Women in their place, unfortunately

This weekend I went to a wedding.  It was a perfectly normal wedding in most ways, and most people wouldn't think anything of it.  I couldn't help but be frustrated by so much of it though because of the unrelenting sexism.

Giving the bride away is a tradition that needs to die in a fire.  I just don't know how people today can sit there and watch a woman handed off from one man to another like a hunk of meat and not twitch at the injustice of it all.  If you want to be handed off by your parents, fine, there are ways to do that.  I have seen weddings where both people being married were walked in on the arms of both of their parents and this is fine!  Not my style, but it does not bother me at all.

But the thing where much ceremony is made of which man is going to hand over the bride to the groom?  YUCK.

Lots of little things got to me too.  I don't like the pageantry and expense of weddings in general, but that is an aesthetic thing rather than a real moral objection.  But the bridesmaids and groomsmen all being gender coded, and the explicit gender rules for everyone involved in the party really bother me.  I also struggle with the expectation that the women in the wedding party must spend extensive time doing hair and makeup while the men put in a far lesser amount of effort.  The women have to pay for new dresses to match the colour of the wedding, while the men just wear their normal suit.  The men are clearly just fine on their own, but women have to show themselves off to get full value.

Marriage is fine and all, once you strip away all the sexist garbage.  I just can't be comfortable with the way marriage happens to most people though, particularly the way it so ruthlessly polices gender roles and comformity to gender norms.

And this is all to ignore all the objections I have to all the religious stuff associated with weddings, which is another whole rant entirely.

Someday I am going to finally swear off all of this.  I feel stuck when I get invited to weddings that I know are going to be a barrage of religion and sexist crap.  I don't want to alienate friends, but sitting through more of these ceremonies that fly in the face of deeply held values of mine is becoming more and more unpalatable as the years go by.

The future of the red pill

Orson Scott Card is not a good person.  I don't like him, not one little bit.  However, he did write one of my favourite books, Ender's Game.  I find it hard to reconcile these facts; generally I decide to just make sure that I never do anything that gives Card money but still read the books I love.

This weekend I started reading Ender in Exile, a book following Ender after the events of Ender's Game.  I figured I would enjoy the book and it would be a guilty pleasure.  Instead the book pissed me off and I don't even plan on finishing it.

Ender In Exile in many ways a predictable followup to Ender's Game, but it goes off the rails with Card pushing his crappy sexist bullshit.  Much like many other highly successful authors before him, Card pushes out sequels to make cash but inserts bigoted views because he is big enough that he can get away with it.

This time it is all about relationships.  Card makes it clear that the only way that human society can function is monogamy, and that it has to be enforced monogamy.  This is silly and flies in the face of all of the evidence, but initially I was merely irritated.  I am all about non monogamy, but fine, the characters in the book are ignorant, I can cope.  The thing that really got me was a scene where on a planet where monogamy has been arranged and is seriously policed.  In the scene, a top male scientist had a subordinate female scientist desperately try to convince him to have sex with her to give her smart babies.  She desperately wanted to lie to her husband explicitly because she wanted better genes for her children.

I am disappointed that Card has added 'red pill' sexist bullshit to his repertoire of evil.  He wants to portray women as requiring enforced monogamy, because otherwise they will just cuckold their husbands for higher status / better genetics / prettier men.  Card's sexism was evident in previous books but this particular one really slapped me in the face with it, and because it also pushed my buttons I couldn't just ignore it.

I just don't know how to cope with straight men who so obviously hate women.  It is such a mess to have that combination of desire and bitterness, attraction and repulsion.  It is wretched and awful, and I am glad I have no part of it.

Don't read Ender in Exile.  Further, if you must read anything Card wrote, try not to give him money for it.  That message is an important one to send.

Keeping score

Recently I found a fantastic Youtube channel called ContraPoints.  It is, as the star says, a scholarly study of online bigotry.  It is also funny as hell, and mixes educational material about racism, sexism, and all the other isms along with dark and dirty humour.  It is definitely not safe for work, and it is not safe for work in ways that I quite enjoy.  The video I watched today is this one about pickup artists who call style themselves 'alpha males'.


The thing I found most interesting in the video was a description of the end goal of pickup artist seduction techniques.  I always found pickup artists loathsome but this gave me some insight into how you get from where I am to where they are.  I like sex, I am a straight man, I am fine with casual sex, and in the periods in my life where I wasn't having sex I was unhappy about that fact.  This might suggest that I would be the sort of person who might employ their tactics.

But no, never.  The reason is that pickup artists aren't actually in it for the sex.  They are in it to try to soothe their intense feelings of inadequacy and self hatred by having as big a score as possible.  If they were just looking for good sex they would figure out how to be in a relationship and find some woman with a massive sex drive and call it a day.  But that doesn't inflate the number of people you have slept with much at all, and that number is the way in which they keep score.

For me sex is the point, score isn't.  The interplay of mutual desire, the ratcheting up of excitement, these are the things I want.  Having sex with new people is fun in general but the really important thing is that the sex be *good*.

Whereas for pickup artists no time is wasted on how to enjoy sex, or how to bring your partner enjoyment.  Once you get your penis inside a vagina your score has ticked up, so the remainder of the encounter is not particularly relevant.

Now I get it.  It wasn't just that pickup artists were gross before, it was that they made no sense at all.  They were clearly evil, but it was an evil without a point, which confused me.  Now that I realize that their goals were entirely different from mine it all falls into place.  Pickup artists aren't pleasure seeking hedonists like me, because wasting time in bars trying to get reluctant people to have shitty sex with you isn't pleasureable.  They just want to win the game, and they are willing to win it in a way that is sad for all people involved.  The game of keeping score in life by the number of one night stands you have had is sad and destructive and I want no part of it.  I am going to keep score by trying to be the person who generates the most fun for me and the people around me instead.

Everything sucks for everyone!

Patriarchy sucks.  There is an awful lot of information there about how it sucks for women, and few people are willing to debate that at this point.  (Obviously there are some, and they are terrible people.)

But patriarchy sucks for men too.  I read a great article today interviewing a number of trans men who had lived experience with being treated as a man and as a woman and they had lots to say about the negatives of being treated as a man.  They talked about people refusing to speak to them, about their emotions being dismissed, and about the lack of support and empathy they got from others.

Of course they acknowledged that being treated as a man came with the benefits of being listened to and being promoted, among others, but it was clear that both sides had their penalties and benefits.

Overall I would take the 'treated as a man' package, as would most people I expect.  It generally is better, which is kind of the point of feminism.  But we would be remiss if we ignored the bad stuff that happens to men as a result of toxic masculinity.  Repression of emotions, lack of non erotic physical touch, and vulnerability being seen as a failure make men feel shitty, and then it cascades onto the people they interact with.

I think this is a critical part of feminism that a lot of people ignore.  Feminism isn't just about helping women - it helps make a better world for everyone, whether they be man, woman, nonbinary, or literally any gender at all.

Halfway there

I turned 40 yesterday, and a lot of people think of turning 40 as halfway to dead.  It isn't quite true, even though on average people do die a little after 80.  It turns out though that it works for me, and using this life expectancy calculator I either rate to live to 79.7 or 82.5 depending on which alcohol consumption box I tick.  Apparently I rate to live 2.8 years longer if I drink alcohol than if I don't... which seems odd, so perhaps I shouldn't trust it.  At any rate I might as well place complete faith in a random calculator I found on the internet and assume I am halfway dead.

That seems okay.

I am not sure if I am having a midlife crisis or not.  Most men who do that start buying motorcycles or convertibles and pretend to live dangerously.  I haven't done that.  I did recently start getting big tattooes and I have spent the last couple years working out to try to get ripped though, so maybe that counts.  I think if I actually stick to the workout routines it isn't an official midlife crisis though - a midlife crises is more about flailing about for validation rather than years of concentrated effort.  I definitely did the cavorting with younger women thing, no doubt about that, but I intend to keep that up right until I die at the ripe old age of exactly 79.7 years.  Similar to the weight lifting thing, it doesn't count as a crisis if it is a permanent lifestyle choice.

I feel good.  40 doesn't feel any different than 39.99 did.  I am changing slowly and predictably, and each of the past few years has seen similar drift.  I am stronger, in better shape, and better looking than ever.  (That assumes you think that adding lots of muscles outweighs my receding hairline and grey, and I do think that.)  I am stupider than before, and that trend is continuing.  I am worse at abstract reasoning and my calculations are slower than they were.  However, I am certainly wiser than I ever have been before and I make better decisions.  Overall my brain is better than ever, though it is mostly better at general life stuff and worse at high performance activities.  A reasonable trade, I think.  I heal slower, sleep worse, and ache more these days, but my body is still a distinctly above average performer so I can't complain.

I remain convinced that my 40s will be great.  Pinkie Pie has struggles and helping her through those is a challenge, but I still prefer a teenager to a baby.  Raising a kid is getting easier, and I am getting much of my freedom back after years of baby prison.  Being wiser is helping with making my middle aged life better, because although I am not as good at winning games as I used to be I am better at finding joy no matter whether I win or lose.

The world has its challenges too, but I remain stubbornly optimistic.  We humans have always had great challenges and I think our track record shows that we will continue to push forward and find ways to make it work despite all of our obvious flaws and failings.  Civilization is clearly imperfect, but we keep on getting better, and I look forward to seeing all the great things we will do.

I also look forward to sitting on a porch in a rocking chair shaking my fist at teenagers and yelling at them to get off my lawn.  I won't wait for them to actually be on the lawn either, I am going to have my fun no matter what.  Hell, I don't even need a lawn for this to work.

Turning 40 is a reminder that my time is limited.  But since it is limited, I am not going to waste it bemoaning how little time I have left.  I don't have time for that!

Not a word of a lie

I often end up thinking about when people have an obligation to disclose information to others about relationships.  This is a thing that comes up with non monogamous dating from time to time - when you first start seeing someone, when do you have a moral obligation to tell them you are already involved with other people?

I have gotten myself into some real arguments about this.  The crux of the matter seems to be what people are entitled to assume.  Most people assume that anyone they date is monogamous, and statistically speaking that is reasonable.  Statistically speaking you should also assume they will cheat on you, but people tend to gloss over this and look at idealized behaviour. 

However, it isn't reasonable to put the entire burden of coming out on marginalized people.  Saying that all the monogamous people are allowed to assume everyone is like them and that everyone else must immediately disclose puts extra problems in the hands of people who already face discrimination, and that isn't fair or good.  It also helps entrench cultural norms further and I think that is a definite negative.  Of course people need to be honest with their answers, and be open, but I think everyone will be far better off if we establish a baseline that you have to ask questions yourself if the answers are important, rather than just assuming things are the way you want them to be.

There are lots of questions like this.  For example, in Savage Love this week there was a dude asking about his obligations in a complex situation.  He is in a dom/sub arrangement where his girlfriend is allowed to have sex with other people, but only when he commands her to go and do so.  She comes back and tells him about the encounters afterwards, and they both enjoy this dynamic.  Do the two of them have an obligation to tell people that this is what is going on when she goes out and has a hookup?

I don't think they have a moral obligation to disclose.  They tell people she is involved with others, but not the details of their arrangement, and that seems like a fine compromise.  I imagine there are lots of people out there who would be horrified that someone they are dating has to ask permission to have sex with them, but I don't think they are entitled to that information before they say yes.  They are certainly entitled to the truth if they ask 'so, what is the deal with you and your boyfriend?' but without an ask that information is sufficiently out of their circle that they shouldn't expect it to be volunteered.

Kink is kind of like being in an open relationship in a lot of ways.  Telling random people about it is a real risk, and so it isn't appropriate to expect everyone in such a situation to be obligated to talk about it constantly just so it can be more comfortable for the 'normal' types.

Of course this kind of stuff is mostly academic when it comes to me.  I wouldn't get involved with someone who wasn't okay with all my stuff, and I already yell about it on the internet, so if someone is getting down and dirty with me they already know the deal.  I just don't like to put people who aren't in the secure situation I am on the spot and make them cope with the problems that cultural norms create for those of us who don't fit into them.

My recent experiences and thoughts about Relationship Anarchy feel like they support this position too.  RA is all about pushing back on assumptions about how relationships work, and you can't do that while you set up different rulesets for people who follow the norms and people who don't.  Honestly is required, and people should tell other information they are likely to want, but I won't impose a rule on the marginalized few that the mass of humanity completely ignores.

A soft beard

People sometimes complain about my beard.  Mostly people who I kiss, who are occasionally attacked savagely by the ends of the hairs sprouting from my face.  Until recently I thought this a problem without a solution.  When I shave it off I get told I look freaky and ten years old.  When I leave it on, it attacks.  What to do with a beard?

But not so long ago I came across the idea of beard oil.  Many people who pay more attention to personal grooming than I do surely knew of this for their entire lives, but it only came across my desk recently.  I hesitated though, unsure if I was willing to actually put that much time into my routine.  Plus the cost!  Surely beard oil is expensive, and you know how I feel about that.

But at WBC this year EpicBeard expounded on the joys of beard oil.  He waxed eloquent about the benefits.  And he is a convincing sort of person, so I gave it a go.

The price nearly killed me.  75 ml for 10 dollars?  What is this stuff made of, uranium?!?  And this is the cheapest stuff in the store!

I kind of hope not.  Uranium is pretty dangerous to put on your face, or so I have heard.

So I put the outrageously expensive stuff on my face; the test is underway.

The results so far indicate that beard oil is smelly.  Not to me - my nose hardly works at all.  Other people though, the kinds of people who were hoping that my beard would be less stabby, report that beard oil is unpleasant.  This does not bode well for the beard oil industry getting any more of my money.

Whether it will make my beard any softer is yet to be determined.  It does seem to reduce the itch factor of my beard though, so at least that portion of it works.  To find out about the stabbiness though I will need to conduct many tests and kiss lots of people.  You need lots of data, you see, in order to science properly, and science is extremely important.  As such, a great deal of kissing must commence.

Ending it all, done right

Usually when I click on obvious clickbait on the internet I feel bad about my choices.  It never brings fulfillment, only endless marching hordes of exclamation points, hoping to divert my attention from something that actually matters.

But sometimes I find a gem.

I just wandered across the alternate ending to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and it fixed so many things.  One of the things about Scott Pilgrim was that while most of the movie was an absolute joy to watch I found Scott's obsession with Ramona unpalatable at times.  At points their dynamic was good, but there was simply too much of entitled dude chasing a woman he has imbued with all his dreams and fantasies without much thinking about who she really is.

I wanted the film to end with Scott not being involved with Ramona.  I wanted him to realize that his desperate pursuit of an unknown was not true love, but simply infatuation.  I wanted him to grow, dammit.

And in this alternate ending, Ramona just walks away, and Scott ends up happily gaming with Knives, finally seeming to appreciate what she brings to him.


And Ramona should walk away.  Sure, there was a crazy thing between her and Scott, but this is the right ending to the story.  I like it both because I feel like this is the right story to tell, but also because I want to put the right lesson out into the world.  "Chase the woman you become infatuated with until she is yours." is not the thing I want the world to see.  I would have been happy with Scott alone at the end, Ramona having left because they didn't actually have anything, and Knives having left because Scott was an asshole to her.  That would have been good too.

But Ramona leaving and Scott and Knives finding a good place for the two of them to be - that is an ending I am so much happier with.

(Here is where I insert my usual snark, noting that polyamory as an option blows up the scripts of at least half of the movies ever.  Why not date both of them?  At least consider it!)

If only The Breakfast Club could put out a new ending to replace the final 5% of the movie... then I could die in peace.

Gradually increasing disdain

Wendy forwarded me this link today to an article written by a Relationship Anarchist.  The author seems to be an anarchist in many ways, not just in relationships.  While usually I find anarchistic arguments interesting they almost always fail in the details; before destroying the economic system that keeps us all fed I would like to know how exactly the new system will distribute food!  However, RA is a completely different thing because implementing it, while it would change things a great deal, does not actually threaten our lives, merely big chunks of the current social order.

The article got me thinking on RA again, and its hard stance that monogamy is wrong and bad resonated with me.  I find myself with a great deal of ambivalence about this topic, because I can see compelling arguments for both sides.

First, a key definition:  Monogamy here refers to people forcing things on others.  If you want one partner, many or none, sexual or not, romantic or not, that is all good.  The thing that troubles me is people coercing others into specific numbers, not what they freely choose to do themselves.

If a friend told me that I could have no other friends but them I would laugh at them and never talk to them again.  If a lover told me that I was not allowed to have a relationship with my family anymore I would give them the heave ho.  If my uncle told me that I was not allowed to have sex with anyone I would tell him to fuck right off.  All of these people would be roundly condemned as being somewhere between insecure jerks and evil abusers.  In fact, those demands are so ridiculous that most people receiving such a demand would assume it was a joke at first.

And yet if a lover told me that I was not allowed to have sex with another person, or love another person, this is normal and expected.

That is messed right up.  A lover trying to isolate someone from their friends or family is a classic sign of abuse and one that people react immediately to.  You shouldn't cut people off from their support networks!  But demand that you be their sole partner for sex and romantic love and suddenly it is all good.  The more times I run this script in my head the more it settles into the conclusion that monogamy is an evil institution that needs to go.

But there are arguments the other way.  If people choose monogamy freely, who am I to criticize their choice?  So long as everyone is on board, informed, and able to leave, shouldn't I back off and let everyone do their own thing?  That is a strong argument for the stance I have taken about relationships so far, which is that I am doing the RA / polyamory thing and that other people are welcome to do what they please.

However, I ask myself if I would say the same thing if a friend of mine was getting into a serious relationship and told me "Yeah, so, my partner says I can't have friends anymore, so I can't see you again."  Would I happily answer "Oh yes, you are making an informed choice and this is fine."?  Fuck no.  I would tell them that this is a disaster, that their partner is a controlling asshole, and they need to get out.  I can't stop them from making the choice, but I will be damned if I am going to sit back and tell them it is a good thing to do.  So if I back off and say that monogamy is all fine and well, how is it that I justify this position when I so clearly see the problems with it?  If I just sign off on monogamy as a totally fine choice I end up making a special case for it and defining it as fine without any justification aside from "Well, that is just the way things are, and rocking the boat is likely to be messy."  and I DO NOT like that justification.

It is all complicated because I live in a system that glorifies and supports monogamy.  Most of the people I know are monogamous, and the prospect of telling them all that their relationships are borderline abusive by definition is ... daunting, to say the least.  I don't relish the idea of getting into that particular fight, and the fights would be nearly endless since I know so many people who are monogamous.  It would be especially difficult with people I care deeply about, people who do work hard to make the world a better place.  Is telling them that they are wrong, that they are being bad in placing rules limiting their partner's affection, that they must change, going to smash my relationships with them?  How much would it cost me to take the public stance that most of the people I know are doing it all wrong?

In addition to the personal cost I have to consider the activism cost.  Telling people "I want to do my relationships this way." is far easier, and far more likely to have them accept it.  Telling them that they are wrong for doing what they do will encounter much more pushback and possibly set back acceptance of my way of living.  This sort of dilemma is present in nearly all activism, and figuring out how extreme a position to take is not a simple thing.

On the flip side, actively deciding to not talk about a serious problem I see because it would be too inconvenient to deal with the pushback feels like cowardice.  What kind of world do I want?  One where people like me, loaded with privilege, refuse to be honest and push for change because they are worried that it might be too much work?  Or do I want a world where I pursue my convictions and upset some apple carts in an attempt to build a better society?

The longer I think about it the more I think that telling your partner that you are to be their sole outlet for all sexual and romantic feelings and actions is wrong.  Not wrong like murder is wrong, obviously, because they can walk away if they want to.  But still wrong, in the same way that criticizing someone about something they are sensitive about in front of people they want to impress is wrong.  Not the thing you should do, and certainly a thing you should look askance at if you see anyone else doing it, to find out if there are other signs of bad behaviour.

I know how I feel.  I know what I want.  Figuring out how to act, given that knowledge, is a much thornier problem.

The downside of fun

From July 22nd to 29th I was playing a lot of board games at the World Boardgaming Championships.  This is a good thing for my happiness, but it is a killer on my routine.  I got home thinking that I still felt pretty good and perhaps ten days of sedentary behaviour, lack of sleep, and subpar food (which is on me, really, the food at the resort was fine) hadn't really impacted my body much.

I was so wrong.

I did my usual workout routine on Monday and Tuesday this week and I am sore all over, particularly my lats for some reason.  For months now I have been feeling good, rarely with significant soreness, and now I am not sure that one day of recovery time is going to be enough for me to get back to feeling healthy and ready to work out again.

I suppose this illustrates that in order to maintain my strength I absolutely have to be constant in my routine.  Even ten days of slacking dramatically was a huge blow, and will probably require significant time to recover from.

I have been curious for quite a while now how much an interruption would cost, and whether or not my relatively good discipline mattered; now I know.

No more days off, not until Christmastime at least.