Cli-TOR-is/Lavoris, CLIT-oris/Leviticus, The Cringiest Word Contest Winner

"God, I love your ass. I mean, butt. I mean, mid-hinal region."

The winner of the cringiest word contest and future user of the possibly unconciousness-causing Velvet Passion Bullet Vibrator is grover mommy.

Among the unspeakable words enterered were: boobies, cunnilingus, moist, secretion, penetrate, labia, hairy vagina, ladyparts, dildo, anal fisting, queef, the onomonpeic splooge, panties, weiner, pecker, amazeballs (*shudder*), girth, fat, vulva, cunt, dripping (though only when applied as an adjective for the aforemention cunt) and...clusters. Email entries included smegma, pussy, and threesome (with bonus anti-points for the alternate spelling 3sum.) I think the next contest will involve a really fucked-up sentence containing all the words.

But I chose grovermommy's entry, not because of her word--menstruate, which bothers me not. In fact I could say it all day--and maybe I just will--but because:

1. She said provided not one, but three, definitions for what mensturate sounds like it should mean, including:

c) an adjective describing a manly appearance, ie. "His menstruate jaw line impressed me and I acquiesced to his offer of a cocktail."

2. But really I chose grovermommy because when she is not surreptitiously reading smutty blogs, she wrote that she also teaches anatomy and is thus forced to say the word menstruate often. For some reason I am enchanted by the idea of grovermommy (Ms. Grovermommy, in class, I suppose) choking out the word menstruate while she and her class are all equally dying of embarrassment. If you know someone in grovermommy's class, I would urge them to ask her to repeat the word loudly and often, claiming not to have heard.

Anyway, I love the lot of you and thank you for sharing your forbidden words with the rest of us. And grovermommy, email me your mailing address and I'll get your prize to you straightaway.

xoxox
jill

P.S. Mennnnnn-strrrrrrrruaaaaaattte.


(prize courtesy of the enlightened folks at Good Vibrations)

A Contest: What Word Makes You Cringe?

Caution: Gazing at photo may
cause loss of consciousness. Or
possible "bewilderment."

Today's prize is the Velvet Passion Bullet Vibrator from Good Vibrations, a company that has given me a strange and quite unexpected superpower: Ability To Bestow Sex Toys Upon Random Internet Strangers. I had been hoping for X-ray Vision or, at the very least, Three More Wishes, but hell, you play the cards you're dealt. Which if you're filling out your IBWMW Official Record Book is the very first, and I expect the last, time I have said or written the phrase "play the cards you're dealt."*

Feel free to click here to read all about the Velvet Passion, aka the next thing you might possibly--if you're lucky!--be sticking up your wang. Or, I'll just toss out some buzzwords from the Good Vibes blurb: "velvet softness," "waterproof" and "pulsation patterns." The Velvet Passion also comes with a possibly frightening "memory function." "Remember that time I was up your wang?" "Tssst! Shut up about that!"

The Velvet Passion is, according to the blurb, "visually stunning," perhaps a wee misuse of the word "stunning" [i.e. stunning, (adjective):  causing, capable of causing, or liable to cause astonishment, bewilderment, or a loss of consciousness or strength.] I like a vibrator as much as the next girl, but I don't want to be losing consciousness every time I open up my nightstand drawer. Although, in truth, that particular function could save me quite a bit on my recreational Benadryl budget.

To enter, you must tell me the word that you absolutely cannot say aloud. Mine, oddly, is "vagina." I am also loathe to use the word "clitoris," in both CLIT-oris and cli-TOR-is form. Yes, I clearly have issues, but there is no time for that today. (Or ever, actually, because I do not wish to attend to my issues.)

Anyway, you there with the old, unsightly sex toy, get on it. Think of your icky word, and leave it below as a comment. Or, if the word is especially unsettling, lock yourself in a darkened room, close your eyes and type it trepidatiously into a top secret email. I'll have Stella, head of the IBWMW steno pool, choose a winner Monday.

xoxoxo,
jill

* I also don't expect to ever write "It is what it is," so you can just cross that one off your list.

True Tale: I was a Grade School Nudist

Yes, I know that every kid is a nudist.  But I really was one.  Like, officially. As in, card carrying member of the ASA (American Sunbathing Association.) As in going to special places--nudist camps, or if would want to make them sound really creepy and culty, nudist colonies--which were created for no other reason than so people could walk around naked.

This was the Shameful Secret of my childhood, like having an alcoholic mother who hit or an uncle who touched you in the areas where the bathing suit covers. No one was to know. As you may recall, I grew up in the 1970s, the time of hippies, macrame owls and mushroom decor, but I grew up in 1970s Georgia, a place of macrame owls, etc..., but also a very conservative, uptight place. It was a place where every white family had a black maid named something like Mavis, vegetarians were suspect and you sure as fuck weren't supposed to be something as whack as a nudist.

Nudism, then as probably now, was considered to be something weird, at the very least, and at the worse, probably sexual. Not sexual in a particularly nameable way but just...wrong. Naked=sex, end of story.

The reality, which would become apparent to anyone who spent 2 minutes at a nudist camp, is that they are about a sexual as any average RV park. Picture the folks in line at your Target store. Now picture them naked. Now picture them naked and running for a tennis ball, their own balls flopping in the wind. Feeling sexy? Exactly.

Every nice weekend in the summer, my dad would load up the car with camping equipment and we'd be off to a campground in nearby Florida. It was run by a sweet old man named Uncle Sammy who was also, incongruently, incredibly racist. And, if you must know, he had rather large testicles that were kind of a blueish hue.

My two sisters and I hated going. HATED it. And it wasn't because of our unfortunate kid's eye view of Uncle Sammy's literally blue balls. Being nudists was the thing that made us different.  Made us weird. Made us wrong. "How was your weekend?" our neighbor Mrs. P would leeringly ask me when we got back. "Did y'all go camping?" She knew what she meant and I knew what she meant, but both of us were loathe to acknowledge it. "Yes," I would admit, mumbling. "Oh, reeeeeeally?" she would smirk triumphantly.

It was this sort of insinuating attitude about nudism that was what was so shameful about it to us. The actual nudism was no big deal. Really.

People find this really hard to believe. Even today, if I mention it to someone--I mean, people who know I write this blog, friends who know me well--they get that Mrs. P look on their faces. It's a mixture of judgey, sort of aroused, completely intrigued, yet put off at the same time.

"It's like a KOA, but everyone's naked," I say, lamely. They never believe me and press for more details. Because surely--surely!--there's more to it than that. But really that's it. Here's what people do at a nudist camp: swim, play old-school sports like horseshoes, ping pong or pool, sit around and play cards, sit in saunas or whirlpools, lie out in the sun, eat dinner and so on. All of this is done naked. Or naked but wearing the appropriate gear like tennis shoes. (If the idea of a bunch of your average Appleby's customers walking around naked isn't non-sexual enough, seeing those same folk naked but for a pair of socks and tennis shoes should do the trick.)

BTW, if you were wondering, the cliche about nudists and volleyball is totally true. Nudists love their volleyball--love it! Every camp has a court, no exceptions. Another nudist thing is the Importance of Towels. Nudists have an inordinate faith in the power of towels as all-purpose protectant. Every nudist carries a towel so that can put it between their sweaty naked ass and whatever surface they put said ass upon. The towel, you see, magically protects everyone from...well everything. I'm not sure why no one considers the "towel flipping factor," that is, once you re-use the towel, can you really be sure you're putting the butt side on your butt? Nonetheless, it seems to work. I don't know the science behind it, but to my knowledge, nudists don't suffer from any greater incident of butt-transmitted disease.

Because everyone is naked there probably are some things I've seen that most people haven't seen. I have seen flaccid penises covered in tanning oil (it was the 70s, remember). I have seen very obese men walking around naked, their genitalia tiny and cowering under the massive flap of their bellies. I have seen boobs hanging down to stomach level, all kinds of scars, varicose veins, sunburned boobs, flat wrinkly bums, prodigious bushes (70s, ditto), and balls that hang down nearly to knee level. I have seen women walking around with a tampon string hanging out their wangs (the accepted nudist procedure, by the way, is for a menstruating woman to don a pair of underpants. Why they couldn't just tuck the string inside and try to "pass" as a non-menstruating woman remains unexplained to me. Perhaps many women of the day still had the whole belt and pad apparatus?)

What I did not see includes: orgies, sex of any kind, an erect penis. (As a child, I read a Q&A pamphlet for new nudists featuring naked cartoon "Love is..." looking folks. For the question "What if I get, you know, aroused?" naked cartoon man was advised to take a quick jump in the pool.)

When teenage nudist kids start rebelling against their parents they do so--seriously--by wearing clothes. Every nudist camp has kids in their awkward years Fighting the Power by wearing a long t-shirt or--fuck it!--even a full pants and shirt combo.

As I said, my sisters and I hated our nudist secret. It wasn't the actual nudism so much because, in truth that was kind of fun. Not the naked part, which we really didn't care one way or the other about, but going on adventures-- running wild, exploring woods and creeks, water skiing, climbing trees and getting to play grown-up games like pool. Nudist camps are like a secret club. They are all over the country and--at least at the time--you had to know where they were (invariably down a long dirt road in the middle of nowhere), the secret code to unlock the gate or who to ask for at the intercom when you pulled up. When we pulled up to the gate at a new club, we'd ask for whoever--Dottie, say--and Dottie would come to the gate, bronzed, wrinkled and wearing only a terry cloth wrap around skirt.  The Dotties always seemed to smoke and had a vague white-trashiness about them. The Dotties always had the nicest mobile home in the place, but nudist camp nice, which is not really that nice.

For my sisters and I, it was the secret part that was so bad. We weren't supposed to tell anyone about it. Knowing that I had a thing about me that people couldn't know gave me a sense of shame that took years to shake. I thought if anyone ever knew this horrible nudist thing about me...well, that'd be about it. I, seriously, didn't even tell my husband until we'd been married several years. I still haven't told my children, or many of you guys. I don't think either of my sisters have told their husbands. (uh, til now. Sorry! Hope you enjoy your Big Talk tonight.)

It is not right to make children keep secrets and, well, let's just say that perhaps the situation could have been handled differently. Though I don't know how. There really was no good way to present the whole nudist family idea to my Georgia neighbors. And I still think there's something a little weird about needing to be naked in public, among other naked people. Couldn't people be just be fine walking around naked in their house without formalizing it, building camps, forming the ASA and whatnot? Was there something sexual about it that I wasn't getting?

That said, as an adult, I can see some of the advantages of the whole nothing-to-hide aspect of it all. I recently went to a Korean spa with my friend Janet. It was hardcore. Old Korean women were squatting down by these sort of low faucets scrubbing the bejesus out of their nether regions. (For a really long time too. They are either really really clean or there must be some sort of pleasure in taking to your crotch with a scrub brush that I'm not aware of.) Everyone was naked because you had to be--sign on the door said so. As I soaked with Janet in the hot tub (making, like, constant eye contact so I wouldn't appear to be staring at her boobs in an unseemly manner*), I looked around.

Everyone looked bad naked, and yet everyone looked good. That is to say, we all looked human. Clothes give the illusion that other people have perfect bodies and that, plus general media bombardment, etc... gives us the idea that most everyone else looks fucking amazing. Of course we "know" that's not true. We know models are genetic rarities, culled from millions of others, and that they are strategically posed, photoshopped, etc... But seeing these regular bodies made me really know it, in a deep way. The chick with the amazing boobs had a bit of a wide ass going on. The trim woman was also a bit gaunt. It was incredibly liberating to realize that we all looked...well, okay enough.

The other day I had the experience of being on the other side of the naked generational divide. I was pet sitting for friends who have a pool. I invited my husband and two daughters over to swim. When they got there, I shouted, "Woo! Let's go skinny dipping!" I peeled off my clothes and dove into the pool. When I surfaced, my three family members were staring at me in semi-horror. "Woo!" I said, again, defiantly. I swam around briefly, to prove my point that they were missing out--big time--but it was half-hearted. I felt foolish and suddenly way way too naked. Soon I climbed out and grabbed my towel. I was half-embarrassed, half-hating their prudery.

Despite that, at 47, I think I've pretty much come to peace with my supposedly sordid past. At least enough that I feel fine telling you, Dear Internet Stranger, and who knows who the hell you'll tell. The good part is that I don't really care any more.

In an interesting coda to all this: My nudist connection which had always been the Worst Thing of my Life also turned out to be one of the best things. When I was looking for an idea to pitch to Rolling Stone, my dad told me that a local nudist camp was hosting bands like Foreigner and Loverboy for a concert, a two-day Nudestock festival. This, anyone could see, was comedy gold. My piece on Nudestock (thank you to my RS editor, the amazing Jancee Dunn) was my first national story.

So what have we learned here? Here are your takeaways: Things are never all good or all bad, they just are. Keeping secrets=bad. Some men have really really long balls.

Now you know the worst,
xoxoxox

* For the record, Janet has an incredible ass.

(Note: names, places, and such have been changed to protect the privacy of various pissed off family members)
(photo source)

A Lover's Moan and Other Sounds of Sex

Jesus, that was good.

Really amazing sex gets you from every direction. Besides the whole crazy love/spiritual intoxicating chemical dump that's happening in your brain, truly great fuckery involves all your senses as well. I think that's why it's all so damn heady. I mean, all these completely intense inputs are hammering you at once. The particular delicious smell of your lover's neck, the sight of a body part swelling with desire for you, the taste of their upper thigh...oh god.  Plus the wild array of touches-- the slow sliding, out-of-control violent thrusting, fierce whole body throbbing ride that marks a really good fuck.

What I've been thinking about lately, though, are the sounds of sex. The sighs, the wet smack of a woman's arousal, a rasped plea, a lover's moan (is there anything better than the sound of your lover's moan?*), a primitive growl of lust, a passionate whisper or shout of your name**--all these sounds convey sublime feelings and pleasures that are literally unspeakable.

I once had a lover leave me a phone message of his orgasm. (If you are as into sound as I am, do this. Do this at once. God, it would kill me to listen to it even today!) He started off talking me through it, explaining what he was looking at (picture of my boobs, you nosy motherfucker) and how close he was to coming. But the catch in his voice told me how aroused he was much more than what he was saying. He described riding the edge of almost coming, as his voice became raspier and his breathing more ragged. His words grew incoherent, as he went toward, then through his orgasm, completely conveying the experience through sound alone. I could hear (and almost feel) the tension, the inevitability, the blinding orgasm, then the strong aftershocks. It was pretty fucking amazing.

Sex sounds are a whole other language, made of groans and gasps and breath patterns and non-verbal...I don't know...emoting. We might "mmm" a bit over food, or grunt as we hit a tennis ball, but it's nothing like the extended, intricate, primal aural communication we have during sex.

So why do we make these sounds during sex?

The science on the sounds of sex is pretty scant. British primatologist Stuart Semple recorded 550 baboon female "copulation calls"--which is not at all a weird way to spend one's time--analyzed their acoustic structure and found that the calls contained information about what point the female was in her reproductive cycle and the status of her partner. Humans might be subconsciously exchanging similar information. A 2008 study found that women's voices--as judged by impartial listeners--changed during their cycle, becoming "more attractive" during ovulation and "less attractive" during menstruation. (Insert bitchy period joke here.)

A 2011 study found that women often made "copulatory vocalizations" (this is really what they called them) to accompany their partner's orgasm. Why? Politeness and/or trying to get it over with. Reports Salon's Lucy McKeon in A Nation of Moaners:

Sixty-six percent reported making noise to accelerate their partner’s ejaculation. Ninety-two percent believed these vocalizations upped their partner’s self-esteem (87 percent reported vocalizing for this purpose). Other reported reasons included speeding things up, “to relieve discomfort/pain, boredom, and fatigue in equal proportion, as well as because of time limitations.”

I don't particularly care for this study because 1). they only used 71 women, and just asked them questions instead of measuring them during real sex with sort of scientific Copulatory Vocalizationometer. 2). Those results are depressing.

I dislike the idea of calculated sounds, designed to spur someone to orgasm or worse "relieve boredom." I much prefer the unbidden moan, the deep rich moan that rises spontaneously from some primitive place of dark-red wanting.

I'll leave you today with these words from a lawyer-turned-dominitrix describing her love of "finding" this moan in her lovers. Or as she puts it in The Vagina Monologues "Discovering the key, unlocking this voice, this wild song."

"I made love to quiet women and I found this place inside them and they shocked themselves in their moaning. I made love to moaners and they found a deeper, more penetrating moan...It was a kind of surgery, a kind of delicate science, finding the tempo, the exact location or home or the moan."
 
xoxoxo,
jill

*answer: no, there is not.
**Why is it so delightful to hear your name on your lover's lips during the throes of passion? Egotism, pretty much. From Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People: Principle #6 –Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

(Alfred Noyer, Paris 1920s)

The Lush Sexuality of a Woman in Full Bloom

I've been writing about vaginas a lot lately.

Which is weird, because I can barely even say the word "vagina." (I'm even a little iffy on "angina," though rest assured, if there were a medical emergency, I'd probably manage to choke it out.*) I'm not alone in this. Even Eve Ensler, Little Miss Vagina Monologues, said: "Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say."

True that. However, I think I am going through some sort of vaginal consciousness raising which, I know, sounds completely horrible, like it would involve attending meetings, holding hands with caftan-clad strangers, and answering dreadful questions like "What is your vaginal song?"

But you see, vaginas don't just exist as they are--well, I mean, they do--but they're also subject to the Prevailing Attitudes of the Day. In the 19th century, for example, girls who learned how to masturbate were considered to have a medical problem. Writes Ensler: "Often they were 'treated' or 'corrected' by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or 'miniature chastity belts,' sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach.'" Which, I imagine, certainly did the trick.

It was only a few hundred years ago that the existence of the clitoris was still a matter of serious scientific debate. And even today, we're still sort of iffy on some pretty major issues such as the G-spot's validity, what the hell a woman's ejaculate is, and whether or not there are different types of orgasm. Science, it seems, doesn't quite know what to make of female sexuality, and by association, vaginas.

So, yes, vaginas are mysterious and hard to figure out. But guess what? That's what so good about them. What fun would it be if you solved it all at once?

I think that's why the Prevailing Attitudes of the Day re: vaginas and the stupid bleaching and plastic surgery are bothering me so much. Because all of those things are about making the vagina chaste-looking and less, well, womanly. Like a beginner vagina that doesn't know anything. The lips of a vagina that has birthed babies and been well fucked are lush and flushed and swollen. They are not tiny and pink and virginal. They are full and open and just...so ripe.

I started thinking of them as being ripe, like a rose in full bloom, after reading this passage from Michael Pollan's Into the Rose Garden on roses and female sexuality. (Yes, I said "like a rose in full bloom." And yes, I know I sound like I'm talking about singing your vaginal song and all that, but hear me out.) In the piece, Pollan writes about his Maiden's Blush rose, also known as Cuisse de Nymphe Emue which means "the thigh of an aroused nymph."

Maiden’s Blush...seems to press her sexuality on us. Her petals are more loosely arrayed than Madame Hardy’s; less done up, almost unbuttoned. They are larger, too, and they flush with the palest flesh pink toward the center, which itself is elusive, concealed in their innumerable folds. The blush of this maiden is not in the face only. Could I be imagining things?

No, Maiden’s Blush is certainly not the old lady I expected when I planted roses. And though Maiden’s Blush bears an especially provocative bloom, every one of the old roses I planted, and all I’ve since seen and smelled, have been deeply sensuous in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Compared with the chaste buds and modest scent of the modern roses, these old ones give freely of themselves. They flower all at once, in a single, climactic week. Their blooms look best fully opened, when their form is most intricate; explicit, yet still so deeply enfolded on themselves as to imply a certain inward mystery....More than most floral scents, the fragrance of these roses is impossible to get hold of or describe “it seems to short-circuit conscious thought, to travel in a straight line from nostril to brain stem." Inhale deeply the perfume of a Bourbon rose and then try to separate out what is scent, what is memory, what is emotion; you cannot pull apart the threads that form this . . . this what?...

If the allure of old roses is in the frank sensuality of their blooms, then what are we to make of the development and eventual triumph of the modern hybrid tea? Maybe the Victorian middle class simply couldn’t deal with the rose’s sexuality. Perhaps what really happened in 1867 was a monumental act of horticultural repression. By transforming the ideal of rose beauty from the fully opened bloom to the bud, the Victorians took a womanly flower and turned her into a virgin, "a celebrated beauty when poised on the verge of opening, but quickly fallen after that."

Deeply sensuous? Frank sensuality? Short-circuiting conscious thought? Oh, Michael Pollan, this is why I love you so! (Oh, also for your excellent points on monocultures, sustainable farming techniques, and whatnot.)

But I wonder, are we doing the same thing with our bodies? Will we keep trying to bio-engineer chaste-appearing closed-up girl vaginas, forever "poised on the verge of opening," while foolishly missing out on the best damn part--the extreme fuckability and lush sexuality of a woman in full bloom? 

xoxo
jill

*This is a lie. Instead of "angina," I would say "chest pains."

(photo source)

I am going to fuck you so hard, Snuggle.

Snuggle, watch your back.
That's all I'm sayin'.

As I often profess, I'm down with whatever consenting adults want to do. You want to fuck a can opener? Go to town. That said, I am simultaneously fascinated with the fucked-up $%#$ that consenting adults actually end up doing (note: I mean "fucked-up $%#$" in the kindest possible way. I use it here to mean "everything I personally don't want to do." And embarrassingly, I am coming to realize that this category includes a lot of items including: having sex with people in chipmunk costumes, bleaching/dyeing/vajazzing delicate body parts, calling balloon phone sex lines, and, well, I could go on. It's a shamefully long list, really. )

So naturally I was delighted when a wonderful (aren't they all?) In Bed With Married Women reader emailed the results of this plushie survey taken from a plushie website.

Now, if you don't know what a plushie is, well, it's someone who loves stuffed animals. The term encompasses a range--from people merely liking and collecting stuffed animals (like that nice old lady down the street) to people wanting to fuck the living hell out of stuffed animals (like that nice old lady down the street). (Social acceptance hint:  if you're not actually into having sex with stuffed animals, you won't want to refer to yourself as a "plushie.")

Anyway, like I said, I was thrilled to see the survey, because, oh lordy, it was awesome. For example, here are the results to Question 3:

3. What odors do you prefer or desire on your plushies?
    [ 66 ] - new, or with no specific aroma
    [ 47 ] - cum, mild
    [ 43 ] - body sweat, mild
    [ 40 ] - musky, ball-sack aroma from yourself or other people
    [ 26 ] - pee, mild
  * [ 25 ] - musky, real animal scent (ferret, fox, rabbit, deer, etc.)
    [ 19 ] - cum, very strong
    [ 18 ] - body sweat, strong
  * [ 16 ] - incense
    [ 15 ] - perfume or cologne
    [ 15 ] - pee, strong
  * [ 13 ] - musky, tail-hole aroma (fart, poop, etc.)
    Other:   Cinnamon (1), Vanilla extract (2), Bubble Gund (2),
             Tobacco (2), Chocolate (1), Leather (1), Licorice (1),
             Ocean/saltwater (1), Just washed/fabric softener (1),
             Strawberries (1), Mild lemon (1)

I loved it. I mean, c'mon. "Ball sack aroma"? Not only are you going to have your way with poor Mr. Bunnykins, but you are also going to insist he smell like "ball sack aroma"? And, what, exactly, is the polite method of collecting "ball sack aroma" from other people? There was a lot to think about. I pondered something called "plush necrophilia." Did this mean a plush toy doing it with a dead human or a live human with a dead plush toy? And if the plush toy was dead, how was this different from a regular non-living (i.e. dead) plush toy? I learned about plushie porn, she-male plushies and the plushie subcategory that is Beanie Babies (conclusion: Beanie Babies are sexually arousing, yes, but generally too small to fuck. Okay to wear inside your pants). It was all completely fascinating.

But after my initial thrill wore off--Plush toys wearing bondage gear! Plush toy on plush toy action! Something called plush slavery!--I thought, Thank God for the Internet. Seriously. I mean, can you imagine being some kid in Utah who not only wants to have sex with stuffed animals, but also prefers they have "cum smell, mild"? You would feel so completely alone. It's not like you could really bring it up to someone, even a close friend. "Hey Joe, this is kind of weird, but did you ever get really really drunk with your stuffed animals and one thing led to another and...?"

But with the Internet, these folks found each other. Being a plushie in 2011 must be immeasurably better than being a plushie in 1973. Now, Mr. Beanie-Baby-in-his-underwear can find someone who not only gets it, but offers the hint that a pee-covered Beanie Baby makes the experience all the more erotic. Can you imagine what a relief it would be to find such a kindred spirit?

Now, I'm not saying that I want to smear a stuffed animal with poo and have my way with it (Boy, am I ever Not Saying that) but I am glad that if someone does want to do that--and they really do--that they have someone they can talk to about it.

Viva freedom and all that.

They're Here, They're Queer, Get Used to It

O, Ye Shall pointedly buy chicken sandwiches.

I'm all wigged out today by this article in the L.A. Times, "Chick-fil-A fans and critics take to the streets." It's about how yesterday, a bunch of asshats human beings that I need to love went specifically to Chick-fil-A to buy a sandwich to show that they were against gay people.

Now, although I find the concept of purchasing a chicken sandwich to show your contempt of "the gays" a bit comical ("And a large fries, because I hate cock-sucking a lot, too"), I am a bit horrified by the number of people who thought it was a-ok to make a public appearance as a hater. I mean, even if you were way, way against gayness wouldn't you just cower at home hating gay people privately? Making sure of course, to watch plenty of gay porn to keep tabs on their nefarious ways.

As you may recall, this all happened because the president of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, said some crazy-ass crap in an interview about our nation inviting God's judgement by having "such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about." One might note that the words "arrogant" and "audacity" might also be applied to one is so fucking certain that he knows God's wishes. Or that a man having the last name of Cathy is actually a teensy bit gay. And I am most certainly inviting God's judgement by wondering why a god would create a bunch of gay people if they are indeed so wrong and hateful. I mean, that seems kinda jerkish.*

But whatever, Cathy said what he said. I don't agree with it. But he's a whack old dude, he can say whatever crazy ass crap he likes. I don't think cities should ban his stores or anything because it's a free county. (Well, freeish.)

One of the protestors, Roy Simmons, 60, who was dutifully expressing his disapproval of gay marriage through the purchase of chicken sandwiches said, "With the left, if you don't toe their line and say what they want you to say, they shut you down as a hater, a bigot or a homophobe."

It would probably also be hideously leftist of me to provide Simmons, who is most certainly NOT GAY, with the definition of the word homophobe, which I happen to have right here:

Homophobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). Definitions refer variably to antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, irrational fear, and hatred. Usage: "I stood in line at Chick-fil-A to buy a chicken sandwich Wednesday to express such negative attitudes because I am a bigoted, hater, homophobe who is so not gay."**

It might also be a bit crass to direct SO NOT GAY Simmons and the other protestors--some of whom wore Superman costumes to the protest (also completely not gay)-- to this Scientific American article "Homophobes Might Be Hidden Homosexuals."

xoxoxo
jill

* If there is indeed a hell, I suspect I'll spend quite a lot of time there re-reading this particular sentence.
**I may or may not have added that last sentence in the definition.