sovay | It's a weak little flame, it's all we got to our name

Current Music: Kris Delmhorst, "The Drop & The Dream"

It's a weak little flame, it's all we got to our name

I am sicker than I was the day after Arisia. More coughing, more exhaustion, less brain. I resent it. I understand perfectly well what happened—I attended a convention over the weekend where, if I really wanted to fight this off, I should have stayed in bed—but I still resent it. I would like to be writing, but I'm not, and I have to leave the house for an unrelated doctor's appointment this afternoon. I spent most of yesterday on the couch with Dr. Autolycus in my arms, firmly and medicinally purring. I recognize there are worse things to do with my time.

1. Courtesy of

selkie: longsword and archery and Gluck.

2. These poems particularly caught my eye: Marion McReady's "Ballad of the Clyde's Water," Sandra McPherson's "Sitting on a Desk," and Durs Grünbein's "The Doctrine of Photography" (trans. Karen Leeder).

3. The Guardian's redesign is driving me crazy, but I found this article by Jill Filipovic useful: "When we haven't yet agreed that female pleasure and clear enthusiasm are prerequisites for a sexual encounter, we lack the ability to peel back the layers of sexual experience, and we end up with two bad options: accept sexual inequity as just how sex is (or just how men are) or wedge truly bad sexual experiences into the category of sexual assault . . . Feminists have been on the forefront of tackling these knottier issues of sex, consent, pleasure and power. And so it's up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist."

4. I still don't like the redesign, but I love the evidence of 4500-year-old metalworking and engineering found on Keros in the Cyclades.

5. Courtesy of

handful_ofdust: James Cagney restores antiques and Gal Gadot needs to play either Bond or Viola or both right now.

I have nothing eloquent to say about Dolores O'Riordan having died; I heard the news and my reaction was a flat what the hell. She was an even less reasonable age for dying than the usual part of the landscape. "Zombie" (1994) was one of the very few music videos I saw when it aired; I was at the house of my best friend who followed contemporary music and she had MTV on and I had never heard anything like that breathless, breaking voice—or seen anything like the video's flip from mud-spattered black-and-white war games to gold-drenched tableaux, although the latter looks to me now like a director who might have glanced off Derek Jarman. The children's mouths opening, silent gold and screaming. O'Riordan a mourning fury. It still gives me chills.

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I know (and like) the song "zombie," but I'd never seen the video before, and wow. It's *very* powerful.

Really loved "Ballad of the Clyde's Water," especially the first third--sipping saltwater to help my body cry, and the repeated "who will remember" and the repeated "Because" lines. Thanks for sharing. I'll read the next two next.

The conversation happening about sex... it's so *big*. So much to say. One thing I think is, whatever the narratives surrounding sex that a culture has, and regardless of how comfortable you are with those narratives (and regardless of whether you should be comfortable with them), there are people who enact their role happily and those who don't, and those who enact their role well (whatever that means--depends on the narrative) and those who don't. ... Where do I want to go with this. I'm not sure. I guess maybe I want to say there are plenty of places for things to go wrong, and part of what makes the discussion so tangled is that people talk across all these different levels, trying to make themselves understood. ... ugh, I feel like the kid at the end of this video.

Edited 2018-01-18 18:53 (UTC)

PS. From Autolycus's purring to your healing--> prayer.

Oh man. I hope you feel better soon.

I was thinking this morning that yet again, it at least partly comes down to Guess Culture vs. Ask Culture.

I tried to further break this down, and I think that both Guess Culture and Ask Culture have multiple threads – like, Ask Culture is usually summed up as “it’s ok to ask for a favour (and indeed you have to or the other person assumes you don’t want anything), BUT you also have to accept that the answer might be No.” Except I think there are some versions of Ask Culture where, if it’s something important like joining a monastery, you have to not only ask, but prove your determination by ignoring the first couple of (expected, ritual) refusals.

Then in Guess Culture you’re not supposed to put someone in a position where they have to refuse, so you drop hints or ask exploratory questions first. In the mild versions of Guess Culture you can ask, as long as you’re really sure the answer will be “Yes.” In the stricter versions you can only drop hints and hope for an offer. But again, I believe some forms of Guess Culture also have a scenario where, once your hints have been acknowledged and the favour you want is proffered, you then have to (ritually) turn it down a few times, so as not to appear over-eager.

Not sure where I’m going with this except that it’s not so much Ask vs. Guess Culture that’s the problem, it’s the versions of either that also incorporate a Token Refusal rule.

And of course all of this assumes that everyone is acting in good faith and not trying to game whichever system they’re in by suddenly pretending not to understand the rules.

I liked the photos of Cagney restoring antiques in his garage – he looks so SRS BZNZ. I knew he raised horses and was generally very interested in agriculture. Now I’m picturing him and Daniel Day-Lewis hanging out and making stuff.

And although we've been deluged by guys who claim not to understand rules, I think it's possible to genuinely not understand rules--I know I can be confused by them. I can have a hard time reading interest or lack of it and a hard time signaling my feelings in a way that people understand.

On top of which, because we're dynamic creatures, living in time, our feelings genuinely change, and they change in reaction to one another. There's just not transparent communication **ever**, or very rarely, on topics that are fraught, like sex.

I guess maybe I want to say there are plenty of places for things to go wrong, and part of what makes the discussion so tangled is that people talk across all these different levels, trying to make themselves understood. ... ugh, I feel like the kid at the end of this video.

"Well, that was different."

That's wonderful. I think I had seen it a very long time ago, but completely forgotten. Thank you.

So I find Filipovic's article useful because I agree that a lot of the conversation is polarizing around the definition of assault—whether a given interaction is bad enough to count as assault, in which case it should be taken seriously, or whether it isn't, in which case whatever—and I feel strongly that in the same way that relationships can be bad without being abusive, sexual interactions can be bad without being assault, and in neither case does that make what happened okay. People can make you feel terrible without doing anything legally actionable. (People can make you feel terrible without meaning to.) There should be a way to acknowledge that and talk about it and look at the dynamics that drive it and figure out how to dismantle them and build in more mutually satisfying structures without it all depending on a given interaction clearing the bad enough bar, because right now that's the only way to get it taken seriously and broadening the definition is solving the wrong problem. That just reinforces the idea of the obvious binary, the problem we can all agree is a problem and always a problem in the same way. It won't make people take the awful, blurry stuff more seriously. And that's what needs to change most.

I was groped on a bus once, by someone I knew. We sat next to each other in seventh-grade math class. I considered him a friend. He had kissed me in the library stacks a few weeks previously, but we had done nothing else that I would have considered romantic or date-like, even hanging out together outside of class; I had mentally filed it as an experiment that hadn't panned out for either of us. We were taking different night classes at the same technical high school and sometimes sat next to each other on the bus there and back. We were on the way back when he started making out with me. I was not making out with him. I did not want him touching my breasts, my crotch, trying to get his fingers inside my jeans; I froze. I thought he would stop if I didn't respond. I thought he would get the idea if I kept turning away from him, bracing my shoulder so that he had to reach in past my tightly crossed arms in order to feel me up. I am pretty sure I even said "Don't" or "Stop." But he did not. I had the window seat and he was tall and his weight was holding me in place; I couldn't get past him without serious pushing or shoving. And I did not think, if I started yelling, that I would get any support from the rest of the bus. There were other kids on board, taking the same kinds of night classes. I was maybe two seats behind the driver. It felt like an absolute certainty that I would be told to sit down and shut up and stop making trouble. So I didn't yell. The rest of the ride took forever, with me prying his hands off and him clamping them right back on, stroking and squeezing and digging. He didn't say anything, which made the whole thing even weirder. He'd asked if he could kiss me in the library. I don't know what the other kids thought, if they saw what was going on; I assume they thought it was consensual despite my silence and my constant attempts to shoulder him off, because everyone knows that if you really don't want it, you fight. I got home and I told my parents and I was still shaking.

I don't know if that counts as sexual assault. I know it was awful and it made me feel terrible and the physical memory went off like a bomb some years later when I was engaging in thoroughly consensual sexual activity that happened to involve my first serious partner sliding his hand between my thighs without verbal warning. (The partner in question was wonderful and held me when I was able to return to bed and listened to me talk my way through what I realized was going on and that particular bomb has never gone off again, which means I can't one hundred percent trash all those romances where someone talks through their trauma and then they have really good sex and then it's solved, even if on principle I hate that trope.) As bad sexual experiences for people assigned female at birth go, it's a very small story. But it was totally consistent with the protocols of heterosexual dating in which no one asks any questions, the man makes a physical move, the woman is—supposed to be—persuaded to enjoy it. I have absolutely no idea what the boy who I had thought was my friend thought was going on, but the chances that he was a canny predator just waiting for the right defenseless moment are significantly lower than the chances that he was a horny thirteen-to-fourteen-year-old in the early '90's who thought this was just how getting together with a girl worked. I'd kissed him in the library, after all. I'd said yes then.

I want ways to talk about that.

Edited (HTML) 2018-01-18 20:15 (UTC)

It sounds pretty much like assault** to me! Yikes! But I understand what you're saying. We do need a way to talk about things without having to wedge them under the label of assault.

**ETA: But I also agree that he was more likely a horny and self-absorbed boy than a canny predator

Edited 2018-01-18 20:47 (UTC)

Purring is indeed medicinal! Feel better soon.

The music video for Zombie is amazing.

I love those photos of Gluck.

I hope you feel better soon, with the help of Dr. Autolycus.

PS. From Autolycus's purring to your healing--> prayer.

Thank you.

Oh man. I hope you feel better soon.

Thank you! Much too much of today was spent outside in the cold, but I got done the things I needed to do and now I am home. I do not plan to leave the house tomorrow if I can avoid it.

Not sure where I’m going with this except that it’s not so much Ask vs. Guess Culture that’s the problem, it’s the versions of either that also incorporate a Token Refusal rule.

I feel like a lot of American heterosexuality acts like it's Ask Culture but really operates according to the rules of Guess, which is a problem.

Edited (subject-verb etc.) 2018-01-19 02:25 (UTC)

I liked the photos of Cagney restoring antiques in his garage – he looks so SRS BZNZ.

He really does. And it looks good on him, being intense about furniture. (To be fair, most things looked good on James Cagney.)

Now I’m picturing him and Daniel Day-Lewis hanging out and making stuff.

I know almost nothing about Day-Lewis except his family and the films I've seen him in. Is he also intense about furniture?

Purring is indeed medicinal! Feel better soon.

Thank you!

(That is an excellent icon.)

The music video for Zombie is amazing.

I hadn't seen it in years when I looked up the link for this post and it was just as powerful as I'd remembered.

I love those photos of Gluck.

I like her paintings, too, but she had a hell of a face.

I hope you feel better soon, with the help of Dr. Autolycus.

Thank you!

Thank you for writing about that. I'm sorry that happened to you; I'd like to hope the boy did eventually grow up and learn better.

I'm sorry that happened to you; I'd like to hope the boy did eventually grow up and learn better.

Thank you. I hope so, too. I actually saw him years later in the Alewife T station; we recognized each other immediately and sort of waved and went our respective ways in the rush and it was the weirdest thing. It was not a setting conducive to even quick conversation, much less asking someone if they ever got it through their head about personal space.

But I understand what you're saying. We do need a way to talk about things without having to wedge them under the label of assault.

Thanks. Basically, I think a lot of my feelings boil down to: the fact that something is bad is reason enough to change it. The rules of the game don't need to produce wall-to-wall violence in order to need rewriting. "Awkward and unsatisfying but not technically coerced" should not be an acceptable minimum for a sexual encounter! And I understand that's not even what we're talking about in my case: it wasn't mutual but pushy, it was someone actually behaving as though if he just rummaged around enough in my erogenous zones, a magic switch would flick on and I would suddenly be into it. Was it equivalent to the kind of institutional abuse perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein, either legally or morally? No, and I don't think it was the same as if he had raped me, either. But that's not the point. It should not have happened and things like it should not happen and I don't see what's so very divisive about that. Just because it's not the worst-case scenario doesn't mean it's worth putting up with.

Edited 2018-01-19 17:30 (UTC)

I am sicker than I was the day after Arisia. More coughing, more exhaustion, less brain. I resent it. I understand perfectly well what happened

Aww. Indeed, but I hope you feel better soon. I'm glad you have Autolycus in the meantime! <3

Day-Lewis is known for getting into character by learning all the skills that character would have -- when he was in The Crucible, he apparently arrived on location early and helped build all the cabins, and for his most recent film The Phantom Thread,, he learned to sew and reverse-engineered a Balenciaga dress from photos (his wife sometimes wears it). Also one of the times he’d retired from acting for a while, he apprenticed to a cobbler and learned to make shoes. I like his acting, but every time I read an interview he sounds as though he’s so much happier working with his hands.

I sometimes feels as though both rulebooks are kept under a table, and whichever one will condemn women is the one that gets hauled out.

I feel as though, for all the problems with Guess Culture, it at least trains you to pay attention to the subtleties, and to the risk of embarrassing the other person (actually another version of this came up yesterday, regarding asking personal questions of people you’ve just met.)

Also one of the times he’d retired from acting for a while, he apprenticed to a cobbler and learned to make shoes. I like his acting, but every time I read an interview he sounds as though he’s so much happier working with his hands.

Oh, man, I wish he'd played Wittgenstein. He sounds like he could relate.

I sometimes feels as though both rulebooks are kept under a table, and whichever one will condemn women is the one that gets hauled out.

That may be true. For the record, I would consider it an equal problem if the culture claimed to be Guess but then operated according to Ask; I just feel the other way round is likelier based on the amount of puzzle-boxing men do about women. "Yes, she said she wasn't interested in me and she'll block me if I message her again, but she said it with a rising tone in the second half of the sentence, so really that means . . ."

Edited 2018-01-19 17:35 (UTC)

Indeed, but I hope you feel better soon. I'm glad you have Autolycus in the meantime!

Thank you! He purrs above the keyboard as we speak.

Yes to everything you say here.

It reminds me of an encounter I had between my junior and senior years of college. I was in Northumberland, visiting a relative. I was out by myself on a country road and climbed up the hill beside the road to sit by myself. A guy somehow found me there--how, I don't recall (i.e., whether he came up from the road or whether there was a path down the hill, or what). He started exclaiming over me and how wondrous it was to see me there--I was feeling very frightened at that point. I was all alone. He asked if he could kiss me. Terrified, I said yes--then said I had to go and hurried away.

In **his** memory maybe it was a poetic encounter ending in a willingly given kiss. In my memory it was a scary situation that I was lucky to have gotten out of with just a kiss.

Maybe it was wrong for me to assume that the guy might have done worse, or might have been angry if I'd said no--maybe he's have been hurt if he knew. But there it is.

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