LizardBreath is smart, and everything in the OP seems right to (non-lawyer) me.
Has there ever been a contested rape case in which the accused and accuser agreed about the sequence of events?
A key point here is that there aren't sex police watching everyone's sexual activity and judging whether or not it meets the strict affirmative consent standard. The issue only comes up if there is a complaint. "But what about false accusations?" is irrelevant, because they could just as easily happen with the old standard.
As someone put it in the CT thread, it seems unlikely that someone will go through all of the ugliness of bringing a sexual assault claim on the basis of "Oh, everything was actually great, but he didn't check off all of the affirmative consent boxes exactly as specified in the student handbook, and I'm a stickler for proper bureaucratic procedure." If there is a complaint, it's probably because something was genuinely not OK.
I can sympathize with people being slightly uncomfortable to the extent that, although there should be no problems as long as the most minimal amount of common sense is present, it's a university policy and so involves university administrators, who can't be counted on to exercise anything remotely resembling common sense.
I pretty much agree with everything AcademicLurker says.
2: Like they tell pretty much the same story but disagree as to whether it was consensual? Happens all the time.
Let's assume that we're talking about people who are not communicating verbally at all, which strikes me as kind of unusual, but the sort of thing that does happen sometimes, I suppose.
This is the only sentence that I disagree emphatically with, especially in the college context. People find talking to be really onerous in a vulnerable situation. Plus their mental dialogue is most likely going a mile a minute, with a new partner, and it's new, exciting, drunk, and there's just not much mental real estate left to add in talking.
6: I've never personally done the minimal talking into bed thing, but I have friends who have. Like meeting at a noisy party, dancing for a while, and then sneaking together out back to bonk. Total number of words exchanged probably in the area of 100, if that.
Personally I love talking to my partner and find it hot, so it's weird to me that people prefer not to talk, but I know there are people out there who have that preference.
I think that in their 20s, 30s, and beyond, it's more of a kink or thrill not to talk, but in high school and college, a lot of it is sheer nerves and cognitive load.
that there aren't sex police watching everyone's sexual activity
So much for my career ambitions.
a lot of it is sheer nerves
That would make me talk too much. Hence, my reputation for seduction.
Not talking much, or talking in complete sentences, I can see. But literally not saying any words at all about what you're doing seems peculiar to me. On the other hand, the only sex I've been around for is sex I've been around for, if you see what I mean, and I'm on the tologosh end of the spectrum.
3: Kind of thinking I was wronger than you think I am -- I think there is a genuine problem (maybe not a huge one, but not nonexistent) if people look at this sort of policy and think the kind of boundary-defining misunderstanding that I described really is a kind of sexual assault, even if it's the sort of thing that would never be prosecuted. It's not good to have people thinking that things that they're doing in the course of genuinely consensual sexual contact, and would be really, really onerous to avoid completely ("Can I move my hand an inch closer to your shoulder? Two inches?"), are the same thing as sexual assault. I suppose you could address that by describing de minimis exceptions in commentary on the rule.
I went over and read that thread this morning, and I agree with your OP in response.
It seems that while you and JH were talking about the OSU rules, other people kept trying to smuggle in different rules (the ones in CA?) that didn't include non-verbal consent. That and the general nitpicky argumentativeness of philosophers kept the thread going.
No one ever seemed to want to get very explicit. Let me do that a little, expanding on what heebie says in 6. If you are the initiator of that encounter, and your new, exciting partner just seems to be lying back and Thinking of England (but not verbalizing or responding by touch or movement), you are potentially in big trouble: better ask. If your partner is pushing you away: better stop. Otherwise, if your partner is talking or touching you back or wiggling in an encouraging way, you are probably fine.
The big difference is that in the ToE situation, for some people the "folk law" is that it's okay to continue. For some really sketchy people the "folk law" is that it's okay if your partner is in a stupor. So this is a change in the "folk law," but to my mind a wholly positive one.
11.2: I can see that. I guess I'm not putting myself in the shoes of an 18 year old.
And the 'folk law' is probably closer to the criminal law standard than the new 'affirmative consent' college policies.
The CA law (which mandates college policies, rather than changing the general criminal law, if I've got it straight) also allows for non-verbal consent. I think the legendary Antioch policy of the nineties is the one that required everything to be verbal at all times, at which point I'd agree that all sorts of innocent conduct would probably violate it, more or less depending on how tightly you defined transition from one form of sexual contact to another.
Oh gawd this is going to lead to some final and official ruling on what constitutes Bases and then rules on how to get from one to the other, isn't it?
But on the whole, I do agree with the premise. A lot of sexual assault starts off with testing boundaries - how forcefully will the other person stop this, or this, do I have plausible deniability to do this - sort of like the high-speed version of grooming described in the swimming article. If the victim is not angrily shutting down the very ambiguous stuff, then the aggressor can move forward with isolating them and becoming more forceful.
15: Heh. This is a terrible problem for foreign undergraduates who don't have an intuitive understanding of the rules of baseball. I picture a preliminary training for them before they even get to the sexual assault education program ("No, you're not finished with orientation until you can explain the infield fly rule."). (Actually, I can't explain the infield fly rule, I just have a vague belief that it exists and is esoteric baseball knowledge.)(Please, no one explain it. I treasure my ignorance.)
Here is what I had found a few years back on the Antioch code: (Non-verbal only Ok if agreed to communication system ahead of time and "Body movements and non-verbal responses such as moans are not consent.")
Consent is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing to engage in specific sexual conduct. The following are clarifying points:
* Consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity.
* All parties must have a clear and accurate understanding of the sexual activity.
* The person(s) who initiate(s) the sexual activity is responsible for asking for consent.
* The person(s) who are asked are responsible for verbally responding.
* Each new level of sexual activity requires consent.
* Use of agreed upon forms of communication such as gestures or safe words is acceptable, but must be discussed and verbally agreed to by all parties before sexual activity occurs.
* Consent is required regardless of the parties' relationship, prior sexual history, or current activity (e.g. grinding on the dance floor is not consent for further sexual activity).
* At any and all times when consent is withdrawn or not verbally agreed to, the sexual activity must stop immediately.
* Silence is not consent.
* Body movements and non-verbal responses such as moans are not consent.
* A person can not give consent while sleeping.
* All parties must have unimpaired judgement (examples that may cause impairment include but are not limited to alcohol, drugs, mental health conditions, physical health conditions).
* All parties must use safer sex practices.
* All parties must disclose personal risk factors and any known STIs. Individuals are responsible for maintaining awareness of their sexual health.
15: The Bases and the progression rules need to be tattooed on people when they reach the age of legal consent.
17: We'll develop a Who's on First knockoff to clarify things.
To repeat from SB967 for general reference:
"Affirmative consent" means affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity. It is the responsibility of each person involved in the sexual activity to ensure that he or she has the affirmative consent of the other or others to engage in the sexual activity. Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.
So it doesn't say non-verbal is included, but it doesn't require verbal consent either.
One issue with the law is that it articulates the principles but leaves it to colleges to put them into practice in more detail. So it'll be good to see how they converge.
Yeah, that seems to me like something that would be violated pretty frequently in ordinary consensual sex, under any ordinary definition of what a "level of sexual activity" was. Still almost certainly not a problem in terms of actual enforcement -- you'd only get absurd results with the hypothetical stickler for proper bureaucratic procedure -- but I wouldn't be defending it in the same terms I've been defending the OSU and CA policies.
This is a terrible problem for foreign undergraduates who don't have an intuitive understanding of the rules of baseball.
We'll just develop a cricket equivalent. ("Well, I thought I was at least good for a quick leg bye, but it was unbelievable. Straight to the boundary!")
Are we sure affirmative consent isn't a right-wing plot to make sure no guy can ever again maintain an erection?
Everything I said about the infield fly rule also applies to being out leg before wicket.
25: Right wing plot? I was sure it was the lesbians.
This is why us prescient nerds filmed, then taped, and later digitally recorded all our sexual encounters.
Datapoint: My HS GF and I fooled around* for 10 months with something very close to zero verbal communication. The first time we ever really communicated verbally was after she, let's say, did something unprecedented and generous as a sort of going away present for college, and in the aftermath she wasn't sure how she felt about it (it was 100% her idea), and so we ended up communicating a very little bit, instead of nearly not at all.
A combo of Catholic guilt and a sense that talking about sex was dirty. I'm fairly confident that nothing nonconsensual ever happened (I tried to be very cognizant of her nonverbal cues), so I'm not disputing the part where nonverbal cues can/should be fairly clear, but I want to push back pretty hard against LB's conviction that nonverbal sex, especially among the college aged, is rare or exceptional.
*that is, nonpenetrative sex of all kinds
Yeah, that may have come across more strongly than I meant it -- I'm sure that it happens a fair amount. I was kind of pushing back against people in these discussions (nameless strawpeople, I'm not sure who specifically I'm thinking about) who make it sound as if talking about what you're doing at all is weird -- I think some verbal interaction is, to put it mildly, more common than none at all -- and also trying to say that not talking much is still often going to be enough to establish verbal consent.
But I completely agree that anything requiring verbal consent at every stage would require changing a lot of people's behaviors. Consensual non-verbal sex does happen a fair amount.
29: Srsly, non-coherent sex was the norm back in the Fifties. Noises were fine as long as they didn't alert parents.
I'm really curious what the unprecedented and generous thing was, given that "nonpenetrative sex of all kinds" had thitherto been enjoyed.
I think you have the sequence confused. By the end of the ten months, all kinds of nonpenetrative sex had been enjoyed (all kinds? I doubt that, or at least I'm not sure where JRoth would have sourced the necessary equipment and additional personnel. But putting that to one side). But the occasion of unprecedented generosity occurred during the ten month period, and was apparently the first time one of those kinds of n-p sex had taken place. Not confusing at all.
31: Twenty years before that, you also had to worry about frightening the horses.
32: Well, that sort of filled out the bingo card, if you will.
And yeah, equipment-free. It was all from-scratch, artisinal fooling around. And, like a lot of scratch cooking, it would have been better with access to a recipe.
(Not knowing what a hojo is in context, I'm interpreting it as an offbrand snack cake, which is what it sounds like.)
I believe I picked it up from AWB, who used it to mean "handjob" and in fact said that she used it offhandedly having just made it up and everyone knew what she meant!
39: I thought it was a hey-jay, like BJ. HoJo = Howard Johnsons in my idiolect, which may or may not be slang for some kind of sex.
41: oh you are probably right! My mistake.
Sex while wearing an orange hat?
Confirmed. I dunno, I kind of like "hojo".
20. I got about halfway through composing a new version before my forebrain decided not to give consent.
35. "She filled my bingo card" can replace bases and wickets, as far as I'm concerned.
What made me the most uncomfortable about Holbo's post was the fact that he made it. Like, I get that he's a philosopher, and arguing about edge cases is kind of what they DO.
But I can't help feeling that if your primary reaction to a policy like this is to post something that pays lip service to the value of it* and then moves rapidly into handwringing about unintended consequences...the message you're actually sending is that the unintended consequences are the most important.
More specifically, that the STATUS QUO is not itself very bad. Which I really, really disagree with.
*I am myself deeply skeptical of the policy, mostly because I don't trust college administrators, but I'm delighted that it's triggering public attention to affirmative consent.
Shorter me: Intent is not magic. I believe that Holbo's intent was positive, but the result of his post is to re-normalize the status quo and this new policy as a change to it.
41. ... which may or may not be slang for some kind of sex.
28 kinds, actually.
Hopefully, these kinds of discussions will, at the very least, make jurors, police, judges, fellow fraternity brothers, etc, more willing to be looking for affirmative consent as opposed to affirmative objection. That social shift would be fabulous.
48: Well, talking about anything on CT is probably counterproductive these days. But don't you think there's some value for people generally of good will who are made uneasy by this kind of policy to raise their concerns rather than brooding over them?
But I can't help feeling that if your primary reaction to a policy like this is to post something that pays lip service to the value of it* and then moves rapidly into handwringing about unintended consequences...the message you're actually sending is that the unintended consequences are the most important.
It seems like in any discussion about proposed new rules, people are most enthusiastic about pointing out ways that a seemingly good idea could go wrong. So this is no exception.
We'll just develop a cricket equivalent.
There's a "popping crease" joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it right now.
52: I think it's a good place to follow concerns with suggesting minimal behavior changes that would bring the spirit & the letter into congruence. Beck or whoever is appealing to the James Bond image - surely there's a movie star who's irresistible but never plays coercive?
the result of his post is to re-normalize the status quo and this new policy as a change to it.
How do you know this was the result of his post?
Especially given that the two bits of his post that are about the policy (rather than Limbaugh) seem to be:
"""
I confess: I worry affirmative consent standards will generate serious problems, even while I acknowledge the real problems they are meant to address. …
UPDATE: It seems 'I worry affirmative consent standards will generate serious problems' has generated an unwanted implicature. I'm actually in favor of such measures. I think the problems the law is intended to solve are more serious and there isn't any other way of dealing with them that is better. It's a knotty problem.
"""
56: Aha! So, do you get invited to the meetings of the High Council?
58: All I can tell you is that YOU don't get invited there.
53: There's plenty of precedent for good ideas going wrong, the whole fucking Twentieth Century being a good example. No need for a reply, I'm going out to run some kids off my lawn.
55: Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story can be the poster boy for not considering apparent consent from someone impaired by alcohol to constitute actual consent ("Yes, Professor.") The general case, sexually irresistible but conspicuously never coercive? is harder.
Jimmy Stewart Gets Laid is a fine banner in the culture wars.
62: That gets you into sketchy territory if you're not careful, e.g., Vertigo? Not what we're looking for in terms of modeling healthy interpersonal relationships, although if I recall correctly coercive sex isn't exactly the issue.
"You should never keep souvenirs from a killing" isn't half bad advice, though.
57.last
If it were purely a philosophical problem, it would be "knotty." The nice thing is we can try this (as a society, or in the subclass of society that is universities) and change our minds later if it turns out not to help.
We've changed our collective minds about a lot stuff to do with sex (and a lot of other things) in the last fifty years, even in the last twenty. Social mores and customs are reprogrammable over time, after all.
These threads are odd for me because maybe I am in denial but I feel like never in my long and (what was the euphemism?) warm-hearted? history have I once felt consent was a tricky issue. I can't think of an instance when it seemed or seems now like it was unclear.
If it were purely a philosophical problem, it would be "knotty."
I'm not sure I follow. If anything, the fact that it affects real people and real attitudes seems to make it knottier.
NONSENSICAL METAPHOR ALERT
You can't just cut a gordian knot in half in real life; there are consequences to that.
METAPHOR OVER.
51: Heartfelt agreement
52: I think that's a false dichotomy. There's a lot of middle ground between "brooding over" your concerns silently and making them the focal point of a front-page blog post.
53: That is completely true, AND it's also true that in this case (and others) simply raising concerns is itself NOT a neutral stance. 'Raising concerns' doesn't happen in a vacuum.
57: Because it feels like that to me? I'm actually serious. I don't think authorial intent is magic. If an audience member reads a piece, and comes away thinking that the author said a few words in agreement, but actually devoted the majority of his piece to his supposedly incidental concerns...actions speak louder than words.
The majority of Holbo's piece seemed to be about the weird rhetorical position Limbaugh has needlessly gotten himself in, though, or so it seemed to me. I mean, as long as we're comparing feelings, it didn't feel that way to me.
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So, just curious, a question for those of you with teenage children, especially daughters. How do you talk to them about sex?
I know one person who is in her 60's now whose entire conversation with her son, while driving, was "Use a condom or your dead."
Like, if you have a daughter, did you say that you were open to talking to her about anything but you wanted to make sure that she was protected, and if she didn't want to talk to you about it, you'd get her resources. and then maybe march her down to the gynecologist and say, "You have to use a condom, but you might want something else too. Talk over your options. Consider getting one of these IUDs. They just came out with a new one for young women, and you wouldn't have to remember to take a pill every day at the same time. But whatever you choose, it's up to you, and you should have that conversation with the doctor."
My parents sucked at this, and I got all screwed up and would love to do better by any kid I might have.
66: That seems, um, totally unsurprising in the context of a sex life not involving women.
I mean, the cultural force that makes consensual sex where one person is literally not doing anything that affirmatively makes it clear that they are participating voluntarily not really bizarre, is all of the baggage around women not being supposed to actively want to have sex, so that even when they're consenting to it (for reasons other than the desire to get laid) they're doing so reluctantly and passively. So you both get some reluctant/passive behavior from women who actually do want to have sex but are trying to comply with what they see as cultural norms, and much more so you get people interpreting reluctant/passive behavior as plausibly compatible with 'consent', because that's how they expect women to behave.
Once you haven't got any women, or the cultural baggage around women's sexuality, in the picture, the issues around consent become a lot simpler because the kind of thought process I keep on trying to sell as an ideal norm for everyone -- if everyone in the room doesn't seem delighted to be here, something peculiar is happening that needs to be hashed out -- is a lot more obvious, I'd think. Does that make sense?
Mostly, yeah. I guess I was sorta trolling.
71: Presidential because of privacy issues for the teenager, but have had pretty much that conversation with a teenage daughter, although I have not quite yet gotten around to making her a gyno appointment. In a moderately stumblingly embarrassed way, but getting across the general idea that she is allowed to have sex when she thinks she's ready for it, that she should be using condoms at all times for disease prevention, and that she should be using another method for pregnancy prevention. I got the impression that the issue was not yet an immediately live one, but that she appreciated the communication.
75: Hrmphf. Check your warm-hearted privilege.
71: Haven't gotten to that age yet, but I feel as if we've been setting the stage all along through a pretty straightforward and honest/blunt discussion of sexual matters to date. She's still in "boys, gross!" mode*, so there's no real point in officially having The Talk - it's just too abstract/alien for her to understand on any direct level. But I don't think it'll be that fraught when the time comes.
*she has "liked" boys for several years, but in a purely theoretical, pining sort of way. AFAIK she's never so much as held hands with a boy
There's a mode in which the law could work as intended---changing assumptions about non-coercive sex and closing the ambiguity window that predators work in. Alternatively, there's a mode in which it could serve as a broken-taillight pretext for expelling people who seem to need it. "The faculty justice committee is 95% sure you are a scumbag and we want to expel you for assault. However, we didn't reach a conclusion after a three-hour argument about standards of proof. But you did violate the affirmative consent policy paragraph II.c(3)a. You read the policy and we have your signature on file. You are expelled. Take a hike scumbag policy violator."
79: As opposed to searching your dorm room and expelling you for having pot.
79: Huh. Once you've got someone saying they were assaulted, and a story that sounds bad but you're arguing about standards of proof, but what's cleanly provable is the violation of the affirmative consent policy, that doesn't sound like a broken taillight to me, that sounds like the core case for when this is a useful policy.
I had very open frank and unembarrassed conversations with my stepdaughter, that she most certainly would not have felt comfortable having with her mother. But divorcing and introducing into the family new semi-parental adults who the kids love and trust but don't have awkwardness with around these issues is a pretty roundabout solution. Aunts, maybe?
67. Sorry. My intent was to suggest that unlike purely philosophical "knotty" problems, this one is real-world and also susceptible to experimentation. Also, "knotty" is to me a pretty wimpy word for a problem of this sort.
Leaving a copy of Heather Corinna's S.E.X. lying around where one's teen would notice it is also an option (though it's probably best to do that and talk to the teen as well).
(Comment only partially motivated by the fact that I'm thanked in the acknowledgements.)
71: I'll be having a related conversation with my nephew (about to turn 14) when I get a chance to visit again. The good news is that in Botswana the message about condoms is pounded home starting in about 6th grade, as well as there being billboards and stuff. I'm more concerned about making sure his approach to sex and sexuality is healthy and non-coercive. That's a bit more of a challenge there as the culture is very patriarchal, and his other male relatives are backwards-ass right wing misogynists.
My intent was to suggest that unlike purely philosophical "knotty" problems, this one is real-world and also susceptible to experimentation.
As a philosopher, Holbo should confine himself to pondering the conundrums of affirmative consent only as they apply to having sex while on trolly cars.
I read an essay in _Christopher Street_ in, mm, probably 1991 that was precisely a young gay man realizing, some time after the fact, that he had not protested no-consent-given sex because he wanted to be liked and thought of as a fun guy. It was a really unpleasant case that I would count as assault, but the milder version is the old feminist cartoon: "A liberated woman would say Yes! Yes!" "Or Ew or You must be kidding." (I have the punchline wrong and can't remember the cartoonist's name. Sylvia?)
And I'd wondered myself if the setup in 74.2 wouldn't be applicable to a young man unsure of wanting/not wanting, afraid of being seen to be wanting gay sex.
Yes! Nicole Hollander!
I haven't found a picture of the comic in question. Quite a lot of Xaviera Hollander came up, and also two lovely drawings of hands:
http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/hands.gif
http://stewartdesignweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bfh4uplorez_thumb.jpg
I know one person who is in her 60's now whose entire conversation with her son, while driving, was "Use a condom or your dead."
My household might be a tad less reserved, given my daughters know the joke "back door loving never put a bun in the oven".
That's how you end up with lawyers as grandchildren.
How would one use one's dead for that, anyway?
94: Having just acquired 4.4 lbs of "cremains" and felt of their texture, I will assure you that using them for lube will guarantee only a very preliminary and quickly aborted attempt at penetration of any sort.
81: Right, which means that the "does it help expel predators" discussion might be independent of the "how do college kids actually initiate sex and would they change that under the policy" discussion.
holbo's probably going to have to ask pretty directly for his next blowjob after saying that dumb shit. witt is correct.
as someone who's unfortunately had actual non-consensual sexual encounters, I have to say that no consensual sexual encounters I ever had were much like them at all, to where the other party was likely to be confused in any way. I guess my first fooling around with my HS boyfriend we didn't always say 'wanna make out' but sometimes we did; it's not like it never happened. I had a long-term boyfriend have sex with me when I was asleep, but I actually found this not cool and a bit upsetting. does any straight couple make the move to anal without talking about it?
25: ogged, complaining above, is it really a boner-mutilator to ask a person if they 'want to fuck right now?' I tend to think of it as pretty hot. is 'she'll stop me if she's not enjoying it' your personal standard of boner-maintenance?
98: One of my partners recently explicitly thanked me afterwards for initiating our first sexual contact through "accidental" touch and reading nonverbals, rather than asking for explicit verbal consent, which she finds a slight turn-off.
Of course it wouldn't have happened that way if I hadn't been able to finesse things to elicit clear signs of enthusiastic consent first, but I was made very aware of my verbal skills privilege and my obsessively reading advice on human interaction from actually smart people and thinking about it privilege. I don't think I could have done what she wanted AND been justifiably sure of enthusiastic consent in advance a year ago, and maybe lots of people will never get to that point.
Other things that helped include really alieving that it's possible someone might be attracted to me (which makes it less terrifying to verbally express desire for others because I don't expect as strongly that they will be disgusted by this), getting comfortable with some kinds of nonsexual touch, and of course improving my appearance and mannerisms a bit so that I'm playing on an easier setting.
It's not fair, but no one ever said sex was fair. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
None of that means we shouldn't try to normalize enthusiastic verbal consent, of course; the opposite follows. It's bad that people find it hard to ask for or express, and leads to disastrous misunderstandings and worse. We should try and fix that!
(I do my small part by trying to condition people to give me lots of explicit positive and negative verbal feedback all the time. Here's my anonymous feedback form, by the way.)
It's been a very long time, and I have only memory, not the benefit of watching the replay with Holbo and LB and their Queer-Eye-like expert assessments, but I believe I've had an experience like Benquo's. Like not only in the sequence, but in having her talk about it afterward positively. That's the part that puts your conscience at rest, how you know you read the situation correctly. The window for that sort of thing is very small, first years of college for at least one of the partners, but that's what this is all about anyway.
How common? I'm guessing not rare.
the message about condoms is pounded home
IYKWIM
M wife says the bulk of her conversation with her parents consisted of, a little after she started dating, her mom at breakfast one morning saying out of nowhere, "You know, condoms can break."
I don't recall anything at all from my parents aside from them leaving a book about teenage development where they probably figured I'd find it.
Of course both our parents would disagree which is consistent with surveys that say large numbers of parents claim to have talked with their kids and large numbers of kids say they've never had a talk with their parents.
As I've told here before, I got literally no talk about sex with my parents. Dr Oops got a short speech before leaving for college: "We've brought you up to behave in accordance with our values. At college, you're going to be responsible for making your own decisions, and we can't control them anymore, but if you do anything that we'd disapprove of, we'd rather not find out about it," that she believes may have been about sex, but it's hard to tell -- that could also cover recycling.
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Do you folks have sex dreams about coworkers (of whatever gender(s) you prefer)? This is becoming a pattern in my administration, and a little bit worrisome.
|>
How about Unfogged commenters you've neither met nor seen pictures of?
No sex talk from my parents. It wasn't a prudish household. There was a copy of the Joy of Sex on the living room bookshelf, and my parents talked fairly frankly/matter-of-factly about sex. But I don't remember any formal conversation, other than a warning to be careful [clearly understood to mean condoms].
I also don't remember any specific talk, but I hit puberty at around the point in the '90s where you could get a pretty earnest version of the talk by turning on top 40s radio stations too so it's entirely possible that there was something and it just never registered.
A couple of talks from my folks, but nothing too focused. And, sadly, it was all too theoretical when I lived at home. Reduction to practice waited until college.
"Remember that any genital contact outside of marriage is a mortal sin, but even if you do consider yourself a homosexual you'll still be Thorn and we'll still love you." There was more than that later, but I already knew condoms weren't part of the conversation.
I got very little. Retrospectively, I don't care that I wasn't lectured on human biology, about which I'd already picked up enough to go on with, or that I got no advice on dating manners from people a quarter of a century older than I was. But I could really have done with some detailed talk about contraception. Crickets.
I like to read 107 as saying that those of us who've shown our faces online or off- are too hideous to be subconsciously contemplated, but while I'm not really one for sex dreams I do have dreams featuring commenters and even pitiful ones that basically feature commenting.
No way would my parents have suggested that any kind of pre-marital sex would be happening or recommending contraceptives (in any case illegal without prescription in my earlier youth. Yes, condoms, not for general sale until some point when I was in college. Before that the students' union had an illegal vending machine which the authorities would keep removing). They did when I was 11 or 12 make sure that I knew I could come to them in the event of a crisis pregnancy and they would love and support me etc.
106, 113: Yes. Quite so. But more in my younger days than now in my dotage. Annals of a ubiquitously sexualized world. And certainly not saying it's healthy for the individual, the workplace or society. But certainly my personal experience.
106/113: White House interns are probably quite a bit hotter than my current set of coworkers, who certainly fall outside the bounds of my broad and eclectic taste. I blame their lack of appeal for my lack of inappropriate dreams.
I had the same thought as Thorn about 107 - maybe a triumph of optimism over experience?
(in any case illegal without prescription in my earlier youth. Yes, condoms, not for general sale until some point when I was in college. Before that the students' union had an illegal vending machine which the authorities would keep removing)
I know I've mentioned this here before, but when I was a teenager no places that sold condoms anywhere near me would sell condoms to teenagers. They would flatly refuse, seeing as how condoms in the hands of a teenager couldn't possibly be used for any godly purpose. (Usually the refusal was accompanied by a brief lecture along those lines.) I'm nearly positive it wasn't illegal, but it was a ubiquitous social norm. (Comically, most stores were pretty lax about selling teenagers tobacco products, even though that was illegal.)
Similarly, most hotels nearby also would not rent a single room to a man and woman traveling together unless they were both wearing wedding rings. I myself was refused a hotel room with a female companion on this basis on more than one occasion. Once, the woman was my fiancé, but we weren't yet married, so no dice. You could rent two separate rooms, or you could sleep out in the cold. (The only proof of marriage I ever saw requested was the fact that both persons were wearing wedding rings, which is obviously imperfectly correlated to the two people trying to check into the hotel being married to one another, not to mention pretty obviously easy to fake if one were so inclined.)
119.1: In the early days after Columbine, even though my parents confiscated my brother's trenchcoat he and his got hassled by police around his high school in their fancy suburb pretty regularly. He was caught in possession of tobacco by a minor and sent to court. The judge (in the town where I now live, so used to dealing with actual teen drug offenses, etc., though the swanky school wouldn't have bothered sending any of its rich kids down for that) apparently actually rolled his eyes and said "They seriously want me to care about this??" and he had some sort of community service probation.
The only proof of marriage I ever saw requested was the fact that both persons were wearing wedding rings
And presumably signing in as Mr & Mrs Urple? AISIMHB, there was an occasion when my mother wanted to book me and the future but not yet Mrs y into a B&B for some family occasion, and she actually rang us to ask what name she should give - should we be Mr and Mrs Smith for the occasion. I told her that wouldn't be necessary and she said, "Well, I don't know dear, it's been years since I've had to do this." We didn't wear fake rings either, neither of us like bubblegum.
AISIMHB
After seeing it used at least about 30 times, I am still unable to figure out from context what hell this is supposed to mean. Can someone help?
As I suspect I've mentioned here before
As I S-something I-somethig Mentioned Here Before.
Pwned, but I added uselessness and misspellings.
Anyway, it's supposed to be ironic.
119 is amazing to me. Seventies California -- you can check out any time you like but you can never leave -- was definitely not like that.
Seventies Montana wasn't like that.
I never received THE TALK. I was handed a book and that was it. It didn't take all that long to figure things out, I'd been assembling my own birthday present toys from way back.
Inserting Tab A into Slot B was a cinch after the ten-speed.
122: Remember, it's pronounced "A-him-sub"
66, 74: I have a friend who claims to have been raped, based on the fact that their* casual partner/housemate started jerking them off one morning in bed without obtaining explicit consent. While I am certainly in favor of as much consent as possible, this really seems like stretching a point to me. If there's no force, no verbal or physical move to disengage, and a pre-existing sexual relationship, I just don't think you can call it "rape". "Unwise" perhaps, or "impolite", but not rape.
*Both parties were people with penises. Gender identification is left as an exercise for the reader.
I have frequent dreams about seduction, hand on forearm, removal of clothing, everything leading up to sex, but they almost always cut out just before the sex itself. It's sort of frustrating - probably about 1/8th as frustrating as it being played out in real life. I think my IRL sex life might be more interesting if I could get myself to fantasize about the details of the act rather than the preamble.
this really seems like stretching a point to me
<rimshot>
133: I'd perhaps call it "annoying". Beyond that is crazy.
134 is sort of what I meant about not having normal sex dreams, except mine aren't frequent. Sorry it pains you, Jeter.
Oh, and I also got several lectures from my mom about how marital sex is so much more enjoyable than the alternative, which has not been my experience but I hope is for all the marrieds among you.
I skipped fifth grade and thus had to do the Family Life book over the summer between fourth and sixth, so I guess I was self-taught on the mechanics of reproduction since there was no way I was going to ask my parents anything about it.
None of these strategies come recommended, though I can't say I'm exactly enjoying the constant conversations about "Well, maybe her mother DID say that, but would you really want to be with a person who likes you for your booty rather than all your other fantastic qualities?"
138 and "not having normal sex dreams" made me think that 134 was talking about "forearm removal".
141: I don't have those either, mind you!
Looked at from the right perspective, I don't think it has to be a bad thing to dream more about the setup than the payoff. But I feel like it could be fun to have more original sexual fantasies of my own, rather than just fantasizing about fulfilling the fantasies of others. Where does one get those anyway?
But I feel like it could be fun to have more original sexual fantasies of my own, rather than just fantasizing about fulfilling the fantasies of others.
Wasn't there a character in Gravity's Rainbow that had a similar problem?
I never remember dreams, at all, so I could always be dreaming of sex with all of you, at the same time, and be none the better off for it. My only co-worker is a visually and personally appealing woman who's just inched past 1/2 + 7. I'm not sorry to not know whether she's in my dreams.
My mom gave me a book and told me to look at it, and that we'd talk about it later. I read the book and then hid it, hoping she'd forget about the talk. She had a special this-is-very-important voice she would use for that kind of thing, and it was horrible and made me squirm in embarrassment. Possible kidnappers, potential molesters, sex: all explained to me in that voice.
I never got The Talk from either of my parents, which was fine, because I'd been reading Heinlein for years by the time it became relevant.
143: So you aren't easily able to have fantasies that don't have the same sort of focus as your unsatisfying dreams? Interesting! Though this conversation has made me realize I only have fantasies about people who've shown some sort of at least faintly plausible interest in me, which I guess explains the lack of celebrity crushes. Sexuality is weird, or possibly just I am but I do think on this one it's safe to generalize a bit.
143: Maybe a sort of Oulipo approach, making up random combinations of things that might be sexy and seeing whether they do you? Perhaps an Archive of our Own generator. (Perhaps not.)
I do have dreams featuring commenters and even pitiful ones that basically feature commenting.
Ditto! Hurray for boring dreams.
152 describes me too. Celebrities can be pretty, but they don't seem to exist in my subconscious.
I'm glad you said that, Eggplant, because I've really been thinking about this this afternoon and why the one exception to my not falling for straight girls (and not believing this girl was straight is part of it, if only a cover story) well predates the rape and long, messy recovery process that got me into all-consent-all-the-time thinking, and so it's a little encouraging to think it might just be my temperament and tendency to overthink rather than some kind of overreaction to trauma. (None of this is meant to psychologize you or your history. It was just nice to have someone not say it sounded blatantly ridiculous.)
155: Me too. I have a set of looks I like and can name celebrities who fit but I've never cast one in a fantasy.
155; 157: what?? there is all this benedict cumberbatch in the world of the internal cinema of your mind, and you choose to let it lie fallow? you have an infinitely large budget. you and every celebrity you fancy, at whatever age they seemed most attractive to you, who can helpfully be re-booted with the personality of real people you find interesting, or fictional characters, can have sex on a fucking iain m.banks orbital?! and you're just going to think about fucking that moderately hot chick at work, in a consensual way? do you fantasize about going to TGI friday's afterwards? why do you even have an imagination??!?!
107: yes.
152, 155, 158.1: Celebrities (are generally) not in my stock footage either. Some level of plausibility seems to be a necessary ingredient for me. Which writing it out brings the thought that it is somewhat creepy, be it as it may.
Is this the thread where we all post our sexual fantasies and our net worth?
161: what if you fantasize sexually about your net worth, like scrooge McDuck
161: Don;t forget Apgar scores.
We just started watching Sherlock and I told my wife how the main actor is a big fantasy object of women everywhere and she was all, "What, him? Seriously?"
I had a dream last night about soccer, so maybe it's vaguely heebie related (not that she was there) but I headed the ball too much and woke up with a migraine.
For once, directly on topic: NMM to Alexander Grothendieck.
Had seen that; a friend sent a link to this reddit thread with a translation of the obituary from Le Monde and some comments actually worth reading.
I've heard that it was news in France, but not really here. In a way, it's not surprising since Grothendieck was French, but he probably really was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, and his life story is fairly striking. (For example, he quit mathematics in the late 80s, and wrote a long fuck-you letter to anyone he'd every worked with. Then he moved to a secret location in the Pyrenees and refused contact with everybody.)
Some years ago I had a few mildly sexual dreams about someone who, as far as I know, had no real world existence at all. That is, as far as I remembered the character on waking, she was clearly nobody I knew in person, and bore no particular resemblance to anybody I could recall seeing in the media or anywhere else. Then I stopped having those dreams, but it's always mildly puzzled me.
I sort of thought the Crinolineswatch would catch more Internet-hell for playing the whitewashed role in Star Trek Into Darkness, but nothing can overcome blogs' love for teabag accents.
I do feel bad for Tom Hiddleston, whose niche the Clambakehutch has rather wholly arrogated.
The NYTimes obituary is fascinating in its obvious uncomfortableness with their inability to verify any details of his life. ("He was married at least once.")
I do feel bad for Tom Hiddleston, whose niche the Clambakehutch has rather wholly arrogated.
For example, he quit mathematics in the late 80s, and wrote a long fuck-you letter to anyone he'd every worked with.
He didn't just dream it, he lived it.
158: IMX, having a specific person and especially a celebrity as a fantasy focus doesn't work because the suspension of disbelief can't kick in. Mini-OCD-me starts working on the backstory, how did we meet, how did we get rid of the paparazzi, and all that nonsense. An idealized anonymous person created of my preferred characteristics works much better.
147. You should have been reading Silverberg; you would have known the mechanics of sex in detail, but been unable to distinguish genders.
A disturbing number of my sex dreams (while sleeping, not fantasizing) involve partners I would never consider sleeping with IRL. This started happening in HS, when I had a dream about a girl I found moderately off-putting, and she was coming onto me strong, putting her hand down my pants, etc. And I'm like, "Do I go through with this? Clearly she's DTF, but c'mon, *her*?"
The same pattern has recurred every so often ever since, with the additional element in recent years that my dream self is thinking, "OMG, I can't do this, I'm married! You're not actually going to violate your marriage vows with *her*, are you?" Except she's grabbing my dick, and it feels really nice, so.... These dreams typically end with me waking up having preserved my virtue, more or less.
you and every celebrity you fancy, at whatever age they seemed most attractive to you
I will admit to having a pre-code thought or two about actresses from the 1930s.
Honestly, I'm mortified now whenever I'm around said colleagues. Still, they are quite comely.
178: See, my Bureau of Superconsensual Thoughtcrimes has merit, except when compared to fa's Historical Font of Hypothetical Hotness. But I think lusting in one's heart is pretty close to the human condition, Jimmy, and you probably know more about what you think than they do.
168: I've heard that it was news in France, but not really here
The subject of my friend's email from Friday was "Not surprised that NYTimes and Guardian haven't noted the death of one of humanity's greatest geniuses - but Unfogged? Really?" He now seems to be a lurker and a critic.
Not to mention archivist: Unfogged not yet on the case yet despite historical interest in Grothendieck.
If Grothendieck wanted Unfogged coverage he should've died during the workweek.
Like he said, during the workweek.
What?! Maybe I shouldn't be relying on Unfogged as my main source of news.
that's pretty lame of us. we should have called a halt to the grothendieck-oriented self-pleasuring earlier.
flip: hiddleston is actually lots of people's main internet BF and they strongly prefer him to cumberbatch whom they claim resembles an overly-botoxed cat. so, he hasn't been usurped at all. plus, he gets to be loki! loki's great. I might have been annoyed at the khan thing if I had seen the movie but you can't rent it on itunes here, only buy it for 19.99, and fuck that. even my love of zachary quinto will not lead me to shell out like that for a movie that I know sucks.
I understand conceptually what people would not like about mr. cumberbatch, namely that he appears to have a weak chin from various angles, but given that from all other angles he appears to have used up all britain's cheekbone reserves...eh. also his eyes are just super-fascinatingly weird; at rest, his lower lid comes well up into the iris of both eyes, almost to the pupil. he has to be staring in genuine astonishment at something for the circle of his iris and any of the white to ever be visible. they are just queer and almond-shaped in a way that makes them fascinating. them we must also keep in mind that my first-ever imaginary crush/sexual fantasy object was the fictional sherlock holmes from the stories. so...deductive.
It's interesting to see the range of approaches to sexual fantasies in this thread. I'm not saying where mine fall, though.
what? c'mon, c'mon, say, teo. where do they fall? where? next door? west plausibylvania? an iain m. banks orbital on which the entire orbital ship mind thinks you, personally, are interesting, and devotes actual real-time processing to interacting with you, rather than the manifold sub-conscious avatars it dispatches to deal with the needs of the other 100 billion people living there, and, in addition, there is benedict cumberbatch? it's the teo show. do your talent.
I bet they all involve women dressing up as birds.
I thought 180.2 was about Glen A. Larson for a second there. Talk about one of humanity's geniuses. The Fall Guy has aged surprisingly well, but holy crap Knight Rider has not...
180: I think it's pretty clear that Unfogged is the wrong place to come for Grothendieck news. Look at this thread. Normally, sex threads are immediately derailed by discussion of cooking or swimming or the ball of yarn we found behind the couch. Awl does his best to derail with 166, but we've stayed relentlessly on topic.
Anyway, Grothendieck was a mathematician's mathematician, in that he was the purest essence of the modern tendency towards extreme abstraction and solving problems by building up theoretical machinery. Appreciating his work marks you as an insider with exquisite taste. In other words, he's mathematics own Alex Chilton.
jake, so you're saying you mos def don't fantasize about anyone from knight rider. ok, what about that chick from buck rogers, erin grey, in her white and silver jumpsuit? at one point in his life she shone bright in the stars of my brother's night sky. I am looking at wikipedia and thinking they must have re-broadcast it? no I guess maybe he was seven. my step-father sure was giving him a lot of shit though, jesus fucking christ. I think he was also somewhat keen on the evil yet alluring princess ardala (whose name I did not even have to look up).
WHO WOULD RIDE A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD THAT HARD, FOR REAL, WTF? what is even wrong with my family. I bought my sister a christmas present today that is very beautiful, with four colors of jade on a pendant. I am feeling really like a bad daughter that my mother is in such physically bad shape right now (her back has been seriously injured for 18+ months) so that at the moment her upper right leg is atrophied and skinny compared to the left. the only person to take care of her is my sister, which is ludicrous, because my beautiful wonderful sister is the most ill person in the world, and isn't even meant to life anything as heavy as a gallon of milk, and needs help herself--it's seriously the blind leading the blind. how am I supposed to help from so far away? maybe I can try to help hire someone? but it would be so much money? my brother and I should try to pool for it, I think is best. but I never even wanted to be the person who buys their way out of this problem! I want to take care of her myself.
For Alameida:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwpQp-pDS8I
I also definitely remember having slightly confusing thoughts about Princess Aradala. 79-81? I'd be about the same age as your brother, then, but it may have been shown a couple of years later on BBC, I can't remember.
Put me on the list for A) not having celebrities as a part of my fantasy life (actually, I largely either reminisce or work with fairly plausible counterfactuals from the past) and B) not really seeing Cumberbatch's appeal exactly (which is odd, given that tall, underweight, and high-strung generally works for me.)
186
If you learned to read Mandarin, there's a wealth of Sherlock/Watson slashfic on the Chinese internet, almost all of it written by female college students. (BC is a bit of a sex god here). A lot of it has been taken down by the authorities, but you could probably still find it if you knew where to look.
For sex ed, we learned extensively about birth control in 5th - 8th grade health class. I remember having to make a BC chart in 8th grade, listing each method, the pros and cons, and the ideal vs. real world failure rate. Our teachers told us that 13 was too young to have sex, and as a teen we should wait at least 6 months into a relationship before having sex with our SO. We also had this woman come in to tell us to masturbate. I remember at one point she was flapping her arms and shouting "masturbate! just touch yourselves!" to a bunch of supremely embarrassed preteens. We also learned that pot was fine, but "angel dust would mess you up real bad," in the words of my 6th grade math teacher, who then recounted a story of a friend on PCP who smashed a glass window and had to be taken down by about 5 cops. Anyways, I've never had the slightest desire to try PCP, so that worked like a charm.
186
If you learned to read Mandarin, there's a wealth of Sherlock/Watson slashfic on the Chinese internet, almost all of it written by female college students. (BC is a bit of a sex god here). A lot of it has been taken down by the authorities, but you could probably still find it if you knew where to look.
For sex ed, we learned extensively about birth control in 5th - 8th grade health class. I remember having to make a BC chart in 8th grade, listing each method, the pros and cons, and the ideal vs. real world failure rate. Our teachers told us that 13 was too young to have sex, and as a teen we should wait at least 6 months into a relationship before having sex with our SO. We also had this woman come in to tell us to masturbate. I remember at one point she was flapping her arms and shouting "masturbate! just touch yourselves!" to a bunch of supremely embarrassed preteens. We also learned that pot was fine, but "angel dust would mess you up real bad," in the words of my 6th grade math teacher, who then recounted a story of a friend on PCP who smashed a glass window and had to be taken down by about 5 cops. Anyways, I've never had the slightest desire to try PCP, so that worked like a charm.
I've never had the slightest desire to try PCP
I do love the name "Angel dust". It sounds so beautiful.
Maybe a good name for a daughter. "Angel Dust Smith". Surely there are a few around.
196: or work with fairly plausible counterfactuals from the past
Nicely put, and captures my situation fairly well (if "past" includes the very recent past...)
If we're going to go way back in time to when there were no "plausible" counterfactuals, sure, the sky was the limit back then. Cue to 10-year old lying almost directly beneath the TV screen trying to look up the dresses of the dancers on The Dean Martin Show or what have you*.
*Three, maybe four channel bitches; it was a good life.
In other words, he's mathematics own Alex Chilton.
Form Wikipedia: Chilton had experienced at least two episodes of shortness of breath in the week prior to his fatal heart attack, though he did not seek medical attention in part because he did not have health insurance.
Gee, thanks, Obama.
"Angel Dust Doe" would get funny looks if she monogrammed her luggage.
205: In New Orleans. I'm sure others saw the poll results before the election where more Louisiana Republicans blamed Obama than Bush for the Katrina response.
"Angel Dust Smith" brought images* of a woman using fire and steel to forge Angel Dust
*Non-sexual fantasy images because feminist.
196 roughly captures me as well. I don't have that many sexual dreams, and I don't have any coworkers, but every once in awhile there's an exception - something lengthy, elaborate, and decidedly unfaithful. It's so out of character that it always shakes me a bit.
actually, I largely either reminisce or work with fairly plausible counterfactuals from the past
This is a concise but comprehensive description of me too.
Film sexiness, of which Diana Rigg for me in the 60s or Barbara Stanwyck in Preston Sturges movies are good examples enormously expand your sense of rhythm and interaction, of how sex might be expressed and embodied.
But no one has ever climbed off the screen into one of my fantasies.
Pretty much exactly what 210 says. I can think of lots of people -- actresses, musicians, whoever -- in the public eye that I think are very attractive. But it doesn't find its way into any kind of fantasy life.
191.2 is why I didn't say anything about Grothendiek-- bad taste to say "not my style" about the brilliant just-deceased.
In my fantasies, I am competent and people like me-- sometimes people I know, never famous ones.
Most of my sexual fantasies don't involve me having sex. Except for the few in which I insert myself as a character, most of them have a woman as the POV character. I don't want to *be* her, but I do imagine a sort of voyeristic telepathic link, in which I can get inside her mind and feel what she is thinking and experiencing. That's much easier to do in fantasy than real life, of course.
So, for example, I wouldn't imagine myself having sex with Cindy Crawford, but I might imagine her bringing herself off and what that feels like for her. (I just saw her featured in an infomercial last night, which is why she comes to mind.)
Of course, most of my actual fantasies, these days, involve being alone.* With a good book, some music, and my guitar. Maybe some cake, and coffee or red wine.
* for a day or two, not forever.
There's something slightly unsettling in realising that my plan for this evening is (inadvertently) to enact ttaM's fantasies.
Ah, but which brand/model of guitar?
Well, my plan for this evening is 213. But first, I'll run this code for the first time and not find any problems at all in the data that comes out.
I think 218 meant "214", but it would be interesting if it didn't.
Planning to inadvertently enact someone's fantasies is a very tricky business.
No, I was being "funny" and claiming that I planned to try 213. The unlikely second sentence was also meant as humor, more in the same vein.
When I was about 10, some of my first romantic/semi sexual fantasies involved then child actress Jodie Foster. I kind of forgot about that until about a month before college started, when news broke that we would be in the same college class. that kind of squicked me out, and I decided on a NMM rule for her, but I never actually met her. I don't think I've had Hollywood fantasies since then. I did fantasize about a few other members of the freshman class for many years, until Facebook turned then into real middle aged people.
Which is why you never shot Reagan.
222. True ignorant question. What does NMM mean when used around here? I see a lot of expansions of it when I ask Google, but none of them make sense in the local context.
It means the same as "Rest in Peace," sort of.
There was a letter to Dan Savage's column a while back, asking if it was creepy to masturbate to a dead celebrity (Anna Nicole Smith, was it?), and Dan, surprisingly, said that yes it was creepy. Someone brought it up here, and it turned into shorthand for "has died."
Yeah, among other bits of questionable advice, I don't know about this one. DS's thing is that thinking of a dead celebrity is somehow hopeless, implying that all meritorious activity is suffused with hope. Not always I think-- I've had plenty of IRL interactions (IYKWIM) lacking any whiff of hope for the future, but those would have met Dan's criteria of honesty and consent.
Maybe there was something particularly horrible about DS's original letter writer, and the relevant context has since been lost.
ick. No, just interactions that weren't going to go anywhere.
Here's the original DS letter. The writer doesn't seem too bad.
Everybody keeps bring up necrophilia these days.
232. Huh. Not reading the comments there now, but that's some pretty flawed reasoning. The basis for identifying either solitary or coupled stimulation as meritorious is the conditional presence of delusional hope, really?
So the girls who are to quick to hope that this will really lead to something, they have the right idea according to DS? I think that John Updike in particular had a lot to say that was very interesting about pairing up among the elderly, for whom it's a mistake to put hope in the foreground.
Teo objected and he must have barely obtained his majority by then.
But I'm not about to start reading John Updike.
255. Thanks. Most of the ones that turned up online were either industry-specific or phrases that began with the N-word.
I'd forgotten how much disagreement there was in that thread. I thought the verdict had been unanimous. Have I now spent 7+ years not masturbating to dead people for no good reason?
At least I have not been here so long.
My question from that link has to do with the next post. Did ogged ever do any Masters' swimming. And from a quick skim, I think will underestimated your time for the 100 breaststroke without you doing very serious workouts (maybe that is what he assumed).
As the one in this thread who's confessed to weird standards of hypothetical imaginary consent, I've always thought the NMM rulings were especially unnecessary since the target isn't around to complain or make things awkward. I mean, no masturbating at funerals and the like, sure, but that's just manners. And I don't expect my own stupid rules to pertain to anyone but me.
Harlow is a bit funny looking to modern eyes, I think.
Hedy Lamarr and Gene Tierney.
Kathleen Ferrier. Images plus voice.
Ewig.
gary. fucking. cooper. but young though. the movie where marlene deitrich leaves behind a life of ease to wander, shoeless, through the desert as a bedouin camp follower of his french foreign legion troop is extremely beliveable. I'm sorry to hear you have actually been adhering to the ban, urple. you do know that we women are allowed to wear makeup, too?
gary. fucking. cooper.
Hey, at least you're consistent. Unlike some other folks.
(And I said it in that thread, but I'll say it again: how is Marilyn Monroe not top of the list?) (For those who like ladies, of course.)
198/199: I remember having to make a Benedict Cumberbatch chart in 8th grade, listing each method, the pros and cons, and the ideal vs. real world failure rate.
And there you all were, listing of Grothendieck/Grottlesex episodes without a trace of irony.
I'm crazy consistent. I think the deck may have been stacked in mr. cumberbatch's favor. in re: which LB you should actually watch sherlock, you know. it's good. he's appealing in motion in a way he's not in photographs. also, his hair obviously looks better like that so he should leave it.
252: I know? marilyn monroe was incandescently hot. lemme see who else with the old movie star laydeez...young elizabeth taylor, obvs...girls like audrey hepburn but do boys or is she too "I caught a sparrow so it wouldn't hurt itself after it flew in the window and now its feathery wings are beating on the cage of my hands ineffectually--oh the delicate clavicles"? lauren bacall, oh yeah, jesus. young myrna loy, surprisingly beautiful but maybe not in a fuck me way. brigitte bardot: really fucking fabulous.
oh shit rita heyworh, yes, I literally mistyped her out. I didn't really focus that she was latina and then they dyed her hair red until I read a little bio thing just now.
255 - Are you kidding? Forget the America's Chipper Partner In Crime Thin Man stuff, Myrna was playing murderous Fu Manchu dragon ladies! I mean, I can understand if people don't go for that because they're feminists not gross racists who get off on yellowface, but they're definitely going for "hot in a fuck me way".
Dorothy Malone has the best on-topically relevant scene in The Big Sleep, though.
http://media.tumblr.com/d54a6af44a9fbba7e9226792a8b0db72/tumblr_inline_muiel963sH1qe6nze.jpg
255: I like the show (I'd like it better if it made any sense at all), and I think Cumberbatch does a great job with the character, he's lots of fun to watch. I just don't feel any particular desire to fondle him. Not sure why -- again, tall, thin, and nervous often works for me, but not on him.
The problem may be that on Sherlock, he's usually standing next to Martin Freeman, who I do find very appealing, and suffers by comparison.
Martin Freeman is quite appealing, isn't he? Cuddly but seems like he'd rise to the occasion, as it were.
I find mop-haired space alien Sherlock season 1 Cumberbatch fetching too, though!
262: touché. I was just starting to think 'hotties of the past.'
So you've also got a thing for hobbits then.
263: this list will surely appeal, LB.
It does. The bit in the middle where they just keep repeating "Shirley Maclaine" for a while? Very entertaining.
257: You went out with Madelein Kahn?!?!
252: My grandfather was an Army surgeon during the Korean War and met her while she was traveling to encourage the troops. Lee was amazed to hear this and pushed for details on how gorgeous and hot she must have been at her peak, but he insisted that while she was very kind to everyone, he found her "a bit flash, really." Maybe I come by my weirdness honestly.
270:
Do you think he knew how impious such a statement had become in the meantime—I'm assuming it's honest either way—or was indifferent to that?
He was pretty far into Parkinson's and less so Alzheimer's at the time she talked to him about it (and there's more to the story, like the way MM greeted him rather than his senior officer first, which he attributes to a lapse in her attention to uniforms and decorum rather than feeling flattered by it) but he seems to have been basically uncomfortable with anything he considered "untidy" (up to and explicitly including Simon & Grafunkel's "Cecelia" once he listened to the lyrics) and she may have fallen in that category even at the time. He really prioritized family, refusing to play golf with his fellow surgeons and instead insisting on mixed doubles tennis because he'd rather spend time with my grandma than with anyone else.
On the other hand, Lee and I got out for a few hours yesterday and talked to a neighbor's mother, herself in her 80s and with significant dementia. Like both my sets of grandparents, she'd had seven children. "What can I say? I guess I just like sex!" she crowed. So possibly there are other parts of the conversation I'll never hear!
268: I didn't realize this growing up, because young people are really bad at judging the attractiveness of anyone over about 25 (? right?) and I had never seen any old movies of hers, but shirley maclaine was actually, like, smoking hott.
you all should be happy to know that thanks to this thread I had a sex dream last night about a real person I know, who is super-hot (and was her 20-year-old-self in the dream), blonde with bright-blue eyes, and one of identical twins from minnesota, but I didn't have a threesome with her and her sister, but with her and another dude, source unknown but a type I find very attractive, tall and with black hair and blue eyes--because I am a feminist.
189: I bet they all involve women dressing up as birds.
They don't, but I may need to reconsider that.
I don't even know what this is about but that made me laugh.
I saw it at the Other Place, courtesy of another commenter who may not want to be publicly associated with it.
That's not how I remember Womyn with Wings.
Shirley Maclaine is/was alright but I find her eyes oddly too small for her face; and that's in full movie makeup. Also, Grace Kelly, bitchez!
I have sex dreams semi frequently, and they fall in two rough types: 1) dreams about people I know (usually but not always people I am not attracted to in real life) that never actually culminate in sex. For 2 years I had an unrequited crush on a colleague, and I'd frequently have what felt like hours-long "sex" dreams that culminated with him putting his hand on my knee. 2) crazy wild sex dreams filled with crazy wild sex, all involving totally imaginary people. Once I dreamt I lived in 18th century England and had been kidnapped by very hot pirates, who kept me as a sex slave. At one point I faked a pregnancy by stuffing a plastic baby doll up my shirt, but even in the dream I was unclear as to the motive. Anyways, both genres of dreams can be quite unsettling.
Were you pleading your belly, perhaps?
262: brigitte bardot
Still alive, monster.
So we've flipped 180 degrees, eh?
283: She would like to believe in "Gott Mitt Us" in order to think it, but she just believed in Billy Wilder?
282: As I believe I mentioned in the "famous encounters" thread, as a young child my wife was friend's with one of Dietrich's grandkids while her family lived in London for a year. On occasion, Marlene would be there; my wife's must vivid memory was being frustrated when Dietrich appeared to be asking her whether she wanted her coat when she was actually offering her a Coke.
