{"id":56632,"date":"2012-05-05T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-05T19:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=56632"},"modified":"2012-05-04T13:01:04","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T17:01:04","slug":"in-search-of-the-sm-siri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/in-search-of-the-sm-siri\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search Of the S&M Siri"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t know what to think of these young people today. <\/p>\n

Do they have it better or worse? Fewer sexual stigmas, yes, but oh my god those student loans. The upshot is I\u2019d like to feed them and introduce them to some nice people, but I don\u2019t believe I could date anyone under 40 at this point. <\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Which is a shame, because that\u2019s mostly who I was set up with at the Poly Speed Dating event I went to recently. We were interested in meeting a nice single woman interested in dating a couple, and they don\u2019t call such creatures unicorns for nothing. There was only one of this kind in the room, and she was already in a relationship with a couple. It was still a fun and enlightening night, and I even won a prize. <\/p>\n

A lot of the young people who sat across from Chris and me at our dating table were IT people, and we talked about the complexity of the algorithms involved. The organizers had the excellent idea of asking whether, in the event that there weren\u2019t many people who fit your desired profile, you\u2019d prefer having a \u201cfriendship\u201d prospect visit your table or just sit out those rounds. We checked \u201cfriendship\u201d so I could talk to as many people as possible, and we ended up talking to a lot of nice young men.<\/p>\n

Also recently, I spent a lot of time on the couch after another eye operation, listening to commentary and reading articles on super-magnification. There was a lot of talk about the HBO series \u201cGirls\u201d and what it means. The show is a sort of grittier update on \u201cSex and the City,\u201d among more struggling twentysomethings. I really didn\u2019t want to watch it, because self-involved kids in a bizarre all-Caucasian version of New York, well, come on. But two big topics of discussion got my interest.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first was about a masturbation scene. One of the characters spent some time talking to a dreary twink they were trying to pass off as adult and a hetero artist. He got up in her face for a minute and uttered this line: \u201cThe first time I fuck you it might scare you, because I\u2019m a man and I know how to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh dear. Apparently this is how young men are meant to carry on nowadays. He was also ‘negging’ her, which is a technique they\u2019re told drives women wild. I\u2019ve had some people try it on me from time to time. It means mildly insulting a woman by pretending you don\u2019t find her attractive. It\u2019s supposed to pique her interest. These poor things, spending so much on college and learning nothing. Immediately after her conversation with this fop, the character scurried off to the art gallery bathroom, conveniently a bathroom of the kind known as a ‘one-manner’, meaning not one with several stalls, locked the door and took care of herself. Commenters said this was unrealistic; one claimed that no woman would want to get off so badly that she could accomplish it standing up and in pantyhose. Well, maybe the pantyhose part, I could agree with. Nothing disrupts my chi worse than a nylon sausage casing.<\/p>\n

Other hot topics were about the penchant for being dominated that the main character seemed to be developing. She seemed to like getting pushed around. What seems hard to believe is that these frail hipsters could actually get that job done, but many viewers said they could relate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back in real life, Chris and I were set up for ‘friendship’ dates for nearly all of our lineup; blame him being hopelessly straight and both of us checking off \u201cnot kinky\u201d on our information sheets. There was a lot of discussion of what constitutes ‘kinky’ with all our friend dates. We all agreed it\u2019s a relative term, but what caused us to check \u201cnot\u201d is that while we like to play with all kinds of different things, we don\u2019t want BDSM, for instance, strongly enough to seek it out. <\/p>\n

The kinds of things many people consider vanilla would probably still be considered kinky to many; and the line is moving on vanilla, maybe as a result of porn going more mainstream. When suburban couples wanting to be hip started going to see Deep Throat<\/em>, this popularized blow jobs (what an odd term, and probably not the appropriate one; I\u2019m fairly certain it was wildly popular for centuries before the 1970s), for instance, and the same sort of thing is happening now with Kink Lite. I\u2019d include in Kink Lite pretty much anything that doesn\u2019t require special training, equipment or cleanup, and doesn\u2019t leave a trail of damage. <\/p>\n

Our kinky friend dates were nearly all nice-looking young men. They seemed to know their way around a silk rope or a delayed orgasm, just from little hints dropped here and there. (Our conversations were mostly terribly innocent, but you can tell when they\u2019re establishing the \u201cI\u2019m a man and I know how to do things\u201d position.) No one was doing the negging thing; they were friendly and polite, but they appeared to be tops, to a man. <\/p>\n

What I\u2019m wondering is whether the tables have turned somewhat. I was in my 20s in the 1980s, when S&M, as they used to call it, was starting to move into the mainstream. The typical profile was the woman dominatrix, usually well-paid if she chose to pursue it as a profession, and her audience was men of power. These men were tired of being Masters of the Universe, as we used to call them (see, every generation has its own folly), and longed, during their down time, for someone to order them around.<\/p>\n

Now, it appears, it\u2019s the women who are tired of being in control, and would like someone to take some of that freedom off their hands and tie said hands to the bedstead. I\u2019m also noticing how much the movie Secretary<\/em> (which I like very much) keeps coming up as a touchstone for women. It\u2019s about an office worker who is dominated by her boss (a lawyer, naturally). There\u2019s also a lot of chatter now about the \u201cmommy porn\u201d bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em>, in which a young woman is dominated by a rich and extraordinarily thoughtful construct of a character. He tells her what to eat, when to work out, what to wear and when to get a wax. <\/p>\n

My first thought at hearing about this book was: That\u2019s not a dom. That\u2019s an app.<\/p>\n

But then, one of my favorite parts of Secretary<\/em> is when the boss tells her she should walk to and from work so that she\u2019ll get some fresh air and exercise. <\/p>\n

Maybe we\u2019re not all that hot to be dominated. Maybe we\u2019re just tired of having to take care of ourselves. This Katie Roiphe column<\/a> says it much better than I do, if you\u2019d like to explore further. <\/p>\n

Putting my disdain aside, it truly must be a great relief from time to time to have someone tell you: I know how you need to feel and what you need to do, and I\u2019m going to MAKE you feel that way. As Dr. Johnson (Samuel, not Masters and) said of the prospect of hanging, being given strict orders \u201cconcentrates the mind wonderfully.\u201d And just like the corporate executives of the \u201880s, these women are only pretending not to have the upper hand, for a little while. They\u2019re quite free to take their business elsewhere. They are what\u2019s known as \u201cbottoms who top.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ironic that this is coming about while there are so many real-life threats to women\u2019s autonomy. Enjoy the games, but be careful what you wish for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila I just don\u2019t know what to think of these young people today. Do they have it better or worse? Fewer sexual stigmas, yes, but oh my god those student loans. The upshot is I\u2019d like to feed them and introduce them to some nice people, but I don\u2019t believe I could date … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}