I told myself that when I took up blogging this time around, I would be more "sophisticated". Of course, I'm not exactly sure what that means. Does writing about literature make my blog sophisticated, even if that literature is pornographic, like the book "Women", by Charles Bukowski? You see, I just finished reading "Women". I was warned that it was mysogynistic. In fact however, I really enjoyed the book, and did not find it mysogynistic at all: It was about a man who behaves mysogynistically, but it did not have a pro-msyogyny moral, just as most murder mysteries are not homicidal simply because they feature a homicidal character. If literature only dealt with flawless people, it would be pretty boring.
Furthemore, I thought that the book dealt much with the relationship between sex, art, and loneliness - a topic that I find particularly fascinating. As I read the book, I began to wonder: What would constitute mysogynistic writing? The answer I came up with, was, that there are two main ways for writing to be mysogynistic: 1.It can have a pro-mysogyny moral 2. It can fetishize mysogynistic behavior to the point where a reader will be tempted to immitate such behavior. I suppose that if you substitute "homicidal" for "mysogyny", then you also have an answer to how a novel can be homicidal. I think "The Picture of Dorian Gray", by Oscar Wilde, is a great example of the second type of novel: It makes sensual behavior seem so desirable, that one is temtped to engage in such behavior. Seriously, reading that book makes me pretty much want to start fucking everyone while reciting Greek poetry and viewing Classic art, while also being in a garden. (A lovely tip for any readers trying to woo me into bed.)
Questions about the second type of mysogynistic novel also come up regarding rape porn: Studies show that many women and men have rape fantasies, so its logical that there is a porn genre that caters to that fantasy. I have heard it argued that rape porn creates a safe place on which to project one's rape fantasies. But rape porn can also easily cross the line, making rape seem so appealing, so damn sexy, that it might make actual rape just that much more tempting, or might even give a potential rapists some tips. I have never watched porn*, so I am not informed enough to weigh in, but I don't think that just because something is labeled as porn, as make-believe, means that its completely harmless - especially since there is an entire industry of "real" rape videos (often these videos are manufactured and only claim to be real), which are meant to help men get off not on the knowingly-pretend stage re-enactment of rape, but rather, on a real rape. Men who get off from real rapes, perhaps should be discouraged, not encouraged, lest that desire to get off on a real rape actually lead them to rape. (Yes, rape is about power. If you get off from real rape, you clearly have power issues. But I am tabling the "rape-is-about-power" discussion for another time. I am also tabling the discussion about how the mainstream porn indsutry uses and abuses women, or how it caters to straight male tastes while also creating unrealistic male expectations regarding women's bodies and sex.)
Anyhow, back to Bukowsky: He goes on and on about the intimacy of kissing, even saying, at one point, that its more intimate than fucking. (His word, not mine.) I am not going to comment on that particular comparison, but I do agree that kissing is more intimate than society gives it credit for: it seems that kissing strangers at parties is considered normal, to the point where not doing so is simply bad manners. (Hello, sexually coercive sexual revolution.) Kissing is often seen as the gateway touch leading to more physical intimacy: It is a kiss, not a nice long feel of a girl's breasts, that a man might expect at the end of a first date. (Maybe because feeling breasts is easy enough without a date if you know how to get down on the dance floor - but then again, so is sex, I suppose.) I wonder why this is - to me, it makes more sense for kissing to be neither the first nor the last thing on the menu - and I am not just saying that because I have an irrational fear of herpes - which, FYI, you can get from kissing. (You would get oral herpes, but then, if you give your partner oral sex and you have oral herpes, you can inadvertantly give them genital herpes. The risk is pretty low if you don't have an outbreak though - if no one could ever get any oral sex from anyone who ever had a cold sore, then our oral sex levels as a human species would probably be pretty low. Also, according to the "Herpes Viruses Association", if both people have the same type of Herpes, they won't reinfect each other. Yay?)
So now that I have completely disgusted you with my impromptu sex ed spiel, back to kissing: I think kissing is beautiful, and private, and intimate - it's not really something I can imagine enjoying with a stranger the way I might enjoy grinding, even though grinding (with a man) involves actually feeling the man's hard-on through his pants. Of course, I am no sexist: I am fully happy to grind with women.
I just wonder how the kiss - or why the kiss - has become so devalued in our society. Is this part of a symptom, of just generally devaluing sex - or at least, sex qua something special, as opposed to sex qua fulfilling a biological need?
My closing thought is simply an image from the movie "Pretty Woman": The prostitute makes a deal with her rich client, and part of that deal is no kissing. They are sitting at a piano, engaged in a game, where he tries to kiss her on the lips, and she resists. Their bodies become engaged in a dance of non-kissing. Of course, for this dance, one needs a partner to not kiss with. The minute a piece of the body is marked as forbidden, physical intimacy becomes a game of power, almost like S&M. Since this is a prostitute-customer scene, and I am a feminist, I could bore you with an entire analysis of the power dynamics. Instead, I will not-kiss you goodnight.
* except for five minutes, when I was stuck in a car with a sketchy Uruguayan and a Swiss banker. Long story. Luckily, I got out of the car before anything truly exciting had happened between the three people in the bathtub.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Facebook, Dating, and Knowledge Addiction
I love reading recipes. Like buying books, they entail potential: When you buy the book, or read the recipe, you are making a secret, and oft-broken, contract with yourself - that you will read the book, or cook the recipe. You do not know the burnt dishes or dissapointing pages yet to come. You only know the hope of new beginnings.
I guess that's kind of like a relationship: The beginning phase is reading the recipe, or buying the book - an act of hope. As the relationship progresses, you notice the smudged page-corner, the slight overdoes of cumin, and eventually, you may desist - or you may decided that the words on page 288 and the melting cinammon in your mouth enthrall you too much for you to give it (her, him) up.
Recently however, the internet has started ruining this process of discovery. You see, it is now common to google or Facebook someone by the end (or even before the beginning) of the first date - a practice so common, there was an entire "How I Met Your Mother" episode dedicated to it, entitled, "History vs. Mystery". (Say what you want about the series, but as an indicator of current social trends, it is spot-on.) So there you are, discovering all this information, without having truly begun to know the person. Because we are human, and we live in a society that lacks privacy, much of this information may be negative, may entail the person's flaws.
Now, imagine six months in you discover you current significant other worked as a stripper, or curses when her/his boss gets drunk at the office. Let's also imagine that you happen to consider these facts negative, but because you already love your significant other, you decide they're worth putting up with. Now, let's imagine you discover those facts before the second date, when you like your significant other, but still havent' really gotten to know him/her - all of a sudden, those facts become deal-breakers, that prevent you from getting to the six-month mark, even though, had you gotten there, you might have found yourself engaged in a long-lasting and loving relationship.
The problem is, that humans have a thirst for knowledge. This is generally a good thing, but the internet has the ability to bring out the downsides to this thirst. Our ancestors (by and large) accepted that while they wanted to know everything, they didn't need to - there was knowledge worth pursuing, and knowledge that was simply not worth the time and effort. Today, that time and effort has diminished to the click of a button and the five minutes it takes to read a Wikipedia article or a Facebook profile - so all of a sudden, we NEED to know everything. It only takes a minute. The problem is, that the "only a minute" has then turned into an hour of reading related Wikipedia articles on information that has no bearing on your life and that you are likely to forget - of course, each article only took a minute, but the aggregate was an amount of time spent on Wikipedia that waas not proportional to how much time of your life the information was worth.
There is no more concept of not pursuing knowledge: Hey, I could spend an hour stalking my date, but I don't have to - I CAN "NOT KNOW" and will spend an hour reading a book, or doing something that is actually useful and enjoyable. Or even, hey, I could read three Wikipedia articles on the history of pencils, but since that's not a topic I am particularly interested in, I won't.
The best example of this is IMDB: Think about how much time you have (if you are a procrastinator like me) spend IMDB-ing actors, directors, etc. Then think about how much of this information you remember, and how much utility you've gotten out of it. Next, think about how much time your parents put into researching actors, directors, etc. - probably much less. Ask yourself if you think the amount of time you put in made your quality of life better in any way. The anwser is probably no, because generally, it is not essential to one's personal fulfillment and enjoyment of life to know every detail of Johnny Depp's love-life.
Of course, while you are online, you are simply thinking that you need to know about Johnny Depp's lovelife, and its only a click away, and how can you finish watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" without knowing about his recent separation from Vanessa Paris?
You see, we live in an era of information addiction: I mean that literally - a compulsive, habit-forming, need for online knowledge that can severely interfere with one's functioning in daily life if carried out to its furthest extremes. Generally, the thirst for knowledge (and, because I am religious, I will add: some help from God), has driven human progress. But I wonder how much progress this recent thirst-surge can drive - thanks to our internet-enablers, we are too busy updating our Facebook statuses about our newly found knowledge, to turn it towards more productive means - or are we?
I guess that's kind of like a relationship: The beginning phase is reading the recipe, or buying the book - an act of hope. As the relationship progresses, you notice the smudged page-corner, the slight overdoes of cumin, and eventually, you may desist - or you may decided that the words on page 288 and the melting cinammon in your mouth enthrall you too much for you to give it (her, him) up.
Recently however, the internet has started ruining this process of discovery. You see, it is now common to google or Facebook someone by the end (or even before the beginning) of the first date - a practice so common, there was an entire "How I Met Your Mother" episode dedicated to it, entitled, "History vs. Mystery". (Say what you want about the series, but as an indicator of current social trends, it is spot-on.) So there you are, discovering all this information, without having truly begun to know the person. Because we are human, and we live in a society that lacks privacy, much of this information may be negative, may entail the person's flaws.
Now, imagine six months in you discover you current significant other worked as a stripper, or curses when her/his boss gets drunk at the office. Let's also imagine that you happen to consider these facts negative, but because you already love your significant other, you decide they're worth putting up with. Now, let's imagine you discover those facts before the second date, when you like your significant other, but still havent' really gotten to know him/her - all of a sudden, those facts become deal-breakers, that prevent you from getting to the six-month mark, even though, had you gotten there, you might have found yourself engaged in a long-lasting and loving relationship.
The problem is, that humans have a thirst for knowledge. This is generally a good thing, but the internet has the ability to bring out the downsides to this thirst. Our ancestors (by and large) accepted that while they wanted to know everything, they didn't need to - there was knowledge worth pursuing, and knowledge that was simply not worth the time and effort. Today, that time and effort has diminished to the click of a button and the five minutes it takes to read a Wikipedia article or a Facebook profile - so all of a sudden, we NEED to know everything. It only takes a minute. The problem is, that the "only a minute" has then turned into an hour of reading related Wikipedia articles on information that has no bearing on your life and that you are likely to forget - of course, each article only took a minute, but the aggregate was an amount of time spent on Wikipedia that waas not proportional to how much time of your life the information was worth.
There is no more concept of not pursuing knowledge: Hey, I could spend an hour stalking my date, but I don't have to - I CAN "NOT KNOW" and will spend an hour reading a book, or doing something that is actually useful and enjoyable. Or even, hey, I could read three Wikipedia articles on the history of pencils, but since that's not a topic I am particularly interested in, I won't.
The best example of this is IMDB: Think about how much time you have (if you are a procrastinator like me) spend IMDB-ing actors, directors, etc. Then think about how much of this information you remember, and how much utility you've gotten out of it. Next, think about how much time your parents put into researching actors, directors, etc. - probably much less. Ask yourself if you think the amount of time you put in made your quality of life better in any way. The anwser is probably no, because generally, it is not essential to one's personal fulfillment and enjoyment of life to know every detail of Johnny Depp's love-life.
Of course, while you are online, you are simply thinking that you need to know about Johnny Depp's lovelife, and its only a click away, and how can you finish watching "Pirates of the Caribbean" without knowing about his recent separation from Vanessa Paris?
You see, we live in an era of information addiction: I mean that literally - a compulsive, habit-forming, need for online knowledge that can severely interfere with one's functioning in daily life if carried out to its furthest extremes. Generally, the thirst for knowledge (and, because I am religious, I will add: some help from God), has driven human progress. But I wonder how much progress this recent thirst-surge can drive - thanks to our internet-enablers, we are too busy updating our Facebook statuses about our newly found knowledge, to turn it towards more productive means - or are we?
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