Philosophical consistency is an aspirational goal. It is not, no matter how much we may want to believe in our own purity, something any of us will ever truly achieve. Also, even if you drive a Prius your farts stink; you have to spring for a Tesla before they turn to perfume.
It is easy to see the inconsistencies in the belief systems of people with whom we disagree (because they are all stupid and rude); it is much harder to recognize those in our own noble, and wise beliefs. Almost all of us here are small ‘l‘ libertarians. Iam a conservative leaning libertarian. We yokels sometimes make jokes about capital “L” Libertarians being all about pot, Mexicans and ass sex which is our deliberately offensive shorthand for our belief that The Libertarian Party, (sorry I know it doesn’t really deserve a capital letter but how else do we distinguish between libertarians and Bill Weld?)campaigns exclusively on sexual liberation (which has been pretty completely achieved, and no you did not get a speck of credit from the progs), drug legalization (yay crony pot!), and open borders, to the exclusion of freedom of association, gun rights, and limiting the massive growth of government, which we see as the more significant issues.
I set this all out as a starting point, because I am going to be examining one of my own prejudices and it helps to give some context about my belief structure. In other words I studied law and philosophy and am now completely incapable of getting directly to the point. Hell, just be glad I didn’t spend 5 pages defining every noun in this article.
Up to this point you are probably thinking: Pompous guy spouting above the fray platitudes, libertarian model II, Paulista edition, time to move to the comments, nothing interesting here. But I am not writing this to signal virtue; I am writing this, and struggling with it, because I have realized (not for the first time) that I have a conflict in my beliefs, and one that I think quite a few people here share.
It has to do with everyone’s favorite non-acronym acronym. That wonderful keyboard swipe that defines sexual politics, LGBTQ. I am not worried about the L, they take care of themselves just fine, the G, they aren’t even victims anymore, the B, doubled date chances and all, or even the Q (Hi Q thanks for the mammaries!), but I have a problem with the T. Ok, I don’t really understand the Q, I mean literally, I do not understand what queer means if it is something not covered by the L,B, or G. So back to that troublesome T.
I believe that there are three phenomena lumped into that T, and that due to deliberate conflating of these phenomena, a great deal of misery is being created. First, there are the physically intersex individuals. That tiny minority who are born with some ambiguity in their sexual characteristics. Second, there are those suffering from gender dysphoria. Also a small minority, but in this case with a psychological disconnect between their otherwise normal physiology and their self perception. Finally, there are those I think of as the snowflakes. Generally young people who I believe identify as transgender either in confusion about their sexual desires, a search for victimhood, or just to dramatize teen angst.
For the intersex folk out there I have nothing but compassion. My only wish for them is that they find whatever role and path to happiness they can. If that means surgery, hormone treatments, and selection of a gender, great; if it means some other path, also great. For those with actual gender dysphoria my thoughts are more complicated. I personally think that treating a psychological disconnect by changing the body is the wrong path, but it isn’t my place to decide what path someone else should take, so who cares what I think?
For the snowflakes, less sympathy, a lot less. As with many snowflake issues the answer is that growing up is hard, but worthwhile, and I suggest they give it a try. No, occasionally having a stereotypical feminine feeling does not a dysphoria make. You are not a lesbian woman trapped in a man’s body. You are just a straight dude, even if you get off on wearing women’s clothes. Equally, if you are ok with your body, but want to engage in sex with another dude that is called being gay, it does not require surgery, hormones, or switching restrooms. Just do what makes you happy, don’t harm other people and stop being so dramatic.
And now you are all thinking: Ok, what’s so contradictory about all this? These are pretty bland, basic viewpoints on this issue, and even the part where I diverge from the sjw narrative I admit is none of my business so why bother to spout off? Aren’t I just being an angsty snowflake myself with all mydramatic “philosophical contradiction” nonsense? BUT I AM SPECIAL DAMMIT!
Well, there is a more controversial part of all this.
What about the kids? Pretty much anyone who claims to be libertarian is going to eventually come around to the idea that adults can make their own choices about hormones and surgery. There may be some waffling about bathrooms, and we may think prisons, sports leagues and other sex segregated venues should go by biology, but it’s very hard to claim to be pro individual liberty and at the same time deny adults the right to make their own decisions about their bodies. Children are a different thing. (Why will no one ever think of them!)
Children do not have full autonomy. Obviously, you cannot let a toddler, or grade-schooler, or even a middle-schooler make all, or even most, of their day to day decisions. A diet of soda, candy, and ice cream is unhealthy. Spending all day playing Fortnite or hunting Pokemon is less productive than school (ok, maybe the kids are right on this one). Vaccinations are actually a good thing, even if shots sting. And, no, the dog does not want to be dressed as your caparisoned stallion and ridden to battle with the forces of evil over at Mikey’s house. So, we all accept that children can rightly be prevented from doing as they wish.
We accept the concept of parental authority, and the idea that children’s basic right to liberty is in abeyance until some degree of maturation has occurred.(Or at least until they get big enough to be useful as cannon fodder.) Very young kids have effectively no liberty, and as they get older they gradually get more autonomy until at some magic point they morph into adults and become free to go to hell in their own way, just like all of us.
I have voiced the opinion that encouraging, or even allowing, children to take puberty blockers, or cross sex hormone treatments, is blatant child abuse. Puberty blockers have permanent effects and the idea that prepubescent kids are developed enough to make permanent decisions, or even to decide that they are transgendered, as opposed to simply homosexual, or just unsure about their sexuality, is nonsense.
By definition, prepubescent kids are not sexually developed. It is the rankest prejudice to say, “Oh, I know little Johnny is gay, or straight, or transgendered,” when little Johnny hasn’t hit puberty. Manifestly all you can be basing that belief on are your stereotypes about how gay people, or straight people act.You see, prepubescents aren’t supposed to be engaged in sexual behavior (sorry OMWC), and sexual behavior is what actually defines you as gay, straight, bi or whatever the hell, and no, playing with dolls doesn’t mean little Johnny is gay, or a woman.
Now, child abuse is a tough subject for libertarians and conservatives. We can accept that children don’t have full autonomy, and default to the idea that therefore their autonomy devolves to the parents. Since that leaves the parents effectively owning the liberty right of the child, we are skeptical about government involvement, but what about abuse situations? If libertarian belief followed all the way left us with no way to stop parents from torturing, raping, or killing their kids, then libertarians would really be as evil as Vox says. Fortunately, libertarian philosophy doesn’t have to take us there.
I think what saves us is the concept of a fiduciary. Parents do own their children’s liberty rights, but they own them as fiduciaries. In other words, they hold the right for the benefit of the child, not the parent’s own benefit, and Mommy and Daddy have a corresponding obligation to act in little Johnny’s interest. So, no problem right? If using puberty blockers is a bad idea, poorly justified, by inadequate evidence, of, possibly nonsensical,gender confusion, with long term deleterious effects, then it is child abuse and should be illegal, just like any other permanent physical harm inflicted!
That has been my belief and I have voiced it frequently. Here is the problem:
I support the right of crazy anti-vaxxers to refuse to get their kids shots. I also got furious, along with most of the people here about Charlie Gard. In other words I believe that medical decisions fall squarely within the parent’s role. So, despite thinking transgender treatments for children are as stupid as the Flat Earth Society bragging that they now have chapters around the globe, and as evil as a Broward County election supervisor, I have to support the parent’s right to make this decision.
So, that leaves me with three possibilities:
1. Medical decisions must be subject to some test and the parents only get to make the ‘right’ decisions.
The problem here is obvious. What test? Who decides? Doctors? Judges? Every single case of puberty blockers being given involved a doctor, as did the decision to kill Charlie, which was upheld by the British courts. So going this route doesn’t get me EITHER side of what I want. When an answer requires the right top men, it is not a libertarian idea
2. Puberty Blockers are up to the parents and child, hopefully in consultation with doctors across a decent spectrum of understanding of the consequences, and I can sit quietly disapproving but shut up about it.
3. My thought process sucks and you all will let me know why I am stupid in the comments.
Much as it pisses me off, I have to go with 2 here. The unexamined life may not be worth living; but examining it mostly leaves you feeling a bit dirty.
It was an early, cool spring day. I doubt that the daytime temperatures had even reached sixty degrees that day. For the most part it seemed like a typical Saturday at the fraternity house. We started early that day . . . well . . . we started early most days. Over the course of the evening I must’ve had about twenty-five Busch Lights. Nothing spectacular for an all day drinking fest, but I wouldn’t say I was at the peak of sobriety. I was still a freshman and still living in the dorms, at least nominally. The fraternity house was made to accommodate about 40 guys, but there were only about ten members at the time (that’s another story). So, I had my own room that I stayed in on nights that I obliged in the binge drinking. I stayed there most nights.
Truthfully, the day was rather uneventful. As usual, I was part of the last group still awake and drinking. It was probably about 4am and we had moved the party up from the basement to the couches in the living room. The TV was on, the lights were low, I had a Rolling Rock in my hand that had been stolen from my big brothers room. I was probably half a beer from calling it a night. I certainly didn’t think I’d be getting laid that night.
Pretty soon there was a commotion at the front door. A group of clearly intoxicated girls arrived. And not our usual girls who show up at 4am. Ashley came in and fell onto me, her head landing at my feet one the couch. She started snuggling with my feet and telling how much fun she had earlier that night. I had my shoes off, so essentially she was rubbing her face all over my socks. I have to admit, I was actually a little disgusted. I had athlete’s foot at the time and all I could think was that she was rubbing her face all over that. She was clearly there to see me and was quite aggressive. I remember my phrasing exactly when I drunkenly said, “ I’m going upstairs to get another beer, you can come if you want.” (Now that’s a pick up line). I guess I was a little surprised when she said yes, but I can’t say I wasn’t happy. I got up and she grabbed my hand. I lead her up the stairs and into the bedroom.
Let’s take a step back for a minute and gather some background on some things. First things first, and do I hesitate in admitting this, but I was a virgin at the time. My college friends didn’t know that. Well, they might have suspected, but I never volunteered the information. I wasn’t completely inexperienced, I had done everything but sexual intercourse. Also, Ashley lived exactly one floor above me in the dorms. Her roommate was in my social circle, so I knew her relatively well. Well enough that I had a small crush on her. I had always suspected she had a crush on me too. The week before, while I was drinking at the fraternity house, she slept with my roommate. I’ll have more on that later. But for now, let’s just say that I was a little disheartened that she had slept with him and not me. I wasn’t in love with her, but I knew he didn’t care at all, so there was a little sting.
When we reached the bedroom I shut the door. We started making out immediately. I casually broke her hold and grabbed another Rolling Rock, opened it and took a swig. I was nervous and I needed that moment of regularity, that pattern and feeling of normalcy to calm my nerves. I can’t exactly remember, but I assume I offered her some. I couldn’t have taken two more swigs before I was accosted and thrown on the couch. I didn’t mind. We were making out and doing some heavy petting for a few minutes. Clothes were coming off a piece at a time. Not in a fast and furious way that you see in movies, but steadily we were becoming more and more naked.
At the point that there weren’t anymore clothes blocking the way, she began touching me intimately. I returned the favor. A few minutes later, I went down on her. I was fairly experienced at that and, again, it gave me a sense of normalcy, it let me remain confident. I was building up to the moment I would lose my virginity. I was nervous, I was happy, I was elated.
I was certain that she was more experienced than me. I mean, she had a one night stand with my roommate the weekend before. That added to the pressure that I was experiencing. As I started to fumble my way through the process of losing my virginity, I got as far as resting my penis against her vulva. Was this it? Was this going to be the moment? No, it wasn’t. I was drunk, I was tired, I was limp.
As I knelt against the edge of the couch, looking down Ashley, I realized I didn’t want to do this. At least not at this time, not in this place, and not in this way. In that split second of clarity, I knew that I didn’t want to lose my virginity drunk, half-erect, and on a filthy frat house couch at 4am. As cliché as it sounds, I wanted it all to be more special. Also, I didn’t want to have a quick fling with Ashley. I liked Ashley. I ask her out on a date and see if we could have something more.
She seemed fine with stopping at that point. She was tired and drunk too and it was time for bed. We got half dressed and crawled up onto my mattress in the loft above us. It was a small twin bed in a cold drafty room. She snuggled into my arms and I fell asleep quickly.
About 2 hours later, probably close to 7am, she attempted to wake me. I wasn’t fully cognizant yet and was definitely still drunk. She asked if I would walk her back to the dorms. What I should have said was, “No, It’s 7am and I’m tired and drunk. We’re both minors, we live in a zero tolerance county. I just went to jail last month for a minor consumption charge. Several of my friends have gone to jail for minor consumption charges while walking back to the dorms. It’s cold outside and a terrible idea. I’d like you to stay here with me for a few more hours and I’ll happily walk you back then.” But that’s not what I said. I uttered out, “no, but you can leave if you want.” I rolled over and fell back asleep. Now, I do realize that on the surface that looks a little rude. But, I didn’t mean to be so rough, I was drunk and groggy. I was awoken suddenly from a deep drunken sleep and not ready to answer any questions. I really didn’t think that she would gather her belongings and leave, but apparently she did.
I woke up several hours later and realized Ashley was gone. I felt a little odd about it all, but figured that’d all work out. I was hoping that I could talk to her later and maybe arrange a date, or at least talk. When I went downstairs it seemed like everyone in the house knew I had gotten laid. I was young and dumb, so I let them believe we went all the way. I didn’t tell them that it only ended up going as far as me going down on her. I let them believe we had intercourse. When I got back to the dorms, I told my roommate that I had slept with her too. I chalk that up to being young, stupid, and insecure.
I can’t recall if it was that day or a few days later when her roommate Casey knocked on the door of my room. I do remember being floored when Casey asked if I had raped Ashley. She elaborated that Ashley had told her that I had raped her that night. She told me that Ashley elaborated that not only had I raped her, but I kicked her out afterwards and made her walk home in the cold. Again, I never kicked her out, I phrased an answer to a question very poorly in my incoherent state. I explained the situation Casey in full detail. I told her that not only there not been a single no uttered throughout the night, but that Ashley was the aggressor in all of it. Casey clearly believed me, going as far as hand waiving the entire situation away. Saying, “that’s just the way Ashley gets when she’s drunk.” “She blacks out sometimes when she’s drinking.” But none of that really helped.
I can’t describe the vast amount of emotions and thoughts that ran through my head. “How can this be? I’ve never hurt anyone! How can she think that happened? We didn’t even have sex! Hell, I’m a virgin! I kind of like her, why would I screw that up? This can’t be happening! What the fuck is going on? Shit, am I going to jail? Am I getting kicked out of school?” A million other thoughts in a similar vane passed through my head over the next few weeks. She never approached me directly. No police reports were filed. That didn’t stop her from telling others though. Now I won’t say that she ran around campus telling everyone everything. She didn’t. But she did tell her circle of friends. I knew all of the girls in that circle. I would have casually called them my friends before this incident. They stopped talking to me. They looked at me with disgust when they walked by. They stopped dropping by the frat house on the weekends.
My friends all stayed by my side through the ordeal. A few of them saw her when she showed up at the house that night. They saw her snuggle with my feet. They saw that she was the instigator and aggressor. The ones who didn’t witness the event had no doubts either, they knew that I could never do anything like that. One of them confronted her about it. She straight up told him that she was blackout drunk, but she just knew what I had done.
She sent me an email a few years ago. She apologized. She said that she had been blackout drunk that night and just assumed the worst when she woke up. She told me that she had talked to a mutual friend and my version of events was much more plausible than what she had conjured up in her head. The email seemed sincere, and it did make me feel better, but I never responded.
This all happened in the early aughts at a small college in the midwest. I can’t image what would have happened to me if this had happened in today’s environment, especially on the coasts. I still have a chip on my shoulder about the incident. I still worry that she’ll decide to #metoo me any day. In the current environment and with the way memories can change over time, I can’t help but worry. Even with her email apology on file, it could still completely upend my life. Isn’t it amazing that we live in a time that well over a decade later I’m still scared that she could ruin my life.
As an addendum: In that email she sent. I found out that she lost her virginity to my roommate the in that encounter the week before ours. She wasn’t as experienced as I thought. Apparently, she had a crush on me too. That night she had gotten blackout drunk, went looking for me, couldn’t find me, and fucked my roommate. It looks like under different circumstances we could have had a relationship. It’s probably best that we didn’t.
* names have been changed to protect the privacy of all parties involved.
Easter weekend is also the weekend of KinkFest. KinkFest is one of the largest west coast gatherings of people into Kink, BDSM, and related sadomasochistic pursuits. In some ways, KinkFest is like any other convention. A large group of people in a giant hall, attending lectures, perusing vendor booths, and socializing. Where it departs, obviously, is the subject matter. The classes usually involve demonstrations that can get you arrested in some places or are interactive and intended to teach a new skill. And the socializing involves leather and latex and cross-dressers and rope and beatings and all kinds of fun, fucked-up shit. Well, not literal shit. The dungeon doesn’t allow scat, thankfully, nor piss play or Roman play.
This year was KinkFest XX. The Portland Leather Alliance has been putting on the event for 20 years. It’s grown to 1500 people attending and takes up the largest space at the Expo Center in Portland, OR. It’s an all-volunteer run effort. And we bring in presenters from around the country and even internationally. It’s 3 days of debauchery, education, and friendship, and I kind of look forward to it every year. Sorry, no actual pictures as cameras aren’t allowed during the event, and the official photos haven’t been posted yet. I’ve included a few shots I’ve taken that are relevant but hopefully SFW.
Education
One of the fun things about KinkFest is that you have attendees who are new and jumping feet first into the deep end and old heads like myself who’ve been involved for decades. The classes cover a wide range. From the relatively vanilla-like classes on anal sex, giving head, or having multiple partners, to basic kink-related things like flogging and how to process pain, to more advanced topics like full-time total power exchange, medical play, and other types of edge play. Here’s the worskshop list from this year.
Edge play is usually play that carries with it higher risks or is pushing close to the limits of the players involved. What that entails varies by kinkster, and it is like Justice Stewart’s definition of porn: you know it when you see it. Some of the more common types are play using knives, needles, and increasingly race and misogyny play.
Backside of a takate kote chest harness. Jute rope
The Kink scene has always fetishized consent for a couple-few reasons. The first is that knowing that all parties directly involved are consenting is the difference between play time and abuse. It may also be the only difference between getting your rocks off and going to prison. In some jurisdictions, even that wouldn’t help, so trust is paramount when you’re doing some of the things we do. Having trust in your partner to stop when you use your safe word, to not push too far, or not take advantage when you are helpless means that negotiations and consent are important. Third, because we are playing with things that are dangerous and carries physical, emotional, and psychological risks, having some security by emphasizing discussion and agreement is important to people in the scene. There is a focus from the older crowd on autonomy, and the idea that you can’t exchange power if you don’t have power to start with, where negotiations are the means for doing so.
This does lead to some entryism by SJW types. But most people aren’t much impressed by them. Part of the point of kink is risk and ambiguity and playing with those things. People do need to learn etiquette around a dungeon. The rules are different. In some ways they are looser than in a nightclub or normal situation. You’re going to see people doing and wearing (or not wearing) things you’d never see in public. In other ways they are more stringent. The biggest one is don’t touch other people or their things (which may mean other people) without asking or being invited to do so. There are other protocols like not talking to people at a play station who are having a scene or standing too close. Generally speaking, people into kink recognize individual autonomy and have developed etiquette around supporting it.
Vendors
Violet wand for shockingly good times.
Like any other con, there are vendors at KinkFest. Vendors selling leather vests and outfits and cuffs and collars. Toys for impact from wooden paddles to acrylic canes. Electro play toys like violet wands and tasers. And of course, rope, rope, rope for bondage and suspensions. There are floggers and whips and latex outfits. Oh, and dildos. Every shape, size and description you can think of. There’s even one vendor called InHerTube that makes special dildos and harnesses that attach to the thigh, or the end of your boot. The vendor hall makes a good spot to wander around, people watch, and socialize with friends. Or to arrange a scene that night in the dungeon, featuring the toys one just purchased. Some of the vendors are truly talented at the things they make.
Dungeon
The dungeon at KinkFest may be the best in the country. To start off with, it is 36,000 sq ft. That space is divided into individual 10′ by 10′ play stations. Each station has some sort of furniture in it: St. Andrews Cross, spanking benches, bondage chairs, massage tables, pagodas, cages, medical tables or simply thick floor mats. The center piece this year was a giant truss structure laid out in four squares with hard points for doing rope bondage. It covered, by my estimation, about 2500 sq ft of space. The whole dungeon has a professional sound and light setup to help set the mood. And it honestly looks like something out of a movie. Some of the extras maybe weren’t as telegenic.
There were some amazing scenes that took place. My favorite was probably an alien probing scene. At least from a spectator’s perspective. There was also the car wash. A couple of nubile young ladies in transparent latex with sponges and water who would wriggle all over their subject and give them a washing. Whip alley is always fun. It’s a 40′ by 20′ section closed off by chain link that has space for two whip scenes. Hearing the bullwhips crack and pop over the sounds of the crowd and music can be startling to some, but it’s part of the atmosphere to me. It goes nicely with the screams, and surprisingly the more common laughter.
And that’s what brings me to the libertarian bit in this piece. It isn’t all just titty-lation (hi Q!). The Kink scene can be a microcosm of spontaneous order, self-policing, private property, and self-ownership. The entire KinkFest phenomenon refutes the ideas people have about why small government couldn’t work. It absolutely works.
The entire affair is organized by volunteers. The core staff put in 20+ hour weeks for 9 months and don’t get paid a dime. They perceive a need and they do it because they want to see it happen. It is a direct counter-argument to the idea that feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless wouldn’t happen without government. People donate so that shit gets done. This includes people spending hours to build dungeon furniture then giving it to the organization. Or specialized skills like professional riggers who donate their time to get things done. Same for the promotion and lining up vendors.
Impact toys, Rope bondage, and the beginnings of some bruises on a bottom.
The volunteers, usually younger members of the community, who help carry it all off give up part of their time enjoying the convention in exchange for free admission. This is a fair exchange of value for those who couldn’t pay the entry fees that are used to pay for the bits that aren’t done by volunteers. Nonetheless, the volunteers earn their keep. It’s also interesting in that if someone volunteers, gets in free, but doesn’t keep up their end of the bargain, they get banned from next year. This deals effectively with the freeloader problem.
Risky things happen in the dungeon. People wear their bruises and welts and even lacerations with pride. Yet the policing is done by a volunteer crew whose focus is on making sure the rules are followed and people are having a good time. The Dungeon Monitors are a model for private police. They are mostly focused on facilitating play in a way that reduces risk as much as possible. They only interfere when called on, or when there is a genuine threat to life and limb. And even then, they are trained in de-escalation and using their words instead of violence. Despite 1500 people all doing fucked-up shit, they rarely must intervene. They wind up offering council or telling people where supplies are like cleaning stuff, first aid, etc. They occasionally must do some dispute resolution over who has dibs on a piece of equipment. But even that’s rare. Because people police themselves.
People and their property are also sacrosanct. Despite all the degeneracy on display, asking first is ingrained and important. Yes, there are yahoos that are new that don’t understand and make mistakes. They are usually quickly identified and corrected. And yes, there are predatory types that look for vulnerable victims to assault, but by and large, those people stay away from the organized group events. Because, again, they get identified. I’d wager one is less likely to be made uncomfortable by a stranger groping you or trying to corner you or to wind up having unwanted violence done to you at a kink event than at a normal bar or concert. It isn’t perfect, but it puts the lie to the idea that without government you can’t have people getting along peacefully or that corporate action requires coercion.
Rope and knife
Another note on property. Most players who have been at it a while have large toy bags. This can be anything from a backpack to rolling suitcases stuffed with stuff. To keep from turning the dungeon into an airport, large shelves are setup near the entrance. People leave their stuff unattended for long stretches of time while playing voyeur or looking for just the right playmate. And return to find their toys unmolested. Some of those toy bags have thousands of dollars in equipment in them. My rope kit alone is probably close to a thousand bucks worth of jute and hardware. Toys rarely go missing. And on the few occasions where they have, it’s usually a case of someone picking up what they thought was their own toy but was someone else’s and it is promptly returned.
That’s not to say there aren’t problems with SJWs, as mentioned. There are, especially online, a contingent of the usual intersectional feminists who want to make any accusation of violating someone’s consent an automatic blackballing of the accused. They use all the language SJWs use in campus kangaroo courts and make big posts on Fetlife, the kink equivalent of Facebook. But fortunately, they don’t have much power in the flesh and blood world. Even more interesting, the vocal ones are learning a hard lesson that the #metoo movement is learning: experienced tops with the more exotic and in demand skills are being much more selective in who they play with for the simple expedient of wanting to guard their reputations. The gender and pronoun thing is something of a big deal. But my experience is that most of those folks are polite in requesting you use their name and pronouns. Those that would like to be able to force you, power is so decentralized, it is hard to coerce people.
One of the saddest things to me is that so many kinksters don’t see that. In their private lives they live and play by libertarian ideas. But they can’t make the leap to seeing it as a strong basis for politics. The left politics are almost reflexive and without thought. I think because many people into kink have negative experience with religious and political conservatives they lean the opposite direction in politics. And there’s a larger contingent than the general population of people who are dysfunctional and therefore want their gimmedats. I try to talk to people about it, and I’ve made some inroads with a few. But cutting through all the accumulated derp is slow going. There are some things you can’t beat out of people.
Impact toys: Carbon fiber cain, hawaiian hardwood hairbrush paddle, rope fist baton, rubber paddle (for vegan play partners), tigerwood paddle, riding crop, small acrylic cane, three floggers.My dungeon/playspace. Instead of typical furniture I have hardpoints for suspension.Diamond Pattern chest harness in jute.One of my first suspensions. Four point side suspension with hemp rope.
Erotic fast food worker cosplay while hitting it from behind to the 90’s slow jams “Cold Drinks” and “Hot Drinks” by Wendy’s
Next, you’ve gotta salt the meat From the back to the front and make the taste complete Not to little, not too much With a little finesse, you’ll get the touch!
“I don’t know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.”
-Woody Allen
“In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. [But] every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.”
-Neil Gaiman
“Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”
-George Carlin
I place blame for this piece squarely on the shoulders of the commentariat. Discussions that began with the absurdity of #metoo quickly went down the rabbit hole of analyses of the sexual marketplace, human mating strategy and unending (indeed, unendable) sexual conflict between men and women. This forced me to think about things, which forced me to want to record and share them, which further forced me to embarrass myself and torture you all once again by inflicting my writing upon you. You have no one to blame but yourselves.
The Backstory
Let me begin with a disclaimer: I am not a biologist nor an expert on evolution or human sexuality. There are likely droves of people in the commentariat that are infinitely more knowledgable about these things than I am. To them, I apologize and please throw rotten vegetables in the comment section. To everyone else that doesn’t know any better, I am a 100% super-knowledgable expert on everything, so take every single word I say as gospel.
“Cave woman seeks cave man, must be at least 5’8″ to ride.”
Good, now that we’ve got that figured out, let’s start with a little story. You are Ug, an archaic male human, newly evolved to self-awareness and roaming the Savannah. You are 16, right in the prime of life, but rapidly approaching middle age. You are ruled by three overwhelming urges that dictate the terms of your existence; thirst, hunger and horniness. Fortunately for you, you have access to watering holes and you’re pretty handy with a spear so the first two are generally taken care of. One day, you come across Oog, an archaic female human with beautiful eyes and hairy pits just the way you like them. Because you are a human, you have no idea if she’s ovulating, all you know is that you need to get little Ug wet immediately. You show your best PUA skills, and 3 minutes later you have scratched that itch that has been bothering you for months. Nine months later, Oog has given birth to a beautiful baby girl Aag. You still have awkward encounters with Oog and see her about the Savannah, but when you see her with Aag you’re not really sure what to make of it. You don’t quite understand that your amorous activities 9 months ago could have caused this; you’re not really sure about anything. Oog could have had sex with 20 different guys and any one of them could be the father, but you don’t know that. Your knowledge of the situation is almost completely opaque. However, what you do know is that she has a baby with her now that needs nonstop attention and resources. Something inside you, another thing you don’t quite understand, is driving you to try and help her take care of this thing. So, against your better judgement, you start sharing your food and water with her and the baby and life goes on, a vision of domestic bliss, complete with a white picket fence around the cave.
The catch is that, Ug may not realize it, but he cannot possibly be sure that he is, in fact, the father of Aag. This is one of the two reasons that he doesn’t pull an alpha lion and kill Aag; the other one being “love” aka: a cascade of hormones (vasopressin, oxytocin, estradiol among others) that create a pair bond and make him want to take care of Oog and Aag and make more babies. So, rather than running back out on the Savannah and chasing some hot new strange, he embraces monogamy, otherwise known as making the best out of a bad situation.
Big Dicks and Horny Chicks
Our bodies and behaviors are museums dedicated to the millennia of evolution that have shaped the human race. Some adaptations are legacies from the larger course of mammalian evolution, internal fertilization, placental fetal nourishment and the eponymous mammary glands providing nourishment post-birth. There are, however, a number of adaptations that are unique (or nearly unique) to humans that must have evolved relatively quickly and can only be explained by sexual selection (physiologic changes brought about by mate preference pressure rather than environmental pressure). Human males have unusually large penises for primates, both as a percentage of body size and in absolute terms. They also lack an os penis or penis bone. The vast majority of mammals have a bone that will actually move into the penis during arousal to create an erection. Human males rely on hydraulic pressure from blood to get the job done. This also means that human penises are a bit more pliable during sex, getting to those hard to reach places. It’s an open question why these adaptations to the human penis happened, but it’s a safe bet that women chose men with these characteristics and had more babies with them. More pleasure? Consequence of bipedal locomotion? Not sure.
For the ladies there are two big ones. The first is my personal favorite; permanently engorged breasts. Biologists are reasonably certain that these are a consequence of humans’ preference for face-to-face sex and evolved as a visual stimulus analogous to the buttock that most male mammals would see while getting their freak on. Preference for large ones could be an indicator of age as bigguns tend to droop as a woman ages. The other adaptation is really important; concealed ovulation combined with year-round sexual availability. This means that humans have no mating season and women are DTF any time. It also means that a lack of being “in heat” ensures that neither partner knows if a particular copulation likely resulted in offspring being produced. This element of paternal uncertainty is essential to the way human relationships developed over time.
Whycome No Pics?
In case you need examples of how this all works (we’re all socially maladjusted failures around here, so it’s entirely possible), I have a pop-up book I can lend you. Before we completely lose the script here, I want to say that the previous story and examples of biological oddity that we humans have are simply to demonstrate that competing sexual strategy has always existed between men and women. This is expressed in our biology and it is certainly expressed in our behavior (what this tome will eventually come around to focusing on). Every animal has such an imbalance to some extent; it’s unavoidable.
Speaking strictly for humans, the cost of reproduction for women always has been higher. She is the one who is saddled with 9 months of pregnancy, followed by the necessity to care for an utterly helpless infant for years. This task, while not impossible to do alone, is light-years easier with Dad involved to procure resources and provide protection. Therefore, it’s in her best interest to be more restrictive when selecting a mate. Compounding her need to be choosy is the fact that she has a limited number of eggs and therefore a limited reproductive lifetime. She doesn’t want to waste scarce and precious resource on the wrong guy. Men, on the other hand, produce zillions of sperm from puberty until death and they’re all raring to be deposited in the nearest vagina, the more the better. Men, intrinsically, have a very low cost of reproduction. No pregnancy, an endless supply of sperm, why not go nuts? That is certainly one strategy that evolved (the “cad”). Fuck as many women as possible, banking on the fact that at least a few of the babies will survive after you love ‘em and leave ‘em. The other strategy (the “dad”), will stick around and help care for the baby, giving it a better chance of survival. The rub with this strategy is that dad only has an incentive to stick around if he’s reasonably certain that the baby carries his genetic material. Otherwise, he’s squandering his time, resources and opportunity cost taking care of someone else’s kid. On the flip side, mom is putting all her eggs (so to speak) in this guy’s basket, so she wants a guy with as many resources as possible. Resources often come along with strength and status, so women want those qualities.
From these few simple rules evolved basically all the pomp and circumstance surrounding human mating behavior. You see, the rules of the game are hardwired into us from thousands of generations. Despite progs’ desire to create the New Soviet Man, you can’t handwave away these realities and any changes to them will necessarily have to happen over a long period of time. Social engineering is a miserable failure when it comes to sex (and, well, pretty much everything else too, but that’s another article).
Modern Sex Pre-1960
Now we reach the crux of this piece, a survey of modern human sexual behavior as a consequence of these biological realities. Before people start throwing autistic fits, I’m fully aware that there are a multitude of other arrangements, lifestyles and aberrations to these rules (see: Sade, Marquis de); however, I’m working in averages here and looking at the most prevalent mating styles. I’m also not going to touch ancient societies with things like sacred prostitution, matriarchal societies (which, BTW, have never really been conclusively proven to have existed), “walking marriages” etc. Basically, I’m going to deal with post-Enlightenment, Western sexual relationships because that happens to be the world we inhabit.
Everyone had so many kids…
Humans are often cited as being unusual in the mammalian world for our penchant for monogamy. Many social critics claim that this is an oppressive social norm forced on women (always specifically women) by the patriarchy to enslave them into becoming breeding cattle. I argue that this is utterly wrong and human monogamy is a direct consequence of concealed ovulation, paternal uncertainty and the complete uselessness of human children for the first 5 years (at least) of life. All of these factors put humans at the extreme end of the K-side in r/K selection (go look it up, I don’t have the energy to go down that rabbit hole). Yes, it doesn’t change the fact that men still have those zillions of sperm raring to be ejaculated in new and interesting places; it also doesn’t change the fact that women want a man with as much wealth, status and resources as possible, but as I said before, monogamy is a compromise on the part of both parties making the best out of a bad situation. Many men still would occasionally satisfy their deep-seated biological urges with low-risk third parties (like prostitutes) in which the chances of yet another woman making demands on his scant resources were minimal. Likewise, women tolerated this because it was a low probability of him leaving her holding the bag. For their part, women would encourage (read: nag) men to improve themselves and their social station to try and make more money or gain more influence. The perfect picture of domestic bliss.
Monogamy is an odd institution because it’s simultaneously natural and unnatural. As I’ve said in previous essays, humans are like onions; we have layers of conflicting desires built one on top of another from the various parts of our ancient evolutionary brains. Our reptilian, mammalian, neo-cortical and spiritual sides are all locked in a battle royale. On one hand, it’s natural for a man to want to stick it in every hole he can find, but on the flip side, it’s natural to want to care for your offspring to ensure their chances of survival. For women, on one hand, it’s natural to want to find the man with the most possible resources (the king or chief), but in that case, you’re most likely going to be competing with several different women for his attention. Therefore, it’s also natural to want to find a decent guy with decent resources who won’t run away and you have all to yourself.
The major rub here is that sex, love and reproduction were all inextricably linked. It was very, very unlikely that you have one without the others coming along for the ride. Our very hormones themselves alter after the birth of a child (for men and women) making it much more likely that mom and dad will stick around and care for that helpless little blob. These are things that are hard-wired into us. You’re not going to change it, at least not with current technology. However, that playbook; the one that got us from the Savannah all the way to airplanes, interchangeable parts, the polio vaccine and indoor plumbing got completely torched with one invention.
The Pill
Those of you who read my previous piece will already know that I consider this to be the most Earth-shattering, life altering invention ever in human history. First approved by the FDA in 1960, this little pack of hormones made possible things that humanity never before dreamed of. Sex, love and reproduction, arguably the most formative phenomena of human evolution, were no longer linked. The world envisioned in Stranger in a Strange Land (published one year after the Pill was approved) was not speculative; it really was possible for people to live in group marriages and sex communes without the messiness of children entering the picture.
And that’s exactly what people did. With gusto. Like a college kid going on a bender at his 21st birthday, the drought was over. No longer would the chains of biology enslave us and repress us. No longer would we have to choose between plodding bourgeois monogamy and family or celibacy. No longer would women have to be so circumspect about who they took to bed. No longer would men have to think twice about having a one-night stand with that hot girl he doesn’t really like that much but has a great rack. As long as she’s on the Pill, all bets are off; no harm, no foul. Everyone gets their various rocks off, then walks away as if nothing ever happened. As easy as playing a game of Gin-Rummy but more fun.
“Intentional communities” (I really hate that term) like Sandstone (counting The Joy of Sex author Alex Comfort and Sammy Davis Jr. as members) and Kerista sprung up practically overnight. The Summer of Love and Woodstock firmly established that consequence-free casual sex and promiscuity were here to stay. The swinging 70s moved it from young free thinkers into the suburbs and the bourgeois community at large. Key parties and swinging became part of the cultural lexicon. Ordinary people began to question what radicals and academics had been questioning for decades; are the expectations of matrimony, nuclear family, monogamy and fidelity a scam? Why do we voluntarily subordinate our urges to outdated social structures? Why do we put a higher value on responsibility and commitment (which can certainly be a drag sometimes) than we do on pleasure, fulfillment and liberation? And the clarion call that still resonates to this day “IT’S NOT NATURAL!”
As stated above, this is true. It’s also not true. It’s also irrelevant. The human situation is one that is much more complex than any 60s sexual radical could conceive of. The millions of years of evolution leading us to this point has, again, created many contradictory urges within us. The onion-like human psyche is far more complicated than than a philosophy of “if it feels good, do it” can contain. But, easy pleasure is a siren song that is very hard to resist. One immediate social consequence of this revolution was a drastic increase in divorce. No doubt, this was a life saver to many people in lousy marriages, but to others it was the first inklings of the “broken homes” and “mixed families” that are ubiquitous today. The mainstreaming of so-called “alternative lifestyles” (another term I hate) would probably have continued apace except for one unfortunate complication.
AIDS
To middle and late Gen-Xers like myself, I have never known a sexual world that did not have the specter of these four letters hanging over it. Previously, STDs were a mild inconvenience. Picked up the clap at the sex party last weekend? Just go get your shot and you’re good for the party next weekend. Even permanent diseases like herpes were NBD; just rub some cream on it and wait for the acute outbreak to go away.
But what a way to go…
Now, however, there was a badass new kid on the block and he wasn’t taking shit from anyone. No vaccine. No cure. Bringing about a horrible, painful, slow and humiliating death. It definitely changed the landscape of relationships and sex toward the more conservative. It’s an interesting coincidence that it just happened to occur during the Reagan Revolution and the New Moral Majority. Since anal sex was and is a much easier way to contract the disease, and since, on average, gay men tend to have more lifetime sex partners than straights and lesbians, AIDS first exploded among male gays. This was not only devastating to the community at large, but adding insult to injury, Social Conservatives used it to take potshots at gays calling AIDS “gay cancer” and “divine retribution” for their “deviant lifestyle”.
People like myself who came of age at this time were relentlessly bombarded with PSAs about how sex will kill you and, if you decide to be an idiot and have sex in spite of our warnings, don’t even *think* about not using a condom; you might as well just give a .357 a blowjob. It’s telling about the overwhelming strength of uncontrolled human sexuality that it took the threat of death to reign it in. Monogamy, sexual restraint and conventional family, never completely abandoned in the first place, came screaming back to overturn the sexual revolution for one brief moment, because the perceived alternative was Russian Roulette. This image was not helped by the fact that many prominent individuals known for their promiscuity contracted and/or died of HIV (Magic Johnson, Eazy-E, Liberace, Freddy Mercury and, more recently, Charlie Sheen).
However, time marches on and human ingenuity is a wonderful thing. New drugs and treatments started cranking out and, while initially very expensive, have become more or less available to anyone that has contracted the disease. Magic Johnson has been living with the virus for decades and seems as healthy as ever. HIV/AIDS was no longer an automatic death sentence; if, in fact, it was ever as big of a threat as it was portrayed in the first place. Some conspiracy-minded libertines maintain that the AIDS scare was trumped up as worse than it actually was to try and purposely counteract the promiscuous tendencies of the previous two decades. Regardless, it had the intended effect until the mid-late 90s when all of a sudden it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. Sleep around, but use a condom; it would definitely suck to catch it, but if you did it’s not automatically the end. You take drugs for life and, in some cases, the virus won’t even be detectable in your blood. You can even have HIV-negative children using advanced reproductive technologies. The beast of human sexuality was not completely unshackled as it was in the 60s and 70s, but it was let out of the cage and given a long leash.
Tinder, Hook-Ups and #metoo
So here we sit. The sexual revolution mostly back in full swing, so-called “alternative lifestyles” are very much en vogue again. To be fair, people were swinging, making “arrangements” with their spouses and creating sexual sub-cultures all throughout the AIDS scare, but it was definitely more underground and seen as dangerous and shameful. Now, these choices are out in the open big time and sometimes portrayed by the intelligentsia as superior to plodding, bourgeois monogamy; a middle ground between the new ground rules of non-child-bearing recreational sex and the continuing desire for stability and family. Perhaps it’s true. I suppose time will tell.
Sexuality among adolescents and young adults went through a secondary revolution of its own. It’s completely ridiculous to think that teenagers and students weren’t constantly having sex for centuries before the current era. However, many times these unions would involve quite a bit of emotional seriousness due to the looming specter of pregnancy. People married young and typically stayed married. The new rules of sex, intersecting with technology, made having sex more similar to ordering a pizza than a complicated dance of courtship and emotions. In many ways, the sexual revolution had reached its ultimate goal; totally unfettered, (mostly) consequence-free sex on demand. Just swipe right and you’re off to the races. For large swaths of young people, intercourse had become akin to a handshake.
As stated, and the theme of this plodding piece of mental excrement, is that human nature is never so simple and it’s not easily altered. You see, going along with the Savannah Principle (the idea that our brains haven’t changed much since the days of Oog and Ug), doubts, fears and general despair and dysphoria began to creep in to this arrangement. In spite of what the sexual revolutionaries had been saying for decades, intercourse is *not* a handshake, and even barring the physical consequences of pregnancy and disease there are emotional consequences of sex.
Recapping from earlier, on the Savannah, Oog and Ug have intrinsically competitive sexual strategies. This can be traced back to the fact that Oog has to carry the baby, then birth it and take care of it. This all comes at the a huge economic and physical cost; all to produce one lousy human. Ug, while his urges to impregnate as many women as possible are very strong, he also must protect his genetic legacy. Human babies are so useless for such a long time that there is a much higher probability that they will survive if they have two parents looking after them. Compound this with the fact that women have a much higher reproductive economic value; finite number of eggs and only able to carry one baby at a time vs. men’s zillions of sperm and ability to impregnate a theoretically arbitrary number of women; and further compound it with concealed ovulation and parental uncertainty, we have quite a complex social situation. Nature has concocted a cocktail of wonderful things to overcome this complexity; female orgasm, penis size, oxytocin, vasopressin, sexual jealousy among other things combine to bond mates together with strong emotions.
As if things weren’t already complicated enough, men and women are both hypergamous; ie: they want to “marry up”. This means very different things to men and women. Women’s reproductive value is derived from beauty and youth, so men want to find young, beautiful women with whom to mate. Men’s reproductive value is derived from strength and capability at procuring resources for mom and baby, so, in the old cliche, women prefer a big wallet to a big dick. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to these complexities. There are entire philosophies inquiring on the nature of love. Love, lust and sex have probably motivated the creation of more art than anything else in history (with the possible exception of religion). In drastic understatement, human familial relationships are very complicated. It’s no wonder there would eventually be a backlash against the often simple-minded form that they take today.
#MeToo
At first started by women coming out to claim that they had been victims of rape/assault and were too ashamed to say anything until now, it has now morphed into a sinister condemnation of male sexuality. Acting like a tactless boor is enough to get you #metoo’ed and potentially put your family and livelihood in jeopardy. Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, this can all be traced back to women giving up their leverage in the sexual marketplace. The ingrained biological behaviors from the Savannah cannot be forgotten or dismissed so easily. To put it bluntly, pussy used to be scarce and expensive, now it’s plentiful and cheap. The supply and demand have been drastically altered from the way things were for essentially all of human history up until 50 years ago (less than the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things). Men behave like boors and expect easy sex because those are the new rules of the game. Men have always wanted easy sex, but the possibility/likelihood of pregnancy incentivized women to keep pussy scarce and expensive; after all, they had a much higher cost associated with sex. This was their leverage, and it was the most powerful leverage known to humanity. Women have always had the upper hand in sexual relationships because of this, in spite of what pop culture and half-baked feminist theories argue. Women certainly got a raw deal when it came to political freedom and, in some cases, arranged marriage. I do not trivialize the treatment women sometimes got as second-class citizens. These were strategies concocted by male-dominated institutions to try and wrestle some control back from the omnipotent vagina. But, it is always in vain because pussy is the ultimate trump card. Men want it. Women have it. And women ultimately decide who gets it, in spite of social constructs designed to contravene that power.
#Metoo, in my opinion, is a reaction by women who find they don’t especially like the results of the revolution. They feel cheated that they no longer have that leverage, even though their Savannah brain is telling them they should. They feel used and cheap and, in many cases, through no fault of their own, they are. To try and win back some of the control they lost through biology, they now are, consciously or unconsciously, using the apparatus of the State and public shaming to try and reel in male sexual fervor. I’ve always thought it self-evident that male and female sexuality are different, but complementary. Men are the engine and women are the transmission. Men are filled with drive and energy and power; a walking hard-on looking for a hole. Women channel that energy from unfocused sexual excess into a sublimation of productivity, art, engineering, etc. Thus things have been since G-d said, “Let there be light”. Now, the transmission has lost its ability to direct the power of the engine; running out of control, the engine tears apart millennia of tradition, family structure and personal motivation. Both sexes perhaps should be more careful what they wish for.
The ultimate purpose of this tome is not to answer any questions, provide predictions or suggest how things can be “fixed”. There *is* nothing to fix. Things are what they are now. The toothpaste is not going back in the tube. Who knows what the future holds? Perhaps some new, even more badass STD will (likely temporarily) push people back to their old ways of sexual restraint. Perhaps the swingers and polyamorists are right that monogamy no longer has a purpose and will be phased out, paving the way for group marriages or some other such arrangement. Due to the hard wiring in our brains, I doubt this is something that would happen on a large scale anytime soon, however. More likely, we’re going to continue escalating the sex war to some kind of breaking point. What comes after that is anyone’s guess. We are indeed cursed to live in interesting times.
Some of you might remember my inaugural post last year. So, I ask you, what are your plans for this evening this year? As reading this website is ipso facto evidence that you are not of a normal sexuality, are you
Spending the evening with your porn wife on Pornhub?
Peering through your closet door, watching me have sex with your wife?
Watching videos of me having sex with someone else’s wife at thepiebaldbull.com?
Crossdressing as Bea Arthur and sniffing the pair of panties you stole from the laundromat while the theme from Maude plays in the background?
Reading a Sugarfree post?
Let me know in the comments below so I can vicariously experience your plans while pleasuring myself.
And that’s exactly what people did. With gusto. Like a college kid going on a bender at his 21st birthday, the drought was over. No longer would the chains of biology enslave us and repress us. No longer would we have to choose between plodding bourgeois monogamy and family or celibacy. No longer would women have to be so circumspect about who they took to bed. No longer would men have to think twice about having a one-night stand with that hot girl he doesn’t really like that much but has a great rack. As long as she’s on the Pill, all bets are off; no harm, no foul. Everyone gets their various rocks off, then walks away as if nothing ever happened. As easy as playing a game of Gin-Rummy but more fun.
