TMI

I’m about to overshare personal information:

I have a deep affection for the furniture of the Arts and Crafts movement, particularly Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Also, Harry Chapin. My father loved his music, and I can probably still sing every track on Greatest Stories Live.

But that’s not what we mean when we say “TMI,” is it?

I Don’t Talk About Topping Much

Partly, that’s because while in practice I switch, I identify more as a bottom. Partly, it’s because, even writing pseudonymously, my spouse prefers that I not talk about what I do with her as a top. What I do as a bottom is personal to me, and I can talk about it as I see fit; what she does as a bottom is personal to her, and she doesn’t want to see the details in the blogosphere.

People who top in various aspects of BDSM play do so for a variety of reasons, and I’m not going to attempt a typology of topping. Since our experiences are highly individualized, it’s tough to say much more than, “this is what I do, this is how I feel about it.” And my freedom to do that is limited, so I tend instead to talk about my experiences bottoming.

I did, however, run across someone saying a lot of things about topping that resonated with me, and that I will share for that reason.

Reductio

Lauren reviewed this survey and said:

Because mothers are more than their children or grocery shopping habits, I’d imagine they tend to check their email, conduct business, and make phone calls too. Was that on the survey?

The answer is that it isn’t. That’s what this culture does to women. It reduces them to component parts, pidgeon-holes them and refuses to recognize or respect the whole woman.

Boundaries

I said in the Shroedinger’s Rapist post that it was part of a larger idea and might be Part I of two. Here’s Part II.

It’s all about boundaries. The Shapely Prose post started with a discussion of women’s fear of rape, and moved from there to public spaces, interruption, intrusion and boundaries. My post focused on public transit as a particular case of public spaces, and staked out the position that bothering a woman whose activities and body language are not inviting interaction is a violation of her boundaries. I’m saddened to see pushback on that.

Shroedinger’s Rapist And The Imagined Right To Intrude

This may be Part I, because there’s more to this than I have time to flesh out right now.

[Added: Part II is Boundaries.]

First of all, this is full of win. Phaedra Starling guest-posted it over at Shapely Prose, and I just can’t say enough about it.

For the cis- het- men out there, I want to talk about what she says about approaching strange women:

Too Drunk To Fuck*

There’s a running joke between my spouse and me: “one is not enough, and three is too many.” It’s a joke about threesomes, but not about the number of people. It’s a joke about one that got away.

Before I get to the story, I’ll say this: I feel like I can’t tell other adults much about reasonable alcohol use. I have a skewed perception of what that is. Both my parents had alcohol problems, and in my early teens I decided I didn’t drink, and that remains true. For lots of reasons, I don’t think I can drink in moderation, and the consequences of being correct are too high to test the hypothesis. My wife can and does drink socially, knowing that she always has a designated driver, and is well acquainted with, for her, the difference between alcohol as social lubricant and drinking to suppress judgment. It’s a distinction other folks draw for themselves, and one I only see from a distance.

So. We were out of town with a group of my wife’s school friend from all over the country. This was a long time ago, before the demands of renovating a fixer-upper and raising a brood of small children.

Everyone’s Fault

The Polanski arrest has everyone talking, and Lauren has again revisited her personal story, which can’t be easy.

Lauren’s a friend, and I’ll say publicly what I’ve said privately before.

Rihanna’s Choice

Rihanna, choosing how we see her.

 
There is an image of Rihanna seared into the public mind — not the one above. That image is of a young woman swollen and bruised by Chris Brown’s fists, and she has become synonymous with domestic violence. We’ve discussed this.

We don’t know, really, what she lost that day.

The Snip

(About men, fertility and privileged experiences with medical care.)

“You’ll have to make the appointment for him,” she said. That was not going to happen.

My spouse heard this several times from several other married women. When they and their husbands were done having kids, they had concluded that the most sensible long-term contraception was vasectomy. That’s an easy conclusion to reach. It’s not really a big deal at all. Yet for some reason that they could not or would not articulate, these men all dragged their heels. They had to be pushed, prodded and handheld through a medical decision that they reasoned to but about which they felt a nameless unease.

That was not how we were going to handle things.

Reasons I Am Not Approving Your Post

Anyone who read my article in the Prospect yesterday can guess that this here very blog has attracted its share of sports misogyny apologists in the last few days. Which might make you wonder – how come I can’t see ‘em in the comments?

Well, here’s the thing. They have the rest of the interwebs to spout off, so I really don’t see why we have to give ‘em air here. Plus, WordPress (the free version, anyhow) has this weird thing where you can’t ban commenters. You can only approve or not approve them the FIRST time they post. Once you’ve approved one post, they’re free to run roughshod over your blog and there’s little you can do to stop them. Therefore I’m pretty cautious about approving even the posts that might be from jackholes, and might just be from dumb people who lack reading comprehension. I don’t want to find out the difference later when it’s too late.

That said, some people are downright IRATE that I haven’t approved their posts. Fortunately no one has accused me of iminging on their freedom of speech yet, but I thought I might clear some things up before it gets to that point.

So, without further ado, your (possible) trolls and my responses to them. Jump in in the comments section and add whatever I left out:

Isnt there two sides to every story? The fact that you used Ben rothlisberger, a story that all the facts are not known completely ruins your argument. There are girls out there who will use such accusations to get money from rich people. Im not saying that he did not rape her, I am saying that we do not know what happened. Doesn’t it make you wonder why the police are not bringing up charges? I’m sure police they would if there really was something that happened. Shit they dragged Michael Jackson into court for ever just because they thought he was molesting children. Sexism works both ways and you are promoting it.