The Blowfish Blog

[Greta Christina] Multiple Marriage and the Texas Polygamy Case

I wasn’t going to comment on the Texas polygamy case at first. At first I didn’t have anything to say about it other than, “Oh, my god, that is so awful.” But someone asked me an interesting question the other day, and it made me realize I have something to say about this after all.

The question: Do you think multiple marriage should be legal?

Here’s why this is relevant. One of the main objections to legalizing multiple marriage is that, in the world as it is today, multiple marriages tend to be abusive. Groovy polyamorous triads aren’t the norm, the argument goes. The norm for multiple marriage, in this country and around the world, is coercive and abusive religious cults that effectively imprison women and children. And if we don’t have laws against multiple marriage, these abusive cults will be legitimized, and there will no protection for their victims.

I’m not sure whether that’s true or not. I don’t know if anyone has ever done a good, careful study on the frequency of multiple relationships, either in this country or around the world, to see if the coerced cult variety really does outnumber the consensual free-adult variety. If there has been such a study, I haven’t seen it.

But here’s the point I want to make.

When the Texas polygamy compound got raided and arrests were made, nobody was charged with bigamy.

The charges so far have all been related to child abuse. And the case seems to be largely in the hands of Child Protective Services.

So how does the illegality of multiple marriage help the victims of these situations?

Why should consenting adult polyamorists be denied the right to codify their relationships in law, simply because some religious cults use polygamy as a form of abuse?

You could argue a slippery slope argument. You could argue that legalizing multiple marriages would confer an acceptance and legitimacy on the polygamy cults, thus making it that much harder to go after them for the child abuse. I have, in fact, seen that argument made. (Sort of like the argument that the drinking age should be 21, because if it’s set at 18 then it’ll be easier for 16- and 17-year-olds to get booze. The idea being that you have to set the line further than you really think is reasonable, because some people will always cross it.)

But I’m always suspicious of slippery slope arguments. I’m suspicious of them because you can always make one. You can always argue, “We can’t have X, because X will lead to Y!” Most of the time it’s a cheap rhetorical stunt: if you can’t actually come up with a convincing argument that X is bad, instead you scare people into thinking that X will lead to Y. I’m not saying slippery slope arguments are never valid; but unless you can make a case that X actually is likely to lead to Y, you really should restrict your arguments to X itself.

Especially when X is a consenting choice of adults, and restricting it means placing an unreasonable restriction on people’s freedom.

And in fact, the “potential harm” argument could easily go the other way. It could be argued that the anti-bigamy laws actually make things worse for the victims of the polygamy cults, since they drive the culture underground and alienate its members from the law. (Much the way that anti-prostitution laws make things worse for prostitutes — even in the cases when they are being genuinely victimized.)

I’m not sure if I think multiple marriage is a good idea. It never seemed like a realistic possibility, so I honestly haven’t thought about it that much. My instinctive reaction is to say, “Sure, why not.” I’m generally in favor of consenting adults making whatever domestic arrangements they like, and unless I can see a compelling argument against it, I don’t see any reason why those arrangements shouldn’t be recognized by law. (On the other hand, I can see it being a horrible legal tangle. All the legal questions that are complicated enough with just two spouses — divorce, custody, inheritance, property ownership, tax law, etc. — could turn into a chaotic mess with three or more spouses in the mix.)

It’s an interesting question, and it’s one I’d like to see discussed. But I don’t see the abusive polygamy cults as being a good argument against it. The bigamy laws aren’t even being used against the cults. If that’s our big weapon against the cults, then it’s not a very good one.

To argue that multiple marriage shouldn’t be legal because some polygamists are abusive is like arguing that gay sex shouldn’t be legal because some priests molest altar boys. Or, to broaden it even more, that no marriage should be legal because some husbands beat up their wives. We shouldn’t be blocking people from a consenting and harmless arrangement just because some people will abuse it.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] The Joy of Theoretical Non-Monogamy

Well, “theoretical” is probably not the right word.

Here’s the thing. I write a lot about non-monogamy. And I write it from the point of view of someone in a successful non-monogamous relationship. But there are times when I feel a bit hypocritical, or at least not 100% honest, about the writing I do about non-monogamy.

Because — how shall I put this? — our non-monogamy is largely theoretical.

Well, again, “theoretical” may not be the right word. Maybe “potential” would be more accurate.

Here’s what I mean. My wife and I are non-monogamous. We’re both free to have sex outside the relationship, with the other’s permission and blessing. We have limitations, of course, agreements we’ve made about sex outside the relationship: what kinds of sex are okay, under what conditions, when to tell each other, how much to tell each other, etc. But the option to have sex outside the marriage is there, and has been since we first got together.

But neither of us does very much about it. And haven’t, for a long time.

For me, the issue has pretty much been time and energy. Between my day job and my writing, which I am now pursuing to the point of obsessive- compulsion, I’m already working six days a week, sometimes seven. I barely have time and energy for friends, for reading, for dancing, for all the things other than work and marriage that give my life meaning. I don’t even spend as much time with my wife as I’d like. And despite the fact that I’m spending almost every spare waking moment on it, I still don’t have enough time to do all the writing that I want to. Where the hell am I going to find time to squeeze a fuckbuddy into all of that?

And I definitely don’t have the time and energy — not to mention the patience — to actually seek out a potential fuckbuddy. If I happened to meet someone in the course of my life who seemed attractive and available and interested, I’d consider it. But to go on a dozen personal-ad first dates? To kiss a dozen frogs in hopes of meeting a princess or prince? I’ve been there, I’ve done that. And to be fair, I actually had a lot of fun with it in my twenties and thirties, when I had world enough and time. But now . . . well, I’m not saying, “Never.” But I am saying, “Not this week.” And I’ve been saying, “Not this week,” for I don’t know how long. You know how couples who want kids say that it’s never a good week to have a kid? It’s never a good week to look for a fuckbuddy.

And yet, if my wife came to me tomorrow and said, “I don’t want to be non-monogamous anymore,” I’d have a serious problem with it.

Which is the point I want to make. I realize it’s taken me an absurdly long time to get to the point: but this is definitely it, coming up right now.

I have found that non-monogamy is a tremendously valuable asset to our relationship . . . even when neither of us does much of anything about it. The main advantage of non-monogamy isn’t necessarily all the wild monkey sex you get to have with all the hot babes. For me, the main advantage of non-monogamy is that it makes the issue of Other People pretty much a non-issue.

When I was in monogamous relationships (or theoretically monogamous ones), Other People were always an issue. Is my partner having sex with someone else? Are they flirting with someone else? Do they think that other person is more attractive than me? Should I be worried about what they’re doing? Am I worrying over nothing? Am I deluding myself into believing there’s nothing to worry about when really there is?

And it wasn’t just my partners’ attractions and involvements that were an issue, either. My own were, too. Much more so, in fact. When you’ve promised that you won’t have sex with other people, then every single time that you have the serious hots for someone else turns into a Big Fucking Deal: an unbearable yearning that turns you into a character from a Gothic novel or a bad soap opera. It did for me, anyway. And from what I’ve observed in other monogamous relationships, it does for a whole lot of other people, too.

But when you’re not monogamous, the Gothic soap opera vanishes like a bad dream in daylight. The basic unavoidable fact that you and your partner are living animals with normal libidos doesn’t turn into a crisis. The fact that your partner is flirting with someone else at a party, the fact that you yourself are flirting with someone else at a party, all those little flickers of attraction and curiosity that human animals are subject to: not a crisis. Non-monogamy takes the lid off of the pressure cooker. It turns the brooding melodrama into a sophisticated romantic comedy. It makes it No Big Deal.

Non-monogamy relieves relationship pressure in another way, too. If there’s a particular kind of sex you like (or want to try) and your partner isn’t into it, you aren’t forced to choose between deprivation and infidelity. You have a third option: Go Do That Thing With Someone Else. And when Doing That Thing With Someone Else is an option, you sometimes find that That Thing no longer has that bewitching glow of irresistibly tempting eroticism. There have definitely been times when I’ve had some fantasy that my partner wasn’t crazy about; have considered pursuing it outside the relationship; and decided that it really wasn’t worth the bother.

Which brings me to the best thing about non-monogamy. For me, anyway. When you’re not monogamous, you realize that not every single person you’re attracted to is someone you’d seriously like to fuck if given the opportunity.

This is probably the single most important lesson that non-monogamy taught me. When you’re monogamous, every single person you’re even moderately attracted to seems like Shangri-La, a lost city of infinite erotic promise, with genitals made of divine light and chocolate ice cream that would transform your life if only you could have a taste. (It did for me, anyway.) The allure of the forbidden, and all that.

But when you’re non-monogamous, you remember that you don’t actually want to go to bed with every attractive person who crosses your path. Some attractive people become much less attractive on closer acquaintance. Some attractive people are crazy; some attractive people are dull; some attractive people have appalling political opinions. And some attractive people you just don’t connect with. Especially if you have a busy, reasonably fulfilling life, the reality of non-monogamy may well turn out to be that most people who you’re passingly attracted to are not, in fact, people you actually want to fuck. They may be perfectly lovely, but they’re just not worth the effort.

I’m not saying non-monogamy is right for everybody. If even the thought of your partner having sex with someone else gives you anxious fits, the reality probably isn’t going to be so swell. And it’d be irresponsible to get into a non-monogamous relationship on the understanding that neither of you is actually going to do anything about it. I can’t even get my mind around the contorted logic that that would involve.

But I think a lot of people avoid non-monogamy because they think it means “constantly running around with other people.” And I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t necessarily mean that. If you’re a normal urban couple with the usual insanely- overbooked urban life, then it very likely isn’t going to mean that. (You can even make that one of your agreed-upon limitations if you like. I had an affair once with a guy whose agreement with his partner was, “No more than once a month” . . . an agreement that worked out amazingly well, for a good long time.)

For me at least, the main joy of non-monogamy isn’t all the different hot babes I get to boink. The joy of non-monogamy is knowing that different hot babes are an option. And it’s the pressure that this option takes off of our relationship. The joy of non-monogamy isn’t all the Other People. It’s the transformation of Other People from tantalizingly forbidden fruit into just another choice, one more potentially fun thing that I could theoretically be doing with my ever-vanishing spare time. It’s the transformation of Other People from high drama into no big deal.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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[Greta Christina] Jealousy, Friendship, and Bisexual Chopped Liver

So there’s this trope I sometimes see in monogamous relationships. (In particular, I see it in advice columns: it came up in a recent Savage Love column, and I’ve seen it more than once in the Dear Abby/ Ann Landers ouvre.)

It goes like this: “My partner has a friend. The friend’s sexual orientation is towards the gender that my partner happens to be. Is it reasonable for me to be jealous? Should I permit this friendship to continue?”

(Or the reverse: “I have a friend. The friend’s sexual orientation is towards my gender. Is it reasonable for my partner to be jealous, and to want the friendship to end?”)

Okay. In trying to make this generic and gender- neutral, I’m being a little obscure. So let’s clear it up and make it specific: “My wife has a new friend from work, a straight man she sometimes goes to basketball games with. Should I be jealous?” Or: “I’m a straight woman who’s developing a friendship with a lesbian. My husband is jealous. WTF?” (Both real examples from real advice columns, btw. Dear Abby stupidly advised, “By no means should you permit your wife to attend basketball games with another man”; Dan Savage, much more wisely, suggested that the husband of the woman with the lesbian friend should get a first class ticket for the clue train.)

Now, I’m not going to get too deeply into the obvious. I’m not going to get into the craziness of the idea that any and all friendships will eventually turn sexual if the sexual orientations line up right. I’m not going to get into the fucked-upedness of the notion that people should choose their friends entirely on the basis of gender, for the sole purpose of avoiding possible sexual attraction. I’m not going to get into the absurd paranoia that even the slightest hint of sexual attraction in a friendship will eventually overwhelm it with uncontrollable passion. (Hey, for some of us, having a little attraction for a friend makes a friendship more interesting . . . even when we have no plans whatsoever to act on the attraction, ever.)

And I’m not going to point out that, according to this theory, gay men could never have gay male friends, and lesbians could never be friends with other lesbians.

I’m not even going to get into the borderline- evil concept that people in relationships have veto power over their partners’ friends. This is just R-O-N-G Rong, stupidly and evilly wrong, in all but the most extreme circumstances. (”My partner is making friends with the man who tried to murder me.” Okay, you have veto power. Everyone else, shut up. Your partner is a free agent, with the right to make their own damn friends independent of you.)

Here’s what I want to say instead:

So what are we bisexuals — chopped liver?

According to this theory, bisexuals could never, ever have any friends at all. We couldn’t be friends with gay men, straight men, straight women, lesbians. And we definitely couldn’t be friends with other bisexuals. According to this theory, the fact that we’re attracted to both women and men makes us ineligible to be friends with anybody, of any gender, ever.

No, that’s not quite true. We could be friends with non-monogamous people, and with single people. But once those single get into monogamous relationships — blammo. That’s the end of that friendship.

I’m not just writing this to point up the stupidity and irrationality of this particular form of jealousy. I’m writing it to point up the stupidity and irrationality of bisexual invisibility.

We used to be a culture that assumed heterosexuality. We still are, to a great extent. But even when we don’t assume heterosexuality, we are still, far too often, a culture that assumes monosexuality. We are still a culture that asks, “Is he gay or straight?” We are still a culture that sees a woman dating a man and says, “Wait a minute — she’s straight? I thought she was a lesbian!” (Or a woman dating a woman, vice versa.) We are still a culture that ignores the Kinsey scale, the spectrum of sexual orientation — and the shifts that many of us make over that spectrum throughout our lives.

And this assumption leads to some truly convoluted errors in logic. I recently wrote about an example of this here in this blog, about how the “Is sexual orientation a choice?” debates almost always ignore bisexuals . . . since even if bisexuals are born bisexual, we still have some degree of choice about which direction to take our lives in. And the bisexual wars in the lesbian community led to my favorite piece of Alice in Wonderland political logic ever: “The lesbians will decide who is a lesbian.”

I can see why people tend to overlook bisexuals. Our existence does poke holes in a lot of conventional wisdoms — especially when it comes to sorting our society by gender and sexual orientation.

But . . . well, that’s actually my point. The existence of bisexuals pokes holes in the sorting of our society by gender and sexual orientation, pointing up ridiculous contradictions and convoluted logic that would be hilarious if it weren’t so annoying.

So maybe we should quit sorting our society by gender and sexual orientation.

And maybe we should start with our friendships. And the friendships of our spouses and partners.

Which are none of our damn business anyway.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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The Bank Job, and the Normalizing of Kink

Warning: This isn’t a proper movie review. Not at all. I barely even mention the movie’s plotting and construction, its writing and acting, its lighting and camerawork. This is a lot more like that Saturday Night Live sketch, the one with the welder’s review of “Flashdance.”

This is the sadomasochist’s review of “The Bank Job.”

Which I certainly wasn’t expecting to write when I saw the movie.

Quick precis: “The Bank Job” is an unusually well-done bank heist movie, set in England in the 1970s, and based — loosely — on real events. And one of the movie’s main MacGuffins — an object everyone is chasing after, an object driving the plot — is a series of photos of a member of the House of Lords cavorting at a brothel . . . a brothel offering, among other things, sadomasochistic services, catering to what is often known as “the English vice.” These photos of an MP being tied up and flogged have obvious blackmail potential; hence everyone in the movie being very interested in them, and attempting to steal and swindle and threaten them away from one another. (There’s another, more central MacGuffin in the movie, also involving naughty photos of a famous person; but that’s a post for another day.)

Now, secret sex — even secret sadomasochistic sex — being used to drive a movie plot is hardly unusual. It’s barely worth even mentioning, much less writing an entire column about. But there’s something about the kink in “The Bank Job” that’s very unusual indeed . . . so unusual in mainstream movies as to be almost unheard of.

And that’s this: The movie’s attitude towards the sadomasochism is entirely casual, and entirely non-judgmental.

The SM scene in the photos — which we get to see a bit of as it’s being secretly photographed — is more than just safe and sane and consensual. It’s friendly. It’s happy. The MP at the center of attention is smiling, enjoying himself, and even making requests in a very “topping from the bottom” manner. Devotees of the more classic forms of SM might chide him for his manners and his poor form — and obviously the fact that he’s being secretly photographed for potential blackmail purposes isn’t so cool — but nobody could say that he isn’t having a good time.

What’s more, the women in the brothel — the women tying up and whipping said MP, as well as the women catering to more conventional desires — look happy to be doing what they’re doing. They’re not victims, they’re not prisoners: they’re professionals, doing their job and enjoying it a fair amount.

And while the characters in the movie are of course aware of the photos’ shock value — and hence their blackmail value — none of them seem personally shocked or surprised. There’s no, “This man likes to be beaten? Merciful Zeus! What wicked debauchery has this world descended to? And a Member of Parliament, too!” They’re amused, they’re entertained, they’re immediately aware of the photos’ potential value and perfectly willing to take advantage of it . . . but none of them seems upset, or concerned, or even the least bit surprised, by the fact that a member of the English aristocracy gets off on being beaten.

And in movies with SM in them, this attitude is so rare as to be almost unheard of. The usual cinematic approach to SM is to treat it as a marker for real-life cruelty and abuse, or real-life martyrdom and self-destruction. Sexual sadists tend to be evil drug lords or something; sexual masochists are either prisoners of the sadists, or prisoners of their own sick, destructive desires. And when movies show SM, they typically try to have their cake and eat it too: using SM imagery to excite and titillate the audience, while at the same time condemning and punishing the people who engage in it.

Either that, or the whole thing gets treated as a big joke. Treating SM as just another sexual variation — and treating society’s objections to it as silly and hypocritical — is rarer in the movies than dildos at a church picnic.

There have been other pro-SM movies, of course. “Secretary” leaps to mind. But that was a movie specifically about an SM relationship. “The Bank Job” is the first mainstream movie I can think of that has SM as a side plot, a casual, secondary plot device with not that much attention paid to it . . . and that still pays the attention it does give to SM with basic acceptance and an acknowledgement of its right to exist.

I don’t know if this marks the start of a trend, or if it’s just a one-time fluke. But I just want to say this, to all the sadomasochists who have been coming out over the last couple/ few decades and trying to educate the public about what we do: Good job, everybody. Coming out works. It’s slow going, but it works. Keep it up.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Loading the Dice: Bisexuality and Choice

In the various and sundry debates about gay rights, the question of whether sexual orientation is a choice comes up with almost irritating predictability. And when it does, one of the things I’ve noticed is that bisexuality — as it so often does — gets completely ignored.

So I want to talk a little about bisexuality, sexual orientation, and choice.

Because, speaking as a bisexual person, in my experience I do have something of a choice.

Of course it’s true that I don’t have a choice about who I’m sexually attracted to. And I didn’t have a choice about who I fell in love with. I don’t choose that, any more than anyone else does. But back when I was dating, I did have a choice about who I dated and who I socialized with. At the time that I fell for Ingrid, I was dating women, and socializing in the lesbian community, a whole lot more than I was with men and in the hetero community. And I was doing it out of choice.

On the whole, I like women more than men. Sexually I like both roughly the same (with something of a preference for women on the whole, but with that preference varying a lot over the years). But personally, emotionally, I tend to like women better than men. Not as friends necessarily — I have plenty of male friends — but as romantic partners. The personality traits that, in my experience, women tend to have more than men — cooperation, empathy, emotional expressiveness, good listening skills, yada yada yada — are traits that I like, and traits that I find central to a good relationship.

Now, of course, that’s a generalization, and a very broad one at that. Not all women are like that, and plenty of men are. And if I’d happened to meet and fall for a man who was cooperative and empathetic and expressive and a good listener etc., then that would have been just ducky. But back when I was dating, dating women just seemed to make more sense. It was the smart way of playing the odds. It was loading the dice.

And it works the other way, too. I’ve known other bisexuals who date and socialize more heterosexually — again out of choice.

It is, IMO, one of the differences between being bisexual and being monosexual (hetero- or homosexual). You can, in theory, be happy being sexual and romantic with someone of either gender . . . and so you have at least some degree of choice about which gender you get involved with. Indeed, if your relationship preference is very strong indeed, you can actually flat-out refuse to get involved with potential partners of one gender or the other, even if your libido or your heart is temporarily pulling you towards them . . . and unlike homosexual people who refuse to accept their homosexuality, you can still have a happy and satisfying sexual and romantic life. And even if you don’t go that far, you can still generally date and socialize with the gender and the community you’d prefer to end up with. You can’t choose who you get the hots for . . . but you can hang out with the kind of people you’d be happy to hook up with if lightning strikes. You can load the dice.

So when I hear people defend gay rights by saying, “Of course it’s not a choice, who would choose to be queer, who would choose to be oppressed and vilified and discriminated against?”, my reaction is to raise my hand and say, “Me. Over here. I would.” Of course I’d rather not be oppressed, etc. — but even with all of those drawbacks, I’d still choose to be queer. And I’d still choose to be in a queer relationship. I did.

And this is a big part of the reason that I think the “choice” issue is a red herring in the gay rights debates. After all, you could argue that pedophiles don’t choose to be attracted to children, and still think it’s profoundly immoral to act on that attraction. The important question in the gay rights debates is not whether being queer is a choice, but whether there’s any reason whatsoever to think that being queer is harmful. And by now, the evidence is overwhelming that it is not. Whether it’s a choice or not is irrelevant. It is still, flatly and unequivocally, none of anybody else’s damn business.

I developed these ideas in a discussion thread on Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Thanks, Ed.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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A Tale of Two Scandals: The Obligatory Eliot Spitzer and “American Idol” Stripper Column

When the governor of New York resigns due to the revelation that he had sex with a prostitute — and a contestant on a top-rated TV reality show is found to have been a stripper — sex columnists around the world are driven to the stories like salmon returning home to spawn. So this is kind of an obligatory column. I am powerless to control myself. Can’t . . . stop! Must . . . blog . . . about . . . Spitzer . . . and . . . the “American Idol” . . . stripper! Send . . . help!

But until help arrives, I’m going to have fun with it.

Here’s the thing I keep thinking about Governor Eliot Spitzer. Yes, the hypocrisy. Yes, the irony of a law- and- order, anti- prostitution governor being caught with a hooker. Yes, the fascinating pattern of public figures in politics and religion indulging in the exact same tabooed sex acts they preach against most vehemently. Yes, the increasingly repugnant spectacle of the wronged wife having to stand by her man at his podium of shame. Lots of people have said this already, better than I.

So apart from all that, here’s what I keep thinking:

A weird part of me is glad he’s a Democrat.

Bear with me. My political affiliation hasn’t changed lately (except that I switched my registration from Green back to Democrat so I could vote in the last primary). It’s just that I’m starting to think that the “it’s always the right-wingers who are caught in the sex scandals” analysis — an analysis I’ve indulged in myself — is just a little too simplistic.

Remember Gary Hart, anybody? Ted Kennedy? Bill Clinton?

People screw around. People cheat on their spouses and partners. People — men, mostly, although a few women as well — have sex with sex workers. And politically powerful men have been screwing around with lovers and mistresses and hookers for centuries. (Politically powerful women, too. The horse story about Catherine the Great is an urban legend . . . but the stories about her many lovers are well-documented. IMO, the main reason we haven’t had a Congresswoman/ gigolo scandal yet is that there aren’t that many women in Congress. Give it time.) Screwing around knows no political affiliation. It is the spirit of bipartisanship itself.

I do think politicians and preachers have a weird connection between public sexual condemnation and private sexual indulgence. I’ve written about it before. But I also think this conclusion all by itself is just a little too easy. I think it’s important to remember that cheating on your spouse — whether with a mistress or a boy-toy, a lover or a hooker — really isn’t something we can blame on right-wing repression and hypocrisy. The repression and hypocrisy, I’m happy to pin the right-wingers to the wall about . . . but the screwing around itself, I’m afraid, is just human nature.

So what does any of this have to do with the “American Idol” stripper?

Here’s the other thing I keep thinking.

In case you haven’t heard, “American Idol” contestant David Hernandez was recently discovered to have been a stripper at a gay strip club in Arizona — sparking a ridiculous shitstorm of controversy in the gossip columns and celebrity gossip blogs, and quite possibly getting him voted off the show last week.

And I truly do not get it.

The wig-out over the Spitzer story, I can understand. The guy is married, and married people ideally should keep their promises about monogamy (assuming they’re monogamous, which I’m guessing Spitzer was supposed to be). The guy won office on a law- and- order platform, and spoke out with “revulsion and anger” in 2004 when announcing arrests in a high-end prostitution ring . . . so there’s the irony and hypocrisy aspect of the deal. And of course, the guy is — or was — governor, and is supposed to have something vaguely resembling respect for the law.

But I do not get the wig-out over David Hernandez.

As far as I know, Hernandez is not married, or partnered, or anything but footloose and fancy-free, and his decision to be a stripper affected nobody but himself and his happy customers. As far as I know, Hernandez has never tried to curry public favor by condemning male strippers. And while it could be argued that patronizing prostitutes is inconsistent with being the highest upholder of the law in the state — what with it being illegal and all — there is nothing I can think of that makes being a male stripper inconsistent with being a pop singer. Hell, it’s probably given him some performance chops.

And as far as I know, stripping is entirely legal in Arizona.

So what the hell?

Why is this a story?

Why do people even care?

Okay, I get why people care. It’s about sex, and sex is always interesting. But why are people shocked and scandalized? Why are people acting as if Hernandez’s naked stripper body has befouled the purity and high standards of, for fuck’s sake, “American Idol”?

A lot of it, of course, is just that good old American Puritan knee-jerk freak-out about anything to do with sex. But I think there’s something else.

I think some of what we’re seeing is a clash of cultures. I think there’s beginning to be a stream in American culture — especially in youth culture — that doesn’t see sex and sex work as particularly shameful. Blame the Internet, blame video porn, blame decades of hard work from sex-positive activists like me. But more and more, I’m seeing young people who are willing and happy to bare all on the Web, at a strip club, for the “Girls Gone Wild” cameras, whatever.

And I think the Hernandez wig-out is partly a reaction, not just to the sexy stuff itself, but to the casualness and comfort with the sexy stuff. Strippers — especially male strippers at gay male strip clubs — are supposed to slink off the world stage with their heads hung down in disgrace. They’re not supposed to prance around shamelessly, doing a bad Vegas version of a Beatles song in front of millions of viewers as if nothing had happened. (Or, for that matter, proudly accept Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay.)

Well, I say good for him. I wish he’d been a better singer, but good for him anyway. I’m just eager for the day when senators and governors and Presidents are just as free to say, “Yes, I had sex with that woman/ man/ Olympic track team, and that’s nobody’s business but mine and my partner and the track team.” And then go on to sign farm legislation or crack down on white collar crime, as if nothing had happened.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Porn Cliches, Or, On Not Seducing the Plumber

This is a story about a porn cliché.

And it’s about the difference between what you want . . . and what you think you want.

A few years ago, when I was in my old apartment, our building had a plumber who used to come out pretty regularly. (Old building; lousy plumbing; frequent visits from the plumber.) He was kind of a dish: young, friendly, skinny but muscular, bright red hair, a sweet Irish accent like whisky in butter. I used to joke about what a babe he was, and how one of these days I might succumb to the porn cliché and seduce the plumber.

So this one time he came out to the apartment to fix the crappy plumbing . . . and he stayed to chat.

For no reason that I could figure out right away.

And the conversation kept taking these odd, non-sequitur turns. He brought up the art house movie schedule hanging on my door . . . and made a point of mentioning the porn star documentary that was coming up. He mentioned the science fiction books on my bookshelf . . . and kept talking about how he liked science fiction cover art, it was so sexy, with all those half-naked girls and guys. (Little did he know that the cover art is probably my least favorite thing about science fiction . . .)

It was a little odd. Flattering, but odd. After all, he’d never paid me anything but friendly professional interest before. I never did figure out why this visit was different. But my best guess is that he’d seen the stack of porno videos in the office next to the bathroom — I was working as a porn critic then, as I still am today — and I think he figured that, with a stack of pornos just sitting out in the open like that, I might be easy and horny and hot to trot. And maybe the porn cliché/ “visit from the plumber” connection had crossed his mind as well as mine.

But back to the story.

Like I was saying, this was an odd conversation, and it took me a while to catch on. (I can be kind of thick about it when people are hitting on me.) But it didn’t take that long. When you’re alone in the house with the plumber, and he keeps bringing up sex for no good reason, it doesn’t take a nuclear genius to figure it out. He was offering me the porn cliché, the impromptu fling with the hot young plumber.

And I was tempted to take him up on it.

For about ten seconds.

But here’s the thing. When presented with the real possibility of it, the fantasy almost immediately lost its appeal.

For one thing, I don’t actually choose my sex partners based on whether they seem like they stepped out of a porn video. I choose my sex partners based on, you know, sexual compatibility. I have somewhat particular tastes in sex — not wildly out of the ordinary tastes, but particular ones — and while it’s certainly possible that he would have loved to spank me silly or let me fuck him up the ass, the odds didn’t seem in my favor. And I didn’t feel like doing the whole sex-positive “conscientious negotiation of overlapping sexual interests” thing. It would have totally killed the spontaneous buzz of the “shtupping the plumber” fantasy. No matter how cute that plumber might be.

It’s not like cuteness is a non-issue for me. Obviously there needs to be some physical chemistry for me to have fun with someone, and it’s certainly a plus if they make my head swivel when I pass them on the street. But I’d rather play with someone who knows their way around a riding crop than with someone who looks like the Irish Brad Pitt. No contest.

Maybe more importantly, though, I didn’t actually know this guy — and I didn’t have any reason to trust him. I didn’t have any reason not to trust him . . . but I didn’t know anything about him, I didn’t know anyone who knew him, and I certainly didn’t know anyone who’d had sex with him. So I didn’t know if he respected limits, or if he cared about women’s pleasure, or even if he played safe.

Which pretty much dovetails with the “sexual compatibility” thing.

Now remember, this was a guy I’d lusted after for some time. It’s not like he took up a lot of space in my sexual imagination; but whenever he appeared on the scene, there was always a twinge of wistful lust, followed by “what might have been” fantasies that often lasted for several days. But the reality wasn’t nearly as enticing as I’d imagined it would be. I wound up the conversation, said that I had to get back to work, and politely ushered him out the door, with just a twinge of regret — not for the sex that might have been, but for how much fun I would have had telling the story.

So I think the moral of the story is this:

We don’t always want what we think we want.

I really thought I wanted to have sex with this guy. At any point before this encounter, if you had asked me, “Do you want to have sex with the dishy red-headed plumber?”, I would have answered, “Sure!” Until I was actually presented with the opportunity to do so, that is.

On a core physical level, I suppose I did want it. I thought he was cute, I lusted after him when he was around, I had occasional sex fantasies about him. If that’s what you mean by “want,” then yeah, I guess I wanted it. But in the important, actually useful sense of the word “want” — in the “Would you accept this if it were easily available?” sense — it turned out that I didn’t.

I just thought I did.

And I think this is something monogamous people need to remember. When you’re monogamous, it’s easy to get wound up over every cute person who passes your line of vision and seems like they might be available. It’s important to remember that not everyone who momentarily stirs your loins is someone you would actually have sex with if you were free and they were offering. Some cute people are crazy; some cute people are on a different sexual wavelength; some cute people just aren’t very interesting. So it’s important to remember that you don’t always want what you think you want. It’s important to remember that the green, green grass on the other side of the fence doesn’t always look so green when it shows up at your door, makes awkward sexual small talk, and offers you a chance at a silly porn cliché.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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