External influences on libido

I said jokingly a little while ago that all I had to do was write about having no libido to start it up again. A week and a half later, I think I was wrong. A kind of an intellectual interest in how everything works returned, but no physical interest. I haven't masturbated or wanted to since September, before the accident. No wet dreams either.

There have been a few stirrings when I went over sexy memories to write something here, but never a complete erection. Normal complete noctural erections, though. I have pretty much no interest in porn, or erotic stories, or fantasizing.

A year ago, living with my wife, I was so frustrated that I couldn't have sex 3-4 times a week; and I loved porn and looked at least morning and evening if not more often. Fantasizing was something I couldn't avoid doing.

Before the accident my libido wasn't this low, but it was still really low; I started noticing a drop a few months after my wife moved out. After about six months it was down to masturbating once every week or two, before the accident it was down to every two weeks.

So what's controlling my hormones? My best guess is that it's so low due to two things: the absence of unrelated, nubile women, and healing my broken neck. My 80-year-old mother is the only woman living in the house; I see my sister pretty often. I see a pretty randomly-assigned professional nurse, all of whom have been women so far, about every third day for about 10 minutes. So, no hormones. Before the accident I saw women even less. But I do seem to have a fair amount of interest in intellectual discussion of sex, on the Web, and if a chance ever comes by in real life; which I think is partly drive to meet women.

Based on previous experience with being divorced and seeking a wife, when I start meeting women my drive will go up; get more physical. I will be fascinated by them, and occasional have fantasies, but will only feel like masturbating about once a month. As me and a particular woman see more of each other, my drive will ramp up and I will masturbate more often, eventually going up to about 3-4 times a week when we see each other pretty much every day.

No one ever told me about this stuff in sex ed, and I haven't seen any discussion on the Web in some searching. So I figured I'd write it down.

The Ugly Bug Ball

Some people are more influenced by looks than others. It tends to be cast as a moral virtue not to be affected by looks, but I don't think it's possible for everyone to train their tastes. If you can't, and you get with someone whose looks don't work for you, there will eventually be pain. The importance of looks is just another matter of taste.

Now, that said, I have pretty nonpicky tastes as far as women's looks go. And when I saw this article about the first engagement from The Ugly Bug Ball, a dating site for self-identified ugly people, I didn't think the bride looked too bad. So I checked it out.

I was thinking that after I'm back on the dating market, that I might sign up despite the fact I'm not ugly. (Not to everyone's taste, but not ugly). As I've mentioned before, being a peculiar sort myself, I would hate to miss out on my peculiar match because she or others don't think much of her looks. Plus, I figured in that environment, my looks would be a guaranteed plus rather than sometimes a "meh", which strokes my vanity.

On a quick look around I think that's what more than half the people who sign up are thinking. Also the front page copy is written to entice anyone to date ugly people (not just other ugly people):

# Half of UK daters aren’t pretty so instead of fishing in a small pool of prettiness and getting nowhere dive into an ocean of uglies and have more choice.

# Ugly people are a better calibre of human - pretty people generally aren’t very nice and tend to be a bit shallow

# Ugly people have had a tougher life and therefore tend to be more considerate and more loyal. A recent TUBB survey also proved that they try harder in bed.

I wonder, in a year will the population at The Ugly Bug Ball look much different than the general population? I'm not convinced it looks all that different now.

The girl with the douchebag guy is also a douchebag

perversecowgirl explains how it works. If you haven't read it already, go read it. Especially if you're a guy.

My Pedestal

Yesterday I wrote about how I imagined the cultural gender images affect people of that gender sexually. I think some people might be interested to hear about the way women's image affects me. I think a lot of men feel somewhat similarly, especially submissive men, but normally not so extremely as I.

I think, and hope, I didn't soak up the image of accomplishment being less important to women. I did, however, soak up the "sugar and spice and everything nice" image. To me, women are wonderful and somehow cleaner than men. Everything gross about a woman is considerably less gross than a man. It would be false to say I think women's shit doesn't stink. However, if you told me that someone had dug latrine near my well, and then told me only women use it, I would feel a moment of irrational partial relief (not "that's OK" but "could have been worse"). I wouldn't be nearly as grossed out if a woman accidentally sneezed on me as if a man did. I've got a bit of a pee kink. It does not extend to thinking women are morally better or worse than men; just physically cleaner. This idea is completely immune to real experience (i.e. it doesn't surprise me that girl pee smells like guy pee, it's just blessed somehow.)

Sometimes one hears complaints about being put on a pedestal, but it's hard for me to see the problems with this one. Seems like if I met a woman who felt the same way about men, it'd be great. Obviously it goes well with submissive play. What are the bad effects, if any?

Looking at neuroses

Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails,

That's what little boys are made of.

Sugar and spice and everything nice,

That's what little girls are made of.

As I've talked about a lot, men are neurotic because they are taught that they are gross and ridiculous on the surface. In media aimed at men, even really hot guys are comedy (think the Isaiah Mustapha Old Spice ads, which are great, BTW). The mass media heroes offered to men to identify with frequently start out with no dignity, offered no respect, but may earn respect by slaying a dragon or a building full of terrorists.

Judging by the way women seem to have significantly greater mentally-addressable problems with orgasm than men, it seems like the cultural neurosis is worse for women. Looking at the message to women from outside, it seems they are accorded a dignity from the beginning, but the message says that dignity is a fragile false veneer. The media aimed at little girls offers princesses to identify with, who are all looks and inborn desserts and no accomplishment. Accomplishment is not held out to women as a way to earn respect nearly as much as to men.

The culture teaches women that their respectability is a fragile veneer, I think, because it's easily lost. Without accomplishment, the respectability of the princess character is really a matter of other people's perception. What's the difference between Cinderella as princess and any ragpicker except how she's dressed and how people regard her? Then, of course, there is virginity; presented as of enormous inborn unearned value, superficial and easily lost.

The culture teaches women that their respectability is a false veneer, I think, because of what it teaches about women's genitalia. I've noticed that women are much more neurotic about their genitals than men. I imagine that is learned at menarche. There's generally nothing more embarrassing in polite society than involuntarily emitting fluids, but this is something that normal healthy women do periodically over most of their life. Women retain respectability not because society accepts this, but inasmuch as they successfully hide it. And then there's problem of perception in how arousal works for women. Men aren't embarrassed about getting hard except in inappropriate places or situations. We're pretty happy about a hard cock, in and of itself. Women are frequently embarrassed about a wet pussy in and of itself. Many women see it as messy, something they have to clean up after. Many men see it as the BEST THING IN THE WORLD, but so what? Boys are gross like that.

These different types of neurosis play out very differently during sex. The neurosis for men, that they are inherently gross and unattractive, isn't as harmful during sex because men didn't expect anything different anyway. Men are trained to the idea that they'd best be grateful for what they can get. To get an idea of the extent of this, look at perceptions when male children are sexually abused by women. Bodily fluids, weird faces, and embarrassing noises can be much more easily taken in stride.

In women it must produce inhibition; inhibition about their own enjoyment more than any particular activity. Women are trained that they have this fragile, false veneer of dignity, and they can't let their guard down or it will be shattered. They've been going around their whole life presented by the culture (not necessarily themselves) as being made of sugar, spice, and everything nice, and then when they have sex they've got to admit that enjoying it makes their nethers ooze a mucusy fluid. Then there's the faces and noises to deal with. I'm imagining this is very difficult for someone who had much Disney Princess training early on; and that it explains a lot about why so many women find it difficult to orgasm.

Something I learned about talking about rape

This post is edited from a comment I left at Bayou Renaissance Man, h/t LabRat. He talks about what women can do to avoid rape. I've made comments of similar import to his in the wrong place and made a lot of people very hurt and angry.

Something I learned in doing so was the tremendous extent to which blame is commonly placed on the victim to avoid blaming the perp. People feel like the victim is only being blamed for being stupid, so it's not such a big deal. And then it's possible to escape fully dealing with the perp. Thing is, likely her parents know the perp's parents, or her friends know him; the people around her don't want to deal with the misery of actually calling the cops, giving them the story, the trial, asking people to be witnesses. People don't want to deal with it, and if they can wriggle out of it by focusing on her mistake rather than his evil, it's a huge relief. After all, all they have to accuse her of is a little imprudence. Doesn't seem that big a deal to them.

Remember, if you were advising the victim, that the offender here isn't the guy we're used to from self-defense discussion, a stranger with a rap sheet as long as your arm. This is your neighbor's teenager or a friend of all your friends. Yeah, maybe he seemed a little off, but you help her go forward with this and you're going to keep seeing his friends at class and parties, or his parents that you always asked to watch the house when you were on vacation.

And the people I was talking to, when I tried to make suggestions as to what could be done to prevent rape, had been through that experience as the victim. Where no one wants to hear it, they want to sweep it under the rug, they want to say that's just how the world is, she should have known. So the victims don't want to hear word one about what they should have done, and I see why. What Bayou Renaissance Man and I meant as a sensible warning in advance is commonly an excuse to worm out of dealing with the offender.

I personally do everything that I recommended that women do to avoid rape, despite being a damn unlikely victim. I'm not convinced we can NEVER talk about prudent behavior. But I think we better bring up its use as an excuse every damn time. Every victim has a whole circle of friends and family. A lot more of us are going face the temptation to sweep it under the rug than are going to face the crime itself. There's a lot more of us that need to recognize the warning signs of wriggling out of handling a rape than will need to recognize the warnings of impending rape. We ought to be considerably better at recognizing those than recognizing what the victim did wrong.

Getting Over It

I've written a lot recently about my perception that women don't find men physically attractive. I'm going to get over that. I've done it before. Between my first and second marriages, I realized that the cultural message was crap and I had the confidence that many women do find me attractive (which is sort of self-fulfilling).

I lost it because my libido was much higher than my wife's and she didn't want her reactions to make offers she didn't want to keep. That's what she intended, not to treat me as unattractive.

The perception that men could be attractive in a suit in a restaurant, but not naked in a bed, came back as I got compliments from friends but my wife didn't give me a second glance. She didn't want her second glance being a promise, but that's not how it felt.

My commenters feel men are attractive. Other bloggers do. That's how real women feel. I will realize that.