Tuesday, July 8, 2008

This is not the post you’re looking for

Category labels: BDSM psychology, Personal experience, Reviews, Sex, Sex toys, Vanilla life, Writing and blogging

The post you’re looking for is actually my new review of the Tantus silicone cock ring on Eden’s site. Unless, of course, you really are looking for this one, in which case read on.

It was recently my birthday. This is actually a bigger deal than it would otherwise be because I’ve just turned twenty four and, by my logic, this means I am entering my “mid-twenties.” For the first time in my life, I kind of feel old.

Of course, I’m not that old, but I’m still kind of old. It’s summer in New York City even though it’s winter in my new home on the other side of the world, which means school’s out of session. The new Executive Board of Conversio Virium is finding their feet, and though they’re doing a fantastic a job of it if I do say so myself, I notice all the little gaps in their knowledge about things. These are things that will come with time and experience, two things I seem to be finding plenty of in myself lately.

I’ve been a very busy bee and thus haven’t been paying much attention to this little corner of cyberspace except in the form of sporadic tweets where my real life intersects (as it often does) with the BDSM stuff. It is one of those cyclic things wherein kink takes a back seat to life. In part, this is simply a matter of lack of opportunity. I miss the public scene I know and complain about back in New York.

I think this has made play a form of comfort rather than a form of exploration, and doing a scene for comfort is not at all the same as doing one for personal exploration. I’m sure there’s a post in there, somewhere…. Ah, well. At least I am still getting new sex toys to review.

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Monday, June 9, 2008

Sexism at Large in American Politics: Armed and Dangerous

Category labels: BDSM in the media, BDSM safety, Masculinity, Politics of sex, Sexism, Vanilla life

I’ve never been extremely thorough about pursuing political current events, but I’m finding myself ever more personally withdrawn from American politics now that I’m living in Sydney and no longer living in America. However, I actually feel more knowledgeable about American politics now than I did when I lived in New York City, mostly because local people here won’t stop asking my opinions on things.

It’s funny to me, how much Australians are interested in the happenings in America. I suppose that makes sense, but as an American who (like the stereotype) never really realized how much of an influence America was to the rest of the world, it’s taking me a little by surprise.

Anyway, needless to say, I’ve been keeping up (a bit) with the Democratic national primary. It’s hard not to. The whole world was practically sitting on the edge of its seat wondering who will win. A black man or a white woman as candidates give rise to only two topics in the right’s conservative hypocrisy: racism and sexism.

This was such a heated race that I’ve even received regular emails from some people in my extended family about it. Their emails are extremely strongly-worded short essays with arguments as to why I should or shouldn’t vote for Obama or Clinton (though mostly only because of the candidates’ opinions on Israel, which I couldn’t really care much about anyway). I’m thinking of telling them to start a blog.

I really have no opinion one way or the other about the merits of either candidate—I’m simply not very well informed. That said, Debra Haffner linked this 5-minute video produced by the Women’s Media Center showcasing myriad clips of all the sexist remarks made about Hillary during her campaign. I rarely link videos in this blog, but this one is worth your time.

There’s a lot of sexist language harassing women in this video, since its goal is to showcase how the media is sexist against women. However, that’s just half the story. There’s at least an equal if not greater amount of sexist language in today’s media against men since, obviously, most public political discussion happens about and between men. Where’s the highlight reel of political pundits proclaiming that some candidate “doesn’t have the balls” to do something brave?

One reason I’m more than a little withdrawn from politics is because I know I’ll never be elected to public office. Even if I had the aspirations, I would simply never survive a smear campaign. I mean, look at this blog!

Indeed, back in the “good old days” when I used to stay at Paddles, the local NYC public BDSM club until 4 AM, that was even a joke. The lot of us, my friends and I, would stumble up the stairs in the dark and then burst out onto the street like mole-people, bleary eyed from a long night. We used to joke with another, “Well, I’m certainly not running for public office after tonight!” the implication being that we’ve done yet another thing that would get us booted immediately if the word got out.

While this threat is meaningless to me, since I don’t want to be in public office anyway, I have met more than a few people over the years for whom this is a real concern. They remain anonymous to this day precisely because they do, at some point, want to be in public office in order to make our government better, and most of them don’t even want to get into the areas of sexual rights. They’ll never have a blog like this, though, because having a blog like this—doing what I’m doing right now—means I’ll never win a race for public office.

But hey. I still get to vote. And of course, I will.

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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wednesday Wanderings: Sexy Techie

Category labels: Bisexuality, Community, Humor, Technology, Vanilla life, Wednesday Wanderings

If it weren’t 12:50 AM here right now, this entry might be more than a PSA, but there is way too much wine in me (and I have way too much work to do) for it to be anything but. On that note, however, I would like to share with you my new absolute favorite web sites:

Firstly, let me just say that I might go to sleep tonight and have a wet dream.

Secondly, let me point out that only among techies do I often see the evidence of equal opportunity, even if cultural overtones are still in full force. Seriously, in what communities other than the realms of utter geekdom does a “Dig a Tech Girl” web site give rise to a “Dig a Tech Guy” web site in literally under a day?

For those wondering how I know these ideas were cemented within a day of each other, the answer is geeky (obviously)! I checked the whois records for the creation date of the domain names. :)

Perseus:~ maymay$ whois digatechgirl.com | grep Creation
   Creation Date: 29-oct-2007
Perseus:~ maymay$ whois digatechguy.com | grep Creation
   Creation Date: 30-oct-2007

Yes, my machine really is named “Perseus.” Yes, my username really is “maymay.”

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Monday, April 21, 2008

My first two months in the Sydney BDSM Scene

Category labels: Community, Personal experience, Vanilla life

It’s been almost a month since I’ve last written here. Even Though I don’t feel beholden to this blog, I do feel committed to it. That’s why I sometimes feel bad when I grow silent or distant from this outlet and spend my energies elsewhere. Nevertheless, such breaks are necessary for me to maintain this blog in the first place, so it’s all a sort of give and take.

My first month in Australia was spent in an absolute whirlpool of chores and errands. Not only was I horribly ill my first week here, I also needed to find an apartment, a job, and all the other bits of a life I wanted. I left New York City so I could go be a different fish in a different pool. Sydney has this strange culture, which I hardly feel qualified to discuss with any authority. It’s exceedingly different from the culture in New York City and it interests me. What I didn’t expect about coming to Sydney was just how small of a pool I was going to end up in.

According to Wikipedia, Sydney is populated by roughly 4.2 million people and is spread over a geographical area of about 4,700 square miles. New York City, by contrast, is populated by roughly 9 million residents (a number that swells to even higher numbers during business hours) and is approximately 470 square miles in size. What this means is that the words “I am from New York City” have an almost magical effect on people here, and even after two month’s time that’s still taking me by surprise.

This is true in both the workplace and the social scenes, though obviously it’s the social scenes where this sort of introduction can lead to any real discussion of culture and history. I’m happy to say that as far as work goes, with little trouble I think I’ve found a really nice employer, with awesome people closer to my age (even if I am still the youngest one in the office by at least half a decade) who I can actually enjoy getting a drink with. That’s never happened before, and it’s nice to see my efforts to mix social and office spaces together actually succeeding.

Also, thanks in no small part to the kindness of our friends, over the past month Eileen and I have been introduced to many of the proprietors of BDSM and fetish venues and parties that are scattered across the Sydney area. We’ve already attended two invitation-only parties of this nature, and we had the opportunity to go to a few more public parties, but decided against it. Firstly, we simply don’t have forty dollars each to spend on a party every weekend (and every party is at least 25 dollars plus transportation costs ’round here, which is just fucking bloody expensive), and secondly I’ve been so busy that the only reason I’m even writing this post is due to the fact that I’m home sick (or rather, working from home).

Of the literally dozens upon dozens of people I’ve met at these parties, munches, and so forth, almost none of them are anywhere near my age. I don’t mind hanging out with older people—I have been doing exactly that since I was a young boy—but the distinct lack of a young person’s kinky space is isolating. There are quite a few organizations for young queer kids, but frankly, most of the time queer kids are just as vanilla as straight kids. It feels a lot like time traveling back to New York City before Conversio Virium became as successful as it is. I think I might just miss my kinky friends.

Along the same note, the BDSM culture here feels old fashioned, as though I’m getting a taste of what it might have been like in the mid 1990’s in New York City. What we in NYC would call “classic leather” or maybe “old guard” isn’t just prominent here, it’s fashionable. Everyone’s always decked to the nines in heavy leather or shiny vinyl outfits. Corsets are pretty much a prerequisite if your body has breasts in much the same way as ass-less pants are if you were born with a penis, and (as I keep bringing up) even the private parties have dress codes (augh!). The local people with any stature whatsoever are the ones that have been around the longest, because they have been around the longest.

The scene superstars here are the same people as the ones I know from the States. Lolita, Lee, Midori, Dov, and others are household names here just as they were in The City. Whereas in the States superstars like these run workshops and spend their time teaching or producing pornography and erotica, all the local superstars here are venue owners, or people who run “donation”-based parties. In Sydney, so far, the word “community” simply seems to mean “I go to some of the same parties as you.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some younger people, even if they tend to lurk in online forums instead of being willing to come out to events. Even better, there’s a much more populous group of female dominants who aren’t pros (though there are a lot of those, too). Ultimately, I think it’s the monopoly of the party culture that is preventing a lot of younger people from feeling willing to come out of the woodwork. Firstly, it’s too expensive, and secondly—despite the stereotypes—it’s not attractive to the majority of young adults.

The Sydney BDSM scene suffers from a lack of educational events. The people here seem just as capable of doing excellent BDSM as they are in the states, but they’re not talking about it to anyone, not even each other. Most of them seem afraid to, as if doing so will give them a bad reputation. It seems okay for me for to do it, since I’m from New York City and all, but for some reason, they think they couldn’t possibly have anything to teach me.

I’m hoping to help change this and over time I’d really love to see more educational events run by local people, advertising local speakers, promoted hand-in-hand with parties and munches.

Comments (4)

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Fetish fashion is the same no matter where you go

Category labels: Beginner BDSM, Community, Fetish, Personal experience, Sex toys, Vanilla life

I’m in Sydney, Australia.

Without a doubt, the hardest thing about moving across the world for me has been the sudden lack of connectivity to the information I’m so used to getting on a regular basis. Nothing else really compares, because more than anything else the cost of that information is time—something (generally speaking) that we all have in equal amounts. Rich or poor, there’s still only twenty-four hours in the day.

So between learning the geography (and public transit systems) of a new city, getting a cell phone, looking for a place to live, setting up a bank account (and doing the dance of juggling one’s finances across two of Earth’s hemispheres while not bouncing any checks), going on job interviews, meeting freelance work deadlines, figuring out what the cost of living might be like, trying to understand people through their (sometimes unintelligible) Australian accents, and a whole lot more (like wasting four hours over three days on a health insurance claim [don't ask]), I’ve barely had enough time—much less an actually usable Internet connection—to do any information-consuming.

Slowly, that’s all getting sorted and the stress that makes all the differences I’m seeing between Sydney and New York City insufferable are making way for me to feel interested by them. Some things I’d have thought would be the same aren’t (like coffee, which is practically a whole different language here), and other things that I hoped would be different aren’t (yet).

Most striking is the (very painful) reminder that I’m not like almost anybody around me. Eileen’s just started classes, and we spent the better portion of a week exploring the campus. I’m meeting lots of students, but I am always reminded (typically rather explicitly) that I am not a student here, and thus not privileged with the same monetary discounts, opportunities for networking, or even casual social invitations for conversation (at least, not at first). It’s making me feel very segregated and lonely.

This past weekend was the climax of the Mardi Gras celebration in Sydney, and the famous parade. I watched the whole thing from the corner of Oxford and Riley streets, right up at the barricades, accompanied by Eileen and our gracious friends from the Blogosphere (and temporary Mardi Gras tour guides) Mistress 160 and Solipsist. It was a lot of fun in its own right, yet I couldn’t help myself from comparing the experience to the one’s I’ve had at the New York City Gay Pride Parades. They are, of course, incomparable in some respects, but not all of them.

For instance, one thing I noticed right at the start when people were beginning to crowd the streets was that at Sydney’s Mardi Gras, the spectators themselves were much, much more participatory in the celebrations. Costumes could be seen everywhere, on a huge chunk of the population, not just the marchers. In New York City, it’s typically only the people actually marching who do anything other than just show up to watch.

Another distinct difference was the abundant presence of alcohol. Beers and wines were so prevalent that by the end of the nearly two-hour parade the street was literally covered with so much trash (called “rubbish” here, by the way) that for a good half-block’s walk you had to be careful where you stepped. For the next few days, I occasionally walked by bits of broken glass. Maybe it’s just that you can’t really tell the difference in New York, but the aftermath of the Gay Pride Parade in New York City doesn’t look like a huge house party. That said, Sydney is surprisingly clean—especially for a city with an unnerving scarcity of public trash cans. Sorry, I mean rubbish bins.

All in all, Mardi Gras just can’t match the scale of the parade in New York. But then again, what can? After all, the entirety of Australia, whose geographic size rivals that of the United States, sustains a population equal merely to that of New York State.

The highlight of Mardi Gras, for me, was the single obvious leather group that marched. Predominantly male and bearing all the earmarks of what the New York City BDSM community would call “old guard leather,” they were sporting leather puppy boy outfits complete with paws and snouts, straight jackets, heavy metal shackles, and no shortage of exposed skin. By the point they marched by—well after halfway through—I had almost given up hope of seeing a kinky group march and advocate for BDSM, so vanilla (if very obviously GLBT-centric) was the rest of the parade and whole general atmosphere.

Shortly after that group marched by, I saw another much smaller group holding a banner that read Sexplorer08.com that had a few other hopeful signs: a woman in a shibari rope harness and a few others dressed in classic fetish outfits. To my surprise, the woman in the rope harness came right up to Mistress 160 and gave her a hug, which prompted quite a few questions from me because ever since I got here Eileen and I have been trying to find the kink scene in Sydney (as well as trying to find the time to search).

I’m really thankful for this blog because it’s given me so many lovely connections to kink communities on an International scope (Curvaceous Dee being another “AsiaPac” example).

One of the things I’ve been chomping at the bit (only figuratively, unfortunately) to see is how, if at all, kink is different across the planet. A lot about BDSM and sex in general is culturally influenced, and geography has a very heavy influence on culture. What sorts of differences, then, will I find in the kink communities here?

Browsing through the aisles of the fetish shops won’t reveal the answers to that because, low and behold, the accoutrements of kinky sex are evidently the same the world over. Not just similar, mind you, but identical, right down to the label. One shop in particular stands out as the clear premium BDSM shop in Sydney: Sax Fetish. Comparable to The Leather Man or Purple Passion in New York City, the only surprising thing about Sax Fetish is that they’re the only ones—something that speaks to Sydney’s smaller size.

This is also exemplary of the way smaller community sizes actually beget a more mixed crowd: wherein New York City you have specialty kink/fetish/leather/BDSM shops owned, operated, and marketed to distinct communities (like the gay community or the heterosexual community in the case of The Leather Man and Purple Passion), in Sydney every kink space is explicitly, pro-actively inviting members of all gender identities and sexual orientations to participate in a singular space. The same is true of the monthly fetish party, Hellfire Sydney, which (and I’m guessing because I’ve not attended it yet) seems reminiscent of BYTE. Specifically, both are monthly “fetish parties” with strict dress codes (the exact same dress codes, in fact), yet because Sydney only has this one monthly public fetish party, the proprietors make great efforts to be inclusive of everyone under the rainbow. These are statements that are mere afterthoughts in the New York City fetish scene, if they are even made at all.

On their web site, for example, Hellfire Sydney says:

[Hellfire Sydney] is a very mixed club. You’ll find varying proportions of people who identify as straight, bisexual, lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, intersex and some that defy even those labels. Which is just as well because we’re not too keen on labels anyway. Celebrating human sexuality in all its weird and wonderful diversity is what we’re all about, so as long as it doesn’t involve children, animals or the unwilling then hey, let’s party, whoever you are!

We’re also a club that celebrates physical diversity, with deliciously dirty deviants of all shapes and sizes dressed to thrill.

That may be so, but doesn’t it seem strangely at odds to you that a club which so adamantly touts its acceptance of the diversity of sexual expression has such a strict (and some would argue, boring) dress code? It does to me. But of course, as Richard has recently pointed out, the “fetish scene” is hardly representative of actually practicing sadomasochism, though there is some obvious overlap.

Perhaps it’s my New York conditioning, but I’m wary of any space that has strict dress codes because I believe it’s likely to be full of “stand-and-model S&M” and lacking for actual play. This is one of the clear differentiators between the “fetish fashion scene” and the “BDSM scene,” and I’m simply not interested in the former.

And so, I’m in Sydney. I’m still waiting to find out what I’ll find here.

Followups: Check out Mistress 160’s post about our night at Mardi Gras, too!

Comments (18)

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Selfish Highlight Reel: Rhode Island Fetish Flair Flea-market Recap

Category labels: Community, Emotions, Kink events, Myths and misconceptions, Personal experience, Pet play, Puppy play, Sex toys, Uncategorized, Vanilla life, Wednesday Wanderings, Writing and blogging

Almost a week and I haven’t posted nary a word in either posts nor comments. What is going on? Despite the praise—which is lovely and makes me feel good, and useful, and accomplished—I have no altruistic goals for my writing, no illusions of where my motivation to keep this blog going stems from.

In case it hasn’t become common knowledge yet, in exactly four weeks I will be leaving the United States on a jet plane headed towards Sydney, Australia, where I will be living for at least the following year. This marks the very first time in my life when I will not have lived in New York City. In fact, it marks the only time in my life when I’ll have to call some location outside of the island of Manhattan my home.

I’m so excited, I can’t wait. But I’m also going to miss so many people and things about New York City and the East coast in general so, so much. In this last month in the States, I don’t expect to be writing every day anymore, and would like to echo the things Eileen said about the stress of moving.

But it’s Wednesday, and I want to keep the commitments I make to myself, so I wanted to post a Wednesday Wanderings link-fest for everyone reading. This Wednesday Wanderings post is going to be a little different because instead of wandering all over cyberspace this past week, I wandered around meatspace. Specifically, I went to the Rhode Island Fetish Fair Flea-market.

Part of the goal for this blog—making myself feel more visible, more heard, more seen, and more listened to—has been a major success. People are finding their own kinds of value in what I have to say, and they do so by finding their own motivations for listening in the first place.

Going to NELA’s Rhode Island Fetish Fair Flea-market this past weekend felt very much like that. I decided to go at the last minute, for my own reasons, to turn the event into an opportunity for personal exploration and experimentation of a sort I choose to keep my own, for now. I had some successes, some pain, some very frustrating dashed expectations, and some disappointments, so it was not the sort of spectacular experience some people might expect it to be. That said, I’m glad I went, and I don’t think I did too badly on my own.

The Flea’s primary purpose for me, an opportunity to practice (among other things) taking the bad with the good without Eileen present was something I accomplished in the end. As I mentioned, for now I choose not to show you (all) the bad parts. I don’t want to talk about them right now, especially since I’ve covered lots of them before.

It should come as no surprise to long-time readers how frustrated I am with the persistence that women’s bodies are the sole subject for fetish photography and how combative I feel around asshat mandoms. The Flea had its fair share of these things.

I’ve been to this Winter event two times before and each time it felt like, well, like going to a kink event. This time, however, it felt far more like I was just going to Providence to see some friends, who all happened to be congregating at a kink event. That was much, much more fun.

I didn’t make it to a single class or workshop. I never made it through the entryway of the Fetish Art Show, even though I passed by the entrance at least a dozen times. I didn’t make a single significant purchase, though I did pick up a small, spontaneous gift for Eileen that I’m hoping gets used on me soon. And I’m not at all disappointed about any of those things.

I do wish I had gotten to spend more one-on-one time with my friends, especially Switch, whose insightful self-reflection was the source of my original motivation to attend the event in the first place.

Switch and I travelled to Providence with Dov on Saturday morning who, like both of us, had made similar last-minute plans to attend two days before. Conversations with Dov are always at least entertaining and at their best are very interesting. At the Flea, we couldn’t walk more than five feet in any direction without one of us stopping to say hello to someone we knew. Midori was vending near the entrance to the infamously gigantic vendor’s area, so she was one of the first people Dov stopped to talk with, and he introduced her to Switch. (I just said a brief hello.)

It wasn’t long after that when Switch and I met up with my good friends Maja and Týr, the marvelous Mischief and the enchanting Estra, as well as a few of our other friends without blog names. Together, we swept through the vending area at least three times over. I also said hello to David King, maker of the excellent Coyote Whips single tails, was introduced to Leah and Scott of Big Head Studios, and waved to Hilton manning the Purple Passion booth.

Eventually, after also connecting with Calico, the group of us went to the Bondage Lounge, where we hung out with Sascha, and I spent a fun few minutes as Switch’s ball of human and hemp.

Later, our group swelled to ever larger proportions, including the addition of yet-more-non-blog-people. Also included in the mix was a specific attractive and dominant woman who I was very happy to get to see again—and whom I hope to be able to see more of in the very near future—but unfortunately didn’t get quite as much time to speak with as I would have liked. (You know who you are; I’d rather not call you out by name without prior notice, though if that’s something you wouldn’t mind then I’d be happy to do so from now on.) Eventually we all made it to dinner in spite of a wait well over an hour.

At the hotel room, emotional issues struck at night alongside insomnia of sorts. None of us got much sleep, but the conversation with Switch was heartening and was the highlight of my day, however mixed it was with exhaustion and other sadness.

The next day back at the Flea-market, I was happy to get the chance to meet the brilliant blogger from over on Kink in Exile, who has finally returned from physical “exile” and is back on the East coast just in time for us to cross paths. The two of us wandered around a bit, and I got introduced to some of her friends, like Mr. Pet (who makes incredible custom couture pieces), Steve of Circlet Press, and a few others who also don’t have public blogosphere identities.

I also had the pleasure of seeing Margaret, the absolutely unabashedly, astonishingly adorable founder of Wolf Princess Designs, a company that sells vegan sex accessories for the extremely enjoyable niche of human animal roleplay (aka. pet play). The fact that I’m not going to get the opportunity to get to know Margaret better is one of the reasons I’m sad to be leaving New York City. Not that opportunities were abundant seeing as how I’m from New York City and she’s based in Providence, but still.

After Kink in Exile and I finished making the rounds, I reconnected with Switch over at Monk’s booth to find her literally tied to Maja. Dov snapped a few pictures as Týr’s massive frame provided a background that would hide other people from the camera, an important thing to be careful of at kink events.

I took the opportunity created by the impromptu bondage photo shoot to speak with Monk’s self-described Twisted Mentat, Alex. I had a thoroughly enjoyable conversation about Seattle, the scene there, and stuff to do there, with her, as well as shared a few words on each other’s personal history, and (of course) bondage, hemp rope, and all the fun things you can do with it.

For me, getting to meet Monk—but especially getting to speak with Alex—was probably the best thing about the whole vendor’s area. As it turns out, I might get the opportunity to actually visit Seattle for few days in early February, so making a good local connection ahead of time was simply wonderful. That, and Alex is clearly full of awesome: outgoing and outspoken, energetic and fun.

Unlike me, Monk and Alex were at the Flea on business and so I tried not to get in the way of the constant flow of customer’s questions. Instead, I spoke with Viviane, and then to Rita Seagrave. I was very happy, and flattered, that Rita made it a point to say hello to me (and to compliment me on this blog! Thank you, Rita!) because her own writing is filled with intelligent observations just as mine is, but it’s also polished into some of the most evocative poetry and prose-poetry I’ve ever come across, and I really admire her communicative ability in that style. If you haven’t yet peeked at some of Rita’s blog, you should.

And that, as they say, was that. The overall uneventful affair was ended with some fond farewells and retracing most of my steps back to the city, with a stop to see Boy for just a couple hours along the way.

The takeaway from it all is this: kink is not some kind of magical mystery tour, some alien or foreign experience devoid of the mundane and—gasp!—normal human interaction. For many people, especially the vendors, kink is a part of the daily grind, and is remarkable largely for its unremarkable quality. And I guess that’s really what I wanted to add to my blog when I started writing this entry.

My writing is typically full of the extraordinary, of the moments of epiphany and none of the drudgery of the thought process, of the sex without the foreplay. Of course, this has been by design. I want readers to come here with the expectation that they’ll get their proverbial rocks off, a reliable orgasm (metaphorically or otherwise) with minimal personal effort.

However, this blog is just the selfish highlight reel.

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Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Fantasy Worlds

Category labels: BDSM psychology, D/s dynamics, Emotions, Fantasy, Femdom, Personal experience, Relationship, Uncategorized, Vanilla life

One of my severe failings is my notorious inability to “take the bad with the good,” or to “just be okay,” or to do that thing that so many people seem so capable of doing with such relative ease that makes them, by and large, happier more often than I am. Regardless of the freedoms or the privileges they may or may not have, some of these people are simply really good at synthesizing happiness. It’s been my mental illness, bipolar disorder, that has been the scapegoat and the whipping boy for much of these failings of my character, yet—ironically, in keeping with my character—I’ve always rejected the notion that such a simplistic, restricting explanation as mental illness is the full answer.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that I lack the refinement of a necessary skill that would give me a lot more peace with the cold, hard, real hardships I’m facing. Though I’m getting better at this with time and hard work, no one has been affected more severely by this struggle of mine than Eileen, for obvious reasons. These reasons include physical proximity, emotional closeness, shared love, and of course, an obvious disparity of some very personally painful privileges.

Right now, as I write this, it’s precisely that thought racing through my head: remember that it will be okay. We’ve recently had a very harsh day. Ordinarily, despite the fact that I reference Eileen a lot in my blog, I don’t often talk about her. When I do, it’s more because I’m talking about me, and even that’s guarded, for both our sakes; navigating the waters between being out and being private is very important to both of us. But right now, I want to write about my night with her.

It’s a night I don’t ever want to forget.

As I said, the day was harsh, a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs. The early hours swung wildly between comfortable laxness and debilitating pain. By the end of the day, we had found a more even keel.

Unfortunately, I began feeling ill a while earlier. It was a mild but unpleasant upset stomach that hit me first, followed by a familiar stab of pain in my feet as I walked. Later, back at home, exhaustion hit me full force and I was soon collapsed on our bed.

“What’s wrong?” Eileen asked me from her computer chair.

“I feel bad…,” I groaned.

“Bad how?” she asked.

“Physically,” I said.

She put her computer back on her desk and pushed herself out from under it in order to come give me a hug. With the painful tension in my body spreading, her hug hurt and I covered my head with the blankets and crawled to the wall. It was clear that I was feeling quite a bit worse than just “bad.”

She paused a moment and then left the bed. “I’m going to run you a bath. The water will relax you, it’ll do you good.”

“No, it’s filthy,” I said.

“Then I’ll clean it,” she said. “When I come back in this room I expect you to be naked, got it?”

I very rarely argue with beautiful dominant women who demand that I strip, so of course I agreed and quickly disrobed, tossing my clothes over the side of the bed and cocooning myself in the folds of the blankets. I heard the water going, heard Eileen shuffling about, but was too far gone to really take notice of very much.

“Where are our matches?” Eileen asked suddenly appearing at my side.

“What? I don’t know.”

“You used one to light the incense the other day, didn’t you? Where’d you put them?”

“Actually, I used the stove,” I told her.

More shuffling from her, more dizzied motionlessness from me. Then I heard a chain rattling.

A while ago, for the June 2007 Gay Pride Parade, Eileen and I bought ourselves a six-foot length of chain. It’s nothing fancy, just a regular old length of chain from our hardware store and a set of four keyed-alike padlocks. In total, it cost us under twenty dollars, and it’s one of the most versatile, often-used, and enjoyable toys in our entire bedroom.

I love heavy metal bondage, chain, and that chain specifically. It’s just like ropes, but the practicality chain and locks offer is unsurpassed, not to mention hugely psychologically impressive. When Eileen picked up that chain and I heard it rattling by the window, my mind immediately started to race towards fantasies and memories, which is arguably a very stupid thing to do.

Oh, forget about it, I chided myself. She’s just moving the chain out of the way.

She wasn’t, though, and the next thing I knew the blankets were pulled off of me and Eileen had one end of the chain looped around my collar and had it padlocked shut. She began pulling gently. “Come on,” she said as she lead me towards the bath tub.

It was mere seconds from the bed to the bathroom, but even before arriving at the bathroom my cock was as hard as the steel Eileen was pulling with. She smiled knowingly at me, and I smiled helplessly back. Then I saw the bathroom, and I nearly melted from glee.

The bathroom light was off. The room was illuminated by eleven candles, ten tea-lights and one large cylindrical candle (I counted them later). Inside the cylindrical candle was the stick of incense I had pushed into the wax the week before, lit and smoking. On the closed toilet seat within arms reach from the tub, a wine glass rimmed with rock salt held a drink—a margarita, my favorite! The bathtub was filled a quarter way with running water, and not a single smudge of dirt or grime was visible on the white porcelain.

The small room smelled of steam and spice. As I stood at the doorway, not quite knowing what to do, I could feel the warm air touching my naked skin, making the finer hairs on my body stand on end. It made me feel suddenly chilly, but it was a welcoming sort of temperature, like the feeling one might get upon seeing hot chocolate and a roaring fire after just spending an hour playing in the snow. I was so happy.

“Go on,” Eileen said, motioning through the bathroom doorway with a nod of her head. “Get in the bath.”

I’m pretty sure I said something at this point, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. I might have said, “Yes, ma’am,” with a smile on my face that stretched from ear to ear, or I might have just stood there agape. I was simply so pleasantly surprised at the scene that I wished I could play the moments in slow-motion.

The water in the bathtub was a touch hotter than what was comfortable, because I had to step out of it briefly after immersing my foot in the water. Eileen waited patiently as I took a moment to adjust the water temperature, and then slowly seated myself in the tub.

When I was sitting down, Eileen took the free-standing end of the chain and circled it around the piping behind the toilet. I heard a click as she padlocked it shut. The sound sent a shrill jolt of excitement through me: she’s chaining me in the bath! I knew the chain was long enough that I could probably stand on the outside of the bathroom door if I wanted or needed to, but the sight of the room combined with the feel of the chain’s presence itself was enough to fuel my fantastical imagination.

I was a harem slave, pampered and cared for so long as I obeyed my Mistress and her underlings. Or I was a simple villager caught up in some conflict and now found myself a spoil of war, being prepped for her enjoyment that she’d no doubt partake of in just a moment. Or I was a beloved human pet, spoiled rotten with expensive liqueur and kept at my owner’s whim for fun. I was all of these things, and so many others!

“Now,” she started as she straightened up, “relax and feel better,” she said. “And drink your margarita! Oh, and you can masturbate if you want to,” she added with a smile, producing our pump-bottle of Babe Lube in an instant and placing it next to the margarita.

“Yes’m,” I mumbled through an impossible smile.

Eileen took a step forward and bent down to look over me. “Yes what?” she asked, grinning at me.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said again, this time with what was evidently satisfactory volume.

“Good boy,” she said, and moved to kiss me. I dissolved into her kiss.

Sadly, the kiss was too brief. She pulled away and told me that she’d check on me, and that I’d better relax and behave. I lusted after her when she turned to go, my eyes nearly molten with liquid, my cock involuntarily splashing at the water’s surface as though it were some ecstatic child. The feeling was simply indescribable.

I took a moment to look around again when she closed the door behind her. Our bathroom, whose walls Eileen had painted with a strip of silver and blue mermaids years ago and which were now flickering in the candlelight, looked like a small washroom in some palace somewhere. The walls themselves, which are made of white, coated brick, added to the illusion. The faint gray trails from the burning incense made a single winding column of smoke that stretched halfway to the ceiling.

The hot water was, indeed, relaxing. It was soothing my muscles and washing my stress down the drain.

So much water, my fantasy narrator was talking in my head. There’s only a funnel at the drain, so all of this running water, every drop, is being spent on me. (Now, I have to laugh at my inner environmentalist who knows this was horrible.)

That fantasy narrator kept going, melding real and imagined thoughts, feelings, and sensations together.

I wonder what she wants from me. Is she going to hurt me? This is all…so nice…but why the chain?

At the thought of the chain I melted again, curling up on my side and letting the fantasy reel keep playing in my head. Every so often Eileen would appear at the door, checking up on me. She never looked sexier to me than she did from that vantage point in the bath.

Unfortunately, my stomach soon began feeling upset and my limbs could no longer find a comfortable resting position. I was feeling ill again and had to stop the water. I sat up, slouched over, holding an arm over my belly. Hearing the water stop running, Eileen came back to check on me.

“I think I need some water,” I could barely croak the words.

“Okay,” she said, and she went to get some, bringing it back in a hurry. I drank.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t drink the drink,” I said. And I’m so sorry my body isn’t playing along with this amazing, incredible creation you’ve made for me, I thought.

“It’s okay, I’ll drink the rest” she said as reassuringly as she could, “I think you should go to sleep.”

Disappointed, I had to agree.

“Will you be okay for just another minute?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and went about clearing the margarita and the lube from the bathroom, preparing our bed and turning out the bedroom lights. A minute later she was back with the keys to my chain leash and had unlocked it from the back of the toilet. “Can you stand?”

I could, and did, and she helped me out of the tub and gave me our big beach towel. I dried myself off as she led me by the chain leash, still locked to my collar, back to the bed.

“Drop it,” she said of the towel, “and get in bed.”

I did as I was told and was greeted by the warmth of several layers of blankets being pulled over me. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I heard the chain rattling against our window’s security grate.

“Oh but…what if I need to go pee in the middle of the night?” I asked without moving or opening my eyes.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Eileen said to me. “I haven’t locked the other end of the chain to the window, I just used a carabiner.” I opened my eyes in slight surprise and saw her smiling cleverly at me. “But I’ll only do that for emergencies or sicknesses, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” I smiled back and closed my eyes again. I spent a little while trying to fall asleep but couldn’t manage it easily. My body still hurt and my mind wouldn’t quiet. She noticed this and was soon in bed with me. We spooned. She was gently caressing my back and my sides.

After a while, when I still wasn’t able to sleep or chase away the tension in my body, Eileen started whispering in my ear.

“I like to think of you owned by me,” she said. “You, a young farm boy, no one special, though pretty, and me coming with an army to pluck you out of your life and take you away with me. I like to think of how you’d fight, how you’d struggle, how I’d break you. You’d be on your knees, being held down by two strong men, when I first see you. I’d tie you down and put a collar on you, mark you as mine.”

One of her hands found my collar and slowly pulled back on it so I’d feel it against my neck. I was silently moaning at this point in little shallow breaths that dried my mouth completely. I was so turned on, hanging on every word she said.

“You’re property,” she continued, “owned, you belong to me. I like that you breathe when I let you…” she closed a hand over my nose and my mouth, yet I only twitched nervously once, “…that you eat what I give you, that you’re living because I want you to. That’s what I mean when I say you’re mine; that I’ll care for you, that I want you.” She stopped and let the words sink in. I still couldn’t breath, and I was happy to let the fantasy of my fear of her keep me from struggling to get away.

Eventually I couldn’t help but begin to pull away from her. “Shhh…” she cooed, and I tried uselessly to relax. The lack of oxygen was growing insistent in my chest, quicker than it would have been had she not raised my heart rate with such arousal. “Shhh,” she said again, more forcefully this time, pressing her hand against my lips and tightening her fingers’ grasp of my nose even stronger. I did my best to hold still, to let my muscles sink into our mattress and my head rest limply on her arm.

I felt the emptiness in my chest growing. I closed my eyes to help myself stay relaxed. What was at first the small circle of emptiness in the center of my body seemed to expand to fill my lungs, and then began pressing at my ribs. Still I remained motionless, restful. Still the emptiness pressed against my body, growing slightly painful. I drowned it out of my consciousness with arousal as best I could.

Still, she didn’t let me breathe. My cock throbbed with my every heartbeat. I could hear her breathing calmly in my ear, the warm air passing over my earlobe and my cheek.

“Good boy,” she praised me, holding me tightly. I waited longer, longer, and yet longer. I waited longer than I think I’ve ever been able to wait for her permission to breathe, but I waited. And finally she let me, and I gasped and wheezed for breath when she moved her hand.

Her hand moved down my body to my stomach, my hips, my thighs. She touched my cock only enough to check my hardness and to feel my precum leaking from it and then moved on, chuckling softly to herself, relishing my breathless whimpers and slight, weakened writhing. Her hands continued to roam all over my body, which was really hers now, and she continued the narration of our fantasy.

I was so aroused I had forgotten my tense and aching muscles and my upset stomach. And that, really, was the point. Eventually Eileen stopped and she soothingly encouraged me to stay relaxed and go to sleep. I tried but succeeded only in falling into a fitful slumber.

I woke up less than two hours later, aching all over and still feeling slightly nauseous. I tried several times to go back to sleep but ultimately got myself out of bed, unclipping the chain leash from our window and carrying it out of the bedroom with me. The rest of the night was a mix of pain and frustration, trying to sleep but being unable to, and weathering through the aches and pains of my physical illness.

Nearing dawn, still unable to sleep, I started writing this entry. I did so because I was feeling upset, angry at the world for making me ill. Why tonight? I thought, Why now? If it weren’t for this stupid, unfair virus, tonight would have been so much better.

The truth is, that night was spectacular even though I felt pretty bad physically throughout much of it. I need to remember, I keep reminding myself now, that it was good, that everything will be fine, that I should take the good with the bad. That I should just be okay.

This is very important, but this is very hard for me. That night was not the night in my fantasies by any stretch of the imagination. Like many things, the reality of it was very different from the fantasy. That night, with its imperfections and nuisances, obstacles and truly undesired pain and discomfort, is what real sexual experience most often looks like, not the perfect creation you and I see in most pornography, the glossy sex in movies and magazines, and sometimes even in many sex blogs.

It was up to me in this moment, after it was all said and done, to make it work. Would I choose to remember this night as “if I just weren’t sick…” or would I choose to remember it as “the night Eileen did something absolutely incredible for me”? To make it work, really work, I had to make it work.

Eileen and I, we’re not just the people we write about, and it’s easy to get a wrong impression or miss out on the rest of us from simply reading about us on our blogs. It’s even easier, for that matter, to get the wrong impression about her from reading my blog, as it is about me from reading hers. Neither one of us can really do the other, or ourselves, justice on a sex blog.

That’s why when I say that Eileen is my love, my hero, and my best friend, I don’t think any of that can actually convey all of what I mean. She is all of that, and she is also so much more.

I love you.

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Wednesday Wanderings #8: Mixed Visions for the New Year

Category labels: D/s dynamics, Femdom, Male sexuality, Polyamory, Religious Evil, Stupid dominants, Vanilla life, Wednesday Wanderings

I missed last week’s Wednesday Wanderings due to Christmas, but I’m not really apologizing for that anymore. Instead, I’m just going to move right on into this week’s personal (and somewhat random) picks. Check them out:

  • The most exciting (by far) find of the week for me was Reverend Debra W. Haffner’s blog titled Sexuality and Religion: What’s the connection?. Debra is also the founder of The Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing and to many people’s surprise despite the name, that does not mean they advocate solely abstinence-only education, anti-abortion political agendas, or rigidly define the sanctity of marriage in a sexist (solely heterosexual) way. Debra is a breath of fresh air in and from a direction that sorely needs it. In a recent post regarding teen pregnency, Debra writes:
    The U.S. continues to have the highest teen birth rate in the developed world. Our teenagers need their parents to educate them about sexuality; our faith communities must address adolescent sexuality; our schools must provide comprehensive sexuality education; sexually active teens must have access to reproductive health services. That’s what happens in other countries that have a teen birth rate much lower than our’s…that’s what we need to do here.

    I’m so happy that she’s speaking out, and even more grateful for her advocacy.

  • Another recent and interesting addition to the portion of the blogosphere I watch is the sweet submissive man who writes at Unspeakable Axe. His blog chronicles many of his attempts at finding dominant women and, sadly, he is a perfect example of the kind of nice guys out there who just can’t find submissive sexual fulfillment despite all their efforts. He writes about women who expect money even after financial transactions were already negotiated out,
    “How much can you pay?” she asked.

    “What? Nothing. I don’t pay for play so why would I pay to meet?”.

    I almost sounded dominant. She knew that I wasn’t looking for that, why would she even suggest it?

    “Really? Ok well maybe we can just be friends then. You’re cute so I’ll let you meet me for free and maybe you can clean my apartment.”

    I was glad we were on the phone, otherwise she would have seen me roll my eyes at her.

    And he writes about women who use submissives like him for an easy ego-boost:

    I know what she’s doing. Whenever she needs to feel wanted or desired she calls me. She constantly gets my hopes up only to cancel at the last minute. She’ll talk about wanting me to sleep at the foot of her bed chained and used just to get me excited. Then she’ll cancel hours before meeting. Over and over we’ve played this dance. She’s probably canceled close to a dozen times.

    And even about women who don’t want an eager submissive, but a challenging alpha-male type to break:

    She enjoys making a man do something he wouldn’t normally do, she loves the challenge. With me, there’s no challenge, she knows I’ll eagerly submit to her desires and because of that I’m no use to her. She made several comments about how there’s nothing hotter than making a man submit who normally wouldn’t.

    Though I’ve been saying it to her forever, it took Eileen to start reading Axe’s blog before she finally fully understood the extent at which submissive men long for something we are only rarely able to find. Thanks to the simplicity with which Axe writes and the personal stories he tells, he can make the problems submissive men face when trying to find opportunities for play partners that are satisfying exceptionally, heart-wrenchingly painful—even if you’re not a submissive man. I think his has now become a must-read blog, so it’s been added to my blog roll.

  • Richard Evans Lee, whom I know primarily from Down On My Knees and as a moderator of Fetish Lore (a BDSM-focused discussion board) has a new project up at FemaleLedRelationships.Net. To my eyes, in much the same way as “pro-life” is a term that has been co-opted to mean “anti-abortion” by conservatives, the term “female led relationships” has been co-opted to signify a specific brand of narrow-minded and harmful relationships involving female sexual domination of men. Richard is taking back the phrase by writing insightful, targeted posts about various topics of female domination as only he can so eloquently do. You’ll find this on my blog roll now, too.
  • Isn’t That Special? is one of Mistress Matisse’s articles for her regularly appearing column, Control Tower in The Stranger, a Seattle-based newspaper. It is also an incredibly brief (500-some-odd words) and incredibly poignant piece that relates a classic misunderstanding that can occur in polyamorous relationships to riding a bike. From the article:
    Pat’s emotional crisis is of his own creation. He took an arbitrary symbol—”Chris sleeps with only me”—and gave that one symbol a lot of power. He made it the solitary litmus test of whether his relationship with Chris was stable and safe. People do this because it’s simpler than having to really examine themselves and their feelings. It’s basically replacing sexual monogamy with some other symbol. But as long as you assign power to symbolism rather than what’s real, then you’re mistaking the form of love for the substance. Sleeping with Pat is not what makes Chris love him and treat him as special.

    In other words, go read it right now. Mistress Matisse is, in general, an excellent writer and worth a look herself. She also keeps a blog.

  • Finally, even though it often has little to do with sex directly, I want to point readers to the incredible wealth of knowledge and inspiration that is available for free at the TED Talks Video Blog. Many of these are must-see videos that are not only eye-opening, but truly unique, beautiful and touching stories as well. Some of my favorites are Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about education and intelligence, Steven Pinker’s talk explaining the intricacies of human thought through an analysis of how we use language (with direct implications for understanding sexuality!), Peter Donnely’s talk about common but tragic mistakes due to misunderstanding statistics, Mena Trott’s talk about how blogging is changing the world by making the personal important, Jimmy Wales’s talk about why and how Wikipedia works as well as it does, Helen Fischer’s talk explaining the science behind love (also with direct implications for understanding sexuality!), Barry Schwartz’s talk about the paradox of choice and how it relates to happiness, and Eve Ensler’s understanding of happiness through the exploration of vaginas and so, so many more.

Everything is, in the end, related to everything else; it’s all connected, even if you can’t see how just yet. One of the things I am wishing for myself in 2008 is a greater ability to be at peace with myself in those times when I see that I can’t see something. That would be true vision.

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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

If this is 2008, then I don’t have any resolutions

Category labels: Masculinity, Technology, Vanilla life

On a little bit too much bubbly and more beers than I’d like to admit, I feel almost obligated to wish everyone a happy oncoming 2008. It’s here, of course, whether we like it or not. Time is such an uncontrollable thing, at least for now.

In any event, Eileen points out to me that New Years celebrations seem almost too arbitrary to matter, to which my only conceivable response has thus far been to ask her why other holidays don’t seem quite as arbitrary to her. Solstice celebrations, which are nothing more than a naturally occurring event despite the significance of Christmas and Channukah or what-have-you that people tend to associate with them, are no more meaningful in my eyes than the New Years holiday. The same is true of other givens, such as the decimal number system we are accustomed to using, which evolved thanks to the fact that we have ten fingers on two hands, nothing more, nothing less; after all, computers use binary, since that’s easier to count with electrical circuitry.

So instead of resolutions this year, I thought I’d share with everyone a poem that Eileen shared with me a few days ago. It’s moving, pertinent, and hopeful. Happy New Years, everyone.

If by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
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Saturday, December 29, 2007

The Sexism of Politeness

Category labels: Masculinity, Personal experience, Politics of sex, Sexism, Vanilla life

There’s been some interesting talk of the so-called “Politics of Politeness” by Rona, inspired by Dev’s comment on a recent post of mine. In the spirit of story telling, I want to share two relevant brief anecdotes that have been burned into my memory for all time.

When I was just getting into the job market after dropping out of school, one of my early jobs was that of a lowly office technician. I was handy with the computers, but I was also handy at running errands. On several occasions, I would fetch lunches or coffee from Starbucks for my office-mates and bosses.

One time, the office had a particularly large order for Starbuck’s Coffee. I was sent out to retrieve it. The order overflowed two trays (that’s 8 drinks plus snacks) and was a challenge to carry, but I managed. I managed, that is, until I got to the doorway of our office building.

The doorway was manned by a security guard. Not a doorman, mind you, a security guard. When I reached the door and tried to open it, I couldn’t. I was juggling too many things in my hands to get the door open without dropping or spilling this thing or that. I glanced over at the security guard on the other side of the glass but despite making eye contact he made no motion toward me, so I tried the door again.

Then, out of nowhere, this tall blonde woman was beside me holding only a small purse, standing in front of the doors. Suddenly the security guard had the door wide open, the woman walked through it without ever acknowledging either of us, and the security guard let go of the door before I even stepped inside. Thankfully, I was small and quick enough to literally slide through the open doorway as it was closing.

Now, all of this happened in the span of about thirty seconds or so, so there is more story here than there is necessarily fact. Nevertheless, I will remember those few seconds for the rest of my life because of the incredible rush of frustration I felt in that moment. What assholes, I was thinking to myself, the security guard for being utterly sexist and the woman for her pretentious attitude of entitlement.

In my generous moments, I think that perhaps the security guard thought I would be insulted if he offered unsolicited help in opening the door and perhaps the woman, for her part, was simply very busy. But I doubt both of these things.

Another similar moment happened not long ago when Eileen, Sinclair, and I were leaving one of Viviane’s recent tea parties. We were putting on our coats and since I had exited the party last, I was the last one to finish getting bundled up in preparation for the cold outside. Then I noticed that Sinclair was holding my coat up.

For a moment, I froze and wasn’t sure what to do. After the surprise had passed, however, I continued putting on my coat with Sinclair’s help and thanked her for the gesture. Never before had anyone who I wasn’t already very close to held my coat up for me this way, and I remarked on the fact.

What’s funny is that I can remember many times when I have done exactly that for other people and then upon further reflection, I remember, mostly for women (though at times close male friends, too). It is as though, lacking any kind of other information about one’s chosen gender role, I defaulted to this behavior while interacting with feminine-identified people I didn’t know well and not with masculine-identified people I didn’t know well because social mores have taught me to do exactly that. Only once I became friendly with a man, and our relationship changed to a more intimate one (even if not a romantic or sexual one), did I begin to behave in a more gender-agnostic way.

That observation, when applied elsewhere, held true for many other things as well. When saying goodbye to friends, I’m more likely to ask, “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” if I’m speaking to a woman and more likely to ask, “Are you sure you know your way?” when speaking to a man. I generally wish everyone “safe travels” regardless of their gender, and obviously there are other factors at play here (that men are also susceptible to), but the observation is an interesting one nevertheless.

The conclusion, I think, is that politeness is perceived to be a facet of social interaction that is inexorably linked to gender. In other words, politeness is sexist (or more precisely, genderist) since to do or not do something polite is dependent upon one’s social presentation. That’s an incredibly variable thing.

Assuming that the security guard who didn’t hold the door for me did see me (because, damn, did I ever feel invisible after that!), either he didn’t open the door for me because he was an asshole or he didn’t open the door because he thought that I would feel it impolite if he did, because I was a man. Similarly, he opened the door for the woman because that is what’s “supposed to be” polite in that context.

No one is surprised to hear that gender affects social dynamics, but many people have trouble seeing how other people could possibly have a different understanding than they do. If you open the door for a woman, she may be flattered, or she may be insulted. In such situations where a positive or a negative outcome could result from one’s actions, what is one to do? That’s a tough question!

I think the best generalized solution has been around for a very long time, and Rona got it exactly right when she cited the solution as the golden rule:

Really, though, I think it should come down to the golden rule - treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself… or possibly even better. Don’t adjust your behavior to suit the gender, adjust it to respect the individual.

What this means in the situation with the security guard is that, if I assume his understanding of gender dynamics to be the ones he displayed, he did exactly the right thing. Similarly, if I were in his shoes, I would want someone for whom I did not open the door to first assume I did so out of positive intent. In other words, to make mismatches like this one go over smoothly, we really have to assume everyone’s innocent until proven guilty.

And hey, isn’t that one of those universal human rights? This is, of course, admittedly much more work than just blanketing every social interaction we have with binaries of “polite” or “not polite,” but that’s the price we have to pay for the invaluable benefits of being a social species.

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