Why any kind of sex with an American is sex with a child

Or, I don't have a problem with my life. You do.

Published on February 19, 2006 By EmperorofIceCream In Misc

"I'm curious, LW. What would you say to people that consider this a co-depenant mental problem? You know that some would say that you just happened to hook up with someone who has a complimentary emotional flaw, right?
Granted, many also call homosexuality a mental or emotional problem. Do you see it as the same kind of thing? Do you think it is just something you are, irrespective of your experiences and mental adjustment, or something that came from how you were treated earlier in life?"
BakerStreet.
BakerStreet posted this in response to a comment made by my wife (LW) on another thread in which she's involved, having to do with submissive behaviour in women. As such things tend to do the discussion there has dipped its toes into the areas of S&M, and 'abuse'.

The reactions are of the usual kind - cries of outrage, shrieks of horror, hysterical accusations (having more to do with the fears and desires of those making the accusations than with anything said in the discussion) involving the defense of rape, and a veritable pantheon of shibboleths, cliches, fears, phobias, guilt, resentment and angst - BakerStreet's comment being possibly the most rational while exemplifying the usual array of American neuroses that surrounds anything to do with sex.

I'm not really concerned with the thread that sparked BakerStreet's comment but with the comment itself (quoted above) - but I thought a little backstory necessary as introduction to the comments I have to make on BakerStreet's ideas.

The first assumption he makes (in common with everyone else) is that a relationship that overtly expresses aspects of domination and servitude is 'problematic'. Like most, he seems not to see that the problem most often is with the observer, not with those actively involved. I've written in several places on here, and in a variety of ways, that such relationships are characteristic of human history (looked at personally - as in the personal is the political - or more 'globally'). I see no problem in our relationship and neither does LW.

BakerStreet postulates where others insist - but what he postulates - co-dependency, childhood abuse, or some more general flaw originating in experience and 'mental adjustment' - is no different, merely less insistent. This is the first area in which his comment is problematic. It takes for granted that its LW and I that have a problem, rather than he himself. A second difficulty is that in his comment BakerStreet proposes a dichotomy between past experience and mental adjustment, and 'sometthing that came from how you were treated earlier in life'.

Consider: what is there in our emotional, sexual, intellectual lives that wasn't formed by our previous experiences and our mental adjustments to it? Put another way, what is there in us that does not come to us from our earlier lives? Of course, to be able to appreciate what my question is asking, you have to take a step back from 'the normal' and see it as something we make, on a day to day basis, as part of the conversation that every society has with itself as to what constitutes it, what defines it.

None of us exists in a vacuum and if we're the products of our own experiences and our mental adjustments to it, we're also a product of the point of time which our lives span, the moment in history that our lives occupy, the intersection of everything we think we are with everything everyone else thinks they are, with everything everyone else thinks we are.

The fact that what we are exists somewhere between what we think and what everyone else thinks (whether in terms of individuals or nations and societies) doesn't mean that as individuals we don't play a role in negotiating that reality with others. And because it's a negotiation reality, normality, is not a factual place we occupy, its a debated and debatable place (in the old sense of a site of battle) that we move through. Some never take up more than one position or employ more than one strategy (those who see 'normality' itself as unproblematic) others occupy many places and employ many strategies.

Myself, I've come to follow desire as a guide, to employ reason as a means to understand what must be done to satisfy desire, and will as the vehicle that carries me toward completion of those goals. Sexually, this modus vivendi translates into S&M, politically (as a philosophy and an understanding, rather than a form of activism) it translates into what I've called civil authoritarianism. Socially it translates into a form of play-acting that conceals what I am from my neighbours and co-workers. If they could see what I am they would not like what I am (since they are typically American in terms of their sexual neuroses and political fears) which, at this point, could only work to my detriment.

I am, you are, the product of your past experience and your mental adjustment to it. Just as BakerStreet is. There is no dichotomy between previous experience and mental adjustment to it, and our inheritance from our earlier lives. That is what we are.

BakerStreet employs a straw man of an argument, hoping to catch his correspondent out. In the terms of his question LW's condition (and by extension mine) is either a consequence of some trauma in the past (in which case our 'sickness' consists in being unable to overcome that trauma); or it is the product of some depraved nature, natural to us but a deviation, a depravity, in relation to the norm for such behaviours - in which case our problem lies in a lack of self-discipline with which to combat and resist this depravity.

He makes a false dichotomy on the basis of his preferred version of what is right, the assumption that what we do is 'wrong', and then waits for us to trap ourselves by responding to the question in those terms. But what we do is not 'wrong', no more than it is 'right'. It's a private matter that has nothing whatever to do with public questions of appropriate behaviour, and still less to do with questions that ought to be settled through criminal law.

His construction of the question in these terms is made explicit in his comments on homosexuality. He refers to the 'many' who think of homosexuality as a mental or emotional problem - whereas in fact it's actually the solution to a variety of mental and emotional problems, just as heterosexuality is another such solution - thus safely insulating himself from accusations of homophobia. But it's he who has framed this question, and framed it in these terms, making a problem out of 'deviant' sexual practices (in this case, S&M, homosexuality, and submissive behaviour) where no such problem exists - except in the minds of the average American sexual neurotic.

In a society of civilized adults sexual matters would be a matter of civility. It's no concern of mine, as a citizen, what gender of person my neighbour most wants sex with. The bedroom only becomes a matter of public concern where criminality is involved - and in all cases of sexual behaviour between consenting adults, no matter what form such behaviour takes, the criminal law should have nothing whatever to say. Private disapproval, on the part of no matter how many, ought not to be the basis of public law applicable to all.

The prurient, obsessive, intrusive fascination with sex displayed in the terrors of the American public (typified by the truly grotesques outcry over Janet Jackson's breast), it's horrors and palpitations over the appearance of 'Brokeback Mountain', is no basis on which to create law that affects all private citizens. It's an attitude of mind that finds its only proper home in the embarrassed, frightened sniggering of children in a schoolyard. Among children it's natural and to be expected. Among adults it's repugnant. And while BakerStreet's comment is adult and civil in one sense, I hear in it, as I often do in news shows, in American advertising, in political 'debate' here, the sniggering of frightened and embarrassed children, too immature to address such questions as they ought to be addressed.

I don't have a problem with my life (nor do I have a problem with yours). LW doesn't have a problem with her life (I leave it to her to say if she has a problem with your life or not).

The only one with a problem here is you.

Comments (Page 1)

Ionolast

on Feb 19, 2006

I agree with you about the immaturity of most Americans concerning sex. God forbid a child should see a naked breast after he or she has stopped nursing, but I think people who emulate the opposite sex (homosexuals and cross-dressers) are confused about their sexuality, and therefore it is a mental problem.

EmperorofIceCream

on Feb 19, 2006

To Iconoclast:

How hard is is it to work out what makes your dick hard or your cunt wet? There is no confusion in myself as to what arouses me: the sight of blood on a screaming woman, the crack of the crop or the whip, forcible penetration (also known in S&M circles as 'play-rape') and a variety of other things to boot (such as seeing how many needles I can force through my wife's nipples at one time).

Homosexuals, cross-dressers, TVs, Transsexuals, are not confused by what they want. If they are confused at all it's by the response of others to what they want - the social and cognitive dissonance that's induced by failing to find in oneself the expected response to what's supposed by these others to be properly desired and desirable.

Myself, I've long known that what I wanted doesn't mesh with what the majority declares itself as wanting. My sexual life has included episodes with both sexes in a near infinite succession of roles (I've not yet bedded a transsexual of either pre- or post-operative varieties, but I intend to do both before I die).

Your comment makes explicit (without need to come out and actually say it) the assumption that there is some 'correct' manifestation of sexuality that ought to be practiced by everyone. Whereas in fact the only limitation of sexual expression that currently exists (in a biological as opposed to moral or legal sense) is the necessity that makes child-bearers of females. Other than that one fact (which I've no doubt will ultimately fall away as a consequence of developments in technology and taste) all restrictions on sexual behaviour exist as law and convention - and both are forms of social construction (not facts of nature) that develop out of the conversation a society holds with itself, the conversation I referred to in the article.

No. The only confusion that exists in the sexual lives of the deviant and the depraved derives from the fears, and the desires of others.

DEVIANTS OF THE WORLD UNITE!! You've nothing to lose but the bad opinion of a bunch of uptight middle-class pussyass motherfuckers who wouldn't know what an orgasm is if one bit them in the ass - twice.

Ionolast

on Feb 19, 2006

The idea that a homosexual or cross-dresser is a woman trapped in a man's body isn't confusion? Please.

EmperorofIceCream

on Feb 19, 2006

To Iconoclast:

The idea that a homosexual or cross-dresser is a woman trapped in a man's body isn't confusion? Please.

It's evident that you find such ideas confusing. But someone who is aware of the plurality of possibilities inherent in being a) embodied and

self-reflexive may find such concepts aids to clarity rather than confusion. I spent two years online as a 'lesbian'. I exclusively inhabited lesbian chat rooms, developed long term relationships with those who presented as women and accepted me as one of their own. I had a thoroughly good time and a great deal of perverse cyber sex.

Does the fact that I'm able to communicate in ways that could be characterized as 'feminine' mean I'm a 'woman trapped in a man's body'? No. Does the phrase itself make the possibility of someone else communicating with others for a majority of the time in the style or mode that's deemed appropriate for the opposite of his or her gender more intelligible to me? Yes, it does.

The fact that you are confused by an idea doesn't mean that the idea itself is confusing.

Ionolast

on Feb 19, 2006

I spent two years online as a 'lesbian'. I exclusively inhabited lesbian chat rooms, developed long term relationships with those who presented as women and accepted me as one of their own.

How do you know those people weren't doing the same thing you were? In other words, lying? How many of them were actual lesbians and thought that you or others were lesbians when you were actually deceiving them?

EmperorofIceCream

on Feb 19, 2006

To Iconoclast:

How many of them were actual lesbians and thought that you or others were lesbians when you were actually deceiving them?

I've no idea. Let me tell you two stories from that time that illustrate why the point you make is irrelevant. When I first discovered the internet and, in particular, online chat I was going through a process of self-exploration, of clarification of what I actually wanted (rather than what I thought others wanted of me) that was ideally suited to exploration in a theatre of dreams (which is what chat can be). In those earliest phases I hung around a lot in gay chat rooms since it was my homosexual impulses that stood in greatest need of exploration. While hanging out in Old VP's Pink Triangle I met many people presenting as both male and female who all described themselves as homosexual, and had many conversations both public and private that allowed me to explore feelings and desires openly and honestly in ways which were unavailable to me otherwise.

The fact that I had no clue as to whether the people I was talking with, fantasising with, cyberfucking with, were who they actually said they were, were the sex they claimed to be, is neither here nor there. Is, in fact, completely irrelevant to how I understood those experiences and what I took from them. For all I know, every one of them was a fat trucker from Philadelphia. It's of no importance now, and was of no importance then.

In a uniquely obvious way I and these others participated in a shared world that we constantly created and destroyed, whose only constants were the 'regulars' (a population that also changed, though slowly) who provided the only context that could have existed for such an experience. Together we fabricated an alternate space in which it was possible to be whatever at that moment it was necessary for any of us to be. What we were outside that space was never questioned because it was immaterial to what we were doing - except as a source of high drama whenever a 'player' was outed lol. I once had a custom VP gesture (made much later but much loved because of its association in my mind with this time) that said "Fag Fight - beware of low flying tutus". The outing of a player was a moment of high tragedy and despicable treachery - but it was also a constructed moment valued for its entertainment and as a source of febrile gossip - the Triangle could be terribly camp.

As part of one of these public conversations I received an IM from a person presenting as young, unsure, and eager for help and counsel on all things gay. We had a wonderfully entertaining conversation that left this person (who presented as a lesbian) seemingly full of hope and good feelings. As a coincidence, and on the basis of a desire to see whether or not I could pass for a lesbian in an online community of them (again, whether they actually were what they presented themselves as being or not is irrelevant), this conversation took place just prior to my first appearance in a lesbian chat room.

One of the first conversations I had in Grrrls Domain (as that series of rooms was known) was with the girl (or boy, or fat trucker from Philadelphia) that I had spoken to while presenting myself as a homosexual male in the Pink Triangle. The comment that I treasure from that second encounter was simply this: "I knew you weren't really a man. You're too nice."

Whatever the actual biological state of the persons involved I had successfully passed myself off as my correspondents preferred gender. In other words I communicated in ways that this person, whether female or not, deemed to be feminine. What's important is not whether we were who we said we were, but whether or not we achieved a form of communication that successfully satisfied what we sought from it.

In these very early days I hadn't clearly formulated to myself the phrases 'theatre of dreams' and 'labarotory of personality'. But that's what chat was for me, even then when I couldn't express it so. What that means is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the story of my relationship to John. I met John when he and I were both regularly presenting in chat as women - but neither of us knew that about each other. By the time that we met we were both experienced enough to know that no deception of this sort can be carried out without a well-developed and consistent backstory in which a whole imaginary life-history has been created and fully developed. I had mine and he had his and both were equally convincing. Incidentally, it's through inconsistencies in the backstory that most players were ultimately outed - this all happened in those distant times before voice chat and webcams.

For months we pursued a successful and very passionate online relationship as two women involved in all kinds of perverse sex (the fact that it was imaginary sex is again irrelevant, the intensity of imagination involved guaranteeing, for us, its reality) - but only ever as two women involved in a sado-masochistic relationship of domination and submission.

And then, one day, my partner in these adventures told me 'she' had a confession to make. I can't remember under what name I'd known 'her' in chat, but 'she' said "My names not really (whatever psuedonym was being used) - it's John." I laughed so hard I almost fell of the chair. And in reply i sent "Well, John, I have a confession too... My Name's not really Simone.... It's Simon." And after several moments of silence, John reported that he had laughed so hard that he had actually wet himself a little.

Now, if your comment as to whether anyone in chat actually knows the truth about anyone they talked to had any real validity, if 'truth' were not something constructed by those who participate in it but something actual in its own right, then both John and I both should have been so shocked by the revelation of our mutual 'deception' that all possibility of communication must have immediately ceased. Communication is built on the assumption that what is communicated is true, and that parties to that communication are trustworthy.

And we had just proved to each other that we were not trustworthy because we had both 'lied'. At least, according to any common understanding of truth and trustiworthiness we had.

In fact, the truth and trust we had created between us was unaffected by these revelations. We continued for many months more to enjoy a relationship as passionate and committed (but even more perverse) than before. We swapped roles, we swapped genders, and we did so in the full knowledge that we were doing was not 'true' but was completely real. We explored and expressed appetites that could not (because of the demands of physics, gravity, and human endurance) be explored and expressed in any other way. And all of those explorations were real and, in my case at least, had a lasting effect on the development of my personality.

Your point is irrelevant because reality, in chat at least, is what you make it. The relevance of my chat experience to the point originally made, that I don't have a problem with my life where others do, is this. In a purely private space I create a world that satisfies my appetites, my desires. Providing that this private world doesn't inhibit or prevent my functioning in the public world, then my construction of a private universe is of no concern to anyone else.

Reality is socially constructed. It has two spheres, one private, the other public, and what occurs in one should not have a direct and causal relationship to what occurs in the other.

Furry Canary

on Feb 19, 2006

'The idea that a homosexual or cross-dresser is a woman trapped in a man's body isn't confusion? Please.'

Well, it's certainly confusion in your case, iconoclast.

1. People who believe themselves to be trapped in a body of the wrong gender (it happens the other way round too. incidentally - men feeling trapped in women's bodies) are transsexuals. Homosexuality and cross-dressing are different things altogether. Neither homosexuals nor cross-dressers necessarily have any feeling of being trapped in a body of the wrong gender.

2. Transsexuals are, in my experience, extremely UN-confused people. They are subject to the prejudices and attacks of an overwhelmingly hostile society, and yet they know EXACTLY how they feel, what their sexuality is, what their gender is (different thing, of course), and what they want to be. No, it seems to me that the straight-down-the-line missionary-on-Friday-night heterosexuals amongst us are probably far less rigorously confirmed in their sexuality, as it has never been tested to anything like the same extent.

bakerstreet

on Feb 19, 2006

"Consider: what is there in our emotional, sexual, intellectual lives that wasn't formed by our previous experiences and our mental adjustments to it? "

Which enters into the whole problem of 'being what you are' that people seem to lean so heavily on when it comes to practices considered deviant by society. On the one hand we are supposed to condemn 'cutters' and other behaviors that are self-destructive AND are the products of how we are treated in our formative years. On the other we are supposed to live and let live when we see other behaviors tied just as closely to the formation of the personality.

Don't you think it odd that if LW was hurting herself we'd consider it a serious problem, and yet when you do it we are supposed to see it as normal? I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone judging you sexually, I'm just recognizing that assault and battery are illegal, determined to be so by the people, and what you seem to offer to make yours a special case is 'because she wants it'. Well, in many cases of other behavior we deem that to be a mental health issue. Picking and choosing what is and isn't can't be as easy as taking someone's word for it.

Why? Because people who are abused tend to say what they are told to say. Chicken or the egg. Did the personality suggest the abuse, or did abuse suggest the personality?

"He makes a false dichotomy on the basis of his preferred version of what is right, the assumption that what we do is 'wrong', and then waits for us to trap ourselves by responding to the question in those terms. But what we do is not 'wrong', no more than it is 'right'. It's a private matter that has nothing whatever to do with public questions of appropriate behaviour, and still less to do with questions that ought to be settled through criminal law."

That's really only valid if you consider beating someone to be a sexual practice. A husband gets mad at his wife and slugs her, well, in 99% of cases that's domestic abuse. To me, it just seems that what separates one from the other is the ability of the husband to control the woman. The best abusers would be able to force their wives to say they enjoy it, wouldn't they?

I think you come from an unrealistic place where everyone is able to define everything for themselves. On the contrary, abuse, assault, etc., are defined by law. You aren't having a law imposed upon a separate practice, you are looking for an exemption from the law based upon the willingness of one party to be abused. Whether you get it or not isn't really up to me. I just know that in almost every other case self-harm is seen as a mental problem. Even when we abuse ourselves with substances it is recognized as abuse.

You impose the unrealistic label on me a lot. I tend to think that it is unrealistic to believe that we can use the law this way. This is basically allowing the abuser to decide if he is breaking the law or not, with the assumption that after systematic abuse the person abused will be able to protest if needed. To me, it seems simpler to call battery, well, battery.

"Reality is socially constructed. It has two spheres, one private, the other public, and what occurs in one should not have a direct and causal relationship to what occurs in the other."

Yet the law has to apply to both, since most violent crimes are committed in the private. If you can't see how what you propose could be abused, well, you aren't really considering the overall reality. To tag "and when she doesn't want it" on to the end of the criminal definition begs abuses that go a LOT farther than S&M.

Gideon MacLeish

on Feb 19, 2006

No, it seems to me that the straight-down-the-line missionary-on-Friday-night heterosexuals amongst us are probably far less rigorously confirmed in their sexuality, as it has never been tested to anything like the same extent.

Oh, you're SSSSSSOOOOOO right, furry! I need to go out and screw several guys, transsexuals and various livestock to know who I am! Thanks for the liberating words!

bakerstreet

on Feb 19, 2006

I just think that you don't realize how many women would say what you are claiming when their lives or children were threatened. Someone has been beaten, the police are standing there, and the woman says, no, I like it. How exactly are the police supposed to decide?

Answer that if you will. When the police are standing with an obviously physically abused woman, how exactly do YOU propose the tell the difference between S&M and plain-old, vanilla abuse? Her kids are at home, she has no job, if her husband goes to jail he'll just be out in a couple of months and restraining orders do dick.

Standing there, knowing that the next time might be a homicide, how do you as a police officer allow a battery to go unheeded just because the woman says "no, it's okay." Obviously you can't. That's why the abuse of another human is and should be illegal.

Furry Canary

on Feb 19, 2006

'Oh, you're SSSSSSOOOOOO right, furry! I need to go out and screw several guys, transsexuals and various livestock to know who I am! Thanks for the liberating words!'
Enjoy!

Gideon MacLeish

on Feb 19, 2006

Enjoy!

LOL!

EmperorofIceCream

on Feb 20, 2006

To BakerStreet:

On the one hand we are supposed to condemn 'cutters' and other behaviors that are self-destructive AND are the products of how we are treated in our formative years. On the other we are supposed to live and let live when we see other behaviors tied just as closely to the formation of the personality.

I'd be interested to know who this 'we' is that you refer to. I'd also be interested to know why you imagine a sadist would condemn cutters. My wife tells me that you made a comment on her 'I am a cutter' thread that showed you to be seriously disturbed by the phenomenon - and once again we have that confusion of personal opinion with political necessity that so typifies American thinking. But rest assured, since it disturbs you so, that my wife no longer cuts herself. She doesn't have to, because I do it for her.

That's really only valid if you consider beating someone to be a sexual practice.

Of course I consider beating my wife to be a sexual practice. I'm a Sadist. Not only a sexual practice but an art form; I'm not happy unless the stripes and weals I mark her with form patterns that have a pleasing aesthetic quality - and she is not pleased either. It's apparent from your comment so far that you simply have not grasped the consensual aspect of the pain that's inflicted by S&M practicioners in a session (or 'scene', as these things are often referred to). Beating my wife is not something that occurs spontaneously. It often, in our case, is involved in aspects of ritual worship. It is pre-meditated, arrainged between the two of us, and above all, consensual. And to that degree I differentiate what we (not simply I) do from common assault.

I think you come from an unrealistic place where everyone is able to define everything for themselves. On the contrary, abuse, assault, etc., are defined by law.

Do you think that the knowing Sadist, the knowing, self-aware masochist, isn't concerned with the law, isn't aware that legally speaking what they do is construed under law as assault? Of course they are. Certainly, both Sabrina and I are aware of the law's position. Which is why you'll never find Sabrina with a mark on any part of her flesh that can be seen under normal circumstances. I don't beat, whip, crop, or cut my wife in some sort of deranged frenzy, as many of you seem to imagine. In some ways what we do would seem cold, clinical and calculated to an outside observer; it's calculated nature being part of its consensual nature.

I tend to think that it is unrealistic to believe that we can use the law this way. This is basically allowing the abuser to decide if he is breaking the law or not, with the assumption that after systematic abuse the person abused will be able to protest if needed.

I draw a line between S&M, its practices, and abuse, which you appear unable to see let alone appreciate. C'est la vie - c'est la guerre. I've no doubt that you hold that view quite seriously and that, while you accept what we say concerning ourselves, you'll never be brought to agree with either of us. For my part, you're welcome to your opinion - as is everyone else; and just as surely, Sabrina and I will never agree with you.

I can, however, agree that my position is open to an attempted abuse. It's possible to imagine a situation in which an abusive husband might claim that he and his abused spouse were simply into 'rough sex'. However, as my wife has pointed out to you a couple of times, those not actually living this but merely claiming to do so as a 'get out of jail free' option would have no means to substantiate the claim, lacking both the tools of the trade and the proper attitudes. As has also been pointed out to you, partners in a healthy S&M relationship are not going to call the police on each other as consequence of a scene in which both have participated willingly and both found mutually satisfactory. Of course, a part of your problem with all of this is that you find it incredible that such a thing could actually be so. As I said: I don't have a problem with my life - you do.

EmperorofIceCream

on Feb 20, 2006

To BakerStreet:

Someone has been beaten, the police are standing there, and the woman says, no, I like it. How exactly are the police supposed to decide?Answer that if you will.

Both of us already have. Your putative policeman would have no problem distinguishing between a Sadist and his partner, and an abuser and his victim (or hers - not all abusers are male), in our case because we would not have called the police in the first place.

But once again, it's this very possibility that you find, at best, improbable if not actually impossible to comprehend. And once again, that's your difficulty to deal with, not mine.

Draginol

on Feb 20, 2006

Wow, if only we could all be as worldly as you.

Because, you know, people in other parts of the world are generally just so open about sex. No hang ups on sexuality in Africa, Asia, or the middle east right? But hey, a small chunk of Western Europe is slightly more liberated when it comes to sexuality and suddenly the US is made up of children.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or feel pitty at such a myopic view.

Incidentally, I believe two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home. So I don't really care. But arguing that the maturity of a given nation is dependent on how closely its people mirrors your beliefs is the height of arrogance. Even I, the Arrogance king, got goosebumps from this post.

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