NP removes woman's IUD without her consent

What the FUCKING FUCK.

Oh my god, I would beat the everlasting shit out of anyone who tried that on me.

I, Object! or: Why it's okay to use sexy people in advertising

Every once in a while, one of the larger feminist blogs I read will have a "post pictures of hot guys!" post, and many women proceed to drool over all the hot guys in the post. However, inevitably someone will say, "Hey, you guys are using a double standard! You go on about objectifying women, but you're objectifying these men right now!" Sometimes this person is an MRA troll, but other times they're a truly concerned feminist. Hand-wringing and soul-searching commences as all the well-meaning feminists on the site wonder if they're being bad feminists for admiring some well-sculpted muscles.

I think the problem is that most feminists have, in their concern over the widespread sexism that advertising and other media perpetrates, failed to realize one crucial thing: it's not the objectification of women that's the problem, it's the objectification of only (or mostly) women that's the problem.

The very nature of photography, especially advertisements, leads to the inevitable objectification of the subject being photographed. When I take a picture of someone, it's impossible for that picture to portray the entirety of that person's complex, multi-layered, infinitely beautiful existence. It can only show how that person looked for one moment in time - it reduces that person to only their image; it inherently objectifies them.

Though objectification is inevitable, it's not always bad.* This may stem from my kinkiness, but I actually like being objectified sometimes. (Indeed, one of my fantasies is to literally be reduced to a piece of furniture (or, more specifically a sushi platter).) I'm actually flattered when someone checks me out at a party or in a bar or whatever - it reaffirms my belief that I'm a reasonably attractive person. Obviously, there are lines that, once crossed, I'm one unhappy lady. If someone starts leering instead of just looking, or making grody comments at me, that's not cool. But there's no harm in just a look once in a while - and god knows I do it often enough to men and women alike.

Now, the problem in advertising isn't that that people are objectified (and paid well for it), but that women are disproportionally objectified. The problem is that when people say "sex sells," they really mean "women's bodies sell" because that's the default image used to convey "sexiness." Having sex=women's bodies is, obviously, problematic because it ingrains the idea in people's minds that women's bodies are primarily there for sexual gratification.

The solution to this isn't to ban nudity in advertising or anything like that; the solution is to have sexy men appear in advertising just as much as sexy women do. That way "sexiness" becomes gender-neutral in the public psyche - and, what's more, it would acknowledge that women like to see pictures of semi-naked men. It'd also acknowledge the existence of gay men, and possibly even make the stereotypical heterosexual man a little less homophobic when he comes to the realization he can look at the picture of a hot man without turning gay. Obviously, there's still some advertising that's unexcusibly sexist, but I think we shouldn't immediately scream "sexism!" every time a hot woman appears in a commercial. Instead, we should demand an equally hot guy to appear in the next one.

*Unless someone is being objectified against their will, e.g. someone is staring at their butt/chest/crotch/whatever and making them uncomfortable. That quickly falls into the realm of harrassment and is definitely Not Cool.

Anal

Master has decided that I'm to undergo anal training. Currently, though I enjoy anal play a lot, I can only take one finger - maybe two. We're going to slowly work my way up until I can actually take in his cock. (Off-topic: lol dickbutt)

Training, of course, involves practice, which I have to do on my own. So I got a bit o' lube and tried it myself for the first time the other day. It was... interesting. I didn't know the inside of my butt was so soft - like a smaller, less-lubricated vagina, kind of.

Then, last night we got to play for the first time. I think it's because we're "out of practice," but I was very sensitive. I couldn't take as much of a beating as I wanted. :( Stupid butt! Anyway, Master played with my bum more, and it felt really nice. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. I still can only take one finger, but it's getting easier for Master to put it in, and I can handle it for a longer period of time. I wonder how long it'll take for me to progress to two, three, and so on...? This is the first really long-term "project" we've undertaken, so I'm curious to see how it plays out.

On roleplaying and owning cats

Master and I finally played again last night; he'd asked me to choose some old clothes that I didn't want to keep, and he would then rip them off me (after they'd been primed with a few well-placed snips) during a rape scene.

It's funny - yes, part of my love for roleplaying of that sort comes from the visceral thrill that rape invokes (oh, how I do love exploring the darker aspects of human psychology and society), but a good part of it is simply my love for acting. It's fun to pretend to be someone else; it's a mental exercise, a game. So when he holds the knife to my throat, even while I'm thinking, "Ohmygod is he gonna kill me?" I'm also thinking, "What could I do to make this more dramatic (that won't get one of us hurt)?" It's an interesting dualism; neither thought process detracts from the other. Yay cognitive dissonance?

Part that made me lol but not really: At one point I accidentally slipped out a, "Yes!" And Master heard it, and commented on it. ("Oh, you like it, huh?") I was like, Crap! I'm supposed to not like it! Uhh... fuck, I'll just run with it! Afterwards, Master commented, "I wasn't sure if your character liked it at the end or not."

"I wasn't sure either." Heheh.

Another tidbit of post-scene conversation: Master said to me, "You know, you don't have to be afraid to say I'm yours."

"Eh? How do you mean?"

"I mean sometimes I notice you seem... reluctant to say that I'm yours. You don't need to be."

I nodded; I knew what he meant. Up to that point, I'd made a conscious point of subverting any tendencies I had to claim some sort of ownership over him. I didn't want to make him feel like I wasn't actually submitting to him - something that had been a point of issue earlier in our relationship. When I explained this all to him, Master said, "Well, you may own a cat, but the cat also owns you."

~*~

I know the sterotype of cats is that they're independent to a fault, but that's not at all true. My ten-year-old cat is a farm cat at heart. She was born under a porch, and long ago we gave up on trying to keep her from adventuring outdoors. Yes, she's independent, but she's also formed an intensely strong relationship with me. My father recently told me that the day I left for school, she began to wander the hallways and cry incessantly. She sleeps next to me every night when I'm home. Though she doesn't hesitate to bite me when I cross some arbitrary boundary of hers, she never bites hard enough to actually harm me; just enough to get her point across.

I like to imagine that her relationship towards me is similar to mine and Master's. I love Master with everything that I am; I feel more keenly for him when he's gone, and when we're near I like to go "exploring," though I always return; Master punishes me when I'm out of line - and, conversely, I can rebuke him when he violates my personal set of rules - but that rarely comes up because our needs and wants are closely aligned most of the time; Master tends to dote on me; I'm so eager to please him that I'm sure it's at times exhasperating. :)

I'm sure many people would be perturbed that I just compared the most loving, committed relationship I've ever been in with my cat. But I can think of a lot worse things for my love life to be like.

crapcrapcrap!

Master's assignment for me before we're back on campus is to go shopping with a friend for a garter belt.

...Where the hell am I gonna find one of those (that doesn't cost a bajillion dollars)?!

*flails*

The Talk

When we get back on campus, Master and I are going to have The Talk. Not that Talk (I already know babies come from Raptor Jesus), but the Talk about where we want our relationship to go in the next few years.

We both want to stay together after he graduates this year, and we both would like for me to move to his city after I graduate next year - we've already determined that part. What we still need to work out is the logistics of how we'll get to that point. What will be the terms of our relationship while he's out of the country? While I'm still in school? That kind of thing.

We're also going to talk about our fears and uncertainties and how we're going to deal with them. I, for one, am worried by my past experiences with people who graduate, as we seem to inevitably lose contact with each other and just... drift apart. I'm terrified of that happening between me and Master. Obviously I shouldn't put too much weight on past experiences because those relationships weren't anything like what Master and I have. They were "just friends," as it were, while Master is infinitely more than that, making our bond that much stronger.

Still, I worry. I do that.

Thing is, I know I can live without Master. I'm not dependent on him for my survival. But it's getting harder and harder for me to imagine what a life without him would be like, and what I do imagine I don't particularly like.

Wah. :[

Master and I have gone to our respective homes for the holidays. While I was able to spend a good week with him in his hometown, it's very difficult to have good sex in a three-bedroom house with five to six other people in it. :/

While Master and I were hanging out in his family's pub, House, M.D. was playing on one of the TVs. It was an older episode that I'd somehow missed (I'm a rather rabid fan >.>) in which the patient of the day was a sub/bottom who also had a fetish for breath play* and was in a rather strict 24/7 relationship with a Domme. I didn't quite catch if she was a professional or not (the volume was too low to hear in the bar and the clost captioning was shit), but it seemed like a genuine loving relationship - not just a business arrangement.

Of course, there were good and bad things in this portrayal in the show. On the one hand, Chase was/had been a part of the scene, so he was sympathetic to the patient and his Domme; he guessed the nature of their relationship right away, but didn't want to "out" them and stayed silent (whether he should have as a doctor is another thing), and he stood up for them when Cuddy barred the Domme from the hospital. And the smile on his face when he watched the two reunite was priceless!

That was outweighed by the general disgust of the rest of the cast, though - mostly Foreman and the clinic's laywer, as well as Cuddy. And the patient's family, of course - but they were quite obviously painted as the "villains" in the episode: people so intolerant, so insensitive towards their son that they were almost willing to sit back and let him die. House took them to task quite thoroughly for that; and for his part, House cracked his off-color jokes about leather and so on, but for the most part didn't give a damn about what the patient did in the sack - very House of him, really.

As for the portrayal of the Domme and sub... I'm mixed. Though it was nice to see a D/s relationship that didn't have chains and latex all over the place, and the Domme was obviously very intelligent and cared deeply about her sub, I didn't like how the sub was portrayed as a spineless, sobbing twit without the Domme. I mean, Jesus Christ, I may be a sub, but I have enough self-esteem to make critical medical decisions about myself! For fuck's sake!

I also was perturbed that it was the sub's kink that made him wind up in the hospital. I mean, even though the general tone was vaguely sympathetic, the fact that the sub had to give up his fetish or die gave seemed to give a "he got what was coming" message. But I may be reading to much into it - and I wasn't able to catch all of the episode before they turned to a football game, so maybe I'm missing a critical part that changed the entire meaning of the episode.

*I've noticed that whenever BDSM is featured in the media, it almost always involves erotic asphyxiation - to an extent much further than it seems to feature in the actual community. I wonder what it is about breath play that makes it particularly alluring to TV writers; perhaps the fact that it's so obviously dangerous makes it easier to vilify? After all, you wouldn't want the viewers to get any ideas.