For Women Who Are Difficult to Love

“You tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do, love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.”“For Women Who Are Difficult to Love,” Warsan Shire

Blow Me Away 30 Day Challenge

Blue and I have started listening to the (adorable) Sex Nerd Sandra podcast, and just listened to the episode on oral sex "Blow Each Other Away!"

In that episode, Sandra's guest Jaidra poses the hypothetical, "what would happen in your relationship if a couple had oral sex every day for 90 days?" What would it teach you about each other, about your own bodies, about the relationship, etc? 

Being the competitive person I am (and someone who really likes both giving and receiving oral sex)--let's do this! We've decided to start with a 30 day challenge, so as not to give ourselves too overwhelming a challenge (and because we're still semi-new to sexing each other and I want to do a lot of things that aren't oral related).

There's going to be a period in there where I'm in MD, but it's just going to have to happen that way, and we'll tack the days on at the other end of that six day period. 

In any case, we'll be starting next Friday, February 7th. Hurray!

Obligatory New Year's Post

Books Read 2012 (Goal: 60) So far: 60!

The Oathbound--Mercedes Lackey

Oathbreakers--Mercedes Lackey

Oathblood--Mercedes Lackey

The Last Werewolf--Glen Duncan

Collected Poems--Philip Larkin

Blueprints for Building Better Girls--Elissa Schappell

The Scorpio Races--Maggie Stiefvater

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer--Michelle Hodkin

Kraken--China Mieville

The Silver Metal Lover--Tanith Lee

Outlander--Diana Gabaldon

Firelight--Sophie Jordan

Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity--Harman and Thomson

How to Read a Poem--Molly Peacock

Vanish--Sophie Jordan

The Closing of the American Mind--Allan Bloom

The Public and Its Problems--John Dewey

Ship Of Magic--Robin  Hobb

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Friend of Virtue--Joseph R. Reisert

Rousseau and Desire--Blackell, Duncan, Kow

The Immortal Prince--Jennifer Fallon

Rousseau: Nature and the Problem of the Good Life--Laurence D. Cooper

John Dewey and Self-Realization--Robert J. Roth

John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics and Morality--Scott R Stroud

Starcrossed--Josephine Angelini

Bounty--Harper Alexander

Grimspace--Ann Aguirre

Cry Wolf--Patricia Briggs

How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents--Zac Bissonnette

Mistborn--Brandon Sanderson

Natural Goodness--Philippa Foot

On Virtue Ethics--Rosalind Hursthouse

Noncognitivism in Ethics--Mark Schroeder

Skios--Michael Frayn

Utilitarianism--John Stuart Mill

Fifty Shades of Grey--EL James

Seraphina--Rachel Hartman

Graveminder--Melissa Marr

The Player of Games--Iain M. Banks

Storm Born--Richelle Mead

The Golden Mean--Annabel Lyon

The Gift of Fear--Gavin de Becker

Unnatural Issue--Mercedes Lackey

John Dewey's Ethics: Democracy as Experience--Gregory Fernando Pappas

Transforming Experience:Joh Dewey's Cultural Instrumentalism--Michael Eldridge

Shadow of Night--Deborah Harkness

Beauty and the Werewolf--Mercedes Lackey

Everneath--Brodi Ashton

The Sun Also Rises--Ernest Hemingway

The Republic--Plato

Dead Witch Walking--Kim Harrison

Storm Glass--Maria V. Snyder

Tinker--Wen Spencer

Santa Cruise--Mary Higgins Clark/Carol Higgins Clark

Skipping Christmas--John Grisham

The Good, The Bad, and the Undead--Kim Harrison

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception--Pamela Meyer

Come On All You Ghosts--Matthew Zapruder

Human-Carrying Flight Technology--Christopher Shipman

For the Love of Letters: A 21st Guide to the Art of Letter Writing--Samara O'Shea

Better than staring out the window

I wanted a drink; a gin and tonic, to be precise. A reward for finishing a project I’d been laboring on for the past three months, in a day where I’d also been tested (declining irregular contracted nouns in the third declension in Ancient Greek) and flitted back and forth to campus four times on foot to hand in a shorter project on time (also completed today). But I was afraid to ask if you’d like to go, or even to go myself, by myself; I didn’t want to give you further, secret ammunition to use against me. 

I was dumbstruck the first time you used drinking as a weapon against me; deliberately leading the conversation here in the middle of a fight on completely unrelated territory, wondering if I were an alcoholic, in so many words. Apparently tallying the drinks I bought myself to unwind, evidence of money I selfishly spent on myself. Not so innocently, though you gave no indication at any time that this might be a problem, and so I went merrily along, thinking I was, in your eyes as in my own, having a drink for fun. My right, my minor indulgence in a fairly serious-minded, spare year.

Wanting one now, I have to wonder what you’ll think. Yes, I accomplished something I’ve been working on for a long time, and yes I worked hard all day and have been working hard for a while now. But I had a beer earlier. I wonder that you’ll think that wanting a drink after a long day is physical dependence. I wonder that you’ll point to this day in specific as evidence that I don’t value you (I still don’t understand how that argument goes). 

I find myself becoming irritated, just sitting here on the couch stewing, wanting that drink. Watching you build across the room, feeling matronly and tightly strung in my best boots and my red top and my tight black jeans. Blonde bangs in my face, putting the same stale water into the kettle, to boil it for the third time.

When I have sex, I don’t just get off on my own kinks and my own pleasure. I also get off on my partner’s pleasure. The sight, the sound, the feel, of someone in my bed who’s getting excited and getting off… that’s hot. It’s not particularly selfless or noble of me — it’s just hot. The more I care about someone, the more true that is… And if you can’t get off on the sight and sound and feel of your partner’s pleasure — even if what you’re doing isn’t your particular favorite thing — then what the hell are you doing in a sexual / romantic relationship?

Greta Christina’s Blog: Broccoli or Tofu? Sexual Differences in Relationships

I was averse to even oral sex for the longest time because men use “cocksucker” as an insult… I question/correct my boyfriend any time he uses “sucks dick” to mean something is negative. If he wants me to do nice things for him, he needs to acknowledge that they are nice things.

Comment by dormouse on Feminist Critique of Hetero Male Culture Causes Mass MRA Hysteria

At the same time as anal penetration is held up in hetero male culture as the ultimately painful/humiliating/unpleasant experience, it’s also held up as one of the premium sexual experiences any man can have - IF he’s on the penetrating end. The plethora of articles in men’s magazines and on men’s websites that instruct men on how to get their girlfriend/wife to have anal sex is staggering…

If anal penetration is the horrible, painful, humiliating thing you imagine it to be, why would you ever want a woman you love, or one you respect and to whom you’re attracted, to experience it? If it’s this horrendous experience, why, oh why, are you expending so much energy trying to inflict it on someone else? And if you expect women to be open to trying it, why continue to use it as the ultimate analogy for all things negative? Don’t you think we hear you when you talk? Don’t you think we get that you associate anal sex with pain and humiliation?

Feminist Critique of Hetero Male Culture Causes Mass MRA Hysteria