Uppercase Woman

Another New Year Begins...

I've been finding myself feeling more rueful than usual as this year draws to a close. This is the last year I'll be in my thirties--I'll turn 40 this spring--and while that is generally rather meaningless, I can feel the shadows of a midlife crisis circling.

I have such a good life; I have a man that loves me unconditionally and passionately. A daughter that is perfect, charming, adorable, and enchanting (do you know what she's just started doing? Every time I tell her I love her she comes and gives me a hug. Could she be any cuter?). I have the best dog ever™. A cat the mostly uses the litter pan, and doesn't ever bite Tori, not matter how hard Tori pulls on her tail. A best friend many people would kill for. A mother that loves Tori and lives close by. A new car. A nice house that gets nicer every minute that our buddy Fred keeps hanging around fixing things.

But I find myself feeling a bit sad about stupid things; I no longer have the power to draw men's glances across a bar (OK, maybe it was just the big "slut" sign on my forehead, but I did have that power at one point). I have reached that age where most people see a "ma'am" instead of a "miss." No one would ever card me for beer or cigarettes (and I no longer indulge in beer and cigarettes, which I also find myself missing a bit today). It's unlikely that I'll find myself in the flush of new love again; and while I have something so much more amazing now--a deep and abiding true love that cannot be matched--I sometimes miss the days of burning so hot that I out shined the sun.

I'm firmly entrenched in the middle of my life now. I'm no longer at the beginning. I can see, now, why people have affairs (calm down, Charlie, I am so NOT going to have an affair), or buy fast cars, or take up rock climbing (I might, however, take up rock climbing). It feels a little bit, now, like I've done it all--like there's nothing new to explore. I've already lived six or seven different lives, some of them in different parts of the country. I am now simply placing one foot in front of the other, waiting for the next thing to happen.

There is great joy in this, of course. I now actually have the ability to live in the moment, to find the hope and magic in the mundane. I no longer feel the compulsion to change the world--and, honestly, that is so freeing. Changing the world is a big job, and I don't really want to have to do it. I have the capacity to sit still now, to listen to a piece of classical music and really hear it without the impatience of youth demanding that it fucking end all ready. I can enjoy just laying in bed with my husband, our arms loosely entwined, feeling content to just be. I can sit on the floor with Tori and watch her push the triangle through the triangle shaped hole over and over again and applaud it each time with equal enthusiasm because I have the patience that nearly 40 years of being on this planet has given me.

But sometimes it's hard to just smolder when you used to burn. It's one of the joys of growing old, but one of the big lessons in humility that comes with aging as well. I know I don't want to be like those people you see trying so hard to stay on fire with the surgeries and the crazy hair and make-up and inappropriate clothes. I am trying to let my skin settle comfortably around me, and just trust that it belongs where it falls, even if part of me thinks perhaps it should still be up a tad (ok, a lot) higher.

Because the truth is, as I head into 2008--a number that is as completely unspectacular as my life is--I have everything I want. I have a perfect life. I have become an ember instead of a flame, and I am learning to be content with that. I plan to head into the new year with only this one resolution--to continue to trust that my skin does, in fact, fit me. I wish the same for you as well.

Happy New Year, everybody. May you find happiness in the skin you're in.

Holy Anal Defenders, Buttman (I know, I know--sorry)

Very interesting responses to my last post. I want to address a couple of things people mentioned.

1. I have no--NO--moral objections to people having anal sex. I do not care who has it, as long as it's consensual and mutually desired. I will defend your right to have it, just as I will defend my right NOT TO. I do not want to ban anal sex, and I don't think men who want it are gay (and I have no objections to gay anal sex either).

2. I do not oppose mutual domination and submission play--not at all. Trust me.

3. My primary objection about the use of anal as a way to humiliate and subjugate women was about the men in that article and what I've seen in pornography.

I want to talk more about that last one.

Charlie said it very well when we were discussing everyone's responses last night; it's not just the anal sex and ejaculating on the face (not to mention a lot of other stuff you see in porn now, like ass-to-mouth and choking) that you see in pornography. It's that the rise of those kinds of sexual acts have coincided with the women staring in pornography looking younger and younger and more and more, well, fake. Fake boobs. Fake hair. Shaved pubs. And bleached assholes. Yes, bleached.

The attitudes of the men featured in the article mirrors the attitude I've seen in pornography. It's there in the smug attitude of the men that were interviewed, especially in the man who had anal sex with his girlfriend for five months before he was willing to "commit" to her and condescend to vaginal sex.

I can't help that these men--and many of the men that manufacture pornography--view women as disposable empty-headed fuck dolls there only for their pleasure.

I want to believe that the women that responded that said that they love anal sex really mean that, and feel loved and supported by their partners, and are fully into of the act. For me, it's difficult to imagine--the handful of times that something has found its way there for me (you know, doctors, drunken fumbling) were unbelievably painful and not erotic in any way. In fact, in every case it totally stopped any erotic feelings in me whatsoever.

So I don't deny that I'm bringing my own prejudices to bear.

But I have to wonder if it's less about actual enjoyment, and more about pleasing your partner. I understand this--I get great satisfaction out of pleasing Charlie even if it's something for him alone (hello, I'm the girl that loves blow jobs). But the act of giving head doesn't cause me pain--I never have to say "stop, go slow, wait!" So I can't help but feel they aren't quite analogous.

This all leads me to wondering if women decrying, "Anal is awesome! I love it!" is yet another victory of the patriarchy. You know, men said they wanted it, women said OK. This worries me, the same way that young women think having anal sex leaves you a virgin (yikes--sigh), and the same way that what Elena said about later issues of incontinence worry me.

But I am going to choose to believe that the women that claim to love it really do. Because the only thing that worries me more about patriarchy victories is women not listening to each other.

Mars, Venus, and the Rise of the Ass

The other day Charlie was sitting and watching TV while I was at the computer reading blogs (the computer is in the dining room, and the TV is in the living room, six feet away). He was being a typical guy and watching some crazy crap on the Discovery channel (and not Discovery Health which has cool shows I like to watch, but some other channel), and they were doing a show about sewage.

Fascinated, Charlie wouldn't allow me to interrupt him when I had a question, and said he was hoping that the show would answer a burning question he had. A few minutes later he said, "I was sitting on the toilet the other day and I realized that around the world, 300 million people are all taking a crap right now." Then he turned to me expectantly.

I looked at him blankly for a moment, wondering what possible response he could be hoping I'd offer. After a moment I said, "I have to say, love, that I cannot see a time, ever, when that thought would organically occur to me." Nor, I must say, would I ever have such a pressing question about sewage that I would watch a TV show about it and refuse to be interrupted.

In many ways, Charlie and I are not "typical" in our gender roles; I'm more likely to pick up a screwdriver than he is, and he's into a bare minimum of sports (hockey and, more recently, boxing). Charlie also does not view the parenting he does as being anything other than his job (as do I)--in other words, he doesn't expect to be rewarded for changing a diaper or going to Tori when she wakes up at night.

But in other ways, we are typical. I, for instance, do not care about sewage, and he finds it fascinating ("It's treated with bacteria!" he gushed at me after the show is over). But all the talk about sewage got me thinking about where it comes from.

Ass has been on my mind lately ever since I read this article (link via Feministing). I'm not sure (and either was Feministing) what was worse--the article itself or the fucking heinous picture that goes with it. Take a good, long look. Feel subjugated? I sure as hell do.

As a woman who has been sexually active for 25 years (holy crap), with many of those years spent "exploring" (a nice way of saying "being a slut"), I have been asked to have anal sex exactly once in my life, and that was so unusual at the time (about 17 years ago, I think) that I dumped the guy immediately (full disclosure--he also had a foot fetish; I might have been able to handle one or the other, but not both).

But that has changed, according to the article. I'm not surprised; if you've watched porn over the last twenty years (what?), you've seen the rise of anal sex from a fringe fetish to a required standard act. If it's in pornography, you can bet your ass (heh) that men are going to start asking for it.

What surprised me about the article, however, is the idea that some men view anal sex as LESS INTIMATE than vaginal sex. Seriously? I don't know any women--not a single fucking one--that would not completely disagree. NO FUCKING WAY is any woman I know having anal sex with any man she doesn't fully and totally love and trust already.

The other appalling thing about this article is that men view having anal sex with a woman as an important thing to brag about. Gah. I'm am very, very proud to say that none--NONE--of the men I know ever brag about the sex acts they have--other than one of Charlie's college buddies (but he's reformed now that he's married). Ironically, every single woman I know does indeed share sex details, but I wouldn't call it bragging particularly. No, we women don't brag, we share information. Heh.

On a side note, it does seem like more people are also eating ass. After all, a common phrase you hear these days is that something "tastes like ass." How do people know? Again, in pornography, there are a lot more tongues touching assholes in the last few years than ever before (again, what?). I remember years ago in the movie Working Girls (no, not Working Girl with Melanie Griffith--one of my fav movies of all time--but a different movie) about a high-class brothel, one of the characters wanted a woman to lick his asshole, and that was considered highly freakish--by prostitutes (she faked it in the movie, by the way--it was considered that vile).

In the Details article a few men at least were willing to admit the truth about anal sex--it's really about domination and submission. I'm not a feminist scholar, or a woman studies major, or even a very good feminist (see: my common use of the words "bitch" and "cunt") but it seems pretty fucking obvious to me that the higher women rise in society, the more likely they are to be humiliated and degraded sexually. First, in pornography (easy to do, eh?). After all, back in the 70's, women didn't have men ever ejaculate on their faces (they were just degraded in the standard ways). That came in the late 80's and 90's--and now it's all about anal sex. Eventually everything crosses from pornography into "real" life, and men begin to expect degrading sex acts from women as a matter of routine. At least that's how it seems to me (my personal experience is only with the face ejaculation thing--not long before I exited the "dating" scene, that became a common request. That was denied.).

Course, I may be talking out of my ass here--after all, I've been in a monogamous relationship for nearly 15 years. I have no idea what men are really demanding out there these days (other than what the women I know tell me). All I know is that if men like those in that magazine article really exist, I am very fucking glad I'm not single. Very, very glad.