So today as a prank I made a sheet music print out of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball but replaced the name with “Christmas Time Meditation” and deleted the words and I’m going to put it in the with church music and see if the pianist notices.
He noticed and I can now add “Yelled at by two priests at once” to my list of accomplishments
In pop culture, slackers are portrayed as playing guitar, but learning to play any instrument requires a lot of commitment and attention, the opposite of what a slacker stands for.
*psst* It’s the fact that capitalism doesn’t value artistic ability if it can’t turn a profit. Capitalism sees all the amateur buskers and starving artists and assumes that, since they’re barely getting by, they must not be putting in enough effort.
People think that intimacy is about sex.
But intimacy is about truth.
When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is “you’re safe with me” –that’s intimacy.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid (via jenshraders)
Reminder that libido and sexual attraction are separate things.
Libido and sex drive refers to how much and how often your body wants sexual release.
Sexual attraction is wanting to have sex with and/or being aroused by a specific person.
You can have a libido and still be asexual. In fact a lot of asexuals do.
For a lot of people, asking someone to do something sexual with you can be an intensely vulnerable experience. Many of us have had it reinforced over and over that our worth, our purpose, is all tied up in being sexually desirable/desired. This can make the stakes feel much, much higher than they actually are when you ask for consent.
For some people, asking for consent feels like asking someone their opinion of your inherent desirability and maybe even your worth. Rejection of an activity can feel like a rejection of your entire self.
This is a problem. It’s not healthy for your entire relationship to be on the line every time you ask someone for sex. You need and deserve to be secure in your own desirability and worth without relying on the unpredictable sexual urges of other people to maintain that security. Your partners need and deserve the space to say “no” freely and without emotional pressure.
Rationally, you probably know that what makes sexual desire happen is complicated and that someone not wanting sex isn’t a punishment or an attack - it’s your emotional response that doesn’t have that memo. When it feels like “no” is a violent dismissal of your entire being, not just a refusal to do something specific, it’s really important to acknowledge those feelings and also realize that they’re not an accurate reflection of reality.
Plan ahead of time how you can work through these feelings without making your partner feel punished or obligated to change their mind. If you have a regular partner, it might be good to let them know about your insecurities and how you plan to handle your response, so they know, for instance, that if you need to go for a walk or take some alone time, you’re not punishing them and you don’t want them to change their mind to placate you – that you know it’s your responsibility to work through your feelings and that you’ve got it handled.
You can also preempt some of these insecurities by working on finding other ways to feel good about your body or to feel close and connected to another person in a way they do freely consent to.
The most important thing is to consistently reinforce your desire to hear an honest answer, even though sometimes you have an emotional response that may be uncomfortable, and to not treat those uncomfortable feelings as a crisis that your partner must handle.
They need to hear and see from your consistent actions that it’s not their job to to agree to anything they don’t want just to keep you from having bad feelings. And that even when “No” feels bad for you, you’d rather hear it and respect it, and deal with your feelings yourself, than do something sexually that they’re not interested in. Without this groundwork, it’s easy to make someone feel obligated to agree to unwanted sex, maybe without realizing that’s what you’re doing.
It is possible to work through this fear and make it less scary to hear “no”. It starts with accepting that “no” is going to happen sometimes and figuring out how you can take care of yourself and your partner when “no” hurts.
An abuser doesn’t always need shouting or physical intimidation like throwing things or grabbing in order to control someone. Abuse can be present without those behaviours.
An abuser can talk calmly and even use a friendly tone of voice or a progressive Consent Culture vocabulary and still be abusive, because the abuse lies in infringing on someone’s autonomy.
If a peer relationship feels abusive but you’re doubting if it’s
Really Abuse, look at whether each person is making choices about their
own bodies, schedules, activities, and external relationships.
A
boundary is about your own body and life, not someone else’s - it’s “I
don’t want to do X thing with you” and not “I don’t want you to do Y
thing at all even if it does not involve me.” Someone making choices
that override your autonomy, even “for your own good”, is not allowing
you to have boundaries.
If you don’t want to be in a relationship
with someone because they do Y thing that doesn’t involve you, that’s
your choice. You can simply end the relationship, or you can say, “Is Y
important to you? Because it makes me uncomfortable,” and have an honest
conversation about conflicting needs/preferences to see if a
relationship is possible.
But there’s a problem when one
person says to their peer, “Stop Y thing that doesn’t involve me, or I will do
something to punish you,” or even “You’re not allowed to do Y anymore, I
don’t like it.”
There’s also a problem when one person says, “I don’t want you to touch me like that/right now/at all,” or “I’m busy that day,” or “I don’t want to do this activity” and the other person overrules them, makes them feel bad for saying no, or coaxes or bullies them into moving their boundaries.
Stop writing men as if modern Western toxic masculinity were the default throughout time and space.
Your medieval knights can share a pallet at night because it’s cold in this castle and they’re demonstrating their respect and affection for each other by sharing physical proximity.
In the far future, your dude can be a scientist adventurer robot captain, but he can also make food for people to demonstrate his affection and dance to show off his happiness.
Many cultures alive today expect the average man to be good with children, to be able to diaper a baby, to know how to assist in childbirth. Your men don’t have to go, “Oh god, an infant, I’ve never touched one of those before.”
Before modern Europe, there was nothing unmanly about loving colour, fashion, art, and decoration. Flowers weren’t always emasculating. Emotions weren’t always considered signs of weakness. Men got to want and have warm, close, affectionate friendships with other men.
In many ways, Western toxic masculinity of the last few centuries has been the exception, not the rule.
In France, England and German, showing care and affection between males wasn’t seen as weird either.
Just say it: Puritans. It all goes back to the Puritans that settled in America. That’s where it came from. A group of religious extremists.
Don’t make shit up to feel special. We all know where it actually came from.
Thank you for being the first person telling me I need to blame shit on Calvinism more often. :3
Calvinism is a terrible economic philosophy but I’m unsure how this is connected to the Puritans??
The Puritans were Calvinists. Or, Calvinism is a big group within Protestantism, and the Puritans were one smaller subset of them who wielded significant political power in England and English colonies. It’s true to blame this stuff on Puritans when dealing with a pure English descent of theology, but I live in an area just as affected by other groups–Scottish Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Dutch Reform, etc–and they’re not strictly descended from the Puritans, but Calvinism more generally.
Anyway, it’s a running joke on my blog that whenever I get asked, like, “Why are white people fucked up like this???” (I did my Master’s in psychology with a lot of Asian international students who actually liked me explaining stuff like this, it was bliss) my answer always somehow seems to end up with, “Because Calvinism.”
