Today's post isn't really about sex. But this makes up for it, no?

I was born in the United States, and that’s where I live. Today is Independence Day here. It commemorates not any victory or truce, but simply the intention to stop being a trodden-upon colony. This is kind of like celebrating your anniversary with a paramour on the day you first admitted you wanted to fuck each other rather than the day you actually did for the first time. Which is fine, really, just an interesting choice that becomes completely meaningless unless there’s some decisive follow-through. Which, in the case of the Declaration of Independence, there was. It was called the Revolutionary War.

I’m somewhat conflicted as a U.S. citizen. It always feels awkward that there’s not a proper word for us. “American” is desperately broad and kind of pushy, as if the manifest destiny myth gives us the right to claim ourselves the sole possessors of all flavors and varieties of Americas, some of which are entire continents. Sure, “America” in this case is just shorthand for “United States of America”, and no one else seems to need it as much as we do (try saying United Statesian. It just doesn’t work), but it bothers me anyway. Other things bother me more profoundly. Our country was never, even once, all integrity and liberty and pie. The United States government and its citizens systematically slaughtered and displaced the people of sovereign native nations to get us where we are today. They enslaved and exploited those people and so many others for generations. No ends justify those means.

I don’t believe our founding fathers were infallible or indefatigably noble. I don’t think that they necessarily planned for “all men are created equal” to mean seriously fucking everyone someday. They were, as we are, products of their era and culture, and that means they had some pretty shitty ideas about plenty of subjects. Instead of perfect intentions and godlike wisdom (or even the moral high ground), though, they gave us wonderful promises and forged them into law. That’s their beautiful legacy.

What I love about my home are the promises it was built on. Those flawed men gave us the framework to grow into an honest, fair, and free society, or as close as we’re likely to ever get. I intensely believe this, and it makes me grateful and yes, proud.

But just because those promises were made doesn’t mean they’re automatically kept. I don’t just think, I observe that we’re not as free as we think we are in this country. Votes become increasingly difficult to verify as paper ballots are phased out. Appointing corporate lobbyists to White House cabinet and advisory positions has become de rigueur. People are lining up to hand in their reproductive rights, relinquish free speech (funny how limiting someone else’s rights also compromises your own), and to thwart the one provision in the Constitution that seems designed to give us a fighting chance if everything goes irretrievably to hell. We’re losing cherished friends, family, and compatriots in two interminable wars that most of us don’t seem to believe in. Our president, who was stridently opposed to the Patriot Act while he was campaigning, recently extended it by a year, and was met with precious little outrage.

The government can do bad things. It will sometimes try to do them in secret. There are recorded, admitted instances where this has happened in the past. So I have to ask, has any government in history ever cleaned up its act and restored its integrity on its own, without a coup, a war, or at least the undeviating insistence of an incensed public? What makes us think a government that, for example, covertly performed mind-control experiments on many of its citizens without their informed consent mere decades ago can be trusted today?

And yet, apathy thrives. Helplessness encroaches.

I realize that everyone has a different vision of the ideal America (mine has a lot of naked frolicking). I don’t know the answers to everything, and I’m not pretending to. I just feel very strongly that no good can come from a nation’s citizens having fewer rights and sitting idly by while more important promises are broken. Even if you’re not using all your rights or you don’t particularly like some of them, aren’t they… I dunno… kind of nice to have? Just in case?

My fellow United Statesians, have a great Independence Day. See fireworks. Grill meat (or tofu, if you’re kinky like that) over fire. Celebrate your state’s relaxed sodomy laws. Do something outdoors. Our nation is beautiful and you have every right to love it. But today I feel bound to remind myself that freedom isn’t something you’re necessarily born with and get to keep. That’s the way it should be, in a perfect world, but in reality freedom can be taken away at any time. That’s when you have to decide whether or not you’re going to declare your intentions to fight for it. And then, fucking follow through.

Prom dates Julia and Maddie of Victoria, British Columbia

… And why Constance McMillen shouldn’t have to miss hers.

I started dating Reginald Sleeth my senior year, second semester. He’d already graduated from our high school a couple years prior.

I remember the chick he took to prom that year. I was a 10th grader in the seventh circle of my awkward phase who was secretly pining after him although we were only friends. She was a rich, skinny blonde from the rival school who had bought a strapless dress in his favorite color and wore long opera length satin gloves. They looked so good together their picture showed up in the local newspaper. Shortly after his prom, he moved in with that girl and disappeared from my life for a couple years.

I wasn’t jealous, mind. I didn’t have the self-esteem to feel robbed because a guy I had a crush on was with someone else. I just saw that full-color pic on the cheap newsprint and knew that it would never be me. I was neither rich nor skinny nor blonde. Prom wasn’t made for people like me.

I went to Homecoming dances a couple times during my high school career, but I never had a date. All my friends usually had multiple options, but no one ever seemed interested in going with me. And I would’ve sooner died than ask someone! Junior year Homecoming, a female friend’s “just going as friends” date asked me for one dance, and she made a point to come up to me and tell me how nice it was of him. I had to agree, of course, but those things sting.

I’m not sure why Reginald decided to come back into my life. He’d already dated many of my friends and acquaintances, he’d cultivated a mythos at school as an accidental rake. It always seemed like women pursued him and he was powerless against it. It wasn’t that way with me. He hunted me. He got my aim screenname from a mutual friend and messaged me one night out of the blue. He begged for my friendship back. Then slowly, methodically, he insinuated himself into my life and seeped into that “boyfriend” slot I’d never had filled before, never thought would be filled by anyone.

I had what I’d longed for both those years ago. Reginald Sleeth, former high school Lothario, claimed to be head-over-heels for me. Before long there were signs of the manipulative, abusive hell our relationship would become, but they were subtle. He tried to isolate me from my friends (most of whom thought he was sketchy or whom he’d already dated and dumped with glorious apathy), he freaked out when I was too friendly to his male friends. He cried a lot whenever he wasn’t getting his way, and threw things. As a result, I was in a relationship with someone I’d had a crush on for years, but I wasn’t really enjoying it.

I made the tough decision not to go to my Senior prom. Reginald, who would of course be my date if I went, had so much negative history with my classmates and friends, that I didn’t want to deal with the guaranteed drama. It just wasn’t worth the few bright patches it might possibly provide between all the bickering and moping.

Reginald was livid, petulant. He accused me of being ashamed of him (which was partly true, I suppose), and of not taking our relationship seriously (because no partnership means anything until there’s been at least one awkward updo and a corsage has changed hands, naturally). One day, as we approached the fatal night, he even wept, “I wanted to cover you in orchids and show you off to everyone! Now I can never have that!” But in this I remained strong. He could push me around in a thousand little ways, but I wasn’t going to budge on this. We weren’t going.

Instead, if I remember correctly, we hung out at his place and he gave me my first rimjob. Romance.

With my prom, I took what felt like the path of least resistance. Sure, Reginald was pushing me in one direction, but even worse was the thought of dealing with so much upheaval (probably most of which would’ve ultimately been coming from him, the drama queen) just because I’d brought a polarizing character to my prom.

But what if the only polarizing thing about my prom date had been her gender? What if I hadn’t wanted to bring my asshat boyfriend? What if I’d wanted to take my girlfriend, and cover her in orchids (…is that creepy or is it just that Reginald was creepy and he happened to say that? I honestly can’t discern one from the other sometimes…), and run my fingers gingerly through her updo?

If that’s a problem in and of itself, I call bullshit. Bringing a perfectly sane girl shouldn’t put someone in the same position that I was in having a shitty person as a potential date. But in reality bringing a girl is sometimes much worse. Sometimes a young woman who wants to take her girlfriend to prom doesn’t get to decide whether to go or not. Someone else decides it for her by, oh, say canceling prom.

So let me get this straight… I could have easily taken my evil boyfriend to my prom if I’d so desired, but brave Constance McMillen, who is young, gay, and out in Mississippi, not only can’t take her girlfriend to her prom, but school officials at Itawamba Agricultural High School have decided to encourage her fellow students to hate her by canceling the event altogether! “Sorry, kids, no prom this year. The lesbians killed it.” sort of thing.

That’s not just unfair, it’s downright cruel. Even if you don’t agree with Constance’s dating decisions, you likely wouldn’t have liked mine either if you’d known the details. But you wouldn’t have had anything to say when I tried to purchase prom tickets, would you, Itawamba? Hetero privilege is so stupid and arbitrary.

Constance and her girlfriend should have been able to go to their prom this Friday. Instead, they’ll go to a formal dance being put on by supportive local parents. A federal judge has ruled that her constitutional rights were violated, but has not ordered Itawamba to restore the prom.

Help spread the word about Itawamba’s unconstitutional and punitive actions, and you might win a $100 Eden Fantasys gift card! Constance’s courage has inspired tonic.com and talk show host Ellen Degeneres to offer her educational scholarships. Congratulations, Constance! Hopefully yours will be the last generation to have to deal with this sort of prejudiced nonsense.

On a more hopeful note, see adorable lesbian prom pictures here! Some schools aren’t run by jerks, apparently.

The day after Valentine’s Day my laptop broke out in a rash of news articles and blog entries about sexual violence. Maybe it’s because sometimes rape feels like the other side of the sex coin that Valentine’s Day embraces, or maybe there was a coordinated effort/awareness day that I didn’t know about. Maybe the day-after-Valentine’s Day thing is a red herring and President’s Day is the real culprit. Maybe it’s Zeitgeist. I suck at Zeitgeist sometimes.

Breda got a day-early jump on the trend when she wrote about a video that was posted on ManUp, a campaign whose mission is to stop violence against women. The video’s original source is Omnipeace, “a humanitarian fashion brand that donates 25% of all profits to charities promoting peace, education, human rights and ending extreme poverty in Africa by 2025.” The video, which I’m going to call the iRape video, uses violence against women as a trope to call attention to ongoing violence in Eastern Congo over conflict minerals (tin, tungsten, titanium, and gold ore). The video isn’t just about rape, really. Rape is one “weapon” being used, and it’s not the only intolerable thing happening there: Omnipeace uses rape in the iRape video because sexual assault is especially visceral, horrifying, and to many the rape of a pregnant woman (which this video depicts) is even more so. The overarching issue is that electronics manufacturers (and by extension, consumers) are fostering violence (definitely including rape) when they buy these minerals from the wrong people and out of the wrong mines in the Congo. The escalating war crimes, the unchecked violence, and how corporations are providing economic motivation for them to continue, are the larger issues, and rape is but one really, horribly disgusting aspect of all that.

The iRape video does the job it was designed to do. It communicates the problem and even appropriates pop culture images culled from the once-ubiquitous silhouette commercials for Apple’s iPod. Surely Apple is one of Omnipeace’s biggest targets here, if only because it’s emblematic as an industry leader. In the sense that it presents information about conflict minerals and violence in the Congo, it accomplishes a lot in ninety seconds.

But it raises some issues. Some of us…well, I… think making rape into a cartoon/parody is just a shade tacky. Even the “iRape”… “iSuffer” copy in the video is so flippant it kind of makes me sick knowing that they don’t mean it as a joke, they’re only accidentally presenting it as one. When you use rape as a supporting argument or an attention-grabber you’ve just invoked something complex and rife with emotion– sometimes raw, throbbing pain. I also think it’s worthwhile for organizations to make it very clear when reposting and sharing the iRape video that it isn’t about rape in general. It’s pretty specifically about rape as a war crime, and to me it’s more successful at highlighting a regional conflict and its related atrocities than it is at saying anything about violence against women in a broader sense.

Breda linked to iRape via ManUp, “a global initiative to engage youth in preventing violence against women”. Theirs is an admirable goal, and I haven’t a clear enough picture of them yet to say whether I agree with their politics and methods or not. But clearly their mission isn’t specific to the Congo. So the fact that ManUp has the Omnipeace iRape video as the lone offering in the “Media Center” section of their globally-minded website seems like a counterintuitive decision because it depicts a very specific type of rape in a very specific context–with little surrounding explanation–on a website that has a very diffuse goal.

In war-torn Congo, rapists are certainly often armed. Non-combatant civilian women have no practical means to defend themselves nor access to legal justice. The details are far removed from what many of us might experience in other parts of the world (and in this and many other respects we are so damn lucky). Here in the United States, for example, that isn’t what rape usually looks like.

Breda’s point that self-defense knowledge and preparation (particularly access to and training with firearms) are key to preventing violence against women is an important one. Her declaration that “…the only way to stop violence against women is to make it a very, very risky endeavor,” is nothing more or less than absolutely true. There are dozens of ways to educate and mitigate and hope the bad guys stop being bad guys, and some of these can help, but they’ll never eradicate sexual violence. Only a culture that tolerates no rape and gives women the tools to enforce that standard would have any chance of existing beyond the threat of sexual violence. I’d be thrilled to see more organizations focusing on teaching women how to defend themselves, and spreading the message that it’s completely appropriate to do so. We shouldn’t be expected to leave our protection solely in the hands of men/authority figures/social change campaigns.

But it bears repeating that “you can fight back!” is not the same thing as “you should’ve fought back”, because I think sometimes people conflate the two. You can’t tell a rape victim she (or he) should’ve been “better” at being assaulted and violated. Well, obviously you can, but if you do, you’re an asshat. Empowering women to stop sexual violence dead in its tracks is good; expecting women to claw, shoot, gouge, or maim their way out of every such situation, and wondering what’s wrong with them if they don’t or can’t, is just another way of blaming the victim. Blaming the victim really needs to end, people. Rape isn’t just a physical fight, and even if it were, not everyone has the strength or reflexes or equipment to stop it. Sometimes sexual violence isn’t exactly what you expect it to be, and if we don’t have a clear and realistic picture of what diverse scenarios rape can include, we definitely can’t stop it, decry it, loathe it… in fact, we’re in immediate danger of tolerating it in many of its more insidious forms.

Ladies, are you prepared to fight whenever you’re on a date? Are you prepared to claw your best male friend’s eyes out at a moment’s notice? Would you kill your husband rather than succumb to forced sex with him, or might you take the abuse, and maybe even blame yourself for it? If you’re an average American silhouette woman bopping around to your iPod in Everytown, USA, the armed soldier bogey is probably not what you need to worry about. The scary shadow you need to keep your eye on is the inky outline of the devil you know.

I’m not saying that all the men in a woman’s life are potential rapists. I am saying that 77% of rapes are committed by non-strangers, and sometimes it’s hard to see these coming. If you’re a man and just felt a glimmer of umbrage reading the examples I gave at the beginning of the previous paragraph, your reaction should provide one flash of insight as to why women might have a disincentive to remain ever-vigilant and prepared against acquaintance rape. Often men want and encourage us to be on our guard with every guy… except with them, of course.

Britni posted a great piece on marital rape and the mythical gray area it presents. I want to address some of the things that occurred to me while reading it, but that will be its own blog entry (Soon, my pets. Very soon…) because I’m not writing a goddamn dissertation here. I’m just some chick on the internet who happens to be not so fond of rape.

Hey, Quizzical Pussy readers. Just so you know… I like you like you.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you’re getting all kinds of laid. Hope I am too!

There’s one thing I do know: if there was nothing but a tissue-thin shred of common sense keeping me from marrying Reginald Sleeth, a man who hit me, when I was 20 years old, I think my uncle who’s been in a strong and monogamous relationship since I was four should be able to marry his boyfriend if he feels like it. His right supersedes mine if we’re going to start ranking whose rights are more rightier.

But people all over are being stupid and saying that men have to marry only women, and women just men. I’m not entirely positive if they think transgendered people should be allowed to marry anyone, and if so, whom. I suspect there’s about as much disagreement about that as anything else they can’t paint in black and white absolutes.

These people, the ones who are being stupid, may certainly indulge their feelings and freak out about same-sex marriage as much as they like. They can rail against it, publish hateful books and websites, and thunder “Yo butt ain’t made for that!” into the cold, unfeeling sky. Their freedom to speak their minds is just as valuable as mine. However, I refuse to let them legislate against same-sex marriage if I can possibly help it. What’s wrong with hating it while it’s legal? Isn’t freedom just another word for leaving other people alone? It disgusts me that they devote so much time and energy into fucking up nice things (for the sake of argument, let’s just agree that marriage can be one such nice thing) for people who are lucky enough to find “lifetime commitment” love.

I’ve often thought that if I found myself in the position where I wanted to marry a man, I’d feel pretty shitty about enjoying a perk that many of my friends (or even I, if I found myself in the position where I wanted to marry a woman) are currently denied. I’m not saying life is fair, but this is the kind of unfair that really sucks because it’s the kind we could avoid if we could just all stop being asshats. So it’s a quandary: how much would I hypothetically let my distaste for the unfairness intrude on my personal desire to get a free stand mixer?

I came across this October 8, 2009 Savage Love column about hetero marriage. Dan Savage (a sex columnist who is gay, if you’re not familiar) recalled a wedding he’d recently attended, where the heterosexual couple chose the following selection as a reading in their ceremony:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.

It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a ‘civil right.’ Without the right to choose to marry, one is excluded from the full range of human experience.

Source: The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in that state.

Dan goes on to say that it would be wonderful if the passage caught on as a wedding reading. I agree. Sure, hetero couples can boycott, or move their weddings to states that have legalized same-sex marriage in an economic and symbolic gesture of support. But not many do, and maybe it isn’t practical to expect them to let even deeply-held political concerns influence their romantic commitments. That reading, though? I think it’s a perfect and fitting gesture, and I would love to see it become the new 1 Corinthians 13.

Dear Gräfenberg, you clever chap
Your spot at least, I mean
It’s helped me fuck and helped me fap
Almighty, though unseen
I swear I’ve never doubted you
It seems so simple, tried and true
And I thought everybody knew
But then, things got obscene
The meanest edict to debut
Since herpes and the clap

Some scientists in Britain gave a survey, not exam
These scientists in Britain say the g-spot is a sham
It’s marketing, they argue, it’s a sexy little scam
So stop pretending there’s a magic pearl inside your clam

Perhaps not standard issue like a coccyx or a wrist
But take away my G-spot and you’ll find me fucking pissed
Though time and time again it’s been neglected, scorned, or missed,
My orgasms don’t lie and they confirm mine does exist

Hey Gräfenberg, can you believe?
They think it’s in my brain
They think I’m terribly naive
My dildos curve in vain
But why does it feel so sublime
Consistently and every time
A climax on a ruddy dime
Not fictive or arcane
How could that lofty two-inch climb
Into my cunt deceive?

Just because you have no G-spot, you can’t wrestle mine away
And if you prefer the clitoris, I promise, that’s okay
But recall they came for G-spots on that dark and distant day
When experts say that prostate stimulation makes men gay

Happy birthday to Jesus, Horus, Dionysus, Krishna, Mithras, and Rod Serling. You guys rock. Seriously.

I appreciate shows and movies that portray sex workers as real people who aren’t predators, victims, or addicts. I do understand and acknowledge anyone who feels compunction about glamorizing something that can go so terribly wrong, especially when that glamor might threaten to blot out the stories that need to get told. The tragic injustices exist: hell, they abound. Prostitutes can and do encounter violence and exploitation, and please let’s not forget the nauseous abundance of women, children, and men forced into sexual slavery to fulfill the global demand for sex workers. There are major problems with the sex-based sector of the economy, some of which of arise partly because so much of it has to operate underground, accountable to very little, and even less that’s ever concerned with the health, independence, and well-being of the participants. Misplaced moral outrage and criminalization chase sex work into the shadows, and we know all too well what happens in a darkness like that: that’s how Sméagols become Gollums.

I believe it’s time to make a clear distinction between sex crime and sex business. These horrible infringements on human rights shouldn’t find it so easy to ape a harmless transaction between consenting adults any longer.

But how about people who are drawn to prostitution and other sex work because it’s fun, because they enjoy both money and sex? Why the hell that should present a problem to anyone is beyond me. The self-created happy hooker who makes a deliberate career choice and executes it with responsibility deserves more play. That’s the kind of sex worker we should encourage. Secret Diary portrays a call girl’s vocation as difficult and complicated, but also rewarding and sexy. Plus, there are times I feel sure I could compose a panegyric to Billie Piper’s ass.

The show is loosely based on the real experiences chronicled by the real owner of the really fake pseudonym Belle De Jour, who maintains a blog and wrote bestselling books, remaining completely anonymous until early this week. Turns out (via sexoteric), she’s 34-year-old scientist Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. These days she’s spending her time researching children’s cancer. Yep, she’s a science geek who’s trying to keep kids healthy: your move, naysayers. She spent 14 months selling sex to support herself while she worked on finishing her thesis, and she doesn’t regret it at all. In fact, she enjoyed it.

Good on you, doctor, for coming out and proving that a whip-smart woman (who is not, as it turns out, some man’s wishful invention or a writer’s fantastical thought experiment) can choose to participate in prostitution, have a great time, and walk away when she’s good and ready.

Now, to wait for season 3 to start…