sex plus other?

[Absaroka]

Well that topic ought to get everyones attention. Moderators let me know if it should be changed.....

What prompted the topic was the idea that so much of our discussion of dressing seems to be it's either a fetish or it's not.

When we talk about other of our bodily needs (I'll use food but there are others) by the time we own a computer we have enough to eat. But food remains something important to us. Examples abound. Fishing is about so much more than catching dinner. So is dining out, a dinner party, or often cooking. At an even more profound level is the experience of nursing for women, which is where the concept of food as love is the most clear. The scene with the apple pies in the movie Shane speaks volumes about the subtexts of food, especially for women. It's gone into in far more depth in the book.

Coping with an eating disorder and participating in a group to do this has revealed to me how incredibly complex an issue food and eating can be. Any attempt in a group of people living above the subsistence level to address eating disorders is doomed to failure unless it addresses all the baggage, both good and bad, attached to food, including the self hate felt by anorexics and bulemics. The idea of sexual anorexia or bulemia is something most people should be able to grasp as well. And in people who have been denied adequate food, either through problems like anorexia or imposed by either nature or others (famine, prison camp) a huge number of psychological issues appear when food is once more available.

I written often that if sex if a good meal then my dressing today feels like a relaxing cup of herbal tea on the porch. We wouldn't call a cup of tea eating, but it does meet a bunch of psychological needs relating to tea, and after all water is essential to life.

With that in mind, I was wondering, where do people feel sex is a part of non sexual activity. Obviously dinner with an attractive date is sexual in some way. Obviously intimacy and sex are often related. Sometimes to me just enjoyment of life, especially the physical parts of life, like chopping wood or hiking, can feel related to sex, perhaps in the way that watching a movie like Big Night, Julie/Julia, Babette's Feast, Do The Right Thing (remember how proud Sal is that so many neighborhood children have grown up on his pizza, or the disdain his son feels from his friends about who he is feeding in his restaurant), or Eat Pray Love is about nurturance (food) without being actually edible. And then there is the issue of sensuality. Womens clothing is just more sensual than mens, sometimes just making me feel more alive. But of course sex is incredibly sensual, so it's very easy to get the two confused.

Thoughts?

[Ralitsa]

what an incredibly difficult and complicated subject

So at some level there is the simple "survival" of either the individual or the species. But of course, the survival aspect has become inextricably linked to pleasure, satisfactions, comfort, etc. So those things which are critical to survival, are also very important to happiness. Where does the one stop and the other start? Why is it viewed as good or necessary to some point and bad or perverted beyond that point? Where is that point anyway?
I hope you don't want an answer, Absaroka. I think all you will get are even more questions

[Gillian]

The purpose of threads to my way of thinking is to gain a deeper insight to why, I, We, think the way that we do. The problem is that I can not separate myself from my endocrinic system. Hormones that flow through me help to determine who I am. How can I separate this from me, I can't and that sometimes is a problem. I have taken those little tests to determine if I have a male or female mind. The problem being that I can take the same test over and over again and get different results. Sometimes I am 65M-35F, and other times it goes the other way65F-35M, go figure that one out. These tests are subjective at best. My point is how can anyone know what your hormones are doing at any given time? I started out with it being a fetish thing, but that does not explain the shift to what it basically is now. What is the psychological need, and how much is influenced by hormones? In the book "Black like Me" the author tryed to understand what it was like to be a black man. He tryed, but how could he get that real mentality that would come from being born that way? What would I have been like if I was born female? I can never know, because hormones play into it to much. Would I have been obsessed with my figure? Would I have been the slut to get a boys attention, or acceptance? I sometimes wish that we could be given the opportunity to walk a mile in someone elses shoes, then we would know what it is really like. Like those movies where they switch bodies, but you would need a year to get the real feel of it. You would have to let the fun wear off. Once a human reaches puberity, everything changes, and the sex drive affects us the rest of our lives. I guess we just have to get used to it and accept it, for who we are. It is the understanding and accepting that so many of us trip over. I don't fit into the usual boxes that seem to be out there. People tell me to think out of the box. Problem is that when I do they get upset. Been happening all of my life, guess I better get used to it. No answers just some discussion!

[Absaroka]

What I found most interesting in Black Like Me was how the author eventually felt that transitioning back and forth was making him crazy. And that was with him having an internal locus of control, he could decide wether or not to transition. Imagine the crazy making power of it not being in one's power to control, which is what many transgendered people and some biracial people have to come to terms with.

The author of BLM developed a practice of visiting one place in one color and returning a few hours later as the other color, and comparing his experience. He was NEVER, EVER, read. I wonder if anyone has done this in a male female way and recorded their experiences.

[Gillian]

I had forgotten the part about going back to the same place twice, but in different mode. My SO and I have talked about how differently people will treat you by how you dress. By example I mean that she will go out casually dressed and then two or three days go into the same place well dressed. She says that she is treated much better the more nicely that she is dressed up. I to, see that this is true having done similar things also. For me, I say that a man in a suit commands better attention than jeans and a t-shirt. My SO says the same thing about when she is better dressed. Let's face it people are respecters of other persons. We all have our biases, and if some male clerk is a sucker for a skirt and nylons, guess who will get served first. My SO thinks that if you walk into a situation with a proper attitude and self esteem, it emminates from us and people will respond accordingly. I know that the sex card gets played on men to get their attention, but I don't know quite how it works the other way, but I know it works. It would make for an interesting book about how one person is treated whether they were dressed as a male, or female. At the same time I think that both a male and a female would have to crossdress, to get as full a picture as possible. It would make for a good read.

[DonnaT]

I was wondering, where do people feel sex is a part of non sexual activity.

If the goal of the activity is eventually sex, then I don't think it can be called a nonsexual activity. Dining, going to a movie, whatever.

Those are nonsexual activities only if the aim isn't sex. But if the aim is to end in sex, even if the goal isn't reached, they are sexual activities in someone's mind.

[Absaroka]

Sometimes sexual activity is also another activity.

I forgot about this but the classic example is rape. It is best understood as an act of violence. The sexual aspect of it, as any policeman or criminologist will tell you, is secondary to the violence, and the desired result of the attacker is fear in the victim.

[Davita]

The sexual undertones of anything a person does it whatever they make of them. You can be doing just about anything and something can trigger a sexual thought. People all have a few hardwired things including sexual desire and some built in triggers for it. Then you could be on the hunt specifically for some sex. etc etc.....

So like sex, we all have other things hardwired and they work the same way with triggers. BTW, being happy, satisfied, content, safe whatever that we deem good is a built in desired state for anyone. Some people just need it more than others and spend more time trying to achieve "it". Some folks plan more.. some react more.. some just take matters into their own hands and keep their IDs in the closet.

When we get to a certain point with anything we do and we feel we need help to gain back control, people will seek help consciously or subconsciously. We may participate in forums, we go to groups, we whine at friends, but we all begin to take the undertones of the situation and bring the to the top.

So where was I going with all this??? Oh yeah. I'm shallow. I like sex, but I am also very loyal to my better half.

[Anthony Simon]

I think this is a really good question. My CDing has a big sexual element, but I always feel it is about "other". It's perhaps that I'm being evasive in this, in that "other" is by definition not nailing down the thing. But then I'm a distinct believer in leaving some things a little diffuse.

First off, just because a thing has a strong sexual element (or starts off that way) doesn't make it at root sexual. Not unless you think a strong sexual urge is not capable of being made up of other things. I mean you can have lust, and you can have love. Most people, when they talk about CDing as fetish seem to imply that it's a form of lust - but I'm not sure tht fits me (and I'm also not sure it fits the people who talk of it that way, just a feeling, but still). It can reduce to that for me, but then it's just a dry, dessicated thing and why do it? I mean the sex could be like the vehicle for a lot of other stuff - and it's the other stuff that really matters.

For me there's like an ache for feminity in my life, and not one that I have much chance of fullfilling right now. So I do this stuff and it keeps me sane for the time being. I could also talk about the way it seems to bridge me over the rage I've got inside me, rather than fall into it. I don't know...

[Sorry I've been silent recently, but I managed to fall down the stairs and injure my knee, which has set me back a bit.]

[Gillian]

Anthony Simon says something interesting.
For me there's like an ache for feminity in my life, and not one that I have much chance of fullfilling right now. So I do this stuff and it keeps me sane for the time being. I could also talk about the way it seems to bridge me over the rage I've got inside me, rather than fall into it.
I understand the part about the ache for feminity, as I often get the same feeling. I have always wondered how much Hormones play into this situation. We know that women have a monthly cycle, but so do men. Is there a particular time within this cycle that one Hormone is raging more than at another time? Or is it just a release valve that needs to be opened every so often to stop things from blowing up? It is like a rollercoaster ride with its highs and lows. Fun sometimes, but not always.

[Absaroka]

What is the ache for feminimity? What aspects of feminimity?

I have characteristics that could be described as feminine that I express comfortably. Nurturing my children for example. It's pretty easy to be content with being an attentive father and not want to be their mother. Or an emotional side. My teenage daughters love to talk about how I'm the drama queen of the family.

Perhaps vulnerability, tenderness? My wife and I have our own way of relating to each other which mostly but doesn't always work. When she is in emotional pain it's easy for me to be supportive, I don't find that un masculine.

Is it just plain liking to be with women, talking with them like another woman rather than a man. That's probably one reason I like out lesbians, we can be friends with less of a sexual subtext.

Is it the whole pursued/pursuer, seduced/ seductress thing? Some other sexual way of relating?

Is it liking to take care of the home? I'm not working full time due to the economy, my wife is. So I clean. Sometimes I feel like a 50's housewife, and even in a dress I can't say that I care for it.

Is it simply not wanting to be stereotypically macho? I've been blessed with a lot of men in my life who are okay talking about feelings and stuff. I'm left with the idea that we simply have somewhat different feelings from a lot of women-see Anita's thread. Maybe you believe your feelings are more feminine, rather than merely "male in touch with their feelings"?

[Anthony Simon]

What is the ache for feminimity? What aspects of feminimity?

I have characteristics that could be described as feminine that I express comfortably. Nurturing my children for example. It's pretty easy to be content with being an attentive father and not want to be their mother. Or an emotional side. My teenage daughters love to talk about how I'm the drama queen of the family.

Perhaps vulnerability, tenderness? My wife and I have our own way of relating to each other which mostly but doesn't always work. When she is in emotional pain it's easy for me to be supportive, I don't find that un masculine.

For me (and it's a personal thing) that idea of being supportive when someone is in emotional pain is a key part (probably the centre of) femininity. Like (many) women seem to have an intuitive ability to feel someone else's pain - and to want to heal it. I think there's something about having a womb in there too - like the experience of having babies (or at least knowing about that experience) and the pain that comes with that. Somehow the two seem to coalesce into something about pain, and the knowledge of pain in other people, that I put close to (or at) the heart of femininity.

Not having a womb, I don't have that. But I kind of catch sight (or perhaps more) of bits and angles of it when I dress up - or in the various ways I am supportive (which work out as kind of androgynous much of the time) in real life.

[Absaroka]

Empathy is a two edged gift. My wife is very empathic. Often she can't deal with this and just shuts the whole process down altogether in order to avoid feeling someones else's pain. She is a very kind and loving person. The difference between us is I might listen to the phone message and then say I can't cope with your pain right now, and call you tomorrow. She can't deal with doing that so she'll disconnnect the phone altogether.

I'm also better at being assigned tasks. At a funeral I'm happy to speak, or give someone a ride to the service, or help carry the casket, but I'm not so good at listening at the wake. She can listen a lot better than I can when she chooses to, but might not want to do the other stuff.

In short I'm more oriented towards fixing something while she's more oriented towards listening. But both are a form of compassion.

We had a number of altercations when we were younger, I'd tell her something was bothering me and she'd listen and then I'd ask what did she think and she'd do the whole reflective thing back. And I'd get annoyed and say I know what I just said, what do YOU think? Likewise when she would talk about something I'd offer solutions or at least feedback, which wasn't what she wanted. Eventually we figured it out.
THis is a traditional male/female dichotomy, in our society at least.

[Gillian]

Zara, you asked a good question.
What is the ache for feminimity? What aspects of feminimity?

Well for me it is things like wanting to watch a good romantic movie, preferably comedy. Sitting around with my SO and/or our female friends and find out what is new in their lives. Feeling an emotional swell from within that makes me want to feel pretty. The clothes I wear would wear as a man are usually jeans and a t-shirt. When I feel I want to be pretty, wearing better clothes are important to me. By better clothes I mean either male or female clothes, nothing sloppy,or casual. Colors become very important, and there proper co-ordination. There are other things, but it can be hard to put ones finger on exactly what it is all of the time. I find that it runs in cycles, so that is why I felt that hormones had to play into it. My sex drive is very cyclic also. The femme feelings usually precede, or follow in the sex drive part of the cycle.

[Azurielle]

Quite honestly, I consider my persona in a relationship to be more akin to that of a sultry female than a man's, but once the lights go out I'm pretty sure I'm closer to an Enrique-Iglesias-type than any woman I've ever known.
Because of this I really do believe one's social gender and one's sexal gender is usually further apart than originally perceived, though I might be wrong.