the presence of the dead. I’m not sure I do, when I think about it too hard, but I like the idea. The idea brings me comfort. I like to think the idea is true. I like that she knows the idea is true. I like that she tells me it’s true.

We are always right on time, and we always get the messages we need.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this. I suppose if I’m entirely honest with myself, it’s because I need something — confirmation that I’m not a complete asshole for publicly grieving. That it’s ok that I’m so sad about “just a cat.” Maybe it’s just a need to write down why he was important to me, to explain how sweet and good he was. Maybe it’s that sick Millennial belief that nothing is really true, that nothing really happened, unless it’s documented on Facebook or on a blog (I hope that’s not it). Maybe it’s the same dynamic as the one that compels therapists and mental health professionals to always say (and tell others to say) “Do you want to tell me about her / him?” when someone you know has a loved one who passed away.

I think, as trite as it feels, this is me telling you about him. It feels uncomfortable and awful. He was just a cat; I’m not suggesting he’s the same as a parent or a sibling or a grandparent or a child. I think that’s ok, though; I don’t think that all grieving processes have to be the same, or even comparable. He was my first adult commitment, and his death was my first truly soul-crushing, truly alone adult decision. He was the first creature I loved because I chose to. I’m writing this, I guess, to memorialize that.
Kosher sex toys

Posted: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:13:16 +0000

I mean sure, why not.

According to the site, KosherSexToys.net’s mission is “to provide married adults with products that can help enhance their intimate moments without involving crude or indecent pictures or text,” and promises to send all purchases without any crude packaging or inappropriate accompanying materials.

The site stresses that it is “obviously only for married adults”, and prides itself in containing no “crude or indecent pictures or text”.

“We believe that only two people belong in the bedroom – and bringing pictures of others in can only harm a marriage,” the site says.

KosherSexToys.net claims to be the only “kosher” website for sex toys on the internet, and promises that “you will never see something on this site that will make you blush. When we need to use descriptive terms for our products, we use clinical and clean language.”

Great that more people can experience the joys of sex toys, and basics like lube.

Bad that this is being positioned as a “clean” alternative to the dirty sex shops that recognize human beings are using their toys.

Confusing that it’s “obviously only for married adults.” Are they going to require proof of marriage to order online?

Interesting that the best-selling item on the website is furry handcuffs.