Nudes

Frisbee is away on business until evening tomorrow, and I'm on Spring Break. Which means in addition to getting my car washed, having some Panang Curry, and getting a mani/pedi today, I also took numerous nude photos of myself to send him once he's done with all his meetings and such today.

Which, as is standard for me, brought me to thinking about the female vs. male body and how they're viewed. (I'm generally unable to properly enjoy things until I've thought over all the particularities, which is both a pro and a con of my existence. Pro in that I get to bother all of you with my mind wanderings, con because I can rarely live in the moment and just enjoy stuff.)

I'm also going to bring Tumblr into the mix, because I attribute that website entirely for my current ability to objectify the male figure.

Which is not to say that before Tumblr I didn't find men attractive. Tumblr helped me find men attractive in the way I feel majority society is conditioned to find women attractive. Which is to say, in a completely all-encompassing, yet completely unavailable way. You're supposed to want it, but never actually get it, which is an incredibly cruel tease. But when you take out the violence that occurs with the mindset "I'm going to get it whether you want me to or not," visual objectification can be incredibly fucking hot. To clarify, I'm not talking about creeper pics, or cat-calling, or any of that nonsense. I'm just talking about good old visual appreciation of another human being.

I've always had a penchant for imaging what it would be like to have sex with random people. Sometimes I even do actually have sex with said people, but my imaginative sex life continues to outperform my reality-based sex life in spades.

Traveling in what some would call "unconventional" sexual circles, I find even there that female nudity and sexuality is placed on a higher pedestal than male. Visual objectification of the female form is pretty prolific. It's used to advertise literally everything. It's never the product you're buying so much as the idea that a woman will find you even slightly more attractive. I had a conversation about this once with bestie. How the male figure isn't conventionally considered attractive, but male arousal is definitely the paradigm by which everything is evaluated. We were talking specifically about gay porn at the time; how when there's a boner, there's always a visual indicator of arousal. And then of course the incredibly clear visual of male orgasm.

Whereas lesbian porn is more widely acceptable because it's the sort of the straight man jackpot - the "unattainable" female nakedness/arousal happening times two and oriented specifically for their pleasure. Gay porn maintains a subset popularity because of it's "authenticity," which is also sexy.

Final verdict? Everyone is incredibly sexy and I need to stop thinking so much about stuff.

In your face

In the course of Frisbee and I's relationship, he's gotten to experience the delightful individual that is me when tipsy and around a group of straight people. The nice way to describe that version of myself is "squirrely." The less polite way is more along the lines of, "antagonistic and horny." 

It's a peculiarity that has to do with representation. Back in the day, Now-hubby and I also got into a discussion about this particular character trait of mine. I love Frisbee and Now-hubby, but they've got a completely different history when it comes to interacting with straight people. 

By which I mean I'm in a relationship with two hetero shit lords. And it's difficult to explain to them how excruciatingly painful it can be to be the only queer/kinky/poly representative in a room full of people who aren't. How exhausting it is to spend an entire evening just trying to evaluate if you can trust this group of people enough to be honest with them about your lifestyle. As a particular example, a few months ago I basically forced Frisbee into the backseat of the car to suck him off after enduring hours of other people milling around saying things like, "But what did he really mean when he said that?" and "Well, I like her but I don't know if she likes me back."

I reach a tolerance limit when placed in situations where I'm outnumbered, and I tend to deal with the agitation by going to an extreme in the direction I'm more comfortable with. If I've just spent hours surrounded by conversation concerned with the intricacies of monogamous courtship, I'm much more inclined to give a backseat blowjob than I would be otherwise. Just for the irreproachable reason that such activity would be defined as "freaky" by the majority of the people I've just escaped from.

I have my own general guidelines as far as how much to disclose about alternative lifestyles when out among the "normals." For those of you still on Now-hubby's bygone page of, "well, I'm a generally accepting, straight cis-guy, so that means all straight cis-guys are just as accepting as I am," I'm here to tell you the majority of daily interactions tend toward the painfully straight. As a representative of a minority sexual culture, there's constant awareness of the battle between underrepresentation and tokenization. A recent example:

I went out last week with a group of people I play Winter League frisbee with. We hung out for about an hour; pizza and beer/general conversation. There were around ten of us, which works out perfectly if you follow the old 1 in 10 legend. Note: I'm not "out" to anybody in this particular League; it hasn't been relevant yet. I bring up this specific example not because I think this group would be judgmental or horrible if I were to come out to them. I bring it up purely as an example of how overwhelming majority monogamous culture can be when you stop to be aware of it.

In an hour, the following:

• Every song that played at the bar was based on a monogamous love structure.

• All ads on TV focused on women making themselves attractive for men, men making themselves attractive for women, or either sex tolerating but not respecting the other.

• That one couple at the bar openly making out with each other. (Not part of our group, but just atmospheric acknowledgement of acceptability.)

• One woman in our group mentioning her engagement to her boyfriend five separate times. When choosing seats around the table, asked if she could sit next to the "man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with."

• At least 20 minutes of conversation focused solely on, "why doesn't he want to commit?" "The sex is good but I don't know if we have a relationship."

Meanwhile me: