Pretty hot, or just pretty?

In the last few months I have heard many things described as “just not sexy”, or “not sexy enough”, or words to that effect. These things include clothing, body shape, body hair, how someone smiles, particular styles of dance, how a particular person dances, and, perhaps most bizarrely of all, university subject choices. In none of these cases is sexiness the only relevant measure, and in some cases it isn't relevant at all. I'm bored of sexiness.

Not bored of sex, I should point out. Just bored of everything being measured in terms of how sexy it is, as though that’s all anything exists for. Often, “sexy” or “hot” are just used as general terms of praise. I think that’s what was happening with the university subject choices example. The fact that these things are now our favourite way of saying we like something is an annoying symptom, but it isn't the main problem. The main problem comes when we actually want to rate something’s (or someone’s) attractiveness.

I'm not talking about attractiveness as a dating prospect, or anything like that, just the kind of aesthetic judgements you’d make of a painting, or a view from a window. Our only way of liking the look of something now seems to be wanting to shag it. In many cases that raises practical difficulties, but it’s also pretty damn disturbing.

We all know that things can be pretty, or beautiful, or cute, or whatever else, without being sexy, or we wouldn't apply these adjectives to children and animals. So why, as soon as it’s something that it’s not actually illegal and messed up to fancy, do we revert straight back to using “sexy” and “hot” as our only ways of saying that something looks nice? And even when sexiness isn't the only thing, why is it still the main thing? I've heard “beautiful, but not sexy” used as a criticism (of a dancer in this case). Why is everything else subordinate to sexiness?

The problem with this, and probably part of the cause of it, is the immense pressure to be sexy all the time. There are loads of other things people might want to convey through their clothes, their movements, their choices, their expressions. Loads of things other than sexiness. If we lose all of that, the world becomes very boring. And sexiness becomes very boring too, because it’s everywhere all of the time, and constantly striving for it yourself and assessing it in others makes it a chore. And that’s a huge loss because of course, in the right circumstances, sexiness is really important for most people.

Currently, women are suffering the most from this constant pressure to be sexy. Consider professional dress, for example. The smartest suit you can imagine for a woman is probably at least a bit sexy. It probably goes with make-up, and maybe even heels. Something plainer will be taken less seriously in most professions. Consider fitness, for another example. You don’t get fit for the sake of your health, but for how sexy you’ll look in your sexy new outfit at some sexy event. This all entrenches objectification of women even further into a culture where it’s already pretty deeply embedded. The message is that women exist only to provide sexiness. Fail at that, and you are neither use nor ornament.

But men are catching up. The fitness example I just gave for women certainly applies to a large extent to men too, and the professional attire example might as well in a lot of jobs. This is not good equality. Men used to have a chance to be judged on attributes other than their sexiness, but no more! Why get an education (unless it makes women fancy you)? Why get a good job (unless the salary will attract hot women)? It’s fine to prioritise finding a relationship in your life, but good relationships aren't exclusively made and maintained by sexiness, as anyone over the age of about twenty is surely aware.

The solution of course is not to stop talking about sex, or attraction. Just don’t be afraid to expand your vocabulary a bit. Compliments will often ring truer, and judgements be more honest, if they respect what a person, or style, or performance, is setting out to convey. That might be sexiness, but even if it is, it probably isn't just sexiness in most cases. Life is richer than that, and it’s time our talk reflected that fact, or that richness will be lost.

Too many wrongs beat one "Mister Right"

We've heard it all before: You’re supposed to wait for Mister (or Ms) Right. You’ll know when you meet The One, your Soulmate. There’s a Prince Charming or fairytale princess, or a Knight on a white charger out there, someone for everyone, your other half. True love turns up when you least expect it, and you’ll just know that this is the first day of the rest of your life…

Let’s try that again.

We've heard it all before: You’ll never find someone if you don’t put a bit of effort in. You need to get out and meet people. He/she has let you down again? Talk it out. You could do a lot worse. Relationships take work; you didn't expect it to be all plain sailing did you? Oh, you’re on your own again; poor you! Plenty more fish in the sea. Got to get back on the horse. Have you considered lowering your standards? You are a bit high maintenance. We all just want you to settle down and be happy.

Well, what are we supposed to do here? Are we saving ourselves for the best, or settling for what we can get? Is it better to risk being left on the shelf, or being stuck in an unhappy relationship? Well, hopefully we are starting to realise that being stuck in a loveless marriage for the rest of your life, just for the sake of being paired off neatly by the age of thirty, is hopelessly old-fashioned. Divorce rates are rising, they tell us, and that can only be a good thing if it means fewer people condemned to that kind of future.

It looks like the looking-for-Mister-Right picture is the culprit in the old-fashioned way of doing things. It is the belief that there is one soulmate out there for each of us that has shaped our search for permanent relationships. But have we really let this picture go? It seems that we are still ambitious – if anything even more so that we used to be. We aspire to true happiness like never before, in relationships as in everything else. It’s just that we expect to have to work a bit harder and look for a bit longer to get there. The only error we have really accepted is that we were too ambitious in expecting to find the perfect partner so early in life. We still have a romantic side.

But at the same time, we have a cynical side. Part of us thinks that there really is no such thing as the perfect relationship. When things get rocky with a current partner, it’s a judgement call, not whether we are really happy with them, but whether we are likely to be able to find someone else with whom we are happier. If not, we tend to think we should stay put and count ourselves lucky.

There’s an up-side to this. Relationships really do take work, and leaving at the first hint of a disagreement, rather than talking about it to try and understand each other’s points of view, seems to be jumping ship too soon. No-one will ever understand you perfectly, or agree with you about everything. However, trying to be too forgiving and compromising over everything can just mean that no-one ends up happy. In the worst case it can result in tolerance of abuse.

That judgement call over whether to stay or go will always be tough, but it can be made somewhat easier by dropping the insistence that being with anyone at all is better than being alone. If we really believe that there is a Mister or Ms Right out there, we have to accept that finding them will take wading through a fair few wrong'uns. And / or that some people will never find the right person at all. If we don’t believe there is any such One, then there will only ever be right or wrong for now, and we can still expect people to change partners every now and again. And / or that some people will choose to be single long-term or permanently.

In any event, we can expect break-ups, new relationships, and periods of being single, in various proportions depending on personal tastes, to be the norm for almost everybody. If that really is what would best facilitate happiness, we need to make being single, and breaking up, more socially acceptable. We still punish people for being single and “not settled yet”, and that makes no sense by our very own lights! Either we think they haven’t found the right person yet, but we know that can take a lot of work, or we think that different people make the best partner for different phases of life, and being single is best for others. In neither case should we be pushing people into little cottages with roses round the door, and a tandem parked by the picket fence, just because they've reached some arbitrary age called Time To Settle Down.

In general we seem to have agreed – and good thing too – that it’s better to leave relationships when they go horribly wrong than to stay with someone who seemed perfect at first glance. Too many wrongs beat one “Mister Right”. Now we just need our other attitudes to catch up. In particular, we need to accept singledom, breakups, and new relationships (as “unsettled” as they may be) as just part of our society. These are not things to punish people for, and the temptation to do so is a result of a hopelessly outdated view of relationships that we have already explicitly and happily abandoned.

Fast food, slow sorrows

We live in a culture of instant gratification. We want our food prepared fast, we eat it fast, and then we’re done. We treat sex the same way. We have no place for preparation, anticipation, indulgence. Why? Because we’re busy people. We’re in a hurry. We don’t have time. But for all that, when it comes to other people’s misery, we suddenly seem to have all the time in the world to wallow. Whether it’s the news, or your favourite soap opera, the average person will spend plenty of time indulging the tragic feels. I suggest we swap this round, and spend more time on stuff that’s actually fun, whenever we can reasonably do so.

We have undergone something of a revolution in the pace of living, and it’s often pointed out that things like cooking and eating a nice meal, or spending time with loved-ones, are the casualties. The loss of these things has left a gap in our emotional lives that we’re always looking to fill. Some people fill it with religion, some have affairs, some develop addictions, but I think one thing we all do, one way or another, is seek out intense emotional stimulation.

You can see it in our attitude to current affairs. I'm not saying we shouldn't watch the news; it’s really important to be informed about what’s going on around you. But the reaction in social and other media to stories that particularly engage our sense of tragedy is almost gleeful in its sheer ferocity. We take to twitter, and do the verbal equivalent of throwing ourselves on the floor tearing our hair and beating our chests. It’s not that tragedy should be minimized or ignored, or that feeling for distant strangers is wrong, but we seem to get more excited at opportunities to do so than is quite sane.

Another place this comes across is in the TV and films we like to watch. There has always been tragedy in art, and it has often been beautiful, and interesting, and provocative, and important. But now, much of it is simply gruelling. It’s like someone turned the misery dial to eleven with no regard for subtlety, plotlines, characters. You want feels? We’ll give you feels. Have a good old wallow in that, and you’ll definitely know you’re alive.

Can we do better? Can we fill this emotional gap some other way than by seeking out the strongest emotional stimulus we can find, and drowning ourselves in it? I hope so. It’s probably quite difficult in practice, but in theory it’s quite simple: Just fill the gap with the stuff we lost when it was created in the first place. Re-learn the taste of food, and the feel of your lover’s skin. Satisfying your basic bodily desires is not a necessary task to be accomplished so that you can get on with your life. These things are life. They have the power to move us more deeply than anything else if we only let them.

I think we all sort of recognise that there’s something better about spending time cooking a meal with loved-ones than watching a soap on TV. That’s why we have phrases like “quality time”. But my point isn't just that it would be better for you and the people around you, so it’s worth putting in the effort (although that’s true). It’s that we really have quite literally forgotten how to enjoy the simple things. We need to spend time focussing on simple pleasurable bodily sensations, almost like an act of meditation, to try and get this skill back. And not only feeling them bodily, but crucially, letting them move us emotionally. They should. Simple as they are, things like eating and making love are the biggest and most important things we will ever do.

Not everyone has this luxury. Some are mired in their own sorrows, not wallowing in other people’s. Others don’t have time for TV or the news or reading, so it’s not so much that they are filling the gap with the wrong things, as that they have no time to fill it at all. These people have my sympathy, and I'm afraid I have no easy solution for them. But I think most of us really do have the time, and our lives are not so bad that this is impossible.

By all means keep your so-called higher pleasures – your art and literature – they are not the problem. Rid your life of anything that you indulge in purely to provoke an emotional reaction, even though that reaction is misery. I promise you won’t get bored if you fill the gap with simple pleasures. Rediscover preparation, anticipation and indulgence in the simplest and most basic aspects of life, and you will quite possibly never be bored again.

Blood is thicker than water?

There’s nothing like Christmas for getting us thinking about our duties to our families. You know the ones I mean, even if you are fortunate enough that none of your own family falls in this category – the ones you force yourself to spend time with and be civil to, while never ever enjoying it. But do we have to do it?

A lot of people, especially at this time of year, spend time with relatives who make them feel miserable, angry, worthless, guilty, ashamed, frustrated…you can continue this list yourself well enough if you’re one of them. You know how it feels for you. There’s a sense that you have a duty to be there, and yet, if you weren't, all parties concerned would be having a much better time. Add in the dreading in advance and the recovering afterwards, and this takes a serious chunk out of time you could otherwise be spending not feeling like crap. Time is precious, so it’s worth evaluating why we think this torment is a worthwhile way to spend it.

They say that blood is thicker than water, that you should always stick by your family, but is that right? Why do people think we should do this? The “blood is thicker than water” line seems to just be about family for its own sake. You owe them something just because you are related. But how on earth does that work? I share more DNA with a fruit fly than with a honey bee (apparently), but does that mean I should spend more time around fruit flies, or show them more respect or affection? It just doesn't seem relevant.

Much more plausible is the argument that you owe them something for what they have done for you in the past. Of course, not all family members have done anything good for you at all, so this argument won’t even get off the ground regarding them. Of the ones that have, there are at least two questions: First, have you already done as much for them as they have for you? Second, have they done you enough harm to outweigh the good they have done you? This stuff isn't measurable, so unfortunately there’s really no way of answering these questions, but if being around these family members makes you miserable, the chances are there’s a reason for that, and that reason may well be harm that they've done you. It needn't be big stuff you can point to, but constant sniping, undermining, guilt-tripping, or whatever is real psychological harm. Ok, it probably won’t kill you, but it’s certainly not nice.

Another powerful reason that people probably do this is self-flagellation and martyrdom. Other people believe that sticking by your family no matter what is some kind of great virtue, so if you’re seen to be doing that, check out what a good person you are! And the fact you don’t enjoy it only enhances the effect. The more time you spend feeling hounded and miserable and yet fighting on out of a sense of duty, the more admirable you seem to become.

But why do these other people think you’re so admirable? Presumably for one of the same reasons you might have – either because family is important just because it’s family, or because you owe them for past good stuff they've done for you. But we've just seen that neither of those is a great argument. So these people are admiring you for all the wrong reasons. If you want their admiration, go out and help an old lady across the road or something.

And in fact that brings me to my final point: what do you do with the spare time and emotional energy if you choose to say “no” to the horrific family reunion? Well you could devote it to friends. Friendships are important, and they need nurturing to survive. You and your friends chose each other for a reason (remember you can’t choose your family, as the saying goes) so don’t lose sight of that. The same goes for partners (the best of friends).

Alternatively you could spend the time and energy on strangers. Since there are only so many old ladies in the world who need helping across roads, volunteer for a charity. Or donate some money, or food, or blankets. Your family might be anything from pains in the arse to nasty pieces of work, but some people’s families are genuinely abusive, and those people often end up on the street. A helping hand for them is probably a better use of your time than listening to great aunty Sue telling you why you’ll never amount to anything for the umpteenth time.

Or finally, you might spend that time and energy on yourself. Looking after yourself is no sin; it’s your life to live the best you can, and you can’t do that very well if you’re stressed and tired all the time. Sometimes the best way of taking care of yourself is taking yourself away from family. You might genuinely be better off without each other, and no mystical sense that blood with similar DNA floating around in it is magically sacred should get in the way of that.

You Give Me Road Rage

This is a rant about the evils of cars and driving.

There are multiple reasons that driving is an immoral way to travel, and at least two of them would each be sufficient reason on their own to never get behind the wheel. The first is the environmental cost, and the second is the risk to life. The environmental cost is pretty well documented; everybody knows it, but no-one appears to care, so I’ll focus on the risk to life.

By risk to life, I mean the chances of killing or seriously injuring someone when you are on the road. The risk of this may be tiny as long as you are not a particularly reckless driver, but killing someone is such a huge cost, that even a tiny risk is well worth avoiding if you reasonably can. And most people reasonably can. In most locations, public transport, walking and cycling are all realistic options for most journeys. It is not about having no other option, but about what is more convenient.

Doesn't that sit awkwardly with anyone? More convenience, versus the risk of someone being killed. And the chances are highest that that someone would be one of the people you drive around most regularly, and so one of the people you care about most. I would think that, however small the chances are, provided they are not infinitesimal (and they are not), there is no way it’s ok to choose convenience over safety.

But you’re a good driver, you think. Even if you’re right (and almost everyone vastly overestimates themselves), so what? Let’s try an analogy:

Say you are a really good typist, and you know it. You’re known for miles around for your fast and accurate typing. Then one day, someone kidnaps your family, and sends you a ransom demand. Actually, more of a ransom challenge, if that’s a thing. They offer a chauffeur-driven car direct to their secret lair, where they will challenge you to a typing test. If you pass the test, your family are released unharmed, and you are all driven straight home.

Fantastic, you think! The thing I'm best at is all I have to do. But then you start to think about having to test your skill under this immense pressure, with your family’s lives depending on your abilities, nerve and concentration. You’re not superhuman; you could always make a mistake. You've made mistakes occasionally before, although fortunately they've never really had any consequences. You are a really really good typist, but it’s a complex skill. If anything went wrong, you would feel that you had killed your own family, and would have to live with that for the rest of your life.

But what’s this? There’s a P.S. to the ransom note. There’s an alternative.

You could get the bus to the secret lair, then your family will be released unharmed, and you can all get the bus home. Buses are only once an hour, so you’re a bit restricted in when you can travel, and it takes about ten minutes longer to get there, and the bus stop is a five minute walk from your house. A chauffeur-driven car does seem more convenient. Is it worth it, if that convenience carries with it the requirement that you wager the lives of the people you care most about on your skill at typing?

Surely, even if you’re an amazing typist, you just get on the bus? If you don’t, how dare you?! How dare you be arrogant enough to wager the lives of others on just how great you think you are at some practical skill at which everyone is necessarily fallible?! But that is just what drivers do every day: wager the lives of others on just how great they think they are at a practical skill at which everyone is necessarily fallible.

You’ll say this is a false analogy, and you’re right. For one thing, most people are not great at driving; they are merely ok, and many are worse than that. For another thing, this analogy doesn't even begin to capture all the innocent passers-by whose lives you potentially endanger when you drive. It’s your loved-ones you are most likely to harm, but it could be practically anyone. All of them with lives and loves and friends and families and plans.

The thing about death (and certain types of injury) is that there’s no going back and making it right, no healing, no recovery. One tiny slip of concentration (and we all have hundreds of those every day) and the worst could happen. You might die yourself of course. Or you might have to live with the consequences of your actions for many decades to come. But it was worth it. Because of convenience. Tell that to the bereaved.

#YesMeansYes

In a previous post, I made a vague promise to write a post on sexual consent, so here, in my second hashtag-titled blog post (look at me blending seamlessly into the modern world) is that post.

Now seems to be the time, given a recent flurry about consent in the media (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29503973 and http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/women-being-coerced-into-having-anal-sex-researchers-say-with-persuasion-normalised-9671395.html), in particular the notion of affirmative consent (saying “yes” rather than just not saying “no” to put it in simple terms), e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/yes-means-yes-california-sexual-consent.

I'm certainly interested in all the various problems posed by affirmative consent (What exactly counts as establishing it? Isn't it still one person’s word against another’s in many cases of assault? Is this level of intervention in people’s private lives too much, given that this seems to regulate how people consent, not only to insist that they do? And so on, doubtless indefinitely). But what I want to write about here is one major reason that the idea behind it is a step in the right direction.

The naïve view of consent says that if you want to do something, you consent, and if you don’t want to do it, you don’t. But even putting aside the problem of what counts as consenting or as refusing, I don’t think it’s that simple. And the main reason it’s not that simple is power.

Sex is often about power. Some people love that and deliberately play on it, others don’t but find it hard to avoid. It’s often the case that at any given time, one partner has some power over the other. I'm not saying that that’s inevitable, or that it’s good or bad in itself, just that it’s very often the case.

When someone with power suggests sex, or a particular sex act, to someone without power, it may be very difficult for the relatively powerless party to say “no”, or otherwise express refusal.

The idea behind affirmative consent, as I understand it, is that if someone cannot bring themselves to say “no”, their partner can’t just carry on anyway. Of course it is still possible to feel pressured into saying “yes”, but keeping silent (withholding consent) is much easier than speaking out (refusing consent) for a relatively powerless partner.

There are lots of reasons that someone might not be able to bring themselves to explicitly refuse consent, including not wanting to be a disappointment to their partner, feeling like they ought to want this because it’s what someone normal would want, fearing that if they say “no” their partner will suggest something else that they are even less keen to do, feeling that they owe their partner this in return for something, fearing that the partner will leave them if they don’t do what they want.

In some situations, the power imbalance may not be temporary, but a permanent feature of that relationship, where one partner always dominates. In that case, there may be worse reasons for the powerless partner not being able to bring themselves to refuse consent, including feeling that their desires are not important, that they have no right to a say, or fearing that if they say “no” their partner might carry on anyway and there is nothing they could do to stop them. In that last case, allowing it to happen might make you miserable, but refusing and having it happen anyway would make you a rape victim – I know which I’d rather be.

There is a particular problem here with sexual habits that play on the imbalance of power. As I said above, there’s nothing inherently wrong with these things, but it is important to realise that they can trap people. If someone agrees to try being submissive just to see what it’s like, they make themselves the powerless party, and once that has happened it can be difficult to backtrack. All the safewords in the world won’t save you if you can’t bring yourself to say them because you don’t believe you deserve the right. Powerlessness can get under your skin faster than anything.

That last part might sound like a specific criticism of the BDSM community, but it’s not. People who know what they like are totally entitled to enjoy it with willing others. The point is more about trying out something new, whether that’s a new sexual practice or a new partner. That is the time when consent is required, and the time when power imbalances are most likely to make it difficult to withhold.

Affirmative consent is a blunt instrument. It may be so blunt that it doesn't do the job, as we currently conceive of it. However, its heart is in the right place. As an idea, it exists to protect those who want to say “no”, but can’t bring themselves to speak. They aren't weak people, or stupid people, or in any way strange or abnormal. They are just people who currently don’t have the balance of power in a sexual relationship with them, and that is something that could happen to anyone, so this should matter to us all.

Even from the other side – the side of the person with the power – this is important. You want to know whether someone actually wants to do what you are offering, not just for them to say that they do. (If not, you are a sex offender in all but name). So establishing real and genuine consent is essential for both parties. Any initiative that tries to help with that is to be applauded. So if you have concerns about the notion of affirmative consent as it’s currently being employed, voice those concerns in a way that could help make it better, or offer an alternative. Don’t dismiss and deride the whole idea, because this is something that should matter to every decent person. Let’s at least start a conversation.

If you had been through what I've been through...

This is a post about privilege, suffering, and inverse snobbery.

Our society despises privilege (although we are all privileged to some extent), praises those who have suffered (although any sane person would avoid suffering at all costs), and because of these two things engages in inverse snobbery.

The term “inverse snobbery” is normally applied to those who criticise those of a higher social class or income bracket just for their membership of that class. No-one likes posh people after all. Unfair as I think this is, I'm thinking of a different kind of inverse snobbery here: the attitude of those who have suffered hardship (or who think they have) toward those who (they think) have led an easier life. And this is just as unfair, and even crazier than the more usual kind of inverse snobbery.

There’s a sensible origin to some of this madness. People who have suffered something (racism, sexism, starvation, violence, homelessness, anything really) may rightly believe that they have a perspective on that suffering that those who haven’t undergone it don’t have. Don’t tell someone who has suffered one of these things what it is like, or how they should feel about it, if you haven’t suffered it yourself. That is fair enough. But the sentiment needn't extend as far as having no right to an opinion about that kind of suffering, or to not being entitled to act to stop it.

For example, I have never been punched in the face. But I think that being punched in the face is bad, and I think I'm entitled to have and express that opinion. I also think I am entitled to step in and stop someone else getting punched in the face without being told that it’s none of my business because I just don’t understand what it’s like. Worse, I don’t expect to be treated like there’s something essential missing from my character until I have suffered this widespread ill.

Think this sort of thing doesn't happen? It does; keep a look out and you’ll find it. The most extreme example I have seen is someone defending their use of an abusive comment of a sexual nature. I won’t quote it. It was nasty. Someone else rightly criticised this, only to be told that they could stay out of it until they had been sexually abused themselves, like the speaker of the offensive comment. Not only is that ridiculous, it’s dangerous. It basically says “I am allowed to be abusive because I have been abused, and you haven’t the right to stop me because you haven’t been”. Now obviously not everyone who has suffered in any way goes on to inflict suffering on others, but there is some danger in letting only those people have a say in how suffering is dished out in the future.

Where does this crazy attitude come from? It seems like those who have suffered take a pride in it, and want to look down on those who haven’t. Perhaps, as with the class or money-driven inverse snobbery, envy has something to do with it. But there seems to be more to it. It’s like we have this social idea that the strongest swords are forged in fire. If you have been though something terrible, you really will be a better person in all sorts of ways than someone who has had a relatively easy life. I don’t buy it. You might be more capable in some ways because of it, and less capable in others, but people vary hugely in these respects anyway. Everything that happens to a person, good and bad, shapes their character. Emphasizing the positive transformative effects of suffering ignores both the negative transformative effects of suffering, and the transformative effects (positive and negative) of good experiences.

By requiring others to have suffered in order to have an opinion or a right to intervene in an issue where that suffering is concerned, you are basically wishing suffering on others. Nice of you. The danger in this being so pervasive is that those who feel their lives have been really easy in all respects become almost envious of those who have some tale of suffering to tell. They start to feel that they are worthless because they haven’t been through at least some kind of hell. And anything that can make people feel something that insane is obviously something that has gone far too far.

So stop it.

Someone who has lived a relatively easy life still has every right to their opinions about suffering, as long as they are not trying to dictate how you should feel about it. They are also not in any way less of a person. Your suffering may have made you stronger, without them being weak for the lack of it. That’s totally consistent. So start wishing for less suffering in the world, not more.