Using People for Sex
I've said before that in an intimate relationship, there is often a power inequality -- not so much because someone is seeking it or deliberately weilding it, but because intimacy creates vulnerability. To be vulnerable is to not be in control. There's no way to structure vulnerability out of intimacy, so it's there; and vulnerability is the risk being taken that makes intimacy scary as well as desirable.
Using people for sex is a behavior overwhelmingly associated with my own sex but I suspect those of you who are female people also run up against that, and it's not a comfortable feeling, this sense that one uses other people for sex. But just as not eroticizing power over other people isn't the same as sex without differences in power, so also not intentionally or comfortably using people for sex, or setting out to do so, isn't necessarily the same as not using people for sex.
It has been spoken of that some people eroticize the notion (as opposed to the actual experience) of someone else having power over us and using us for sex. I think this tends to be paper-clipped to masochism, but being the person done unto takes one off the hook for being the one doing unto others, where doing unto others is using people for sex. That's the attraction of it.
Yeah, I said "us". I'd definitely categorize myself into that second paragraph. For me, the fact that being on the using side is more associated with my sex combines with an attitude I already had about how other males were and how I was in general. Well before puberty I was not identifying with them, wishing, in fact, to distinguish myself from them, so things associated with my sex often tended to be repellent to me just because I associated them with my sex. So on top of whatever general guilt trip one gets on about using people for sex was added the notion that doing so would make me more like the men, would dump me in with them. The men with whom I don't identify.
In the specific case of using someone for sex, there are so many vulnerabilities about hurting the people you care for, and coercion is a form of hurt, an erasure of the other person's will.
Intimacy is not safe and cannot be made safe. It's inherently risky. It's fun, it's delicious and thrilling. But not safe.
Here's my arrival path to intimacy. I accept going in that there is the risk of coercion, and I take that risk with a willingness to assume the lack of deliberate intent, an openness to forgiveness. I guess that kind of makes it a BDSM arrival path, this acceptance of coercion, and I'm okay with that.
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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
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This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. I was going to start echoing it on Substack as well but we're not off to a good start. Anyway, please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
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Index of all Blog Posts
Using people for sex is a behavior overwhelmingly associated with my own sex but I suspect those of you who are female people also run up against that, and it's not a comfortable feeling, this sense that one uses other people for sex. But just as not eroticizing power over other people isn't the same as sex without differences in power, so also not intentionally or comfortably using people for sex, or setting out to do so, isn't necessarily the same as not using people for sex.
It has been spoken of that some people eroticize the notion (as opposed to the actual experience) of someone else having power over us and using us for sex. I think this tends to be paper-clipped to masochism, but being the person done unto takes one off the hook for being the one doing unto others, where doing unto others is using people for sex. That's the attraction of it.
Yeah, I said "us". I'd definitely categorize myself into that second paragraph. For me, the fact that being on the using side is more associated with my sex combines with an attitude I already had about how other males were and how I was in general. Well before puberty I was not identifying with them, wishing, in fact, to distinguish myself from them, so things associated with my sex often tended to be repellent to me just because I associated them with my sex. So on top of whatever general guilt trip one gets on about using people for sex was added the notion that doing so would make me more like the men, would dump me in with them. The men with whom I don't identify.
In the specific case of using someone for sex, there are so many vulnerabilities about hurting the people you care for, and coercion is a form of hurt, an erasure of the other person's will.
Intimacy is not safe and cannot be made safe. It's inherently risky. It's fun, it's delicious and thrilling. But not safe.
Here's my arrival path to intimacy. I accept going in that there is the risk of coercion, and I take that risk with a willingness to assume the lack of deliberate intent, an openness to forgiveness. I guess that kind of makes it a BDSM arrival path, this acceptance of coercion, and I'm okay with that.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. I was going to start echoing it on Substack as well but we're not off to a good start. Anyway, please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts