Wednesday, February 27

Kink in The NYT

Oh man! Guys guys guys guys guys!


The New York Fucking Times!

And it doesn't totally suck! Yes, they sound like people talking about some strange breed of believed-extinct animal at certain points, and they mention That Book far too often, but still!

Plus, they've got comments in from Lee Harrington, which is just... icing on the cake.

The drippy, sweaty, perverted little cake.

(That's the second cake metaphor today... Maybe I need to bake more).

Anyway. Check it out, have opinions, but mostly, I think, just it's existence is pretty huge. We're not in Kansas anymore, kiddos. And fuck, what a big wide delicious world it is.


The Bigger Sexism: A Post About the Oscars


By now, everyone who gets near the internet has read something about the rampant sexism at this year’s Oscars. Jokes about rape, domestic violence, and topping the great dripping patriarchy cake, like some sort of grotesque bridal figurine: a song, “We Saw Your Boobs,” reducing some of the greatest film performances in recent memory to an infantile, sexist joke. So I’m not sure I really need to write about Seth MacFarlane’s sexism, as it seems to have been (rightfully) pointed out enough.

(a refreshing dew of silver lining in all this? It wasn’t just feminist-aware publications, like Jezebel, writing about this. It was the New Yorker, it was the New York Times, it was Slate).

Talking to Jamie the other evening, he mentioned a discussion on the internet (the place that, by it’s highly intellectual and well-cited nature, nurtures to some the most fruitful discussions of our age) about sexism and this year's Oscars. It wasn’t directly about MacFarlane, but was rather speculated on whether the actresses’ reactions shots were prerecorded, and if they were, what that meant for the whole debacle.

At first, I was pretty shocked to consider this. On a second examination, I wondered why I would be at all - in this current technological age, words like “live” and “real” are descriptors not to be trusted. Heading back for a third go-round, it was simple and easy to see that, at the bottom line, it didn’t really change anything. Did the actresses know this was going to happen? Did they prerecord reactions? Did they, in doing this, somewhat condone MacFarlane’s sexism?

Maybe. Probably yes. But it doesn’t so much matter.

Because whether or not the actresses were in on it, there’s a bigger narrative at work. Do I think Seth MacFarlane is an idiot? Yeah, sure. Do I think what he did was shitty and sexist? Duh. But that’s not really the problem. Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Halle Berry: these are not the problem.

There was a team of producers behind this. I know nothing about how the Academy Awards are structured or developed, but there had to be. There was a creative team, fellow artists, co-writers and friends and whoever else that knew this was happening, and in not saying anything, condoned it happening. There was the entire Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus singing backup, and the entire Academy Awards establishment who, with the gift of their stage, literally gave MacFarlane his platform to stand on.

Part number two? Part number two is the rest of us. The audience, both at the academy awards and at home, the people who laughed at this, who tweeted about the “awesome list of movies to see, thanks Seth,” who, in response to articles like those in the New Yorker and Slate, muttered defenses like “well, it was just a joke,” or “chill out, it’s not that big of a deal.” Anybody who doesn’t see this happen and say “Wow. That’s incredibly fucked.” That’s part two of the problem.

Harking back to an earlier post, I’m not trying to place blame about this, but merely to say: this is indicative of something bigger. MacFarlane, the actresses, the people backing him, you, me: yeah, we may have screwed up, but that’s less important than the fact that we live in a world in which such a thing like this can happen. You want proof of patriarchy? You want proof of ingrained sexism? There it is.

Because whether or not the actresses were in on it, and who was the blame for what, the story that everyone saw was the same, the message disturbingly clear.

You make art? Doesn’t matter: you’re a sex object. Committed to your craft? Worked decades to get to where you are? Doesn’t matter: we value you for your body, and even then, only so far as it pleases us. Have you won, for films dealing issues of sexual violence and misogyny, the most prestigious awards possible? Don’t care. For that, we will humiliate you, publicly, at the very awards ceremony from which you received said accolades. Go home and look at them, sitting on your shelf, these golden and glinting statuesque men, and know what we really think of you.

Whether or not those actresses were really going through those experiences is, in one light, irrelevant (on a purely human-empathy level, it sucks if they were, and is... really sort of skeezy if they were somehow planned, but again, that’s less important). What we saw at home, and what the country watched, was a narrative. It was a cause and affect. Want to be an incredibly successful woman in this industry? This is what you get. Ridicule. Humiliation. Reduced to your body, and there’s nothing, no amount of money or fame or recognition that will change it.

There’s a great article from cracked about why the stories we tell in movies are important, why they shape who we are. Expanding from this, the stories we tell on live television, the supposedly “real life” stories, can't be any less important. And this - this is the story we tell. It doesn't matter if it was meant as double-ironic, or to make some convoluted less-shitty point (as the Slate article, admittedly, alludes to a little). Sexism and misogyny is the story every little kid watching the Oscars understood. This is how we are teaching them to see women, even the most successful women.

A fried of mine posted this on facebook, about a day ago:



And I’m with him. But I’d amend it, for my own post-it, a little, to say this:

I need feminism because we live in a world where someone can make it to an international stage, and sing songs about seeing women’s breasts in brutal rape scenes, and anyone at all laughs for even a second. I need feminism, because this should only ever happen in nightmares.

Wednesday, February 20

The Fault

note to self: make this button
Last night, we are at the bar. "We" is four people: one my dearest, closest friends (we'll call her Claire), and two of her dearest and closest dude friends, from college. Dudefriend #1 is leaving tomorrow, on a plane back to New York; this is his going away drinks celebration. I like Dudefriend #1 a lot (and we actually had a great conversation about theater later in the evening, but that would be another blog entirely). Dudefriend #2 and I don't particularly get along. We never have. There are things big and small about him that irk me, and probably things big and small that irk him about me. We know this about each other, have acknowledged (via Claire, mostly) that we do not like each other. Up until last night, we had played nice. Or rather, nice enough to let everyone sort of... gloss over this mutual dislike.

In short, this is no longer the case.

Throughout the night, there were little things that caught me the wrong way, from him, and looking back, these may have compounded. I'm not sure what was different; usually there are lots of little things like this, when we spend time together. Five minutes into the night, he made a joke about herpes, and I called him out on it, generally at first, and then with specific, personal reference. Went something like:

Me: "Hey, can we leave herpes out of it?"
Dudefriend #2: "I mean, I didn't mean it like that, you know, I just - it's herpes, right? I mean..."
Me: "Yeah, but I don't like herpes jokes, and I'd appreciate if you didn't make them around me."
Dudefriend #2: "Okay, but I didn't mean anything by it."
Me: "Right... so, just to say it: I have herpes, and that's part of why I don't like them. Thanks."
Dudefriend #2: - crickets -

I think I resorted to personal facts, even though I often try not to do this, because the reason not to make herpes jokes has nothing to do with the fact that I have herpes, and everything to do with the cultural stigma surrounding the virus. But... sometimes I don't have the energy to fight that fight. Or, as we'll see coming up, I hadn't found it yet.

We got to talking about sex, and what defines sex, virginity, etc. I started, as I usually do, to ask about why it is we need to define sex at all, what purpose it serves, under what contexts these questions come up, and what it says about us culturally that they do. As a side note, I never do this because I'm looking for a fight, but rather, because these are the things that interest me, this is where my brain revs it's engines the brightest (although I'm learning, slowly, that doing this often leads to confrontation and debate. I'm trying to take that into consideration more).

And then we got on to a conversations about playwrights, and what happens when modern theater takes a play and does something with it that, perhaps, the playwright didn't intend (the example used: casting a black actor as the male lead in Streetcar Named Desire). And when Dudefriend #2 got into an empassioned speech about what playwrights he loved, and why they should be honored, I sort of lost it. It went something like this:

Dudefriend #2: "... Tennesee Williams and Thorton Wilder, I mean, these are the great playwrights of our age, these are playwrights I've looked up and read my whole life, and their work ---"
Me: And isn't that nice? That you were raised in a world where you had role models who were writing about things you could relate to, who looked like you and tackled subject matter that was relevant to you? Wouldn't it be great if everybody had that?
Dudefriend #2: I mean, yeah, but I can't do anything about it, and it's not my fault that the world is the way it is, and I mean..."

And I just... broke. I think I rolled my eyes, or scoffed, or something, because he looked at me, and said "what?" and... the dam gave way. I shook my head, looked at the table, let out a breath, and unloaded.

"You drive me fucking crazy, sitting there, so defensive, just a little, scared boy, terrified of examining your own world view, and every single fucking thing out of your mouth is so tiny, and priveledged, and..."

His response, I think, was something like "Well, I appreciate the honesty." Which, to his credit, didn't escalate things.

I sort of trailed off. I realized that I was sitting at Dudefriend #1's going away party, that these three were better friends than I was, that I had been (graciously) invited into their social circle for the evening. I felt bad, and it was rude, and I said as much, sort of muttering. I maybe should have left, just there. But Claire, in fine form, handled it with an overly-acknowledging-of-the-awkward "So....." and we carried on.


After a few more drinks, and much talk of American theater, we parted ways. In the parking lot, I turned to hug Dudefriend #2, and told him I was sorry. He said "it's okay, but if I could just... say one thing." And he stood there, and gave me, as it were, a piece of his mind:

"I'm happy to be at fault for things, when things are my fault. I'm happy to apologize for something, if you feel disrespected. But I expect my viewpoints to be respected also, I want mutual respect among my friends. I don't like to be disrespected, and I don't like to be blamed for things that aren't my fault."

it wasn't so bad as this, but it was close.

And I don't know how to explain why this was infuriating. Why he is infuriating to me. Why I got into my car and blasted bad pop and punched my steering wheel all the way home, and cried a little, and went through wave after wave of emotional upset that spanned from enraged, to ashamed, to sad, to simply, curled up in my couch, defeated. I've written and re-written this post to try and map it out, to try and get to the details of why this is so difficult. I think it has a lot to do with some of the tactics in Derailing for Dummies, but it's also more than that. It's something, I think, about the interaction between personal experience, or personal action, and the recognition of bigger things. I've tried to script a meta-narrative about what goes on, which might be helpful, and might not, but I'm muddling through it, so here goes:


Me/Anyone: Hey, there's something shitty about what you said/how you think/that thing you brought up. Here's why; not your fault, but it's indicative of these things about our world.
Dudefriend #2: I mean, didn't mean to offend, I was just saying a thing [what I hear: "you do not have the right to be offended, and I will not acknowledge that what I said was hurtful; also, the systems you're pointing out? They don't exist for me, because I don't think I'm really to blame! Sorry!].
Me/Anyone: Right, but what you said was hurtful/shitty/indicative of this bigger thing. I can explain why: here's the bigger narrative, and you're right, it's not your fault at all, but acknowledging that that narrative exists is.. true, and... I don't understand why you won't do that?
Dudefriend #2: Why are you attacking me? I don't adhere to these cultural beliefs; I'm my own person, I'm not an asshole, why are you blaming me? I don't do all these things you say the world does, so why is it relevant?
Me/Anyone: Except that... you do. Which isn't a point of blame. It's just recognizing that we're all complicit in the system, you, me, the Pope and the President, that even the questions we're raising are indicative of a system that's broken, a system that's shitty for a lot of people, which isn't anybody's fault, it just... is.
Dudefriend #2: Well, that's just how it is. There's not anything I can do about it, and I'm not perpetuating it. Why are you saying I'm perpetuating it? Why are you attacking me?

The facts, for me, are these: the broader cultural narrative that I'm pointing out? It colors my everyday experience. It colors it in a way that I cannot get away from, and more importantly, in a way that's detrimental to my life, that puts me on the short end of the stick, as it were. I understand that, for you, it's different. That it puts you with advantages, that it lends to your life just as it takes away from mine. But you cannot tell me it doesn't exist. And when I point out how this broad cultural narrative affects your life too, how it, in fact, makes your privilege, and why this is important to recognize? And you come back at me with a personal story about why it doesn't? That is undermining my experience. That is saying "well, I don't think that this exists."

What is usually comes out as, and why these conversations often come to a stalemate, is "why are you blaming me? Why is it my fault?"

And my answer to that is: it's not.

Let go of the fault. Thousands of years of patriarchy and oppression are not your fault. But you did get a better deal, and in this moment, this interaction, sitting here, me over my whiskey and you over your rum, if you refuse to acknowledge that? That's your fault. That's you perpetuating the very system you cannot see. That is a young, rich, white male saying "I do not acknowlege your experience," and that's patriarchal.

And I think that's what gets me most. I think that's what's most frustrating. Because if Dudefriend #2 always feels blamed, and always feels backed into a corner, he's never going to realize the bigger picture. I don't know how to give him a context where he can.

Maybe I'm to blame, somehow, for getting him to this place? I honestly want to know how I can do this better. How I can have these conversations better. I want to unpack how I think, and whether it's right, and how he thinks, and where we can meet each other somewhere along the continuum. I want to leanr and put into practice how righteousness and passion can be obstacles to changing people's minds, how there are times when maybe the way I approach a conversation can actually help a shift with someone's perspective. But sometimes, especially after some whiskey, I come to an end of things. I come to a hard concrete bollard that stops productive conversations, and leaves me panting and sweating in my feminist tracks.

Because it isn't your fault, Dudefriend #2, but there are things you can do to make it better. And one of those things? One of those things is simply letting go of fault. It's an infinitesimal leap between undermining experience and advocacy, really (and maybe that sounds condescending, but I'm standing on the bollard now, shouting). All it has to be is "yes, I see this." All it has to be is questioning what is normal, admitting that you don't exist in a void, that your personal experiences and your identity are influenced by bigger things. It's harder to see, because for you, most of those things are beneficial. Not all of them, but sum total, you come out on top.

I want to know how to help you see it. I really, really do.

Sunday, February 17

Fifty Shades: A conclusion

this should be in every bookstore
I never quite finished the Fifty Shades of Grey critique series, and with a surprise day off, I thought I'd get back to it.

I picked the book up off my shelf, started to flick the pages, saw that I had, in fact, read to the end of the book, that there were notes til the end of the book. I remembered what happened, in a vague, big-plot sort of sense, but none of the funny details that would let a breakdown be funny (or as funny as any of them ever were, anyway). And I realized that I just didn't want to read the last chapters again. The writing is bad, the message is worse, and... I don't really have time for this kind of crap. This kind of shitty portrayal of kink, this kind of perversion (and not in the fun way) of a sexuality I hold dear. My time? Not worth it.

But I've gotta close it out, so a few parting thoughts (click the "five-oh shades" tag at the bottom to see previous posts in the series):

What I remember about the end of the book is this: Anastasia, finally, leaves Christian Grey. Which is great, which is phenomenal, which is arguably the only sex-positive, consent-conscious, I'd-even-go-so-far-as-to-say-sort-of-feminist moment in the entire five-hundred-odd-page drivel. James, to her infinitesimal credit, even alludes some pretty great reasons why Anastasia would leave:

"He has needs that I cannot fulfill, I realize that now."

"This is really it. This is what it boils down to - incompatibility..."

"'I can't stay. I know what I want, and you can't give it to me, and I can't give you what you need.'"

These (isolated as they are here - but we'll get to that in a minute) are perfect reasons for leaving a relationship, healthy reasons, even. Recognizing when two (or three, or four - you go puppy piles!) people just aren't going to fulfill on another's needs is, so much so that they're going to be unhappy trying: that is perfectly valid. Painful, difficult, but really valid.

It's also a circumstance many kinksters are terribly familiar with. Kinky, or poly, or otherwise "other" sexually inclined folk run up against this very conundrum, explicitly, all the time: 'I want to be with this person, I want this person to be with me, I love them, even. But I'm kinky, they're not, or I'm kinky, and they're differently kinky than me. And nobody's needs are going to get met if we stay together, and it's going to slow-simmer into resentment and, eventually, dissatisfaction on both our parts. It's painful, it sucks, but we both have to recognize it.'

And if James were to leave it how the above, isolated phrases imply she leaves it, I'd have better things to say at the end of the book. But on the heels of my last post, the assumptions and context that go along with Ana leaving are especially disappointing. Some additional quotes from the last chapter:

"He's not normal."

[from above]: "incompatibility - and all those poor subs come to mind."

"I have had my eyes opened and glimpsed the extent of his depravity, and I now know he's not capable of love - of giving or receiving love."

And that last one pretty much sums it up. There are a lot of issues in this book that rub me wrong, some trivial, some not. The lack of negotiation, the anti-woman caricatures, the bad writing. The fact that, although I love that she leaves him in the end, I'll eat my feminist jacket patch if it's not just a set-up for them to eventually get back together, for Anastasia to be heartbroken for time enough that readers sufficiently salivate, making the reunion all that much more tragically satisfying.

But I'd be willing to forgive all that (maybe not the anti-feminist bits, but the rest, surely) if the underlying message of the book didn't tell me that how I love, how I have sex, how I express affection and gratitude and desire is inherently wrong: that it is, in it's very nature, impossible. The book is a denial of my sexuality, of the sexuality of thousands (hundreds of thousands? where to draw the line anyway, really, because the number of people who deem themselves "not really kinky" and use toys and power exchange and role play in their sex lives is growing every day?).

I've often been told that I shouldn't take offense so much. As if being offended is something I choose. Peel back the layers of what it means to be offended, for me, and it basically strips down to hurt. I am hurt. It is hurtful, especially because of how popular this book is, that someone would say these things about me, about my friends and my community, would not only write this perspective, but succeed with it, popularize it with others, make so much money from it.

Which isn't mean to come off as reason to be pitied, or as victimized. I don't think E.L. James has a right to that kind of influence over me, or any kinkster. But simply to say: that sucked, lady. That sucked, and that hurt people, and that was a step back for kinky people in a lot of ways.

So with this, I say goodbye to Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm not going to read the next books (I've got better literature, and better kink literature, to spend my time on).

Consolation prize? I'm probably having wicked better sex than you ever will, James. Put that in your crop and flick it.

Monday, February 11

Sex as Sacred Union

In a Venn diagram of people in theater, kinksters, and poly folk, there's considerable overlap. I'm not sure if it's as remarkable as the geeky vs. kinky graph, but it's close. Something about subcultures and niche social groups and other-than-mainstream beliefs, probably. Or that it's a self-perpetuating feedback loop of friends having interests spreading to friends, etc etc.

Regardless of why, I've got a fellow stage manager friend, who's also poly, and we bumped into each other the other night. As expected, it was late at night, in a mostly empty theater. She was doing paperwork after a rehearsal, I was helping a friend tape out a floor (for those of you not in theater, taping out a floor is when you mark out the set, in tape, in the rehearsal space, so the actors can practice on it. It's actually one of my favorite bits of stage management). We were all tired and a little fried, but again, as expected, got to talking. In this business, with it's strange hours and ridiculous time commitments and insular subject matter, we all take the social time where we can get it, which mostly means theater people are friends with other theater people

She got to talking about a lover of hers (her word, not mine; "lover," always ends up sounding too much like shag carpet and shiny shirts with gold chains, to me) who, after much discussion, she'd finally found a balance with. He wasn't interested much in her theater friends, or that community, and she wasn't much interested in his kinky proclivities. But they'd found a happy medium, a good level of investment and commitment for both of them, and she felt like they were, after a year, finally hitting a happy pace and frequency for each other. Especially considering how into the kink scene he'd gotten lately, she said, which just wasn't her thing.

"Yeah, whips and chains and pain, it's not for me. I'm about sex as sacred union, and if that's not you, then no thank you."

And I'm sure she didn't mean it as anything, because for her, kinky sex obviously can't be sacred, or deep, or... whatever it is that she needs sex to be. But it was interesting, hearing those words come out of her mouth, how much it stung. As usual, the sting got me thinking, and as usual, I have thoughts from that thinking.

Much of the world, it seems, especially with the recent media frenzy around That Book That Shall Not Be Named, has become aware of the kink in a way they weren't before. And sure, there are all kinds of ways this perspective (the perspective that's offered by the media, that's offered by The Book, that most of people, when I talk to them, have about kink) is pretty screwed up. But this friend of mine, a woman I know and like and who's sex positive and open and loving, she doesn't really fit into that category. She knows more, and doesn't, from what I can tell, have these biases. She's not a person I would peg (punny, punny) to assume much, if anything, about other people's sex lives. So it was surprising to me, and enlightening, to see this tiny piece of the perspective on kink that, regardless of where you get your representations of kink from, or sex positive or poly you are, might be much more prevalent than I realized.

Different than the idea that being kinky is deviant, or a sickness, or exists only in the sex industry, or is something that dirty, fringe people do in dark hotel rooms, there's this idea that kinky sex is funny, or silly, or, in some fashion, trivial. That it doesn't run as deep as sex without pain, without overt power exchange, without role playing or costumes or implements.

That kinky sex is, inherently, less than non-kinky sex.

This might not be a revelation to many people, but it was for me. I thought back on conversations I've had with friends and acquaintances, and started to wonder what kind of weight they gave the words I use, how the meaning behind those words and ideas shifted from the moment they came out of my mouth, to the moment they landed in the brains of those friends. Do they imagine it as a game? As goofy? As trivial or, worse still, as just a mechanism by which I get turned on, as a tool by which I get to the actual, meaningful part: the sex?

Taking kink too seriously has it's own issues, and I'm not trying to advocate that kink = meaning any more so than any "non-kinky" sex must be imbued with meaning. That's entirely up to the practitioners of that given sex, at that given instance of sex. One of my favorite blogs is Happy BDSM, and it serves as a delightful reminder that this is fun, that this is play, that joy comes in smiles and laughter as much with BDSM as without.

The other side of that coin, though, is this reaction I'm having to my friend's comment, the thing that I think so many people don't understand about kink, or don't maybe better said: the thing that they don't even think to consider. That yes, the joy comes with D/s, with role play and bondage, but that it comes because of it as well.

The moment of obeying a command, the seconds between hearing it out of Jamie's mouth and fulfilling the action, the frantic, visceral, immediate compliance: this is sacred to me. The warmth that spreads from my face to my shoulders to the very edges of my skin when I know I've done what's been asked, when I know he's happy with me, proud of me, when I know I've been good, really good, whatever I've overcome to get there: that is sacred to me. The sound of a cane through the air; the sharp shock of as it flicks across my ass, upturned in the air, although it's frightening, difficult, shameful for me to keep there, but he wants me to keep it there, so I do; the pain changing in the seconds after the strike, spreading, ebbing from sting to pressure to a sweet and steady burn; the residual warmth of the line as he winds up for another, and another, layered in succession until I'm screaming: this is sacred to me. Running the tips of my fingers up to my neck, feeling the wide band of black leather there, knowing that it is only a thing, but my, what meaning we have put in it, what incredible heights such a simple, ritual object can carry us to: this is sacred to me.

So yes, kink is sometimes silly: sex, in any of it's permutations, should be able to be silly. But frivolous? Or employed for some other, better purpose, by definition? Or lesser in some way than other kinds of sex? No way.

because isn't that the face of the radically ecstatic?

And I know that most people reading this are with me on it; I know I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise, really. But I think a lot of my passion about this comes from how incredible it's been for me to discover this; how basically excellent it's been to find. I'm invested and passionate about this part of myself. Wanting to scream from the rooftops: "Look! Yes! Look! This is how I am! I've found what I want and I get to have it! Isn't it amazing? Isn't it just fucking unbelievable?"

A few dictionary definitions of scared pretty much sum it up: "dedicated to some person, purpose, or object; regarded with reverence." In those moments, I revere him; there isn't a better word. I am dedicated; I am a dedication, dripping wet, prostrate, ass welted and panting through open lips. This is my church; this is one of the ways I find myself most joyous in the world.

So yes, Sir, yes Sir this is my sacred union. This is the way I butter my bread. And not as an appetizer, not simply to fill my stomach, but because this bread and this butter are my first choice.

Friday, February 8

"Sloots"

Belushi's "feminists say what?" face
My younger brother turned nineteen yesterday. I called him (at 11:58 - two minutes to spare!) and we had one of the most (if not the most) engaged and related conversations we've ever had.

Which is really saying something. Because, while he will always be family, and while we've had any kind of long-running animosity between us, my brother and I have never been close. We've been, compared to most other sibling pairs I know, extremely distant. We never talk on the phone, or if we do, it's short. We don't hang out when I'm home. We mostly eat dinner together, sometimes, with my parents. We live alongside each other, but we don't interact much.

I don't think it will surprise anyone to hear that I'm generally a pretty outgoing person. I often get "outspoken," or if I'm lucky, "well-spoken." Gregarious, snarky, a lover of words, a master debater: these are characteristics that live at the top of my dance card.

My brother is not like this. Not only does he not love debate or argument (which has been difficult, in terms of us figuring out how to connect with each other), but he has a hard time with it; he's got some auditory processing problems, and so a debate for him, with me, feels more like I'm bullying him than anything playful or fun. On top of this, he's just naturally quiet, and reserved, and introverted. I love him, always will, very much, but we've never been close, as siblings go.

So when I say we talked for an hour and half, and he told me about college, and his friends, and even different girls at college, and even parties, and even drinking, and asked me questions about drugs/usage/what the different M's in MDA and MDMA mean: this is a huge deal. We laughed and talked, and even exchanged pretty in-depth observations about why the Catholic Church sucks. It was incredible. I felt like a sister.

Which is why it was so hard, when we got to talking about women in college, and a woman that he'd been (in his words) "sorta messin' around with," and he sort of stopped, stumbled over his words, and said "well, I wish so many of them weren't such sloots." It sort of caught me off guard, really, to hear that word come out of his mouth. In a way, it was gentler that the traditional "sluts." I suppose. Although I'm not sure that it's really anything more than goofy pronunciation that separates the two.

It hurt to hear, but I didn't really know what to do. I was uncomfortable, flustered, standing in my kitchen. I was surprised, although when I think about it now, I guess I shouldn't have been. I assume a lot of things about my brother that simply aren't true; I assume he's like me in various ways, that we are the same in various ways, when he is, in many ways, somewhat of a stranger to me.

I asked him what he meant by the word, and he proceeded to describe these women as loud and annoying, as sleeping with lots of people. He spoke of a few of the women golfers (he's on the golf team: golf is, more so than school, what he's going to college for) as having been "passed around the team." I nodded (because you can totally hear nodding over a telephone). I understood what he was saying, and that the way that he was saying it wasn't meant to be mean, or hurtful, or misogynist. I understood that he was younger than me, and different than me, that he was sort of a frat boy, sort of a bro.

I tried to let it go. Difference of experience, difference of language, he just didn't mean it, I ran through these excuses in my head and tried to let it go. We talked about other things for a minute. About five percent of my brain was focused on what he was saying, and the rest of it was racing through ideas, questions, approaches, outrage, trying to find a way to tell him why it was upsetting to me, this ill-pronounced slur, without ruining what was turning out to be the most sisterly conversation I'd ever had with him. I didn't want to scare him, I didn't want to make him feel bad. I was trying to weigh my principals against this newly discovered siblinghood.

And so I said something. I told him, as free of confrontation as I could, that it sort of hurt to hear him use that word. I followed it up with asking him why, really why, he used that word. I asked him, again, trying to really ask, leaving the judgment out of my voice, if he thought there was anything wrong with women having a lot of sex, with different people, often, frequently, etc.

He doesn't. He told me as much in the conversation that followed, which (surprising enough) turned into a really interesting discussion about sex, and how people have sex at college, especially a big frat-esque pseudo state-school like his. It wasn't that these women were having sex with lots of different guys, but rather, he didn't like that people (not women, but people) had so much sex that they didn't seem to care about. Not that the sex was casual, or without emotional involvement, but that it was treated like something to be traded, to be kept secret (or, when drunk, to brag about). That there was animosity, a culture of throw-away people and throw-away nights surrounding sex at his school, as these frat parties, with these women he so-dubbed "sloots."

I'm paraphrasing into my own words, there, but basically I ended having a super-great sex positive conversation with my brother. I'm not sure he really understands the whole why-that-word-is-bad-and-has-a-really-shitty-history thing yet, but in terms of his attitudes about sex, they seem really excellent. I shared a tidbit with him from my OKCupid question-answering experience that he seemed to like, and sort of agree with. The answer to "do you enjoy meaningless sex," for me, is "no." And not because I need all sex to be in the context of a long term relationship, or I think sex equals love, or anything like that. But because sex isn't meaningless. It has value. It has weight - what weight you give it for yourself, what weight it has for your partner(s). Can I enjoy casual sex? Yes. But it's going to mean something.

In the quest for sexual liberation and free love, I think the pendulum can swing too far. Or that maybe there's not enough sex-positivity in the casual nature of Big State School sex culture (I mean, of course there's not: in this particular sense, I suppose). It seems like, in trying to distance ourselves from the sex-means-I-love-you narrative, we sometimes move into the once-we-have-sex-I'll-cease-to-acknowledge-you-exist-or-treat-you-like-a-human. Which is ridiculous.

I don't really expect anything of my brother, and I don't really want to reserve judgment on him. He's living in a generation and a culture where any kind of feminism or sex-positive attitudes are met with incredible scorn. But for this particular interaction, I was really happy that he could hear me, and I could hear him, and for all our differences, we sort of landed in the same place, albeit with distinctly different nomenclature, about sex.

So good job, bro. I'm going to bug you about the execution, but in general, you're coming from a good place. An honest human place. It's almost like we were raised by the same people, or something. Funny, that.