lightcastle | Entries tagged with relationships

I got invited to drinks Friday night by one of my co-workers.

She had sent the email to the wrong person.

About sums things up.

Those who will actually be in Montreal this weekend might want to go to the First You Get the Sugar single launch at O Patro Vys on Friday.

I encountered this as a euphemism earlier today. (Yes, I am talking about sex.)

On one level, I kind of like it, because I happen to be fond of indirect speech that isn't actually indirect. On another, given my past experiences, this dances a bit close to the "you're obligated to put out".

That's a shame, I think. I would like "sing for your supper" and "earn your breakfast" to be playful again.

It's a question that gets dredged up constantly with any number of permutations and I'm certainly not going to lecture anyone on their choices. (Assuming you aren't constantly calling them abusive names or some such.)

I still cling to "girlfriend" as implying some level of commitment and priority, although quantifying it remains a nebulous exercise.

I enjoy reading about how other people navigate the issue, especially those in relationships the culture doesn't have a default script for, which is why I enjoyed reading this article by a cis woman dating a trans man about her struggle to come up with terms and titles.

If I ever start smearing myself with an addictive substance in order to get an addict to be more into me by associating my body with her addiction, please just point and laugh at me until I slink away in shame.

In a shocking display of good judgment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued new rules for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals that protect patients’ right to choose their own visitors during a hospital stay.

And yes, that included same-sex partners. It includes anyone. If you, as a patient, want someone to visit you, they have to have full and equal access to visit you as anyone else. The only reason to deny you a visit should be clinical. The rules will go into effect in about 2 months.

From the press release:

"Basic human rights—such as your ability to choose your own support system in a time of need—must not be checked at the door of America’s hospitals," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Today’s rules help give 'full and equal' rights to all of us to choose whom we want by our bedside when we are sick, and override any objection by a hospital or staffer who may disagree with us for any non-clinical reason."

[...]

"These rules put non-clinical decisions about who can visit a patient out of the hands of those who deliver care and into the hands of those who receive it," said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, MPP. "While we still have miles to go in making care more patient-centered, these rules make it easier for hospitals to deliver on some of the fundamental tenets of patient-centered care—care that recognizes and respects the patient as an individual with unique needs, who treated with dignity and granted the power of informed choice."

The Five Love Languages

My primary love languages are probably
Quality Time and Words of Affirmation.

Complete set of results

Quality Time:		9
Words of Affirmation:		9
Acts of Service:		5
Receiving Gifts:		5
Physical Touch:		2

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

I'm dubious about this. The spread seems too far, although I can see my top two working out like that. Maybe I'm just more demanding of something that was lacking and so that's pushing the spread up.

Or, you know, internet quizzes suck. :)

Clarisse Thorn wrote an article last week asking Why Do We Demonize Men Who Are Honest About Their Sexual Needs?, in which she argues that the toxic construction of male sexuality has resulted in it being pathologized. She uses the word "creep" as sort of the male equivalent of the way "slut" is used with women - a means to police and control their sexuality.

There are some good points in it, and I like the basic three points she ends with:
1) Accept male desire, and accept men's word when they talk about it.
2) Male sexuality should be approached from the concept of pleasure rather than accomplishment.
3) Let's all discourage sexuality that's actually predatory or non-consensual.

I'm sure you will all be shocked entirely none that those resonate with me.

But while I do think those are fine aims, I kind of agree with Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon when she argues that creep is still a useful word.

I think part of it is that I just don't think male desire is that demonized, to be honest. Certainly not by the people who are supporting better and more positive sex for all, anyway. Male sexuality as predicated on entitlement and subordination of women's desire is, and I don't see why it shouldn't be. (As a comment early on the Pandagon thread notes, the problem is a society that equates desire with entitlement to have that desire fulfilled.)

Ultimately, I find most of what people describe as "creepy" has everything to do with not respecting boundaries. A problem hardly limited to men. (Men are encouraged to be creepy, however.) This may be a case of I have a hammer and so I only see nails, but most examples people give seem to fall into exactly that, a refusal to accept the boundaries the other person sets up.

This is why, btw, just about everyone is capable of creepy behaviour at some point. Lord knows I've been accused of being creepy. One apologizes, and backs off. Creeps double down and insist they aren't at fault and continue the behaviour because they feel entitled to the response they want.

It's a nice term in this article on the whole men and womens brains are wired completely differently.

(This also gives me an excuse to point to Echidne's Statistics Primer.)

The general point is summarized thusly,

There may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, added Fine, a researcher at Melbourne University, but the wiring is soft, not hard.

As long as we're discussing social science, here's an article looking at the whole hookup culture issue and its effects on adolescents and young adults. Unsurprisingly for some of us, "hooking up" wasn't invented in the 90s and so there is some research on it.

The research shows that there is some truth to popular claims that hookups are bad for women. However, it also demonstrates that women’s hookup experiences are quite varied and far from uniformly negative and that monogamous, long-term relationships are not an ideal alternative. Scholarship suggests that pop culture feminists have correctly zeroed in on sexual double standards as a key source of gender inequality in sexuality.

And while this line is specifically women-focused, I rather think it applies more generally.

For most women, the costs of bad hookups tended to be less than costs of bad relationships. Bad hookups were isolated events, while bad relationships wreaked havoc with whole lives.

So what's the over/under on "met, proposed, accepted, moving in" all in the same month working out these days?

(Not me, of course. I think even if I *had* suddenly started a passion - or, you know, anything - here, this would be pretty drastically out of character.)

Speaking of marriage, here's a rather nice primer on the difference between civil union and marriage in the USA.

Completely unrelated, but Dr. Seuss Fabric

There's also a whole lot of discussion about this video from Eminiem and Rhianna. You should read bfp's take (well, as this reminded me, I should read bfp more often) since I think it is an interesting one. Sadly, if you follow the blog, you'll see the conversation in the comments get ugly.

Mostly from the often-interesting Yes Means Yes blog, a couple of discussions about consent.

Firstly, the nature of "nebulous consent". To quote Thomas using a kink example:

But let’s take the “asking for it” bit to its logical conclusion. Let’s say I meet a top in at a play party and we talk about what she wants to do, and then she ties my hands to a St. Andrew’s Cross and … what? What exactly have I consented to?

If you said, “whatever you two agreed to, and not whatever you two have not agreed to” they you have it right. Anyone with a different answer needs a remedial class in consent.

It goes on that this "agreed to" can be very specific or quite broad, and isn't always verbalized (but often needs quick adjustments if an unverbalized assumption turns out to be wrong).

It's an interesting piece, because consent is rarely negotiated in an academically explicit manner, but is something that is actively involved and evolved amongst the people involved.

The second, and more personally-affecting one involves the concept of mismatched sex drives and "compromising". (It is also up at Feministe. If you like comment threads, both are interesting.)

That post came out of a piece on alternet called 6 Things to Try If You Want Sex More Than Your Partner Does.

Having been on both sides of that fence (although only once toxically), I know the struggle that can be. It touches on huge issues of feeling accepted, loved, and desired. In the cases where it has been ok, there's been a way to talk about the mutual desire to still be in the relationship and the desire for the person, even when it isn't expressed physically. But even then it's hard.

This speaks to me:

n the relationship I’m thinking of, I felt constantly rejected, like I wasn’t sexually desirable (which played into a lot of body image and performance issues for me), and like my desire was a problem. Like every time I felt sexual want, I felt an immediate internal response: oh, no! Please go away. It’s not the most healthy way to relate to your sexuality, let me tell you.

On the other hand, my partner told me he felt constantly pressured, which made him want sex even less. Which? I totally get. If you don’t feel like you can freely decide, if you feel like someone else’s desire is more important or more overwhelming than your own, it’s not a very sexy feeling, is it?

Jaclyn takes issue with the idea of scheduling sex and compromise, saying they deft enthusiastic consent. (A term, incidentally, I've grown to dislike, as people have gotten very hung up on "enthusiasm" as a descriptor, interpreting it as a demand for jumping up and down rah-rah activism. I have shifted to "active consent" personally, rather than the "tacit consent" our culture so often glorifies.)

I do think compromise can be deeply problematic, especially when it so easily slides into pressure to do something you don't want to. "I only did it because it seemed important to you" is a horrible thing to hear. (Believe me I know.) Of course, that's not hard and fast - "I did it because you like it so much, even if it's not a big deal for me" seems very different in some ways.

As for scheduling sex, that seems a very couple-specific answer. Some will find that turning into more pressure and resentment, others will find it an excuse to both engage in finding time and space to appreciate each other. I think it depends a lot on the particular relationship and sexual dynamics involved.

Ultimately, I think I have to turn to much-ado about this, and her many discussions on "buy-in" for the relationship. If you are both enthusiastic about the relationship, it strikes me there are ways to get around the mismatch with communication and kindness.

A series of pictures (sadly, I cannot easily hotlink) looking at the message from Disney (since I just put up a link on some Rom Com/stalker overlap.)

What Disney Princesses teach girls.

What Disney teaches men about attracting women.

Another version of the Princess one.

We don't get a marathon on our Patriots Day.

The LOST finale seems to not be generating nearly the backlash that the BSG finale did, although I think it suffers from the exact same "The Writers Think All Serial TV is ultimately soap opera and so don't care about their world, setting, or plot" problem that plagued BSG.

In weird science news, someone argues for the evolutionary advantages of oral sex. They use bats as their example.

Also, some discussions on the neurophysiology of gaming and the near miss. The slot machine effect, more precisely. (As others before me have pointed out, this is probably the reason for the "The Crazy ones are Hot" idea.)