"Don't You Fucking Move," Letter from a Feminist Submissive

Didn't I tell you not to strive for
equality in the workplace?

(Hey gorgeous, found this in the backwaters of the blog today and I loved it all over again. Just ignore the highly untimely Fifty Shades of Grey tie-in, and you'll be good.)

Today's letter came in response to a Newsweek cover story on Fifty Shades of Grey, the insanely popular S&M-y mommy porn, unpromisingly spawned by, of all things, Twilight fan fiction.

Reader Submissive and Truly Fine With That was but one of the people pissed off by the article, which tied (yes, and I'm too lazy to think of a better word) working women and feminism to S&M. You can read her response below.

If you are unfamiliar with Fifty Shades of Grey, see this Daily Beast article on the book's 14 Naughtiest Bits (a genius idea!) Here, you can witness Perfectly Good Smut being ruined by a few ill-chosen words. For example, when heroine/virgin Anastasia (she would so be named that) watches Christian's (same deal) "erection spring free" (so far so good), she thinks--unlike a young woman would, but exactly like a middle-aged fan fiction-writing author might--"Holy cow!"

Later, when she takes him in her mouth (again, a good start...) it's described thusly: "He's my very own Christian Grey-flavored popsicle. I suck harder and harder...Hmmm...My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves."

By the time Anastasia's "inner goddess is doing the dance of the seven veils," my own inner goddess is "confused, slightly icked out and ready to go to the kitchen and get a cup of coffee."

But I digress. Please give a warm welcome to Submissive and Truly Fine With That:

Dear IBWMW;
God bless you for being the one place I can send this email. I just finished reading an article in Newsweek about how (or why) today’s feminists have a more-than-passing interest in S&M, or more to the point, being sexually submissive. Now I feel the need to rant because of all the sources they consulted, they neglected to ask one of us, ie. a feminist who craves domination. (To be fair, they did quote Simone de Beauvoir, but, last time I checked, she’s dead.) I thought, what better venue to rant to than this column? (Actually, there is no other option. I really don’t want to disgust any of my friends with details of my sex life beyond relative wang dimensions or whether a guy was “orally efficacious” or not.)

For starters, I have to admit I believe I was born into this desire. My first sexual fantasies all involved bondage; usually, some guy I hated or found grossly unattractive would tie me up and have his way with me. In retrospect, I think it had to be someone I didn’t like for the submission to feel “honest”.  

If I go backwards in my life to my first physical sexual feeling, it was this: a happy little tingle between my legs while watching a TV episode of "Batman and Robin." The boys were tied up in a hot air balloon that was continuously ascending and their ultimate demise was imminent. I didn’t recognize it as sexual excitement at the time, but I do now. The numerous episodes of “Electra Woman and Dyna Girl” that followed elicited the same phenomenon. And they were tied up or trapped at least once per episode. No wonder that was my favorite show.

Dopamine, The Cruel Bitch Mistress

If you'll open your books to where we left off the other day...we talking about the exquisite agony of The Crush. The crush, as you recall, is where we basically become dreamy fuckheads, walking ids powered by the hideous/delicious combo of single-mindedness, spaciness, magnanimity to your fellow humans ("Everyone is so awesome!"), hateable neediness, and general giddiness alternating with sudden despair--all set to the constant backdrop of the throb of unquenched sexual desire.

As reader can't keep anything to myself put it:

Crushes are torture, but the most delicious kind of torture. They make you realize what a masochist you really are. It's such a fun feeling though when your insides are squirming and you're smiling at random people like an idiot because you're thinking about them again and your jaw hurts from smiling so hard/much.

If you are suffering thusly right now, please know that you're not acting like such a pitiful lovesick idiot because you're inherently weak or out of your fucking head, but because cruel, cruel dopamine is totally screwing with you. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, "a kind of natural drug associated with the expectation of a reward that brings us pleasure," writes Sheril Kirshenbaum in The Science of Kissing. Dopamine can start fucking you up even during a first kiss. Writes Kirshenbaum,

Spiking during a passionate kiss, dopamine is responsible for the rush of elation and craving, and can also result in obsessive thoughts that many of us experience in association with a new romance--almost like an addiction.

I'm sorry, did she say "almost like"? Because dopamine is involved with stimulating the mesolimbic reward system (Mmmm, you like it when I talk to you all scientifically, don't you?), the part of the brain involved with virtually all of the addictive drugs. Wheee!

It primes us to make us want more, making us feel energized. Some people pumping lots of dopamine even lose their appetites, or feel that they cannot fall asleep--not surprisingly, the same 'symptoms' commonly described when "falling in love."

So maybe you're not in love, maybe you're just high on dopamine, you friggin' junkie. Which can go either way, depending if your ardor is returned. Writes the delightful Helen Fisher in Why We Love:

Because romantic love is such a euphoric "high," because this passion is exceedingly difficult to control, and because it produces craving, obsession, compulsion, distortion of reality, emotional and physical dependence, personality change, and loss of self-control, many psychologists regard love as an addiction--a positive addiction when your love is returned, a horribly negative fixation when your love is spurned and you can't let go.

If you don't get your love fix, well, it's not good. The suffering includes all kinds of sucky withdrawal symptoms like "depression, crying, spells, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite (or binge eating), irritability and chronic loneliness," reports Fisher.

Fisher continues, and I suspect she based her research solely on my diary entries from 1987: "Like all addicts, the lover then goes to unhealthy, humiliating, even physically dangerous lengths to procure their narcotic."

Which is not good, either. (Well, it's sorta good.)

Our takeaways from all this?  Hmmmmm, I guess, if you're going to get all hepped up on dopamine over someone, at least try to make sure that they might be someone who'll like you back. Which, you know, is totally easy. (Helpful hint: After years of painstaking research--ahem, Nobel committee--I can say with a fair degree of certainty that emotionally unavailable, meanish, and your basic garden-variety insane dudes are not, to my great surprise, good choices. You're welcome.)

Anyway, after awhile nature finally gives us a break. Because even a good dopamine ride can be, well, a bit much. I mean there's only so much time you can spend in a state of constant arousal, contemplating such uber-focused matters as the insanely lickable curve of a loved one's particularly enchanting body part. "Our biology places a limit on how long the 'high' conferred by dopamine can last," writes Kirshenbaum. "Studies have shown that levels of this intoxicating neurotransmitter decrease as we become more accustomed to a romantic partner, which might be why sexual desire tends to wane with the same person over time." (See also: the Coolidge Effect in "Our Genes Can Be Heartless Puppeteers").

On the other hand, it also doesn't seem reasonable, or at all fun, to avoid excessive, stupid, sexy, out-of-your-fucking-mind passion, for fear of getting the dopamine monkey on our backs. As "Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of The Female Orgasm" author Nicole Daedone's current, possibly grammatically problematic, Facebook status says, "Desire is there to be lived inside of."

I will await your tales from the front....

xoxo
jill

[addendum: As the unrelentingly brilliant and hilarious Betty Fokker points out below in the comments, the sweeter, more mellow high of attachment and bonding chemicals conveniently kick in just as the harsher high of the dopamine fades.]

[addendum 2: My dear friend Tricia sent me this bad-ass article on the fleetingness and horrible unsustainability of such passion.]

(photo: Marlo Broekmans, Photo extraite de la serie "Autoportraits")

True Wife's Tale: Billie, "My Lover Is A Stonewaller"

New True Wife's Tale via Billie. True Wife's Tales, as you recall, are real people talking about their real sex lives and we want to respect them and their choices, so don't get all up in her grill.

If you want to write up one of your own (you don't have to be a wife, or a woman, for that matter. Just need to have a sex life, or lack of one that you're willing to tell the truth about), see instructions at the end of the post.

Here then, please welcome Billie:

********

Yesterday my lover left me.

Or at least I think he did.  He didn't actually bother to tell me.

My lover, you see, is a stonewaller.  Stonewallers, as I learned via a teary, surreptitious Googling session last night, are people who don't acknowledge, honor or respond to your concerns. In my case, my "concern" was whether we was coming to visit me today, as he'd repeatedly said he was going to.

He lives in Washington and I live, well, somewhere else, and he was going to visit me for two days to give me the sex I sorely lack in my marriage. I didn't feel guilty about it. I'd made my peace with it as something I needed. Judge me if you'd like, but I know what I did was right for me. I had learned so many things with him and for the first time in 20 years--20 years!--I'd been able to express my sexuality and passion to a man without shame. I gave my body and self to him freely and I'm glad I did. I'd do the same thing again in a second. In a second! Plunging deeply and fearlessly into love--that's right, just jump straight the fuck in--is only way I want to love.

Anyway, I know you can't see in my house right now, but he is definitely not here.

That he is not here is how I had to figure out that he was not coming.

Writes Steve Becker in Love Fraud:

The stonewaller’s absence of empathy for the stonewalled party, perhaps even the relish the stonewaller takes in messing with the stonewalled party’s head, in watching her twist and squirm and perhaps make humiliating efforts and bids to be heard—there can be something actually sadistic about this.

Stonewalling will tend to elicit some common feelings in the stonewalled party—among them shame, anger, rage, infuriation, humiliation, desperation (to be heard), helplessness, and a sense of being driven crazy.

No shit.

Stonewalling is what abusive people and sociopaths do. Meaning--*sigh* what a drag--I have to remove myself from the situation.

So today, the day he would be fucking me, I allowed myself one last fantasy of him. In preparation of his "visit," I am in fine shape--all toned, waxed, the proper ratio of slim and curvy. I'd been tapering my antidepressant (sexy!) for weeks so I could actually have an orgasm and I hadn't touched myself since 18 days ago when we'd had amazing, amazing phone sex.

"My passion for you is near violent," he'd texted.

I needed to come.

So I locked the door and hopped into bed. Naked, I thought of him and his fine, fat Jewish cock and how much I was going to miss the way he paused in the middle of sex to fuck me slow and smooth.  His cock seemed to go on forever as he drew it slowly in and out of me. "God. It's so good, isn't it?" I whispered to him. He nodded, looking me in the eye and I thought I saw wonder there.

That look, that humanity that he couldn't seem to access in regular life is probably why I stuck around so long--more than two years. I thought I could get to it.

But I couldn't.  And maybe it wasn't even there. And that's why, in the middle of my ceremonial jerk-off, I burst into tears. Fingers stopped between my legs, I burst into deep, racking sobs--the kind of sobs that come from some deep ancient place.

I was sobbing for all of it. For the way he couldn't come to me with an open heart. And for how there was nothing--absolutely nothing--I could say or do that would make him respond openly and truthfully to me. Or even respond at all--which is just so, so...well, see above, "common feelings in the stonewalled party." For how much I would miss his thick Jewish cock. For what a stupid masochistic cunt I was to put up with so much shit. And how much I would miss him and his version of love and the way he kissed me deeply and well--the way I needed to be kissed. For how I would have to put my passion and sexuality...somewhere.  It wasn't going to fit back inside me hidden away and I didn't know what the fuck to do with it and who--if anyone--would ever again feel it with me. Ever. God. Fuck! 

I cried and cried and cried.

I slid my fingers back between my legs and thought about sitting on top of him, fucking him, and how he got almost a panicked look in his eyes before he came and shouted out my name.

In my own bed, I came too, big waves of orgasm juxtaposed with sobs.

It was maybe overwrought and stupid and overdramatic but real and necessary.

Passion is a strange thing. I have never felt so much passion for someone and perhaps never will. I don't know if I wanted him so much because he was harmed or in spite of it. I don't even understand, exactly, why it was him. He was kind of overweight, didn't "get" me in the slightest and made no attempt to try. The last time we met, it was in a sleazy hotel called The Sagamore (could there be a more depressing name?) We fucked on top of the bed spread which as anyone can tell you is about the filthiest place on the planet.  He wore black footie socks while he was fucking me. And I didn't care. I just wanted him inside me, all overweight and black footie sock-wearin', fucking me like I yearned to be fucked.

Anyway, now I am pretty well fucked metaphorically and not at all fucked literally.  Hoping for the opposite, but right now I am just...wrecked.

 ******

Thank you to Billie for today. If you have some love/sex purgery of your own to do, get your fanny over to the computer and jot it all down. Pretty it up and send it on it to jillhamilton001@gmail.com.

Love to you all.

xoxox
jill

P.S. In Bed With Married Women was named a Sex Blogging Superhero by Kinkly.com. I'm not really sure what superpowers this comes with (maybe this?) but a huge thank you to whoever it was that nominated the blog!

(photo via Lady Cheeky)

The Bad Dave, and Why Every Woman Needs One. Maybe.

Readers over at The Frisky were recently all up in arms about an article 12 Kinds of Sex Every Woman Has To Have Before She Settles Down, calling it "inane," "slutty"and "stupid." (Among the 12, if you are planning to take it as serious life advice, were sex with a girl, with a way older/way younger guy, with an artist, etc...)

I don't mind things that are inane, slutty, etc... and in fact, would submit that the article missed one very important type of pre-settling down sex--sex with a mean guy (aka, that asshole, what a dick!, etc...) Hooking up with a mean guy offers many Important Life Lessons. Plus when you're not busy sobbing over him or in the corner scrawling forlorn poetry, the Mean Guy is kind of fun, in a weird, unhealthy masochistic way.

My own mean guy--who I will call Bad Dave, because that is his name, well, the Dave part at least--was a friend of a friend who ended up being one of my housemates in college. Six of us lived in a big Band-Aid colored house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bad Dave was not horribly attractive, made unflattering clothing choices and was slightly plump, but he bore a passing resemblance to Bono and was a philosophy major. He was big on late night discussions of topics such as "What is Art?" which, to my college self, was so fucking deep. (And, to be perfectly honest, I would still probably still be sucker for such talk.) But what made it all work for us is that he had a mousy girlfriend away at Harvard, and I was slutty and generally drunk.

Our relationship--embarrassingly, probably my most long-lasting one of the year--was sort of an extended series of booty calls, all the more convenient because his room was right next door to mine. This could have easily become tedious--get drunk, go knock on Dave's door, blah blah blah--but what made it interesting was that there was always a weird power struggle going on, with me always on the losing end. It was psychological S&M, kind of like that movie "Secretary," except with poorer-quality cinematography and I didn't sit in a chair peeing on myself.  Bad Dave would give me instructions like