"Give Yourself Permission Not To Have Sex"

 Source material for this entry. Some of it. The rest of it is INTENSELY personal. 

My Hollywood Squares response to this headline was I'm 24 years married, I get permission not to have sex every night.

My real answer demanded a blog.

"Celibacy is having a moment", we're told, and yes, it is. A long moment. It started a few years ago with "incels", or involuntary celibates, a group of men who blame their lack of sexual activity on women. The reality, of course, is that there is nothing involuntary about the celibacy of incels: their attitudes make them sexless by popular demand.

Incels believe that women are nothing but receptacles. This mindset differs only in degree, not in kind, from that of most other men when it comes to women. Does that sound harsh? My usual question along these lines: after how many dates do you expect sex? If you answer with a number (and only three men I've asked didn't, out of well over a hundred), then you believe women are objects you put kindness into and sex spills out.

Oh, men don't like to hear that. I'm mocked, insulted (the usual "cuck", "beta",  and "white knight") and, as if I'm a child, told that the purpose of a date IS a relationship. Yeah, okay, fine, but why does sex have to be part of a relationship? I have non-sexual relationships I cherish from the many people I call friends. At this point I'm usually insulted some more and the conversation ends abruptly. 

Those insults, by the way? They're meant to wound, and they don't even touch me. That's relatively new in my life, the ability to laugh off casual hate directed at me from a distance. I couldn't always do that. 

"Cuck" is of course short for "cuckold", a man who inverts several social norms at once by "letting" his wife have sex with other men; originally the other men were Black, but that requirement has dropped. In fact these days the word "cuck" is used identically to all those 80s gay slurs I also heard pretty much every day. It no longer means pimping your wife out, but something closer to "I wouldn't be surprised if that pitiful excuse for a man can't satisfy a woman".

I'll only repeat and repeat and repeat what Heinlein said: sexual intercourse vests no property rights. There are many perfectly valid reasons for options beyond monogamy and so long as everyone agrees to the deal -- and periodically revisits the deal to see what has changed -- quite frankly I don't know why people care so damn much. Doesn't affect you.

Isn't it interesting how to about half the population, "masculinity" is both something immutable and forever fixed AND something you're hated for if you don't perform it the "right" way? It's a mystery kinda like how sex is an unstoppable biological urge (whatever) for men and women are supposed to "keep their legs together" (whatever times a million).

We all know "beta", the unfinished, buggy, unfit-for-consumption model of a man who treats women as equals (the horror). Not only is the whole "alpha/beta" idea scientifically vacuous and toxic as fuck in men, it doesn't even apply to the wolves men stole the framework from. I hear "beta" as a compliment. Every time.

"White knight" is just as ludicrous as the other two. It has a long and noble literary history and originally meant a hero; in today's world, outside business, it's a man who engages in various behaviours to try and help or impress women without their consent. The concept ties in with "virtue signalling", the implication being it's all an act.

So much to unpack here because this is all wrong.

I do call out misogyny whenever I see it. Not to impress women: in fact I don't address the victim(s) of the misogyny unless she/they address me first. Not exactly to "help" women either...more like to help MEN. The immediate object of my scorn is probably beyond saving, but I do want men to see there is another way to treat women besides the way they've been taught to. 

I don't do "acts". 

There are certain reflexive responses to what they call "white knighting". The most common is for the sexist pig to ask me if my behaviour/words have "ever gotten me laid". To which I cheerily respond "nope, that's not what they're for". The script diverges here pretty much right down the middle: half call me a liar and flatly refuse to consider that a man would do anything without a sexual motive. The other half lapse into a spicy verbal stew heavily flavoured with "cuck" and "beta" and some swipes at my sexuality because clearly a guy who doesn't think a woman is a bedpost notch MUST be flaming.

Not flaming. Not even smoldering. I am at most "heteroflexible" -- and about as flexible there as I am physically, which is to say...not very. 

Does defending women against sexism need their consent? I've yet to hear a woman say I should have asked for it. I usually get thanked, politely, and sometimes with a species of desperate relief that breaks my heart: just how many assholes ARE there out there, anyway?  Is it an act? If it ever was, I long ago forgot how to play out of character. Like, in my teens. My response to a woman thanking me: this is baseline behaviour, please don't thank me for doing the least that needed doing. 

________

The linked article above is written by a devout Catholic. I was baptized into that faith twice and have rejected pretty much all of it. But there is wisdom here. Plenty of it.

Once you get past the through-the-looking-glass definitions the church uses, anyway. In the Catholic church, "celibacy" isn't abstinence, it's being single (since no singles are supposed to ever have sex). Actual celibacy is called "continence", as if sex is piss that leaks out of you if your muscles are weak. That really does seem like how every religion (as opposed to spirituality) treats physical love. Like piss.

But then, that's for good reason. Or at least I think it is, and I think that because among the people that regard sex askance are the ancient Greeks. They had nothing against it in and of itself, but they recognized it as incomplete. And so it is, again to me.

Sex without love is...nothing. I'd rather take a VOW of celibacy than ever have sex without love in it. Interestingly, the author says "Perhaps the greatest gift celibacy can foster is the ability to love people without wanting anything from them" and goes on to suggest sexual love wants "everything".

Mick Jagger said "you can't always get what you want...but if you try sometime you'll find you get what you need". I'm going to get to this in just a moment. 

I've had sex without love in it. I've had sex I didn't think love was in, only to find out later it really, really was.  Both kinds of sex did nothing but hurt myself and my partners in the end. There are in fact people who pour love into their sex on short notice. Just because I can't do that doesn't mean it can't be done. 

I feel like a lot of women have had sex without love in it and regret it just as much or more than I do. "Why have sex if the sex is usually bad?" The author praises this but laments it's for the wrong reason: disgust at digital dating culture" rather than "physical discipline". But the thing is? Regardless of why you're celibate -- if you place sex in its proper place in your life -- the LONGER you're celibate, the more discipline you'll build.

Discipline does not, in any way, displace desire. Whenever my desire spikes, I hike my discipline unless I have permission to share the desire. 

I have been celibate at various points in my life. Once for five years. Can I confess something? All things being equal, I'd rather not be. But whether I am celibate or not at any given point, one of those thorny things I have to explain to people once they get close enough (and it can take years for them to fully grasp): the difference between desires and expectations.

I have more desire than I know what to do with. Not to jump people, never to jump people. To get to know them, as deeply as they'll allow. To know their dreams and their demons, their hearts and minds and souls -- in that order -- and then, if we're on the same page, PERHAPS their bodies. 

Celibacy, after all, is not asexuality. A celibate person may well want sex. But she can, ideally, recognize that desire, comprehend it and send it on its way. There is much one can learn by feeling a desire without rushing to satisfy it.

Indeed there is. You can examine your desire from all angles, play with it (privately), really feel it, and then...let it go. Yeah, some of them are a bit harder to let go than others. I can't be called disciplined in much of my life -- I'm far too easily distracted by new information and new emotion -- but here I am a drill sergeant.  

Sex is just one form of intimacy. It is, admittedly, a doozy: where other kinds could be called "into me see", a physical expression of love is literally "into me be". It's a gift I don't deserve unless a woman says I do. (NOTE AND NOTE WELL:  UNLESS, not UNTIL: the latter definitely implies I'm waiting for those panties to come down, which I am most emphatically not).

Pull it back way before sex and call it a kiss, now.

There are an even dozen people I would just love to kiss, and the only way ANYBODY on that list will find out a single name is to ask me if theirs is there.  Anybody off list will never know even that much. (And then, having been told that yes, dear friend, your kiss is on my list, they won't notice any difference in treatment from me. I mirror what's freely given me, nothing more, nothing less.  Further to that: none of these kisses are even remotely likely to happen, and will never happen without explicit and enthusiastic consent on the other end. It wouldn't come up at all unless I felt very clearly that it could be returned. It's...kind of an requirement to even activate the switch that lights the light at the top of the streetpole between my legs.

(It's a model world down there.) 

People have wildly speculated on every relationship I've ever had in my life. They've all been wrong in multiple ways, by design.  The same man who said sexual intercourse doesn't vest property rights also said the thing to do with a nosey question is to fail to hear it. 

 I don't get much of this anymore since people have made up their minds about me. Thankfully most have recognized, at least partly, that I really do have an oversized heart and devote myself as much as possible to growing the hearts of others...and that this does no harm because I seek out the same sort of person.

I have had three women promise me the next life. They'll each get it: once we leave this realm of relativity, all times will be one and we can be everywhere all at once. I know this ain't scientific: put down the damn slide rule, okay? This is soul talk science will never touch. I don't think it can: anything that can't be sensed or measured, as far as our hyperrationalist world is concerned, doesn't exist. And if it's heard mewling away in the dark just beyond physical perception, it must be stepped on and squashed before it breeds.

One other thing caught me in that article:

Celibacy transforms other people from potential lovers to potential friends — friendship being the form of love that asks for nothing except that its beloved exist. 

But every lover I have ever had was a friend first and always. No idea why she would treat these as mutually exclusive. Then again, only opposites are mutually exclusive in my world.

Love to all of you. Whether it's physical or not.