Being Amber Rhea

From Sara:

But what bothers me even more about this whole thread is that it seems to defy the purpose of the site. Now, there’s nothing in the language of the space to suggest that it was ever meant to be free from criticism. But it’s a confessional, of sorts, the kind of place you go to admit thoughts and feelings for which you have no other outlet. That kind of catharsis is hampered if, the second you let fly those bottled emotions, you’re immediately invalidated and dismissed, and innunduated with the asinine opinions of people who think they know you, your motivations, your life based on two or three sentences you scribbled off in an effort to just get rid of them, to get them out of your system.

The more I think about it, the more I think that this is the kind of site that isn’t built for dissenting commentary. The “me too”s were a good idea - we can feel less alone by hearing that someone, somewhere, is in the same metaphorical boat. Comments were even a decent idea, to the extent that people could reach out to one another and offer advice and comfort, or maybe to even just share stories and miseries. Moms had someplace to finally be able to say “You know, infants are really boring” without having to endure chastisement and ostracization from just about everyone, to admit that they wish their husbands thanked them more often for the care work they perform - to have a forum where their complaints were actually heard and not contested.

Because sometimes we need that more than anything - not to have something fixed, or examined, but just to have it heard and understood. I know that, for me, that’s a huge part of any emotional work I do, especially regarding conflict. I can’t move on and do any kind of processing or rebuilding until I feel like I’ve been heard, until I feel like someone’s listened to what my issue is/was.

Haven’t we heard this before?

Rob Peters, a reporter from Vancouver, says:

Some difficult truths have been brought to light by the personal blogging blitz of the last few years. One such revelation is that most of us aren’t as interesting as we think. Waking up every day and jotting down some deep thoughts about breakfast is a difficult way to sustain any kind of readership.

I could not disagree more. What blogging brings to light for me - and I know I’m not alone in this - is that people are infinitely interesting.

Not every single person is going to be interesting to every single other person. But that’s not news; that’s a fact of human existence, and why would we hold blogging to ridiculous, unrealistic standards that we don’t apply to other aspects of life?

And anyway, why is anyone still publishing this recycled tripe? Every 6 months or so, some know-it-all writes a piece on the “death” of blogging, or how it’s causing Very Bad Things to happen, or how it’s lost its innocence, or whatever other cliché they’ve dredged up for the moment. I guess maybe it’s a guaranteed will-publish if you’re having a dry spell?

On a personal note, I’m not having the best day - in fact, someone on a blog just saw fit to inform me that they “don’t appreciate anything about [me].” Do I blame blogging, though? Give me a break. I think you know the answer to that one.

That reminds me - a post on civil communication is in the works, too.

So I know that last post of mine wasn’t very “fair.” Part of me feels bad but part of me just can’t get too worked up about it.

I just feel like in BlogLand recently (well, and not so recently, too), there’s a lot of “group think” and generalizations going on, and if you don’t fall in lock-step, then you’re out of the Cool Kids Club.

There are some situations where generalizations are helpful, instructive, and necessary. I think making a blanket statement of “no blanket statements” is just as ignorant as, well, most blanket statements! Because sometimes it’s appropriate. But I think that’s the exception rather than the rule. And I get the impression that a lot of bloggers who move in some of the same circles I do kind of blog with an iron fist.

It’s hard to write about this, too, because I’m afraid I’ll end up sounding like those whiny assholes who come to feminist blogs and go, “Not all men are [x]!” YES, we know, thanks for making it all about you YET AGAIN, now please to be shutting your dumb mouth.

I’m not a patient person in general, BUT, with friends and on a one-on-one basis, I can be very patient. See, nuance. What might look like a contradiction to the casual observer is actually just the fact of nuance and complexity that we all have within us. And I think a lot of what is missing from some of this blog drama (which I’ve mostly just been observing and shaking my head at, rather than getting involved in, as I know I wouldn’t be welcome anyway) is nuance. Context. Because guess what, context matters. A lot of things have to be taken on a case by case basis.

Like I said at Trinity’s, wrt porn and such: (as usual, double blockquotes are me quoting someone else)

So uh, “men ask women to do Those Things” is true, but not really worth getting furious at people for, to me. Again, even if that’s sexist: mosquito bite. Not worth my worry.

It seems to me that a lot of the time, the asking is set up as a bad thing. And I’ve never really grokked that. Because what always comes to my mind is, “So, one partner is communicating with the other partner about hir sexual desires.” What’s bad about that?? It’s a GOOD thing to be able to tell your partner, openly and with no shame, “[x] turns me on” or “I’d really love to try [y].” The part where good or bad comes into play, I think, is what happens next - and even that is a lot more complex and nuanced than a lot of these scripts make it out to be.

It’s not enough to just say “[x] is wrong.” [x] doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and all the internal and external factors surrounding it have to be parsed in order to get an accurate understanding.

And yet, with all that said? Yeah, there are still plenty of times when the motivation, intent, etc. doesn’t matter AT ALL; what matters is the resultant action. But again: nuance! None of this applies across the board!

I’m having a hard time trying to explain this but I don’t actually think it’s that hard of a concept to grasp, mentally, without words.

Next thing I want to write about: the fallacy of assuming that just because someone’s poor, it gives them special insight into, well, everything. There’s a term for that but I can’t remember what it is.

Insert sophomoric joke here about “commentary on briefs.” Hey, I can’t help it; Dacia’s excellent Naked City interview with Sadie Lune reminded me that I once had my photo taken on Ho Plaza:

Anyway, somehow I’ve ended up with 7 items pinned in Bloglines again. Oh, bother. So here’s some stuff I wanted to talk about at greater length:

• porn law follies (from Open Source Sex)

  Violet Blue explains some of the profuse idiocy that is Section 2257. If you don’t know much about 2257, don’t care, or (especially) if you think it’s a good idea because who would want to repeal it except sickos who dig child porn, you should definitely read this post. Money quote, emphasis original:

  You know, I’m really in favor of laws that make sense when it comes to kids, adults and porn. Too bad we don’t have any.

• Oh, the irony (from Mistress Maeve)

  I could really relate to Maeve here. I’ve experienced that feeling of revealing something to a sex partner (a fantasy, desire, preference, etc.) and having them not respond positively, and feeling utterly crushed and embarrassed - and of course, with my annoying idiosyncrasy of crying at inopportune times, having the tears sting my eyes. And I don’t think there’s any shame in that - it shows that we’re human, and when we open ourselves up and make ourselves vulnerable, as you have to do with sex (even casual, no-strings-attached hook-ups require a certain level of vulnerability; all sex does), deeply-felt emotions are on the line. Especially living as we do in a sex-negative society that has told us all along that our desires are wrong and bad and shouldn’t be discussed in “polite company.”

  So, really I think it’s good for those of us who advocate for sex-positivity and open, healthy communication in relationships to have experienced that kind of thing, because it helps us remember that this stuff is hard - but so worthwhile.

• Previous Posts Revisited (from $pread Blog)

  An excerpt will speak for itself for this one:

  For instance, when Lyderson claims “the vast majority of young women in prostitution are controlled by pimps and suffer worse conditions in terms of violence, number of clients and lack of autonomy the longer they stay in the trade”, what is actually meant is that the vast majority of prostitutes in the DePaul study fit that description, and this is a study of only 100 women. Similarly, when she goes on to talk about percentages (”58 percent of women were transported to different locations for prostitution”) it would be equally true to say simply “58 of the respondents were transported”….but “percentage” sounds more dramatic and substantial than providing the actual number.

• Booty 911: Butt Pimples B-Gone! (from Naked City)

  I pinned this post as a reminder to myself. I am so ordering this product.

…okay, there are others I want to mention, but I’m too damn sleepy to write anymore. Bed beckons.

Today I had a rather lengthy email exchange with Christopher Penn about sex work, economics, financial aid, and stereotypes. (Yes, all of those things together!) I was frantically typing away in multi-tasking mode while at work, and somehow my replies ended up being longer and smarter-sounding than I’d expected, so I figured I had blog material on my hands. (I did some minor editing to fix typos and such in the parts I wrote.) Hence:
Read the full post »

Has RSS caused blog comments to dramatically decline? Is it an effect of one’s blog getting more popular? Is it random?

None of those answers make much sense to me, but I and several of my friends (Dacia, Rusty, Jen, Duane… just to name a few) have noticed that we don’t get nearly as many comments as we used to.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Quality is way more important than quantity. The “great post!” comments are certainly nice, but if those are the only comments, well, something is lacking. And I certainly don’t want assholish or outright trollish comments. I mean why do you think I banned valeko, Andisheh, and a few other repeat offenders?

Interesting conversation is what we all want, right? And shit, people, that’s not unique to blogs. That’s life.

And yeah, unfortunately, sometimes when there’s been a lot of conversation on a post I’ve written, it happened to coincide with a very busy time in my off-blog life, so that I simply wasn’t able to sit down and write in-depth replies. Other times, I admit, the flurry of conversation has been a little over-stimulating, and I’ve been content to sit back and enjoy it vicariously - and I don’t mean that in a negative way; what I mean is, I like listening to smart, interesting people talk!

So I hope you all will comment more. I know that lots of smart, interesting people read my blog (flattery will get me everywhere!), and we have lots of good conversations elsewhere (even if they’re getting kind of fragmented, with things like Twitter and Tumblr) - so yeah I guess I’m being selfish and saying, I want some good conversation here!

I don’t want flaming, or stupidity, or trolling… but good conversation. Like hanging out at a (non-smokey, not too loud) bar, except you don’t have to leave your house or spend money. (Unless you want to!)

(I am resisting the urge to create a “navel-gazing” tag to use with this post. Frankly I’m sick of my own self-deprecation. As Fred Stoeker would say, “It stops here!”)

I saw this line at Random Bird’s place. It is fucking beautiful in its simplicity and to-the-pointness.

If I love you, I will love you more for everything you were before me.

YES.

And I read that, and I thought, “Whoa. That is what I’ve been struggling to convey for I don’t know how long now. And look, she’s gone and done it perfectly with one simple sentence.” I am awed.

I’ve read it a thousand times: the accepted-by-default platitudes about, “Don’t talk about previous relationships, and BY GOD whatever you do, ESPECIALLY don’t talk about previous sex!! If you do, reality as we know it may come crashing down in a ball of fire and jealousy!! And there is NOTHING WORSE than jealousy!!”

You can find it everywhere, this perception. Yes, from the goddamn mainstream pop-culture media, but also from people with good intentions. Like zuzu at Feministe. And I wrote about that post back when it first went up, but fell short of accurately getting across what I meant. Oh, and I mentioned this whole concept here, too; and that turned into a bit of a blow-up at another blog.

To reiterate my point wrt zuzu’s post, in particular: I completely agree that specific numbers are meaningless (not to mention heteronormative and male-centered) and should never be a determining factor in a relationship, used against a person as a judgment about his/her character, etc. But I’m not talking about “the numbers game” here. I’m talking about the way that any discussion of past experiences - and not just sex, even, but anything that involves a former partner; and especially any admission of love for that person - are popularly deemed “off-limits.”

And I’m left there thinking, “Wellllll… wait. No. That’s not how I feel.”

And then, of course, back when I first started to identify that the way I felt didn’t match the popular portrayal: “What’s wrong with me?”

Cue hours upon hours of introspection! ‘Cause that’s how I roll. So then I came to, “Well, that’s bullshit. It’s all socially constructed! It’s caused by people’s discomfort with sexuality and it perpetuates that discomfort! Oh and not to mention, people’s undealt-with emotional baggage about fear of abandonment and whatever else.” -You know, or something close to that, in my 17-year-old mind.

I got negative reinforcement from other people, though, when I tried to reach out and put my feelings to the test. Questions were met with, basically: “What’s wrong with you?” I internalized a lot of that, and to a certain extent some of it’s still there, and I’m still struggling to shake it. Which is why I can get a bit defensive about it, even now.

I still feel like I can’t articulate this properly. Really, Random Bird’s entire post sums it up better, by way of illustration rather than trying to write a whole philosophical thing.

So this is how I feel, period. And I won’t pretend otherwise. (Fortunately, in my awesome relationship now, I know I don’t have to.)

On a larger scale, not just related to sex: I think another part of it is, I recognize that every experience a person has had contributes to who they are today. And if I love the person they are today… fill in the blanks.

Oh, and also? I hate secrets. I always have. And even moreso since the debacle of the Ending Of My Marriage (which, if you know about that, you’ll understand). To my mind, to love someone is to share things with them that you might be hesitant to share with others.¹ It’s a function of trust.

¹ And no this doesn’t mean having no privacy, or no space of one’s own. That’s something completely different, and not cool.

This comment from The Happy Feminist sums up how I feel about “the numbers game,” as they called it at Feministe:

I like the idea of discussing past sexual history* with a significant other. I don’t think our sexual histories define us but they are a significant part of our lives. I really do want to know my husband’s sexual history, not so I can judge, but because I am extremely curious about every aspect of his life and experience. It’s a function of my interest in him and a desire for closeness with him. … If I thought for an instant that a significant other were going to hold my “number” or the speed with which I agree to sex (or initiate sex) against me, that would be a major red flag. I have no tolerance whatsoever for that kind of thing.

It is true that one’s “number” is usually an arbitrary, meaningless thing, and for many (most?) people, trying to calculate it can be downright pointless. I mean, it’s pretty lame that the “number” seems to quantify only male/female penis-in-vagina sex. Boo, heteronormativity and male surpremacy! I’m about to link to a Rachel Kramer Bussel article for the second time today, but she has a lot of smart stuff to say about this in “Down With the Count.”

So, that being said, for me it’s not a matter of discussing a number in particular, because a numeral in isolation carries basically no information. I just plain like talking about sex, on both a conceptual and personal level, and talking about it with a partner is exactly what The Happy Feminist describes: another channel for closeness.

The thing is (and I fully acknowledge that that this could be some of my own shit getting in the way), sometimes when well-intentioned people on threads such as the Feministe numbers thread say things like, “There’s no reason to have the ‘numbers talk.’ Your sexual history is your own” and, “However, even in a perfect world, with no shame attached to having prior partners, regardless of the number, I still wouldn’t share that information with anyone. There are some things that belong to me alone, and what I’ve done in bed is one of them” - well, I start to feel a little defensive. I understand where these people are coming from, and I completely agree that one’s sexual history should never be held up as a determining factor in a relationship, or a statement about one’s character, or any of that BS. But on the other hand, I feel like it’s a slippery slope from the well-intentioned (and absolutely necessary) drive to eradicate the madonna/whore dichotomy, to an environment that’s hostile toward any talk of past sexual experience. I just want to live in a world where I can talk openly about my sexual experiences, to whatever degree I choose, and have it not be the launching pad for a debate about privacy and patriarchy.

*Ed. note: I believe “past sexual history” constitutes a redundancy. I’m just saying. It’s hard to keep silent when I see a redundancy in my immediate vicinity!

I really want to start a sex/relationship advice column and just answer every question with, “Why don’t you talk about it?” Or give some elaborate, multi-paragraph answer, and then at the end say, “Or, you could just fucking talk about it.” And so on. Variations on a theme.

Yesterday before trivia, Rusty and I went to Borders. We sat in the cafe, sipping caffeinated beverages and eating sugary treats. And I read Cosmopolitan. It was chock full of material.

I learned about 8 hot new places to have sex. I learned about 4 things I do that TURN HIM OFF. I learned how to have multiple orgasms (really, from a magazine!). I learned about his “M-zone.” I learned [some arbitrary number] things to do to celebrate my single life before “settling down” and having to “deal with someone else’s taste.” For example, I should embrace “feminine decor” - but not go so far as to paint my room pink, because that will repulse any guy I bring home.

The advice column was a real hoot. One of the only redeeming qualities of the magazine was that they put a little “Get Real” icon beside this question, which I will now describe to you. To paraphrase… Girl’s boyfriend gets massages sometimes. One day, he confesses to her that sometimes he lets the masseuse “finish him off.” Girl is appalled and feels this is tantamount to cheating. Guy insists it’s no big deal, it’s just an “enhanced massage,” and lots of guys do it. Girl wonders whether she is overreacting.

And then the answer was like 4 paragraphs long! Does that much really need to be said? My response would’ve started with, “Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously. What the fuck.”

The other questions were a bunch of “What does he mean by this,” “What should I do about that,” “What will he think of this,” etc. ad nauseum. The shorter version of the answers to all of them ended up being, “You should talk about it.”

So in conclusion, I guess my advice column would have two recurring themes… “Just fucking talk about it,” and “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Submit your Ask Amber questions now!