#in the sense that we talk about sex from a biological level

[togglesbloggle]

Voltaire's Prayer

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it." -Volaire’s letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, 16 May 1767

I’m inordinately fond of sex, in the political sense.  It’s saved us so often from the worst parts of ourselves.

As far as anti-authoritarian elements of the human experience go, sex is right up there with curiosity and the search for truth- maybe even more so.  When a new tyrant comes to town, shutting down the universities and the libraries is only the second thing they try.  The first thing is to regulate human sexuality to within an inch of its life.  Rules for marriage, rules for courtship, rules for which genitals may touch and where they may touch and when they may touch.  Rules for who and rules for whom.  Rules for which kinds of sex must doom characters in literature, rules for which things may be described as sexy, rules for which things may be described in a sexy way.

Of course they do!  If you’re trying to bind a large polity together under a common ideological narrative, to render people predictable enough to quash dissent and legible enough to exert power through them, the last thing you need is a bunch of folks running around being horny about stuff without permission.  Nature gifted us with a great capacity for reason and community; we have the innate opportunity to learn about ourselves and our neighbors, and to form complex societies based on that understanding.  It was Aristotle who first called us the political animal, and the fruits of that extraordinary capacity will always be within our reach, if only we can come together within a shared understanding.  The invention of the city is the great triumph of our species, and with it we conquer the universe.

But also this extraordinary, reasoning mind has been sculpted from the raw clay of a biology that’s anchored in sexual reproduction, and this ends up being very, very funny.

The problem isn’t so much that the sex instinct exists, per se.  It’s how it’s implemented.  Like most biological forms, the full complement of 86 billion(!) neurons in your brain aren’t encoded in a particular configuration; the brain is much too complex to be described so precisely in the only ~725 megabytes or so of human DNA.  The particular shape of your brain is in there somewhere- the lobes and subregions responsible for vision, memory, cognition, all that- but only up to a point.  The genius and fundamental limitation of genetics is that, below a certain level, the genes instead describe a process for the production and reproduction of specialized cells, and simply constructs them in such a way that they can be relied upon to order themselves as they go.

This is all well and good when we’re talking about kidneys and livers, but the fact that you can encode any kind of specific behavioral instinct in a brain this way is nothing short of a minor miracle.  Think about it!  Spiders don’t have a ‘spider web’ gene, the gene is for ‘proteins that come together in self-assembling electrochemically sensitive gelatin tissue which, when complete, encodes patterns that operate organ systems such as legs and spinnerets in such a way as to reliably create silk webs.’  This is absurdly impressive, and also completely insane.

What I’m getting at is, powerful behavioral instincts in a complex animal aren’t precise instruction manuals by which we pursue evolutionarily advantageous behaviors.  Sex and eros are prior to logic or language, let alone strategy.  Sex is a double-thick electrical wire discharging lightning bolts right through the middle of our cognitive centers, installed in the brain by a surgeon wearing mittens.  It’s an untethered firehose whipping chaotically through the cathedral, unpredictably spraying golden reliquaries with substances unmentionable.  It’s the first and greatest anarchist.

I really can’t overstate my gratitude for this.

Obviously this results in any number of deeply goofy outcomes by way of kinks and odd sexual practices- it gets tangled with pain centers, with random bits of anatomy and proprioception, with our taboos and aversions, with our greatest terrors or our greatest yearnings or just arbitrary stimuli from adolescence, and of course it gets enmeshed so often with our notions of power and submission.  It imbues these things with a fascination and potency out of all proportion with their mundane meanings.  And ultimately, you end up with human pleasures and human values that diverge so far from banal evolutionary imperatives as to be all but unrecognizable.

Even when this process somehow manages to propagate through the brain in such a way as to drive behaviors that are legibly aligned towards some adaptive constraint- e.g. heterosexual mating practices resulting in biological reproduction and careful childrearing- it’s still madness.  Love and sex penetrate deeply across tribal and national and racial boundaries, across economic interests, across battle-lines and enmities.  We become traitors, apostates, emigrants, and artists.  Declare a law, and in short order some hot-headed young people come along to break it in the name of sexual passions you could not possibly have seen coming.  Divide your neighborhood into us and them, and by the time the ink is dry on your proclamation there will be a forbidden relationship across the fence.  There is no social order, no ethical system, no theory of human nature that can entirely withstand contact with the full spectrum of human sexuality, because sex and eros are always going to be exactly as bonkers as the complexity of the human mind and culture will allow, plus a little extra just to be sure.

This isn’t always a delight, of course.  Many prohibitions exist for a very good reason, and the chaos of human sexuality makes no exemptions for true evil.  Some of us end up really, truly victims of this process.  But for all the dangers, the chaos at the root of all this isn’t oriented towards evil.  Chaos just means chaos, essentially arbitrary and hence absurd in character.

And in the grand analysis, we are so lucky to have this thing moving through our communities, this ridiculous madness that guarantees that there will be cracks in every wall and slips exploding cigars in the pockets of the powerful few.  Not in everybody as individuals, of course, and not everybody the same amount; asexuality is certainly one of the outcomes that all this mad gallivanting through our brains can produce.  Sexuality would never be so predictable as to guarantee its own existence, after all.  That’s part of what makes the joke so funny.

But all of us, regardless of sexuality, get to live in a world where the grand anarchy of sex is constantly driving home this lesson that no category is inviolate and no law is perfect.  That we should not and cannot take ourselves too seriously, or forget that we’re animals.  That we don’t exist only for the sake of others, or within their understanding.  That cities are made of cooperation, grace, and forbearance- not conformity or mere compliance.

People sometimes worry about immortality.  In the political sense, I mean.  They worry about eternal dictatorships and unconquerable gerontocracies.  This fear isn’t entirely unjustified; death has often played a role in progress and liberation.  But as long as enough of us are still getting horny without permission, still falling in love in stupid ways, I think we’ll be okay.  Romeo and Juliet don’t have to die at the end to make a difference in the world, as long as they’re brave enough to get weird with it.

[buckybarnesss]

I don't know own if you've stated this before, but what is your theory on Eli's existence?

I love reading everyone's theories on how Derek came to parent this adorable mini-Stiles.

i've speculated a little before. mostly tongue-in-cheek (or was it hem).

like, we talk a lot about teen wolf's messy timeline but eli hale existence breaks it on a fundamental level. the teen wolf movie takes place in 2026 and eli is 15 years old. this makes him born in 2011.

season 1-3B all take place in 2011 and it's a very tight timeline.

i would like jeff davis to sit down and tell me when derek hale had not only the time but the desire to go have sex during s1-2. eli couldn't have been conceived any later than maybe april to still be born in 2011 and that's pushing it.

like, derek was very busy going through The Horrors in season 1 in which he was trying to find out who murdered his sister, dealing with scott and stiles, jackson's needy ass, being tormented by kate and feral peter.

season 2 picks up almost immediately after s1 as lydia's still in the hospital and takes place over a few weeks. during this time derek's trying to find out who the kanima is, dealing with the argents and attempting to build a pack (and starting to become aware the alpha pack is coming).

derek ain't got the fucking time.

and no jennifer cannot be the mother because jennifer fucking died and also jennifer and derek didn't meet until like early september.

and also no braeden cannot be the mother because derek and her didn't even meet until 3B which was in late october and they didn't fuck until season 4 which takes place in 2012. it's too late.

and no it's not kate. fucking gross.

but heather, you ask, maybe the conception happened prior to wolf moon?

it's possible but i have such a hard time seeing that version of derek engaging with anyone beyond a surface level that the only way it makes sense is if eli's an accidental baby and the mother couldn't get in contact with derek for a significant period of time.

we know by age 3 eli was with derek as scott had seen him. which coincidentally would've made it 2014 the same year the show actually ends.

(never mind that the final final scene of them all in the parking lot is supposedly 2 years after that making it 2016 putting eli around 5 but i guess no one saw him despite them all hanging out but whatever).

conclusion: jeff davis pulled eli hale out of his goddamn ass

and i can already hear oh but what if he was laura's or what if eli was adopted from another pack and those are good scenarios but in terms of canon itself jeff fully intended eli to be derek's biological son.

so my theories are this:

derek accidentally got someone pregnant shortly before wolf moon and she was unable to reach him but knew his name. at some point before eli is 3 derek comes into custody of eli.

it was the nemeton and eli just straight up exists out of some kind of magic.

tl:dr

#my blog #thoughts on teen wolf #teen wolf #eli hale #derek hale #sterek

[joannerowling]

I would say that no one outside of the US and other English-speaking countries says "I have a gender" as the word gender is technically wholly English word that does not have a direct translation to other languages(no matter how hard the social media/'new sites' try to make it a thing, by that I mean, for example: in my country we don't have a word for gender, we *do* have one grammatical term but while it's used for living things-including humans-it's only ever used as we're learning our grammar in school, no one really uses that term, except now news sites are trying to use it in both biological sense and as the translation for "transgender" and it drives me bonkers to be honest).

So really, the whole gender thing is such a English-speaking world thing; the rest of us when talking about roles imposed on us based on our sex simply say, as you already mentioned, "sex roles".

Side note, but most normies think that gender is a synonym for sex anyway, hence all those "there are only two genders" from the crowd that isn't gender critical just doesn't believe in 1000 genders.

That last paragraph is very important i think, most people use "gender" as just the polite way to not refer to sex directly; that's literally how the word got popularised in English first, as a way to not say "sex". (Protestants… they're just Like That.)

When you start saying stuff like, "gender and sex are not related", you lose 90% of people. Most of them aren't even all that interested in the topic, and you're already signaling that they'll have to deconstruct what they understand on a semiotic level to understand what you mean (not agree with you! just understand). That just doesn't strike me as an efficient way to communicate, let alone convince.

#replies #anon

[possumsinpeoplesuits]

So, every once in a while, I have to rant about something online before I just start blabbing to some poor unfortunate Wendy's employee about niche internet pornography. Sometimes in the middle of that rant I realize I might be onto something, and have to share it with others who might benefit.

Today, that subject is the Omegaverse, and the squandered potential for worldbuilding therein.

Now, this post is gonna have some very broad generalizations about the genre, because while I'm certain there's plenty of authors who do put a lot of thought into the pedantic details I'm about to have a Category 5 Autism Event about, it's been difficult to find them amongst a sea of painfully mediocre fics.

For every stellar Locked Tomb Omegaverse fic set in a modern day Taco Bell (Seriously, I want to engrave Double the Meat onto a satellite and launch it into space so that extraterrestrials can see the peak of human civilization) there's like... a million and one Alpha Male/Omega Female pairings written by Conservative Mormon housewives that dare to ask such questions as "What if a man and a woman could have a baby?" and "What the hell is consent?"

But I'm not here to be mentally ill about yet another space being drowned in heteronormativity. Nor am I gonna be a dick about the first fics written by teenagers who're just dipping into fan communities, because my terminally online since the age of 11 ass would be a huge hypocrite for that.

No, instead I'm here to talk about genitals, and deliver just enough sciencey technobabble to justify my passionate opinions about the potential of what is, ostensibly, werewolf porn.

So, for those who've somehow gotten through all these paragraphs but have zero idea what the Omegaverse is, the basic gist is that there are three sex categories that're separate and occur within the usual sexes that humans already have. Effectively, this means that male, female, and intersex individuals can also be Alphas, Betas, or Omegas.

So, to understand these categories, there's a pretty simple rule. Alphas can get Omegas pregnant, regardless of physical sex. Sometimes Alphas are bigger than normal, and Omegas are more petite, but that's not quite as much of a core "rule" to follow, and more just dependent on people's tastes. Betas usually follow standard human dimorphism, though I have seen some people headcanon them as a sort of halfway point between Alpha and Omega.

There's some more details, too, like the presence of knotting (where the base of the penis swells and prevents pulling out during orgasm), heat cycles and rut (where the mating instinct goes into fucking overdrive in the most literal sense), pheromones, bite marking, and sometimes that whole... imprinting thing from Twilight.

So, taking this all into account... Omegaverse fiction has the potential for a BARE MINIMUM of 6-9 SEXES before even taking the vast spectrum of gender identities and presentations into account.

Do you see what I'm on about now? When our society is still struggling with the concept of being nonbinary, and barely ever even acknowledges intersexuality as existing, any Omegaverse setting would be radically different on a biological, psychological, and sociological level.

Can ya see now why I get frustrated when it gets stripped down to compulsive heterosexuality with wolf dicks?

Now, with all the standard tropes laid out like this, we get back to the question that started this all, the question that should be a no brainer when it comes to smut... What them genitals look like? What does a female Alpha, or a male Omega have down there? I have three concepts in mind, and explanations on how they could work from a scientific perspective that's just barely not bullshit enough to overcome suspension of disbelief!

So, the first thought, and the one that initially appeals to me as a nonbinary person... they just look trans. This concept is really simple to work with, because we can just look at real life trans people and just tweak things a little bit. Maybe primary and secondary sexual characteristics operate independently naturally, or maybe there's HRT for it. It's a pretty common method, too, and I enjoy seeing it... but it feels like it needs something more?

Don't get me wrong, this one's basically my personal gold standard for shorter Omegaverse stories, especially fanfiction, but it's also just... swapping parts around. Great for ease of access, but hard to differentiate from the trans experience. Definitely a go-to if you want to play with transition in an alternate society, though.

For the other two, I have to explain a bit about fetal development and reproductive organ equivalents. Also a bit of genetics, too, because it's where we're gonna fuck around and build a lot of theoretical bullshit around a little bit of real knowledge.

So! Some of you may have heard that every fetus starts as female, but might not know some of the mechanisms at work when that changes, and how finicky they can be. This is also fun to throw at TERFs, because ambiguity throws a wrench in the simplistic arguments of reactionary bigots. :)

So, the usual arrangement of sex determining genes is often simplified to XX=female and XY=male. This leaves out other variations like Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) which affects 1 in 500 people under the AMAB umbrella, causing some degree of infertility, autism symptoms, and a somewhat androgynous body shape. (I've been checked for this one! It came up negative, but reading about it was enlightening.)

Now, the presence of a Y chromosome (usually) causes the proto-organs to change function, and develop into the male-aligned reproductive systems at roughly, say... 6-8 weeks? (Unless, of course, there a deficiency in the 5α-Reductase enzyme, which causes a delay in some of this process, resulting in a child that appears female, then just... grows a dick during puberty when the higher levels of testosterone overcome the deficiency and finish off the primary sexual trait development.)

Hey, wanna know the fun thing? Even that is an oversimplification. The whole Y chromosome doesn't mean shit unless the sex-determining region Y gene is in the right place. It can just... fuck off and attach to the X chromosome. If this mutation occurs in XY individuals, it causes Swyer's syndrome, resulting in a female aligned reproductive system that just doesn't include functioning ovaries, just purposeless ambiguous gonads. Pair that fucky X chromosome with another X chromosome, and you get a male with XX chromosomes.

Plus, if someone has a faulty androgen receptor? Well, partial androgen insensitivity can leave things ambiguous, but if it just doesn't work at all? Yeah, everything will develop along the female blueprint, despite the fact that the gonads are testes.

I swear this is still about the porn.

So, with the information we have about these real, existent conditions, we have a good idea of reproductive development, and the mechanisms at play. Now, there's still some theory that's not been definitively proven yet, but the current consensus on the primary sexual equivalents are as follows:

The clitoris forms into the penis, while the vaginal canal doesn't form.

The ovaries become testes, or stay as undefined gonads.

The salpinx become the vas deferens (these are the tubes that transfer eggs or seminal fluids, respectively. More on this later.)

And finally, and the most theoretical, the uterus is believed to become the prostate. (There's sometimes a little pocket, or divot in the prostate, and the arrangement makes sense, but it's still up for debate.)

But how do we use this for our fuck fics, you ask? How do we take your failed medical career, and translate it into Destiel's babies ever after? Well, it's quite simple! We just have to add the bullshit!

So, most alterations to the SRY gene or the androgen receptor tends to just wholesale alter the whole array, and the midway point usually results in infertility and difficulty with sexual function, but what if we could change this? What if, for the purpose of our fiction, we can mix and match everything, and somehow make it all functional and neat? Well, fasten your fuckin' seatbelts, because we're finally at the theories I made while delirious due to a combination of sleep deprivation and the after effects of eating an entire ice cream cake to myself over the weekend.

So, the firmest idea, and the idea I'll be using because I am WAY too deep into this to not write Omegaverse unironically, is what I've dubbed the Primary/vestigal system for f!A and m!O characters.

So, this theory would require that we shove two things into suspension of disbelief. One, we have to completely fuck with androgen and estrogen receptors to mix and match the development of primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Two, I have absolutely no idea how you'd be able to tell when this is going to occur. Maybe genetic testing, or maybe it's just a surprise? Depends on your style of story.

Effectively, we'd base this off the delayed primary sexual characteristic development mentioned above. Alpha Females would operate similar to the real thing, being born looking typically female, before puberty hits and the Alpha genes take over for the genital development, while secondary characteristics still follow a feminine shape. Maybe the gonads stay inside, but function as testes? Sure, sperm production is more effective around 1-2 degrees lower than normal body temperature, but it doesn't stop entirely.

For Omega Males, the process would occur in reverse. Maybe the testes just change course and go back into the abdomen to become ovaries, or maybe they don't descend at all and the first clue this is happening would just be finding a vaginal canal forming?

I like this one primarily because it feels like a less 1 to 1 allegory for being queer, but still feels kind of relatable? You can, of course, still have the end result resemble the first method mentioned waaaaay up past the sciencey bits, but I kind of like the idea of there being a vestigial remnant of the birth parts left behind. I like the ambiguity, and the chance to explore how this would affect someone appeals to me.

Now, my last theory is mostly for the lulz, but this must be DOCUMENTED for POSTERITY'S SAKE.

So, Omegaverse started with m/m shipping with mpreg, right? Well, a lot of the earlier fiction just... describes typical cis male anatomy, with zero explanation for exactly how this is all occurring. There's just... anal sex, and then that somehow forms babby.

Well, what if I told you that I've figured it out? See, remember how I mentioned that the prostate is theoretically what became of the fetal uterine tissue? Guess where the prostate is? Guess. GUESS.

THE ASS IS WHERE!

So, we just have to bullshit the prostate back into a functioning uterus, but leave the placement in close proximity to the anus. Now, the other problem is that that would mean that there's an opening leading to the colon, which... look, I have no idea how birds and lizards keep their cloaca from getting infected, but connecting other tracts to the asshole doesn't usually end well.

So, we have to find a way to seal it up when not in use. Now, the cervix serves this purpose in the real world, opening to let in fluids, or let out discharge or, y'know... a baby, but that's really expensive so most of us settle for having a breeding kink that we never act on, and instead impose on our favorite blorbos who don't have to pay for health insurance.

But still, even with a butt-cervix, bacteria's still likely to get in, so we need a firmer block. I've suggested a little flap like the epiglottis in the throat as a second line of defense. If it can protect your trachea from wayward chicken nuggets, then hey! It might not be terrible for keeping sepsis at bay!

Unfortunately, layering extra protection over the bussy business zone ain't gonna cut it. Hell, as self cleaning as the vagina is, infections happen all the damn time, even if your hygiene is good. So, we need to take that self cleaning nature, apply it to the bussy business zone, and crank it up to eleven. Just constant mucousal discharge, pushing all the bad back out.

So, yeah. Your favorite Omega Man'll have a rectal womb covered with a secondary internal assflap that's constantly discharging a steady stream of slime (just consider it free lube!), but if you can make it past that, you can live your dreams of gettin' that bussy mpregged by cumming in they gay ass. Then they'd just kinda... poop out the baby, presumably.

So there you have it! Three in-depth explorations of how Omegaverse genitals can work! I'm gonna go take my psych meds and fucking SLEEP.

#omegaverse #a/b/o #a/b/o dynamics #a/b/o verse #a/b/o au #mpreg #mpregnancy #worldbuilding #I'm so tired that sunlight hurts #We are all god's forgotten neopets #Mmm mirtazepine tastes like sleep.

[emperor-kumquat]

Please take this solid argument against this.

Even if you wanted to make a claim about biological sex, it makes no sense for asexual alien robots to be divided into two kinds... They have a crap ton of different shapes it’d make more sense for them to make race cars, tanks, jets, etc. biological sexes!

But talking about gender, what is that and how is it different? Gender is a way of presenting yourself and being perceived by other people. There aren’t just two ways. Sure, most people present themselves as male or female and like being perceived that way, but other people don’t fit in at all. It’s also just creepy to enforce on people: “I WILL address you and perceive you only by your genitals! Biological sex matters!”  That’s what you are doing when you claim there are only two genders. Ok, it’s gross. And dehumanizing. Stop that.

What about me (Emperor Kumquat)? New people are very confused about me meeting me. Ok sure, my DNA may say female and someone like the original poster may say: “That’s it, end discussion.” But, when you see me on the street, you might just see me as male without knowing my DNA. In that case, gender—presentation and perception—mattered. At this point, my blood hormone levels, voice, flat chest, and facial hair (shaved off) are typically masculine. I have long hair and can dress more feminine though, so the result? People don’t know what I am and can get upset with me whether I go to the women’s or men’s rooms.

If there were only two genders, then people would know how to perceive me and this confusion wouldn’t be possible. But, I can present myself in another way, so it is possible. People just aren’t used to it, people are being weird and trying to divide people by genitals. That’s just you (poster) freaking out that I’m not being what you want me to be. You might say my body was meant to be female and these changes only happened through medicine, but really I ask, why do the changes bother you? Why do you want to forbid me from changing? I’m not going to keep my body one way because it makes you comfortable. It’s my body, I’ll change it how I want. Freedom, right? Everyone will be confused, “What are you? How do we address you?” But that’s gender for you. They asked because they couldn’t perceive me as one of two options—I was a third one. 

Bringing Transformers into this just showed how sensitive you are to want to force even ALIENS OF ANOTHER CULTURE to fit your comfort zones too.

#transformers #trans #enby #nonbinary #gender #person also called me a groomer #one of those people

[delta-queerdrant]

Cut the crap, Hamlet! My biological clock is ticking, and I want babies NOW! (Elogium, s2e4)

I get the sense that "Elogium" is an episode that viewers find embarrassing. Maybe I am just projecting my adolescent feelings onto the internet consensus. It is certainly somewhat hamfisted, but it also belongs to a genre that we might call "reproductive health body horror" and, like... I'm kind of into it?

The premise of the episode is, of course, that space alien radiation causes Kes to enter estrus. (Unaccountably the Ocampan word for this is "elogium," which is a real Latin word for something else. Okay guys!)

Let's get the "bad science fiction watch" out of the way: Ocampan reproduction makes no sense from a population biology point of view. If an Ocampan couple can only reproduce once, they need to have a multiple pregnancy to maintain population levels, not the single child Neelix seems to be contemplating. (Also, having kiddos at age five means that grandparents would often not be around to participate in elogium rituals, as the Ocampan lifespan is 9.)

Additionally, it's hard to know what to make of the revelation that Kes hasn't reached "puberty" yet. The show seems to be decoupling intellectual/emotional maturity from reproductive capacity, but we are left with some very awkward questions about Kes's relationship with Neelix. Like, sex aside, what does romance mean for a young Ocampa? This show doesn't dare ask the question, such is its fragile allo/amatonormativity.

Still, I thought Jennifer Lien's performance was strong - emotional and a little weird while still respecting her character's personhood. In an important scene (one that frames her relationship with the Doctor as a parent/child one, thank god), she questions whether she wants a kid and makes a self-affirming decision that I loved to see, though I wish it had been dramatized more fully.

And, like, occasionally, having a uterus does make you feel like you're in a dirt-eating fever dream. I don't know if the alien physiology metaphor will work for everyone but I sorta dug it.

Neelix is, of course, trash in this episode, with the return of his jealousy subplot, his dreadful gender essentialism, and the extremely cliched portrayal of him as a reluctant father. His "should I be a dad" dilemma is fundamentally relatable, but instead of showing a real dialogue between a couple that's been avoiding the question, he and Kes start the episode with gender normative beliefs (she wants a baby, he wants adventure) and switch positions after some extremely light self-reflection. They're never on the same page, and they don't make the decision together.

On a happier note, this one's shippy! The episode starts with Janeway and Chakotay having one of their ridiculous whisper-conversations on the bridge. People are (shock!) hooking up and they need to decide what to do about it. This is very weird and silly because both Starfleet and the Maquis seem cool with fraternization, and they're 70,000 light years from home. Surely there is not even a conversation to be had, other than a need for some policies and mental health supports around breakups? But we do get Chakotay asking his extremely impertinent question about Janeway's personal dating plans, and the introduction of the Janeway chastity vow.

It makes sense for Janeway not to date crewmembers, especially in light of her commitment to Mark (this episode was originally slated for season one). But what about Chakotay? He is also everyone's boss?? I think that even in the 23rd century people should still not date their bosses, but this show does not seem to know this and it bums me out, particularly because of the gendered double-standard here.

(Mollie watch: Janeway is looking at a Mark/Mollie photo in the final scene. The show wants us to believe she's pining for her man, but honestly I think the baby talk is just making her miss her doggo. In my head canon Janeway is the type of person who responds to all child-rearing anecdotes with stories about her dog.)

Ensign Wildman, and her pregnancy, are also introduced, and we get another J & C scene where Janeway affirms the crew's right to have kids (hashtag reproductive justice) and contemplates the possibility of becoming a generation ship (whoa, slow down, lady! Like, of all the ethical questions about having kids while space marooned, assuming they'll continue your mission for you is quite a leap!)

Tuvok's line "It appears we have lost our sex appeal, Captain," sums this one up: despite all the innuendo, this is a very unsexy episode, and I think that's by design. Family planning is often unsexy! I just wish it had gotten a little closer to contemplating the real issues that emerge from our dual natures as people with bodies and people with agency over those bodies, and the push and pull of figuring out what that means for us, individually and in relationship.

3/5 bowls of mashed potatoes with butter (a Terran delicacy!)

#star trek #star trek voyager #kes #janeway x chakotay #neelix is the worst #mollie watch

[bigbroadvice]

I keep seeing this term ‘biological male’ being thrown around. There are lots of reasons why this is an innacurate and unhelpful description, but I’d like to examin just this term for a moment.

What exactly is a ‘biological male?’ The definition of biology is “the physiology, behavior, and other qualities of a particular organism or class of organisms.“ So let’s brake that down a bit. In refference to humans that means organ structures and chemicals that run those organs. So when talking about biological sexes, we’re probably referencing a certain set of average characteristics shared by people with XX chromosomes, XY chromosomes, or other sets of chromosomes which are part of natural human variation like XXY, XYY, XXX, XXXXY, X, XXXXXX, and XXXY (learned about those in biology class. It’s really cool how much more diversity there is to human biology than you generally think about. If we’re basing sex off of DNA, there are indeed WAY more than two sexes).

Now the way that any of those sets of DNA (which are known as genotypes) translate to how the body looks and works (phenotypes), is by making chemicals. Those chemicals are what build all the organs and keep them running the way they do. DNA isn’t the only thing deciding how much of each chemical there is though. Environmental factors like the food we eat, medicine we take, other organisms living inside us like bacteria and viruses, chemicals we absorb from the environment, and even stress massively impact body chemistry, often completely overriding DNA. So sometimes you might have the genotype for one thing and end up with a different phenotype. Like people who were born with tall genes but end up short as adults because during the time they were developing they didn’t have access to adequate nutrition. Their DNA might say one thing but in reality, they turned out as something else. The short person with tall genes is still short, regardless of what their DNA says.

Phenotype can also be directly changed by outside forces, like getting a limb blown off in an explosion, getting your ears pierced, or having surgery. These overide both DNA and body chemistry. A person with the DNA and chemicals to have two arms but had one arm chopped off is phenotypically a one armed person.

When reffering to different sexes, we’re usually talking about generalized groupings of phenotype, like gential organs, bone structure, musculature, hair growth, and fat distribution. These phenotypes are generally determined by chemicals called hormones. Just like any other chemicals, these too are impacted by environmental factors like what we eat and what medicines we take. So when someone takes a medicine that alters their hormone levels, that alters their phenotype. Just like how growing up with healthy foods and vitamins can help kids develop strong and healthy bodies, medicines like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy lead to bodies developing differently. These phenotypes can of course also be altered through surgery by deconstructing and reconstructing different parts of the body like genitalia and facial bone structure. By changing the chemicals and organ structures they have changed the biology.

So what is a ‘biological male?’ A biological male would presumably be someone with the general phenotypes of the group called males. If someone does not have those phenotypes, it wouldn’t make sense to call them a biological male. So according to the definition of biology, a trans woman whose physiology, behavior, and other qualities align with those exhibited by females is not a biological male. She is a biological female.

#I wrote this up in a response to a video my dad sent me from a right wing news station #wailing about the horrors of ‘biological males’ in women’s sports #it is by no means meant to be a complete analysis of that issue #or a thesis on why trans women are women #women and females are not the same thing #I am also not a biologist #I’m just a dude who took biology in school like everyone else #which is why I’m fairly confused about why so many people do not seem to have a grasp of basic biology #and keep on trying to use it to argue things it does not say #biological male #biological female #biological sex #biology #basic science #human biology #trans women #trans women in sports #trans women are real women #transexual #transexual women

[clandestinegardenias]

as someone who stumbled upon your panopticon kp meta and spent the last two days researching the surveillance theory while ripping my hair out, i need you to recommend me some books or even academic articles on social theory that you think are important or interesting. i’m still in undergrad and am finishing up my social psych class (which was very surface level, “i can google it and understand it” kind of stuff), anything that you think is interesting to look into, please tell me!!! doesn’t even have to be social theory, any books or journals that you liked, let me know because i will read the heck out of them 😵‍💫

Sorry this took me so long to answer, anon! I wanted to wait until I got back into my office and had access to my books.

Okay so first, this is THE BEST ASK I HAVE EVER RECEIVED. I am LOVING that you want to read social theory because of my kp meta, this is my crowning achievement, my glory in life.

Ahem. Okay. SO, a few selected recommendations for people wanting to dig a little deeper into social theory.

Note: Most of these are in the public domain and can be found for free by googling them with 'pdf'. Also available at libraries!

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

If you loved the panopticon meta, this is for you. Foucault can be REALLY dense, so this isn't exactly an easy read, but it's utterly FASCINATING. While the focus is on the evolution of modern-day prisons, the theories are broadly applicable to the structure of our society more generally and how we monitor and control bodies. also good for analyzing kink in kinnporsche

2. Capitalism and Modern Social Theory by Anthony Giddens

If you're really curious about the three big classical social theorists (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) but don't want to, say, read all of Capital, this is a great place to start. Giddens analyzes the main big ideas from each of these theorists and gives you some great context and background. You wanna engage with the Marxist debate around rich kid Mile funding his own gay mafia fantasy? Start here.

3. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

This book changed my LIFE. It connects the personal, internal sense of self with the way that self-understanding is formed through society and social interactions. If you're intrigued by how Kinn presents one 'self' around his family and an entirely different one around Porsche, this is your book. It's got dramaturgical analysis, it's got looking-glass self, it's got it ALL. Note: For a slightly more confusing but equally enthralling take on this topic, see Mind, Self and Society by George Herbert Mead.

4. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber

If Giddens gave you a taste of Weber and you can't get enough, go here. Again, life changing. Connects dominant Western religious attitudes with the rise of capitalism. More fun than it sounds. Iron cage of rationality, enchantment, and Weber was definitely into religious erotica so go here for all your VegasPete needs. also go to Discipline and Punish

5. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Read everything and anything by Butler, but start here. If you think gender is a scam and biological sex might be, too, this book will speak to your soul. If you want to talk about how Kinn performs the role of 'mafia boss' in a very gendered way, takes after his mom, uses soft power, etc. this book is your best friend. Also gets into sexuality, here's an amazing quote: "heterosexual melancholy is culturally instituted as the price of stable gender identities" WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, READ THIS.

#social theory #kinnporsche #asks #BY NO MEANS AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST #this could be so very much longer #i also focused on books rather than articles but I'm kind of a believer in going straight to the source? so. #god this is making me want to read social theory again UGH i'm in PAIN

[91vaults]

From a Butch lesbian perspective: GC's tend to talk a lot about the "poor lesbians" but as I discovered when really interrogating gender, there is a long history of gender fluidity within the lesbian community. There were always he/him lesbians, lesbians who's only connection to the concept of womanhood was...well lesbianism (of which I count myself) lesbians who performed and experienced gender in a way different to many "biological women". Lesbians who experience gender dysphoria with the "biologically female" parts of their bodies. (I have a body type that lends itself well to androgyny, but lord knows how I might feel if it were different) . Some of them might have been trans men and were they around today and made the choice to transition that would not be a loss to lesbians. We tend to exist in the frameworks available to us at the time.

To put us all in the category of "biological women" and "biological men" limits us and denies our experience. I feel a disconnect from "womanhood" as most define it but this is not some attempt to "escape the sexism that women experience" I am not immune to sexism and will never be. Instead I pick and choose the parts that do speak to my experience. "Woman Adjacent" fits me just fine. It doesn't need to make sense to others.

The relentless pressures of compulsory heterosexuality can make us cling hard to ideas and labels. We are inundated with so much messaging that its all about men, relationships with men, that we'll "grow out of it" or bi phobic myths that girls will mess around with you for fun then go back to heterosexuality. It is natural then to define your lesbian identity more so as the absence of attraction to men rather than the presence of an attraction to women. AMAB people who identify otherwise feel like a threat to the definitions and categories we use to stand our ground in a patriarchal society. I used to feel like that, and balked at the idea of "Nonbinary lesbians" or other labels ("Demi boy??? what is this nonsense") and of course unlike me many lesbians, butch or otherwise identify strongly as women and have fought so hard to be recognized as such. And lets be real, if that's the case and you start being asked what your pronouns are all the time that's probably going to grind your gears (where and when we get asked our pronouns can be a prickly topic all across the LGBT+ spectrum but I digress)

It's also hard to deny that fear, however irrational: " what happens to us when the "lesbians" are all non binary or transmen?" we feel like a minority within a minority, our numbers ever so small and now seemingly shrinking, they'll be none of us left, will I die alone?

what's wrong withing being a lesbian?

makes sense on an emotional level if you've struggled to regain the title for yourself.

It need not be like that though. Lesbians aren't going anywhere, there are many queer woman under the umbrella regardless of how they may identify. Letting go of strict definitions does not erase yours or anyone's identity, rather it makes you more empathetic and understanding. The shifting of the framework in which we identify ourselves is not a threat. It's an opportunity for acceptance and perhaps even exploration.

and ultimately at the end of the day you do not have to date anyone you don't want to for any reason. As long as your not a jerk about it. Sex and connection is complicated and contentious and perhaps does not exist in a vacuum: but personal preference is personal preference.

When GC/TERF ideology is taken to its logical conclusion it hurts us all much more than the "bogey man" trans person in their heads ever could. They talk endlessly about the protection of women: which women? women who are gender non conforming? women who are unable to or do not wish to reproduce? intersex women? women who are subjected to invasive questioning of their gender because they are athletes and present a certain way? (that's not even getting into the ways this disproportionately affects WOC) they claim to understand the reasons and inner lives of those they call women who do not identify as such. To talk over them and insist their "dysfunction" is due to a need to escape sexism, rather than just who they are. (I don't hate or run away from womanhood..I just orbit around it with nothing more to say about it then "...huh, ok")

They are incredibly abelist against autistic people as if they have no understanding of themselves, as if their particular experience with gender is invalid.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull calls for men with guns to guard women's restrooms. What do you suppose would happen if someone like me were to walk in? years ago in America a Masc women was accosted by a cop in a public restroom who demanded to see ID. A man in a female restroom harassing a woman....fancy that.

This is not about protecting women. This is about a hatred of a large portion of the LGBT+ community, its a repackaging of every homophobic trope they used in the past, before we collectively agreed the rights of gay people were not up for debate. It's about enforcing a strict veiw of gender based on biological essentialism, as nonsensical as it is harmful. As though they want to recreate Gilliead (given the alt right friends that's probably not far off the mark)

It might start that way for some, to express """concerns""" about women's issues, but it always seems to devolve into the same thing: obsessing over sexist and restrictive biological ideas about gender, misandry and obsessively nitpicking and mocking the physical appearance of those they hate (Feminism!!!!! :D )

Truly makes no sense.

#butch lesbian #lesbian #lgbt+ #lgbt #terf #terfs #fuck terfs #gender #gender critical #trans #trans rights #transgender #queer women #amab #afab #gc #radical feminism #Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull

[sometimesraven]

interpersonal harm =/= systemic oppression. trans men experience misdirected misogyny which is just repackaged transphobia. just because a white person who can pass for Black gets called names does not mean they are actual targets of anti-blackness. ignoring your privilege as terfs become more and more popular is falling right into their trap and harming trans women. read https://www.transmisogyny-explained.carrd.co and listen to trans women. you do not need to use the term transmisogyny to express the transphobia you experience. there are so many resources on the carrd on why there isn't a new word needed. and there IS a reason why there doesn't need to be a new word for white trans ppl-- white trans ppl aren’t oppressed for being white and trans men aren’t oppressed for being men-- they're oppressed for not identifying with their agab in the first place! the gender trans women are is an additional form of oppression against them in addition to being not their agab. please PLEASE listen to the tons of resources from transmascs AND transfems in the carrd about this. and you don’t get to decide when you've harmed someone and need to apologize. trans women know you've done something wrong. read the gd carrd and stop spouting that reverse oppression is real bc "when women say stuff abt men ppl listen and when men say stuff abt women ppl don’t" you sound like an mra! that's what mras say! that is literal. take away the word trans. you are an mra. you make trans women unsafe. just acknowledge your privilege for being tme! it's not difficult.

From the previous ask: transmisogyny is not transphobia against trans women. transmisogyny is the combination and intersection of transphobia and misogyny. that's why transmisogyny has a term and transandrophobia isn't one. From this ask: you do not need to use the term transmisogyny to express the transphobia you experience.

IT'S EITHER FOR TRANS WOMEN ONLY OR IT ISN'T, YOU CAN'T JUST CHANGE YOUR MIND DEPENDING ON WHAT WORKS FOR YOU LMAO MAKE IT MAKE SENSE

stop spouting that reverse oppression is real bc "when women say stuff abt men ppl listen and when men say stuff abt women ppl don’t"

literally didn't say that, again. I just pointed out the fact that y'all are hypocrites and you made shit up because you can't actually counter my point. You're literally saying that we all experience the same oppression (therefore are on the same level of oppression) and then immediately turning around and saying we're oppressing trans women your argument liTERALLY MAKES NO SENSE.

You're talking about TERF shit when you're literally just repackaging TERF shit to include trans women it's such transparent projection.

Also, while we're here, I forgot to mention a thing in the last post. You (I assume this is the same anon) mentioned that what I'm saying is biological essentialism. This is the definition of biological essentialism:

so you're right! sex-based oppression is probably the TERF term for it and I apologise for calling it that. I'm actually talking about biological essentialism, which is a unique form of oppression that TERFs partake in which treats you differently based on your assigned sex.

Thank you for giving me the correct term. Biological essentialism has caused unique forms of oppression that harms everyone but is notably different. Next you'll be saying intersexism isn't real because a large number of intersex persons identify as men or women.

However, recognising that people believe in biological essentialism and will treat you differently based on sex is not the same as believing in it myself.

To use the bathroom debate as an example: it is biological essentialism to believe that those assigned male at birth will most likely sexually attack anyone assigned female at birth. This is based on the incorrect correlation of sex and gender, ignoring that the disproportionate amount of sexual violence towards 'women' is based on gender, not sex.

It is not biological essentialism to then say "TERFs are treating AMAB people as being automatically violent and predatory and AFAB people as automatically innocent and vulnerable". It is simply pointing out the biological essentialism.

I know it's hard to get your brain around that as you don't seem too capable of critical thought, but I hope it helps scratch that one brain cell you have rattling around in there :)

#transmisogyny #transandrophobia #transphobia

[lavenderfeminist]

Hello. I have a question and I don’t know if you’ve talked about this before because I’m fairly new to your blog. I also haven’t heard other people talk about it either, but until pretty recently I wouldn’t really use social media so it’s possible people have talked about it and I just don’t know. I’m also curious as to what you have to say. Anyway I don’t know why I’m giving such a long introduction lmao it’s a simple question.

So, you know how gender isn’t real (in an innate biological way) and I’ve recently become quite critical of what it means to be trans if gender is not this innate thing. But something that I can’t wrap my head around is how when people transition, they discover that their sexuality is different. Like there will be lesbians who were like 100% certain of their homosexuality and then they transition and find that they are attracted to men. Sometimes they’ll even quit being attracted to women entirely. And they’ll say stuff like “testosterone makes you gay”. Before, I wouldn’t think too much of it, I would think about that episode in The L Word where Max is transitioning and realizing he likes men when he was a butch lesbian before and he says something along the lines of “it’s not about wether you’re attracted to men or women specifically, it’s about same-sex attraction” sort of stating that since he’s a man now he likes men because he’s same-sex attracted. But now that I’m thinking about how the concept of having a gender identity doesn’t make sense, there’s just male and female, and being same-sex attracted is liking one or the other forever, I’m confused. Does this mean that people like Max were bisexual after all? Does this mean that how you identify with your gender has some sort of impact on your attractions? What does that mean for people who wish for the abolition of gender? How does that explain former lesbians who now aren’t even attracted to women? I doubt they were straight all along. I have never been attracted to men (nor have I ever had the desire to transition), but if I went on T, would I magically start liking men? This is so confusing!!!

Anyway I said it was a simple question and then followed with a whole bunch lmao but thanks for reading anyway✨. No pressure to answer by the way, just curious on what you think.

I wrote my entire response to this and then tumblr deleted it 😭 Here we go again.

The first thing I want to point out is that male homosexuality and female homosexuality are two separate entities. Yes, I relate to and connect with gay men on a social level over our shared experience of homosexuality, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re homosexual through the same biological mechanisms. For example, there’s no female counterpart to the fraternal birth order effect. A man’s statistical likelihood of being homosexual increases with his number of older brothers, but there’s currently no recognized phenomenon where a woman’s likelihood of being homosexual is linked in any way to her number of older siblings or their sex. That’s because the hormone they believe is responsible for the fraternal birth order effect influences the development of attraction to males; in a woman, that’s not going to make her a lesbian. I personally believe there are unrecognized phenomena related to the development of lesbianism specifically, which obviously would not have the same effect in males. Of course, there are also some mechanisms that affect both sexes, such as the genes that might be responsible for high instances of both female and male homosexuals in certain families. I don’t think I’m homosexual only as a matter of genes, and that’s not concerning to me. There are no other instances of homosexuality in my family that I know of, so it makes sense to me that I developed this way through mechanisms beyond the genetic material I received from my parents. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t born this way.

Why am I saying all this? Well, because I think Max from The L Word is full of shit. First of all, Max is a character: a representation of a human being, not a human being who actually exists in the world. What that means is that Max was created by living breathing human beings, who have their own beliefs and biases towards homosexuality that are inevitably reflected in her character (hint hint). Second of all, cross-sex hormones…don’t change your sex. A female on testosterone is still female. So even if we believe there are some mechanisms which result in same-sex attraction (rather than male attraction or female attraction), they’re not going to change their presentation in one person, because humans can’t change sex. Max is materially bisexual; she was seemingly attracted to just women for a long time, and now seemingly just men. We’ve all heard of the “bi-cycle” before, where a bisexual person can experience attraction to just one sex for a stretch of time, and then just the other for a stretch of time. This is not uncommon among bisexuals, and that’s in cases where they’re not taking a cross-sex hormone that has the known effect of *drum roll* increasing your sex drive.

Once, when going for a walk with my (to my knowledge at that time, lesbian) ex girlfriend, she lightheartedly confessed to me that she “only fantasize[d] about men when [she was] really, really horny.” If you imagine that I was taken aback, you’d be correct. That is the farthest thing from my experience. Being turned on doesn’t make me more receptive to thoughts of men, it makes me more disgusted by any thought of them. I’m never more hot and bothered for women (and repulsed by men) than when I’m ovulating (which happens to be when women’s testosterone levels increase). It’s not a far-fetched idea to me that if you’re a bisexual woman with a much more significant attraction to women, testosterone is going make you pay more attention to your less-apparent attraction to men. And without getting controversial, if you’re the kind of person to dismiss your attraction to men and call yourself a lesbian, it’s utterly unsurprising to me that once you’re paying more attention to men you’re going to jump right over to calling yourself a gay man. That’s far more believable to me than that testosterone can literally turn a lesbian straight.

Conclusion? No, gender identity doesn’t influence sexuality. No, the abolition of gender does not mean the abolition of homosexuality. Yes, I consider people like Max bisexual. No, testosterone doesn’t turn lesbians straight; bisexuals exist, and they’re very comfortable claiming labels that don’t fit them even before adding in a regressive belief in gender identity.

#asks #long post

[spesalvi]

The Nothing Burger's Tale

One of the pieces of literature that has become the 1984 of the intersectional progressive has been The Handmaid's Tale.

Written in the 80's as a cautionary tale if the Neo Conservatives and Religious Right were ever to have full control over the culture and political institutions.

It imagines a United States, now The Republic of Gilead where it has been taken over by a group of White Supremacist Evangelicals who have established a theocracy in the wake of an ecological and biological disaster which has rendered many women infertile so, now there are Handmaids who also get their legal names stripped from them and replaced with new names(Margret are you trying to say something about Christianity at a fundamental level or at least female religious?), who act as mistresses to the powerful men in Gilead and have a bizarre mating ritual to boot as well.

The book follows a Handmaid named Offred and her attempt to escape the confines of Gilead and make it to Canada (obviously a reference to slaves escaping to Canada in the 19th century before the American Civil War.).

The book ends in a university lecture in the future and questions the validity of the text and if it can be even trusted since, it was written by a woman.

This was a relatively obscure book mainly read and quoted by English majors, activists and the more hardcore feminists out there. However, after the Orange Man got elected it became this rallying cry women's rights and the like because a sex pest was elected president and somehow that meant we were going to rollback a hundred plus years in the struggle for equality for women.

But it never happened, in fact women hold more cultural pull than men and it's been this way for awhile. Women are allowed to get away with things men simply cannot and often are for lack of a better term "cancelled" or called into question. For example, in 2014 Lena Dunham openly admitted that she had molested her sister when they were kids and she still has a lucrative acting career.

Or the fact that for the most part, the entire Me Too movement has been female centric, with the token inclusion of Brendan Fraiser. A movement that got killed in 2020 whenever it became obvious that Joe Biden would be the Democratic frontrunner we just swept the very credible sexual assault allegations under the rug.

Not to mention that organizations like Planned Parenthood has been caught aiding pimps in order to continue prostitution and sexual exploitation. They engaged in intersectional rhetoric in order to get away with this stuff and also hides behind other layers like being pro LGBT (which makes no sense since 95% of their business model focuses on women, biological women who are seeking to destroy/terminate/end the life inside of them). It only makes sense if they want to be beyond the reproach of criticism.

However, what people don't see is that this is mainly a cudgel by one side in order to shut the other down. No one talks about the sexual assaults perpetuated by Bill Clinton (allegedly) or how Ted Kennedy killed his secretary (allegedly) but these are never really given much if any consideration when it comes to the opposition then it's treated as fact from day zero, rarely if ever will there be a retraction.

#ramblings #joe #biden #ted #kennedy #reproductive rights #the handmaid's tale #margret atwood #neocons #neo libs #progressive #feminism #intersectional feminism

[felidaefatigue]

i wanna put this thought somewhere before i forget it but i dpnt have time to expand on it or make it super palatable but;

i thinl we need to start shifting the way we discuss sex and gender a little (mostly people who surface level support trans/et, the deep divers prob know what im talking abt already)

specifixally around the ideas of biological sex; ofteb we default to going "well its a spectrum not everyone is 100% male or female" which i think it shooting ourselves in the foot at the get go cause a lot of gender essentialist types then go, ok, fine, if i acknowlesge intersex people, but call them an outlier or a disorder or defective thats fine and i can continue to believe there are Men and Women.

Im thinking of changing what we refer to as biological sex as "medically westernized" sex- because male and female are not biologically existing categories. there is no perfect male or female biology. every aspect of it is in flux. but there HAS BEEN categorically defined male female purely for the sake of simplifying medical care based on assumed physiology associated with the terms. and thats fine. i do think it has some very limited scope of efficiency in medicine. id also be fine doing away with it entirely because its also wildly inaccurate and misleading in medicine- but still.

and i think if we can reframe talkinh about biology as a variety of metrics that can shift up or down is a way more accurate scientific examination of sex. there is no biological male sex, you are a human, you might have a mosiac karyotype with xx and xy genes, you might have a penis with internal testes. you might have testosterone thats way too high for your system causing an enlarged prostate, stunted growth, blood clots, and other physical traits for better or for worse.

then you can seperate that from social abd mental gender, how being shorter than you want, undescended tests, as influenced your perception of your place in society. how the mood swings and irritability limit your roles. etc.

and medically, if they/you define you male, they might address the testosterone with hormonal therapies to better suit your health and medical gender.

idk makes sense to me.

[throwawayformydb]

Wife: "Am I the love of your life?"

This post was originally published on /r/DeadBedrooms

Quick background: I'm a HLM married to a LLF and about to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. Sex has never been frequent, but less and less frequent in recent years. We're probably at 2x/month now.

Typical story... I'm an eternal optimist and always hoped it would get better. She was working through major emotional issues in the early years of our marriage, nearly all of which have improved greatly. I always thought as she got healthier emotionally and felt unconditionally loved by me, the intimacy (on all levels, but certainly sexual) would improve. They haven't.

When we got married, I was head-over-heels in love. Looking back... I'm not sure whether she was or not. She acted like it, but she came into the relationship as a sexual abuse victim (never raped, mostly verbal abuse from asshole exes who belittled her physical attributes), and I just thought she was a little "bruised" in that area and she would heal over time.

Fast-forward to today. I've always been super generous and give and give and give. She had her first orgasm ever during our honeymoon because I gave her oral. She's never reciprocated for long enough that I orgasmed, and those reciprocations were only a handful of times anyway. She has TMJ problems, so her jaw has always been the excuse. But as I've lurked around here and started to really wake up to the fact that I'm in a "dead bedroom," I've realized that she is a bit of a pillow princess (assuming I'm using the term correctly). She takes so long to warm up to any sexual activity, that the whole thing is completely about her. I love being generous, so this was OK with me for a long time. I'd give her 30+ minutes of full-body massage, give her oral for however long it took, she'd orgasm, then she'd want me "inside" her ASAP and want the whole thing over with as quickly as possible from there.

Out of some sort of sense of guilt (assuming the worst) or generosity (assuming the best), she would propose "quickies." This involves zero intimacy and might as well be me masturbating -- just using her body. She's completely been passive in these situations.

As much as I enjoy orgasming inside her, I've come to view these quickies as a turnoff in every way except the pure biological/physiological release.

Sex is just one part of a relationship, so I've tried to work on every other part of the relationship in hopes that this would improve. We had some big financial challenges years ago which have stabilized (she's big on financial security, which affected everything in the rough times -- especially sex), we've been to relationship counseling to address communication and other issues which have mostly been worked out.

However... she has always had a terrible fear of me being interested in other women or even looking at porn. God forbid that I actually masturbate (I do... but she doesn't know it). On top of that, she's always felt pressure to have more sex -- NOT from me, but because she knows it isn't great. So... bringing this up or talking about it always felt to me like a DICK move.

This is getting way, way longer than I intended. Let me bottom-line it: she's been binge-watching a show on Netflix that ended up doing a bunch of drama around the "love of your life." I've not been watching the show, but I came in during one of the episodes where some starry-eyed people were talking about the "one love of your life" and debating whether they could end up having more than one.

Wife turns to look at me: "Am I the love of your life?"

RED ALERT. RED ALERT. Now's not the time for hesitation! WTF do I say?!

"YES. Of course you are!"

And part of me is dying inside.

"You don't love me like you used to, though. You're committed to me, but you used to really love me."

FUCK. I really want this to work out well. We have such a great life in so many areas. She has made efforts in the sex department. We had a talk a few weeks ago about how I'm not feeling loved, and how that -- sure -- sex is part of it, but it's more about intimacy and feeling like I'm cared for and not just expected to do all the husband stuff. That had gone really well. She really acted like she was going to work on everything, including seeing a therapist about intimacy issues. She's even taken some steps in that direction.

I've read about so many of you who were able to reach the place where you could say, "my needs are important enough," or even, "satisfying my libido is important enough," that you were able to end long-term relationships. I'm not sure that I can get there. Maybe so... but at the end of my life am I going to look back and say, "I threw away a near-20-year marriage to the mother of my child because I wasn't getting enough sex?! What the FUCK was I thinking?"

I'm sure some will say, "talk to her about opening the relationship." Even mentioning that as if it were a possibility would likely bring this relationship to an end.

We have a getaway planned to celebrate our anniversary in a couple of weeks. I'm going all-out romantic. She'll know that I wanna fuck like bunny rabbits the whole weekend, but I'm going to play that down (because she'll feel pressure and then everything will end in disaster). But of course I want to fuck like bunny rabbits!!

I already know she's feeling poorly about the relationship based upon the "Am I the love of your life?" question and subsequent conversation. I want to try to reignite as much of a spark here as I can.

But I feel like I'm standing at a fork in the road gaping at it like a fucking idiot.

#deadbedroom #dead bedroom

[jayy-day-library]

REVIEW: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Rating: 3/5

Synopsis

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

Review

I am not the smartest person when it comes to biological science, so a lot of whatever the hell hey were talking about really went over my head while reading this book. Aside from that, this story really did capture my heart despite it being from the infamous Book Tok. Though, this book wasn't exactly as it was marketed to be from readers. When many talked about spice, it sounded like this entire story was meant to be erotica. The reality is that there was really only one sex chapter, which given the traits of our beloved heroin, Olive, it makes sense.

The prologue drew me in immediately. I'm a sucker for a good laugh especially if it's relatable. I've learned my lesson from wearing expired contacts myself! Immediately after reading the prologue, I knew we had our hero. Then suddenly two years and eleven months later we find Olive kissing some guy who is none other than our hero himself, Adam Carlson.

One thing that irks me about the beginning of the book is the first chapter where it is described that Olive had kissed Adam without his consent. At the beginning of the story, the two of them are the perfect strangers who stand at very different levels in their careers - Adam is a professor, Olive is a student which isn't exactly the power dynamic I usually go for in contemporary romance novels. While I love a good plot in STEM, specifically women in STEM, I find that the relationship could've been represented better with a more preferable age gap that does not make it seem too inappropriate. However, they do end up making it work as they start becoming more comfortable with each other, so I guess that works.

"I'm starting to wonder if this is what being in love us. Being okay with ripping yourself into shreds, so the other person can stay whole."

Both Adam and Olive have admirable goals in their careers; Olive's pancreatic cancer project and Adam's fight for his research fund while under suspicion that he may be moving to another university. This story is very much character driven with not much character development. But, if you're looking for that grumpy x sunshine fake dating trope, well then this book is perfect for you. I noticed that this story did not focus much on the flaws of the characters which added to the lack of character development, aside from them being more comfortable with each other as the story progressed. The more we got introduced to new characters, the more I started to realize that each character lacked diversity. It seemed that they each had either the same or a similar personality. Which while entertaining for certain character interactions, it all seemed repetitive in the end.

"Olive had felt that he was on her side. Over and over, and in ways that could never have been anticipated, he had made her feel unjudged. Less alone."

Conclusion

All in all, I feel that while the relationship was cute and had great development, the story could've used more personal character development for the individual characters. One thing that I did enjoy that I tend to joke about quite a bit is the fact that even though they had no "one bed trope," they ended up making their own anyways and I thought that was funny. The best takeaway from this book is that it surrounds the difficulties of women in STEM and the fact that Adam became her biggest protector in the end made my heart flip. Nothing is sexier than a man who will do anything for his woman even if it means pinning a man against the wall and threatening to kill him. Hopefully you find this book enjoyable as much a I did despite it's many flaws and it's redeeming qualities that balanced it out.

"If you say another word about the woman I love, if you look at her, if you even think about her - I'm going to fucking kill you."

#authors #the love hypothesis #ali hazelwood #books #bookish #book blog #book review #booklr #booktok

[drmaqazi]

EQUAL RIGHTS IN ISLAM

According to Islam,God Almighty has given man this right of equality as a birthright. Therefore no man should be discriminated against on the ground of the colour of his skin, his place of birth, the race or the nation in which he was born.

Gender Equality in Islam

In gender equality conversations it is often insinuated that in Islam there is no gender equality.

The crux of Islamic teachings is that as men, we’re hardwired by nature and confirmed by divine design and historically through the ages to do three main things: to provide, to protect, and to lead. We do this not for our own sake, not to feed our egos, but in service to others; our families and society and country. Human beings are not identical units. 

The fact that we are similar also means we are not the same. We’re not interchangeable pieces of social machinery. Equality is based not in political ideology but in the reality of the differences and mutual dependencies of real men and women. As men and women we are designed to need each other, not replicate each other. Because we have deviated from divine design and intent, it is the key reason why modern culture is so conflicted about equality of men and women.

In this article, I will explore some of the issues often raised and address the general question: Does Islam discriminate against women or men in its teachings? [*]

What is equality?

In order to understand this issue, we first have to determine what it really means to be equal? Are we talking about absolute equality when it comes to gender relations? If we are talking about absolute equality, it must be clear that many (perhaps, all) atheists, secularists, and feminists do not propose absolute equality of genders. 

Virtually everyone concedes that the two genders need to be treated differently in at least some life activities. Take sports for instance. If absolute equality was the goal in sports, we would be having tournaments with men and women playing together or against each other. But this is not the case at all, as sex verification tests take place to ensure there is no inequality by having a man pretending to be a woman playing in a given sport. 

Here, “equality” would be defined as women playing against women for a level-playing field. Had equality been absolute, such tests would not have existed. Their existence shows that all of us are agreed that nature has given different tendencies, aptitudes, strengths and personalities, to men and women.

Now, let us take a more specific example that is also related to sports: Physical strength. In this regard, it would be wrong to say that all men are stronger than women, but it would be correct to say that men in general are stronger than women, given that the term “strength” here is being used to refer to physiological, muscular strength and not to other kinds of strengths like dealing with trauma, surviving illness, etc. where women are in fact stronger. 

Hence, if men entered into sports competitions against women, they would have an unfair advantage. The issue is not then one of gender equality in the absolute sense. Instead, it is an issue of gender equality in the best sense.

What that means is that it must be acknowledged that each gender has strengths and weaknesses that may or may not overlap. In certain respects, one gender has an advantage over the other, while in other respects, the other gender has the advantage.

 As one psychiatrist, Dr. Neel Burton, puts it, “biological advantages and disadvantages are more or less equally distributed between the sexes”. In spite of these differences, God Almighty declares in the Holy Quran:

وَ مَنۡ یَّعۡمَلۡ مِنَ الصّٰلِحٰتِ مِنۡ ذَکَرٍ اَوۡ اُنۡثٰی وَ ہُوَ مُؤۡمِنٌ فَاُولٰٓئِکَ یَدۡخُلُوۡنَ الۡجَنَّۃَ وَ لَا یُظۡلَمُوۡنَ نَقِیۡرًا

But whoso does good works, whether male or female, and is a believer, such shall enter Heaven, and shall not be wronged even as much as the little hollow in the back of a date-stone (Holy Qur’an 4:125).

In other words, as far as one’s spirituality and relationship with God is concerned, there is indeed absolute equality between the genders.

Understanding Gender Roles

What many see as inequality between the genders in Islam is actually equality in the best form. Due to the fact that women are born with the ability to give birth to children, and are naturally better equipped to care for a newborn’s needs, Islam has assigned them a more central role in terms of the upbringing of children. 

This does not mean that men do not have any role in this regard. It only means that the father has a supportive role while the mother has the primary role and responsibility in taking care of young children.

Conversely, Islam assigns the role of supporting the family financially on the husband/father, and the husband bears the heavy responsibility of ensuring that the family is well taken care of. This is laid out in the following verse of the Holy Quran:

وَ لَہُنَّ مِثۡلُ الَّذِیۡ عَلَیۡہِنَّ بِالۡمَعۡرُوۡفِ ۪ وَ لِلرِّجَالِ عَلَیۡہِنَّ دَرَجَۃٌ ؕ وَ اللّٰہُ عَزِیۡزٌ حَکِیۡمٌ

The husband is responsible for providing all the needs and amenities for his wife”, clearly stated in the following section of a verse of the Holy Qur’an:

(Holy Qur’an, 2:234) وَ عَلَی الۡمَوۡلُوۡدِ لَہٗ رِزۡقُہُنَّ وَ کِسۡوَتُہُنَّ بِالۡمَعۡرُوۡفِ

While the man has been bestowed certain abilities that lay this responsibility on him, he is also taught to treat his wife with the utmost kindness. 

The Holy Qur’an enjoins that if a man has given his wife a mountain of gold as a gesture of his affection and kindness, he is not supposed to take it back in case of divorce. This shows the respect and honour Islam gives to a woman; in fact, men are in certain respects like their servants. They have been commanded in the Holy Qur’an:

(Holy Qur’an, 4:20)وَ عَاشِرُوۡہُنَّ بِالۡمَعۡرُوۡفِ

i.e., consort with your wives in such a manner that every reasonable person can see how kind and gentle you are to your wife.

In other words, this teaching of Islam shows the tremendous amount of respect and dignity that is granted to women in Islam. In one way, the men are taught to be like servants of women. If anything, this teaching can be argued to have placed men at a disadvantage, a far cry from suggesting that women are being mistreated here. 

In essence, Islam respects the different capacities and abilities of men and women, and provides them roles that are best suited for them.

The man’s role then is to be the breadwinner and provider of the family, while the woman’s role is to ensure the family unit is strengthened and children are brought up in the best environment. 

These are the primary roles of men and women, which of course does not mean that their other roles should be completely dismissed. 

As their primary roles are being fulfilled, women can work in a profession of their choice if they wish to earn a personal income. Similarly, men should play their part in the proper upbringing of children and providing their family the best treatment, as the Holy Prophet (SallAllahu ‘alaihi wa Sallam)  said:

“The best among you is the one who is best in treatment of his family”