I’m sipping on an iced chai latte and trying to take notes on Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks (aka going on Twitter). Summer is finally hitting her stride when BAM a custie (customer) orders two HOT pumpkin spiced chai lattes…
Like, it’s seventy degrees out.
I know people get excited for pumpkin patches and whatever but let’s not bring up the f word (f*ll) until AFTER September 21st.
This could just be me procrastinating but I have not enjoyed summer to the extent that I should have. I remember those rainy April days where I promised myself I would be stoned on the beach every day. Now it’s August and I’m wearing a sweatshirt in an overly air-conditioned café and buying textbooks.
Life is what happens while you’re making plans!
Drake, Rose, and I recently had a heart to heart about self-worth and (barf) emotional availability. Apparently my romantic preferences are atrocious and I use crushes to “torture myself.”
Sounds fake…
Of course those of us that are on a certain side of TikTok or paid attention in our Psych 101 classes are familiar with the concept of attachment styles.
Like I get that fear of intimacy is a thing and I obvi exhibit behaviors that fall into the avoidance category, but at this point I can’t tell what is me performing post-ironic shit post styles of a love life for laughs and what is an autonomous choice I’m making based on what I actually want (and god knows what I want is shaped by a shit storm of what’s expected of me). There’s also the issues of desirability, self-esteem, finances, gender performance, social capital, and obligation (among other things :/ ).
Right now I’m struggling the most with the classic girlie pop feminist Q of are my desires only centered around being desired–specifically by men?
I think what we have here is a textbook example of compulsory heterosexuality minus the committment to engage IRL in heterosexuality. I want the attention and the desire but there is a huge wall for me whenever physical proximity is involved (Daddy Gorbachev, tear down that wall!).
I just finished the audiobook for Want Me: A Sex Writer’s Journey into the Heart of Desire by Tracy Clark-Flory. My surface level review of the book is that I liked it (the crowd roars because I was able to encapsulate such nuanced emotion in such a succinct yet chic way). I appreciate the questions she asks and her research/examination of feminist theory is dope even though my jaw hit the floor that she was so against Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs.
She is the first writer I’ve encountered (note the subjectivity to that claim) to provide a nuanced examination of the “pro-porn” camp that were battling Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon in the 80’s and 90’s.
Tracy-Clark is so right when she says that women’s and gender studies departments typically don’t make space for pro-pornography viewpoints in their curriculuums. I feel like all I read in college that addressed the topic was Pornland by Gail Dines, essays by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and text messages between my classmates and I about the ways porn has affected our own sex lives.
As I venture into this subject outside of the classroom structure I’m struggling with the gender reductionism and anti-sex work rhetoric that’s used in these infamous anti-porn arguments. And god knows I flip flop heavy on my thoughts about pornography.
I def recognize that pornography has the power to shape cultural desires and write sexual scripts and that this power , and so much of the porn that gets the most views is by definition violent. These details were reason enough to keep me uninterested (JUST SAY NO!).
Until very recently I didn’t watch porn (unless you count HBO shows). I began to dabble in 2020 when I listened to so many podcasts and it seemed like every single one was sponsored by Dipsea (the audio erotica app with Canva drawings as cover photos for each scenario/audio journey).
I found audio pornography to be divine because there were no performance of youth (it absolutely yucks me out how much mainstream pornography relies on age play and incest) and there weren’t any visuals so I was able to close my eyes and put myself into the scenario.
I promise this isn’t an ad for Dipsea because I stopped using it once the 7 day trial period ended. Sex work is real work that deserves to be fairly compensated but I was not willing to funnel $10 or so a month into an audio app (I have yet to find a good audio erotica podcast on Spotify so please link me if you know of any).
Porn is a topic I want to play with in stand-up. I have so many different joke ideas and questions I want to ask but I don’t know how to present them in a way that aligns with my politics. The classic dilemma of trying to be funny in a PC world (if you have more than one brain cell it’s extremely doable so clearly I'm struggling).
If you have the time, energy, or interest to workshop some jokes with me pleaseeee hit my line. Right now my notes app is embarrassingly full of cringey half-thoughts (thots???).
God, I know this blog post is on a one way train to nowhere but my mind is firing in a million different directions right now and I forgot to pack a lunchie.
I want to talk about the pleasure gap (cis-het men orgasm 91% of the time they have sex with cis-het women while cis-het women only orgasm 64% of the time they have sex with cis-het men) too!!! I’m not trying to say that the only reason people have sex is to orgasm but there’s something going on where cis-het women’s pleasure is not being centered or even remotely acknowledged during sexual encounters. I remember learning this in my Sociology 101 class and not understanding why that was a big deal.
Junior year my feminist philosophy professor asked the class what we think it means to have sex “multiple times a night.” This is anecdotal evidence so fuck me but most of the class answered that they consider a sexual encounter's end to be when the penis ejaculates. Once the refractory period is over and the dude is bricked up and ready to go again the same night the class agreed that that is considered having sex “a second time.”
It’s just…so gnarly. Like come on!!!!
I think we would all have way better sex lives if we weren’t expected to make profits for the people that own the means of production. Like we should only work jobs that keep society running (farmers, doctors, and bloggers/comediennes).
Well, I should probably sign off because I’m not gonna fall in love while writing about porn at a coffee shop (unless…).
X
Critchie
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