Comments on: Why So Snippy

By: hexy

hexy — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:14:12 +0000

I don’t think she did dismiss his experience when she talked about ignoring anything “he has to say about BDSM.” I think she dismissed his pronouncements on the nature of BDSM, and his insistence that his experience is comprehensive.

Exactly correct, piny. My apologies for not getting back here to clarify my statement earlier.

I most certainly do not dismiss Dim’s experiences. I dismiss his insistance that his experiences are a direct reflection of what every woman involved in BDSM everywhere is experiencing even in the face of multiple women attempting to correct him. It is the generalisation I object to, not the experience.

By: Myca

Myca — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 20:41:57 +0000

*nod*

Oh, I get that concern, and I think that communication is the most important thing. I have the ‘what would want to you do in the event of an unplanned pregnancy’ talk with all of my partners before any sexual contact, and if their answers don’t match mine, sex ain’t happening.

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 20:04:05 +0000

There’s lots of kinds of sex that aren’t at all about procreation (and you shouldn’t have to want a baby every time even for the one kind that does have that risk), but having it all come out in the wash when the pregnancy happens is problematic. Especially if what comes out in the wash is about how you actually saw each other. What happens sometimes is that people take for granted that particularly ambiguous signs mean, “yes, we are serious,” or “of course we both know this is a fling,” or whatever.

By: Myca

Myca — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:16:27 +0000

See, I would actually disagree with that standard, just in that I think the concept of sex = procreation is an intensely patriarchial one. There are lots of people I like quite a bit who I would never want to have kids with, but with whom I’ve had long-term positive sexual relationships

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:32:09 +0000

Incidentally, part of my own theory about what's a "too casual" sexual relationship is that one way of being "too casual" is to have sex with someone you absolutely wouldn't want to ever have a child with, not because you're not ready or were clear you didn't want children at all, but because of who they are, and have that fact only come out in the wash once an accidental pregnancy occurs. That's only one case, and I don't know that it's about patriarchy per se, but it is an instance where there's a clear and concrete sign of what's wrong with a particularl sort of "casual sex."

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:28:19 +0000

OK, I do buy that if you’re going to criticize sex that is too casual or promiscuous, you should either state what you mean by too casual (unmarried? non-monogamous? don’t know your partner’s name?), or else, if you’re not willing to set such a clear boundary, at least say what questions people should be asking themselves to see whether the sex they’re having is sufficiently unpatriarchal. I’ve seen too much “be seductive, but not too slutty” type advice aimed at women to be fond of totally unndefined standards.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:48:04 +0000

Piny, in a funny way your reading is less charitable to Jensen than mine, though I concede that yours makes a lot of sense. I read it the way I did because of the “write a manual” line, and the juxtaposition with the term “practices” in the sentence before. That’s sort of a clear allusion, and I assumed that it was intentional — but more importantly, because “it’s not my job to write a manual” has a lot more to recommend it if one really believes that that devolves into a discussion of what happens between the sex partners than if it is a discussion of how they know each other. I already said he failed to support his conclusion about anonymous sex, and that he sort of did a slight-of-hand to implicate a broader array of practices. If one reads him the way you suggest, Piny, then as you say he’s simply saying that sex that fails his test is inherently patriarchal but it’s not his job to tell anyone what the test is, let alone explain why his test if the right one. Now, that’s where his identification becomes important. It’s one thing for a man who straightorwardly identifies as a gay man to say, “some of us engage in sex that I don’t approve of …” He still needs to define his terms and show his work, but it’s an internal critique. For a guy whose identification is “kinda sorta it’s complicated,” it loses the aspect of internal critique because he is more or less placing himself outside the community he’s criticizing. So … what does that make him? The world’s most public homophobic closet case? Gay – but not like those damned queers over there?

Lynn, I’m not saying what you seem to think I am. There is a difference between what I just don’t like — saying that anonymous sex is inherently partriarchal — and what I call disingenuous — stating that conclusion while pointedly refusing to define the scope of it or show how one reasons to it. The stupid part was making certain arguments that Piny says he isn’t making, and Piny might be right. The disingenuous part is not arguing that casual sex and promiscuous sex are like anonymous sex, but attacking the latter and then playing bait-and-switch with the terms to try to throw mud at the former two without explicitly analyzing or even defining them. If he’s got a theory as to the right-and-wrong in the choice of sex partners, he ought to have the backbone to go ahead and make his case. Instead, as Piny says, he just makes an assertion that X is wrong, but refuses to say why X is wrong or even to define the limits of X (hinting that at least everything from T to X is wrong, and maybe everything after D). That’s why I say he’s not just a moralist, but a disingenuous moralist.

By: piny

piny — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 18:58:57 +0000

“Sex practices” doesn’t refer to positions, I don’t think. I think Jensen is responding to people who are asking him what he means by “anonymous” sex–and when committed becomes casual becomes anonymous.

It’s disingenuous to refuse to clarify any of those definitions, when you know that the lexical definitions are ambiguous, especially when it comes to gay men. (Even though he used a definition of “monogamous” that’s unusual.) He refused to clarify which relationships, which levels of romantic acquaintance, qualify as inimical to intimacy. Polyamory? Sex within one’s calling circle? Sex with someone you aren’t committed to? Sex with a dear friend? Sex at a play party? Sex with someone you respect but don’t want as other than a friend and sex partner? Hell, sex with the option of no-fault divorce? It’s impossible to figure out when he sees lust as endangering intimacy, or why, when he’s so inspecific about the circumstances he abhors.

And I think that’s kind of the point–he’s relying on everyone’s slutphobia to kick in, and hopes that they’ll assume that his definition of bad sex matches up with theirs. It’s not an unreasonable hope, either.

By: Lynn Gazis-Sax

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 14:21:56 +0000

I don’t get it, Thomas. Not the part about your disagreeing with him, but the part about his needing to be unusually stupid or disingenuous to say what he said. Is it unusually stupid or disingenuous to disapprove of casual sex? Or to disapprove of casual sex, but see yourself as talking about relationships rather than specific sex acts? Or to treat casual, promiscuous, and anonymous sex as being close to the same thing?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:55:46 +0000

And where at the end I wrote “Disqualified to,” I of course meant “Disqualified for.”