E-tarded: A Night to De-Member

*This post has undergone a much-needed edit and is being published again to better clarify my intentions

Okay, guys.

WTF?

I just got off the phone with a female friend of mine. Our conversation was about your penis.

Yes, yes it was.

Before she called me, she had been happily chatting with YOU. She was a little excited, thinking that you were attractive and fun, and that it seemed like things were moving along nicely toward the point that she could find herself comfortable enough to consider pulling out her best moves in the sexual encounter that she could now picture herself engaging in with you. She was starting to think about having sex with you, because you had made it to her intellectual second base and now she was picturing you naked. Oh, how close you came, buddy.

But you blew it. You blew it big time.

You did something so horrendously inappropriate that she felt compelled to call me and ask me just what in the hell she should do now.

Guys, honestly... This is a problem. You can't just whip it out. I don't understand why, but there is obviously a lot of confusion about this issue. Let's just try to clear it up now, okay?

You can't do it in public. If you do, you're legally considered a sexual predator and can be arrested for it. It is considered unsolicited sexual behavior, etc...

But let's just break it down, alright?

It's just not polite to point. It's REALLY impolite to point at certain areas of a person's body, and that appendage of yours has a pretty accurate guidance system. Besides which, women kind of put phalluses in the same threat category as vampires in that they aren't supposed to comfortably move about in daylight, religious symbolism is supposed to AT LEAST slow them down, and they can't come in unless they're invited. Start operating outside of those standards, and you do to the dating game what 28 Days Later did to zombies; you now have something inflamed and enraged that you can't even outrun, AND IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO FREAKIN' WORK THAT WAY.

Unless we specifically get freaky and ASK you for a picture of your member, sending it to us will upset us on a number of levels. It may surprise you to learn that what often upsets us the most is the massive responsibility that you've thoughtlessly heaved onto the unsuspecting woman who's now in a staring match with Mr. Cyclops.

Pray tell, O man, what is the response that you're expecting?

Try to think with the big head for just a second. Okay, good.. now that the blood is flowing back into the area of your body that is (supposedly) where your seat of empathy lies, try to put yourself in the sweaty pumps of your potential partner. What in the FUCK is she supposed to say when you abruptly STOP talking and start just hanging out the one part of your body that you are the most emotionally fragile about? It is, at once, both the most disrespectful shortcut to her girlie parts that you could possibly take, and the greatest self-inflicted punishment a man could dream up, and you've left the determination between those two extremes solely at the discretion of the stunned woman who didn't plan on talking to your dick today.

If you're sadist or a masochist, or you're looking for a sadist or a masochist, then MAYBE this could be a really quick way of getting through a singles event. Even then, its kind of a dick move (pardon the pun).

Again, I implore you to look at this from our perspective. Prematurely exposing your most private of parts is interpreted by a woman as a "put out or get out" alert, and it usually comes at time that she's just getting a tingle of sexual attraction to you. You've as good as told her that you're not interested in getting to know her anymore and you're not wasting another breath talking to her unless she takes a good look at your dick and says "yeah, I'll just hop right on that". Most women will not declare themselves ready for boarding just at the sight of dick, and if they do, there is something wrong with her. Either she's got boundary issues that will manifest themselves into various degrees of psychosis in the near future, or she's got other souvenirs to give you that you're not going to want cluttering up your travel-bags later on.

In order to make it clear that she is NOT a slut or anything like what I described in the previous paragraph, she cannot be too positive in whatever she says about the unexpected penis before her. She ALSO knows that if she says anything negative, it could end the relationship then and there when you shrink up like a scared turtle. More than that, given the extreme sensitivity that men exhibit at ANY and EVERYTHING related to their penises, she's not sure if you're going to come away from this with a permanent wound that she didn't mean to inflict.

How is this fair, man? You guys flip out about your independence and freedom when we ask why you didn't call, as though we were trying to shove a GPS tracking device in your anus. We're usually asking because you usually call. When you didn't, we were probably concerned for a variety of reasons, not the least of which include "Oh shit, is he dead? This guy texts me fifteen times a day and today I haven't heard from him in ten hours". Goddamn.. how dare we forget to read your mind and understand that THIS is the day you were going to pretend that you're Rambo and you're going into the bush (haaa..) for two weeks and can't be contacted til all the bad guys are little smouldering bloody piles in the jungle.

See, in one situation, we're expected to extricate ourselves with all the precision of a neurosurgeon, carefully avoiding any damage to the highly sensitive areas that we now can't HELP but be in direct contact with. In the other, if we show the slightest bit of concern when a situation moves from "status: normal" to "WTF", we're treated like soul-sucking harpies, hell-bent on emasculating you by demanding that you show us common courtesy.

This sexual faux-pas seems to happen more often than ever, what with the ready availability of camera phones. Before everyone had cameras in their phones, there were digital cameras and chatrooms. I had a few girlfriends that used to hang out in the same online social areas that I did, and between us, we had pictures of almost every guy who frequented that same area. We went so far as to play "Guess That Screenname!", trying to match the dick to the dickhead who sent it. This is not as cold and cruel a practice as you guys might think. This was us, making the best out of an awkward and uncomfortable situation. We felt lucky to have each other, because at least we had someone to bounce a sample response off of whenever cock would invariably show up in our inboxes, with little to no warning of its arrival.

Which leaves me where I am today. Having gone through an entire conversation that revolved around:

1: Not hurting a guy's feelings
2: Not being a slut
3: Preserving that guy's chance at ACTUALLY GETTING SOME
4: Trying to appropriately handle an extremely inappropriate situation
5: Justifying the continuation of a heterosexual lifestyle, despite godawful problems like this that come with it.

Oh, and we did talk about length, girth, color, angle, and all of the other shit you're probably worrying about. This was mainly a way to diffuse the discomfort of the situation that this girl had found herself in. Trust me when I say this... unless you've got a serious case of micropenis or there were visible surface abnormalities, we didn't judge you by any of those penile stats that I mentioned.

We DID, however, judge you for sending it to her. That's strike one, provided you haven't done anything even dumber before this. If you're smart, you'll apologize.

Here are some GOOD and BAD ways to try and recover from exposing yourself like the quintessential pervert with a trenchcoat:

-GOOD-
"I'm sorry. That was really impulsive of me. I'm just so turned on by you that I did it without thinking. I hope we can move on from this really out-there thing that I did"

-BAD-
"Now how's about some quid pro quo, baby?"

-GOOD-
"I'm really feeling kind of shy and embarrassed about sending that pic. I want to ask you what you think about it, but it wasn't cool of me to put you on the spot like that"

-BAD-
"Can we fuck now?"

-GOOD-
"Ok, ok... my bad. You don't have to say ANYTHING. Let's let it go, and you will see it in person if and when you WANT to see it. I did something that was very inconsiderate of you and I'm sorry. I just got excited and was being an idiot"

-BAD-
"No, seriously. I need to see a picture of your vagina RIGHT NOW. Unless I can get delivery in 30 minutes or less? Plz?"

In short (and if you're gonna send us a picture of it, you better pray that it ISN'T), COULD YOU PLEASE STOP SENDING US UNSOLICITED DICK PICS?

Thank you. This Public Service Rant has been provided to the general public courtesy of thefemininecontext.blogspot.com, on behalf of MILLIONS OF CREEPED OUT WOMEN WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE HAVE BLOWN YOU... had you not blown it for yourself.

-------

*Bear in mind before you go all OMFG SHE IS SLUT-SHAMING AND OMFG THE RAPE-CULTURE/PATRIARCHAL WRONGNESS.. Trust me, I know. In fact, I completely agree. Unfortunately, all the "wrong" things said here are common things that women think having been indoctrinated by the patriarchal and archaic rape-culture we've been brought up in. This entire post is basically derived from many, many conversations I've had with other women about this subject, including the commonalities between all of those conversations (i.e.; "I can't look like a slut. Was I being slutty? I like him so now what do I do?"). So to clarify a point or two..

- Slut-shaming is wrong. Internalizing it to the point that you'll participate in your own victim-blaming is really messed up. Tragically, one of the first things a woman does when placed in a sexually-charged, undesirable, unwanted situation like this is to check HERSELF for anything she did to deserve what has befallen her. Maybe we need less red, embarrassed female faces and more drinks being thrown into lascivious, expectant asshole man-faces that are awaiting a response.

- Having to tiptoe around an ugly-ass situation that someone ELSE created in an effort to spare that aggressors' feelings is REALLY wrong, and is holding the victim responsible for what the aggressor has foisted upon her. Even worse, this happens to women and girls every day. As a culture, we have so internalized the idea that women bear all sexual responsibility, they often go straight to work trying to salvage a situation that they should remove themselves from (dating a disrespectful prick, for example), and should never have been exposed to (pardon the contextual pun) to begin with.

- Exposing oneself in person is a crime, punishable by law (that is, if you can convince the law you're not a slut who asked for it, which is fucked up). Just because you put Mr. Willy in a digital format instead of actively whipping it out and trying to touch her with it, AND can legally get away with it, doesn't make it any less unwarranted, unwanted, or inappropriate. Keep it in your pants, and by "it", I mean the collective "it" which includes your genitals and the phone or device that contains any pics taken of your genitals.

- I'm sick to death of having conversations with my friends about how best they must navigate the obstacle course of disgusting behaviors they endure out of the obtuse neanderthals they are dating. Here's something worth considering. A logical breakdown.

Following the logic that women have to obsess over every last thing they say, do, wear, etc, because of the commonly accepted idea that men cannot conduct themselves in safe, non-violent, socially acceptable manner when exposed to sexual stimuli in any amount, the idea of locking them up in cages most of the time would be both LOGICAL and SOUND in the interest of protecting women and children. 

If men are so driven by sexual impulse that cannot be trusted to not sexually assault, rape, or become violent/aggressive/unstable when a woman is present, the responsibility falling on the woman/potential victim, I'm guessing we should lock them up like we do anyone else who we (as a society) determine are so likely to harm others if they are free to roam.

I don't want to lock the entire heteronormative male gender in a cage. Maybe it might be a better idea for them to grow the fuck up and start learning to tell themselves, and their penises, "no". That's what human beings are supposed to do when childhood is over and their parents aren't there to tell them "no".

Why Men Call Women "Crazy" - Turns Out That It's Total Bullshit Like We Thought It Was

From "On Labeling Women 'Crazy'" by Harris O'Malley on HuffPost:

"Back in the bad old days, I was notoriously self-absorbed. It wasn't that I thought that I was the greatest thing ever, it was just that I didn't really stop to spare too many thoughts for others. I was willing to make an effort for others, but only so far as it didn't really inconvenience me past a "reasonable" point. I didn't want to have long drawn out conversations about how my behavior made my girlfriend feel and I certainly didn't want to get dragged into what I saw as unnecessary drama. In fact, I was incredibly drama-averse, thanks to an early unhealthy relationship.

As a result... well, I wasn't willing to consider how others were feeling. When the woman I was dating would try to explain to me how the way I treated her felt, I would tell her that she was seeing things. She was overreacting to inconsequential stuff. She was being over-sensitive, reading things into what I was saying or doing that just weren't there.

The subtext to everything I was saying was simple: "You are behaving in a way that I find inconvenient, and I want to you to stop." I wasn't willing to engage with her emotionally and address her very real concerns because I was too wrapped up in my own shit to think about other people. As a result, I would minimize her issues. By telling her that she was reading too much into things, I was framing the situation as her being irrational.

I didn't realize it at the time, but what I was doing was, in effect, telling her that she didn't have the right to feel the way she felt... because I didn't want her to feel that way."


I would love to see more of this kind of thought process from men. The patriarchal status quo ain't helpin THEM out either, making them all out to be emotionally-challenged, overgrown children who are incapable of interacting with others without gratuity. That's not healthy for anyone, and its not true. Following the societal norms of  traditional gender roles to the letter; fearful, skeptical, and cynical of any deviation, does nothing more than entrap us in unhappy lifestyles and a dangerous, violent culture.

The Feminine Context

"Not Really" Is Still "No". One Man's Introspective Article

Anyone who has read this blog can easily detect my feminism within a few posts. It's not something I hide, I don't consider "feminism" a bad word, and I don't use feminism as a way to assault men. As a feminist, I tend to worry less about what men are doing, and find myself most often taking offense at the behaviors of other women who want to reap the rewards of feminism while abandoning the personal responsibility of earning them.

That being said, I'm not a mysogynist. Sexual politics within any culture are complex by nature, built upon historical, religious, economical, and other factors. To unravel an issue, means that one must take the time to untie all of the good intentions and practical measures that somehow developed into a likely unintentional problem. With the efforts of many individuals on different ends of the discussion, there can be some understanding and resolution.

This is why I ADORE you, Hugo Schwyzer.

His bio, from his website:

"Hugo Schwyzer is an American author, speaker and professor of history and gender studies at Pasadena City College. He presents workshops on body image, sexual harassment, rape prevention, and the “myth of male weakness.” He is also a frequent guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and has appeared on CNN and CTV (Canada) as an expert on body image, sexuality and gender justice."


I came across one of Mr. Schwyzer's articles today, and simply HAD to share it..


From "Accidental rape. I knew I hadn't committed a crime but..."


"Most “good guys” take a woman’s firm “No!” for an answer. (Those who don’t are best left to the ministrations of our criminal justice system.) But lots of men are like the guy I was at 19—assuming that while “no means no” anything short of a firm “no” is either a “yes” or a “keep at it, boy, because you just might get a ‘yes’ soon.” Call it male sexual legalism, the first rule of which is “All that is not expressly prohibited is assumed to be permitted.” That legalism can turn many men into accidental rapists"

We need more of this guy, and less of this guy..

The Feminine Context

God Save The Teens: An Intervention

This is an actual Facebook-comment conversation I had with my niece the other night. It is at times like this that I'm grateful for the long, lonely, isolated adolescence I experienced as a home-schooled student. At least I never had the opportunity to pick up dumbass habits like this.

Names and identifying information removed. Kids, if no one's slapped you for abusing the English language like this, please do what's right and slap the holy shit out of YOURSELF.

The Feminine Context

Statement of Purpose

Hello.

This blog is intended to be interesting to both men and women, due to its emphasis on male/female communication.

If I go on writing in this blog with the same dryness contained in that description, it will no doubt be interesting to NO ONE.

So.. let's just get this out of the way.

This blog will probably be updated in a somewhat random fashion, but I'm REALLY going to try and do it with some sort of regularity. I've attempted to maintain several blogs over the years, but like houseplants, I just can't seem to keep them alive. This time, I think I've got a topic that's entertaining enough to ME that it can keep my interest. We'll see.

Right now, it's September of 2011, and come September of 2014 you might run across this blog with a total of 15 posts that end abruptly in October of 2011. If that's YOU and you're reading this in 09/2014 and I've killed another potentially fun blog through pure neglect.. well, to hell with you and your judgments! I at least left a trace of myself to float out in the e-cosmos, probably with as many bad puns and puerile humor as I could possibly shove into the pitiful number of posts this blog contains. For like, ten minutes worth of reading, I WAS SOMEBODY... that you probably didn't want to hang out with... BUT I WAS STILL SOMEBODY, DAMMIT!

Tirade break.

In case anyone is wondering, I'm female, over 30, and an avid bullshit-enthusiast. Some have called me an "artist", but as far as bullshit is concerned, I really consider myself more of a hobbyist. Perhaps a connoisseur of fine bullshit artistry. Believe it or not, this rambling preamble is actually leading to the point of this blog. Points, really.

Point One :

Men and Women are different. Their BRAINS are wired differently. They have equal needs, usually the same needs, but they communicate, learn, and prioritize differently from one another.

Point Two :

This causes a lot of problems. A lot. A lot of problems that could potentially be avoided by keeping Point One in mind before anyone says ANYTHING to ANYBODY.

What I plan (hah.. "plan") to do with this blog is to effectively illustrate these two points, as often and obnoxiously as I possibly can. I plan to assist you men out there by decoding the subtle, hidden messages that the women around you are lobbing at you at every possible opportunity. You know how your mom/sister/ex/current/female friend is constantly trying to tell you that so-and-so is a total bitch? Believe it or not, she probably is. However, its pretty dumb to make decisions based on one person's interpretation of this hidden, foreign language. I think it would be better to work on a sort of "travel phrase" guide here, just so you get some idea of what the HELL is going on between the women around you. Trust me, its enough to scare you NOT straight.

Ladies? I'm not forgetting you. Men are loading you down with the same type of conversational manure that they are mired in as a result of our communication differences. Between us girls... well, let's be honest, we're not getting ANYWHERE trying to translate it together. All of our girls nights out are loaded with questions.. questions about men. Usually we're in a small group of women without enough testosterone between us to support ONE testicle, let alone the fact that we're all squawking the same damn questions at each other. It doesn't help that our groups diminish and repopulate based on a bunch of illogical assumptions about what some other girl "meant by that". It could be something as simple as a facial expression. An item of clothing that someone deems inappropriate. Talking to the wrong man or talking to him at the wrong time. It could be anything. We will recognize it as some great personal (or worse) group insult. We will ostracize that girl within an inch of her life, and bring her back only when she has been sufficiently punished for that thing that ACTUALLY meant this other thing that was SO GODDAMN OFFENSIVE that we were momentarily motivated to burn her for the bitch witch she was ...

.. FOR WEARING THAT BLOUSE WHEN SARA WAS TRYING TO TALK TO THAT GUY THAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW. OMG.

Yes, men. It is that bad. Shame on us. Shame on you guys for running about willy-nilly in a gender-integrated world and not realizing the intensity of the female-to-female interactions that go on around you at all times.

Shame on all of us for not being honest. Shame on us for playing this retarded game that makes no one happy.

Maybe, if I can stay interested long enough, I can dig a couple gold nuggets out of the giant shit-pile of confusion that we all work so hard to build, dividing us a species into two, confused, bitter groups of people who aren't getting laid and don't like each other most of the time. I can give it a try.