Reading George Fox

Of Filibusters & Magical Thinking

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-10-17 Politics

After listening to Dahlia Lithwick on 2038 today, I had to write her a note. It’s hard to believe someone so smart and incisive can be so blind to political reality.

Dahlia,

I was just listening to you on the new 2038 podcast. Your support of the Democrats reinstating the judicial filibuster is simply magical thinking ignoring the current reality of the Republican Party. The Democrats simply cannot shame them into re-establishing norms.

They already tried to do it once. The Republicans got rid of Blue Slips during the Bush years; Democrats brought them back during Obama’s term; and the Republicans immediately dropped them after Trump was elected. The only thing the Blue Slips did was help McConnell keep spots empty for Trump to appoint more judges.

I have no doubt if the filibuster is brought back, the Republicans will get rid of it again when they control the White House and the Senate. Their behavior over the past two decades has not given any reason to believe otherwise.

The Democrats are stuck in a prisoner’s dilemma and continually compromising doesn’t work when the Republicans refuse to reciprocate. It’s tantamount to conceding defeat. The correct strategy for the current situation is “Tit for Tat”:

It is also a highly effective strategy in game theory for the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. The strategy was first introduced by Anatol Rapoport in Robert Axelrod’s two tournaments,[1] held around 1980. Notably, it was (on both occasions) both the simplest strategy and the most successful in direct competition. -Wikipedia

The Republicans are not going to change course until they face consequences for their actions. McConnell has consistently been the one to escalate norm violations. The reason Reid got rid of the judicial filibuster in the first place was the Republicans were blocking practically any nominee. McConnell was clear about his goals from the moment Obama was sworn in: To make him a one-term president.

There are real dangers to the Democrats escalating as well; it could lead to a death spiral where the Federal Government can only do anything when one party controls Congress and the Presidency. But not escalating makes it certain that the Republican Party will only get more extreme. Don’t you remember how hard Obama and the Democrats worked to get a single Republican vote for the ACA? No compromise would have gotten Collins or any other Republican Senator to join them.

If Ginsberg or Souter don’t make it to 2020 and the Democrats don’t hold the Senate, the median vote will be Thomas. Forget about rolling about civil rights: the Court will be rolling back the New Deal and creating a Neo-Lochner era.

You clearly want to hold on to the idea of the Court as an impartial institution, but that ship has sailed. It died when Merrick Garland was denied even a hearing.

Democrats and the left have to wake up to reality.

I saw this lovely plan after writing the initial note. Republicans don’t care about norms at all anymore—they are ramming through judges with only 19% of the committee actually in Washington!

Moral Monsters & Non-Hollywood Endings 🎥

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-10-13 Design and Art

Spoilers Ahead

Moral Monsters

After sleeping on my thoughts about A Star Is Born, I’m still struggling with my reaction. I truly enjoyed the film, but it also sits really uneasy with me, terrifyingly so. And I think that clench in my stomach stems from Rez’s actions at the end. I have struggled with my own suicidality and the dark thoughts that all I do is hurt the people I love. Those thoughts are disconnected from reality—even as they spiral in my head I know that they are fundamentally irrational. But that knowledge does nothing to lessen their power or shake my belief in them.

If, in my worst moments, someone close to a loved one told me that I was hurting them, that my loved one would never tell me, but they would be better off without me…I’m not sure what I would do. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t self harm, but I’d probably need to go to an inpatient psych ward to be safe. Watching Rez do that to Jack—a man who had just begun to face his trauma—shredded me. At that moment, Rez became a moral monster: he is so ruthlessly selfish that he’s willing to emotionally eviscerate a mentally fragile man. And it’s horrifying that he will remain in Ally’s life—content in the knowledge that his vile actions will push her to greater fame. What might he do to her in the future? She is just an object, a tool for his own advancement. For Ally to keep such a ogre in her life is terrifying. And the film disappears him after the final scene with Jack—my mind wandered to worse and worse scenarios.

The film uses this horror as an emotional gut punch, to ratchet up the tension and sadness for both Ally and the audience. It feels cheap; using addiction and trauma as a tool and not seriously engaging Jack’s experience of treatment. The film offers us hope that he can heal then makes a character irredeemably evil to engender a tragic ending.

Non-Hollywood Endings

The film had the opportunity to tell a much more complicated story, one without a villain, one that eschewed Hollywood myths. And it had a really easy template to do so: Lady Gaga’s own musical evolution. Unlike Ally, Lady Gaga made deliberate choices about her artistic path: her pop music is her voice, her vision. As far as I can tell, her persona is not simply a method to become famous1, it is also a fulfilling aesthetic choice. There was no Rez Gavron telling her what to do; there’s the Haus of Gaga that she put together.

Think about a movie where Ally followed this path; where she discovered her voice in the world of pop, both in the music and the artifice. If Rez was not a domineering asshole, but rather an artistic collaborator who believed in her vision. Now Jack must confront a much more complicated world: can he accept that his love’s voice is so different from his own, that her vision of art and truth conflicts with his? Would he be jealous of Ally’s work with this Rez?2 In the actual film, the only person she collaborates with is Jack and we don’t see her create any of her pop songs or acts. How much more difficult would Ally’s choice be if it were between music and art that she loves as much as she loves her husband. That would tear her apart in the final act and could lead to a more tragic, more honest, and less violent end.

One of Hollywood’s most cherished myths is “Love Always Finds A Way”. Even after Jack kills himself, his love is transmitted through the final song he wrote for Ally. But the truth is that sometimes love is not enough—two people can love each other with all their hearts and their relationship can still fall apart. There’s a version of this film where Jack’s and Ally’s lives and art drift apart, where his addictions and trauma rupture their marriage beyond repair. Even in the film we have, there is a big reason to fear for them before Rez’s moral bankruptcy: when Ally visits Jack in rehab, he says he’s doing the work all for her. And that is simply not sustainable in the long run—he has to face his trauma and choose to live for himself. This disconnect, this tragedy could be enough for them to part. Given the history of their relationship and marriage, Jack may not be able to heal within it. If Ally and Jack lost each other for both their healths, for both their lives, the film would have taken a much harder but more honest truth. Ally’s heart would still break3; she could still sing the same song at the end. But that ending would feel inevitable, stemming from both their journeys and characters—not from the happenstance of a monstrous producer signing her.

  1. Though it is partially that. ↩
  2. Importantly, Ally’s and Rez’s must be non-romantic, non-sexual. It should be a connection over music—that would be a true threat to Jack because he fell in love with Ally as an artist and their relationship begins with musical collaboration. ↩
  3. It would actually break more, knowing that their love was not enough, that they had to let each other go for both of their sakes. That despite their true and strong connection, other aspects of themselves made them not healthy for each other. That their relationship was for a time, that it was worthwhile and good, but now that time is over. ↩

“A Star Is Born” is Too Easy 🎥

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-10-12 Design and Art

Spoilers Ahead.

I really enjoyed A Star Is Born; the music is fabulous, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga kill it, and the ending crushed me.

But the main dilemma, Ally’s choice between a famous pop career or a smaller1 indie career, is too easy. There’s really not much to recommend the more famous path: Ally’s producer is a mercenary and disregards anything she wants, she doesn’t seem happier performing on pop stages, and it keeps her away from Jack, whom she dearly loves. Her troubles with Jack stem from his alcoholism and drug abuse, not any desire on her part to pursue the kind of independent career she does. I could easier she her being happier if she signed with whomever produced Jack. After all, Jack was the one who helped her get comfortable in the recording studio. If she had taken a more indie path, I could easily see him continuing to support her in recording sessions and otherwise.

Moreover, by the end. Jack seems to have come to terms with Ally’s career. He kills himself after Rez convinces him that he’s holding her back. In doing so, Rez moves himself beyond any sort of sympathy: to him Ally’s fame is a source of profit.2 He’d rather make her miserable than let her pursue the life she wants. There’s no doubt that if Ally ever learns what Rez said she’d be beyond furious. Given she punched out a cop at the beginning of the film, I could easily see her physically attacking him.

The film would be all the more powerful if Ally actually had a hard decision. If at the end, rather than Rez pushing Jack over the edge, she had made a choice to prioritize her pop career. If perhaps she had left Jack on her own accord and he made the decision on his own to take his life. In the actual film, his sacrifice isn’t a tragic action to enable Ally to realize her talent; it’s a horror that breaks her heart and ruins her dream.

  1. Which, considering the concerts she plays with Jack at the beginning of the film, would not be that small. ↩
  2. I have no doubt Rez would drop Ally in an instant if it were in his interests. He’s a classic abuser, separating her from the people who do love and care for her. ↩

Lively Porn vs. Deadly Meditation

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-10-08 Sexuality and Polyamory

Or I’d Rather Be ‘Dick Drunk’ Than Be Masturbated Like Clockwork

Content Warning: Explicit description of sex.

I picked up Emily Witt’s Future Sex after a friend reviewed it. I haven’t finished yet, but I couldn’t help but notice the discomforting comparison of the chapter on Kink.com (obviously very, very NSFW) and the one on Orgasmic Meditation. Perhaps contrary to our cultural expectations the porn shoot is much more connected, alive, and joyous than the “well-lit room” of a female-led San Franciscan blend of orgasms and transcendentalism.

In the chapter on Orgasmic Mediatation, Witt visits OneTouch, a program1 founded by Nicole Daedone that teaches a very particular form of partnered masturbation:

“So if her clitoris were a clock” (the room found this hilarious) “it would be in the one o’clock position. And you’re just going to stroke there, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.” (Kindle Location 733)2

This clitorial time keeping lasts for exactly 15 minutes—the stroker sets a alarm on their iPhone. To me, this sounds like the most deadly and boring sex imaginable.3 Daedone claims to want to free women from the male-centric concept of sex, but drains all the life out of the act in the process. Moreover, it ignores the wide range of female sexuality and physiology. Not every woman is going to find repetitive strokes pleasurable. Some woman like rough sex; some women like gentle touch all over their body; some women like to spin fantasies with their partners. And on and on. Yet Witt concludes:

The people at OneTaste were looking for a method to arrive at a more authentic and stable experience of sexual openness, one that came from immanent desire instead of an anxiety to please. (Loc. 914)

I can hardly find any human desire in such a rote practice. OneTaste has removed joy from sex. I shouldn’t kink shame, but Orgasmic Meditative sounds pretty distasteful to me.

In the chapter on Kink.com, Witt visits a Public Disgrace shoot. As one might expect, the lead performer, Penny Pax, is disgraced in a bar full of strangers.4 After a long day of intense shooting:

[Witt] asked if there were any moments if genuine pleasure. She [Pax] looked at me like I was crazy. “Yeah. Like the whole thing! The whole thing.” She apologized for not being more articulate and explained she was in a state of delirium. “We call it ‘dick drunk,'” she said. “I’m a little dick drunk right now because it was just very nice.” (Loc. 1123)

Pax seems to have had a far more “authentic and stable experience of sexual openness” than anyone at OneTaste. She was in her body and connecting with both her fellow performers and an audience she had never met while being filmed. There was spontaneity and joy, not treating her clit like a mechanical clock on a timer.

I’m sure Daedone would be horrified by a woman tossed around, touched by strangers, treated like a piece of meat.5 But I bet Pax enjoyed her orgasms way more than anyone at OneTaste.

  1. Or grift? They offer a coaching program that costs $13,000. (Loc. 754) ↩
  2. I’m not a big fan of ebooks, but I’m trying not to accumulate a library in the Berkshires that I’ll eventually have to haul home to the city. ↩
  3. Daedone claims it’s not sex, which is a very heteronormative viewpoint. As Dan Savage says: sex does not equal penetration. Someone is touching another person’s genitals to provide sexual pleasure—that’s clearly sex. ↩
  4. They sign up through the studio and the director, Princess Donna, maintains a strict standard of behavior, albeit a standard that our mainstream culture would probably not approve of. ↩
  5. To be more accurate, they pretended to treat her like a piece of meat on camera. Princess Donna made sure she was cared for, comfortable, and consenting at all times. ↩

Life Affirming Politics

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-09-08 Politics, Sexuality and Polyamory, Spirituality

This is a continuation of a response to @marmanold on Micro.blog.

While being pro choice, Democratic priorities would do a lot to reduce the number of abortions:

  • Better and ideally free access to healthcare, especially prenatal and postnatal. Whatever our options are on the status of fetuses, we can all agree that taking care of mother’s during pregnancy and their children after birth is life affirming.

  • A more equal distribution of wealth, free daycare, etc. A significant number of women who get abortions already have children and cite financial reasons about not being able to afford to raise more.

  • Regulation of industries and pollution controls. Environmental factors have clearly been shown to affect the health of children both pre and post birth.

  • One of the most effective methods of reducing abortions is comprehensive sex end and free widely available contraception. Pro-life groups almost always oppose these as well. Abstinence education only delays sexual activity by about 6 months, but when the teens do have sex, they are much more likely to not use contraception.

Here’s a really great post from a woman who was strongly pro-life in her teens and was disillusioned with the movement when she learned more in college. She argues pro-life organizations (not individuals) are more anti-sex and anti-woman than they pro fetuses and babies.

Initial Thoughts About “religious myths recycled as ersatz social science”

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-09-06 Politics

@ayjay wrote a strong piece challenging tensions within contemporary liberalism. I need to spend more time digesting it and the piece by John Gray that he links to. Here are some initial reactions though:

  • Gray claims that liberal elites have run the West for the past 30 years. Yet, from the 80s onwards the US has been on a rightward march from the economic liberalism of the New Deal through the Great Society. Conservative thinkers and Republicans seem to have been setting the terms of the debate.

  • The austerity in response to Great Recession had much more to do with conservative Austrian Economics than liberal Keynesian solutions. How much have the resulting economic shocks fueled the extreme left and right? Also, the Chicago School’s 90s shock therapy for Russia may have quite a bit to do with their illiberal turn.

  • I guess the upshot of the above is a question about the relationship between economic beliefs and social beliefs. Has the move back towards conservative economics and greater income inequality affected the place of liberalism within society? Are conservative social beliefs connected to the conservative economic approach? And, if so, how does that relationship affect the liberal response to the former?

  • I need to re-read Coates’ article, but as I remember it, the essence was that because so much of America’s wealth was built off of the violent exploitation and oppression of African Americans, reparations are the only potential way to make amends. And that reparations will force America to acknowledge the continuing legacy of white surpremacy, just as German reparations has helped their acceptance of responsibility for the Shoah.

  • Arguments about the most effective way to address injustice have a history of being used to deflect change. I think it can be easy to advocate calm and restraint when one is not personally suffering from the problem. Aggressive action may be necessary to bring the existing tensions to the surface. Where there is systematic oppression, sometimes the best thing for the privileged to do is just listen and follow.

Such Disrespect!

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-08-01 Design and Art

I wrote this mostly as a parody of certain men raging at women making minor geek culture mistakes. There is a slight bit of actual annoyance at Ebony attributing a cinematographer’s contribution to a director.1 More importantly the episode is an incisive discussion of Blindspotting.

Oh, oh, Ebony messed up big time today on Feminist Fequency Radio #37. She talks about film directors who know how to light brown skin. Talk about disrespecting cinematographers! Yes, some directors are involved with lighting, but even they collaborate with their cinematographers: the latter are the ones specifically trained in lighting and capturing light on film!

As a theatrical lighting designer, I’m sorta sensitive to this, as I’m the one doing the equivalent in live performance. And, as a aside, POC are such a pleasure to light as there’s so much more color to bring out than in pasty white people.

For those of you who haven’t seen it recently, check out Purple Rain again. The lighting throughout the film is so good. There’s one scene in the basement with acid yellow lighting making Prince’s father so much more threatening. And it would have turned a white person into a lemon.

  1. There is a possibility that this annoyance is gendered, but I’m pretty sure I’d be equally annoyed by this misattribition made by anyone, regardless of their position on the gender spectrum. ↩

Kevin Drum Bets Hard On Genetics

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-07-27 Miscellaneous

A few days back, Kevin Drum wrote a post about the future influence of genetic engineering on social policy. I’m going to leave aside the moral argument that everyone deserves a decent standard of living and focus on two of his assumptions.

  • How much does parental upbringing affect any of this? I’m going to put my money on “not much,” but it’s hardly worth making guesses anymore. In a decade or two we’ll know.
  • How much effect does the entire environment outside the womb have starting with the day a baby is delivered? I’m going to put my money on “some,” but that’s as far as I’ll go.

I strongly question his assertation that genetics and epigentics will be found to be overwhelming determinative of talent and skill.1 How will that square with studies that show children of wealthier and/or highly educated parents do better academically? Or that teachers grade girls’ math tests more harshly than boys’ when names are included, but the opposite when names are redacted?2 For a specific example3, Ta-Nehisi Coates attributes much of his success as a writer to his family having a ton of books around and his father’s philosophy that he should learn about Black and African history as a child. So it’s not simply wealth.

Also, while genes may somewhat affect effort and focus, there is truth to the saying “invention is 90% perspiration.” The Williams sisters were talented children, but their monomaniacal father’s emphasis on practice enhanced that talent. Bill Russell’s genes were probably not “worse” than LeBron James’s, but sports medicine, travel conditions, equipment4, quality of the competition, social mores, etc has vastly changed. Trying to project how Russell would perform today is really difficult, yet the genetic component is swapped by environmental factors.

Also, “talent” is most likely not measurable on a single axis. Many, if not all fields, depend on collaboration. Scientists work in large groups and it probably is hard to determine which skills are more important than others: the forward thinker may get first credit on the paper, but the quiet organizer may have been just as essential. And that doesn’t count paradigm shifts needing people who think outside the box while within paradigms/normal science, there must be people focused on advancing the current model. The performing arts is also utterly dependent on people bringing diverse crafts together: one can be the most brilliant film director in the world, but if one doesn’t have good designers, actors, etc, the films will suffer. And “good” means both talented and attracted to one’s style (a great blockbuster cinematographer would probably not mesh with Tarkovsky).

Human society is likely too complex for there to be a “best” genetic makeup. Will it even be possible to “max out” mental agility and organization and perseverance, etc at the same time? Even if it is possible, the influence of one’s family, peers, mentors will shape one’s own attitude towards one’s talents. Imagine if Donald Trump and Bill Gates both paid for “enhancing” their grandchildren. I have no doubt those children would develop differently even if they received the exact same “cocktail”. The incentives in a family without a moral compass, without curiosity, without emotional closeness are vastly different than a family who has donated a tremendous amount of money to diseases in the global south, who (I’m guessing) values the pursuit of knowledge, and who are surely more emotionally balanced than the Trump clan.5

Humans are tremendously social animals; it would be quite strange if the social environment did not continue to have similarly strong influence.

  1. Kevin himself is an advocate of the lead theory of crime. Given that lead is an environmental factor, it’s a bit confusing he downplays those here. ↩
  2. I really should find these studies and cite them. Sorry for being lazy; I’ll try to add some in a future update. ↩
  3. Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data. ↩
  4. The difference in something as simple seeming as shoes has had a massive effect. ↩
  5. No matter how callous Bill and Melinda may be, I have trouble imaging them being more instrumental about family relationships than Donald. In fact, in the Trump family, I might worry about having the next generation be too intelligent. They’d either react with horror and flee or be much better at backstabbing politics and displace the current members. Can you imagine the damage Donald Jr. could do to his father if he were smart? ↩

Dan Swings and Whiffs—Savage Lovecast #610

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-07-18 Miscellaneous

Dan may have not played the entire call and I’m personally biased, so it’s possible that I’m misinterpreting the details.

Dan has a truly terrible response to his final caller in episode 610. A woman asks about her boyfriend: he can fly off the handle at himself for days because of simple mistakes. While she describes him as genuinely kind to others, he also has significant self-hatred1: thinking that he is a worthless person and being uncomfortable when he is happy because he doesn’t believe he deserves it. Dan’s verdict is the boyfriend is a manipulative asshole who just needs to grow the fuck up.

It’s far more likely that this man suffers from severe mental illness and desperately needs treatment. For one, it sounds like the behavior precedes the relationship, that he’s tortured himself while single as well. The caller never mentions him getting angry at her or that his explosions have anything to do with her behavior (or reality in general). He doesn’t blow up when she goes out with friends, when she picks up the wrong food, when she’s not paying attention to him. Rather, he’s triggered by his own silly mistakes. While his behavior clearly affects her, it hardly seems like his motivation is to manipulate her. After all, what behavior is he trying to change?2

And I’ve been that guy. I can get extremely angry with myself for completely irrational reasons. When it gets really bad, I torment myself with the conviction that all I’ve ever done is hurt people, up to and including a friend that I helped avoid deportation. On some level, I even know the thoughts are disconnected from reality, but my mind only doubles down, insisting any evidence that I’ve helped people is a lie. These days, I mostly hide that behavior, going to my bedroom and convulsing until my body is exhausted, but in the past, I have sought comfort from partners.3 Not because I wanted to control their behavior, but because I was in psychological and physical pain.4 It certainly wasn’t fun for them and many eventually broke up with me, but that’s because I wasn’t in good working order, not because I was a total asshole.5

Even his kind behavior may be a sign that he is ill: if he’s such a terrible person, he must go above and beyond in helping others to make up for his sins. In past relationships, I even used my love of my partner as a distraction from my depressive thoughts. While this did have negative effects on the relationships6, it also meant my partner was always on my mind and I would pick up things they liked, plan activities, etc. Not because I wanted to gaslight them, but because I really did love them and wanted to do nice things for them.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, unlike Dan, I think the caller should definitely break up with her boyfriend. He needs serious treatment and needs to choose it for himself, not to save the relationship. At the moment, he is resistant to both therapy and medication. If anything, losing the relationship may be the motivation for him to start doing something.

If she does stay with him and he does go into treatment for himself, she will have to accept it will be a long process and that there will be times where she will have to take the role of caretaker.7 It could be something as simple as dealing with dinner because his self-torture has exhausted him or even just sitting with him. Which may sound easy, but watching someone you love experience pain and not being able to help really, really sucks. As with any serious illness, the symptoms persist even as the underlying disease is treated. In a sense, it is not very different than dating someone with a serious disability, perhaps someone who finds it physically difficult to feed themselves. They are not manipulating their partner into being a caretaker at times: they have a physical limitation.

That said, it would be a big commitment at six months and she has no responsibility to make it. Her life will be a lot easier if she doesn’t date him. Even in the best case scenario, it will take a while for him to get a handle on his illness and things begin to get easier. Most likely, it won’t be a straight line as well: he could get worse before he starts getting better8 and there will be relapses. Some relapses could be worse too; he may need inpatient treatment at some point. A person who is deeply convinced that they are worthless, has trouble being happy, can’t control self-anger, and might be expecting suicide9 has a lot of healing to do.

Describing the boyfriend as someone who just needs to grow up contributes to the stigma around mental illness. Dan might as well be saying that a person with asthma should just learn to run a marathon. In both cases there are real and serious health issues. I’d bet dollars to donuts that if it were “easy” for the boyfriend to stop hating and torturing himself he would have done it years ago.10 By downplaying the boyfriend’s symptoms to basic insecurity and low self-estimate, doubting that those emotions are real, and suggesting the boyfriend is just playing a game to get attention, Dan displays a profound lack of compassion and his bias that severe emotional outbursts are always a sign of control and abuse rather than a sign that the person is ill, hurting, and damaged.11

  1. She calls it low self-esteem, but, given his behavior, it is clearly a more serious emotional problem.↩
  2. While he’s certainly eliciting comfort and attention, anyone in genuine pain does that. A person with epilepsy isn’t manipulating their partner during an attack.↩
  3. Actually these days I’m a patient at a residential psychiatric hospital and am getting better at going to nursing for help heading off this pattern off as it starts. Hiding the emotional self-harm to avoid “manipulaton” was a sign that my health was getting worse, not that I was “growing up”.↩
  4. Depression and other mental illnesses can cause psychosomatic pain. While it may not have a “real” physical cause, it still hurts like hell.↩
  5. I’m basing this “not a total asshole” judgment on most of my partners and our mutual friends not hating me after the breakups.↩
  6. I had no space to hold their emotions.↩
  7. And she would probably need individual therapy herself to help manage her emotional burden from the relationship.↩
  8. During one long-term relationship, I finally started getting help—and the bottom completely fell out. One night I was stuck on the floor, bawling for reasons I couldn’t understand. My then-partner actually left for the evening. That was the right decision for her and I didn’t resent it at the time (or now). After all, all she really could have done was to just sit with me (I literally couldn’t stand up). And I use “literally” in the correct sense: if she had tried to help me up, she would have probably need to deadlift my body.↩
  9. While he does suggest he might hurt someone else if he snaps, I doubt it. Given that the caller doesn’t mention him directing his anger at others, he’d probably go after the person he hates most—himself.↩
  10. David Foster Wallace describes severe depression thus in Infinite Jest:

    It [Psychotic Depression] is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self ’s most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any / all of the alternatives we associate with human agency—sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying—are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.

    So, yeah, not something one can simply grow out of.↩

  11. Though I don’t believe it’s the case here, the experience of the relationship and the prescription of getting the hell out may be the same in both cases. However, there is still an important difference between an abuser and a mentally ill person. In the first, the abuse is a way to control the partner; in the second, the lashing out is a very unhealthy coping mechanism. There’s more hope for change with someone who is ill because they aren’t enjoying the experience either.↩

Response to San Hughes on Kink—Savage Lovecast #608

By Bruce Steinberg 2018-07-05 Design and Art, Sexuality and Polyamory

This post is safe for all but the most conservative workplaces. The most explicit aspects are naming a certain fetish and a specific performance art piece.1 There are no visuals. The only link is to the podcast page.

I’m to lazy to search JSTOR for Sam’s research, but some of what he shares in the podcast doesn’t match up with my experience. Towards the beginning he suggests that people often eroticize the opposite of what causes them stress: the classic CEO goes to the dominatrix. One potential odditiy is that Hughes also talks about kink stages starting in childhood (well before anyone is a CEO). But on a personal level, his explanation doesn’t make much sense. One thing I love about being a dom is setting up scenes and telling degrading2 stories. Take the intercourse, degradation, and personal participation out and that basically describes my career as a lighting designer/theater-maker.3 Indeed going back to my childhood, a lot of my play with friends was running around outside, making up stories, and telling them their roles.

Another through line from the rest of my life is the nature of my sadism: I like creating predicaments where there is no “right” answer. If my partner messes up, they are punished (which, for the right person, is pleasurable); if they don’t, they get some form of reward or relief (time to enjoy the delicious endorphins from the punishment).4 When I told my oldest friend (we met at 4) that I enjoyed sadism, his response was along the lines of: “No duh.” I have been teasing those I care about for just about forever. One of my favorite activities with this friend is “ruining” movies by nitpicking them to death and twisting his responses: sheer torture. Again, when I realized I was kinky, I basically sexualized this behavior.

This is not to say no part of my sexuality is an escape from stress or a pleasurable/safe way to work through issues, but there is clearly much more going on. As Dan says, half the people who write in about spanking ascribe it to being spanked as a child and the other half, to not being spanked as a child.

Academic research into kinks is needed, but it doesn’t seem to ready to make any definitive statements. There may be no definitive statements to make: the complexity of genes, epigenetics, childhood environment, and our powerful sex drive5 may be irreducible on some level.6 There may be a multitude of paths to the same kinks.7

  1. Googling either is very NSFW though. ↩
  2. With my partners enjoying the thoughts of being degraded. ↩
  3. While not all shows are quite as explicit as a BDSM scene, I have worked on one show about Feederism and another with repetitions of wrestling/bear eating/having sex/amnesia. A third included a reenactment of Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll, 1975 (Note: Photos of this piece are definitely NSFW). So my work isn’t always vanilla either. ↩
  4. So, in reality, there are no wrong answers. ↩
  5. This is complete speculation, but I wonder if asexuality is also an expression of the human sex drive. That is not to say that asexual people aren’t real or do experience sexual attraction, but rather the same aspects of brain biology that manifests as sexual desire in sexual folk manifests as absence of sexual desire in asexual folk. Sorta like the role that the unconscious plays in inspiration plays for both the “softest” artists and the “hardest” scientists. “Epiphanies in the shower” are essential for both. On the other hand, I could be completely out of my gourd here. Love to hear thoughts from Aces. ↩
  6. Well, until we have a much better understanding of how the brain physically works. ↩
  7. Not that social science and psychology won’t have a lot to say, but that they will only be able to elucidate trends and tendencies, not complete explanations. ↩