15 minutes, vacation over
Falling asleep so early at the house, before 9pm, but that's when T falls asleep also. Waking up before 4am is routine at the house for me, but T usually needs a couple hours more sleep than I do. When I spend a night with K we stay up later, but I still wake a couple hours ahead of him. I haven't had a solid week to myself in forever so I'm not sure what my sleep schedule would be on my own.
At the house, Astrid sleeps with me, often she sleeps right alongside, in contact with me for much of the night.
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This morning's meditation was more of a labor, lots of dragging the Frog Brain back to the breath, she's coming up with all kinds of memories and plans and judgments. Including suddenly missing a guy from my past who I haven't contacted in any way in nearly a year, haven't seen in several years, and it took me a while to even remember his name. Also lots of stuff provoked by the game I'm playing. And reactions to stuff people wrote on Reddit. And the ongoing forest fires out West, which fascinate me.
Took much more effort to drag her back than it did yesterday.
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Guy#1 on Twitter retweeted Guy#2's tweet, and Guy#2 looked cute so I went to look at his other tweets. Mainly I just follow sexy guys on Twitter as an ongoing porn show to distract me from my Quarantine Life LOL, but I also follow other non-political stuff, such as weather, earthquakes, forest fires, astronomy. Seeing his other tweets, oh, he's a transgender man, he shows a lot of before and after pics and is raising money to help pay for his surgery, so he's very open about being transgender.
He discusses his dysphoria, his dissatisfaction with having a woman's body previously, and appears quite proud of his masculine transformation. If you asked me who I'd rather have sex with, I'd pick his "after" pics, because I'm more sexually attracted to masculine bodies for whatever reason. But I expect there's an equally numerous population who would rather have sex with his "before" pics. I get the sense he thinks he's more sexually attractive "after". He's happier with his look.
But now he's frustrated because he's single, and tweets a lot about this frustration. As though finding the partner of his dreams is Stage Two in the transformation of his life. Another kind of dysphoria -- first with his body and gender, second with his relationship status. The emotional struggle with his life not matching his needs or desires.
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I have no idea whether adjusting his hormonal balance made him happier with his body/gender, but less happy with being single. I'm curious about the pros and cons of hormonal therapy. In the game, Tyler said something about how men smell worse than women and how he had to adjust to his own body smelling worse, heh.
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Definitely fascinated by what motivates somebody to make this journey. And is it more typical for transgender men to be attracted to other men? It seems for some transgender men, a part of this journey is not liking their own breasts and wanting to get rid of them ... makes me wonder how I'd feel if I'd been born with breasts. I kind of think it would be easier for me to attract men in general if I were a woman. But maybe straight men suck, as compared to gay men, heh. I really don't know. I haven't had a sexual/romantic relationship with a man who identifies as straight.
Part of my radical anti-gender position is that I question my own sexual preference for men. I used to think that my being attracted to transgender men was kind of a plus for me, an unraveling of my own gender bias, but now that I'm realizing transgender men are just men ... I have to retract this little gold star I'd given myself. It's not that I'm never sexually attracted to women, but I'm definitely more sexually attracted to men. But is it because they are "men" or is it because I'm sexually attracted to certain features that are more commonly associated with men? To what extent is my "homosexuality" culturally constructed?
I was talking about this with T in the car yesterday -- that we overgeneralize sexuality in terms of gender.
I'm not sexually attracted to every man. Put me in a gay bar and I'll see guys I'm attracted to and guys I'm not attracted to. Over the decades I've had guys make the moves on me who I'm not attracted to. I won't have sex with just any guy.
I presume this is the same for everybody, that whichever gender(s) you are sexually attracted to, you aren't sexually attracted to everybody in the gender category.
So gender works its cultural magic on us by overgeneralizing what we're sexually attracted to. "I'm sexually attracted to men" is not a completely true statement, it is overly broad. Most of the people I'm sexually attracted to are men, some are not. What are the exact features to which I'm attracted?
For some gay guys, it is pretty clear to them exactly which features are attractive, and they go looking for this particular physical type. Maybe their type is Asian twinks under 25 years old. Or White bears over 50. Maybe they have a variety of types. Maybe they're more attracted by non-visual traits. Maybe it's a combination -- when looking for Mr. Right there are many considerations, including emotional stability, financial stability, sense of humor, choice of friends, favorite artists, religious faith, politics, hobbies.
The primacy of gender in our culture pretty much forces us to define sexuality in terms of gender. Just look at the way sexual minorities describe themselves -- LGBT -- it's all about gender. Women attracted to women, men attracted to men, people attracted to both genders, people who identify with their non-assigned gender.
The LGBT community are a collection of gender rebels who are nevertheless completely defined by gender! It's pretty far out for me to talk about abolishing gender, because then what would happen to the LGT folks? I presume the B folks would be OK, they're the most radical of the four groups, expressing sexual attraction across the gender divide.
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My only concern with me dating a transgender man is that I don't have any experience doing this yet, so I might have certain hesitations about ... not wanting to offend via ignorance ... not feeling confident in my ability to give pleasure while making out ... but I'd be willing to move forward after expressing my hesitations. I mean, there are always hesitations about dating, always insecurities. I'm at a point in my life where I'd openly discuss my hesitations if this were acceptable to the other person. You'd have hesitations about me also, I presume. Rational people looking to date each other have both compatibilities and incompatibilities, stuff that flows and stuff that requires work.
And this leads me to a separate topic, but it's in part a reaction to the Twitter guy, and in part a reaction to stuff I saw on Reddit.
This notion that people are looking for the perfect relationship, or think they've found the perfect person, the "love of my life".
It's a strong cultural norm allied with monogamy, that you can only have one partner, so this one partner had better be pretty much perfect.
But it's also driven by the hormonal crush of meeting a new person, feeling the sexual attraction, perhaps enjoying the sexual attraction via consensual activities, and then fantasizing about "adding this person to my life".
There is no perfect person, there's always more than one potential, or actual, love of your life. And relationships are both work and fun, ups and downs.
I sometimes see on Reddit people who have not even gone on one date with a person talking about how they want to add this person to their life, and they ask, "How do I go about bringing this up with her?" Um ... first slow the fuck down. You're attracted to her, that's very different from both of you knowing that you're compatible enough to live together over the long term. And in the poly world, it's even more complicated. But I see couples who have not even opened their relationship yet, thinking they've found the "perfect" person to add to their household, and they want to know how to go about doing this.
Yikes! Triads are sometimes called "poly on hard mode", and if you haven't even opened your relationship to anybody else yet, how can you think a particular person would be "perfect" for adding to your lives? It's complete fantasy. But people do it all the time, whether they are mono or poly, in a relationship with somebody else already or not. They meet somebody new and inside their brains they turn that person into a spouse before they've even gone on a date.
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There's also the opposite problem. People who have created a fantasy spouse inside their brains who cannot ever find that fantasy in real life. Nobody in real life can possibly live up to that fantasy, so they remain single and unhappy about it forever. They keep trying to date, but everybody they try to date has "issues". Then they give up on dating, because nobody will ever be good enough.
Whichever side of this problem you're on, going on a first date becomes an audition for filling that perfect role as perfect future spouse. Either you're already seen as perfect but you will disappoint them, or they're looking for perfection and will discover you're not the one.
How about ... just going on a date to see how you get along, try to have fun, and if you have fun go then on another date? One date at a time? Seeing whether the two of you can build a working relationship, without prejudging the outcome?
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I was complaining about this stuff to K back on Friday night, about people who are "looking for a long-term relationship". And I've written about this particular thing before -- "looking for a long-term relationship". This activity attempts to break the time barrier. You cannot possibly find a long-term relationship. You cannot possibly know or control whether the person in front of you can build a long-term relationship with you. Long-term relationships are something you cannot have until the long-term has already gone by and, you both discover, hey we're still in a relationship. Because we both persisted, because it made sense for each of us to continue with it day after day.
You cannot judge these things ahead of time. If you think you can, I call bullshit. You have to start with mutual attraction, and work on things from there, each person at his own pace, dealing with the good and the bad as it happens.
Ideally, if you say you're looking for a long-term relationship, what you really mean is that you're willing to do the work and the communication of relating to another human being as she is, making yourself available and vulnerable as you are. That's all you can ever do. And you're just hoping that doing the work of relating to somebody will mean you can continue doing the work of relating to that same person, and that they'll do the same, with you.
But for now, you've got to deal with now. And tomorrow, you've got to deal with tomorrow. That's plenty. When I do open up to meeting others or spending more time with the people I already know, I'll be open to what happens next. That's all I can do. That's all anybody can do, but a lot of the time we fool ourselves into thinking we can do more than that. We think we can judge others to be perfect, or not. We don't, we can't, really know this.
At the house, Astrid sleeps with me, often she sleeps right alongside, in contact with me for much of the night.
-----
This morning's meditation was more of a labor, lots of dragging the Frog Brain back to the breath, she's coming up with all kinds of memories and plans and judgments. Including suddenly missing a guy from my past who I haven't contacted in any way in nearly a year, haven't seen in several years, and it took me a while to even remember his name. Also lots of stuff provoked by the game I'm playing. And reactions to stuff people wrote on Reddit. And the ongoing forest fires out West, which fascinate me.
Took much more effort to drag her back than it did yesterday.
-----
Guy#1 on Twitter retweeted Guy#2's tweet, and Guy#2 looked cute so I went to look at his other tweets. Mainly I just follow sexy guys on Twitter as an ongoing porn show to distract me from my Quarantine Life LOL, but I also follow other non-political stuff, such as weather, earthquakes, forest fires, astronomy. Seeing his other tweets, oh, he's a transgender man, he shows a lot of before and after pics and is raising money to help pay for his surgery, so he's very open about being transgender.
He discusses his dysphoria, his dissatisfaction with having a woman's body previously, and appears quite proud of his masculine transformation. If you asked me who I'd rather have sex with, I'd pick his "after" pics, because I'm more sexually attracted to masculine bodies for whatever reason. But I expect there's an equally numerous population who would rather have sex with his "before" pics. I get the sense he thinks he's more sexually attractive "after". He's happier with his look.
But now he's frustrated because he's single, and tweets a lot about this frustration. As though finding the partner of his dreams is Stage Two in the transformation of his life. Another kind of dysphoria -- first with his body and gender, second with his relationship status. The emotional struggle with his life not matching his needs or desires.
-----
I have no idea whether adjusting his hormonal balance made him happier with his body/gender, but less happy with being single. I'm curious about the pros and cons of hormonal therapy. In the game, Tyler said something about how men smell worse than women and how he had to adjust to his own body smelling worse, heh.
-----
Definitely fascinated by what motivates somebody to make this journey. And is it more typical for transgender men to be attracted to other men? It seems for some transgender men, a part of this journey is not liking their own breasts and wanting to get rid of them ... makes me wonder how I'd feel if I'd been born with breasts. I kind of think it would be easier for me to attract men in general if I were a woman. But maybe straight men suck, as compared to gay men, heh. I really don't know. I haven't had a sexual/romantic relationship with a man who identifies as straight.
Part of my radical anti-gender position is that I question my own sexual preference for men. I used to think that my being attracted to transgender men was kind of a plus for me, an unraveling of my own gender bias, but now that I'm realizing transgender men are just men ... I have to retract this little gold star I'd given myself. It's not that I'm never sexually attracted to women, but I'm definitely more sexually attracted to men. But is it because they are "men" or is it because I'm sexually attracted to certain features that are more commonly associated with men? To what extent is my "homosexuality" culturally constructed?
I was talking about this with T in the car yesterday -- that we overgeneralize sexuality in terms of gender.
I'm not sexually attracted to every man. Put me in a gay bar and I'll see guys I'm attracted to and guys I'm not attracted to. Over the decades I've had guys make the moves on me who I'm not attracted to. I won't have sex with just any guy.
I presume this is the same for everybody, that whichever gender(s) you are sexually attracted to, you aren't sexually attracted to everybody in the gender category.
So gender works its cultural magic on us by overgeneralizing what we're sexually attracted to. "I'm sexually attracted to men" is not a completely true statement, it is overly broad. Most of the people I'm sexually attracted to are men, some are not. What are the exact features to which I'm attracted?
For some gay guys, it is pretty clear to them exactly which features are attractive, and they go looking for this particular physical type. Maybe their type is Asian twinks under 25 years old. Or White bears over 50. Maybe they have a variety of types. Maybe they're more attracted by non-visual traits. Maybe it's a combination -- when looking for Mr. Right there are many considerations, including emotional stability, financial stability, sense of humor, choice of friends, favorite artists, religious faith, politics, hobbies.
The primacy of gender in our culture pretty much forces us to define sexuality in terms of gender. Just look at the way sexual minorities describe themselves -- LGBT -- it's all about gender. Women attracted to women, men attracted to men, people attracted to both genders, people who identify with their non-assigned gender.
The LGBT community are a collection of gender rebels who are nevertheless completely defined by gender! It's pretty far out for me to talk about abolishing gender, because then what would happen to the LGT folks? I presume the B folks would be OK, they're the most radical of the four groups, expressing sexual attraction across the gender divide.
-----
My only concern with me dating a transgender man is that I don't have any experience doing this yet, so I might have certain hesitations about ... not wanting to offend via ignorance ... not feeling confident in my ability to give pleasure while making out ... but I'd be willing to move forward after expressing my hesitations. I mean, there are always hesitations about dating, always insecurities. I'm at a point in my life where I'd openly discuss my hesitations if this were acceptable to the other person. You'd have hesitations about me also, I presume. Rational people looking to date each other have both compatibilities and incompatibilities, stuff that flows and stuff that requires work.
And this leads me to a separate topic, but it's in part a reaction to the Twitter guy, and in part a reaction to stuff I saw on Reddit.
This notion that people are looking for the perfect relationship, or think they've found the perfect person, the "love of my life".
It's a strong cultural norm allied with monogamy, that you can only have one partner, so this one partner had better be pretty much perfect.
But it's also driven by the hormonal crush of meeting a new person, feeling the sexual attraction, perhaps enjoying the sexual attraction via consensual activities, and then fantasizing about "adding this person to my life".
There is no perfect person, there's always more than one potential, or actual, love of your life. And relationships are both work and fun, ups and downs.
I sometimes see on Reddit people who have not even gone on one date with a person talking about how they want to add this person to their life, and they ask, "How do I go about bringing this up with her?" Um ... first slow the fuck down. You're attracted to her, that's very different from both of you knowing that you're compatible enough to live together over the long term. And in the poly world, it's even more complicated. But I see couples who have not even opened their relationship yet, thinking they've found the "perfect" person to add to their household, and they want to know how to go about doing this.
Yikes! Triads are sometimes called "poly on hard mode", and if you haven't even opened your relationship to anybody else yet, how can you think a particular person would be "perfect" for adding to your lives? It's complete fantasy. But people do it all the time, whether they are mono or poly, in a relationship with somebody else already or not. They meet somebody new and inside their brains they turn that person into a spouse before they've even gone on a date.
-----
There's also the opposite problem. People who have created a fantasy spouse inside their brains who cannot ever find that fantasy in real life. Nobody in real life can possibly live up to that fantasy, so they remain single and unhappy about it forever. They keep trying to date, but everybody they try to date has "issues". Then they give up on dating, because nobody will ever be good enough.
Whichever side of this problem you're on, going on a first date becomes an audition for filling that perfect role as perfect future spouse. Either you're already seen as perfect but you will disappoint them, or they're looking for perfection and will discover you're not the one.
How about ... just going on a date to see how you get along, try to have fun, and if you have fun go then on another date? One date at a time? Seeing whether the two of you can build a working relationship, without prejudging the outcome?
-----
I was complaining about this stuff to K back on Friday night, about people who are "looking for a long-term relationship". And I've written about this particular thing before -- "looking for a long-term relationship". This activity attempts to break the time barrier. You cannot possibly find a long-term relationship. You cannot possibly know or control whether the person in front of you can build a long-term relationship with you. Long-term relationships are something you cannot have until the long-term has already gone by and, you both discover, hey we're still in a relationship. Because we both persisted, because it made sense for each of us to continue with it day after day.
You cannot judge these things ahead of time. If you think you can, I call bullshit. You have to start with mutual attraction, and work on things from there, each person at his own pace, dealing with the good and the bad as it happens.
Ideally, if you say you're looking for a long-term relationship, what you really mean is that you're willing to do the work and the communication of relating to another human being as she is, making yourself available and vulnerable as you are. That's all you can ever do. And you're just hoping that doing the work of relating to somebody will mean you can continue doing the work of relating to that same person, and that they'll do the same, with you.
But for now, you've got to deal with now. And tomorrow, you've got to deal with tomorrow. That's plenty. When I do open up to meeting others or spending more time with the people I already know, I'll be open to what happens next. That's all I can do. That's all anybody can do, but a lot of the time we fool ourselves into thinking we can do more than that. We think we can judge others to be perfect, or not. We don't, we can't, really know this.