When You Say "Slut" or "Whore", I Don't Know What You Mean

I've hinted somewhat here and there on this Xanga that I find those who deem it necessary to judge other people's sex life perplexing, slightly hypocritical, but – above all – naïve.

Of course, when I refer to the term whore in the above title, I mean when it is used in the same sense as the word slut, rather than the profession (though I could have a good rant about prostitution, really).

And the largest reason why is simply that what you apparently think a slut is probably is entirely different from what someone else thinks it is. Let me first point out that I do not mean someone who sleeps around with other people's significant others or any other revenge fantasy that you may have. This is often a conflation with the larger, constantly there in every incarnation, factor of a person who has a lot of sex. And that is what I want to address.

With what do I have an issue? Am I apparently an advocate of do-whatever-you-please life aims? Rather, I want to ask, have you ever had sex? Once? Was it just petting, even? Was it after years with a significant other to whom you felt terribly close? Was it one night at a late party?

Regardless of your answer, according to my mother, you are a slut. Why? Because opening your legs once means you have no morals. Not that my mother would tell you this to your face, despite having had premarital sex herself.

You see, when terms like slut or whore are used, I don't understand what a person means. For some, it's sex just one time. For others, it's sex for pleasure. For others, it's casual sex. For others, it's the amount of sex, regardless of whether its meaningful to the person or with committed boyfriends or girlfriends at the time.

And, if you've had sex (regardless of whether it was saving it for that special someone you never married, even if you plan to eventually do so), you've been allowed to make a privileged choice that – at one point in time – would have casted you entirely undesirable on any level by every facet of society.

Many fought for your right to decide what sex should mean for you – including whether it might not be the right decision for you. That's your personal choice for yourself, not to cast on others.

You know, I'd appreciate not being continually told that asserting myself or dominating others is what makes me a man. My masculinity exists for my personal comfort and adjustment, not your gauge of acceptability nor verification of my genitals.

Asking, "Why is 2+3 always equal to 5?
Where do people go to when they die?
What made the beauty of the moon and the beauty of the sea?
Did that beauty make you?
Did that beauty make me?
Will it make me something? Will I be something? Am I something?"

And the answer comes…
Already am, Always was,
And I still - have time - to be.

^^truth

Not true, but a lofty thought regardless

Points if you can get what message the picture is highlighting.

The next person I hear who has pre-marital sex and calls someone a slut, I'm going to snap back, "And what exactly do you think some people think you are?"

Stupid hypocrites.

Finding the right person to date, for me, tends to be a more...complicated affair than I ever like. See, fundamentally, even regardless of any other possible traits, there is always a particular trait that I want that, in essence, tends to be (what I feel is) a reflection of myself - I want complexity. Not in the most general sense but in that you near contradict yourself.

As both Laura and jess are a testament to, I tend to prefer someone with an incredibly engagable personality, most often articulated in a public personality that is often completely agreeable. In fact, it often borders on being mistaken for being simplistic and, by extension, stupid (which, really, makes far more sense than you might initially assume; if people were to look only at my sense of humor, I'm either the driest individual you may come by or, on the other side of the spectrum, a complete asshole who completely banks on shock value for any sort of reaction or poor sex jokes. Focus on one aspect of anyone and you miss the possible complexity of their personality. This is just more easy a crime to commit since the public personality is the one we see of a person most often and, for some, entirely).

However, you'd be a fool (and also a bit of an ass) to assume as much. Get to know the person and they're utterly intelligent, often troubled, very much self-aware (ironically, even if they themselves aren't aware of it), etc.

And it's often such specificity that screws me over. I need someone who's patient enough and able to push me enough to deal with my intense shyness. At the same time, I need someone shy enough to not be domineering and to allow me take a leading role as well.

I want someone who actually challenges me. If I can sum them up easily (and, with so many people, that isn't that difficult), there's a problem. Which, in and of itself, often implies constant contradiction. Passionate, yet able to be subdued when appropriate in certain situations. Have to be independent and able to stand on their own, yet not optimally happy that way so they need someone to lean on and get support from (hence a huge component on most relationships). Someone jaded enough to not be happy-go-lucky yet willing to believe there's more out there. Like I've said before here, I need a dreamer. I need someone who feels that utterly pull to chase something. If you're not looking forward, you'll clash heavily with my own personality.

And part of that is what I feel is a huge problem - I need someone, in a sense, who is troubled.

I have clinical depression, along with a..."pleasant" childhood. I have a taste for the warped. The dark and dreary is not something which will not forever be a component of my life. As I've said before here, I don't plan to - and probably couldn't - cut that out of my life.

I like more extreme things. While I often being incredibly straight-lace in almost anything, I can look at things with a fascinated impartiality (I told my cousin, off a random thought, yesterday to try reading Catcher In the Rye but with Holden having a sexual crush on Phoebe, largely to just gross out my cousin, but also because the perversity of such a reading actually being possible is intriguing, when you really think about it). And that impartiality, as well as a bit of my hyperbolic sense of humor, is partially how I approach the world.

I don't want to hold back.

And I don't want to necessarily fall into old conventions about things but would rather explore something and decide for myself what to think of it all.

I'm being far too vague but I couldn't put things into more specific a way without going into specific examples, at which point things would be so specified that we'd need many examples in order to cover everything I'm talking about in every different case they might show up as.

My point is - pain, suffering, disillusionment, fear, even anger, are all very human. And while I don't want to be yelled at, I do want to see all of those things. You cannot possibly be completely un-traumatized by some point in your life or even your present. Share that. It's a part of you. Plus to be devoid of such things is boring.

People are messy. People are not perfect and they're incapable of being packaged in these nice little boxes.

Do not try to shove yourself into one of them. Frustration can be endearing and it's not something I don't want to deal with.

While, yes, being happy and getting along and being enjoyable is nice, that's not all of who we are. And, I guess, what I'm trying to say...you're more interesting that way so why hide it? Why deal with it in private.

I want someone who's able to control themselves and yet can be a mess. I want fucking complexity. Be varied, be vast, be radiant.

You know, for such a keen distributer (since that's really Disney's main focus these days), Disney can't seem to find that they'd probably sell a ton more if they didn't ingrain all of their characters with inane stereotypes and actually peddled gender and race politics of a higher caliber. If I had a kid, I wouldn't let him/her/zir near the Disney channel.

And, on an utterly unrelated note, this music video is astoundingly awesome:

I really need to do another archaic word of the day. It's been far too long since the last, yes?

So, as I imparted to Kari yesterday, it kinda pisses me off that there is a such a limited, narrow, and slanted view of what is attractive in terms of how women look (because, if we're being brutally honest, I'm far closer to straight than I am to being gay and so can speak more authoritatively on that end of the spectrum).

Granted, I still find physical attractiveness to be a sorry form of evaluation for people, pointless, and a cruelly unfair system that aids to many of the debilitating aspects of our society that erodes self-confidence and certainty in self-image (hyperbolic? I'd hardly say so).

That being said – I'm not going to convince many (if any) other people to my line of thinking. And, if that's the case (as I said above), it really pisses me off that there's such a limited view of what is considered attractive when it comes to women.

It may just be me, but there is a complete wealth of diversity and multitude of differing body types when it comes to girls (like I said, I'm a poorer judge when it comes to guys, so it's mostly ignorance talking there) that it absolutely amazes me that our society tries so harshly to smash it into some ridiculous notion of a singular mold. I mean...why would you want to limit yourself?

However, as I said above, there's a limited view of what is considered attractive. Obviously, attractive doesn't mean only physically attractive (and by physically attractive I mean traits that can only be derived through genes). There are many personal and cultural choices that a person can make that can make them attractive or not attractive to a person (such as choice of clothes or whether they wear glasses or not).

So, that being said, understand that the rest of this discussion in this post covers on some things which are just a matter of opinion and others of it are just inexcusable pickiness and stupidity. Also understand that while I'll focus on my out-of-what-is-usually-considered-the-norm attractions, I generally fall within the mainstream as well. Which is all fine and dandy. I get why we might flock to certain ideas of attractiveness and generally will agree. It's our seeming inability to venture away from these or even admit that the ones I'm going to list are perfectly applicable candidates as well that bothers me.

The first that drives me insane is our society's complete inability to recognize curves. I wanna scream every time some idiot mislabels someone as being "too fat" just because her body actually has a shape which differs from a stalk of celery. Obesity and curves are not the same thing. The latter, you dumbnut, happens to be the natural shape a woman's body takes. Not all, obviously, but please stop telling all to achieve that of a pole.

That being said – fat isn't a bad thing. Being chubby can be equally attractive. Criticize the muffin top, if you will, but chubby girls tend to be more cuddly and are tons more fun to hug.

Also, what's with the Only Huge Boobs Please thing? They get big enough and they start to no longer look human. Alright, alright, I'm being facetious by now; but, seriously, small breasts aren't a bad thing. They are quite the opposite often enough. Diversity, people!

Now, this next pet peeve of mine, admittedly, is mostly a preference thing. I can't honestly chastise people here in good conscience. Obviously some may just honestly disagree with me. But I've never been able to understand the makeup thing. If I wanted to be cocky and snide, I might say it's because I'm a fan of natural beauty and don't understand wanting to cover it up, but that would most clearly be just me being a smartass, and I could easily disassemble such an argument. That said – I still don't understand makeup. In 99.9% of the cases I've seen (and I'm mostly meaning towards the beautifying stuff, anyway (like lipstick, etc.); not movie makeup, for example), the individual looks utterly better just without makeup. But, then again, I've always had what my mother has called pathetically simplistic and boring tastes. A girl with no makeup, hair done up in a simple ponytail (with no other "trimmings"), and wearing jeans and a hoodie is a thousand times more attractive to me than one "dressed up" (say, a dress). Then again, I'm also a fan of adrogynous girls and what others might call "plain looking", for two other vaguely related examples.

I was slightly horrified, admittedly, yesterday when Vikki and Bailey started freaking out over Alys having a figure and going to go shopping with her; I've always found her to be attractive, unrevealing dressing style and all. Yeah, I said it; granted, it partially doesn't matter because this will likely never make it back to Alys and so she won't be able to glare at me like she tends to. But still. Regardless of where the majority lies, those are my tastes. I'm sure there are others out there that agree.

Also, arms with hair on them. Are they really so bad? At first I was kinda indifferent. Now a days, I lean a little more in favor of. It seems like whenever hair and female get put in the same sentence people recoil (I can mentally see my parents doing so right now) – but I don't get it. It can be just as cute or pretty as hair on one's head can be, I think.

I remember last Winter Break my mom asked me if I had seen any girls at college yet that I find attractive. Normally I either ignore her or say something along the lines of, "Why? It's only an illusion anyway." This time, however, I decide I'll humor her. So, I respond, "No, not really. I've kinda been into more masculine women lately." My parents reactions? They gawk and go, "What???" Now, granted, I probably meant more physically feminine women with a masculine gender, but (as I've said here many times now) butch women are pretty fantastic as well. My main point here is that there are, in the mainstream, a lack of women with a more masculine demeanor (either in only their gender or physically or some combination of both). I mean, if we're being totally technical, playing video games is still generally considered a masculine trait (as in it's considered socially acceptable when done by males and often not considered acceptable when done by females), which instantly makes gamer girls technically more masculine than most of their fellow female peers. But clearly most of us wouldn't instinctually label video games as being all that masculine (leastwise, I don't). I mean in areas that are more universally thought of as masculine, there is a lack of females which possess that. The only category (again, I'm talking mainstream, so (for example) the butch/femme lesbian culture doesn't really count, not to mention (to the best of my ignorant knowledge) I believe that culture is slowly fading away) for such a phenomenon is the old tomboy stereotype – and that's pretty limited. How about a girl that wears a lot of "guy" clothes (such as suits, etc.) but isn't all that athletic? However, if we could break stereotypes so easily in people's minds, I'd be a much happier person and quite busy in the world.

And I'm sure there are a million others I could think of. I didn't mentioned, for example, braces or glasses in part because our society is moving closer to finding them acceptable on a really mainstream level, even finding them cute. Anyone see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? It says something that the fact that the main character's love interest is a nerd, equipped with glasses, can go over our heads because we've become so used to the idea and also – well, she's a nerd! And it's a children movie that did well at the theatres. Think of how this may affect future generations of kids who saw the movie? Granted, I'm not going to assume that all such taunts and aversions to glasses will end because of this movie (my father once told me he would never have dated anyone else with glasses because he was so self-conscience about his own as a kid); but it's progress.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, love your "imperfections" and "blemishes".

You never know who could be admiring them.

Oh, and also rail against the stupidity of society. But I guess that's kinda the undercurrent of this entire Xanga, now isn't it?