1000 Words Away

Commited non-monogamists tend to concur with the small-is-beautiful anarchist's romantic view of tribes.  For a long time I was sceptical of how women's quality of life might have been, back in the good old pre-agricultural days. I am slowly but increasingly convinced, by writers such as Sarah Hrdy, the Ryan and Jetha team, and even Paul Shepard.  So when I read this interesting article in Common Dreams, using Dunbar's number to re-examine world economic crisis and societal disfunction, I immediately thought of non-monogamists' ideas about communitarian sexual relations in the context of a tribe of 150 individuals or so.  That led me to this lovely quote of Dunbar's here: "Words are slippery; a touch is worth a 1,000 words any day."  This couldn't possibly resonate any stronger with this modern woman, blogging in the vast obscurity of the modern-day Internet.

Sex Tip #10

I understand that it's not for everyone to be a dogmatic anti-monogamist crusader. So I've been trying to think how my readers can contribute to changing the system in a modest way.  My previous post ended with a gentle suggestion to my fellow females, to give These Men the benefit of the doubt.  After all, we have to keep in mind that the poor dears are dealing with a stream of pornographic images (PI) pumping through their brains on something like, what do I know, a millisecond basis... [my original PI post is here].  Whereas even Katchita, who definitely rates as a red-blooded American female, doesn't experience more than half a dozen on her best days and sometimes can go for days with nary a one.

It certainly never crossed my mind when I started, but over the years I've gotten used to men seeing my blog as an open invitation to send me dirty pix of their pride and joy or their favorite Internet porn or even once a personal home video (!)  It finally dawned on me that they're simply aching for the opportunity to show off their special friends.  Analyzing this phenomenon in my Katchita way, I began to think of my blog as providing a certain outlet for men who have a strong need to express themselves sexually but are forbidden to do so in many ways by law, and in many more by societal censure.

I'm personally a long way from the point where a flasher, for example, could elicit more from me than a giggle and a cursory look-see (on the off chance he's packing something interesting there inside his trench coat).  But I can remember a time in my life when that would have been terribly intimidating or even frightening.  An extreme example perhaps, but You Men really need to remember that most women don't have the PI problem. They find it not only extremely difficult to understand how prevalent it is in your lives, but also really quite uncomfortable to even contemplate.  Sort of like a flasher.  Not to mention that some have suffered, sometimes terribly, at the hands of your fellow Men's Club members.

You already have a feel for this, of course, but for some reason many of you still tend to write women off as frigid bitches when we slam you for throwing your PI issues in our faces.  You see, to many of us, it seems crass and Neanderthal to give us even the slightest inkling of how much you would like to drag us by the hair back to your caves and slam us with your mighty clubs till the sun comes up.  We don't like it, not in the least...  or, at least not until the appropriate moment!

Many of us women love innuendo and subtlety.  It's a sign that there might be some depth hiding somewhere buried inside the big ape.  Don't despair, though, because there often IS an appropriate moment to show your Neanderthal side, as I'm sure some of you have figured out.  Try to think of it as part of the thrill of the hunt to get the timing just right. 

The (Anti) Monogamy Post, Part III

It's becoming increasingly obvious where this is going. So, for those of you who are pretty much reading this blog for one thing and one thing only (and to whom I'm increasingly catering), I've added a new label, "Non-Monogamy". Now, between this and the "Sex Tips", you can quickly and easily access what may be the best of Sexless Berlin.

Non-monogamous is what I've been, I suppose, since having something akin to a coming-out experience in my late 20s.  Recently, however, I've felt more and more that it's necessary to be militantly anti-monogamous, so as to continue to chip away at this monolith of monogamy constantly bearing down on us.  This blog has become almost exclusively my attempt, directed at both women and men, to do just that.  With sexism, misogyny, sexual harrassment, sexual abuse, rape and worst of all, pedophilia, so rampant in so many societies, I know we can do better.

As I am not in the least inclined to force my beliefs on others, it's incumbent upon me to recognize that the last thing that many of the people out there, who have suffered various traumas thanks to the monogamist monolith, would want is something that implies that they are responsible for servicing more people!  It's tricky, you see.  I have only two tools, it would seem: my eloquent (ahem!) writing and my ability to lead by example.

For those of you out there who've escaped serious damage and are perhaps willing to be swayed (and here I am speaking to women because most men, whether they admit it or not, would really prefer non-monogamy), how do I begin?  An Email exchange with a young and beautiful friend of mine brought me back to this topic which I've been mulling over in my head.  The question is: why do beautiful women so often castigate men who find them attractive?  It's quite simple: in our twenties the attention can become overwhelming, as I've blogged before.  And don't forget how intensely our societies trivialize women, reducing us to nothing more than our physical appearances.  The whole thing becomes at best confusing and at worst damaging.  Is it any wonder we get to the point where we wish we could make it all just go away?

Let's imagine instead a society where the important thing is not looks (or possessions or prestige or power), but sharing.  This is the world that Sex at Dawn envisions for us, where sharing includes everything, down to our own bodies.   Imagine what it might be like for you to be most valued for your desire and ability to contribute to and support the other members of your tribe or group.  Now imagine all the pathologies that would do away with.

Given that we women cannot just flick a switch and enter this alternate world, how might we begin to change things, little by little?  Let's start by trying to just assume innocent until proven guilty. After all, does it take a woman more than three minutes to figure out if a man, in addition to being attracted to her beauty, is interested in her mind/character/accomplishments/personal power?  I think not.

As a first step then, we can give These Men a chance.  After all, how easy can it be to talk to a beautiful, self-assured woman?  How many times are men cruelly shot down just because they try?  Shoot them down for being shallow, sexist, fascist, unintelligent, incurious, unthoughtful, etc., etc.  But not for simply daring to talk to someone who appeals to them.

The Pornography Post

Now I ask you, given the possibility of a steady supply of sex from multiple willing partners, how much time do you suppose men would spend wanking in front of their computers?  Picture this scenario if you will: ¨No, Miranda and/or Mandy, I couldn´t possibly service you right here and now as I have to go and watch for the 50th time that money shot where the Italian Stallion hits the voluptuous redhead square in the eye¨.  NO.  WRONG.  AIN´T GONNA HAPPEN.

Pornography is a perfect example of the damage caused by monogamy.   With so little sex happening and with men under pain of punishment for inappropriate sexual behavior, ranging from social ostracization to prison to a lifetime on the sex-offender´s list, what are the poor creatures to do?  I happen to think that them spending an hour or two a day watching flat-chested blondes ride well-hung dwarfs is a reasonable way to keep their hormones under control.  I also happen to think that a lot of monogamous relationships should give grateful thanks to pornography because I can hardly imagine how they would survive without it.

What do I as a woman think of porn?  I think it is horrifyingly male-centered. I think it is frequently yawningly repetitive and coldly plastic.  I think there is no doubt that it commodifies women.  I think it takes little account of women´s desire, sexuality and physiology, giving men next to no idea of how to interact with us, much less of our needs or how to please us.

I also on occasion enjoy it, particularly as a window into the desires of the men I´m involved with.  I even believe some porn is quite good, though it´s an unfortunately small minority.  Recently I´ve thought about asking for reader participation, to send me porn clips where they believe the women are actually climaxing (not the usual faking) and (even more rare) where the film-maker doesn´t immediately cut away from a woman´s climax. So what do you think, Sexless Berlin readers?  Do you have some good quality porn to share with me?  If so, post a comment with the link in the form of a URL.  And thanks to Anonymous whose comment prompted this post.

Bad Boys Ravish Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly

I'm as tired as any woman out there of being treated by men as a sexual commodity to be begged, borrowed or stolen. I'm also tired of giving freely to men who give nothing in return or (the worst) act as if they've gotten away with something. But unlike most women, perhaps, I don't blame it on their base animal natures. [I myself am hardly immune when it  comes to a base animal nature.]  No, for me it became much easier to get along in this world when I was able to ascribe the moronic behavior of These Men to the shitty socialization to which this society subjects us all.

Capitalism has taught us women that our sexuality is a desired commodity to be carefully rationed. In contrast, men are conditioned to try to get something (booty, in this case) for free. We all know what an extremely disagreeable tension this causes. As an extreme example, let's look at what happens in a sex club.  Women get in free most places in Berlin or, in Madrid, pay at most pay 10 euros (with a cocktail typically thrown in).  Men pay five or more times this price, unless accompanied by a woman, which generally at least halves the entry.  It's hardly surprising when inside, many behave like animals -- after all, they've paid for the right.

What sort of attitude does this engender in women?  Getting into a club for free (the eternal ladies' nights) gives us women the rather smug feeling that we're getting away with something.  I'm not sure many of us stop to think how we're being sexually commodified.  Well then, and the men?  I imagine they're very aware of the true cost of a "lay" -- so many euros to get in, so many minutes of cheap lines and stupid small talk before a woman loosens up, so many drinks to get her well lubricated (pun unintended), and, above all, a tangible chance of failure in the end.  Male readers, feel free to weigh in on this topic, but if I were you, I think I'd find it frustrating and unfair. Even so, you know those clubs, don't you, as you seem to show up as if on cue, within a half-hour of the close of ladies' night hours?

Sigh.  Does it really need to be this way?  The insane hormonal rollercoaster on which I currently find myself tells me clearly I am meant to get as much of that "good thang" as I possibly can before my time's up. My intellect tells me that I, and women like me, are prisoners of this system just as much as men are, and it will always be extremely difficult or impossible for us to freely and unselfconsciously act on and enjoy our own sexuality.

Given the personality with which I've been saddled, it really is so hard for me to give up without a fight. The Pirate says, "there you go, moving forward, creating new imprints and conditioning - consciously, not just the random hubris of a mechanical system of lowest common denominators".  Guilty as charged! I keep thinking and puzzling and pushing the envelope pretty much just as far as I dare.  And that's because there's a reason that's much, much bigger than just myself.

In this regard, the other week I consulted my dearly beloved Ex, who was visiting me in Madrid and like me seems to have spent the last few years observing first-hand some really horrendous sexual pathology.  My question to him was how much pathology is due to this mentality of sexuality as some sort of precious limited resource, instead of something that should be as free and abundant as the air we breathe.  Because here's the crux of the matter: if eschewing our shitty socialization would get rid of even a fraction of the sexual abuse of children and women, shouldn't we advocate it?  Militantly?  I really rather think the answer is yes.

Mother Nature

As Sarah Hrdy puts it in her excellent book, after which I've named this blog post (see an excerpt here), "Underlying tensions between males striving for quantity and females for quality (a simplification I will clarify later) are as old as humanity."   Yeah, so, we've heard plenty of times that it's men's evolutionary imperative to sow wild oats and women's to keep the home fires burning.  After all, this dichotomy is one strong reason for our evolutionary success.  I've done enough science in my life, plus this blog is supposed to be fun...  So I'll leave the long-winded arguments to people like Hrdy and Ryan and Jathá.  I'm here to say that there's substantial truth in the wild oats/home fires model.  But also that there's rather more similarity between the sexes than our shitty socialization has led us to believe.

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Let me turn to a little anecdote based on my own ancient personal history.  The first time I lived in Nicaragua was at the high point of the illegal U.S. contra war.  Eugene Hassenfus, the arms-running pilot who was free-lancing for the CIA, was shot down in November 1986, at which time I was working on farmerworker health and safety for the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health in León.  I watched up close and personal how that single event blew the lid off the Iran-Contra scandal.  Given my tender age at the time, I was as young as many of the young Nicaraguan men who served in the Sandinista army army in the '80s.  The consequences of that became very clear to me during my second stint in Nicaragua, 1999-2000, when there was clearly a shortage of men my age.  Estimates of casualties during the contra war range from 50 to 200K, in a country of 4 million (albeit with some 1 million living abroad thanks to extreme economic desperation). The war was devastating and by and large it was young men who died. 

Now bear with me as I recount another anecdote, about the bar on the south side of town where my lover during my second stint in León would sometimes take me.  According to him, everyone knew about this place, where married men who take their liaisons to lunch before packing them off to one of the sex hotels on the bypass for a little afternoon delight.  I remember once spotting a journalist friend of mine there who I knew in his public life (meaning I also knew his wife, father-in-law and children), with a woman who was definitively not his wife.  With both of these men later on, after I worked out the math, I tried out my argument.  For simplicity's sake, it went roughly this way: for our generation there was a shortage of some 100,000 men in a population of 1 million, meaning there were about 4 men to every 5 women.

Now Nicaragua tacitly accepted, or even benignly encouraged, men's "true nature", so I spent a fair amount of time trying to puzzle out exactly who all these women might be, that were providing the abundant cads and bounders the opportunity to sow all those wild oats? Because I had a hard time coming up with more than a ratio of about 1 and a quarter women per man.  I presented the only three possible options I could see.  First, there were a handful of single women happily servicing far more men than those men were servicing women. Second, there were a lot of prostitutes busy servicing all those Nicaraguan men. Or finally, those men's own wives were giving them a darn good run for their money.  

This brings me to an interesting digression, which is that Giles Tremlett in Ghosts of Spain cites the statistic that one of every 17 Spanish men has been to a prostitute. And this number pales with respect to the estimate of 39% in this horrifying article my ex recently sent me. I can feel a blog post detailing the pathology of sex in Spain coming on, but for now I'll limit myself to saying that my current housemate, who is a non-monogamist of the strongest sort and the first time I have thought I could be friends, actual friends (!), with a Spanish man, tells me, "en España, no follamos" -- in Spain we just don't screw.

Returning to the state of affairs in Sandinista Nicaragua, I can guarantee you that men, even if they wanted to, just didn't have the money to do much patronizing of prostitutes. And though I'm sure there were some happy single girls in circulation, it seemed to me always that there were more unhappy ones who wouldn't have much of anything at all to do with these men. So you see, I always ended up back at the conclusion that the girlfriends and wives, no matter how sedate and even virginal they seemed, had to have been up to their own tricks. Needless to say, these men didn't care too much for my arguments!

Although I've believed since my late 20s that I myself am not monogamous, I think that gradually throughout my 30s, it became clear to me that humans in general probably aren't.  Books like Open Marriage and The Ethical Slut in my 20s, which seemed to imply that non-monogamy was a lifestyle choice were replaced by The Third Chimpanzee and Mother Nature, that seemed to imply it is a biological imperative.  In my circle of intellectuals, I've initiated a debate as to whether we can separate our true nature from our socialization.  I think yes; but many of them think no. When I asked D. if we have fatally lost our way, she said "We have ..., indeed.  And we may be very old (or dead!) when the old order dies."

Now the problem is, I'm an American. You know:  land of the free, home of the brave.  This means I'm constitutionally incapable of accepting that there's no solution to this problem.  And so I'll just have to keep chewing away at the whole puzzle of what needs to be done.  Stay tuned to Sexless Berlin.  Although the blog posts may seem to come far too infrequently for my biggest fans, I'd like to think I'm delivering far more quality than quantity these days.

Just In from Chocolate Guy

This link and these words from Chocolate Guy: "It's even penetrated as far as the Guardian! That must be progress, or at least a pun." It's not just the Bay Area any more...

Girlfriend Material

Are you aware, dear readers, that not only is there research aplenty showing that we women are measurably more attractive when we are ovulating (see this fascinating article) -- breasts firm and lift, waists narrow and faces glow -- but we also engage in behaviors that range from dressing more provocatively to being careless about safe sex? At this very moment, I'm contemplating a careful scientific study to measure the likelihood a woman ends up in a nightclub the two or three days she's ovulating as opposed to spending her period eating ice cream and watching Desperate Housewives reruns.

Last year a lover of mine told me women could be divided into girlfriend material or something that I understood to be the opposite (shall we say, ahem, boffing material?) . . . ! I asked him exactly how he could tell and he said, "just look at how she's dressed." To a woman (or at least this woman), that sounds so patently absurd that I can almost feel a rant coming on.

But I'm going to suppress the urge and finally introduce a book, Sex at Dawn, that I first gobbled up when back in the Bay Area last October. It may very well be one of the most important books of the century, although it's dangerous to say so only 11 years into a new one. It's important to emphasis that I'm basing this judgment on the authors' ideas alone, as it's sadly written in a hyped American vernacular style that makes me shudder to think about what form translation into any other language/culture would take.

If you take my recommendation, then, please do your best to filter out all the unfortunate references to American pop culture and think about the real meat of the message. It's important, so important that I finally feel like there's a book out there that does what The Ethical Slut and Open Marriage just didn't do for me. It emphasizes that we humans actually don't really have a choice; that it's not just some of us choosing to be bounders or cads, loose or slutty. On the contrary, we as humans are designed to be unapologetically non-monogamous, promiscuously sharing everything we have, including our bodies.

When I despair of how far off-track we have gotten (girlfriend material, indeed!), I now have an intellectual space to which I can repair. I can remind myself that it's not only a good thing to want sex, but it's an important way for me to build bonds of mutual support with the people who matter to me, who represent my community. And when These Men don't understand that I am happy to give freely but that in return I expect them to behave as responsible members of this community, it helps to remind myself that I'm part of an exclusive group of intellectuals who realize that this species has apocalyptically, irredeemably lost its way. We've evolved ourselves straight into our own private hell.

Well I, for one, intend to spend the rest of my time in this hell of ours fighting to be the minx, harridan, Jezebel, temptress and vixen, as well as the paragon, madonna and goddess that millions of years of human evolution intended me to be. The paperback version of Sex at Dawn is hot off the presses with newly added material, my ex informs me. As both of my hardback copies seem to be perpetually loaned out, I'm putting in my order for the paperback, and it's staying on my bedside table, to be consulted and quoted whenever one of These Men tries to make me feel bad about my (and Mother) Nature.

The (Anti) Monogamy Post, Part II

Well now, it has come to my attention that this blog has become entirely too top-heavy with respect to the men-as-cheaters cliché so common among women. It's incumbent on me, therefor, to advance my anti-monogamy musings of last spring by explaining why this particular lament is not completely due to the dastardly nature of men themselves but more on social structures lamentably created -- 'tis true -- by penile-bearing creatures. Katchita, you will say, whatever can that tortured sentence be on about?! Well, dear readers, after struggling with this issue for years, I've decided it comes down to a simple question of bioanthropology.

Anti-Monogamy Theorem 1: Men have one and only one job: to impregnate as many women as possible.
Corollary to Theorem 1: Men must be constantly cruising and at the ready, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It's their nature, my dears; they really can't help themselves. I'll continue:

Anti-Monogamy Theorem 2: Women have one and only one job: to effectively raise their offspring, which they accomplish by obtaining as many protectors as possible.
Corollary to Theorem 2: Women must be sexually receptive to multiple men, either simultaneously, and/or in relatively close temporal succession.

It's our nature, darlings; we really can't help ourselves. My conclusion, then? That the most evolutionarily adapted among us, the ones best equipped to pass on our genes, are, if you'll pardon my language, simply going to fuck around. And the more we fuck around, the more we produce fuckers-around, and on and on it goes.

Well now, you may (perhaps) stipulate to my argument, but of course there's the more insidious problem of those societal constructs to which I was just alluding, now isn't there? And that's where the problem for women (or at least women like me) really comes in. Because those of us who've decided monogamy is not only anthropologically unrealistic, but who have, in addition, attempted to be open about and true to our beliefs, do, I'm afraid suffer. On a regular basis. Because what is more threatening to basic social constructs than a group of thoughtful, mouthy women who say, wait a minute, I'm not interested in participating in your tired old models? More on this later, my dears, but for now I'm girding my loins for another skirmish in the anti-monogamy battle.

The (Anti) Monogamy Post, Part I

There's no escaping that the secret to my (past) success with men was my ex. A woman who's getting (most) of her needs met elsewhere is virtually irresistible to men. I found it very interesting, actually, that most men are surprisingly good at playing second fiddle for an alpha female. Only once in ten years did I have someone (quite a bit younger) fall a bit too hard, although I do remember one other relationship where, due to circumstances, and by unspoken agreement, we didn't declare ourselves. Living the alpha-male <---> alpha-female <---> beta male(s) construct for nearly 15 years now has been wonderfully instructive. All in all, I've found many men are very good at not pair-bonding. I'm virtually certain this is something deeply embedded in human sexuality. After all, why not engage in a little beta-male behavior on the side, as long as it takes little effort? It can only improve a man's chances at passing along his genes.

The interesting thing is that the opposite seems to be completely untrue: very few women can deal with their partners' extracurricular activities and precious few seem to be any good as beta females. I simply can't make up my mind if the alpha-female <---> alpha-male <---> beta female(s) construct fails so dramatically in European and American (including Latinamerican) culture because of socialization or if it's something that runs deeper, at the bioanthropologic level. The only men who I've found to be the least bit adept at managing relations with multiple women are Nicaraguans (this could possibly be expanded to Latinamericans in general, but I hesitate to do so as I haven't spent enough time in enough countries). What's the secret to their success? I'd have to say it's an uncanny ability to keep extra-curricular activities completely hidden. And this brings me to one of the strangest things about humans: we are the only species to hide our sexual behavior, unique within the animal world. Is this for women's benefit? I really wonder if might be.

I'm certain that I can hardly think of anything more contrary to women's best interests than socially-dictated monogamy. The extremely long time that it takes to properly raise a human child virtually guarantees a mother will need multiple protectors, and I believe it is a fundamental drive within us women to seek as many as possible, both alpha and beta. And how exactly does a woman do so? By convincing as many partners as possible that her offspring are theirs as well. And how can she best do this? By having surreptitious sex. I'm constantly flummoxed that, no matter how good I am as a modern woman in taking care of myself, I always feel a deep, visceral need for a protector. Or two, or three! So you men, let me cite Henry Miller, Nexus, who got it completely right: "A woman, when truly grateful for the attentions she receives, nearly always offers her body." It's really that simple. And that's why Mr. Berlin, Mr. Europe, and Mr. Germany just won't work, at all, ever.