But, But....You Don't Understand

No, see. The problem is that I do. Far too well.

And so you have to look at the development of female geeks, who not only have the same not-conventionally attractive, socially confused, and isolated early conditioning as male geeks....

So, a story.

I was visiting colleges. Which was a painful experience to begin with, because the school I really wanted to attend was not only the most expensive - both to visit and to attend - but the slowest in getting me my financial aid package. So I spent about a month going around to the other schools. All the while trying really hard to not compare them with what would one day be my alma mater.

(Yes, there is a happy ending to this story.)

So, I was visiting colleges. One in particular up in WA, to be exact. Doing the whole tour/sleepover/sitting in on classes thing. And there were a bunch of us, because it was that time of year, who were being hosted by the same woman. The visit itself was pretty uneventful - aside from the fact that I watched ER for the first time - except for two things....

....but the added stigma of not having their intelligence recognized, encouraged, or appreciated.

The Second Incident:

I sat in on an electronics class.

Which was completely my fault, as I'd asked for a science class. Physics, preferably.

I understood very little of it, but it sounded really interesting, and I thought it was cool that I understood even some of it. But all the students - who, looking back, must have been science majors themselves, considering the level of the class - kept making comments about how I must be bored out of my mind and how they were so sorry I'd gotten this class.

I wasn't. And why did they think I would be?

And did I really want to take classes with people like that? I thought the point of college was to leave those people behind in high school?

I mean, the idiot partner from my high school physics class may ignore me every time I say the right answer, but at least he cares enough to pretend that he's smarter than I am.

And being told that their only worth is their sexuality, and clearly they FAIL at that.

Because I'm all about non-linear narrative tonight, a confession.

I was one of those girls once upon a time. You know, those heartless bitches that turn guys into jerks.

Only once, though.

He asked me to go out when we were in 6th grade - and still in elementary school. I told him that I didn't really think we were old enough for that, but that I still wanted to be his friend. (I am so not making this up.) I got all pissed when he didn't want to be friends anymore and found it really awkward when did stuff like ask me to dance at this stupid thing they held for us at science camp.

I wanted to say no but I couldn't because we weren't allowed to. Dance rules. Grrr. I have no idea if he knew that I didn't want to touch him, but it would have been really hard not to know.

(no, really, this is all true)

You end up with a lot of touch-starved women.

All through elementary school - well, fourth grade onwards, my crush was on...damn, I completely forgot his name....anyway, he was cool. Cooler than I would ever be. The boy wore Grateful Dead and Led Zepplin T-shirts in 6th grade. I still don't own any music by either of those bands. He was super cool.

And he was a nerd, too! We were in GATE and science fairs together. He made a robot in 4th grade for his science project and demonstrated it to the class and I spent the whole time secretly wishing he would pick me to try the remote. For several obvious reasons. (It was a cool robot.)

But he worked really hard at ignoring me.

And right after the Nice Guy asked me to dance at science camp, it was my turn to ask my crush to dance - and get the same treatment I'd just gotten.

You end up with women who think, "I'm sick of being only appreciated in virtual spheres for my intelligence, but still not treated as being as intelligent as men, and I'm sick of being told I'm worthless because I'm not drop-dead gorgeous. If I can't be loved, I want to at least be desired."

The First Incident:

It was about the time when normal people would turn in for bed, and our host announced that there would be one more activity. Lucky us, we'd come on the night when they guys traditionally came to serenade the girls dorm.

Being the silly girl I was, my first thought was "how romantic!" And hiding in the darkest secretest shadows of my heart was the wish that I would picked as worthy of a serenade.*

She wanted to give us fair warning though, because last year the guys thought it would be funny to be all insulting and shit and call the women names while "serenading" them. One poor girl apparently got so upset she had to leave.

(Upset - like throwing things at them upset? - I wanted to ask.)

So she just wanted us to know that we didn't have to go if we didn't want to or if we didn't think we'd enjoy it.

Well, gee, guess who opted to opt out.

And guess who the other two girls spend at least a full half hour talking about when they came back. (Be warned, my spirit animal is a opossum.)



Yeah, there's no pressure at play at all in Operation Douche.



Quotes from sabotabby via the_red_shoes via hahathor via lauredhel.

*FYI to any interested parties, being serenaded in public is no longer a secret wish of mine. Unlike you are the late, great, Heath Ledger. Or you are a famous rock star who has written a hit single about me. Otherwise it's just creepy and/or immature.

On the Bright Side

It's all so very snark-worthy

"This should be a better world," a friend of mine said. "A more honest one, where sex isn't shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where say, 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts,' and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful."

I must fail at logic, because I completely fail to understand why saying "your body is beautiful" is massively more complicated than saying something like "Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts."

And I will say, yet again, that if any guy ever comes up to me and compliments me by saying simply "you're beautiful," I will die of shock. Which will be very sad, because he was sure to get my number and/or my first born child otherwise.

We were standing in the hallway of ConFusion, about nine of us, and we all nodded. Then another friend spoke up.

"You can touch my boobs," she said to all of us in the hallway. "It's no big deal."

I'm fascinated by her phrasing here, and how everyone in the group finds this so refreshing. I mean, I'm very much not down with the whole "sex is a special thing that should only happen between two people who are in love!" meme that most of the world pretends to be caught up in, but isn't it a little insulting for her to say that "it's no big deal?" Unless her breasts are completely lacking in nerve endings, shouldn't she have some kind of feeling toward the experience? Otherwise, isn't it just a mini version of pity-sex?

Now, you have to understand the way she said that, because it's the key to the whole project. The spirit of everything was formed within those nine words - and if she'd said them shyly, as though having her breasts touched by people was something to be endured or afraid of, the Open-Source Boob Project would have died...

I agree. Her lack of (stated) desire and the fact that she was making an offer and not a proposal, very much is the spirit of the project, and very much why the project is complete FAIL.

Yet it wasn't a come-on, either. There wasn't that undertow of desperation of come on, touch me, I need you to validate my self-esteem, and maybe we'll hook up later tonight. There was no promise of anything but a simple grope.

Because, of course, when women do come-on's it's because we are desperate. Guys on the other hand, are just being guys. So when they say 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts" women should translate that to "your body is beautiful" and not get sidetracked by all the "me/I" statements.

We all reached out in the hallway, hands and fingers extended, to get a handful...They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched.

Which raises the question of which breasts are not worthy of being touched, and how the poor women attached to such breasts feel about that.

And life seemed so much simpler.

Yeah, not having to think about privilege is like that.

In this moment, all of the societal restrictions had fallen away, and we discovered an eBay-like need: We liked to express adoration of her body, and she liked the compliment of being desired. It wasn't a one-way flow; it was a stream of compliments being passed back and forth as we explored that small zone of her body, a My God, these are beautiful breasts you have, along with the backstream compliment of Thank you, you're worthy of touching them.

Dear idiots, the issue is not your worthiness, but her desires. You can pretend all you want that you are living in a brand new world, but if she says you can touch her breasts because you are worthy, oh great one, and not because she wants you to, then it's really just the same old world. As it usually is.

Plus, "an eBay-like need"?? wtf is that even supposed to mean?

It could have been a base lechery. But instead, it was sexual desire made simple. We knew we couldn't go further, but being allowed inside this area of restricted access with nothing more than a question was somehow amazing.

After all, usually women make using their bodies all complicated and shit.

Oh and wtf is up with confusing desire and pleasure? Dudez, the desire was made simple by skipping from compliments to expressing your id. It's the getting of sexual pleasure, not desire, that you are talking about here.

We stood there afterwards, a little shocked

Do I really have to say the obvious?

Then someone else spoke up in the same tone of voice:

"You can touch mine, too."

Well, at least this time there was no "it's no big deal." Although, I must ask, why no "Can I see your cock?" Cuz that's totally what I would have said instead.

And my God! We all reached out like zombies trying to break through a door to get to those breasts.

Yeah, no desperation here.

And it wasn't getting any worse! We weren't degenerating into an orgy....

Isn't that a direct contradiction to the above sentence? Or maybe he thinks zombies are sexy.

Nobody was trying to pull off a bra or suck on a nipple; we'd been given access to a very special place that only lovers usually touched, and why would you be so crude as to try to push the boundaries of that?

You mean men can be expected to respect personal boundaries? I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

No really. After reading all of this, I kinda am.

And every girl in that hallway was then asked the question: "May I touch your breasts?" They considered, and said yes. And we all did.

Wow, no pressure there.

And my Lord, I'd had experience in breasts in my time, but having so many compared right next to each other was beautiful. One of the reasons I love sex is because every body is so different, and the differences in size, and skin tone, and nipple sensitivity, and bras - bras were a big deal in how a boob felt - were highlighted....

Yes, every breast is different, but only some are worthy of being touched.

We went back to some of the first open-sourcers, eager for comparison. "Can I touch them again?" "Sure!" And the feel-ups continued.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. As others have painstakingly pointed out, open-source is about who owns the rights, not who ultimately uses the software.

I felt the terrors of high school washing away from me. It could be this easy. Just ask!

Apologies, but I really must quote CM on this one:

"I wish all our unsubs tacked their profile up on the wall like this."

Unresolved issues much?

And then the real magic happened. Because a beautiful girl in an incredibly skimpy blue Princess outfit strode down the hallway, obviously putting her assets on display (the thin strips of her clothing had to be taped to her body to stay on), and we stopped her.

Oh dear god, no.

"Excuse me," the first, very brave girl asked. "You're very beautiful. I'd like to touch your breasts. Would you mind if I did?"

Ok, now I'm really confused. If the idea is that people should take "I'd like to touch your breasts" to equal "You're very beautiful" then why the hell did she say both? Methinks someone isn't being very honest with themselves.

We held our breath. We didn't want to offend.

Yet, they "didn't want to" enough to not take the risk of doing so, obviously. How daring of them to risk her feeling humiliated so that they could cop a feel.

This could go wrong, collapsing and turning us into cruel lechers who'd make her feel uncomfortable and shamed of who she was....

You know, most people get past the "it doesn't happen unless I see it" stage at about age 3.

A tip for all dudez (and dudettes) thinking of trying this. Her saying that you are lechers is not what turns you into lechers.

She thought for a heartbeat, sizing us up. But there must have been something honest and trustworthy in our eyes that promised that we wouldn't get out of hand... Because after a moment, she smiled and said, "Sure!"

Again with the worthiness. And the idea men behaving is shocking. And the lack of awareness of risk analysis. (She decided that they were trustworthy, not that what they promised was worth the risk of what might happen. And god forbid we mentioned the possibility of peer pressure or the risk analysis often involved in saying "yes" when you want to say "no.")

The first girl touched respectfully.

The repetition of "respectful" is really making me wonder why such respect is considered so noteworthy to the author.

And reported that they were glorious.

More than any other part of this post, this sentence makes me want to beg the writer in question to never write anything ever again. Please. With sugar on top.

.... It wasn't that she was a piece of meat to be felt up, but rather that a living person that we did not know had voluntarily lowered the barriers that separate us and allowed us in... And we were so grateful that we were showering her in pure adoration.

You know, I might actually believe this if I thought for one nano-second that any one of them asked her how she wanted to be touched, rather than if they could touch her or how she didn't want to be touched. But since I'm fairly certain none of them did, I fail to see how any of this is adoration.

It was exciting, of course. I won't deny it was sexual.

Except for her, of course.

But it was a miraculous sexuality that didn't feel dirty, but clean.

Dare I suggest that it's because you weren't bothered by thoughts of her pleasure? Plus, your issues are showing again. You might want to take care of that. And no, not caring about how others feel is not the way to do so.

Emboldened, we started asking other people. And lo, in the rarified atmosphere of the con, few were offended and many agreed.

Which makes it all good, cuz that's what a democracy is about, right? As long as most everyone's ok with it, it's ok to do it.

And they also felt that strange charge.

You know, it might have been just you. I doubt that most SF fans are quite as repressed as the stereotype says they are.

Or, it could have just been the static electrcity

We went around the con, asking those who we thought might be amenable - you didn't just ask anyone, but rather the ones who'd dressed to impress - and generally, people responded. They understood how this worked instinctively, and it worked.

Gee, there's no rape apology lingering under all that. No siree.

And on a completely unrelated note, I wore oversized t-shirts all through high school because I was all about being comfortable at that age.

By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?"

I just can't snark about that. It's just too sad.

And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry.

I'm glad you've finally figured out how to do that, but I still don't think a public space is quite the right place for it.

Oh, and I thought I'd give you fair warning that I'm trying to find a way to ban the letters l and o from the internet.

We talked about this. It was an Open-Source Project, making breasts available to select folks.

Really, there is no end to his lack of understanding of the idea of open-source.

(Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It.)

Irony, my good friend! So nice to see you.

And we wanted a signal to let people know that they were okay with being asked politely,

For their sake, of course.

so we turned it into a project:

The Open-Source Boob Project.

At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask:

"Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?"

Ok so, I'm going to give the Douche the benefit of the doubt and assume that people with the latter buttons were left alone. But still, what is the point of the "No!" buttons?

Oh, silly me, I keep thinking that he's being sincere in trying to make this easier for the gropees. No, it's always all about the gropers.

And if you weren't a total lout - the women retained their right to say no, of course - they would push their chests out, and you would be allowed into the sanctity of it. That exchange of happiness where one person are told with gropes and touches that they are desirable and the other is someone who's allowed to desire.

Again, desire =/= sexual pleasure. Which, in turn =/= access to other's bodies. There is a connection, yes. But they are not all the same thing.

For a moment, everything that was awkward about high school would fade away and you could just say what was on your mind. It was as though parts of me were being healed whenever I did it, and I touched at least fifteen sets of boobs at Penguicon.

Unresolved issues. Drink!

It never got old, surprisingly.

Surprising? In what way is that surprising?

Some women didn't want to. That was fine.

Wow. Good to know.

We never demanded anything of anyone.

You know, despite the obvious douchbaggery involved here, it never actually occurred to me that any of them did (explicitly). The fact that he felt the need to clarify that makes me wonder, however.

And if you didn't want to put yours up for the Project but you wanted to touch, well, that was fine, too. It was simply for folks who felt like being open.

Open to what, exactly? Other than being reassured that I am worthy enough to be groped, I'm a little confused as to what I'm supposed to be open to.

It was a raging success at Penguicon.... And there haven't been any hookups that I know of thanks to the Open-Source Boob Project.

So, I'm not saying that touches aren't good by themselves, but still, this is a good thing why?

I've left off the names, because frankly, people should reveal for themselves whether they're Open-Sourcers or not. Not everyone wants to go public with it, and what happens at the con stays at the con. But trust me. If you are, and I meet you, I will ask.

You have insurance, yes? Good.

And you'll understand the beauty and simplicity of the Open-Source Boob Project for yourself.

Well, yes, being the crazy feminazi that I am, I'm always eager to kick men in the balls. I so rarely get socially sanctioned chances to do so, however. Nice of you to do me that favor.

Touch the magic, my friends. Touch the magic.

And here, I though that earlier sentence could never be topped for pure "dear god, I wish I'd never read that"-ness.

It's the "Sex" Part That Needs Redefining

I've been reading figleaf's Real Adult Sex (NSFW, but not quite what it sounds like either) and he's been talking a lot about what he's "calling *men's* dominant paradigm of women as the "no-sex" class."

I find the posts interesting because, well, they are (this is one of my faves, for obvious reasons) but also because it's really nice to listen to someone trying to work out feminist arguments in a way that will actually reach other men without intentionally watering them down or twisting them into something they are not.

He explains the theory thusly:

But.... it *doesn't* resonate with men... to the point where we're inclined to say "in our dreams!" Because for whatever indisputable *abstract* privileges such class division might bring to us our *experience* of it is... pretty disempowering.

So in the face of that contradiction -- holding the reins of patriarchy on the one hand and feeling totally out of power when it comes to sex on the other -- I decided to try and (mis)apply a standard strategy from mathematical logic: attempt to prove the contrary position -- that men perceive women as the *no* sex class -- and see what shakes out. And, in fact, tons of fascinating stuff shakes out....

The point being not that feminist theories are wrong but that they are incomplete in that they tend to only describe how men (as a class) act within the system and how women experience being in the system, not how the average man actually experiences being in the system, or even really how women act from his perspective. Which is a fair criticism.

It's also the type of criticism and expansion of feminist theories that is best done with men leading the way - for obvious reasons - so it's really nice to see a man addressing it, because I've been wanting my male peers dissatisfaction to be properly addressed for quite a while now.

But of course, that doesn't mean I agree with all of it. I don't think he's wrong, exactly, just that it's obvious and understandable that he's still working this out - we all are - so it needs some (a lot?) of fine tuning.

It makes me feel like we need some unifying theory.

While he talks about this terminology resonating with men when little else does, and he draws as much from feminist writers as he does from personal experience when explaining the theory, it still bothers me that the terminology doesn't completely resonate with women. (ok, with me, anyway.) So, while it's a very useful theory for reaching out to men, (and again, may I add, thank god, finally?) it still doesn't help much for reaching out to people and has limits in the extent to which it will facilitate conversations between women and men, feminists and not.

Mostly, I disagree that women don't see a distinction between being called "the sex class" or "the no sex class." I think that men and women both identify with being called "the sex class" - or identify with neither. This presents a problem when trying to work things out together.

Well, then, how to resolve this?

I think figleaf got pretty close in his this post on the consent:

I was thinking about someone I quoted earlier on the limits of "no means no" and it occurred to me that even the concept of requiring consent is kind of missing a big point.

We don't seek our friend's "consent" when we ask them to join us for lunch. Instead we seek consent to park our car in somebody's driveway. We don't seek "consent" when we have a couple of extra tickets and ask if our friends want to tag along. We seek consent to use the school gymnasium for a neighborhood fundraiser.

There's been a lot of talk in the feminist blogosphere over the last several years about shifting the goalposts of consent from "no mean no" to "yes means yes."* Which I completely agree with.

But, yeah, still missing the point. Legally, it makes sense to worry about consent, because that's always going to be the legal issue. But culturally, it's both a revolutionary step forward and still so far off the mark. I have the same vague feeling about defining men as the "sex" class and shifting women to the "no-sex" class. It's useful, and good, and suggests some major changes to how we view things, but pretty soon we are going to notice that we've only moved things around a bit. The paradigm shift we are looking for is still buried beneath it all.

I think quite often we are talking past each other.

Not because women are from Venus or men say what they mean, dammit! But because we perceive ourselves differently than others perceive us.

Figleaf classifies women as the "no-sex" class (er....identifies that women are perceived as the "no-sex" class by men) because men have this perception that women don't want sex.

But why the fuck does this even matter? Why does the stereotypical man care that he wants to have sex but women (supposedly) don't? And why do we care? Well, because the stereotypical man wants to have sex with a woman, not a man, that's why!** Shifting women to the "no-sex" class is still focusing on how one gender experiences and perceives the other; it's not really looking at how we both experience living with the system, how we perceive ourselves and are viewed in turn, and, most of all, how this all fits together:

I'm suggesting that either way the heteronormative assumption is that sex is something to be obtained by the man, and dispensed by the woman... that sex is requested by the man and granted by the woman... which in turn assumes that sex isn't something she just might naturally just want to *have.* And that's what I mean by the dominant male paradigm of women as the "no-sex" class -- that by nature women just aren't interested, let alone motivated, the way men are.

Wait!....back up a bit.

....the heteronormative assumption is that sex is something to be obtained by the man, and dispensed by the woman.

Yup, that's the part.

Or, as someone told me quite seriously during the pie fights "A man's sexuality is defined by sexually desiring women. A woman's sexuality is defined by men sexually desiring her." In short form: sex is something that men want and that women have.

That lie that "women don't want sex" is only one part of this very false proscription for sexual behavior.

It's an important one. One that's long overdue for demolishing. And certainly a better one for talking to men than "men hate women." (As is the reasoning behind labeling men the "sex" class - the "boys will be boys" assumption that men are always horny that figleaf picks apart all the time as well.)

However, it's one that doesn't resonate with women not only because, as figleaf constantly points out, we know this for the lie it is, but also because it doesn't speak to our experiences as the class that is responsible for giving out sex.

Now, I don't think that figleaf needs to change his terminology so that it will speak to women as well as men. That would be silly and selfish and counter-productive for obvious reasons. But again, we need some way of talking about this is public, in mixed company, etc. And I think the key there will be found in the dynamic itself - and the tension between how we are taught to be, how other's perceive us, and who we actually are - not just how men or women view the system from the inside.


*the term, in case anybody doesn't know it, is really "enthusiastic participation." But, it tends to be rephrased as "yes means yes" when talking to a non-feminist audience. Which rather misses the point, imo, since the most radical part of "enthusiastic participation" is the idea that one wants to do this, rather than emphatically agreeing to do something.

**because, you know, no one is gay or bi in the prescriptive scenario.