UPDATE: I am out of the hospital and everything went fine! But comment mod will still be slow because I have no inclination to do anything but take Vicodin and sleep for many days.

In the meantime, I encourage you to enjoy this Twitter screencap, which brought me close to tears of mildly-bitter and ironic laughter:

(Image description:

The image shows the Twitter feed belonging to the user @JoeMande. @JoeMande has retweeted 5 tweets. In order, these tweets are:

Image via the risingtensions tumblr.)

I write a lot about my experiences with BDSM — that’s a 6-for-4 acronym that covers Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism. I have a fair amount of experience engaging in BDSM; I also have a fair amount of experience in the BDSM subculture. The subculture consists of meetup groups, educational workshops, dungeons where people practice BDSM, a set of well-reputed books and resources, Internet social networking sites, etc. The subculture also has its own norms and pitfalls.

Many BDSMers use the word “bottom” to refer to a masochist and/or submissive, and “top” to refer to a dominant and/or sadist. I am a switch, which means I feel comfortable in either the top or the bottom role. I haven’t observed every BDSM group in the world, but in my experience, one BDSM subculture pitfall is that we don’t explicitly teach very many “bottom skills”. In fact, a lot of the time, “bottom skills” aren’t even recognized as skills.

But bottom skills are totally the skillsiest skillz you can imagine. Let me start by describing my ex-boyfriend who was most in touch with his bottom side. When I met him, I was much less experienced than him at BDSM, and I was basically unaware of my top side. I think there are probably a lot more women than we think who would be up for being BDSM tops, but since cultural norms tell us that women aren’t dominant, lots of those women simply don’t recognize those feelings. My ex-boyfriend agrees, and as a result he’s specifically trained himself to surreptitiously draw out a woman’s dominant desires.

With me, he started by giving me the gift of his fear. We saw each other around the community a few times, and I guess he took note. Then one day, we were both at a BDSM meetup, and from nearby — while he was speaking to someone else — he remarked that I terrified him. He knew that I’d overhear.

I looked at him. He avoided my gaze. Eventually he worked his way around the crowd so he was actually speaking to me, and that was when he actually met my eyes and said directly to me, straightforward, in a charming and casual tone: “I’m terrified.”

Of course, this is vulnerability on a silver platter: it’s confident vulnerability. You scare me. Yet I’m still talking to you, even though I’m sure you could hurt me real bad. He was being so obvious, yet there were still so many tacit dimensions to what he was doing, and I had never quite seen anyone like him before. I was intrigued, and felt myself gain a predatory focus.

He was like that throughout our relationship. Throughout the flirting, throughout the BDSM encounters. He communicated very directly when there was a need for direct talking. But he also showed me so much of what to do. When I put my nails in certain places, he’d arch his body directly into them and groan. When I did something that was difficult for him, he’d get quieter and less responsive in an extremely obvious way while he dealt with it. He’s the only man I’ve ever seen who knew how to tip his head back for a kiss (he was also tall, so most women would have to be in very particular positions for this to work, ahem). A lot of this was instinctive, of course; many bottoms would recognize themselves in these tendencies … but he’d learned his own instinctive responses and fine-tuned them.

I want to make it clear here that I don’t want anyone to “perform” a type of sexuality that they don’t like; trust me, I know just how much a person can feel responsible for “acting out” their sexuality. I’ve been there. But that’s different from a person taking their own desires and reactions, and honing them for maximum communication power. That kind of thing takes experience and self-knowledge. Which is one of the things I value most about BDSM — the inner exploration it can enable. I just wish we taught about it better.

I definitely think the BDSM subculture is great at teaching certain topics: for example, how to perform certain activities safely. In major USA cities, there are often workshops on how to safely hit people with whips. Communication also gets a decent amount of airtime; for example, everyone in the community knows what a safeword is (indeed, a lot of people outside the community know about safewords, too). Sometimes, tops are even “judged” on their “dominant skill set”. But bottoms are usually seen as just being “along for the ride” — or are merely judged for “how far they’re willing to go”, which is even worse, because it discourages some bottoms from setting boundaries.

(As a side note, here’s a pro tip on looking for tops. If you’re talking to a top who can’t stop bragging about how awesome and experienced they are, I advise you to walk away. Or perhaps I should merely say that I, personally, would walk away from that. My favorite, most respectful dominant partners have all had a hefty sense of humility and been very willing to learn — even if they were very experienced.)

So why sub skillz got no respect? I think it’s partly because a lot of them are subtle and hard to see. In general, any “receptive” social role is going to get less credit in an interaction, because lots of people think that the “initiating” social role “does all the work” — but the truth is that the “initiating” social role simply does more visible work. You see this happening with mainstream gender roles, too; for example, some men complain about how women expect them to do “all the work”, like asking women out on dates. But the truth is that for any role played by one gender in the usual heterosexual mating dance, there is an opposing or matching role that takes its own kind of work. For every man who has trouble asking women out, there is a woman who has trouble appearing approachable … or who wants to ask men out but thinks that she will freak men out by doing so (and indeed, she might well be correct). Things are tough all over, baby.

Communication — any kind of communication — is not just explaining one’s desires out loud. There’s also a ton of non-verbal feedback and non-verbal reading that goes on. Everyone communicates, but because a lot of bottoms communicate primarily by responding, bottom communication is often invisible. There’s also a whole nother level of bottom communication sometimes achieved by people who are really good, which involves tacitly running the encounter from the bottom side. Like what my ex-boyfriend did in my anecdote above.

Other bottom skills have to do with bottoms monitoring their body and taking care of themselves. Some of this is physical. One thing I would absolutely love to see is a BDSM workshop on body chemistry: I’ve written about it and I try to keep an eye on how it works in my life, but I’ve literally never seen a class on the topic. My experience is that all kinds of things — from sleep to intoxicants to the quality and amount of food I’ve eaten — can drastically alter my experience of BDSM (and, for that matter, sex). But I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor, and although some things are obvious — like: it’s easier to take pain when I’ve had enough sleep — some things are not obvious at all.

And then there’s breath control. I am definitely a novice at this, but I’ve got the feeling that understanding how my breathing intersects with my pain tolerance could lead to a whole new level of BDSM. The one thing I’m sure of right now is that it’s easy to reflexively stop up my breathing when I’m in a lot of pain, or to breathe irregularly. But if I can force myself to breathe more regularly, then it gets easier. So the only advice I can offer bottoms here is for them, too, to watch their breathing and look for patterns.

Of course, taking care of oneself isn’t just physical; it’s mental and emotional too — setting boundaries and understanding oneself. It’s important for a bottom to know what they won’t do, will do … or what they want to do, but suspect will be complex and hard to deal with. In fairness, it is also important for tops to know these things about themselves, but the risks bottoms take tend to be more intense and direct than the ones tops take. Also in fairness, the BDSM community has developed some tactics for talking about this: for example, I often write about BDSM checklists, which list a huge array of BDSM activities and encourage people to rate their desire for and experience with those activities.

A lot of taking care of oneself involves a self-aware learning process. Calling a safeword is absolutely a skill, and it’s a skill that gets easier with practice; but sometimes I’m still not sure whether I actually want to safeword, and I’ve been doing BDSM fairly regularly for years. (For this reason, a lot of BDSMers use the “stoplight system”, whereby “red” means “stop definitely for real!” and “yellow” means “I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think I want to stop, so let’s slow down or switch activities”.) A lot of bottoms enter an altered state of consciousness we refer to as “subspace“; understanding how to navigate subspace is its own highly personal thing that deserves multiple stand-alone articles. Plus, I’ve learned a lot about which types of pain I like and dislike, but my tastes (like everyone’s) can and do evolve over time.

In short, processing intense sensations — and understanding where a person’s brain is at, and what they want even when they’re processing those sensations — is its own constellation of BDSM skills. Again, most relevant for bottoms, but also relevant for tops.

Sex work is a controversial and polarized topic, and there are many perspectives on it. My position is complex — but for me, when it comes to how we actually interact with sex workers, one important factor is whether or not they consent to and enjoy their jobs. I am absolutely in favor of giving better options to sex workers who do not enjoy their jobs, and I am horrified by the idea of a person being trafficked or coerced into sex that they don’t want to have. But I also know people who have sex for money 100% voluntarily, and I do not want to deny their experience.

My friend Olivia, a 25-year-old graduate student, recently started advertising her services on a “Sugar Baby” site called SeekingArrangement.com. I think it’s important for more people to understand these kinds of experiences, so I asked to interview her. Many people have pointed out that once a person starts thinking about the definition of “prostitute”, it’s a bit difficult to define what exactly a prostitute is. Some of my sex worker friends have asked the question: what exactly is the difference between a person whose partner buys her a fancy dinner after which they have sex — and a person whose partner buys sex with money? Olivia has thought at length about this, and I’m grateful to her for sharing her perspective on that question, and others.

Please note that Olivia is exceptionally privileged. What you are about to read is a portrait of what the sex industry looks like for a person who is very privileged: she comes from a white upper-middle-class background, she is not desperate, she is being paid a lot of money, she does not have a drug addiction. Many other peoples’ experiences in the sex industry are very different.

The interview went long, so we posted it in two parts. Part 1 is available if you click here. In Part 1, Olivia told us that she usually uses the site SeekingArrangement.com to find clients; she described the nature of a “sugar baby” site, and she talked about some things she’s learned about gender roles. Now for part 2:

Clarisse Thorn: In Part 1, you mentioned that you feel powerful in your relationships with these men. But there are issues of your safety, right?

Olivia: I think there are issues of safety anytime a person meets someone they don’t really know, especially if they plan to spend time in private. And especially if you’re dealing with topics as sensitive as sex or money. There may be more issues of safety with this because some people really do believe that money can buy them anything. But for the most part, when I meet people they seem very respectful.

Things I do to increase my safety are that I tell my husband and my friends where I’m going to be, I tell them exactly where I am. I’ll do things like take down a client’s license plate number and text it to my husband. I’ve been thinking maybe I should look at each client’s driver’s license too, and text the client’s name and driver’s license number to my husband. I think some clients might feel threatened by that, though.

The most important thing for my safety is that I’m willing and able to walk away from situations. I’m not desperate — I won’t starve or die if I don’t do this work. I meet all my clients in public first for a meal, and if someone sketches me out, I leave. I’m not so desperate that I’ll get into a situation that scares me.

I guess I am at risk if I meet a really crazy person who wants to chop me up and put me in a dumpster. But I could meet a person like that during a normal night at a bar, too.

The major risks that I see include that I might catch an STD — but I use protection. I might end up alone with someone who believes that the money he’s paying actually gives him the entitlement to do whatever he wants to my body, but I’ve never encountered anyone like that. The thing is, as I said before, I haven’t met anyone who I think would actually describe themselves as paying for sex. The terms on which I continue to see these men are probably less explicitly negotiated than an escort’s terms would be. I don’t have flat rates, for example.

I’ve heard escorts complaining that people who use sugar baby sites are unprofessional, and I think that from an escort’s perspective they probably are.

Clarisse Thorn: If people are unwilling to actually talk about sex for money, it must be hard to negotiate your encounters. Do you have a set of steps for negotiation?

Olivia: I haven’t been doing this for very long. It’s varied so far. Usually, I meet them for some kind of meal, and we chat. We have a perfunctory conversation, like — “How was your day?” Then one of us will say something like, “Tell me a bit more about what you’re looking for. Why are you on the site?”

Then we’ll explain our deal to each other. Like, he might say: “I’m divorced, I’m looking for companionship.” At some point, money comes up. I am always extremely vague when I talk about money. I’ve found a good deal of variation in how squeamish people are about money.

For example, one client was saying that he wanted to get married again, but not yet. I said, “Huh, well, if you’re interested in a more emotional relationship, how do you feel about involving money?” The way he explained it to me was that people are attracted to each other for all kinds of reasons, probably including money, so why not be up front about the fact that money is attractive. He seemed almost confused about why I asked. With that guy, I ended up sleeping with him before we even talked about money — which was a huge risk, but I thought it might work, and it did. We had the money conversation immediately after we had sex — at some point when we were taking a break, I asked what he was looking for more specifically from this relationship, and he said that he wanted to see me again, maybe once a week. I think I asked him his preference for a monthly allowance as opposed to every time we meet, and he said he’d rather do something monthly. Then when we were getting dressed, he pulled out $1000 cash and handed it to me, and said, “I’ll give you the balance next time we see each other.”

With other people I can be more straightforward. Maybe they aren’t sure how to set up the relationship, so maybe I talk about another client, like: “I have another client I see 3 times per month for $3000,” and they might say, “That sounds good.” But some guys will just negotiate it per encounter. One guy brought it up very quickly after we’d exchanged some emails. He said that he prefers to do a “per meet” of $300 — he called it a “per meet” — I told him that was too low and quoted him $1000, and he said he’d meet me in the middle. Another guy told me that he would just slip $400 into my purse when he saw me, and that’s exactly what he did.

I have one client I’ve never explicitly discussed money with at all. I had lunch with him, and we didn’t negotiate anything, though we talked a little bit about our reasons for being on the site. The next time I saw him — we were deciding where to meet, and he asked if he should get us a room. I said that I would like that, so I met him and we had sex. He knew it was my birthday soon, so as we were getting dressed, he said, “I know we haven’t talked about money, so I got you some birthday spending money,” and he handed me an envelope with $400. The next time I saw him, he asked about my plans for the evening. I said I was having dinner with a friend, and he handed me $400 in an envelope and said, “Maybe this will help pay for it.” I’m lucky that I’m willing to accept $400 — it’s my lower bound, but I’m willing to accept it. Imagine if I hadn’t been willing to take $400 — that would be super awkward. Probably I should have negotiated that situation more clearly, but it worked out okay.

I’ve heard about situations where unclear negotiations did not work out okay. There was a “New York Times Magazine” article about the site published in 2009. In that article, there were some examples of unclear negotiations that didn’t work out well. But it sounded like that woman didn’t really know what she wanted, and didn’t really enjoy the work. But I do. And I know other women who do, too.

I have a new client who paid me $3000 up front to see me 3 times a month. But I haven’t heard from him since our first meeting. If I were his girlfriend, I’d call him, but he asked me not to call him. So I don’t really know what the deal with that one is. Maybe he’s gonna flake out on me, but he already gave me $3000, so that would be weird.

Clarisse Thorn: So, your husband. You mentioned him briefly. How does your husband feel about this?

Olivia: He does not seem particularly threatened. We already have an open relationship. I think he sometimes feels very visceral jealousy, but that’s just like any other time one of us has sex with somebody else. We just have to talk about it.

Part of the deal here is that I’m doing this because I’m broke. My husband really wants to be able to support me financially, but he can’t right now, so I’m supporting both us doing this. I think that’s a real blow to his ego. To the extent that he gets bothered, I think it’s because I’m allowing other men to support me and give me money; he doesn’t care about the sex. Even though I see this as work, he sees this as “here’s this rich successful guy who just gave my wife a bunch of money, and she slept with him — so probably she’s attracted to him.”

I am kind of attracted to my clients, and I kind of get off on making them happy, and I happen to think that the age difference is kind of hot. I like having sex with them; it’s not unpleasant. I like hearing about these guys’ life stories. I think it’s interesting. But these guys would never be a threat to my husband. I would never be sleeping with any of them except for the money. And I love my husband. I’m always very up front about the fact that I’m married and I love my husband. My clients accept that.

Sex work is a controversial and polarized topic, and there are many perspectives on it. My position is complex — but for me, when it comes to how we actually interact with sex workers, one important factor is whether or not they consent to and enjoy their jobs. I am absolutely in favor of giving better options to sex workers who do not enjoy their jobs, and I am horrified by the idea of a person being trafficked or coerced into sex that they don’t want to have. But I also know people who have sex for money 100% voluntarily, and I do not want to deny their experience.

My friend Olivia, a 25-year-old graduate student, recently started advertising her services on a “Sugar Baby” site called SeekingArrangement.com. I think it’s important for more people to understand these kinds of experiences, so I asked to interview her. Many people have pointed out that once a person starts thinking about the definition of “prostitute”, it’s a bit difficult to define what exactly a prostitute is. Some of my sex worker friends have asked the question: what exactly is the difference between a person whose partner buys her a fancy dinner after which they have sex — and a person whose partner buys sex with money? Olivia has thought at length about this, and I’m grateful to her for sharing her perspective on that question, and others.

Please note that Olivia is exceptionally privileged. What you are about to read is a portrait of what the sex industry looks like for a person who is very privileged: she comes from a white upper-middle-class background, she is not desperate, she is being paid a lot of money, she does not have a drug addiction. Many other peoples’ experiences in the sex industry are very different.

The interview went long, so we’re going to post it in two parts. Here’s part 1:

Clarisse Thorn: Hey Olivia, thanks so much for being willing to talk about this incredibly complicated topic. Could you start by defining a sugar baby site? What is it?

Olivia: I use the site SeekingArrangement.com. I don’t actually know how many sugar baby sites there are, but I get the sense there’s more than one. It’s very hard to pin down exactly what it does. I guess it connects people, usually with a big age gap, who are interested in exchanging some kind of material goods or financial resources for some form of companionship that is often sexual — but not always.

As far as I can tell, the site’s founder is very against the claim that this is prostitution. He puts out a lot of publicity claiming that this site has nothing to do with prostitution. At first I thought that he was trying to evade legal consequences, but I think he actually probably believes that. The site has a blog that he controls, and you can look at it to get a sense of what he’s thinking. One post I think is really interesting is called “Sugar Baby & Sugar Daddy: The Modern Day Princess & Prince?“, which compares being a sugar baby to a kind of “happily ever after” princess fantasy.

So far, no one I’ve talked to seems remotely interested in hiring what they see as a “prostitute”. They seem to want to be having sex with someone they find very attractive who is also someone they feel like they can respect, whose intelligence they respect. For example, someone I see occasionally — the last time I saw him, he gave me money at the end and he said that he felt good about giving me the money because he knew I wouldn’t spend it on, quote, “a designer handbag.” He seems to think that I am reasonably ambitious and have my shit together, and he seems to feel more comfortable giving me money because he knows it goes towards my grad school costs and credit card debt. My ability to write with proper grammar, without overusing emoticons, appears to be my biggest sales point. Men have told me this outright.

That guy also mentioned feeling more comfortable because he thinks I’m from the same social class as he is. There are a lot of class issues coming up in these encounters, I think. Being white and from an upper-middle-class background may help me get clients. My background has also given me a ton of confidence that puts me at an advantage when negotiating. I do not think I radiate “take advantage of me,” and I (nicely) tell guys who start doing that to go away.

The guy I was just talking about — he also mentioned that he feels like he doesn’t want to have sex with someone that he doesn’t feel at least a little bit connected to. There’s a distinction between meaningless sex and casual sex. I think these guys want casual sex — maybe they aren’t at the point where they want to deal with having a partner, or they’re really busy at work, or they already have another partner — they want casual sex but not meaningless sex.

In my encounters with these men, the money does two things. Firstly, it enables them to have a relationship with me that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have. Secondly, it puts them in this position where they can give me something valuable and have that be appreciated. The guys I see really want to feel appreciated.

Clarisse Thorn: Do you feel like this has given you any new insight into gender roles?

Olivia: Hmm …. It’s made me feel more powerful. I definitely feel like I am the one with the power in this situation. When I show up, I don’t feel like — here is this rich, powerful person who is about to bestow wealth upon me. I feel like — here is this person who is a bit sad and lonely, and maybe I can make their day better.

A lot of the men who are on this site want to feel appreciated, so it’s important to them that the woman they’re with give off the appearance of appreciating them. So for example, on the website there’s a lot of talk about sugar daddies being “mentors” or “benefactors” rather than clients. They seem to want some combination of me asking them about their day, and they also want to feel like they’re bestowing knowledge upon me about the world. One of the men I see will always talk about his opinions about money. He has complicated feelings about himself having money because he doesn’t come from money, so he’s trying to work those out. But he also keeps telling me in a very serious voice that money will not make me happy, that nothing I can buy will make me happy. I tell him that I can buy security and he says yes, that is one thing I can buy.

Other men seem to be having issues with their age. One mentioned that he’s just turned 40, and that’s really bugging him. Then he flaked out on me a couple times — I don’t think he was completely okay with his own decision to be seeing me. But anyway, often, another thing these men seem to get out of it is access to someone who has a bunch of youthful energy and optimism and just plain new ideas. A lot of them have mentioned feeling stuck, or bored, or cynical, or intellectually constrained. So in this sense sex is only one thing I’m offering them — I’m also offering them optimism, hope, energy, and so on. Firstly, the sex is good in and of itself, as most of them aren’t getting laid otherwise. But the sex is also a symbol of them getting access to my youthful energy or whatever.

I think the archetypal image of a mistress involves a woman being “kept” so that she doesn’t have to work, so that she can be available for sex basically whenever. But I don’t think this is what the men I see want. I am more valuable to them because I have other work that I am seriously invested in, and am having sex with them anyway. Again, these men are interested in a woman who they see as more “equal” to them — in this case, defined by earnings potential — and they seem gratified by the idea that they could help me enter their income bracket someday. This is, of course, still kind of patronizing; like I said, they keep using words like “mentor”. It’s also presumptuous. But I think a lot of them being patronizing and presumptuous can probably be attributed to age and wealth, and only some of it to gender.

I think I’ve learned more about class and money than I have about gender. It turns out there are people to whom $1000 versus $3000 doesn’t matter that much, and I finally understand that on a visceral level. $1000 doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to most of them. I knew this, but now I really know it.

Another thing I’ve been struck by is exactly how much romantic relationships are worth. I’ve had several clients tell me they don’t feel wealthy, and they feel like they worry about money a lot. I think they were sincere. Of course, my first thought was: don’t you think that your $2000-per-month prostitute is part of the budget that could be trimmed? But I think that maybe it’s not, actually. I think they think that investing a lot of money in me is a good investment for them if it gives them a release valve so they can deal with the rest of their lives. They’re probably right.

Thanks for reading! Click here to read Part 2 of my interview with Olivia, in which she discusses how she negotiates monetary exchanges and how she manages her relationship with her husband.

I saw “Tangled”, the 2010 Disney Princess flick, over my Christmas holiday. Where to start? I don’t know, so I’m gonna do one of my all-too-rare open threads. (Also, I have concluded that I should catch up on work and email and past comment threads and make sure to thoroughly enjoy New Year’s Eve before I write another of my famous long posts. Also also, happy New Year, folks.)

Feel free to post things that aren’t about “Tangled” too. But like … the movie is a freakin’ goldmine. Here are some discussion prompts:

1. I guarantee that “Tangled” has already birthed many, many BDSM fantasies. I mean, see above. But recalling my frequent injunction that BDSM can be “love sex” too, I like this picture much better:

Disney’s always been good at that sudden, sweet, swoon-inducing moment of intimacy.

2. Obligatory gender roles analysis! How do we feel about these in “Tangled”?

3. Did we learn any lessons about manliness (or even pickup artistry) from Flynn Rider?

Why, it’s almost like the guy is both cocky and funny! But you know what else he is? Vulnerable. Flynn’s character kinda made me think of the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold cliché.

P.S. That “Blade Runner” reference towards the end. This isn’t even a question.

I am just saying. They can deny that they intended to reference “Blade Runner” all they want, and I’ll still be here, just saying.

(Images above show various characters from “Tangled” — including two in which Rapunzel has tied up the male hero, Flynn, using her hair. Please note that the image of the “unicorn moment” from “Tangled” is here via the fuckyeahtangled tumblr. Because there’s a fuckyeahtangled tumblr.)

Do we actually believe that people can change? If so, how do we want them to show us they’ve changed? Is absolution possible? Who decides the answers to these questions?

I very rarely weigh in on Internet Scandals. This is partly because I’ve got lots of stuff to write that I believe has longer-lasting value than the latest flavor of the moment. It’s also because I have much less time and patience for internet flamewars than I once did. I seem to recall that at some point flamewars were kind of … fun? But these days they just feel predictable, tiring and unproductive.

As it happens, though, I unintentionally found myself in the middle of one this week. I feel exhausted and trapped by the whole thing. But I hope I can dim the flamewar into a lantern to illuminate issues that actually matter.

Specifically, I interviewed Hugo Schwyzer, a prominent writer on gender issues, who identifies as a male feminist and teaches gender studies in southern California. Hugo has a very complicated history that includes incredibly problematic behavior: drug addiction; compulsive and destructive sexual behavior, including sex with his students — and one attempt, over a decade ago, to kill both himself and his girlfriend during a drug binge. He has since, in his own words, “cleaned up”; chosen sobriety; recommitted to his religion; confessed his history; and attempted to make amends to the people he feels that he wronged.

Because of Hugo’s history, a lot of people really don’t like him. When I posted the interview at Feministe, one of the top feminist blogs, the comments exploded. Pretty soon, the comments had nothing to do with the interview at all. Some commenters were making amateur psychological diagnoses of Hugo, and other readers were emailing me privately to express shock at how ugly the discussion had gotten. So I closed down the discussion, making it impossible to continue commenting in that particular forum. As a result, I have now received more hate mail from other feminists than I ever have from anti-feminists. (Note: I have not received a small amount of hate mail from anti-feminists.)

In this situation, people seem to expect me to take a position that is primarily political. People seem to believe that I can either “prove my loyalty to feminism” by throwing Hugo under the bus — or I can “prove my loyalty to Hugo” by claiming that everything he’s done is A-OK. Like many political problems, neither of these options are fully human. Both of these options are stupid, limited, and do not get us any further in our lives.

I certainly do not always agree with Hugo, and I have occasionally pushed him to reconsider certain things. But, full disclosure: my experiences with him have been incredibly positive. Hugo was one of the first high-profile bloggers to promote my work — and occasionally, he took heat for doing so when I wrote about controversial topics. Hugo invited me to guest lecture in his class when I passed through Los Angeles, and he’s given me extensive feedback on and encouragement about my work. Even though I don’t always agree with him, and I believe that a lot of feminists’ critiques of his work are valid … a number of Hugo’s pieces make me want to cheer, like his article “The Paris Paradox: How Sexualization Replaces Opportunity with Obligation”. Perhaps ironically, when I once wrote an agonized post about moral accountability and how to deal with friends who have done really bad things, the most thoughtful and nuanced response came from Hugo. (He’s also written about the problem of how too many people will excuse some sexual predators, even within feminism itself, just because those predators do good activist work.)

Other feminists have been angrily emailing me, Tweeting at me, etc with things like “FUCK YOU FOR PROTECTING THIS WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.” But I have seen no evidence that Hugo hasn’t made an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability. I have seen no evidence that Hugo’s religious re-conversion was dishonest. And I have seen no evidence that Hugo continues problematic behavior.

I am telling you this partly to explain where I’ve been coming from during this particular Internet Scandal. But more importantly, I’m telling you this to lend shape to the ethical problems I see underneath it — problems that are intimately intertwined with how I think about gender and sexuality. I’m actually not very interested in picking apart Hugo himself, whether positively or negatively. I believe that the politics of this situation are mostly a cheap distraction from truth and honor.

For me, the interesting and important questions that emerge in cases like this are:

How can we create processes for accountability? Feminists often discuss crimes like partner violence and sexual assault. Our focus is on helping survivors of these crimes, just as it should be. I personally have been trained as a rape crisis counselor, and I have volunteered in that capacity (if you’re interested in feminist activism, then I really encourage you to look into doing the same). And the history of feminism includes convincing people to actually care about and recognize the trauma of rape: Rape Trauma Syndrome was first defined and discussed in the 1970s.

But perhaps because of our focus on helping and protecting survivors, I rarely see feminist discussions of how to deal with people who have committed crimes. In fact, I rarely see any discussions of how to deal with that, aside from sending people to jail. Let me just say that problems with the prison-industrial complex are their own thing — but even aside from those, the vast majority of rapes and assaults and other forms of gender-based violence go unprosecuted.

So, frequently, jail won’t even enter the picture. Yet communities and individuals often know that gender-based violence is going on. How do we talk about the people who have done those things, and how do we talk to them? How can we create community structures and norms that enable people to change the behaviors that led to those crimes? How do we interact with and judge someone who has committed to change, as opposed to a person who has not?

“Accountability teams” are one way I’ve heard of for dealing with this: whether support groups of perpetrators who share their experiences with making amends and changing their ways, or groups of friends who assist a perpetrator with those processes. I would like to see more and larger discussions about those teams, and more acknowledgement that change is possible. If we can’t create this kind of process, then how can we expect to create real change around these crimes? How can we expect perpetrators of violence to work on themselves if we can’t give them the space to work? Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?

On another note: are there crimes where we draw a bright line? Are there things we cannot or should not forgive? If some crimes are unforgivable, then how do we deal with the perpetrators? In some areas of the USA, sex crimes are punished legally by restricting the movement of perpetrators, but this law has had significant unintended consequences. And the legal question doesn’t even cover the dimension I’m most interested in, which is how friends and social circles can deal with these situations. If there are unforgivable crimes, then how do we handle the unforgiven people involved?

And: have you thought about these questions in your own life? I don’t mean abstractly, as an intellectual exercise. Concretely, and with intention. What would you do if, tomorrow, you found out that your best friend was a rapist? Your lover? What would you do if your sibling came to you to confess a terrible crime? To request absolution? To request accountability?

These questions are not just applicable to an individual like Hugo. They’re applicable to all of us, in all kinds of situations. And I think it’s wise for us to give them some thought before they come up … because in the heat of the moment, we can be overwhelmed by questions we could have thought our way around if we addressed them beforehand.

Do you believe people can change? And if you do believe it, then how would you help someone change?

Note from early 2012: This piece kicked up a huge controversy, and I learned a lot from the ensuing debate. If I were writing this piece today, then I would not write it the way I did above. My favorite response to this piece around the internet was posted by Maia at Alas, A Blog. It’s really good and I later requested that we be permitted to cross-post it to Feministe, a request that Maia gracefully granted.

So, I have this ex. I dated him for a long time, but we haven’t really talked in ages. I suspect that I hurt him pretty bad when he dated; he hurt me pretty bad, too.

I’ve written about him only a few times. For instance, I wrote about him when I discussed my history of figuring out how to reach orgasm, because he … was not a good sexual partner. He pressured me in a lot of unpleasant sex-related ways. During one fight, he even shouted at me that he didn’t care about my sexual satisfaction.

I know that he was manipulative. I know that he ignored my needs. And I know that he hurt me. But I also believe that he loved me. I know he understands me deeply, and respects me in a lot of ways. I know I was important to him, and I know I wasn’t always the most reasonable partner myself.

Where is the space for me to reconcile these things?

I once wrote a long post about him that got very different reactions from different readers. A commenter on one feminist website informed me that he had abused me; she told me that I “should” admit that I am a victim of abuse. Whereas a writer an an anti-feminist site wrote a whole post about me titled: “Another Sexually & Emotionally Defective Feminist.” The post described me as “histrionic” and “flawed” and “melodramatic”. This armchair psychoanalysis concluded that my sexual identity makes me “defective,” and that the whole experience arose because of my own failure to understand myself.

It seems that from the outside, some observers will conclude that he was “at fault”, and some will conclude that I was “at fault”. Obviously, I’d prefer to believe that he was “at fault”. But maybe “fault” isn’t the most productive way to think about this?

I know he hurt me. The relationship was incredibly problematic. I see some of the things he said to me in descriptions of emotional abuse tactics such as gaslighting. That post defines gaslighting like this:

For our discussion, I consider gaslighting to be a repeat, systematic series of lies that are designed to make the victim doubt her reality.

… Gaslighting can be intentional, such as … where a partner purposely moves or hides your stuff to make you feel forgetful and untethered to your memory.

Gaslighting can also be an unintentional side-effect, as a classic outcome of living with a narcissist, or with a partner who is trying to cover up their pattern of abuse, or with the addict trying to cover up their addiction. It is done in order to preserve the … [gaslighter's] vision of himself as an honest and upstanding person without actually doing the things that would make it so.

For example: after the fight when my ex told me that he didn’t care about my sexual satisfaction — after I walked out of the room, and walked around crying for hours before I finally had to come back because I was staying with him and had nowhere else to go — after that fight, he told me that he’d never said those words.

I know he said those words. I even said, “You can’t mean that,” and he repeated them. But I was so tired, after all the fighting and the crying, that I didn’t push when he told me that he never said it. All I felt was disjointed confusion and pain and … lack of words.

I let him create the reality between us — or he took control of that reality, with his subtle social violence. And our sex life remained bad. So bad that when I think of having sex with him today, all I can feel is shivering disgust.

Maybe he didn’t mean to do it. But it’s important for me to understand that even if he didn’t mean to mess with my head so much, he did it anyway. It’s important for me to understand that even if he didn’t mean to hurt me so bad, he hurt me. It’s important for me to understand those things because it helps me trust myself; it helps me value my own emotions; it helps me protect myself.

Late in our relationship, he gave me a ring. It was a valuable ring; an old heirloom. After we broke up, I tried to give it back. “No,” he said, “it’s yours, I gave it to you. I want you to keep it.”

I didn’t especially want to keep it — but I kept it. I didn’t know what else to do.

Years later, I was leaving the country. I found the ring as I was packing up my life. I called him and told him I wanted to give it back.

I left the call to the last minute, because thinking about calling him made me so anxious. We talked for a while about nothing important, and I remember thawing. I remember thinking, oh, that’s right, he’s smart and funny and he knows me so well. I liked him for good reasons.

It took me a while to bring up the ring; half an hour or so. I said that I knew it was an heirloom, that someday he’d meet someone else who should have it. I said that I didn’t want to wear it. That I didn’t want to keep it at all.

It was late at night and I recall standing, stretching, listening to his voice on the other end of the line.

“No,” he said. “It’s for you. I gave it to you. If you don’t want it, then you can sell it or give it away or bury it or throw it away. I don’t care what you do with it. It’s yours.”

But he knew I’d never throw it away or give it away or sell it or bury it. And as I stood holding my cell phone, I remember thinking that this was the last hold he had on me. I recognized how I felt. I was feeling disjointed confusion and pain and … lack of words.

I didn’t want the ring. I didn’t want it.

But, “Okay,” I finally said, and we said goodbye and hung up, and I still have the ring.

I don’t especially stay in touch with him. He contacts me sometimes and says we should hang out. I always find excuses not to see him (though sometimes I can’t avoid it). It’s been years, but I’m still keeping my post-breakup distance. And I know that hurts him. Sometimes I feel smug that I came out of the whole affair with no desire to see him; sometimes I feel a little angry, sometimes I just feel sad.

I wonder if I’d feel more okay seeing him, if he hadn’t convinced me to keep the ring.

I originally published the above in late November. A few days ago, my ex contacted me and said he’d be in town. Said he’d love to hang out.

I’m going to give him a pseudonym. I’ve never named him in my writing before.

I’ll call him Mr. Blue Sky. Because he and I both love the “Rocky Horror Picture Show”: I can see blue skies through the tears in my eyes. Because his eyes are sky-blue, and he loves that song by The Who. Because when he and I were together, I felt like saying I didn’t love him would be like saying the sky wasn’t blue.

It’s been a long time.

Mr. Blue Sky texted that he wanted to hang out, and this time I didn’t make excuses. I told him I could see him for lunch but I wanted to give his ring back.

He texted some potential lunch details, and added: “I don’t want the ring back.”

I wrote back: “If I can do whatever I want with it then I want you to take it back, and I don’t want to see you otherwise.”

He wrote: “Did that last message just tell me to meet you so that you could give me back the ring?”

I took a breath. I wrote, carefully: “I would like to see you and hang out. However, I don’t feel comfortable seeing you unless I can give it back. Giving back the ring is not the reason I want to see you, but for me, it is a prerequisite.”

“As you wish,” he texted. I chose not to think about the “Princess Bride” reference, and we finalized lunch.

When we met, I simply handed him the ring box. Mr. Blue Sky took it, pocketed it casually. Said “Thank you.” It seemed so easy that I was startled.

We talked easily, too. There were a few pauses, but no hitches. Traded details about mutual friends. Asked after each other’s lives.

I wasn’t vegan when we were together. I hadn’t been to Africa. I didn’t have a damn clue about S&M, and now I get paid to lecture on it. God knows I wasn’t a professional feminist writer, though gender issues were important to me. I feel very different from who I was when we were close, but I’m probably less different than I think. The same characteristics, just a little shifted around.

Mr. Blue Sky seemed much the same.

We talked about the bicycle accident I had this year, the one where I broke my neck. He asked for details. I gave them. I watched him catch his breath. He hadn’t realized how close I came to dying.

“If I give you a hug, will I break you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, and he gave me a fragile gentle hug.

Me being myself, I totally failed to change the subject to something less intense.

“I was thinking,” I said, “after my accident, that if it had killed me, then I would have been the first from our university tribe to die.”

“Don’t say that,” he said.

“I mean,” I said. “Someone’s gotta die first. Might as well be me, right?” I laughed. I’m the kind of person who says uncomfortable things like that, sometimes, and thinks it’s funny.

“I don’t follow your logic,” he said dryly. He knows how to handle me, still.

It was on his way out the door that Mr. Blue Sky brought it up. He was putting on his jacket. “I gotta ask,” he said. His tone was faux-casual, taut underneath. “What’s the deal with the ring?”

I hadn’t been ready for the question. My pulse jumped.

“I just didn’t feel comfortable having it anymore,” I said.

There was a moment, so brief, super-charged. I almost said something else out of sheer anxiety, except I couldn’t think of what to say. I’ve been trying to give it back for years, I thought. Don’t act like this is new. Except I didn’t really think that. My thoughts weren’t really formed. I might have been holding my breath.

“Okay,” said Mr. Blue Sky. He smiled, in that way people smile when they feel like they should. “I guess that’ll have to do.”

Yes, I thought. It will. Except I didn’t really think that, either.

“Safe travels,” I wished him.

Mr. Blue Sky thanked me, and wished me well in return.

And left with the ring.

The image at the top of this post is of a human eye whose iris looks like a cloud-filled sky. It’s from the oeuvre of my favorite artist, the surrealist René Magritte.

(I use phrases like “failed encounter” and “gone wrong” and “mistakes” with caution, because I think these situations can often be viewed as learning experiences, and therefore they are successful for a lot of purposes! But certainly in the moment they feel like screwups, and a lot of the time they can make the whole relationship very difficult, and I think that most people who have been through them feel as though some kind of failure happened … whether it was a failure of understanding, communication, empathy, caution, or something else.)

Much of the problem, I think, is that people have such a hard time communicating after serious miscommunications and mistakes.

The following quotation is from Staci Newmahr’s Playing At The Edge, an excellent ethnography of the BDSM community. (I’ve changed a few jargon terms so I don’t have to define them for you, but I left two terms I’ll be using throughout this entry: “top” and “bottom”. A top is a blanket term for a dominant and/or sadist. A bottom is a blanket term for a masochist and/or submissive.)

Sophie had been engaged in a long and intimate S&M relationship with Carl, a friend whom she deeply trusted. During the encounter she describes below, Carl changed his approach, and Sophie subsequently felt that Carl was somehow not quite himself. Sophie and Carl never quite recovered from the incident; though they remained friends and tried to do S&M again, it was, according to Sophie, never the same.

Sophie says:

He was very much a rope top. That was his big thing, was tying people up. And he was excellent at typing people up. And our dynamic was always — I mean, yes, he would absolutely hurt me when the time came for that, but there was also always this element — even when he was hurting me, it was done in this incredibly, like, touchingly caring way. And especially when he was tying me up, it was this soothing, wonderful thing.

So one day … Carl starts an encounter with me. Carl had decided in his head, from all the things that he’s heard me say about how I play with another partner, that that’s what I really want from an interaction, in order for it to be the most gratifying and valuable. So we proceeded to have an encounter where Carl was not Carl. And I didn’t stop it because it was so like, I couldn’t understand what was going on. I couldn’t understand why it felt so horrible. And it wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, because I trust him completely. [ ... ] I just couldn’t figure out what the problem is, I felt horrible through the whole thing. And he was so out of touch with me that he wasn’t even aware of how horrible I was feeling. The encounter went on for some time … and the second it was over, I … was just, like, you know, traumatized. And he was like, “Oh my God, what’s wrong?” [and] he carried me into the other room. I said something like, “Where did my Carly go?” and then he started to cry. [ ... ] He’s like, “I was trying to give you this sadistic experience.”

In Sophie’s story, Carl’s risk backfires. … The risks were unsuccessful; each ended up emotionally distraught and distant. Ultimately, they sacrificed the relationship. (pages 179-180)

Man, that description is so intense. Let’s talk about it.

The Practice

The first thing worth noting about Sophie’s story is that, while she probably had a safeword, she didn’t use it: she says that she “didn’t stop it.” Sometimes, in really confusing S&M scenes, submissives have trouble using their safewords. This does not mean safewords are worthless … but as Thomas MacAulay Millar puts it, “Tops can never be on cruise control.” Non-verbal signals matter, and if an S&M partner — top or bottom! — starts reacting in an unusual way, it’s great to check in with them even if they haven’t used their safeword. Safewords are a useful additional way of communicating about sex, but they can’t replace all communication.

Note also how hard the situation was on the top partner, not just the bottom. Carl ended up crying afterwards!

Next, what I find myself wondering is whether Sophie and Carl could have communicated past this incident. Sophie obviously trusted Carl, and presumably he trusted her. Could they have talked it out and had a successful relationship afterwards? It would have been hard, but maybe they could have done it.

I’ve (rarely) had similar experiences myself — where boundaries were severely tested, and afterwards it was difficult for both me and my partner to work through it. It can absolutely have an immense impact on the relationship. I write about this a bit in my upcoming eBook, Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser. Here’s a quotation from a section in my book where I’m talking to a dominant partner, with whom I just had such a difficult encounter:

Sometimes, these things happen. One partner pushes a boundary, breaks it; maybe the boundary was unspoken; maybe the dominant misreads signals; maybe the submissive didn’t yet realize that the boundary was there. When it comes to S&M, these things can be so dramatic … yet sometimes they’re nobody’s fault. We find these mental and emotional blocks, and we call them landmines.

My partner didn’t hit the landmine on purpose. He wasn’t trying to push me as hard as he did. And I didn’t warn him off. So the important question becomes — how does one deal with such a situation afterwards?

… “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I never want to do that to you again.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “These things happen. But please do be careful. But don’t worry ….” I trailed off, trying to find words.

It’s so hard to know how to talk about this, especially with people who aren’t used to discussing S&M. When there’s a fuckup, sometimes both sides feel betrayed. The submissive might think: “Maybe I didn’t tell you exactly what to avoid, but sometimes it’s too much to think about, sometimes it’s hard to understand in the moment, sometimes I don’t know ahead of time. Okay, so I pushed myself too hard, but I did it because I’m so into you; I did it because, in that moment, I lost track of myself. And anyway, I thought you could read me. I thought you understood me. I thought you knew. You’ve read me perfectly well before; why not this time? Is it that you don’t care?”

Whereas the dominant might think: “Maybe I went too far, but I thought I could trust you to stop me. I thought I could trust you to tell me. I don’t want to harm you, I just want to push you; I want to break down walls with you. I want to see your eyes go deep and soft. It’s not fair for me to feel like I fucked up, because you fucked up, too. I thought you could take care of yourself. I thought you knew. You’ve communicated perfectly well before; why not this time? Can I rely on you?”

That particular relationship didn’t last, and I think that our most difficult encounter probably affected our trust for each other through the end. Still, I can tell you how we worked on it at the time — and I can tell you that it felt really good. We just listened to each other. And we both assumed that the other person had good intent. By the end of talking it out — which admittedly took a really long time; multiple days — I trusted him more than ever and I felt incredibly close to him.

I’ve been thinking a lot about classic feminist anti-abuse models, which describe how abusers accomplish abuse. One of the tactics abusers consistently use is Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming their partners. Abusers claim that the abuse didn’t happen; they claim it wasn’t important; they blame their partners for what happened. A partner who is willing to listen and change will respond openly to criticism and to mistakes: a non-abusive partner will not minimize, deny, or blame.

And those three things are what my ex-partner did not do. He never claimed that our difficult encounter didn’t happen; he never put the blame on me; he never insisted that it was no big deal. He didn’t even come close to doing those things while we talked it through. He took his emotions and dealt honestly with them, and I did my best to do the same.

Also, in BDSM, we often talk about the concept of “aftercare”: that is, what we say and do after a BDSM scene to ground ourselves, bring ourselves back into the world, and connect with our partners. Aftercare is a huge topic; here is an excellent page full of advice on how to give good aftercare. It’s important to give careful aftercare after any BDSM encounter, but if the encounter has been particularly difficult, it’s doubly important. I have personally had good experiences leaving Super Intense Conversations like the one I describe above until post-aftercare, when all partners have calmed down and dealt with any immediate emotional responses.

I’m writing vaguely, so here are some concrete suggestions for things to say during the conversation after a difficult BDSM encounter:

* “I’m sorry.”
* “I still like you and think you’re a good person.”
* “Do you want to talk about this now? If not now, then let’s set a concrete time for later.”
* “I’m feeling really vulnerable and confused right now.”
* “Why do you think that happened? How were you reading me, and what were you thinking as you responded to me?”
* “How do we feel about this now that we’ve discussed it, and how can we keep it from happening again?”
* “What have we learned about landmines? Are there any particular words or actions that are definitely off-limits from now on?”

I have one final super important caveat to add here: Not all “screwups” are actually screwups. Some are just plain abuse. A human-shaped predator will use words like “miscommunication” and “mistake” to cover up what they do. This post is focused on honest errors, but there are dishonest and evil people out there. In particular, if a person “keeps screwing up” … that’s a terribly bad sign. It is not an inherent part of BDSM to feel roiled up and confused and alienated after a BDSM encounter; most BDSMers feel more intimate and connected after successful encounters. (Here is a previous post that I’ve written about BDSM and abuse. I talk mostly about minimizing/denying/blaming again, but there’s other stuff too.)

I’ve had some iffy results splitting up my posts in the past, but this post is really long and I’m super busy, so I’m just going to post what I have for now. My next post will cover The Theory of “Failed Scenes”.

The above image is the cover of Issue #1 of “Vamps”, a short series of obscure comics from the mid-1990s. I came across it in my mid-teens and loved it. It was all about these gorgeous girl vampires who formed a gang and motorcycled around, seducing men and drinking their blood. The girls were turned into vampires by a male vampire who was a selfish, abusive jerk, and the series was partly about the way they defeated him and seized freedom.

One of my big takeaways from reading “Vamps” came not from the series itself but from the author’s afterword. The comic was created by a woman, Elaine Lee, and although I don’t have access to the quotation now, I seem to recall that she described receiving a ton of vitriolic hate mail over “Vamps”. Her theory was that vampires are basically a rape fantasy, and that readers were incredibly disturbed to see the “typical” rape fantasy “turned around” such that women were taking that kind of aggressive and violent sexual power over men.

Anyone who does any serious research about vampire tropes will find almost immediately that vampires are historically, consistently associated with “deviant” sexuality — meaning queerness and, of course, BDSM. (Hello to my fellow blood fetishists!) Vampires are some of the most hidden-in-plain-sight BDSM fantasies available, so it’s not surprising that vampires would also be affected by some of the gendered stereotypes about BDSM roles that get expressed in the BDSM community: for example, that men are the “natural” dominants/sadists and women are the “natural” submissives/masochists. People have a hard enough time accepting female dominants; it’s not surprising that female vampires might be considered more unsettling than male vampires.

That said, I think the cultural tide has turned a bit since the 1990s, though everything isn’t fixed by a long shot. The 2000s saw the wide release of “Underworld”, an action movie with a badass and aggressive vampire lady as the main character. (Which, by the way, blatantly cribbed from one of the best roleplaying games ever made: “Vampire: the Masquerade“. The makers of “Vampire” sued the makers of “Underworld” and settled out of court. In fairness, the game “Vampire” was both an excellent overview of vampire tropes and a significant influence on ideas about vampires, so it’s conceivable that some of the writers on “Underworld” weren’t familiar with the game.)

A couple of years ago, I wrote some fiction whose main character was a female, masochist, submissive vampire. Her master was a mortal, and I really enjoyed thinking about him feeding her his own blood as a gesture of power, or as a reward when she did what he wanted her to do. She only wanted to drink from him, and she loved him … despite her strength and predatory power, she ended up enslaved by her own hunger. I’ve thought about trying to revise that story and publish it somewhere, but I’ve never gotten around to it. (The original is incoherent and unpublishable.)

I found an original copy of “Vamps” Issue #1 in a comic shop recently and bought it ($1!) … I wasn’t as excited about it the second time around, but there’s still a lot to love.

As a side note, I must leave you with one of my favorite jokes. It’s kind of ridiculously terrible. If you are of delicate sensibilities, then it might appall you. Ready? You’ve been warned ….

Q: What did one lesbian vampire say to the other?
A: “See you next month!”

Actually, as a side side note, I must leave you with my personal vampire-related recommendations.
* The movie “Night Watch” (originally of Russia)
* The song “I’m A Vampire” by the Future Bible Heroes
* Neil Gaiman’s “Vampire Sestina”
* The novel Blindsight by Peter Watts (free to read online)
* The novel Agyar by Steven Brust (one of my favorites)
* The classic roleplaying game “Vampire: The Masquerade” (non-nerds need not apply)
* Feministe post and comments on how Twilight (which I have not read) is “a powerful cautionary tale about accepting traditional gender roles and conforming to expected societal norms“.

I do my best to maintain a healthy sense of irony about everything. Including death, taxes and breakups.

But breakups are terrible and soul-searing; I’ve been observing some breakups lately that make me feel gun-shy about ever wanting to be involved with another human being. Also, I’m never sure what to tell my friends in these situations. I find the above quotation to be a totally awesome description of how I feel after a nasty breakup, but it doesn’t contain much actionable advice.

There are two resources I’ve found that had the best breakup advice ever. One was aimed at women, and one was aimed at men, but both of them work for people of all genders. The one aimed at men is shorter, and I’ll reprint the whole thing in a moment here. The one aimed at women is more hilarious.

Here are those resources, plus some advice from me. And also, if you’re going through a breakup, then you have my sympathies. Virtual hugs, my friend.

Resource #1

The lady breakup guide is the book Exorcising Your Ex by Elizabeth Kuster. Here is one of my favorite excerpts. This isn’t one of the advice parts of the book; it’s solely funny. Even if you have broken up lately, it will hopefully make you laugh:

… This seems as good a place as any to share with you the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) story about post-breakup stuff that I’ve ever heard. It came from a woman who initially professed not to have any post-breakup stuff. Naturally, I was skeptical. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

The process is expensive — freeze-drying a 9-pound pet costs $550, so freeze-drying a 200-pound ex would cost about $110,000 — but think about the possibilities. You could have them pose your ex so it looks like he’s begging for forgiveness. You could have them pose him in a sitting position, put him on the couch and tell your parents you’re married. (They’ll be none the wiser, especially if you insert a remote into his lifeless hands.) (pages 118 – 121)

I frequently quote Ms. Kuster’s line where she says “It would take a very sick person to find anything funny about this, so let me assure you that I am that person.” It’s kind of my favorite quotable quote ever.

Resource #2

Aaaand now for the dude breakup guide. It originated on the forums at the classic Internet dude site, SomethingAwful.com. The user who originally wrote this guide called himself Lushka16. Lushka16′s advice has been reposted across various nerd sites, so I might as well mirror it here.

Here it is:

~~~

Being dumped sucks.

It is rarely a good experience — no matter how long you’ve been going out, what the nature of your relationship was, or how it ended. The very idea that someone does not want to spend his/her time with you is a pretty big blow to the ol’ ego.

I have been dumped on many occasions for many reasons, for over nearly a decade. I understand that there are many who have never had a girlfriend, many on their first relationship, and many more with little experience with being dumped. Take my advice as you will, but I can guarantee you that when the day comes (and it probably will), you will be better prepared for it, and hopefully won’t end up being a huge whiny turd.

I give to you:
Lushka16′s guide to being dumped, and taking it like a champ

Rule 1: The relationship is over.

This is the most important rule of all. You need to go back to it at least once every minute in the aftermath of being dumped. It is the most difficult part, yet it is also the foundation for healing. The day you come to terms with it, is the day things start getting better.

In my experience, there are three basic parts to being dumped: Premonition, Dump, After-Dump.

Premonition

I have been dumped, and have dumped, lots and lots of times. There has never been an instance where it is random. For every single relationship, from shortest (2 days) to longest (3 years), there has been a period of time where the breakup is planned. For the person about to get dumped, this period is called premonition. I have always felt a breakup coming, and it is physically a worse feeling than the breakup itself. There is little communication between the couple, an intense feeling of uncertainty, and a strong desire to make it better. The longer the premonition stage lasts, the more apt you are be stupid.

Things to avoid:

Do not go beyond the bounds of your relationship. Don’t start saying, “I love you” if that’s not what you normally do.

Resist the urge to sulk. Do whatever it takes to get your mind away from it. Get the fuck out of bed, go to the gym, go for a walk, find some friends, smoke some pot, do whatever it is that you do to de-stress.

Do not start screwing around. The relationship isn’t over yet. You might get yourself into some serious trouble.

Don’t beat her to the punch, unless you had plans already.

Things to do:

Hey, here’s an idea — talk to her. “Hey, what’s going on with us, things have been kind of weird lately.” Sure, it might lead to breaking up faster, but that’s the point. If it’s going to happen, might as well not torture yourself.

Try working things out. I know, it’s easier to post a complaining thread on the SomethingAwful forums than to talk logically to another human being, but take it from me — it can work. If you really care for the relationship, and she’s not cheating on your sorry ass, there’s room for work. I’ve found that the best times I’ve had were after we’ve worked things out.

Dump

REMEMBER RULE 1

Get ready to go through the 5 stages of loss:

Denial
Bargaining
Anger
Despair
Acceptance

It might not happen in that order, it might not involve all the stages. Chances are you’ll experience at least 3 of them, the most popular being bargaining, anger and despair.

Denial — Try your best to avoid it. Denial doesn’t help resolve anything, makes the whole process very difficult. Remember Rule 1.

Bargaining — Might as well give it a shot. There might be some things that you can reasonably change in the relationship. Give it up after a good shot at it. If it’s over, it’s over.

Anger — Yup, you’re pissed. Get over it.

Despair — This is where the crying begins. Now is the time to not be pathetic. There’s nothing wrong with crying, but don’t make her feel bad for you or pity you. She’ll only be pissed. There is little sympathy when it comes to being dumped, so don’t play that card. More on this in the post-dump section.

Acceptance — Time to let go, man. Rule 1.

Here’s a quick scenario as to how the whole thing might look:

Girl: Things aren’t working out.
Boy: Are you sure? I thought things were fine.
Girl: No.
Boy: Well, is there anything we can do to make things better?
Girl: I just don’t want to be in a relationship anymore.
Boy: But you were the one who wanted to be in one in the first place! Who put you up to this? Is there another guy? I’ll fucking kill him.
Girl: [insert despair]
Boy: [insert despair]
Boy: Well, if this is what you want, and if this feels right, and there’s nothing I can do or say to change it, then we might as well let it happen.

See? That wasn’t so bad. This is a really good time for some Q and A, especially since you’ll want to know some of the answers in the post-dump phase.

Here is a short list of questions you should ask now, while you’re still communicating:

Is there anything I can do to make this relationship work?
Is there anything I could have done to make things better?
What made you decide to do this?
Is there someone else involved?
Is there anything I can do to avoid pissing off future girlfriends?
When did things start to suck? What caused it?

This is a very short list, and you should tailor it to your needs in the premonition phase. If you can get all your important questions answered, it will make life easier in the next phase. Also, be sure to indicate that you don’t want to see/talk to her for a while. This is key. More on this in the next section.

Post-Dump

Nearly a decade has taught me one important thing: This is a very long phase. You need to accept this.

Ok, you just got dumped. Let the emotion out the best way you know. Cry if you have to, beat the shit out of something, go for a run, post a SomethingAwful thread (maybe go for a run first). Be a man, and find someone to give you a hug. Talk it through with your close friends (not hers). Set some kind of time limit. Say to yourself, “I’m going to be a pile of emotional shit for the next hour, then I’m going to start picking myself up.” Stick to it, if you’re a sulking mess for too long no one is going to want to hear about it.

Inform your friends. People ought to know to be careful around you. If they care about you, they’ll help you cope. Put away blatant reminders of her – her pictures, her underwear, her lifesize blowup doll etc.

Go out, live life normally. Do not do anything rash. Joining the Army doesn’t help, running away doesn’t help, you won’t get her back if you get into a car accident/attempt suicide, you certainly won’t get her back if you vandalize her property. Don’t fuck her sister/friends, don’t go beating up some kid who you think might be her new boyfriend. Use Rule 1 folks, it really puts things into perspective.

Just go on with your life. That’s the only thing you can do to really take it like a champ. There’s a huge list of things you shouldn’t do, because they’re very annoying, and you’ll feel stupid about them later.

Spend lots and lots of time away from her. This is actually a strange situation. Say you spend 4 months away from her and are feeling great. The next time you see her, it’ll take you back about 2 months. Then you’ll recover, and the next time you see her it’ll take you back 1 month. Then 2 weeks. Then 1 week. See what I’m getting at? Recovery is a long process, and there will be setbacks. Don’t think it’ll be peaches and cream the first time you see her with another guy. Try to avoid her socially until you’re certain things are ok. This may take months or years. Rarely weeks. This is why avoidance is key. You don’t need to go out of your way to avoid her, just let her know that for a while, you don’t want to see her.

Don’t play the pity card. Yes, you’re upset and hurt and heartbroken. Tell it to your friends, not to her or her friends. Avoid putting up depressing away messages, profiles, blogs, or anything of the like. Understandably, you want her to know how much she hurt you. It does you little good to do that, remember Rule 1? Don’t go to the same party as her and sit in the corner looking all depressed. She’s not going to want you back, you pansy.

Don’t go visit her. First of all, it will hurt like a mofo. Secondly, girls are evil and will do shitty things like hug you, cuddle with you, tell you how much they miss you, or hit you with pepper spray. Rule 1 — it still applies. She doesn’t want to be with you, just wants to make herself feel a little better. If she wants to come back to you, she’ll call you up and say so. Being around her is most likely going to annoy her and make you feel really shitty. Girls have also been known to employ the use of a guy named Todd, who is only there to make you turn emo.

Don’t start looking for answers. If you’re smart, you already asked them when you two were breaking up. Don’t call / IM / email / fox her friends. Yes, they’re close to her and they know what’s going on. Chances are, they won’t tell you what you need to know. They’re her friends first, yours second. I’m letting you know now — if you do take this path, you will find out nothing of any use. Do you really want to know if she’s seeing someone else? Do you really want to know if she is in bed crying because she misses you? Back to Rule 1. She’s going through her own healing process, she doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you. Let it go, man. Her friends will report their findings to her, and she’ll hate you for snooping.

On a similar note — Don’t fucking stalk her! E-stalking counts.

The above is the basic foundation for taking a dumping like a champ. There are many little nuances that I can’t remember and didn’t cover, so be prepared for anything. Of course, I welcome and urge the advice and experience of other goons. The only thing I can guarantee is that life will get better and you’ll move on.

For what it’s worth, I got dumped and quite heartbroken 2 days ago, but I’m doing all right, thanks for asking.

Fake edit: It’s almost certain that anyone who has read this and is going to get dumped for their first time will not follow my advice.

~~~

In Conclusion

It’s me again, Clarisse. Those two guides are my two preferred go-to resources when I’ve been dumped. (Also when I’ve dumped someone! Which is not easy either.)

Note: I, Clarisse Thorn, have personally had okay relationships where I got back together with a partner after we broke up. So it is true that sometimes, you can get back together with an ex. Sometimes, re-dating an ex is not the end of the world. But in general, I still think it’s good advice to take some healing time apart after a breakup. Most breakups are for good. Plus … if your relationship is super solid, then it will still be super solid even if you take a few months without talking to your ex.

If you choose to take time to yourself after breaking up with a partner, then the next question is: When do I talk to my ex again? My answer: I talk to my ex again when I feel emotionally safe doing so.

Here is the way I measure the emotional safety of seeing my ex. It requires being really honest with myself, and sometimes that’s really hard … so a lot of the time I prefer to just avoid him instead of asking these hard questions. A lot of the time, I just avoid my ex until I feel mostly indifferent to him. Friendly, but indifferent. Then, if we’re going to be friends again, we can develop a friendship from there.

But if I think I’m not indifferent to my ex, and I still want to see him … then here are the questions I ask myself before I see him:

Question 1: Do I feel even the tiniest smidgen of desire to have sex with him? Or even just make out?

If the answer is no, then it’s probably okay to go see my ex. If the answer is yes, then I should move on to the next question.

Question 2: Will I feel okay if I have sex with him? Or make out, or whatever?

If no, then avoid him. If yes, move to next question.

Question 3: Will I feel okay if I don’t have sex with him?

If no, then avoid him. If yes, move to next question.

Question 4: If I have sex with him, and then the next morning he says something like “We’re not getting back together,” then am I going to be okay with that? Or am I going to feel like I’ve been punched in the throat? Am I going to feel used?

If I won’t feel okay with it, then avoid him. If I will feel okay with it, then move on to the next question.

Question 5: If I have sex with him, and then he seems to want to date me again, then will I be okay with that? If he wants to get back together with me, and I don’t want to date him, then do I feel capable of telling him that honestly? And … if we get back together for realsies, then what is my plan for dealing with the relationship … especially the factors that made us break up in the first place?

The bottom line is that if I don’t think I can be honest, careful, and kind with my ex, then I avoid him. And if I think he’s gonna break my heart all over again, then I avoid him.

Or at least I do my best.

I often say that all consensual sexuality is okay. Open relationships? S&M? Same-sex partnerships? One-night stands? Porn? I could care less how people have sex, as long as the people involved are consenting adults. This means that most of the interesting and important questions are about consent: how do we make sure that we always have consensual sex? How do we ensure that we’re always respecting our own boundaries and our partners’ boundaries? How do we talk about our preferences and our consent? I write a lot about sexual communication for this reason.

Every once in a while, though, there’s something interesting to discuss besides consent. (Totally weird, I know!) One of those interesting things is stereotypes. Also interesting: bad dynamics in the BDSM community.

One example of a bad, weird dynamic is the “one true way” thing. Some people act like there are “right” ways and “wrong” ways to do consensual BDSM — as if some consensual BDSM is more legit than other consensual BDSM. Often, people do this via what we call “role policing”: they make claims about “real submission” and “real dominance”. (Even worse, people will sometimes act like dominant people are socially “better” or “more important” than submissive people. Or they’ll act like men are “inherently” dominant, or women are “inherently” submissive. It’s a clusterfuck! Thomas MacAulay Millar has a great essay about this called “Domism“.)

Examples of role policing might include:

* “If you were really submissive, then you would be serving my dinner right now instead of having me serve myself.”
* “If you were really dominant, then you would pay for my drinks.”
* “If you were really submissive, then you wouldn’t be confident enough to write a blog about your sex life.” (Not that I’m biased or anything.)

Sometimes these are hilarious light-hearted jokes. But sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re bullshit, and they make people feel as though they’re “bad at submission” or “bad at dominance”. Also, it gets really silly when we start thinking about switches — people who can feel comfortable in the dominant role or the submissive role, such as myself.

One very common, relevant assumption is that dominant people always enjoy inflicting pain: that sadists and dominants are always the same group. They’re not! Sometimes people are into sadism, or into dominance, or maybe they’re into a lot of sadism but a little dominance, or whatever. The same thing goes for submission: sometimes people are submissive and like taking pain, but sometimes people are submissive without being masochistic, or maybe they’re into a little bit of submission and a lot of masochism, or whatever.

Or maybe they’re masochists who like ordering their partners to hurt them. I once threw a memorable party at which my then-boyfriend, a mostly-submissive gentleman, arranged for a bunch of our friends to grab me and hold me down while he ate cake off my body. As he did this, I clearly recall shouting at him: “You better hurt me, or I’m going to safeword on your ass.” So he hurt me! It was great.

Because “submissive” and “masochist” aren’t always the same thing — and “dominant” and “sadist” aren’t always the same thing — the BDSM community uses the terms “bottom” and “top”. A “bottom” is a blanket term for a submissive and/or a masochist — the receiving partner. A “top” is a blanket term for a dominant and/or a sadist — the partner who is providing sensation. The point is to have words that indicate who is giving and who is receiving, without making claims about each partner’s preferences. (These words can also be used as verbs. For example, if I am “topping”, then I am in the dominant and/or sadistic position.)

And yet! Even though we have these handy terms “top” and “bottom”, which are specifically designed to help us avoid making assumptions, people end up making assumptions. There are two common BDSM community phrases that are often deployed in tones of disgust and irritation. One of those phrases is “topping from the bottom”. The other phrase is “service top”.

“Topping from the bottom” indicates a person who exercises power in the relationship, despite being in the “bottom” position. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, as long as both partners consent. But some people talk about “topping from the bottom” like it’s bad — as if power ought to belong to one side or the other; as if the bottom should never express preferences or make decisions about what’s going on. Which is ridiculous.

I’ll grant that it can be annoying if I’m trying to be a top, and my partner isn’t listening or isn’t doing what I want. But in those cases, it’s important to pay attention to what is actually going on. Is my partner resisting because he actually doesn’t want to do what we’re doing? In that case, I should respect his preferences. Or maybe my partner is resisting because he wants me to punish him. Or maybe we just have bad chemistry! Whatever. The point is, “topping from the bottom” isn’t inherently a bad thing. “Topping from the bottom” doesn’t make the bottom into a “bad submissive” or whatever. It just means that either the person is trying to communicate, or the person is looking for a certain kind of push-pull dynamic.

(I am hardly the first person to notice that “topping from the bottom” is a badly-used phrase; here’s a rant from another BDSMer on the topic.)

Simultaneously, there’s the phrase “service top”. It’s basically the same thing in reverse. A “service top” is a top who enjoys topping in line with his partner’s desires. And once again, some people act like this is a bad thing — as if service tops “aren’t dominant enough”. But it’s not inherently a bad thing! If a service top is doing things just because her partner likes them … then good for her!

I sometimes use phrases like “topping from the bottom” and “service top” to describe dynamics of a relationship: to talk about what is actually going on. But that’s because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with topping from the bottom or being a service top. I try to avoid joking around about it unless I know that the person I’m talking to is not sensitive about the topic. And I really don’t like it when people use those phrases while role policing.

BDSM can carry an incredible emotional charge, and a lot of the time, people will want comfort and snuggles after doing BDSM together. Sometimes, part of that comfort and snuggles includes reassuring the partner: “I know you just beat the shit out of me until I cried; I enjoyed it — I still like you and think you’re a good person.” Or, “I know you called your safeword while I was hurting you; I still think you’re a beautiful submissive and you did a great job — in fact I love it when you call your safeword because it helps me understand you better.” I think that in these cases it’s totally okay to say something like, “You’re such a good submissive.” But it’s so important to keep in mind that there isn’t some kind of submission that’s inherently “better” than any other kind — or dominance that’s “better” — or sadism, masochism, whatever.

And here is the part of the entry where I pull aside the mask and reveal that even though I claimed I wouldn’t talk about consent … I was secretly talking about consent all along!

The consent problem here is that role policing can be used to mess with people’s consent, because role policing can be used to pressure people. If a person wants to feel like a “real submissive”, and you tell them that “real submissives” always receive anal sex … then the person might accept anal sex even if he doesn’t really want to … because he wants to be a “real submissive”.

I have personally witnessed accusations of “topping from the bottom” or “service top” being used to hurt people who were just trying to communicate, or arrange a relationship that they liked. For example: “I thought you were a submissive. Why are you asking me to tie you up? Stop topping from the bottom! I’m the dominant partner, I make the decisions!”

An important facet of consent is trying to create a pressure-free environment, so that all partners feel comfortable talking about what they want. Sometimes, it can be very hard to create that environment, because pressure isn’t always easy to see or understand — but if we want maximum consent power, then we have to do our best. One way to create a pressure-free environment is to be careful about phrases like “topping from the bottom”, “service top”, and the role policing that can go along with those phrases.

The image at the top of this post shows a shocked-looking man wearing a leash and a collar. He is about to spank a dominatrix who is bent over his knee. I believe that I first spotted the picture over at maymay’s blog.

I discovered this tiny sculpture (easily fits in my hand) at a friend’s party this weekend. Apparently it is known as a “Halloween labbit”; it was created by Frank Kozik and produced by the designer toy company Kidrobot. This discovery might just be the highlight of my entire life. Seriously. Study questions include, “What would you do if that were a real animal that ran into the room where you’re sitting right now?”

… Aaand on that note, let’s move on to “A Unified Theory of Orgasm”. This article was originally published at the girl-power site Off Our Chests.

I CAN’T COME.
and it’s poisoned
every romance
I’ve ever had.

masturbating doesn’t work. I don’t know why. I tried therapy too, but my smart, understanding, sex-positive, open-hearted doctor couldn’t help. drugs while fucking? check. I date attentive men who only want to make me happy, but no matter how fantastic they make me feel, I can’t get off. and believe me, I like sex. I love sex! how can it feel so good and not end in an orgasm? I tried experimenting, and I sure do love the kink. it feels great. but doesn’t get me off. I’ve tried everything. everything.

now I have the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. but just like every other one, he can’t get me off. big dick? oral sex? tons of foreplay? kink? it’s all there. nothing works. I used to lie to my boyfriends and say it was ok that I couldn’t get off. then at least they could enjoy sex without feeling guilty. but then they’d stop trying, of course. and this one is still trying … sometimes. I mean, it’s clearly never going to work. so I can’t blame him for not having the same passion for trying as he used to. and I keep thinking I should back off. after all, why put pressure on him to “perform”? he’ll just resent me if I keep asking for more, even if I’m gentle about it and compliment him and all that. since nothing he does works. it will never work.

and I try so hard not to get frustrated, but I can’t avoid the knowledge that I am fucked up, I must be broken. I mean, any normal woman would have come by now. so what do I do? I don’t know what I need. do I back off and focus on him? that’s what I end up doing, because I can’t face asking for a little more attention in bed anymore. what’s the point? he’ll just resent me when it doesn’t work again. so I back off. and I can’t help resenting him, just a little, for not noticing how much I’m hurting. and not trying, even if I am broken, and I will never ever come.

Contents:

I. Vaginal Pain
II. S&M
III. Frigid
IV. The Fight
V. Men’s Perspective
VI. S&M, Redux
VII. Figuring It Out
VIII. Study Questions

I. Vaginal Pain

When I wrote the above, I was actually pretty close to figuring out how to have an orgasm. But I didn’t know that. I’d dealt with the anxiety of being unable to come for so long — and I’d also recently begun to understand that my sexuality is oriented towards S&M — and so anguish just flooded out of me, into those words. I craved S&M, but acknowledging the craving made me feel like a “pervert”, a “freak”. It contributed to my already-overwhelming fear that I was “broken” because I couldn’t figure out how to come.

There’s one thing I didn’t mention when I poured out all that fear and shame: I experience rare vaginal pain — not every time I have sex, not even most times, but occasionally. Medical science has traditionally failed to care about how women experience our sexuality, so very little research has been done on the subject. As a result, it’s impossible to say why I get that pain. Is it some kind of physical problem? That seems likely, because my psychological comfort level with a sexual encounter doesn’t seem to correlate with whether the pain happens or not. But because female sexuality is often stereotyped as too mysterious and emotional to be worth rigorous medical investigation, I doubt I’ll ever know for sure.

For a while I was sure I was allergic to semen, because I read a magazine feature by a woman who said she was. Aha, I thought. I stopped taking hormonal birth control pills. I made my trusted monogamous boyfriends use condoms. The pain became less common. Yet throughout that time — continuing through today — I still get the pain occasionally, very occasionally. Sometimes I even feel the pain during encounters that lack vaginal penetration, so it’s clearly not about having a penis in me.

I can push through the pain; I can even have an orgasm, a reflex that feels good yet is surrounded by not-good; but I can’t get rid of the pain entirely. Whenever I think I’ll never feel it again, it sneaks into some sexual encounter.

The semen allergy theory has been ruled out, since I get the pain without semen contact. That doesn’t mean that hormonal birth control didn’t have an effect, though — the pain was definitely worse while I was taking it. The Pill intersects with sexuality in ways we still don’t understand; one common side effect is that it reduces sex drive. Perhaps the Pill affected my sexuality in some physical-medical way, worsening the pain problem.

The long and the short of it is that I experience some vaginal pain; the pain is confusing and hard to predict, and there aren’t any good medical resources on the matter. Maybe the pain points to something unusual about my constitution. Maybe there’s a reason it’s harder for me to have orgasms than the “average” woman.

But the vaginal pain itself is not overwhelming, on the rare occasions that it crops up. And the vaginal pain is not even close to the most central issue of my sexuality — or the biggest influence on my orgasmic ability.

II. S&M

I identify my sexuality as BDSM — a.k.a. kink, leather, fetish, S&M, or B&D. BDSM is a 6-for-4 acronym that encompasses a host of related activities, including bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism. And yeah, I’m really into it: my desires are heavy and overwhelming; I dream of agony, of terrified screams for mercy. I’ve gone so far as to describe BDSM as my sexual orientation.

Before someone goes leaping to conclusions, there is a definite difference between “good pain” and “bad pain”. The occasional pain I feel within my vagina is not good pain; it’s not even interesting. It’s just annoying. It’s not sexy or enjoyable at all.

Some of us in the BDSM community have felt lifelong tendencies towards BDSM. We have conversations ending with thrilled exclamations: “You mean, you tied up your Barbie dolls as a child too?!” But BDSM is widely misunderstood and negatively stereotyped, and thus, many of us also went through periods of rejection. We’ve internalized so much anti-BDSM stigma from society that, at times, we freak out. We deny or erase our BDSM desires.

That’s what happened to me when I was in middle school. As my sexuality made itself more and more evident, my anxiety peaked. I’d been producing secret sadomasochistic art and stories without labeling what I was doing, but I stopped. I blockaded my thoughts of violent power-play. I closed it all away as thoroughly as I could.

I still felt sexual desire — I mean, I was entering my teens, so of course I did. Sometimes I felt so much desire, like in the middle of some inconvenient class, that I’d have to rest my burning forehead on the cold desk. I would close my eyes, and breathe deeply, and wait for the erotic shiver to pass. At home, I’d lie around my twin bed and dream about kisses; imagine men’s hair and skin and touch.

Yet it was hard for me to trace my desire, to take control of it. I thought I had no problem with the idea of masturbation, but when I touched my own lady bits, I went cold. Vibrators did nothing but bore me.

I had excellent sex education, thank goodness. I went through a Unitarian Universalist sex education program that talked carefully about different experiences, that made space for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and queer folks. I didn’t only learn about sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy and condom usage; I was also encouraged to explore my sexuality, to value it. But this marvelous curriculum did not include BDSM and other non-standard sexual identities. Nor did it include much advice on how to negotiate sexual encounters with my partners. So, although I internalized many positive and feminist messages about sex, my own sexuality remained invisible, bewildering and hard to talk about.

When I started having sex around my mid-teens, I liked it — I liked it a lot — but it seemed weirdly lacking. I’d never figured out how to masturbate, so I couldn’t show my partners how to pleasure me. And although I occasionally suspected that I wanted something like S&M, I didn’t understand how far I wanted to go.

A couple of teenage boyfriends tied me up … but then they acted solicitous and went down on me, which didn’t send me over the moon (though it was fun). From this, I concluded that S&M was boring, but the truth is, I hadn’t come close to the extremes that form my preferences. It was years later that I released my need for agony, tears, bruises and blood.

III. Frigid

As I got older and had more sex, my apparent inability to orgasm became the most toxic secret I had. Most of my closest friends didn’t know. For a while I thought I must be “frigid”, and ripped myself apart over the idea that I was a “frigid bitch”, even though that made no sense. It was ridiculous to conceptualize myself that way — my sexual desire was undeniable, unavoidable. But I had no other words, no other images or stereotypes, that described a pre-orgasmic woman.

When I did tell my friends, it almost never went well. The best-case scenario was a conversation with anecdotal fragments: “I knew a girl,” one friend advised, “who couldn’t have orgasms. Then one day she was tripping, and having sex, and she fell asleep, and when she woke up she was having an orgasm.”

I also found a book on my father’s top shelf, written by a guy who said he could give “any” girl a squirting orgasm. The author claimed that the key was for the woman to be comfortable. He also claimed that the woman had to not know what he was trying to do. In fact, the book explicitly recommended that men prevent their girlfriends from reading it.

Needless to say, it was hard to extrapolate a Unified Orgasm Theory from these tales. The only things that seemed clear were that I somehow needed to both “let go” and to “keep trying”. But how?

Every once in a while I made the mistake of telling someone who was convinced they knew the answer — which was: sleep with them. When I got drunk with one sexually experienced male friend and asked for advice, he insisted that if I’d just fuck him I’d be sure to come. “Anytime you want,” he slurred, “I’ll give you an orgasm. Guaranteed!” The fact that I was not attracted to him was, in his view, unimportant.

Worse was my lesbian female friend who declared that I had “issues”. She said that I ought to sleep with a woman. Ultimately, she turned out to be right that the problem was one of sexual identity, but she was wrong that I was a repressed bisexual. Her campaign to get me to sleep with her ended in a threesome with a guy I had a crush on. I liked bits of that evening, but most of it was boring — if not distasteful. When I tried to talk to my friend honestly about it later, she insisted that I loved the whole experience. She said that I was merely feeling morning-after guilt. “You were totally into it,” she informed me. She was clearly smug with victory, but angry that I resisted her version of events. I felt resentful for years.

I didn’t even tell my partners about my orgasm difficulties until I’d known them for a while, because my secret felt like such Restricted Information: I couldn’t give it to anyone I didn’t trust. I couldn’t abide the idea of “everyone knowing” how broken I felt. I couldn’t stand the combination of pity and fascination that my problem evoked in the few who knew.

When I did get around to telling my partners, that was most complicated of all. I was quite unpopular in high school, and so I was something of a late bloomer — boyfriend-free until my late teens. It took years before I had any confidence in my boyfriend interactions. And because I had no idea how to come and no idea where to start and little idea of how to communicate about sex, I could not give guidance about what I wanted.

I also felt paranoid that lovers would resent me if they felt I was demanding something too “difficult” during the sexual “exchange”, so I downplayed my feelings. I told awful lies like “it’s not a big deal that I can’t come” — lies that broke my heart as I spoke them, but felt safer than the truth.

I did manage to have one orgasm in my teens — one. I’m still not sure how it happened. It occurred one evening when I was incredibly tired, but went out with friends to get a fudge brownie sundae anyway. When I got back, my boyfriend came over and wanted to have sex, and I let it happen — despite being tired and uninterested and full of sundae — because I had not yet internalized the notion that my boyfriends wouldn’t hate me if I denied them sex. I was barely present during the act, but I jolted into awareness when I realized I was having an orgasm. Afterwards, exhaustion overwhelmed me and I fell straight into sleep — so deep that my boyfriend was unable to wake me.

This was puzzling and hard to analyze. What aspects of my singular orgasm should go into my Unified Theory … and which aspects were irrelevant?

The chocolate? Well, chocolate is arguably a mild drug, and drugs help some people come. Also, there were studies that found mild aphrodisiac qualities to chocolate. So maybe.

The position? The position had felt really good but was somewhat awkward, and I felt weird asking my boyfriend to reproduce it, so I didn’t let myself think about the position. (I’m much better at communicating with my partners now.)

What about the exhaustion? It made sense that being very tired might help me “let go”. But I hadn’t been very turned on or enjoyed the rest of the encounter, mostly because I was so exhausted; and I didn’t want to deliberately force myself to have sex while tired. So while the exhaustion might have been a factor, I filed it under “less-than-useful” as well.

I didn’t worry about the problem too much for a while, because I figured that now that I’d had one orgasm, surely it would become easy. I didn’t tell my boyfriend it had happened, either, because I didn’t know how to describe exactly how. I thought I’d figure it out as we went along, and then I would tell him exactly what it took.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. Months and years passed without replicating the incident. Anxiety began seeping back. My Unified Orgasm Theory was not doing well.

My fear of being perceived as “demanding” during sex and relationships was at a ridiculous extreme back then. For example, I’d heard over and over that boys don’t like girls who are “high-maintenance”, so I told my boyfriends that I never wanted them to buy me flowers. I thought that men would feel relieved that they didn’t “have to cater to me”, but they were just puzzled. (One responded by buying me fake flowers.)

Because of the awful shaming stereotypes around cunnilingus, I sometimes refused that too. I couldn’t believe that the boyfriends who were willing to go down on me were actually enthusiastic about it, enjoying it — and when my anxiety became too painful, I inevitably stopped them. I always stopped them long before I stopped enjoying the act, because I was so scared that they hated it, and hated me for wanting it. I was scared that they resented me more and more, the longer they did it and I didn’t come. My fear crept up my spine and twisted around my heart until I had to make them stop.

Sometimes I felt trapped between love and disgust, like with the boyfriend who constantly complimented me on how great in bed I was, but who seemed unaware of how much I felt missing. The worst was when he went off on a rhapsodic list of my wonderful qualities ending with: “… and I don’t even have to worry about giving you an orgasm!” He didn’t see the bind he was putting me in, the awful self-suppression and self-wounding that he encouraged. He seemed unaware that I heard him telling me: “You’re great in bed because you are constantly disappearing your own needs, and never asking anything complicated of me!”

In fairness, I wasn’t giving him any guidance on how to do better with me. In fairness, I had no idea what kind of guidance to give.

They had their own social programming, and I didn’t communicate well. But sometimes I still have trouble forgiving my early boyfriends.

IV. The Fight

Not all my boyfriends were willing to do as little as going down on me. One, in particular, resisted very strongly; never did it at all. This was an especial problem because he was one of the men I’ve loved most in my life, and our relationship lasted for years. I think well of him when I think of anything other than sex. But when I remember having sex with him, I feel echoes of sick panic and heartbreak.

By the end, every time I slept with him I felt nothing but disgust.

He seemed to prove all my fears: that the men in my life would loathe and resent me if I tried to discuss my confusion and desperation; that they would loathe and resent me if I asked for help with my sexual needs. Towards the beginning of our relationship, I tried asking him (very timidly) to go down on me, and he simply refused. In later conversations he insisted that cunnilingus was “too degrading”, an assertion he made with a weird lack of irony, given that I was going down on him regularly.

As the years passed, my frustration deepened and I started thinking about experimenting more sexually, but I was terrified of mentioning it. I didn’t know what I wanted to experiment with — I really believed that I’d “already tried” BDSM, and that I didn’t like it — but his initial rejection of mere cunnilingus didn’t make me feel confident.

Finally, I got to the point of directly asking for sexual experimentation, and we had the worst fight ever.

I recall that our relationship was somewhat rocky already. One of my journal entries from that time contains the sentence, “I can’t seem to not make him angry when I’m trying to discuss our relationship.” For this particular fight, we were sitting in his room reading when I scraped together my courage and asked for his help in figuring out my sexuality. “Well, what do you want me to do?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think there must be some way to find out — I don’t know, there have to be books?”

“That’s ridiculous,” he snapped. “I love you, but I’m not going to read books in order to figure out how to have sex with you.”

It got worse from there. I was crying within the first few sentences. At one point, he outright shouted at me “I don’t care about your satisfaction,” at which point I said, “You can’t mean that,” and he repeated it. Eventually, I simply turned around and walked out of his room. I had nowhere to go; it was a long train ride to visit him, and the trains had stopped running that day. It was mid-winter, and freezing cold. Crying, I put on my coat and shoes and exited the house, onto his suburban street.

I walked completely at random. I was hardly able to see. Fortunately, because it was so cold, no one else was out and about. I muffled my sobs by bowing my head into my collar. After fifteen minutes, I discovered my cell phone in my pocket and tried to call my best friend, but she didn’t answer. I was still walking around crying an hour later, when she returned the call.

She calmed me down and got the story out of me. It was the first she’d heard about my inability to orgasm, and she didn’t know how to advise me because she didn’t have the same problem. Also, it was obvious to both of us that trying to communicate with my boyfriend wasn’t working. It was obvious that there might be no way to successfully communicate with him on this topic at all.

Eventually, after she’d managed to quiet me into a trembling jellylike mass, my friend said gently, “Okay, hon, you need to hang up and go back inside.” She was right. So I did.

When I stepped back into my boyfriend’s room, he was still reading. I could sense from the texture of our silence that he felt bad, though. I was exhausted, I felt like a stiff breeze would blow me apart, but I told myself that I had to set a line. I was sure my voice would waver as I made myself say: “If you’re going to tell me that you don’t care about my sexual satisfaction, then I can’t do this anymore ….”

“I never said that,” he said softly.

I closed my eyes. He would do this sometimes, insist that he hadn’t said words I was sure I’d heard, and it always made me feel like I had gone insane. I knew he’d said it. I’d even responded with, “You can’t mean that,” and then he’d repeated it. But I felt so tired. It had been hard enough to start the conversation. Hard enough to walk around the streets crying for hours.

Maybe I really did misunderstand him somehow; I’ve been over those moments in my head a million times, and I don’t know anymore. Maybe I misunderstood. Or maybe he was falling into a classic pattern of emotional abusers. Maybe he insisted that I was hallucinating in order to confuse me out of protesting: abusers do these things because they work.

What I do know for sure is that when he halted the conversation with a flat denial, I couldn’t bring myself to even try to talk about it again. Couldn’t bring myself to resume the conversation. But I also couldn’t bring myself to break up with someone I loved so much. We talked about other things instead.

And, of course, nothing about our sex life changed at all.

When my best friend called me the next day to check in, I said, “Well, he says that he didn’t say what I thought he did.”

Her silence echoed with disbelief.

“Maybe I just … didn’t understand what he actually meant,” I said, but my words sounded weak even to my own ears.

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully, but she didn’t press the issue.

Even after that fight, I continued dating that man for a long time. I look back now and I can’t imagine how I did it.

V. Men’s Perspective

The gendered societal pressures that affect men are worth discussing, and worth analyzing, and I often do just that. There is undeniable pressure on men to “perform” sexually, for example. I try to have sympathy for men who feel this pressure — but it is difficult sometimes, because its major effect on my life has been to silence me. To make me feel as though I couldn’t ask for anything sexually. As though I couldn’t express my needs without hurting my boyfriend’s feelings or making him angry.

And even now, when I talk about this stuff, I am as vague as I possibly can be about the exact timeline. The last thing I want is for people who know me to read this and know exactly when I started having orgasms. I don’t want anyone to know exactly which partners “couldn’t perform”. Because I know those men might feel it as a social punishment, and as much as I hate the dynamics at work, I can’t hate the men who were part of them. They had their own social anxieties and their own blind spots and if I didn’t understand what was wrong, how could they?

I recently had dinner with a former partner. At one point we found ourselves having a very explicit conversation, and I mentioned that I’ve figured out how to come. He looked sad and apologized: “I’m sorry I was never able to get you there.” I had no idea what to say. [1]

VI. S&M, Redux

I finally came into my BDSM identity around age 20. At first, when I was faced with the fact that I wanted to be hurt until I cried and begged for mercy, I freaked out. I had no idea what to do about BDSM, no idea how to feel about it. The only thing I knew for sure was that I’d found something I really needed. But what did that mean for me, when I was also trying hard to be an independent, rational feminist with self-esteem and integrity?

It took me years to parse out my thoughts on feminism and BDSM, to feel comfortable with BDSM, and to talk openly and comfortably about it. During that process, I got better and better at finding partners who were interested in my sexual desires and willing to experiment. I also got to the point of reading sexuality advice books on my own, including books specifically on BDSM (I recommend The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy; here are some other resources).

And I gritted my teeth, forced down my anxiety, and looked into books about the female orgasm.

One book that came highly recommended from Amazon.com was Lonnie Barbach’s For Yourself. By the time I was halfway through the first chapter, I was crying because what she wrote felt so true. At the end of the first chapter, I put it down and was never able to pick it up again. Barbach wrote compassionately about experiences very similar to mine — for instance: [Are you afraid to talk to your partner about your problem] because you’re embarrassed to ask for what you want at a particular time; afraid your partner will refuse, get angry, or feel emasculated?

But she also ended the first chapter this way: You have to assume responsibility and be somewhat assertive. Our culture has taught us that a woman should depend on a man to take care of her, which means she can blame him for any mistakes. It’s nice to be driven around in a car, but it’s also nice to be able to drive yourself so you can go where you want to, when you want to. But to do that, you’d have to assume some responsibility.

It was the same “let go” and “keep trying” advice I’d been coming across for years, except that now it was wrapped up in a nice package of assumptions about me: implications that I wasn’t assuming responsibility or being assertive. I felt like she was telling me that I chose to depend on a man to take care of me.

Maybe it would have been okay if the rest of the chapter hadn’t been so miserably true, but the combination of reading a bunch of truth about how I was feeling — then being told that I wasn’t trying hard enough, that I was choosing to avoid responsibility …. It was toxic.

I also had the bright idea of asking my gynecologist. The doctor rolled her eyes as I spoke, then told me that the problem was obviously my partners. When I insisted that I needed more guidance, she referred me to a center that gave orgasmic dysfunction “evaluations” at $1,500.00 a pop. I was earning $7.50 per hour at the time. I didn’t go.

I got up my nerve and talked to my mother, who had been extremely helpful and caring when I came out to her about BDSM. During the BDSM conversation, I’d been scared — then I felt immense relief as Mom told me that there was nothing wrong with me, and reassured me that I wasn’t “giving up my liberation”. When it came to orgasms, though, she seemed unsure of what to say. She did at least tell me that she, too, couldn’t come easily, which made me feel a little better.

Most helpful was the therapist I found on the Kink Aware Professionals list — a list of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who believe they understand alternative sexualities such as BDSM. I tried one therapist who didn’t seem to get it, but the second therapist I saw was wonderful. He helped me through an enormous amount of my BDSM anxiety. The orgasm problem was thornier, but he didn’t make any assumptions, and he did listen carefully, which was more than most people did.

My therapist gently encouraged me to get a second opinion about my how my body worked, from a new gynecologist. Irrationally, I didn’t. I suppose I still felt crushed by how the first gynecologist had reacted. I also hoped I’d learn to come as I explored BDSM more — which turned out to be true.

VII. Figuring It Out

In retrospect, I recognize that I went through a brief period where I had orgasms sometimes — weak ones. But the orgasms were hard to hang on to because they happened during sex with my boyfriend. This would be the same boyfriend I described at the beginning of this piece, when I wrote: now I have the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. but just like every other one, he can’t get me off. big dick? oral sex? tons of foreplay? kink? it’s all there.

Now I see, in retrospect, that not everything was there: neither of us had questioned our sexual assumptions, our societally-determined sexual scripts. And one of the biggest sexual scripts is that sex ends with the man’s orgasm. That the man’s orgasm is the goal.

It’s very hard to think around these scripts. It’s very hard to even be aware of them. So, since my paramount goal during sex was obviously “satisfying my man”, I often pushed my orgasm away due to my focus on him. I knew that if I came then I’d feel tired and less interested in sex (at least for a while). And obviously, if he were to have his all-important manly orgasm, I couldn’t go falling asleep on him could I? I couldn’t even pause to mentally process my sensations if he seemed to be enjoying himself, now could I? Plus, once he’d come, I certainly couldn’t expect him to stimulate me any more than he already had, because he was tired; he’d just had an orgasm!

(These days, one of my #1 judgments of whether a new partner could be good for me is this: if I didn’t come before he did, then does he take a moment post-orgasm to catch his breath, and then turn to me and smile and offer to do what it takes?)

In the end, figuring it out was almost anticlimactic.

I saw an online video from sex educator Betty Dodson called “Did I Orgasm?” … and I realized that I’d been occasionally having weak orgasms already. I was also experimenting more and more with BDSM; simultaneously, I put more and more power into the hands of my fantasy men; and once I had compelling private fantasies to feed on, I couldn’t help masturbating. Here was the key: initially, I’d felt that masturbating in itself involved having too much control over the situation. And that’s not how my sexuality worked.

Oh yes, in practice I take responsibility for my pleasure; and now I’m pretty good at clearly discussing what kind of role my partners will take ahead of time, describing what they’ll do with me. These days, I sometimes take the dominant role, too. But even now, it’s hard for me to come if I feel like I’m in control.

On some level, even if it’s the most tissue-thin fantasy, I usually have to convince my emotional-sexual self that I’m not in charge. It helps if I have an emotional connection with whoever I’m fantasizing about, too. If I don’t have an emotionally involved romantic partner, I seem to automatically create BDSM-themed fantasy worlds with hilariously ornate storylines. Years ago, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t reach orgasm because my internal characters weren’t compelling or my plotlines weren’t dramatic enough … but sometimes it’s true!

In my case, I believe that BDSM is the key to my sexuality. It is as close to the core of my sexual identity as I can get; close enough that, like some other BDSMers, I occasionally call it my “orientation”. But I don’t think BDSM is like that for everyone, and I don’t even think that’s the whole story with me — because during the whole time, this self-discovery process, I was doing things like eating more regularly, keeping a healthier diet, putting some weight on my previously stick-thin frame, and exercising more. Health plays a big role in any kind of sex, and it’s important to think about. Still, even now I can’t come without some thread of dominance and submission, even if it’s an entirely internal fantasy that I imprint on whatever is happening.

When women ask me for advice on how to have orgasms, I feel helpless because there is no “one true way”. I don’t want to fall back on the old “let go” and “keep trying” that I received — it’s decent advice, but it’s so vague. Perhaps something more useful would be this: first, it really helps to have an idea of what you want. I know this can be hard in a society that soaks us with sexual images designed for stereotypical men, rather than images for women (and especially not for non-normative women like myself). And I feel so aware of how patronizing and useless the “you aren’t in touch with your sexuality, that’s why you can’t come” argument can be. Remember, I had that argument used against me by my lesbian friend. But it was, in fact, kinda true for me — just in a different way: I need BDSM.

If you’re not sure what you want, don’t panic. Just keep your eyes and ears open, and try to monitor your reactions. It may surprise you. If it does, don’t worry — just research it! No matter how unusual your sexuality, there is probably information on the Internet about it. (And even if your sexuality is unusual, odds are it’s not nearly as unusual as you think it is.)

My personal favorite sex education website in the entire world is Scarleteen.com, a grassroots feminist effort with an amazingly comprehensive perspective. Scarleteen has an incredible impact on many, many lives. Sometimes I read it just for fun!

Secondly: it may help not to prioritize orgasms. I am not saying orgasms aren’t important; I just don’t want the importance of orgasms to wound you, the way it wounded me. For me, it is helpful to imagine sex as a journey. For me, it helps to focus on having fun throughout, instead of doing what it takes to reach the “goal” of orgasm. If you’re not taking pleasure in the journey — or at least indulging some curiosity — then why keep going? Why not stop and try something else?

Experimenting sexually in an open-ended way has been, for me, the most productive possible attitude. And in fact, once I knew how to make myself come, I discovered that — though it’s helpful to be able to attain that release if I really want to — orgasms aren’t actually my favorite part of sex! There are lots of other things I like better.

It’s also worth noting that our definitions of “orgasm” are fairly narrow. Some research indicates that there may be other ways to conceptualize orgasms than the stereotypical genital-focused approach.

Thirdly, although it’s possible for a person to explore sexuality on her own, relationships can make or break the process. We all make some compromises for romance. But when we compromise, we should know what we’re compromising, and we should think about whether the compromise is worth it.

For me, sexual exploration and satisfaction are incredibly important — but it took ages to develop the courage to put my foot down about them. After my boyfriend shouted at me that he didn’t care about my sexual satisfaction, it took me an embarrassingly long time to end things with him; I really was in love, and we’d been together for years. But my sexuality wasn’t even close to a priority for him, and breaking up with him was one of the best decisions I ever made.

After ending that relationship, I was able to build my self-confidence and self-esteem with new boyfriends surprisingly fast — and my boyfriends helped me more than they probably know. I owe countless small debts to men who accepted my inability to orgasm, took my anxieties about it into account, and sometimes gently pushed me to try new things.

One particular guy comes to mind: I told him I couldn’t come, but that I wanted to experiment with S&M, so we arranged to buy rope and some painful equipment. During our conversation, he gently drew me out on my history, and then he said, “You know what I think we need to go along with this rope? A vibrator.”

I blinked and said hesitantly, “I don’t know, I’ve never really liked vibrators.” But I was willing to try it again, and that’s when I learned that vibrators are awesome. That’s when I learned that what I really need is to convince myself I’m not in charge — that once the correct fantasy is in place, vibrators make everything easy.

Even today, few things make me happier than a man who grasps the tension I still sometimes feel about “being demanding” or “asking for too much”. I communicate with straightforwardness that amazes most partners, but it’s crucial for them to understand that I still have hesitations. That even I, sometimes, need a moment to articulate what I want — or need to be asked whether there’s anything he can do.

Lastly, and most importantly: don’t let go of your boundaries unless you’re sure you’re ready. If you really don’t want to do something, you don’t have to make yourself do it. I’m writing this because when I was growing up, all the sex-positive work I read encouraged exploration at the cost of boundaries, and I think that’s wrong. There were times when that attitude hurt me — for example, I did things I didn’t like because people claimed I hadn’t yet gotten over my sexual “issues”, like my lesbian friend in college. And I know that attitude has hurt other women, too.

I don’t like seeing sex-positive feminism equated with making oneself freely sexually available. Exploring sexuality does not mean you have to ignore your warning bells.

Sexuality is so complicated. Sex cannot be reduced to bodies, or hormones, or psychological stereotypes. Sex cannot be reduced to certainties, to shoulds and shouldn’ts. If I could destroy every force in our lives that drives home ideas of sexual “normality”, I would. Which leads to my final piece of advice: don’t let me tell you what to do. This is just my experience, just my ideas. As with everything, I want you to do whatever feels right for you — as long as it’s among consenting adults.

VIII. Study Questions!

Here are some things that might be interesting to reflect on:

1) What questions do you have about your orgasm?

1a) Where have you researched the answers to those questions?

1b) Have you ever discussed those questions with your partners?

2) What questions do you have about your partners’ orgasms?

2a) Have you ever asked your partners about their orgasms?

3) What’s one thing you wish you’d said in bed to a partner?

3a) What would have made it easier to say it?

4) What are your favorite sexual acts? Are there other ways you could perform them?

5) What’s the best sexual experience you remember? What made it great?

6) What’s the hottest thing you’ve seen or read? What made it great and are there ways you could participate?

7) Does anything from this article resonate with you? What?

This is the end of the original article. The footnote below goes into tangential issues of manliness.

Footnote: When this article was first posted, a guy grabbed the first comment on Feministe protesting that I clearly don’t get the men’s side of this equation. I don’t usually get super angry about comments on the internet, but in that case I did, and I had to take a while to calm down.

There was a mild comment fracas. Eventually, in response to that guy, I wrote:

I worked really hard on this article to try and note both:

A) how men’s perspective might make this difficult for them, but simultaneously

B) why men’s insecurities aren’t actually an excuse for men to treat women badly.

In my experience women are actually extremely aware of men’s insecurities. Women frequently silence themselves and put up with a lot of crap because we are afraid of “emasculating” our man, as I specifically noted in the article.

Given that this was an article about:

1) a woman’s experience,

2) and what it’s like to be a woman,

3) and why this issue is difficult to take on as a woman,

4) and why women shouldn’t allow men’s insecurities to shut us up …

… can you see why I would avoid putting a lot of text towards describing men’s insecurities in loving detail?

For more on why I got so angry about it, you can read this set of comments over at Alas, A Blog.

Now. With that having been said ….

One of the guys in the Clarisse Thorn Manliness Brain Trust ™ emailed me with some thoughts in the wake of this article. Once again, I want to emphasize that I don’t want anyone to feel that they “ought to” give a crappy partner “another chance” if that partner is treating them badly. I spent years giving a terrible boyfriend millions of second chances because I kept telling myself that he was just “insecure”. Walking away from that oh-so-”insecure” man was one of the best choices I ever made. Nonetheless, I think that the following comment from my Manliness Brain Trust ™ friend might be useful for some people:

When I first saw this post, my first thought was that I have to pass it on to a couple of the people I’m involved with, who have difficulty reaching orgasm because it’s an awesome, awesome article. My second thought was that it seemed like Clarisse didn’t really grok the guy’s side of this exchange.

Somewhere among 5th, 7th and 9th thoughts, was the notion that I’d be a jerk to raise that point in the comments. This article is a great reference for women working through difficult climax issues and there’s no need to drag the conversation off to the guy side of the experience … So I sent Clarisse an email about it instead. Because the thing with Unification theories is that they’re never all the way done. And things could have been so much easier for Clarisse if her boyfriends didn’t suck. Maybe some insight into why they sucked would help with the ongoing development of the model, or at least provide some eased management strategies.

The thing is, I don’t feel attacked or diminished or anything else by this article. Despite the fact that I’m a guy, I have insecurities and I can in some places see a stupid, obnoxious mirror of myself in Clarisse’s dumb ex boyfriends — that isn’t at all why I thought I should talk about the topic more with the author. It just seemed to me like Clarisse hadn’t quite got her head around what the guys were going through with their side of this interaction. Where their insecurities came into play.

In my head, I see a young woman, working through her own issues with orgasms reading this, and seeing her young boyfriend reflected in Clarisse’s past relationships. And the take away from Clarisse’s experience at the moment seems to be that if your boyfriend is insecure and stupid, maybe he’s not the right person to work through this with you. And I’m not sure that’s doing anyone any favors. I mean shit, maybe that is what you should take away from reading this — that the guy you’re with isn’t the right person for you right now if you’re struggling with difficulty achieving orgasm. But maybe there are other stories going on as well. Maybe he’s insecure about his role and his failings (or his body or whatever) and maybe he could be the right guy to work through this with you, if you’re the right person to work through his insecurities with him?

And please, please don’t take that to mean let things slide because you don’t want to emasculate him. I’m not for a moment advocating putting up with nonsense because he’s a guy with a precious male ego. But lots of guys, certainly including myself, have personal insecurities, about masculinity and about sexuality, and attached to the perceptions of masculinity in sexual situations. As a guy, we’re all taught that real men don’t give head — or at least that it’s a private thing that we don’t admit too — which is so fucking stupid, but is still really out there in heteronormative western male culture. We’re all taught that getting a woman off is our job, and to be a good man, and a good lover, we have to get our partner off before we get off. I don’t know a single sexually active guy who has never felt humiliated because he came too early, and too early is largely defined as before our partner gets off. And we’re all taught that real men get their partners off with nothing but the awesomeness of our cocks. Hand jobs/digital penetration are fine for highschool or fore play — but our image of a good man, and a desirable lover doesn’t integrate with those things. We’re coached by pop culture and porn to believe that the guy every woman wants is the one who sticks his cock in and makes her explode with joy from the very first thrust. And any time that doesn’t happen, the guy is at fault.

And again, to stress my position here, I think all of those things are stupid, illogical nonsense. But those are the pressures that are on guys. And maybe, if the guy that you’re with is struggling to work through your orgasm issues, maybe it’s because he’s so far under the weight of his own insecurities that he doesn’t know how to cope with his own issues, and be a supportive partner to work through yours. But the thing about a good relationship, is that together you’re stronger than the sum of your individualities. Maybe as a couple, you can work through his insecurities and your orgasm difficulties at the same time. Nobody’s problems exist in a vacuum, and sometimes finding the support you need is easier if you just fix the support you already have.

That comment was originally posted over here, and there was some discussion afterwards — including some guys saying that they never got any memo about cunnilingus being “not manly”.

Here’s my wrap-up: sympathy is good. Trying to build a better relationship is good. And I understand that some people may have serious, important reasons that they can’t or don’t want to walk away from their romantic partner. (That’s one of the things feminism has always worked towards: giving people many sources of support and safety nets, so people can leave abusive partners if necessary.) But. Seriously, if your partner sucks? Walking away is an option — it’s even an option, sometimes, when you think it’s not an option. Just remember that.

1) Wow, I dealt with many of these issues and did a better job several weeks ago, when I wrote my piece: “Chemistry“. I’m also going to examine a lot of these issues in my upcoming eBook Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser: Long Interviews With Hideous Men. (I know, I’ve been plugging the eBook a lot lately. What can I say — I’m a starving artist and I use the platforms available to me.)

2) Well … okay. I’ll try to be more fair. I am coming at this question from the perspective of a 27-year-old woman, who is just starting to think about getting married — and I have considerable experience in liberal sex subcultures. Kate Bolick is coming at this question from the perspective of a 39-year-old woman who has clearly thought a lot about getting married — and who was somewhat influenced by second-wave feminists like Gloria Steinem … but is clearly uncomfortable with liberal sex-positive feminist perspectives.

(If Bolick weren’t uncomfortable, then when she tried to get a grip on the modern dating scene she might have talked to lefty feminists, rather than speaking only to the relatively conservative Susan Walsh. As a matter of fact, Susan Walsh has openly insulted and attacked a number of high-profile modern feminists, including women who I greatly respect. Personally, I find Walsh to be somewhat interesting and mostly harmless; during our brief exchanges, I’ve gotten the impression that she feels the same way about me. I have found some of Walsh’s critiques of sex-positive feminism echoed in my own experiences, and I try to take such critiques into account during my ongoing project of building more flexible and universal sex-positive feminist theory. But I 110% disagree with where Walsh takes those critiques — for example, Walsh has been known to assert that we ought to do more slut-shaming. Which is just no. The last thing we need is more slut-shaming.)

3) Given that Kate Bolick is a bit more conservative than I am, and given that she has very different experiences, it’s not surprising that she has taken such a different journey in her thoughts about this topic. What’s more interesting is that she arrives at very similar conclusions. Like many other commentators, I liked where Bolick was going at the end of the article, when she talks about potentially building collective lives with like-minded people, rather than depending on marriage to create our family structures.

Unlike many other commentators — and unlike Bolick, apparently — I already have a great deal of experience with collectives and cooperatives. I don’t usually write about this, because it’s not directly relevant to sex & gender, but I’ve mentioned it before, like for example in my old post “Grassroots Organizing for Feminism, S&M, HIV and Everything Else“. I hate to sound like a true believer, but I really think that cooperatives can be the wave of the future … if we let them.

Building an intentional living community with like-minded people is very difficult. But there are thousands of examples of cooperatives around the world — some dealing with housing, some dealing with other matters. Most of my experience is with housing cooperatives, and I can attest that participating in even a very functional housing cooperative can be infuriating, heartbreaking, and scary by turns. But functional housing cooperatives have also taught me an enormous amount about humanity, relationships, grassroots action, interdependence, efficiency, and sharing. (Awww. I know. It’s so sweet.)

And I fully expect that my experience in building intentional “family” will be great for me as I grow older and my life takes me either into marriage, or not into marriage. Cooperatives are living communities that do not depend on these outmoded ideas of nuclear families. And, by the way? Living in a cooperative does not preclude marriage. Plenty of married couples live in cooperatives together. Some have kids in the cooperatives!

I wish that Bolick had wound up her article by doing some serious research on the cooperative movement. But she didn’t, so I’m going to give you some resources off the top of my head right now. If you want to learn some basics, then definitely check out the website for the non-profit organization North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO).

As it happens, NASCO is about to host its yearly educational Institute, which is a totally awesome opportunity to learn more. I wish I’d thought to post this sooner, because I just realized that today is the last day you can register for NASCO Institute. The conference will happen from November 4-6 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Another great resource is an old article by a gentleman named Jim Jones, who used to work for NASCO. This article is called “Death in the Co-op” and it’s a brilliant exposition of Jim’s thoughts on why co-ops go under — what the potential weaknesses of co-ops are. As far as I know, this paper has basically been passed hand-to-hand for years, but has never been posted openly on the Internet. I view it as required reading for anyone with a serious interest in housing cooperatives, so I’ve put it up on my own site for download.

4) Aaaand back to Kate Bolick’s article. Do I have any other thoughts? Just one: at least it wasn’t another article by Caitlin Flanagan.

Here’s some other coverage of Bolick’s piece. I sent these links to some non-feminist friends, and one of them characterized them as “haterade”. I don’t think they’re “haterade”, but as I already said, Kate Bolick pretty much blatantly snubbed the liberal feminist sphere, and she cited Susan Walsh, who has blatantly attacked the liberal feminist sphere. So, you know. There’s gonna be some snideness in the coverage.

* A snip from analysis at L’Hote:

I think Bolick is on the cover of “The Atlantic”, and in pictures inside the story, because she is writing about her superior desirability to the men whom she might potentially partner with. And I think that in order to make that possible, she and “The Atlantic” need to show that she’s attractive. And she is [conventionally attractive]. If there were no pictures of her, that would be the question on most people’s minds: what does she look like?

As with Hannah Rosin’s “The End of Men,” this strikes me as an article that superficially details victory for women while the context in which it emerges reminds us of how far we still have to go.

(Please note that I, Clarisse Thorn, am all for deconstructing ideas about what “attractive” means and what “attractive” looks like. One of my recent posts had a bit of a blowup about this, and I can see places in the above snip where the author is assuming that “attractive” = “conventionally attractive”. So I just want to say that, again, I’m all for questioning and deconstructing ideas of “attractiveness”. There’s more discussion about sexiness and performing femininity over on Alas, A Blog, if you’re interested.)

* A snip from Amanda Marcotte’s discussion at Slate:

What’s interesting about these non-stop media musings about how women are getting to be “too good” for men—again, disproven by the research!—is that one specific area where women probably are getting pickier about who they date is getting overlooked. Call it the “feminism gap,” if you will; as women gain more economic power and self-esteem, their willingness to put up with a bunch of crap from men is declining rapidly. We see this in ways big and small, including the fact that women are more likely to sue for divorce than men and some research indicates that the “hook-up culture” that causes so much anguish may have partially developed as a way for women to get laid without going through demeaning and sexist romantic rituals. My favorite statistic regarding this surge of women being able to ask more of men and of life: the rate of women murdering their husbands has declined dramatically in the past 30 years, which is largely a direct result of women leaving men who beat them earlier in the relationship, long before the abuse reaches the point where they feel their only escape is to kill their abuser. I think women are beginning to have higher standards for how they’re treated in a relationship, and while many men have caught up, there are probably more women who won’t tolerate sexist treatment than men who are willing to stop being sexist. Give it a generation, and I bet it evens out significantly. Already the divorce rate is going down, suggesting that a lot more men are embracing the mutual-respect model of marriage than they did a generation ago, when a sea of marriages cracked under the pressure of trying to shove modern people into traditional patriarchal marriage.

* A snip from thoughts at What Would Phoebe Do:

Bolick went from being told (by her mother) not to settle down, to hearing from friends, at 28, that the clock’s a’ticking. In college, she and her female friends “took for granted that we’d spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we’d finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30. That we would marry, and that there would always be men we wanted to marry, we took on faith.”

Meanwhile, of course people meet at 15, at 45 … and things work out. The window of opportunity merely governs expectations. Right, right, no one intelligent cares what others think, but this isn’t even on such an explicit/conscious level. Women really do go, and quickly, from feeling “too young” to feeling “too old.”

And of course, if you wrote about Bolick’s piece, then feel free to link yourself in the comments.

November is also when CineKink: The Kinky Film Festival brings its annual national tour to Chicago, November 18-19 — and I’m offering free tickets again this year!

Plus! November features Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, November 3-12 — and this year, I can offer a group discount to one of the screenings.

For more information, keep reading ….

Firstly, CineKink. I am currently offering TWO PAIRS of FREE TICKETS to a film of your choice at the upcoming CineKink: Chicago, which will take place on November 18-19. If you want the tickets, then just email me with your name, tell me how long you’ve been reading my work, and include the title of the first post you ever read on my blog! (It’s okay if you’ve never heard of me before and the first post is this post.)

I’ll put all the names in a hat next week on Wednesday (November 2). I’ll pick two names randomly, then I’ll email the winners. And you get to CHOOSE which movie you see for free with a friend or partner!

CineKink Chicago has a great 2011 lineup. One cool-looking film this year is a documentary on International Mr. Leather, the annual Chicago contest for leathermen. Personally I’m especially excited about the Best Of CineKink Shorts, which are always fascinating and challenging. The Best Shorts this year include:

Best Dramatic Short
“Cactus”
Anna Treiman, 2009, Denmark, 30 minutes.
Harboring a secret sexual fantasy of being raped, Helene hires a gigolo to fulfill her imaginings. But the “rape” does not go according to the agreed scenario and, faced with unforeseen complications to her plan, Helene must confront the true workings of her desire.

Honorable Best Mention
“Love Hotel”
Erika Lust, 2010, Spain, 4 minutes.
In this sequel to last year’s CineKink award-winning short, “Handcuffs,” a couple arrives at a love hotel … and many fantasy scenarios ensue.

Best Experimental Short
“Butterfly Caught”
Joshua Bewig, 2010, USA, 7 minutes.
A shy and studious girl wanders into a bookstore and is transported to another world by the images she discovers in a book on Japanese bondage.

Honorable Best Mention
“Turning Japanese”
Paul Bickel, 2009, USA, 20 minutes.
A couple struggling with their finances stumbles upon an unknowing sleepwalker and they exploit her nightly episodes by selling tickets.

Best Documentary Short
“Love, Hugs and Kisses, Sissy Stephanie”
Mrs. G, 2010, USA, 12 minutes.
A profile of New York scene icon, Sissy Stephanie, and a look at the heart, humor and aspirations that lie beneath her crisp layers of crinoline.

Best Comedy Short
“Piss”
Vincent Peone & Bette Bentley, 2010, USA, 7 minutes.
Why can’t you just pee on me?

But there are a bunch of other good films showing as well. Don’t you want free tickets? The films are being screened at the awesome Leather Archives & Museum (up at 6418 N. Greenview Avenue in Rogers Park).

RECAP: For a chance to win TWO FREE TICKETS to CineKink Chicago, all you have to do is:

1) Email me, Clarisse Thorn: clarisse.thorn at gmail dot com.

2) In your email, tell me how long you’ve been reading my work, and write the title of the first post you read on my blog. (It’s okay if you just found my blog, and the first post is this post! And if you can’t remember the title of the first post you read, just tell me what the post was about.)

3) Sit back and wait until the night of Wednesday November 2. I will email you if you win the tickets! And remember, if you win, you get to decide which CineKink movie you see for free!

Secondly, Reeling! The International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival takes place from November 3-12, and Sex+++ is promotional partners with some Reeling shorts screening on November 6: the set of shorts is called “It’s Not Me, It’s You“. If you bring a large group (10+ people) to “It’s Not Me, It’s You”, then we can get you a discount. Here are the films in “It’s Not Me, It’s You”:

“Just Friends”
Chris Dupuis, Canada, 2010
Four Guys. One Question. The answer? Let’s just be friends.

“Latte”
Xi Wang, Australia, 2011
Two young lovers are thwarted by traditional Chinese cultural values where getting married and having children is the only acceptable future.

“A Word”
Yoav Imbar, Israel, 2010
A young man gets dumped by his boyfriend, kicked out of his sister’s apartment, and gets involved in encounters with strangers — leading him to confront his inability to feel love.

“Strip”
Michael Jortner, USA, 2011
Brent is a handsome, but miserable, businessman whose wife has just divorced him. Trying to drown his sorrows in a bar, he’s seduced by an alluring blonde with an interesting proposition … involving her husband.

“More or Less” (“Mais ou Menos“)
Alexander Sisqueira, Brazil, 2010
Ivo is constantly bullied by Sandro, his high school classmate. Their troubled relationship seems irreconcilable until an unexpected encounter changes everything.

“Winner Takes All”
Camille Carida, USA, 2011
Alec Mapa (“Ugly Betty”) plays slave to a narcissistic but seductive beauty who engineers his two lovers to fight each other … for him. Winner takes all.

But there are lots of other super awesome films showing at Reeling, too! Check them out.

On a totally different note …. Since you made it all the way to the end of this entry, I offer you a fascinating pair of articles about Bjork’s latest album “Biophilia”. I don’t actually like Bjork’s music very much, but she’s definitely a genius, and her latest album is interactive! Apparently it recalls both science museums, and gaming. Here’s an interview with the dude who designed the “Biophilia” app, and here’s a review of the album by the “New York Times” video game reviewer.

Also, don’t forget to attend Sex+++.

I once read a critic who called the French author Colette “a corsetiere of love”. If Colette is a corsetiere, then Tanith Lee is a surgeon with a scalpel — or rather, a more artistically violent profession, perhaps a sculptor with a knife.

My favorite of Lee’s short stories is called “The Glass Dagger”, which is part of the compilation The Book of the Dead; I don’t like the other stories in that book nearly as much. My favorite of her novels is Biting the Sun, although that could just be because I discovered it at age 14, and I felt like the main character was exactly like me. I have never felt able to satisfactorily quote these works, so they aren’t represented below. When recommending Lee’s work to newbies, I usually suggest starting with the compilation Dreams of Dark and Light and the fantasy sequence the Flat Earth novels, beginning with Night’s Master. There’s an incredibly awesome, detailed bibliography of Lee’s work at a website called Daughter of the Night.

I would give a lot to interview Tanith Lee, but I hear she’s reclusive. I’d direct you to her own website, which was once a tacitly lovely and sideways place; but it looks like tanithlee.com has been snagged by domain squatters.

Once upon a time there was a princess, outside whose high bedroom window a nightingale sang every night from a pomegranate tree.

While the nightingale sang, the princess slept deeply and well, dreaming of wondrous and beautiful things. However there came a night when the nightingale, for reasons of her own, did not sing but flew far away.

In the morning the princess summoned a gardener and told him to cut down the pomegranate tree. The man protested; the tree was a fine one, young, healthy and fruitful. But the princess would not relent. For as she said, all that one previous night a nightingale had perched in the branches, and the princess’s sleep had been very much disturbed by her song.

[from Disturbed By Her Song]

Love is everywhere … and the death of love. And time, which is built of the histories of death and love. Death and time I had always conceded, and acknowledged. And now I see plainly what love is. Not in you, pretty, mortal child. But in my arms that comfort you for wounding me, in my hands which soothe you for it, in my words which say to you, in despite of me, Do whatever you must. This lesson I will not remember. Nor shall I ever forget.

[from Delirium's Mistress]

A rose by any other name
Would get the blame
For being what it is –
The colour of a kiss,
The shadow of a flame.
A rose may earn another name,
So call it love;
So call it love I will.
And love is like the sea,
Which changes constantly,
And yet is still
The same.

[from The Silver Metal Lover]

[This last one is both sad and cruel. You've been warned. The main character is a late-1800s gentleman who has stopped off at a village during a long, long train ride. We do not know where he was traveling to. In this village, he has just seduced a girl named Mardya. ~CT]

She was already dewy when my fingers sought between the fleshy folds of the rose. “No,” she said. She rubbed herself against me, arching her back, shaken through every inch of her. “No — no –”

“This will hurt you.”

“Hurt me,” she said, “I am yours. I belong to you.”

So I broke into her, and she whined and lay for a moment like a rabbit wounded in a trap under my convulsive thrusts no longer to be considered, but at the last moment she too thrust herself up against me, crucified, with a long silent scream, a whistling of outdrawn breath, and I felt the cataclysm shake her to pieces as I was dying on her breast.

… “Are you the one?” she said. “Are you my love? For always?”

“Always,” I said, “how else?”

“And my death,” she said. “Love is death. Kill me again,” she said, but not in any mannered way, though it might have been some line from some modern stage drama.

So presently, leaning over her, I “killed” her again. This time I even pinned her arms to the bed in an enactment of violence and force. Her face in ecstasy was a mask of fire, a rose mask.

Afterwards her eyes were hollow, like those of a street whore starving in the cold.

When I began to put on my clothes, she said, “Where are you going?”

“It will be best, I think. We might fall asleep. How would it look if the girl came in and found me here, in the frank morning light?”

“But you will come back tomorrow?”

“Your aunt invited me to luncheon.”

“But you will be here? You will not be late?”

“Of course I shall be here, of course not late.”

I kissed her, for the last time, with tenderness, seemliness. It was all spent now. I could afford to be respectful.

As I reached the open door, she was lying like a creature of the sea stranded upon a beach. Her delicate legs might have been the slim bi-part tail of a mer-girl, and the tangle of nightgown and hair only the seaweed she had brought with her to remind her of the deep.

… As I let myself out of the front door, and descended the steps, the air cut coldly in the icy deserts before dawn. It was almost four o’clock, and I had seen to my luggage beforehand. I need only go along to the station and there wait for the train.

Two doctors attended me at the point of my destination, one the man I had arranged, a month previously, to see, the other a colleague of his, a specialist in the field. Both frowned upon me, the non-specialist with the more compassion.

“From what you have said, I think you are not unaware of your condition.”

“I had hoped to be proved wrong.”

“I am afraid you are not wrong. The disease is in its primary phase. We will begin treatment at once. It is not very pleasant, as you understand, but the alternative less so. It will also take some time.”

“And I believe,” said the less sympathetic frowner, “you comprehend you can never be perfectly sanguine. There is, as such, no cure. I can promise to save your life, you have come to us in time. But marriage will be out of the question.”

“Did I give you to suppose I intended marriage?”

“All relations,” said this man, “are out of the question. This is what I am saying to you. The organisms of syphilis are readily transferable. You must abstain. Entirely. This is not what you, a young man, would wish to hear. But neither, I am sure, would you wish to inflict a terrible disease of this nature, involving deformity, insanity and certain death where undiagnosed, on any woman for whom you cared. Indeed, I trust, upon any woman.” He glared on me so long I felt obliged to congratulate his judgment.

The treatment began soon after in a narrow white room. It was, as they advised, unpleasant. The mercury, pumped through me like vitriol, induced me to scream, and after several repetitions I raved. One does not dwell on such matters. I bore it, and waited to escape the cage.

The ulcerous chancre, the nodulous sore, long healed, which had first alerted me, has a name in the parlance of the streets. They call it the Devil’s Rose.

… She died insane, I heard as much some years later in another city, from the lips of those who did not know I might have had an interest.

The condition was never diagnosed. Probably she had never even been told of such things. They thought she had pined and grown sick and gone mad through a failed love affair, some stranger who entered her life, and also left it, by train.

She had always had a morbid turn, Mardya Lindensouth, obsessed by dark fancies, bad things. Unrequited love had sent her to perdition. She was unrecognizable by the hour of her death. She died howling, her limbs twisted out of shape, her features decayed, a wretched travesty of human life.

Yes, that was what dreams of love had done for her, my little Mardya. Though in the streets they call it the Devil’s Rose.

[from "The Devil's Rose", a short story in the otherwise forgettable collection Nightshades: Thirteen Journeys Into Shadow. As a quick introduction to the story, Tanith Lee writes: "I have always said I find this one of the most horrific of my own stories. How many times it must, in some form, have happened. And, in more modern guise, still does. One wishes to assume a strong moral stance. Yet self-denial is a wicked thing. The air is always full of first-thrown stones."]