Hey, remember when my posts had coherence? No?

[puella_nerdii]

Good news, mostly: Am back on campus!

Good news, definitely: I think the grad school interview went well, knock wood -- at any rate, the program feels like the right one for me, and I can only hope that the faculty agrees.

Less good news: The internet is not working in my apartment. wryyyyy.

Amusing news: really there were many amusing things

Comments

hi! I have written you an essay!

[puella_nerdii]

I have talked about it before at some length, though I think it's in the comments to a post rather than in a post itself. I think I've talked on it about pyrrhiccomedy's journal, too.) The America I write fails at BDSM because he's not good at the kind of conscientiousness and negotiation that BDSM requires. You have to be capable of pretty frank self-assessment if you want to make BDSM work, and America's, well, not always so good at that. You also need to be really attuned to your partners -- what they need, what they want, how they feel -- and it has to be genuine empathy and not just you deciding what your partners want based on how you think they should be reacting or feeling. America is not good at this kind of empathy, to say the least; he's still really set on doing things /his/ way. The idea of wanting to be hurt is also a little strange to him, I think; he's definitely had his share of fast rough sex, but it's never been premeditated, and BDSM calls attention to a kind of intentionality of pain that America's uncomfortable with. He's a creature of the moment, and getting a few scrapes during sex is cool and fun, but deliberately inflicting or receiving pain is another animal, and since so much of American culture is built around avoiding pain -- yeah.

As for the rest of the BDSM spectrum -- my America does not like to be tied up and doesn't view discipline as terribly sexual or as something to be sought after, and while he's capable of a lot of behavior that could be construed as D/s, there's a difference between doing that unconsciously and doing it with intention, and my America has issues with the deliberateness more than anything else. America has a very specific image of himself as The Hero, and engaging in D/s calls that identity into question, and that makes him really uncomfortable. So while America's more than capable of dominant behavior, as history and Hetalia can both attest, he's not a Dom because it's not conscious and he's deeply uncomfortable with the idea of exerting that kind of conscious power over someone else. (America's style of control is a lot more insidious, and a lot of times he doesn't even realize he's engaging in it.) He doesn't want to think of himself as the kind of person who wants that kind of power, regardless of whether or not he is that kind of person. His issues with submission are similar, because there's a lot of cultural baggage associated with the idea of submission and America's uncomfortable with being perceived of as weak, to say the least. Not that submission is a sign of weakness! But it's construed that way a lot, and while I definitely think America has a submissive streak, I think you'd have to construct the idea of submission as a "proving how much you can take and how strong you are" kind of thing if you wanted him to intentionally go for it. (I mean, I think the BIGGEST draw for submission for him would actually be the "being cared for and cherished and loved" bit, but I don't think you could get him to admit as much.)

I think he might be able to work around all this eventually, but it's going to take time and effort, emphasis on time. I have also read very good takes on America where he doesn't fail at BDSM, and I've completely believed those, but the version of America in my head works the way I've described.

I would hope there's not a Why Americans Aren't Kinky strip! Many Americans are, regardless of their country's Issues With Sex. O Alfred.