hooray Tia!

Oh, that thread. I was so sensible then.

I cleaned up the formatting a bit.

What are your casual sex options/interests with women? It seems as if it might clarify things for you a bit to actually have sex (by your definition) with a woman or women where you're not worrying about damaging an important relationship (I realize this might be hard to arrange before this Saturday). If it turns out that you're not that seriously into women after all, you can leave the relationship with Holly where it is, either just friends, or friends who occasionally make out but know it's not getting seriously romantic.

On the other hand, if sex with women is great for you, that also might help clarify your thinking about Holly. And get some recent memories in your head to block out thoughts of your last ex.

I realize this might be hard to arrange before this Saturday

Orange post title?

FWLIW, I am pretty straight and the closest I've ever come to 'love at first sight' is with another straight woman. We saw each other and knew we belonged and are magically close and haven't ever felt erotically charged about the other. Spending less time with her was the hardest thing about forming my partnership with my honey. So I would vouch for a friendship landing instantaneously, being very deep and not romantic or erotic.

But I don't think that's the situation you are in. People not owning their sexuality is different and I haven't had to negotiate that. I don't have much to offer but good wishes.

I'm sure if I dedicated some energy to it I could find a woman to sleep with, and I've probably (well, certainly) had opportunities that I haven't pushed hard because in practice, when it came down to it, I haven't wanted to sleep with women I didn't feel strongly about. (Either because I really, really like them, or I thought they were phenomenally attractive, or both.) I don't think I have to decide anything before this Saturday. But there would be a time after which our relationship would settle into something that felt inviolably platonic; that's how it has gone with other relationships I've had with women that started off with some sexual tension that never got realized.

But I'm more worried about her ambivalence about sex than mine, and the ambivalence of mine I'm worried about is less about what sex would feel like and more about this issue of being too much like someone to be romantic partners.

I do realize this is awfully cavalier -- get right on firming up any uncertainties about your sexual orientation, now! -- and that it's not actually that easy. I'm throwing out advice in the hopes that it'll inspire someone with more sense to tell me I'm wrong and come up with better ideas.

Watch This Japanese Movie with her and see what happens.

I saw it Tuesday night. Mitsushima Hikari is a very talented and courageous actress, but I can't give it more than a 6.0. The movie is a bit careful and cautious. And I don't think it has many answers, other than independence and loneliness. It also cheats a little by making the guy in the triangle a horror, but early doormat Hikari-san...never mind.

I also learned Tuesday night that Japan has an entire media industry built around schoolgirl crushes...yuri...which has many subgenres.

All I got.

get right on firming up any uncertainties about your sexual orientation, now!

Somebody should write an app to guide the process.

I think part of the issue is that neither of you really know whether you could be satisfied w/ a sexual relationship with each other based on past experience (I think chemistry really matters, so her experiences with previous women might not reflect her experience with you), so in that sense, I wouldn't say that you know it won't work.

I think there are two questions here though.

First, could you and Holly still remain friends if you try something sexual and it doesn't work? Think through all the scenarios--you enjoy it, she doesn't; she enjoys it, you don't; both of you kind of like it, but not enough to want it as a primary sexual relationship; or both of you really don't like it at all. If the answer yes, it might be worth trying.

The second is, let's say you are both into each other and you could date, would you rather risk a romantic relationship that could end poorly, or would you prefer to maintain a friendship and unrequited crush that has the potential to last a long time?

Let me be the first to suggest that whatever happens liveblog it.

Because you're a feminist.

I get the sense that PINY needs to do a little less worrying about being in a relationship and spend a bit more time on building a single life that's worthwhile on it's own terms. The Holly thing complicates that and it might be worth it to go for it and just see where the chips fall. I doubt it will end in anything more than some real awkwardness that dissipates with time if it goes bad, and it might go great.

Don't sleep with some random woman if you want to sleep with this woman because it's really not about interchangeable body parts, IME. I'm with Britta's "try it and see but stay friends anyway" version. But also don't get hung up on what "sex" is. Holly is right to start with making out and blah blah blah. This is all very high school lesbian stuff, which is totally not a slam, but there is nothing like those highly charged uncertain emotions, in good and bad ways. I could say more, but take it slow, redefine what "friends" and "sex" mean to you and enjoy yourselves. That's my advice, though I'm sure I'll say more later.

(And bob just learned about yuri YESTERDAY? That surprises me.)

And bob just learned about yuri YESTERDAY?

See Protesting, Too Much.

"try it and see but stay friends anyway"

Nice work if you can get it.

17: Sure, but I think that can sometimes work better if the sex is about experimenting on both sides rather than one person trying to draw the other over to a preferred identity. Obviously this way lies heartbreak and unrequited love and so on, but I think that's more common in the oh-so-common lesbian-loves-a-straight-girl context.

Anyway, the more important stuff is that if the flirting is fun, there's absolutely no reason to go right to sex and definitely not to thinking about who would be better at changing diapers. Looking at a relationship with a woman who creates this spark with you is something new to both of you, and so don't push anything but don't push anything away either.

I was thinking somewhat similar to Thorn - there's no reason not to enjoy a whole murky area of cuddling and hand-holding for a while. That could easily be a permanent fixture, even if you both eventually end up in heterosexual longterm relationships.

It seems like the two of you are well positioned to say "Let's try this sex thing" and really mean it as a trial run. Your friendship seems strong, and you're both obviously feeling an erotic charge, and you've both had limited same-sex experiences before. Unless you really think this would ruin the friendship, I think you'd be crazy not to try it. If the sex part doesn't work out, you two can process that and remain friends -- "ha ha, remember when we thought we'd enjoy sex with each other?" Yes, my perspective is influenced by my experiences in gay land, where of course you would try sleeping together. In my experience, even if the sex creates some kind of rupture in the friendship, it's a rupture that heals with the passage of time if both people really value the friendship.

No. Strap it on immediately.

So, say the orientation issues were all worked out (either she were a straight man, or you were both comfortably lesbian or bi). At that point, is there a problem?

Honestly, I don't think there is. "Too much alike" and "don't want to risk our great friendship" are both things that I'd think of as excuses for "I don't actually want to be romantically involved with this person," not as actual independent reasons not to go for it if you do want to. At which point take Thorn's advice.

And Bave's, who I crossed with.

21 to 17

Also, were you to enjoy a lasting relationship with this woman, you could certainly open up the bedroom to men from time to time. (I mean, a feminist.)

25: I'd take one for the team.

26 to 21.

27: There's no I in TEAM, but there's usually anal penetration.

That's what Team APO is short for, actually.

What is your track record on pulling gracefully back from getting involved with someone to whom you're intensely attracted? Have you ever regretted it before?

My own experiences render me unfit to give advice to anyone (she broke my heart to splinters, but I was 19), but these seem like the questions I would ask. Do you get heartbroken? Do you get over people easily? Can you stay friends after breakups? If you think you can live through a flameout, maybe it's worth it. I suppose I don't regret the late-teenage relationship, and in fact it's among my most cherished memories, even if the end was brutal. But the question is whether I would prefer, soberly and in my 30s, to have retained that friendship in lieu of the passionate memories. And... jeez, I can't think about it. Maybe. Yes, I think so. But I don't think it's possible, let alone desirable, for anyone to take me as a model. So consider the questions alone, and the better advice above.

The O is for ouch.

I'm generally with the "try it, you might both like it" school, except for this:

I'm also still painfully enough in love with the guy I stopped seeing in October that I have distressing, intrusive flashbacks about him when I try to get it on with other people.

Also, you both seem to have unnecessarily constrained notions about what constitutes lady-to-lady sex. (Echoing Thorn.)

Also, you both seem to have unnecessarily constrained notions about what constitutes lady-to-lady sex. (Echoing Thorn.)

We should get Farber in to consult.

Further to 32.last: Let me be the first to suggest you each read some lesbian erotica.

There's no I in TEAM, but there's usually anal penetration.

This did not turn out to be true of Academic Team, I'm sorry to report.

OH MY GOD JUST KISS HER.

You are overthinking this.

No video games until after you've read your lesbian erotica.

36: From what I've seen, over-thinking relationships seems more fundamental to lesbianism than women kissing other women.

38: WHATEVER, heebie. You could have just used my name!

And on the overthinking part, it's obvious, PITY, that she's flirting with you and not just for-no-good-reason having the old "So, fucked any women lately?" conversations that I assume, say, heebie and her straight friends do not have all the time. But she may be wanting you to make the first move and/or send other signals. If this thread gets long and dire enough, I can share my stories of manipulating my first girlfriend into making moves because (as the one who identified as lesbian rather than straight) I didn't want to be seen as playing on her better nature or what have you.

it's obvious, PITY, that she's flirting with you and not just for-no-good-reason having the old "So, fucked any women lately?" conversations that I assume, say, heebie and her straight friends do not have all the time. But she may be wanting you to make the first move and/or send other signals.

I would agree that this is obvious. Not that orientation issues might not get in the way if you did anything about it, but from what you described, she's actively interested in trying it out.

37: No video games until after you've read your lesbian erotica.

If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?

(I always Mondegreenishly heard this as "If you don't kick your feet," flashing back to prowling swim coaches on the deck during practice.)

I dunno, I get crushes on my friends all the time. I don't see what the big deal is. If it works out, it works out. If it doesn't, it sounds like this friendship could easily survive that, given a small amount of time to regroup. I don't really understand why people would not be friends with their exes though, per many previous discussions, absent some kind of abuse or truly bad behavior.

One vote for the don't overthink, er, vote.

As a passel of early prophets[1] once declared, it is better to regret the things you did, rather than the things you didn't.

Also, too, on the sex thing, there is tons of room for making sure everyone is satisfied. Experiment and talk.Give room for ideas that initially sound Bad. Yes, that is much harder than it sounds. As a former therapist told me after I bitched about how things never seemed to get easier, if it weren't hard, you wouldn't be seeking what you wanted.

There, I'm done dispensing others' wisdom for the day. And it is still before 11.

[1] Butthole Surfers, Sweatloaf

36 gets it exactly right.

And 43 ruins the reference by spelling it out. What do you take us for?

Read, please go away.

Maybe this is just a pitiful male ego thing, but it seems like it would be fairly stressful to be in a situation where: (1) you really like someone, and don't want to have things go poorly, (2) it's your first time having sex with a woman, so you're sort of inexperienced, and (3) she's been disappointed by lesbian sex in the past, so you know in advance that the bar for successful performance is set fairly high.

What I'm saying is: you're gonna need a fucksaw.

you're gonna need a bigger fucksaw.

I agree with 46.1. She is self-identifying as heterosexual, at least at the moment; you're basically still in love with someone else; and your friendship with this woman is important and you don't want to fuck it up. I say chill out for a while.

I don't see how you can separate 46 into parts. It is one set of necessarily unified advice.

I meant 46 para. 1, or 46 (1) to (3), to the exclusion of the unnumbered fucksaw part, which I don't endorse.

Maybe 50 should have been posted at Standpipe's blog.

I'm basically on the side of "be open to the possibilities, but don't rush to resolve it" as expressed variously above. This is, in the interest of honesty, advice I am historically completely unable to follow, myself.

Once upon a time, I had sex with a friend who was feeling bi-curious. Afterwards she said that she was no longer curious and now knew that she definitely did not, in fact, want to fuck women. Yay! I'm the best at sex!

You might think this would be crushing, but even at the time it was mainly funny. HOWEVER, I was not even a little bit in love with her, so take your own feelings into account accordingly.

53: Maybe you could set up a service where you get referrals from Scared Straight-type anti-LGBT groups.

53: Diagnosis: not enough fucksaws.

52.last: I thought the Mineshaft was supposed to answer with good advice we wouldn't actually follow ourselves.

Gotta agree with 36. While highest highs are indicated, possible contraindication could be lowest lows.

I had an experience very similar to 53! (As the rfts player in the scenario.) I hadn't thought of that in a long time.

48: She's "self-identifying as heterosexual" only to OKCupid. She's slept with women, she's made obvious overtures to PINY. You can call a tail a leg if you want, but that doesn't make this woman straight.

Also, it turns out that it's totally possible for adults to make out, and then either have sex or not, and then say "I still like you but I don't want to have sex with you." SO KISS HER ALREADY

Also. ALSO. "I've been thinking about what you said about us making out, like, thinking about it a lot, but I don't want to screw up our friendship, and we're both kind of ambivalent about sex with women, so I have this great idea, let's just like make out for four straight continuous hours and see how that goes?"

The commentariat is about to turn into a chorus of mildly racist singing undersea creatures.

let's just like make out for four straight continuous hoursuntil the roots of our hair turn red and see how that goes?

FTFY

62 totally doesn't work for me.

And don't forget to liveblog when you do.

You, apo, can take the "seven hours of the clock" option.

It seems like the two of you are well positioned to say "Let's try this sex thing" and really mean it as a trial run

Qualified endorsement. While I'm generally on the anti-inertia side of relationship questions (kiss her already! get a divorce, mine worked out great!) the bit where she suggested you make out and then dramatized being deeply ashamed of her suggestion sounds like she's likely to -- possibly even looking forward to -- freak out after the sex.

Which isn't to say don't do it, just when you're gaming it out, don't even consider the possibility that she won't freak out. Rather, figure out whether you can navigate the freak out -- I say the other side is just friends, but with a 1 in 4 option of more and happy sex.

My beard grew in red, but now that it has gotten a bit longer, it is the same brown as the rest of my hair. I'm not sure why.

67: Smog?

If the air is that bad, I'm going to start smoking again.

she's likely to -- possibly even looking forward to -- freak out after the sex.

Maybe, for her, that's, like, part of the sex.

I agree with 20. Can't read the whole thread right now but even if it isn't sparks, you can still be friends. Women are cooler about that stuff than men. You're both fairly new to it, so it's not like one person has to be the dominant one (which is boring). Have toys available, talk, laugh, and make it fun.

If this thread gets long and dire enough, I can share my stories ...

Be the change you want to see in the thread, Thorn.

70: What's the post-sex equivalent of foreplay? "Backplay" doesn't sound right.

Putting?

73: Afterglow

Sleep.

67:Have you washed lately? Sometimes my white beard is blonde or light-brown.

I bathe daily.

DAILY!!!! With the water running the whole time, I suppose.

Wait, maybe we've discovered the issue.

73: Smoking.

79: If I turn off the water in the middle, I get cold.

Settling up.

DAILY!!!! With the water running the whole time, I suppose.

What is the ecologically proper standard for bathing, with or without water running?

Once a week, need it or not.

That's my dad's joke about how often they bathed when he was a child. They had no indoor plumbing.

Our puppy (not so little anymore) got his first bath yesterday. Normally his daily swims in the river take care of that. But now that he's taken to rolling on dead salmon, he's gonna get baths. With shampoo.

84: Wash yourself with a wet washcloth, not with running water.

To clean you hair, fill and bucket and dunk your head in.

There's a hole in the bucket.

89: that also wastes water

That's how often we bathe our children, and we do have indoor plumbing.

Kids are different. They don't have armpit funk.

I am sad that the simultaneous eruption of Hott Sexx and blog spats has cut short our discussion of Lincoln.

I know this is a very stereotypical straight male thing to say, but I am also sad that I will never have the opportunity to have lesbian sex.

I will never have the opportunity to have lesbian sex

Certainly with that defeatist attitude, you won't.

Thread has gone tired and silly, and this from Thorn

Obviously this way lies heartbreak and unrequited love and so on, but I think that's more common in the oh-so-common lesbian-loves-a-straight-girl context.

inspired me to discuss the movie in 9), or otherwise display my ignorance in hope of correction. It takes a while, but the nuance seems to come out a while after watching, which is why I watch one a night.

1) Our first lead, by a hair, Mitsushima plays the "straight" girl. Quotes because we're not so sure. She is young, college, and has a very low self-worth. She is shown approached by sweeter nicer gentler guy late in the movie, who proceeds to mansplain her. She rejects him.

2) Our 2nd lead, Nakamura Eriko is not bisexual as IMDB says but a committed lesbian. However, she is not comfortable in the lesbian subculture (bars) and being 5-10 years older than Hikari, desires a permanent relationship. She is somewhat needy and demanding of Hikari, which is frightening and leads to the end (and reconciliation, and then another breakup) of the relationship. She is by far the more sympathetic character, Hikari keeps pushing her away and calling her back til it breaks your heart.

3) The third lead might be considered the setting, lower-middle class economics and social constraints. Eriko lives with her family, even with a good job. Over and over you are shown the harsh and conformity-demanding nature of Japanese subgroups, be it the lesbian community or the student societies or Eriko's work world.

4) Thus Hikari's decision is put into a context of Japanese conformity, and the isolation the two leads endure and look forward to provides more empathy toward her difficulty in committing.

5) I mentioned Mitsushima's courage, the character here is very unattractive, frowsy frumpy indecisive and cruel and does not become a butterfly. This is the 2nd time I have seen her do this, mostly with walks and body-language.

I've upped it to a 7.0.

Once a week, need it or not.

Gross!

people are sweaty smelly hairy mean and ugly animals,

As the title of the Last Exit tune has it, "Jesus! What Gorgeous Monkeys We Are!".

"People are people so why should it be, you and I bathe so frequently."

never have the opportunity to have lesbian sex

I don't even know what this means.

Men can have lesbian sex, but not in a way women can understand.

93: I assume it must get really tiresome for lesbians to have straight guys talk about how turned on they are every time the topic of lesbian sex comes up, so I do my best not to mention it. But it is very hard to resist.

I think it is an offshoot of the urge to say "I'd hit that" every time you'd like to imagine yourself hitting that. I'm not sure why we have this urge. Announcing that you'd hit that generally doesn't bring you closer to hitting that. And most of the time you wouldn't really hit that anyway, because, you know, you're married or something. And yet, the urge is there. The world must know that I would hit that (if the circumstances were right.)

I didn't mention Mitsushima's economics because it isn't clear. Barely decent apartment in a slummish neighborhood, no job, studies German literature at Tokyo U. Tin Drum is thematic. Parents aren't seen, if she has an accent (Osaka is common) I can't tell). Her parents aren't seen or mentioned, but with this evidence there is a possibility they, barely middle-class?, would not approve and cut her off.

She will also need her school contacts to get a good job, or is worried about a job. Eriko has fulfilling work, (she makes breast implants and other prosthetics, another theme, but it is a tiny company of three people.

I bet there is a lot I'm still missing.

Sawako Decides is also recommended. Very woman-agency, and funny.

I'm not sure why we have this urge.

On the veldt....

There are commenters I'd totally hit, but not in the sexual sense.

100: It's often amusing rather than just tiresome, but in person it can be creepy rather than tiresome. Much depends on the intent and execution. I've certainly never felt unreasonably perved on by anyone here, though you don't need to bother telling me it's because you wouldn't hit that. (Or, if you're Apo, that you would.)

103, 104: Apparently even apo wouldn't. Hooray!

It's super weird for me to think "I'd have sex with that guy" without wanting to tack on all kinds of qualifiers. That seems like a strictly a consequence of gender socialization.

Oh, Thorn, don't kid yourself.

106: "If he were the last man alive," for instance?

Hey Thorn, I totally have fantasies about getting it on with drunken literary critics.

This post really was hot, but in significant part thanks to the detailed description of that should we kiss/shouldn't we kiss tension that is such a great part of young love. I guess a positive element of the whole bi-curious thing is that you can reproduce that. Actually you can probably reproduce it in adultery too, but in a bad-idea kind of way.

108: "...if he looked, thought, and acted like somebody else."

Wait, I actually don't get this. It goes without saying I've heard straight men go on about hott girl-on-girl action, but I don't think I'd ever heard one say he regrets the impossibility of having lesbian sex. I don't even know quite what I'm asking here but the general gist of it is "wha?" I guess: why would being a woman-having-sex-with-a-woman be hotter than being a man-having-sex-with-a-woman for someone who is, in fact, a male-identifying male man person?

108: If I recall Clerks correctly, recently dead works just as well.

This post really was hot, but in significant part thanks to the detailed description of that should we kiss/shouldn't we kiss tension that is such a great part of young love. I guess a positive element of the whole bi-curious thing is that you can reproduce that.

So it would seem the shortest path to remedying the absence of lesbian sex in your life is to make out with a dude, if I'm reading all this correctly. You're welcome.

111: Having a cock eventually gets kind of boring. YMMV.

114: Like a drill.

113; 114: Gay chicken all around!

MMDV.

117: So far.

I'm flattered Smearcase is trying to recruit me.

Remember, you can't say it's the best time you ever had until it's all over.

I don't know if PGD is my type so I was actually volunteering helpy-chalk for it. Plus it's no fun playing gay chicken with an actual gay. And I haven't been chicken, by any reasonable standard, in years.

117: Have you tried using cruise control?

111: well, this may be TMI, but I have more than once not quite regretted (I don't think that's the right word at all) but … reflected regretfully, let's pretend that's somehow better … that it will never be possible for me to make like Tireisias and be the female partner in even a male/female coupling, let alone a female/female coupling, not because I think that would be hotter, but because it seems as if it would be totally different. Here, to wax high-minded, we have the problem of other minds in its purest form: if you cut your finger while dicing onions and I, in a philosophical mood, reflect that I can't have your pain, I can be reasonably effectively brought down to earth by being reminded of the last time I cut my own finger: isn't that what "having the same pain" comes to? But if I, while copulating philosophically (which is how I always copulate!), reflect that I can't have my (female) partner's orgasm, or her sexual experiences generally, isn't that right? It sure seems as if what she experiences isn't like what I experience, and it even seems like it would be worth experiencing. But I can't! Such experiences are not a possibility for me. There are certain mechanical aspects analogues of which I could experience, but I suspect the analogy is strained, at best.

Women have super awesome orgasms that last for a long time. At least, some of them do, and in my imaginings I am free to put myself in that category.

111:Because she might like it more?

I have no, and have never had any, sexual interest in lesbians-as-lesbians, and find the idea utterly offensive.

The last thin about Kakera is about Eriko, the lesbian, searching for her comfort role in relationships. She is shown as dominated, trying, but ultimately unsatisfied. She tries aggression, but isn't very good at it. It could be that she hit on Hikari because of Hikari's weakness and lack of self-worth. But fails at that dominant role too. This is absolutely not shown as reductionist but dynamic and experimental and self-realized.

These are two individual unique people who find some way to manage alone.

Japan has less sex than any other developed nation.

while copulating philosophically (which is how I always copulate!)

I think therefore I am?

124: There's always heroin.

Japan has less sex than any other developed nation.

But more tentacle porn. Go figure.

I am putting off going to the office "holiday" party which I am not looking forward to even one little bit (well it's at least relatively close to my house). People have kept stopping by my cube over these last few minutes saying, "time to leave" etc. Bringing up the naked Twister google search results "A little more work to do and then I'll go" is my response.

124: Just inhale.

It is ironic that it is when we are physically nearest that our remoteness from each other is at its clearest. Is that, perhaps, why the ancients proclaimed that after sex all animals are sad? Perhaps. But it is a poignancy that I would not want to live without—the spoonful of medicine that helps the sugar go down.

Laydeez.

Party Guest: I finally had an orgasm, and my doctor said it was the wrong kind.
Isaac Davis: You had the wrong kind? I've never had the wrong kind, ever. My worst one was right on the money.

Is approximately how I feel.

I agree with 94, only completely not-jokingly.

111: Not inherently hotter, hot because different from the usual. ("You inside some girl you duped, jackhammering away, not noticing that bored look in her eyes." "Hey, I always notice that bored look in their eyes, alright?")

copulating philosophically (which is how I always copulate!),

It's amazing anyone puts up with people like us.

My sabbatical project will be to watch every movie bob talks about as soon as he mentions it.

What is it like to be a bat who has lesbian sex?

Someone who isn't me should make an animated gif out of the "Why don't you shut up and kiss her already" scene from "It's a Wonderful Life."

I endorse 123 as a plausible elaboration on my 114.

123 seems like a fantasy about being the woman in heterosexual sex, not being a woman in lesbian sex.

I frequently wonder what it is like to be a lesbian bat.

135: Dammit.

73: If the sex is BDSMmy, or otherwise extremely physically/emotionally draining, the following period where you make sure your partner is okay and give them a snack in anticipation of the coming adrenaline crash is referred to as aftercare.

It's not a fantasy, urple. It's philosophy.

135: Or a lesbian who has bat sex.

That's the least likely pwning I've seen in a while.

I can't identify with wanting to experience lesbian sex - if I was temporarily a woman I'd want to sample the cock, not something I've already tried. That's assuming the transformation came with an appropriate orientational adjustment so I could stand being sexual with a man. Not to make said adjustment while permitting temporary zapping into another body would be just cruel.

You cisgendered monosexuals are hilarious.

133.last is one of my favorite movie rejoinders, and I've been vaguely wishing I had an opportunity to use it in real life ever since I first saw it (more than a decade ago, now). Sigh.

145: I'm not following this -- wouldn't you think that the big difference about a (magical/thoughtexperimentical) sex change would be the change in your equipment, rather than your partner's? If you were interested in experimenting with cock, a more parsimonious thought experiment would be "what if you were a gay man" rather than a straight woman.

nosflow might have said it already, but neither can I imagine "being a woman." If I remain myself, a man, in a woman's body then I am not actually a woman. Yet if I change into a woman in a woman's body then I am no longer myself, at least those parts of myself relevant to gender.

I have very rarely been turned on by watching lesbian videos*, and as usual by the people and personalities rather than the mechanics. As usual, it is watching people having fun and enjoying each other that is arousing, and I swear, to tell from pron, sex is usually hard labour.

*Veronica Hart doing Seka in a 69 with her large nose, and both of them laughing while coming was pretty nice.

147: Well, you could try getting into more discussions about the definition of sex with spunky lesbians.

That is, discussions (about the definition of sex) (with spunky lesbians), not (about the definition of (sex with spunky lesbians)).

Good point. I haven't had enough of those of late.

the spoonful of medicine that helps the sugar go down

/like

||

What time will people arrive at the meetup? I expect to leave here between 6 and 6:30, in which case I'll be there between 6:30 and 7.

|>

Independent evidence of such desires: aftermath, nostalgia.

a more parsimonious thought experiment

I have also wondered what it is like to be parsimon.

I'm on about the same schedule -- I'm stuck on a call that's not ending, but I'm leaving here as soon as my interlocutor shuts her cakehole.

after sex all animals are sad

Not what I'd say, myself, insofar as I can ascribe emotional states to animals at all. Cocky, annoyed, tired, nest-seeky, indifferent, but why sad? What were they looking at? Is this just like counting women's teeth or ribs or whatever they famously got wrong?

157: I thought it was a piehole. Can it be both?

And yes, 159 to all manner of things. Whatever.

Classically it is a piehole, but having, instead, a cakehole may just be one of LB's interlocutor's many failings.

Cakehole shut, I'm leaving, should be there around 6:20-30.

Cake is the new pie.

in the uk we say lollyhole

148: Right, there's two axes of change, but in exercising the new equipment I'd rather try in addition something entirely novel.

Sorry to be absent from the thread. Stuff came up today and then my internet broke. I'm going to the meetup, so some of you can continue your campaign to get me to have hls in person.

I don't think law school is the answer, Piny.

They have kombucha on tap at this bar!

I wonder what it would be like to drink it as a straight man!

it would make the girls look cuter!

111: I don't think I'd ever heard one say he regrets the impossibility of having lesbian sex

But they get so much done in a day!

Regarding the post, in the previous mineshaft PINY said something about wanting to find someone to make a baby with. Dating women does not seem like a good way of advancing this agenda.

138

123 seems like a fantasy about being the woman in heterosexual sex, not being a woman in lesbian sex.

That might set off some guy's homophobia.

I wonder what it would be like to drink it as a straight man!

Totally gay is what would be like. Uh, I've been told.

Every animal is sad after sex, except the human female and the rooster.

It's cheaper to drink as a straight man, at least in my experience. Maybe I just have bad taste.

Yeah, those tiny umbrellas can really add up over the course of a night.

This bar doesn't even have umbrellas. And they pass the savings on to anybody who wants to watch Ohio State play Duke.

Some call it a tiny umbrella, others a tiny flared base.

177: So you're there by yourself.

Yes, but lots of people are here with other people.

171-- wouldn't it double the opportunities? the other ingredient is easy enough to come by. (obvious joke here)
123- maybe u r doing it wrong. ;)
mostly--oh for fuck sake, stop thinking and kiss her.

174 s/b:
Every sad animal is after sex, except the human female and the rooster.

I can't imagine what 181.2 is getting at, given the last part of 123.

179 to 178, of course.

Ugh, I'm trying to read these comments but they're too boring. The real problem here is that you're both too old to be eating pussy for the first time for two bicurious girls. The fact is, either you want to eat pussy or you don't. It can be really fun, and you're guaranteed to be better at it that 9/10 of dudes with no practice. Don't just lick it; eat it, the way you would suck dick if you like sucking dick. It's not hard.

The thing is, repressed people suck in bed unless they're super-perverts, so be prepared for a lot of cuddling and talking if it doesn't work. Either way, you'll be friends because you were already friends, and that's how it works with girls. I have never lost a girlfriend by having sex with her. I've lost lots of men as friends after having sex with them. Women are easier in bed, easier to give orgasms, easier to hang out with afterwards. The only hard part about being involved with women is that sometimes they expect that you have some emotional maturity or maternal nature, which I don't have, and that only applies to strangers anyway.

Way to be judgy.

How am I being judgy?

You mean the boring comments part or the part about how guys tend to be awful at eating pussy compared to girls, or what?

Too old, perhaps. I didn't mean too old to eat pussy of course. One is never too old to eat pussy. But too old to be just getting around to it, maybe, yes. It seems like it would have come up before.

But too old to be just getting around to it, maybe, yes. It seems like it would have come up before.

I don't know; I think PINY's reasons for why it hasn't are 1- entirely plausible, and 2- not at all indicative of it being a bad idea to try it out.

More generally, if you're going about your life in such a way that activity X isn't going to happen, it's going to keep not happening however long you keep doing that, but it doesn't necessarily mean X is a bad idea--precisely because you're not doing it, you're not getting any feedback about its desirability one way or another.

188, 189: Yes, those are all among the judgy elements of 185.

I don't think it's a bad idea (for PINY or for anyone else) except to say if you're well into your life and you've had gay feelings and never acted on them then why now unless there's been some lifting of superego or something. I only say it because I'm mostly straight, but by my early (and long-fundamentalist) 20's I was desperate to eat pussy, so it's hard for me to imagine a secular 30-something who thinks it might be an interesting way to spend time who hasn't done it and that this person actually has enough interest in it to do it well. No one wants to be a science experiment.

The parts about guys sucking at it and boring comments I don't apologize for. The part about shaming someone who is coming out to herself after all these years I certainly don't mean to be shaming; I mean get on it, lady.

Women are [...] easier to give orgasms

Well this is one of those "boy other people's worlds are different than mine" moments. Then again I recall you mentioning that you found giving good handjobs a challenge, so I suppose I already knew that.

Giving women orgasms is just like pulling all the right bits of a machine at the right time; men take all this like thought and effort. I know this is not how men think of themselves as sexual objects, but, coming from at least my perspective, I can make a woman come five times for the amount of effort I'd have to put into a single man's orgasm. It's part of why I like having sex with men. It's a challenge.

195: Well, except it's not just "how men think of themselves as sexual objects". I mean, is there a male equivalent of Betty Dodson?

it's hard for me to imagine a secular 30-something who thinks it might be an interesting way to spend time who hasn't done it and that this person actually has enough interest in it to do it well

I suppose it might be hard to imaginative inhabit the psyche of such a person, but PINY did give a pretty clear reason:

this was probably repression to defend against the fact that I had at one point or another lusted terribly after most of my female friends, knew I'd never be reciprocated, and was afraid that admitting I was attracted to women would interfere with the intimacy I had with them

And this reason seems perfectly compatible with being able to bring an adequate amount of lust/passion/interest to bear on the pussy in question.

You mean other than the 10 million j/o videos on Xtube? Making someone else come is totally different from masturbating, I think, in that being good at blowjobs is better practice for being good at eating pussy than masturbating is. Oral sex really isn't that different no matter what the gendered object is.

it's hard for me to imagine a secular 30-something who thinks it might be an interesting way to spend time who hasn't done it and that this person actually has enough interest in it to do it well.

What's with all this looking down on people who aren't risk takers and don't find it easy to reinvent their personas? Get over yourself.

192: I in fact know lots of people who waited until their 30s to experiment with gay sex. I don't think it's particularly rare.

Some people wait to try old chestnuts.

Jesus, AWB, so fuck them already

I'm on team actually wishes I could have lesbian sex, basically for the same reasons that nosflow outlines. I'm curious about what sex would be like as a woman, and I find that idea especially appealing if I'd be having said sex with someone I'm actually attracted to. On top of that, there's some things that I find hot about the idea of same-sex sex (e.g. it's taboo without actually being objectionable), and it's easier for me to imagine being a woman than finding a man attractive.

185 etc - apart from what she said in the post, isn't there something for the idea of it being *that particular woman* that's attractive rather than any old random genitals?

202 would make sense for several reasons.

So in this fantasy where you guys are a bunch of lesbians, are you butches? Or more kind of a Portia di Rossi model?

it's hard for me to imagine a secular 30-something who thinks it might be an interesting way to spend time who hasn't done it and that this person actually has enough interest in it to do it well

The entire history of my love life has been finding myself attracted to men whom I would never until that moment have expected I'd be attracted to. It doesn't seem all that surprising to me that a theretofore-straight woman could, even late in life, find herself unexpectedly attracted to a particular woman. Attraction always seems unexpected, at least in my world. (As for the interested enough to do it well part... Yeah, I don't know. Doing any of it well remains a mystery to me.)

I'm on Team Go For It, as far as PINY is concerned. You both seem interested. It could go horribly wrong, of course. But it could also go horribly right. So why take a chance on missing the chance at horribly right?

206: Ellen Page?

I'm also going to disagree with AWB on the idea that "[n]o one wants to be a science experiment." I mean, if you are talking middle school they-made-me-do-science-fair science experiments, okay, sure. But imagining a scientist exploring a subject of interest, eager to delve ever deeper into learning the unknown ... Oh dear God how I would like to be that science experiment.

I think you already know the answer to 206, Smearcase.

209: Please sign this Informed Consent, Di.

I'll need to see a complete CV and review of literature first, of course.

210: I mean I have my hunches! But since it's all driven by curiosity about a woman's experience, I assume it's actually all the same. Unless it's curiosity about what it's like to experience orgasm as a woman who is attractive to women who are attracted to the same kind of person the subject is attracted to as a heterosexual man, which is so specific!

I dreamed I was in a science experiment in my Maidenform bra.

I'll need to see a complete CV and review of literature first, of course.

I am not sure that you really want a review of Apo's literature.

Thanks for the advice, all.

Some thoughts in response:

Normally I'm much more approach-oriented than avoidance-oriented, as a psychologist would say, more inclined to seek reward than avoid pain, but I am just coming off of the third straight 1-3 month relationship that ended badly with a no-contact rupture. I mean, in there I slept with one guy once, it went poorly, we're still friendly, but still. I really hate abandonment. I know no one likes it but I really, really don't, and the accumulation of these relationships is crushing me. In general, I am losing my tolerance for relationship pain enough that I'd like to find ways to be more cautious (although I know I can't find a partner without any risk). It would be very hard for me if one or both of us flipped out and we stopped talking to each other. I can't even guarantee it wouldn't be me if I got involved with her and the way it ended was that she went off with someone else soon after (I could work through anything else). Holly's friendship is very valuable to me and it's scary to risk it.

Also, "it will all be fine because she's a woman and women are chill" is belied by my one experience dating a woman who was, perhaps, the craziest tweaker I have ever been involved with. I am no longer friends with her, and I don't think I had control over that at all -- that is, there's no way I could have acted, assuming a me who gets to have feelings or get angry at all, that would have preserved that relationship; she cut me off with very little justification. She became clinically depressed and parasuicidal about a week and a half after we started dating (conveniently in response to basically self-generated events in therapy, and right at the point when we were about to have sex, suggesting the functional purpose of this episode may have been avoiding increasing intimacy with me), so she's not a good stand-in for women as a whole; I'm just saying "everything's easier with women" isn't reassuring, given my limited experience.

As for why I haven't had sex -- all the reasons I said. Around the time I was seriously thinking about it I got involved in a two-plus-year relationship with a man. Many of the unambiguous opportunities I've had have been with women who in my heart, I wasn't that in to, and I didn't particularly want to subject them to having sex with someone who wasn't excited about them, nor did I want to try to figure out how I felt about girls with someone I didn't really want. I certainly wanted to with S, the crazy tweaker, and I was very excited about getting to have sex with a woman I felt physically and romantically attracted to. I wanted to dress up, even, and have a nice dinner, and celebrate it in a way I definitely didn't get to the first time I had sex with a man. So it was pretty disappointing when just when we would have gotten to that point she stopped being sexually available. I also tend to have sex with fairly-to-very aggressive men, and most of my script for what it means to be desired involve pretty stereotyped masculine/feminine roles where dude takes over so it's harder for me to figure out what to do when that script doesn't apply. (I mean, there are exceptions to this, and I initiate sometimes, but the point stands.) I had this crazy experience in New York this April when the Hot Girl dancing on stage who everyone in the club was fixating on and lusted after picked me out of the crowd to approach and start kissing and grinding with in a very "means business" kind of way, even though I hadn't done anything to approach or signal to her, but she seemed confused and surprised that I lived in the heartland, and didn't respond to me when I texted her the next day. Finally, I tend to be most attracted to femme women; that's a population that's more likely to be straight than the population of women considered as a whole.

So I just haven't.

Wanna come upstairs and see my bibliography?

The fact is, either you want to eat pussy or you don't.

Yeah, despite a vague though somewhat ardent commitment to the idea that it doesn't make that much sense to be 100% monosexual, I years ago conceded that I just am not curious on a groinal level. Maybe it was socialized out of me by gay sexual politics; I dunno. But I've seen enough porn of it without, er, an organic response that it's just not even on my "oh hey maybe I'll do that someday" list. I'm gonna be 40. I don't think the curiosity is latent, waiting to be stirred.

I'm really puzzled by all the men who say they'd like to experience sex as women because I've never heard a woman say the reverse. Does this have to do with penetrating/ being penetrated? With some belief that female orgasms are better/ different?

217: Is it... extensive?

219: Really? I'd love to be able to experience sex as a man. But with women. Although by the time I'm imagining I had a penis -- a secret weiner, as it were -- getting a blow job from a hot guy might be nice too.

I'm really puzzled by all the men who say they'd like to experience sex as women because I've never heard a woman say the reverse. Does this have to do with penetrating/ being penetrated?

I have heard far more women express this than men.

218: Not necessarily relevant to the main topic, but sexual orientation can manifest in really unpredictable ways. During a questioning period in my teens, I tried gay porn with what I still think was real openness, and since I didn't get much out of it decided that's that, I'm straight. But since then I've had enough impulses popping up vis-a-vis real people that I may well be like the fabled straight women-who-don't-like-porn for my gay side but not my hetero side.

Does this have to do with penetrating/ being penetrated?

I'm going to say not, since there's a very straightforward way of having that mystical experience without a passport to the Realm of the Feminine.

224: Yes, of course, we're not talking realities, since there's also an equally clear way for women to have the experience of penetrating. But I don't think this fantasy has much to do with reality?

222 echoes my experience.

Sorry, I responded to Smearcase before seeing that women do, in fact, wonder about this. I stand corrected!

That's ok, I think I may be being dickish about the whole thing because I'm still perplexed by the male "I want to have lesbian sex" dealio.

I'm really puzzled by all the men who say they'd like to experience sex as women because I've never heard a woman say the reverse. Does this have to do with penetrating/ being penetrated?

Using a strap-on with a boyfriend definitely made me curious about sex as a man. The control you have as the thruster / penetrator is really different, and it would be neat for that to be combined with stimulation of my own genitals. (I know that some women manage to stimulate themselves using a strap-on, but that wasn't the attraction of it for me and I never bothered to figure out how one does that. And not the same thing anyway.)

But while that sex act made me wonder, it's not a curiosity that particularly occupies me. I probably haven't thought of it in years, actually.

It's okay, Smearcase. I don't get the appeal of opera.

there's no way I could have acted

Or, well, I could have gotten, "If something seems seriously wrong about a situation, learn to leave before your own feelings get too seriously hurt instead of being such a trying-too-hard bitter ender who can't tolerate loss; it is the best chance for preserving the relationship" tattooed on my arm. That still might be a good idea.

Holly just texted me to tell me she had last minute theater tickets for tonight; do I want to come? She certainly does seem motivated to spend time with me.

I frequently wonder what it would be like to have sex with an opera.

231.last: If Wham! were playing ...

232: I tend to assume the opera role myself.

232: Loud.

234: I wouldn't worry, that's totally Norma.

222: I don't hear that many women wondering about the sex specifically, but I do hear women asking "what's it like to walk around with one of those things." I think Elaine asks that question in the episode of Seinfeld where George is complaining about shrinkage.

okay i am childish and petulant and painfully socially inept, everybody can see that, but i dont have any friends in real life and i am so very lonely so please let me just leave some comments here. its all i have. stop being mean to me.

219.1: Yeah, I've heard that wish expressed in many many contexts. I don't think it is at all uncommon.

This is making me remember that I was at an ex's house not too long ago and she had a piece of artwork referring to different times in her life. And for the time that we were together (in a messy, non-exclusive relationship) she had put down "I wish I had dated less". Yikes. But we're still very close friends.

I guess the thing about my first experience with someone of my own gender was not so much about the mechanics, as I was only mildly concerned with whether I was doing it right (and got lots of encouragement, which was super nice of him), but that the next morning there was like WHAMM! huge avalanche of emotional intimacy that I was NOT prepared for. It was actually a little freaky. So that would seem like a good thing to avoid if PINY hooks up with Holly. And then I broke it off a few weeks later when I learned that he was a mean drunk. Doesn't sound like that would apply here though, hopefully.

Holy shit, 238 is heartbreaking.

Speaking of Wham!, I've mentioned before that I am amused that, during jr. high, when George Michael was first big with his solo career, we had endless debates about whether he was gay, which seems absurd now. For those of you who were older, did adults who were aware of him figure he was gay as a matter of course or what?

242 is not me.

238 originally said something quite different.

If it needs saying, 242 is not me.

I thought that maybe 238 was a script/FPP edit, but the last part seemed genuine.

Since this is a political blog, why won't anyone answer my question about George Michael?

I think the edit of 238 was really shitty. Deleting, fine. Replacing with comedy, fine. Ventriloquizing so the banned commenter is insulting herself is nasty and childish.

Oh, one other thing I was going to respond to. It seriously confuses me, as a gay man also did recently, when people bring up wanting a child as a reason not to be involved with another woman. Sperm is cheap and plentiful. I need someone to get me pregnant and a co-parent, but I don't need them to be the same person. This would be way more of an issue if I were a man debating whether to be involved with women or men. As it is, it's a totally non-existent one. Look, I could even get a 25% discount if I wanted to get started now.

At this point, I absolutely don't care.

Replacing with comedy, fine.

I think this was the intent, the execution was just a bit flat.

I always care about George Michael.

Comedy was not the intent, urple. My actual wishes for read are far, far more malign but I'll keep them to myself.

Sperm is cheap and plentiful.

For now.

Comedy was not the intent, urple.

Well okay then. I stand corrected!

Sperm is cheap and plentiful.

Mouseover text? Also yeah, what Shearer said reads like thinly veiled homophobia, though I don't know if he's a homophobe.

as to 247, yes and...? She's relentlessly nasty and childish to almost everyone here. (Not me, yet, though maybe that'll change after this comment.) I do hope one day to be called the udarnik of the sexual kolkhoz, though. That's actually really funny.

250: I think this was the intent, the execution was just a bit flat.

Everybody's a critic now.

FWIW, I don't think there's any editing that could be done to a persistent troll's comments that could qualify as "really shitty". Even the insertion of emoticons would not be out of bounds.

241:Yes. I don't ever remember having an open mind about George Michael. Bad me, maybe.

I do have an open mind about Ellen Page.

I really don't care much at all, but there is a slight interest in strictures of societal oppression, e.g., does EP have to stay in to get work.

It is interesting for instance, that after seeing Rupert Everett play straights after he came out I am a little unclear how I see his identity. Or how indifferent I have become. Hard to explain. I was at a point happy that Everett could get parts as a hetero; now I don't give a shit.

George Michael? Hell, I remember when people weren't sure about Melissa Etheridge.

259: That's because of her earlier album titled "Well, I don't see how that's any of your business."

I only figured out Freddy Mercury was gay after he died.

The horrible reality of the world wide web is that some people really genuinely do deserve to be punched in the face, and there's no satisfactory way to do that over an internet connection.

OT: Hating on Williams-Sonoma is an easy shot, but lazy rich people, please.

That Williams-Sonoma article is very funny.

258 last is unclear, but then I am a little unclear

One of the points is that actors, however much they themselves are conflicted about it, do bring an off-screen persona onscreen. It is part of what they sell and part f what they develop over time. It is a shorthand that helps scriptwriters and directors.

They can't do everything equally well, and their limitations are part of what make their strengths marketable. If Michael Madsen and Rupert Everett were interchangeable we wouldn't need casting.

If preference or orientation is always, or as a choice, invisible onscreen, then it might not be very defining offscreen.

McLellan is warm and authoritative, Everett warm and funny. I don't think they can easily turn these aspects off.

258. Gay actors have been playing straight roles and vice versa since the time of Phrynichus. This is what acting is all about - pretending to be characters who are not yourself.

261: He was decidedly less gay by then.

265 s/b McKellen

266 see 258: I disagree that an actor can make herself invisible in a role.

I even disagree that that is what an audience wants. We go see a Johnny Depp movie to see Johnny Depp play a part.

Don't go see Dark Shadows. It just sucks.

Sex roles are too confining. I've always had a fantasy of bottoming with a butch lesbian. Had an OK experience with a guy but like women's bodies better.

If "gay" can be made invisible like "vegetarian" can be made invisible but "Republican" can't be made invisible...it raises questions about identity.

Actors disappearing into their parts is part of the myth of classic film continuity like invisible editing.

That Williams-Sonoma article is very funny.

Yes, but I bet that fruitcake is pretty great.

No, we go to see a Johnny Depp movie because we think Depp is capable of making an interesting performance (or we avoid doing so because we don't think so). I give Depp enough credit to think that's the way he'd want it too. To go and see him be Depp is reducing him to the level of a stand up comedian.

There are actors—not necessarily Depp—of whom what bob says is more or less true. One might think this of Jack Nicholson, for instance.

274: So what, Depp and Crowe and JGL and Jon Hamm are interchangeable? Or limited only by their external physical attributes?

Jeremy Piven and Louis C.K., for two fairly similar guys, would or could play a part in exactly the same way?

If that is true, then something radical is being said.

I enjoyed strap-on sex, but receiving more than giving. I have never really thought about having sex in a man's body. It's weird to think that so many straight men who don't in other ways seem to be trans fantasize about having boobs and a vagina during sex.

Jeremy Piven and Louis C.K., for two fairly
similar guys

Nuh-uh.

275: Al Pacino is my go to example for that. If you want someone to play Al Pacino, Al Pacino's your man, I say.

263: It's like a waffle inseminator.

I forbade my last girlfriend to magically acquire a penis on the grounds that she would try to insert it into basically everything she encountered and very quickly be arrested.

For men who want to have lesbian sex, it's simple: begin sexx0ring your female partner, then call to mind whatever you personally believe are the essential psychological differences between women and men and mentally project yourself into the female end of that spectrum. Presto: as long as you're maintaining your consciousness in your best approximation of a female mindset, you're having lesbian sex. IMPORTANT: under no circumstances should you attempt to describe to the Mineshaft what you believe the essential differences are.

SO WHY AM I BOTHERING TO LEARN ALL THESE STUPID ACCENTS?

216: Yeah, I've had sex with crazy tweaker chicks too, and those end up badly for the same reason that having sex with crazy tweaker dudes ends up badly--because they're crazy.

But, IME, if you're having sex with a good friend who is a woman, and not a tweaker, you're going to wake up the next day with a good friend. If you have sex with a good friend who is a guy, and not a tweaker, you might wake up with someone who will never speak to you again or who might act like you're dead. It's always a surprise with dudes. A woman isn't going to just cut you off after sex.

The best thing to do, I think, is make sure you're both sober when you have sex. The sex will be better, and no one can blame the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol; you'll just be the same people, who chose to have sex, and either it was fun or it wasn't, but you'll be closer for it.

278:Physically similar?

I mean, we need to think about what we are saying if we say Olivier and McKellen and Pacino "bring something unique" to their Richards. What unique thing do they bring?

Enough.

Of course no two people would play the same part in exactly the same way, but neither would one actor play two different parts in the same way, which is what you seem to be suggesting. Olivier played Hamlet as Hamlet and Richard III as Richard III, not as Olivier. Given that his make up in the latter made him facially almost unrecognisable, what part of Olivier playing Olivier are you getting when you go and see it?

What unique thing do they bring?

Imagination. A reading of the script.

similar guys

Nuh-uh.

Kraab is of course correct, for at least 1000 reasons, very much not the least of which being that Louis CK has like a foot and a half on Piven.

287 got all fucked up format wise, but you see what's goin' on.

but neither would one actor play two different parts in the same way

What? Plenty of actors play basically the same part in every production they appear in.

289. Yes, but by implication we're talking about good actors here.

That's different.

219, 224: I'm kind of surprised by how quickly recourse is had to "but men can be penetrated too"/"it must be about penetration"; I assume that a man's (or a woman's) being anally penetrated is not just basically the same as a woman's being vaginally penetrated—I mean I hear that for many women the location of ingress is not a matter of indifference. I also am given to understand that women can have what leading scientists theorize is something not unlike a sexual response without penetration.

then call to mind whatever you personally believe are the essential psychological differences between women and men and mentally project yourself into the female end of that spectrum. Presto: as long as you're maintaining your consciousness in your best approximation of a female mindset, you're having lesbian sex

I didn't know there was such a thing as "a female mindset", but if I did know that, I'd worry that one's best approximation of one could potentially be far off the mark, and that "maintaining your consciousness in your best approximation" of one is probably pretty different from just having it be your mindset.

Given that at several commenters have attested to being interested in a phsyical/experiential difference they assume exists, this advice sounds kind of like "as long as you're looking at color samples while maintaining your consciousness in your best approximation of the mindset of a red-green colorblind person, you're experiencing reds and greens the way they do".

281.1: Your girlfriend was Erika Moen (NSFW) ?

I usually try to avoid movies with good actors because sometimes directors will rely on good acting as a cheap substitute for having an explosion.

We need to separate our Meg Ryans from our Meryl Streeps. Or, more to the point, our Rupert Everetts from our Kevin Spaceys.

I forbade my last girlfriend to magically acquire a penis on the grounds that she would try to insert it into basically everything she encountered and very quickly be arrested.

I don't know; I think after one or two attempts to insert it into a tree or hubcap she'd start being cautious.

We need to separate our Meg Ryans from our Meryl Streeps

I don't think Yawnoc understands how lesbian sex works.

292 gets it right.

I have never really thought about having sex in a man's body. It's weird to think that so many straight men who don't in other ways seem to be trans fantasize about having boobs and a vagina during sex.

I don't know if it's so much about the anatomy as wondering what these orgasms are like that last 50 times longer than our orgasms.

292: nosflow and I are sympatico!

This all has to do with what are we doing when we try to see the other or grant subjectivity or try to communicate.

Particularity vs singularity. We try for empathy by refuge to attributes of recognizable types (particularity) and objectification.

...

Just as it is my avocation to find the director (Altman) within five different movies, I also think I need to find the actor with a portrayal(s) in order to assess the performance.

If there is neither particularity or singularity in McKellen as Gandalf, Richard, Profumo and Whale...umm I don't know.

I do think that acting as the antithesis of personal expression is a recent and limited phenomenon and possibly has to do with Fordism and late capitalism. Interchangeable parts, labor as commodity.

It's bothering me that Kevin Spacey is a terrible example of a chameleon-like actor, but I can't think of any better crypto-gay examples. Maybe gay dudes are all bad actors? Or maybe closeted gay dudes are the best actors?

It disturbs me that bob seems to be the one who's most picking up what I'm putting down.

I don't really understand the focus on lesbianism among the men here, though.

(focus, among the men, on lesbianism. If there were a rash of lesbianism among men, that might be worth focusing on.)

I don't really understand the focus on lesbianism among the men here, though.

Me neither, but have been refraining from comment on the grounds that most of what I want to say would likely be construed as coming from the humorless feminist perspective.

I often wonder what it would be like to have a woman's sense of humor.

Me neither, but have been refraining from comment on the grounds that most of what I want to say would likely be construed as coming from the humorless feminist perspective.

SUCCESS!

I have thought about having sex in a man's body! Your bodies are strange and fascinating and squirty.

306: Penetrative.

Yes, but by implication we're talking about good actors here.

Well, for me there's great acting that's about great presence rather than the detailed, convincing assumption of character. Silent film acting is a good example: Renee Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Katherine Hepburn sometimes. (Lots of examples in another art form I am reluctant to bring up because I get irritable when people then associate me with it and it alone.) And then there are examples of sinking thoroughly into character that aren't great performances. Watch any daytime soap, not that there are any left: a lot of those people are perfectly convincing, but not compelling.

I don't really understand the focus on lesbianism among the men here, though.
It's topical? I'm assuming the men in question aren't usually so focussed on it.

I often wonder what it would be like to have a woman's sense of humor.

292: I think you're underestimating the degree to which sex is a mental rather than a physical exercise. I think you're also underestimating the degree to which your gender identity is performance rather than essence.

I think you're underestimating the degree to which we're talking at cross-purposes, since "gender" is irrelevant to mine, and I'm interested precisely in the physical aspect. The analogy (yes!) to colorblindness wasn't idle. I hope, also, that you won't find me fearfully naïve if I go on believing that, hos epi to polu, men and women differ anatomically.

293: Similar, but more penetrate-y. Moen just wants to touch everything with her hypothetical penis.

"...if he looked, thought, and acted like somebody else."

Not even strictly necessary.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you don't care how naive I find you.

I know some people's genitalia can be construed as either male or female, Ham-Love, but some of us aren't so lucky.

I admit, it seems to me likely that finding people naive comes easily to you. But that's why I want you to challenge yourself.

I don't know if I'm naive too or what, but it seems very obvious to me that any two women are going to experience the same activity differently and some can think themselves to orgasm while others require a very specific set of circumstances and so on. I certainly wonder what the things we do feel like and mean to Lee, but I don't think that's quite the same thing.

That being said, one if my first responses to PINY's question was that IME there's something cool about being with someone whose body is like yours where you can (in the nice-kind-of-experiment way!) try to do things that have felt pleasureable to you and have that extra resonance of semi-understanding if she responds similarly. This isn't unique to gender, but I remember that feeling of symmetry and rightness being very compelling in my first relationship especially.

No, actually, I'm enormously naive myself, and also really bad at making judgements about other people. I just honestly don't actually think you care much about whether I find you naive.

I think the sense of one's gender identity as essence might be one of those things that essentially varies from person to person. I don't feel strongly about gender difference in myself or others, but I believe others when they say they feel deeply guided by an essentially gendered nature. If that weren't true, if it were all choice, I don't think trans people would have gone through what they have. And that works the other way as well; it seems clear that other people feel very meaningfully encased in their own gender identity.

I actually do somewhat, because I don't think what I think is naïve and I would be frustrated to know that someone I don't think I need to be disagreeing with thought otherwise. I acknowledge that you are very cosmopolitan and pleased about that and whatnot, but there remains, nevertheless, further territory.

I'd like a magic gadget so I could actually experience being a woman as long as it had a reverse button if I didn't like the experience.

There's nothing about men I can't experience or get close to experiencing; inhabiting a fully functional woman's body is simply not possible (yet). My curiosity would impel me to push that magic button if it were available.

I have tried what Ham-Love suggests and it can work, but it takes a lot of intimacy, sexual skill/knowledge/energy, and connection to your partner. In particular if a man is going to 'feel like a woman' in heterosexual sex then it helps a lot for the woman to 'feel like a man' or think of herself as taking a male role. (This has nothing to do with strap-ons or a crude physical approximation, it is a mental/spiritual thing). Both people have to open up a lot. To nosflow, I would say that even though anatomies differ there is a deep layer of sex that is essentially spiritual (I wouldn't call it just mental, that's a little too surface). To Hamlove, gender identity is deeply rooted and is not a surface performance even though it is not unchangeable essence either. In my experience at least, experimenting with this kind of sexual energy in a non-cartoonish way gets into all that eastern mystical sexual energy/tantric stuff that everyone laughs at when you talk about because it sounds so nutty, but actually is related to something real.

There is a pretty cute pornographic text adventure game in which this is the crucial plot point. You wake up as a guy, going around doing things and people, and then you find this amulet that turns you into a chick, and then you go around doing even more people, and some of the same people, and then you turn into a dude again, etc. It's surprisingly well written.

I would also like Merlin to come to my house and send me off on a bunch of adventures where I experience inhabiting the bodies of various different animals.

325: I already mentioned Tiresias.

321 sounds dead on to me. I'm always a little bugged by the construction "performing [gender, masculinity, etc.]" because, while it correctly recognizes that gender essentialism is bogus, it also seems to insist that no one really likes to inhabit traditional gender roles, or that authenticity is inherently opposite to those behaviors.

Probably protesting too much, and I don't reject the phrasing entirely, but I think that it entails a lot of unexamined assumptions (or assumptions that wouldn't stand up to examination, but can slip through).

I'm wondering if those of you who are curious about having sex as a woman are also curious about having a period.

Well, look, let me try and come at this from another direction.

You, with your single male brain and single male genital set. Is your subjective sexual experience the same every time? Does it feel the same to have "ugh this girl is actually kind of weird and I don't really like her but she's available and I'm horny" sex as it does to have "oh my god not only is she awesome to hang out with but she does that thing, that thing with the cup" as it does to have "well I'm not really in the mood but since she's my long term partner I can try and take one for the team and whoa actually it turns out I am in the mood after all" sex? Can you really boil all of those experiences down to "this is what male heterosexual sex is like" in any meaningful way?

Now, where exactly is the "hottt lesbian sex" center of the brain, and how much, exactly, does it dominate the sexual experience?

(I find it interesting that I come off as "very cosmopolitan and pleased about that", because I rarely think of myself as pleased about anything about myself.)

329: Certainly. And breastfeeding. Not childbirth, though. I've had epic constipation and have no desire to experience anything even slightly related.

330: saying that sexual experience varies is not the same as saying that it varies in a particular way. I will also come out as the author of 324 and say that although what you're saying can work it is not so simple as you seem to imply.

Can you really boil all of those experiences down to "this is what male heterosexual sex is like" in any meaningful way?

"Squirty."

I'm wondering if those of you who are curious about having sex as a woman are also curious about having a period.

It doesn't sound really all that pleasurable, so, not as much, no, but it's in the same genre, I guess.

Can you really boil all of those experiences down to "this is what male heterosexual sex is like" in any meaningful way?

Well, no.

I have more than once heard—I think it's a common observation—someone talk about doing some yoga exercises, and thinking, as they were doing them, "hey, this isn't all that intense, this isn't all that strenuous etc., what's the big deal?", but then, the next morning, feeling sore in—as it is often put—muscles they didn't even realize they had.

Now it's probably also true that those people had exercised muscle groups they were quite well aware they had in a variety of situations and moods such that they couldn't really say "this is The Way it feels to exercise my bicipes". But that doesn't mean that there isn't something qualitatively different from any of that about feeling sore in this previously unwot muscle group. (Which could, indeed, feel sore in many and various ways—once you have the knack of feeling in it at all.)

Now imagine that someone has a muscle that you just don't have! How could you imagine yourself into that?

Now, where exactly is the "hottt lesbian sex" center of the brain,

If you think I give two shits of about "center[s] of the brain", you are sorely mistaken. (I have nothing against giving shits, of course. Shitting is one of the great physical pleasures—though we mustn't overlook its spiritual dimension.)

331: I have a really disruptive stomach bug I'd be glad to give you. Interested?

333: female heterosexual sex can occasionally be that too, and it's fun when it is.

I have several red-green colorblind friends and, also, sometimes wonder what the same thing we're both looking at looks like to them.

329: Maybe Kotsko?

the construction "performing [gender, masculinity, etc.]" ... seems to insist that no one really likes to inhabit traditional gender roles, or that authenticity is inherently opposite to those behaviors.

Can't speak for anyone else, but when I use the construction it's meant to highlight the fact that 99% of the population never gives a single thought to how much of their gender-specific behavior is learned versus innate, and that this is horribly depressing and dangerous wrt "rape culture".

Both people have to open up a lot.
Maybe need to try a different size strap-on.

331: I'd try the whole package. No one ever wants a repeat of epic constipation, women often eagerly volunteer to have more than one child.

I'd try the other settings too. I'd love to be one of my cats for a while, and a big cat out on the veldt, and then an impala, and an owl, and so on until I'd tried them all.

337: I learned yesterday that the distinctive scents of caraway and of peppermint are the two enantiomers of the same chemical structure. Scent receptors of one handedness trigger "I'm smelling caraway" and of the other handedness trigger "I'm smelling peppermint".

This got me thinking: At some point in a young brain's development, you smell this smell, and it associates with all the other sensory input in your brain, and sets up a little mnemonic circuit for "I'm smelling peppermint", associated with Christmas or toothpaste or whatevre. Later (for typical westerners) you smell caraway and set up a different circuit for that, maybe associated with Indian food. There's no predefined shape or set of associations. Trying to describe the smell of peppermint without bringing your personal associations into it is doomed.

339: Well yeah, and that's why I don't rail against it: it's communicating an important truth.

But I also think it tends to swap one set of un(der)examined assumptions for another, which doesn't feel like that big of a win.

maybe associated with Indian food

Anti-Semite.

342: yes, but the associations are probably difficult to change through simple conscious effort.

women often eagerly volunteer to have more than one child

My partner loved being pregnant (until the temperature hit 100 in DC), giving birth was tougher.

I learned yesterday that caraway goes really well with ginger, garlic, and red chili pepper. Try it yourself!

There's no predefined shape or set of associations.

You don't say! Nevertheless, you can get by without merely "personal" associations, if "personal" is supposed to contrast with intersubjectively shared and mean something like "merely private". Wine people learn to talk to each other about the smells and tastes of wine in ways that, apparently, they find comprehensible—and which draws widely on other sensory terms.

Trying to describe the smell of peppermint without bringing your personal associations into it is doomed.

True. But I know somebody who works with high-end essential oils and one of the interesting things about playing around with different oils is that it provides a context to be attentive to the reactions to a specific smell (or how the oil feels on your skin) separate from the associations with the original plant.

345: I was bringing it up out of general interest, not in specific support of my "lesbian sex is easy" thesis.

Though I guess I'm kind of saying "there's no wrong way to have lesbian sex."

Was it here at the Mineshaft that someone told a story about someone roleplaying werebear sex?

I would say that epazote smells like grass and motor oil.

Further to 347, there was an interesting conversation at Thanksgiving because my brother brought Frankincense ice cream. One of the people, who had been raised Catholic, expected that from him, Frankincense would have associations with religious ritual but was surprised to find that the flavor was very different than the smell of Frankincense.

There's nothing about men I can't experience or get close to experiencing; inhabiting a fully functional woman's body is simply not possible (yet). My curiosity would impel me to push that magic button if it were available.

1) Black men? Asian men? Veterans? Gay or straight men? Of significantly lesser or greater intelligence or talent? I have some trouble claiming that others' contingency can be so simply assimilated, or that my own can be discarded.
When I say I can't imagine being a woman it is only a particular case of a general rule.

Is this a failure of imagination...could be. Or imagination's triumph, to understand that after I abstract attributes from the other there remains an unknowable residual, and that this residual is what I am reaching toward in empathy. I can't fill my lack with you or yours.

2) The Lacanians say:"Woman does not exist. She is a symptom of male desire in a patriarchy." Some feminists find that offensive; others understand they are not the contingent performance "Woman."

Without meaning offense of judgement, because this is the human condition, desiring to be "Woman" feels to me to be close to vampirism. If I want to be Woman, as specifically what I cannot identify with, I want something to control what is totally other to myself, rather than communicating with my own voracious emptiness and inescapable subjectivity.

I would want to make the Confronted Subject into Object.

There's sort of an eternal argument going among my guy friends here about masculinity, in that each of the three guys I'm thinking about consider the other two to basically be aliens from outer space. Each of them talks about his own relationship to sexuality as if it's the "normal" way to be a heterosexual man, and the other two just can't believe what nonsense that is. It's very funny to watch. I get the sense that they all come from communities where everyone is like them, or else they never talk about this stuff.

Caraway is Slavic.

Each of them talks about his own relationship to sexuality as if it's the "normal" way to be a heterosexual man, and the other two just can't believe what nonsense that is.

There's a lesson here that goes for more than just those three heterosexual men.

343: I don't get that at all. It smells a lot like the standard knee-jerk reaction to the term "privilege".

Was I really offensive last night? I feel like the presence of real, constant, annoying trolls has made us forget the pleasures of one another as drunken bossy homegrown trolls who are trying to mix it the fuck up a little bit.

But can you tell us what that smell is?

"trying to mix it the fuck up a little bit" sounds like the self-assessment of the typical troll.

So how is empathy possible?

I'm not sure it is. Perhaps a constant critique of one's own contingency and subjectivity helps, and I believe a caring careful essentialism will allow us to surf the surface of the day.

||

Male dog got hit by a car this morning. So alright that the vet gave us pain medicine "just in case." My greatest regret is that in my over-excitement I didn't reassure the driver that dog looked pretty good.

But gender! What's funny is that when the female dog is in pain she gets hyper and overactive, and a diazepam is added to the tramadol.

When the male dog gets hurt he freezes, and gets this amusing befuddled and confused demeanor. "So not fair this can't be real"

|>

358: Yes, precisely. I am aware. Am I banned?

I just mean I don't really see what the pleasures you speak of are.

"there's no wrong way to have lesbian sex."

This seems like a wrong way, but I still watched.

357: Mostly pyridine, with just a hint of actual privilege.

360: Let's all take advantage of the text thing to push our luck.

Actually, the thing I really wonder about, more than I wonder about having boobs even, is what it is like to be a dolphin. They have both a well developed sonar system and a well developed visual system. Do they experience them as separate sensory modalities? Do the modalities interact, like taste and smell do?

359--Ow. I hope your dog is ok, bob.

At SeaWorld last Friday, I did find myself wondering which Shamus were so seething with rage that they'd bite their trainer in half if precautions hadn't been added.

Regarding experiencing copulation as a different sex, either hetero or homo: there was a short story published in The National Lampoon about this very thing. The story was about an invention that could transmit the thoughts and feelings of actor to the patron. Initial trials of "You Are There" style action were abortive because the actors were acting, i.e. worried about capturing their "good side" on film vs, being attacked by Romans or whatever. So the financial backers were disappointed, until they realized the gold mine of sexual experiences. It being the National Lampoon, the story ends with a breakdown of the machine, and everyone's sexual experiences getting scrambled. I remember thinking it was funny.

365: Given how much of what we think we see is actually synthesized from memory and imagination working on crappy inputs, I would guess that dolphin imaging probably feels pretty continuous between the visual and sonar systems.

I wonder what boobs would look like in sonar.

365: And how does it feel to be one of those disguisey octopii that can make themselves look like anything? There has to be some incredibly amount of processing going on there. Are they aware of what they are doing or is it automatic?

At SeaWorld last Friday, I did find myself wondering which Shamus were so seething with rage that they'd bite their trainer in half if precautions hadn't been added.

A short story that essays an answer to your question, sort of.

Given how much of what we think we see is actually synthesized from memory and imagination working on crappy inputs

I see objects in the world, Ham-Love. I don't know what you see.

The name "Ham-Love" now creates this mental image for me (completely safe for work, you nervous nellies).

I would like to experience being a dolphin having lesbian sex with an octopus. They would have 8 tentacles and I would have none, sounds ideal!

142: It's not a fantasy, urple. It's philosophy.

This comment has led me to mentally replace 'fantasy' with 'philosophy' and vice versa for the past day. I like it.

It smells a lot like the standard knee-jerk reaction to the term "privilege".

And yet I endorse the analysis inherent in "privilege". A mystery!

There are more things in heaven and earth, [random commenter in this thread], than are dreamt of in your fantasy.

Philosophy Island for an example of doing it the other way. It's easy once you get the hang of it.

375: How about a dolphin making out with a cat?

Less sarcastically, "privilege" is inherently about one's relationship to society - without social structures, the set of behaviors/relations tied up in privilege don't exist.

But people pick at least some of their preferences on their own - perhaps not from the whole world of options, but from those they're presented with. Three toddler boys: one plays with trucks, another with bugs, a third with Barbies. Which one is "performing masculinity"? All? None? If they stick with those preferences all their lives, at which point does it become performance?

As I say, my objection is the idea that either all activities are performance, or else a certain subset of activities that are culturally privileged can only be performed.

Furthermore, as I say, I recognize the value in the critique embedded in the phrase - people are deeply resistant to the idea that anything they do is anything other than a sincere embodiment of their individuality and/or What Is Right - but I think that it makes rhetorical commitments that its critical underpinnings can't back up.

Was I really offensive last night?

Obnoxious (in a drunkily bossy way), but not offensive, I don't think. Maybe if you'd really doubled down and insisted that your opinions were Objective Fact. I had a bit of dread that it was going to go that way, but nobody really bit.

None of them are performing masculinity until the day an older kid or a parent beat the shit out of the one playing with Barbies.

382: Oh, I don't believe in facts, so I wouldn't say that, even drunk. I was just trying to challenge some of the "we must be so so careful and delicate with people all the time" stuff. Trying to get myself to buck up too. I'm in the midst of watching one of my very reasonable and appealing friendships here turn into an exhausting and protracted flirtation, and wondering why this (appropriate object, no reason not to) is the sort of thing I can never seem to get the guts to make happen. Suddenly the overactive superego jumps in and starts warning me not to mess up a good thing, and what if this person is more delicate than I suspect, and how will we deal with it if everything about it isn't perfect retreat retreat retreat. Sometimes things are fine and people are grownups and we can all deal with it.

I had never seen Ham Rove before. My day is made. Perhaps even my week.

384: The one thing* I remember from my middle school reading of Fear of Flying is "The superego is soluble in alcohol."

*Well, I remember "zipless fuck" of course. And the dude is named Adrian, I think.

Oh, I don't believe in facts

As long as we're stirring shit up, let me say that that seems profoundly stupid to me.

386: Yeah, but drunken sex isn't fun for me, and I do think it gives people a reason to act all ashamed the next day, which is my greatest fear.

387: Fine. Why are you so mad at me right now?

387: Maybe she believes in propositions, which in turn represent the facts.

387: Facts are for losers. Winners create their own reality!

I don't think it's profoundly stupid not to make Objective Factual assertions about universal sexual experiences. I can only talk from my own experience, which may not be the same as other people's experiences, but I tend to come off as "obnoxious" when I'm trying to argue with things it seems everyone else is taking for granted as universal truths about sex. So maybe I overstated my case. I'm sorry?

Now imagine that someone has a muscle that you just don't have! How could you imagine yourself into that?

Stop mocking me! I just have trouble adding mass! I come from a lanky New England family!

I don't think it's profoundly stupid not to make Objective Factual assertions about universal sexual experiences.

There's a bit of a gulf between "I don't make universalizing claims about sexual experiences" and "I don't believe in facts".

Maybe she believes in propositions, which in turn represent the facts.

I think if you believe that propositions represent facts, you either need to believe in facts, or you need to believe in an error theory about propositions, which is also a bit dodgy.

it seems everyone else is taking for granted as universal truths about sex

You mean like if you haven't given in to homosexual desire by a certain age, you're too old to start?

394: Asking for a friend, I assume.

Oh, god. That's disgusting. I need another Mobile Pseud.

394: I just wondered why now? She and her friend both sound like people who don't have sex with women, have had many opportunities and either haven't enjoyed them or didn't feel they were compelling, and use that as evidence that they are not interested in having sex with women. That would make one wonder why now, in this case, it seems that this is not just a romantic friendship but one in which the people want to have actual lesbian sex. I have had a huge number of relationships in which there was a ton of erotic and emotional content, but no desire to fuck each other. It seems like a distinction worth making.

395: read the thread, I assume.

I just wondered why now?

Aside from the reasons given in the OP, it doesn't sound all that mysterious to me. Both, as you note, are open to the idea, which seems like a useful prerequisite. Neither seems to be lesbian-first, which seems to explain why they wouldn't have spent a lot of time pursuing gay sex. And it seems perfectly reasonable to think that attraction toward your not-primary sexual target would be highly contingent on chemistry, timing, etc.

AFAIK AB has never acted on any same-sex desires, but she has still told me that specific women are or aren't (sexually) attractive to her, and it's a much narrower range than which males she's been attracted to. Personally, I've never engaged in any mutual activity*, but I could see getting into the physicality of it. However, I've never felt any sexual chemistry with a man, which would complicate getting to the physical part. BUT, and this is the point, if I met a guy and suddenly felt a visceral attraction, then I could totally see having some fun. Even though I'm an old man.

*a drunk friend once insisted on sucking me off. I swear I'm not referencing the Onion here

She and her friend both sound like people who don't have haven't yet had sex with women

I think if you believe that propositions represent facts, you either need to believe in facts, or you need to believe in an error theory about propositions,

I was making a little syntactic joke about believing "in" things. Bear presumably meant that she didn't believe that facts existed. I reinterpreted that to mean that the objects of her belief were not facts.

Not much of a joke, I know. I do rather like the idea that things like perception and reference work differently for different people. As in, you might perceive objects directly, but I only perceive sense-data. And while my beliefs may be directly about the world, AWB's are mediated by propositions.

have had many opportunities

erm, this doesn't describe me. I have had some opportunities -- scarcely many. I can't think of a time I had an opportunity that was clear to me with a woman I was unambivalently interested in, other than this one. There have also been times I've pursued women unsuccessfully. This summer I had a really fun date with a woman and made out with her and then she disappeared. She told me she had a borderline diagnosis, though, so maybe I dodged a bullet. I'm really just not that good at falling into bed with people when someone else isn't doing the seductive work. I've very rarely met a sexual partner outside of internet dating sites -- and yes I write women on internet dating sites. They frequently don't write me back! And sometimes I don't write them back, because I'm not that into them.

As in, you might perceive objects directly, but I only perceive sense-data.

I would dearly love to see an argument for this possibility.

a drunk friend once insisted on sucking me off

Best drinking buddy ever.

I'm really just not that good at falling into bed with people when someone else isn't doing the seductive work.

I would say this was the same for me for a long time with men, but that I always felt capable of being sexually aggressive with women--something I learned and modified from being with dommy guys. It might be fun to apply lessons from one to the other and take on a role that's new for you. I found that it eventually re-shaped the way I slept with men; it's much less appealing to me to be submissive now.

I would dearly love to see an argument for this possibility.

I really have no idea where to begin, but if I could think of one, I'd send it to J Phil right away. I think it is a charming thesis.

a drunk friend once insisted on sucking me off

Wait, what? Was this friend gay or straight? What does "insisted" mean?

This former commenter and current lurker will once again pop back in to add that the whole increasingly common narrative of "if you are really, authentically queer or trans, you come out young and have the relevant gender or sexual experiences early" is both untrue and actually harmful to queer and trans people. I'm sure you can fill in the relevant stuff about experiences with religion, bodily health, family culture, class and so on that - while I'm sure they do make some people awesome amazing rule-breaking gender warriors by their late teens - actually still mean that a lot of folks come out or transition later in life.

On a personal level, it's something I struggled with a lot - my particular history (with which I will not bore the 'foggetariat) meant that I was not able to feel like what some folks would call a sexual subject until comparatively late. I wasted a lot of time - years, in fact - thinking guiltily and anxiously that I was old now, and boring, and had experienced so much straight privilege in life and it would be stupid and useless and kind of selfish, in fact, to make a big fuss about sexuality now. And everyone would make fun of me for not having my first girlfriend in my teens and not having much sexual experience anyway, so I should probably just shut up and keep acting like I was straight. Now, fundamentally this was my emotional issue to deal with - but that doesn't mean that the whole "real queers have queer sex right away" narrative didn't help any.

I add too that a family friend transitioned at the age of 60, and the question of whether she was really sincere about being trans - since she'd waited so long, after all - never even occurred to me.

the whole "real queers have queer sex right away" narrative didn't help any.

er, should be "helped any".

Frowner!

Frowner!

Frowner!

I'm really just not that good at falling into bed with people when someone else isn't doing the seductive work.

I bet you fall in bed too easily...

if you are really, authentically queer

I'm skeptical that any such thing really exists. People are attracted to other people. If you find yourself attracted to a kind of person that you hadn't been previously, that doesn't mean that your prior experiences were lies or that you suddenly became something that you weren't previously.

Frowner!

Frowner!

Frowner!

397 &c. "Why now?" My "OMG JUST KISS HER" is informed by the way PINY's Ask The Mineshaft is written. It's highly charged, and it doesn't end with a question like "how do I discourage her from making any further makeout proposals without losing the friendship?" There's a lot of how-awesome-Holly-is and a lot of here-are-my-excuses-for-not-making-a-move.

"If I had this kind of connection with someone this attractive, and that person was a straight man, we'd both be fantasizing about the wedding right now."

I mean, holy shit, I want to kiss Holly right now.

I was trying to think of some joke about how I seldom comment but am always watching - I do read quite a lot of Unfogged - but then I realized that just sounded creepy.

Yeah, I wasn't saying those feelings aren't "authentic." I was just wanting to know what's different this time, or what has changed. I apologize for a few comments I wrote drunk last night in a tone that people seem to have found deeply upsetting. I find most of the tone here lately deeply upsetting and queer-negative and sex-negative, which is why I so rarely comment anymore. So it seems surprising to me that I am being singled out as causing so much shameful feeling about sex and queerness. I apologize to those for whom my comments were upsetting! I am surprised and will refrain from upsetting people in the future.

Was this friend gay or straight? What does "insisted" mean?

I think the "insisted" part kind of answers your first question, or at least gives an indication of some leanings.

407: Gay friend (not super-close, but a good friend). I was alone, working late in the computer lab a few weeks before graduation*, he came in drunk, locked the door, and ignored all of my demurrals ("What about BOGF?" "We don't have to tell her." Etc.). I didn't see any reason to make a big deal about it, and he seemed really keen, so I let him**. We remained friends until he moved away 6 or so years later and dropped out of touch.

* Yes, I know this sounds like a Penthouse letter

** Given the circumstances, reciprocation - which he insisted he wasn't expecting - would have been impractical. IIRC we were within about 3 minutes of getting caught (turned out that he hadn't, actually, locked the door)

The internet, and unfogged especially, was invented to make me think that my own sexual experiences have been impossibly humdrum and vanilla*, right?

* Self-declaration of racism invoked as prophylaxis.

Frowner! I am glad you weighed in, because that sort of story is so common for women, I'd guess more common than "I knew when I was 2/12/22 and never looked back." (Also, I am old and boring and queer and straighter-looking than I'd prefer and so your comments about authenticity feeling selfish really meant a lot to me.)

but then I realized that just sounded creepy.

In your case, I think we can call in benevolent rather than creepy.

my own sexual experiences have been impossibly humdrum and vanilla

As has often been mentioned, people who feel like they have nothing to add on a given topic are unlikely to comment.

straighter-looking than I'd prefer

No rainbow tats, huh?

427 is a fact. Passing is something I struggle with, but that probably seems stupid from the outside.

Hardt & Negri

"History has a logic only when subjectivity rules it, only when (as Nietzsche says) the emergence of subjectivity reconfigures efficient causes and final causes in the development of history. The power of the proletariat consists precisely in this".

We still need to identify, however, a theoretical schema that can sustain us in this inquiry. The old analyses of imperialism will not be sufficient here
because in the end they stop at the threshold of the analysis of subjectivity and concentrate rather on the contradictions of capital's own development.
We need to identify a theoretical schema that puts the subjectivity of the social movements of the proletariat at center stage in the processes of globalization and the constitution of global order. (235)

Are social movements different for the bourgeoisie and the proletariat? Are battles over compensation and representation and recognition different in the boardroom and the factory floor? Of course they are, the first case is a battle for what is owned as part of the community. To put it another way, the CEO struggles for his share of the hegemony, while the laborer struggles against the hegemony...forever.
The worker knows he will always be struggling, will never be accepted, can never be part of the hegemony.

An analysis of these two opposite and opposing kinds of subjectivity present in all the other identity and social movements is absolutely critical to moving ahead.

Passing is something I struggle with, but that probably seems stupid from the outside.

Say it loud, say it proud, sister.

My sister and SIL were here for the weekend, and we had people over, and one later said to AB that she got a "[negative]* lesbian" vibe off my SIL, which I could see, in the sense that I doubt many people assume that she's straight. Or maybe they don't - I have no idea. I don't even see lesbianism.

Actually, on that topic, after my sister came out, I became less interested in lesbian porn for straight guys. Some of it is/was being creeped out by thinking too much about my sister's sex life, but I do think that a lot of it is/was getting the inherent political (if you will) problems with it.

* can't recall the actual word. "Arrogant" maybe? It was weird

428: Actually, haven't you shaved your head at times? Surely a lot of people (right or wrong) associate that with being lesbian. Before we met AB had a very short haircut (on a smaller woman you'd probably say pixie) and once had a passing pickup driver call her a dyke.

422: !? !? !?

Pixie haircuts only exist on pixie body types?

New euphemism for getting fat: "I'm growing out of my pixie cut."

431: Yeah, but not since having kids. Hair upkeep is too much work on a short cut. As it stands, Lee and I cut each other's, but I got bored and cut my own the last time. It's basically a bob.

433: It just seems odd to use it to describe a non-pixieish woman. Possibly I'm influenced by the first woman I knew who wore one, who was, indeed, pixieish.

434: It wasn't mass, it was height. Pixie, to me, suggests 5-2 or below.

And how does it feel to be one of those disguisey octopii that can make themselves look like anything?

The Indonesian Mimic Octopus! My favourite animal.

432: ?

The one thing I remember from my middle school reading of Fear of Flying is "The superego is soluble in alcohol."

The one thing I remember from reading it was feeling aroused in spite of reading it in a foreign language. I was curiously proud of getting an erection: it felt like I had reached an important threshold in reading comprehension.

a family friend transitioned at the age of 60, and the question of whether she was really sincere about being trans - since she'd waited so long

Divorce attorney welcomes a new pair of clients. 90-somethings. "Pardon me if this is intrusive, but, i mean, you've made it this far... Why now?" "We wanted to wait until the children were dead."

"if you are really, authentically ... "

The beginning of 90% of the statements in every kinky forum on Compuserve even back in the good old days before the AOL rabble ruined all of cyberspace.

432: ?

Was I the only other one surprised by the story ending "he seemed really keen, so I let him"?

443: No.

Mildly surprised, sure, but not !? !? !? surprised.

(Oh, but right, I'm smugly cosmopolitan)

445: Yes, that's about my reaction. I wouldn't find a combination of drunk, teeth, and my penis any sort of turn-on, I'm too paranoid.

406: I really have no idea where to begin, but if I could think of one, I'd send it to J Phil Fant right away.

How was 422 a surprise after 399?

399/422:

I've heard people insist: One mouth is the same as the next.

k-sky!>?!?!? Why knock divorce lawyers!>!??!!

I've heard people insist: One mouth is the same as the next.

Only those pitiful people extrapolating from an N of 1.

He wasn't that drunk. Just drunk enough to be a bit more forward than usual (now that I think of it, he may have been my first out friend). And his technique was superb.

248

Oh, one other thing I was going to respond to. It seriously confuses me, as a gay man also did recently, when people bring up wanting a child as a reason not to be involved with another woman. Sperm is cheap and plentiful. I need someone to get me pregnant and a co-parent, but I don't need them to be the same person. This would be way more of an issue if I were a man debating whether to be involved with women or men. As it is, it's a totally non-existent one. Look, I could even get a 25% discount if I wanted to get started now.

I don't have much contact with people like you in real life so I find it easy to make incorrect assumptions. I will just add that if you want to involve other people (like this Holly person) in your plans they have to be fine with them also.

I don't have much contact with people like you in real life so I find it easy to make incorrect assumptions.

You should have this tattooed on your forehead.

I will just add that if you want to involve other people (like this Holly person) in your plans they have to be fine with them also.

And this differs from conventional hetero reproductive planning how exactly?

I should probably note that my basic response was, "Who am I to say no?", which led to a number of situations in my life, some better than others.

454: You should have this tattooed on your forehead.

It kind of already is.

456: which led to a number of situations in my life,

Such as when you literally answered like that on your wedding day.

New euphemism for getting fat: "I'm growing out of my pixie cut."

This is actually me right now! Not that I'm exactly getting fat, but I did decide that my face is a bit fuller than it used to be when that cut was maximally flattering, and that maybe I'd try it out longer for a while.

455

And this differs from conventional hetero reproductive planning how exactly?

It doesn't but I think her odds would be better with a guy who is less likely to decide that he doesn't really like having sex with women after all.

420: Don't worry. We know you only upset us because you love us. And you only have the power to upset us because we love you right back!

460: As an exercise in empathy, I invite you to imagine my first four objections to this statement.

459 et al: I've been considering a pixie cut. (Is a Judy Dench cut a pixie? That's what I was thinking.) Rory is growing hers back out now, and that seems like a long, kind of annoying process so maybe no.

You should have this tattooed on your forehead.

Antisemite. Or maybe self-hating Jew.

That was redundant.

P.S. No one here knows her so this is important only to me, but I'm feeling guilty about calling the woman I dated "perhaps the craziest tweaker I've ever been involved with." The senses in which she was "crazy" were just what I mentioned: very seriously depressed, self-harming, very uncomfortable with intimacy, and unable to manage other people's feelings about her behavior. However, she was certainly rational and articulate about her own internal processes, and might herself call all of those things fair cops. There's probably no way to justly say she was "crazier" than my first boyfriend. I just meant to say that I hadn't found it to be true that women were chill and easy to deal with after sex (or some thing close to it).

449: Numeronormativist! 399 doesn't necessarily precede 422.

374: Wow. That's only safe for work if random laughter is okay where you work.

Re: straight male lesbian fantasies (e.g., 100, 111, etc.):

Most of my sexual fantasies (except for the few in which I insert myself as a character) are generally related from a third-person limited point of view, with a woman as the viewpoint character. I don't want to *be* her - what I want to achieve is more of a telepathic link where I can vicariously appreciate what she is feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Obviously this is only truly achievable in fantasy - although I do appreciate a partner who can verbally convey what she is or was experiencing sexually, when not caught up in the moment.

While my personal fantasies haven't generally involved lesbian interaction, I have brought that same style of appreciation to (real or fake) lesbian porn/erotica I've encountered, except that it's more likely to be a third-person alternating approach. I might, for example, try to get inside the mind of a woman portrayed as giving oral, and then switch to the receiving partner's mind, imagining in each case both her appreciation of the physical sensations and her appreciation of her partner's body. Coming from a straight male perspective, it's easier for me to imagine and erotically connect with an appreciation of the partner's body when that appreciation aligns with my own preferences.

I am somewhat surprised at the surprise at 422.

Also, PINY: allow me to be the first to encourage you to just go for it already.

It worked! We got emdash back!

So ladysexxxings and troll wars? Anything for emdash!

It seems that mensexxings may have played a role as well.

469: should we really be taking sex advice from someone named 'Erectile Dysfunction Guy'?

More seriously, I suspect that all sexuality -- male, female, gay, straight -- involves projecting yourself into the pleasure and feelings of your partner. It seems like this is central to the experience of partner sex. So for straight people there is some small element of 'imagining yourself as a woman' or 'imagining yourself as a man' involved even if it isn't elaborated into an explicit fantasy of such.

It seems like this is central to the experience of partner sex.

Not mine! (This is clearly the thread in which I do my best to make sure that all of you are fully convinced that I am terrible in the sack.)

I don't even know what PGD means.

477: I don't even know what "means" means.

'imagining yourself as a woman'

What does "a spectre not a symptom" mean?

It means you are desiring an image, an emanation, a ghost, a figment of your imagination...something really there but not an object and not a "thing." This is good.

What makes the desirable or desired a symptom or a pathology? Not seeing yourself in your fetishized desire.

I would prefer "imagining yourself as this woman" but YMMV. Tell her she could be anybody.

The other half of love, "Cyborg not Goddess" may answer the questions about solipsism and lack of intimacy.

Desire is a social machine* not a merging with the transcendent.

*Guattari

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Starting Bwell on centering and compositions:

1) Yoshishige Yoshida is the only director I have encountered to consistently use radically decentered compositions. Amazing and beautiful stuff. Example

2) One of the most shocking movies I have seen was a "Tora-san" Tora-san's Love Call #8. There is a story. Yoji Yamada made the first three or four and then moved on to more "serious" films. The series was a huge success and made enough money to keep Shochiku studio afloat when other studios were closing or moving into exploitation. Well, box office declined and Shochiku begged Yamada to come back and make a summer and winter Tora every year forever. Thus the longest series in film history.

But when he came back with #8 he got to make a statement, and Love Call is the most amazingly directed mainstream commercial genre movie I have ever seen. In many ways.

"Classical filmmaking thus considers edge-framing taboo; frontally positioned figures or objects, however unimportant, are seldom sliced off by either vertical edge." ...Bwell

Yamada has a lot of scenes with half a face filling the far edge of a screen, commenting on action is the distant center. Jaw-dropping stuff I have never seen elsewhere. And yet a satisfying commercial piece.

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