Sex 2

content/sex/005.md

@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 5
+---
+
+I spent a lot of time walking circles around the concept of asexuality. It's an uncomfortable thought, an identity that itches for someone who feels attraction, who otherwise enjoys the idea of sex, even the act.
+
+> So long as it doesn't actually involve you.
+
+Yes.
+
+Autochorissexualism, they call it, though the word is clunky to the point of inoperable. The feeling of being generally positive on sex to the point of getting turned on, so long as it doesn't actually involve oneself. Fictional characters, visual art, and text-based roleplay seem to be almost the bread and butter of such.
+
+I suppose, if you spend so much time feeling a fundamental disconnect from your body, such an identity is almost bound to form. Even before I felt so plagued by dysphoria that interacting sexually was problematic in its own right, even before I was able to engage with another person sexually in person, I was embedded in long distance relationships where sexual interaction was based on the idea of sex rather than the actual practice of it.
+
+> Was that a choice?
+
+I don't know. I suppose, on some level, it was. Could I have dated someone local instead of Danny? Instead of Marek or Andrew? Sure, I guess.
+
+> But you didn't.
+
+No.
+
+> Why not?
+
+I suppose that would have required me coming out to my parents more formally. Or, perhaps, it would've required me gaining a level of sneakiness in my social interactions that I don't think I'm really capable of.
+
+Not only that, but I dove into furry, and I dove into it *hard*. It was my distraction from a shitty few years of life, from a shitty entry into puberty. And, with the whole running away fiasco, the sudden moving of schools, it was my whole social circle.
+
+And hey, one dates within one's social circle, right? That would require having a local furry scene.
+
+> You had Shannon and Ash.
+
+Well, yes, but Ash and I had known each other since second grade. Something about it didn't feel right. And this is back when I was very, very gay. For better or for worse, Shannon and I were not relationship material.
+
+> Had you been more open to dating women, do you think you would have been?
+
+Perhaps. I don't know how long that would have lasted, though, had we gone in that direction. After a time, we simply became better friends material than we would have made relationship material.
+
+> There was Pilot.
+
+We were in no way compatible.
+
+> There was Michael.
+
+I *knew* it. I knew that was coming. I could feel you winding up to throw that in my face.

content/sex/006.md

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 6
+---
+
+> So, tell me about Michael in a second, but tell me why you knew that was coming.
+
+Why should I? We both know.
+
+> Because it's important that you be able to contextualize this discussion.
+
+It was the order of your questions. It was the way you came at things so circuitously. It was the way you asked about the local furry scene specifically without mentioning him. It's the way you nudged me about Shannon before bringing him up.
+
+> Was that uncouth.
+
+A little. Ask about relationships as relating to a woman, then ask me about when I started dating a trans man. Are you my internalized transphobia?
+
+> Not my department. You hate yourself far more than this conversation entails.
+
+Of course.
+
+> Still, the answer is no. I do not ask about him out of some weird sense of transphobia, so much as because, with Shannon, you mentioned being very, very gay, and yet your relationship with Michael was still sexual.
+
+So?
+
+> There is an aspect of biology here that needs mentioning.
+
+Or at least talking around in circles.
+
+> No, mentioning. You went into your relationship with him gay to the point of describing your aversion to vaginas, and you came out of it solidly bi.
+
+Point.
+
+> Yes.
+
+Our relationship was indeed sexual. It didn't involve PiV sex until it was no longer a romantic relationship, but there's no denying the that aspect of it. There's no denying the attraction, even if at the time, I chalked it up to him being transmasculine.
+
+> Was there perhaps some aspect of **doppelwunsch** to it? Some bit of "I don't know whether I want to be with him or be him"?
+
+If so, it was only the tiniest shadow of a prelude. We dated when I was seventeen and eighteen. I didn't really do the whole *gosh, maybe I'm trans* thing until I was in my mid twenties.
+
+> Hindsight is 20/20.
+
+I hate that phrase.
+
+> 2016: "I think "hindsight is twenty-twenty" is better reserved for cases
+when seemingly unrelated occurrences come together to form an outcome
+that seems to be greater than the sum of the parts. It fits best when
+you look back at your life and see disparate, unconnected events come
+together to make the situation you find yourself in now."
+
+You throw my words back at me?
+
+> Yes.
+
+Fine. Yes. Perhaps there was some aspect of *doppelwunsch* to our relationship. Still, that does not take away from the fact that suddenly, sexuality became far more complex for me. Suddenly, There was some level of attraction to someone who wasn't simply another gay furry on the internet.
+
+> It opened you up. "Ah," you thought. "Perhaps the reason sex doesn't work so well with guys is maybe I'm more into women."
+
+That's putting it quite glibly, but perhaps in a way, yes.
+
+> So you dated Kayla.
+
+Yes. We even had sex a few times.
+
+> And were you more into women?
+
+I don't know. I think that's the point at which it stopped mattering. That's the point I started calling myself pan. That's the point I stopped keeping track.
+
+> Because nothing was working.
+
+Yeah.

content/sex/007.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 7
+---
+
+I feel it important to add that it's not that sex itself feels bad.
+
+> Why?
+
+Why does it not feel bad?
+
+> No. Why do you feel it important to add that?
+
+Because to do so would do a disservice to my years trying to be sexually active. They weren't bad years, and I did have some success at it.
+
+JD and I eventually got together. We had a good amount of sex. We went to the Underground parties --- orgies, really --- and had lots of fun there. Bel and I had a good amount of sex, and it was pretty good. I looked forward to seeing them, simply because the sex was pretty good, as well as because they were good friends.
+
+> So if the sex was pretty good, if I still had a lot of fun playing around with your husband, why did you stop? Why did you eventually remove your choice in the matter and chemically castrate yourself?
+
+Because I resented needing sex. It was insatiable, yet it seemed to me to be no more than a puerile affliction, like baby teeth.
+
+I resented how I shared so many wonderful and complete sexual interactions with people when my own body was not involved. I resented how how good sex *could* be and yet never was. I resented how easy it was for some people to have good sex when, for me, even at my freest, I was so rarely able to manage much more than a confused, anxious jumble of physical interaction that was driven so often by the mere need to ejaculate.
+
+> You resented that you had to take part so wholeheartedly, too. You resented that you had to stop, to do nothing but sex for so long.
+
+Yes. I could typefuck and read. I could typefuck and do homework. I could typefuck and browse porn. I could typefuck twice at the same time, or three times, spending time with one person on SPR and another on FurryMUCK, or hell, two people on one MUCK, one in the same room while paging another elsewhere.
+
+Hell, I resent having to focus on a single thing even now. Even as I write this, I'm on a train with no cell signal, and I resent the fact that I have to focus just on this without the ability to tab over and, say, chat with someone.
+
+> Do you resent this forced interaction with me?
+
+No, or perhaps no more than usual. I would resent being only able to work on typesetting or software, too, just as I resent going out to the movies for making me do nothing but consume a single piece of media.

content/sex/008.md

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 8
+---
+
+> So if sex makes you feel anxious and confused, how does being asexual --- or perhaps autochorissexual --- make you feel?
+
+Other than uncomfortable and itchy? I think that's how I described it earlier.
+
+> Yes.
+
+I guess it makes me feel anxious and confused in new and exciting ways. It's comfortable enough for JD and I to not have a a sexual relationship. He's still a gay guy, for the most part, so for me to have transitioned to the extent that I have means that we don't really click on a sexual level anymore, anyway.
+
+He's not my only partner, though. Robin is still sexual. Barac is still sexual. Colton is still sexual. I have all these sexual people in my life, and they're all people I'm attracted to and with whom I've shared sexuality in one way or another, but with whom I mostly feel disinclined to have sex with for <a class="pulse" href="/aside/dreams/3">any number of reasons</a>.
+
+> And Judith?
+
+We had penetrative sex for the first time --- a sort of exploratory thing --- when last she visited, and shortly after, she mentioned feeling ace, herself.
+
+> You enjoyed it.
+
+I did, that hasn't changed from what I mentioned before. Sex feels good. It feels better now after surgery than it did before, too.
+
+It's just that, having had surgery has only removed one aspect of the anxious and confused grossness that goes along with the act. It only removed the dysphoria (and of course the complications of phimosis). It didn't fix my other hangups.
+
+> What are the other hangups?
+
+The discomfort.
+
+The mess.
+
+The guilt.
+
+The imperfection.
+
+> Imperfection?
+
+The sense that were we doing something else, we might both be happier.
+
+The sense that, no matter how smoothly I might move, I must surely be doing a bad job, I must be falling short in some way.
+
+The sense that, no matter how many times I ask the other person whether something feels good or is allowed, I must be somehow <a class="pulse" href="/sex/rape">betraying their consent</a> by gaining pleasure from this act.

content/sex/009.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 9
+---
+
+> Were you able to become a truly sexual person, would you?
+
+Probably.
+
+> What would that look like?
+
+I'm not sure. Sexual liberation? All that stuff online, being able to do at least some of it in person? Some fantasies coming true? I'm writing this on my way to a furry convention where I'll be around three of my partners. Maybe it would look like having comfortable sex with them. Maybe it would be some low-consequences sex with friends, many of whom will also be there.
+
+Perhaps it would simply look like less shame.
+
+> Shame, according to Brené Brown, is rooted in vulnerability. Shame is the sense that "you are bad", as opposed to the "you did a bad thing" that goes along with guilt.
+
+Yes. And there is some aspect of vulnerability that is healthy, but just an aspect of it, not the whole of it.
+
+Were I able to become a truly sexual person, I'd probably do it.
+
+> Do you feel bad that you aren't, then?
+
+To an extent, but not bad enough to hunt down some sort of "fix". I don't feel broken, *per se*, at least not always, but I do feel like I'm missing out on something wonderful. I don't feel broken, but maybe I do feel a little jealous.

content/sex/010.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 10
+---
+
+> Do you think you are becoming more comfortable with sex over time?
+
+Yes, as I've mentioned.
+
+> Spell it out plainly.
+
+Okay.
+
+Surgery helped. Hell, transition as a whole helped. Being a girl has helped. Sure, it might be nice to be the penetrating partner, but I also dearly love being penetrated, and this has added that to my life.
+
+Talking and thinking about it has helped. I spend a lot of time working on this, because even if I can't become a sexual person, becoming more comfortable with being an asexual person would be a good thing.
+
+And hell, even kink has helped, as I mentioned. As has typefucking. I've started interacting more as Makyo lately, as an explicitly transgender character, as someone so very like myself. I'll never be able to have anything other than complicated and weird trans sex as a complicated and weird trans woman, and so doing so intentionally, owning the less-than-ideal realities of my body and mind in a place where it's so easy to take part in the ideal feels like a healthy step forward.
+
+> Late bloomer that you are, you're learning that all of the less-than-ideal aspects of sex are a part of the whole experience, and that you can still have fun despite them.
+
+Yes. Let me own the lube and the awkward positions. Let me own the wet spots and the performance anxiety. Let me own my weird-as-hell body. And then let me own sexuality, and I would be plenty happy with that.
+
+> But you're not unhappy now.
+
+No, I'm not unhappy. I'm happy with this, really. I'm happy with fantasy and art and TS. I'm happy with verbal teasing and masturbation.
+
+The only bit I'm really unhappy about is that it keeps me from making others happy.

content/sex/kink/001.md

@@ -3,7 +3,9 @@ date: 2019-09-25
 weight: 1
 ---
 
-What do you do when you've got a libido and relatively little will to act upon it? Delve into kink.
+What do you do when you've got a libido and relatively little will to act upon it?
+
+Delve into kink.
 
 > Well, and fuck around on Taps a lot.
 

content/sex/kink/004.md

@@ -25,6 +25,6 @@ It was exposure therapy when I spent scene after scene toying with fertility. It
 
 It was exposure therapy when I made my character a pudgy nerd and still able to engage with her sexually. It's exposure therapy because I've been able to come to terms with my body.
 
-> It's exposure therapy because at some point, you started enjoying sex and the thought of sharing that with someone.
+> It's exposure therapy because at some point, you started enjoying sex --- or at least enjoying it more --- and the thought of sharing that with someone.
 
 Yes.

content/sex/rape/01.md

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 1
+---
+
+> Tell me about rape.
+
+No.
+
+> Talk in circles around it, then, and then tell me why you won't tell me about it. Or vice versa. I'm not picky as to the order.
+
+Fine.

content/sex/rape/02.md

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 2
+---
+
+Let's say, as we have already, that you spend much of puberty up in your head, and then when you start branching out into engaging sexually with others, you do so in a purely intellectual way. One which involves some sort of platonic ideal of sexuality. You never feel awkward. Everything always just works.
+
+Let's just take that for granted.
+
+Let's also take for granted that this mechanism of interaction is one wherein getting out of a sexual interaction that is uncomfortable, or pressured, or hell, even nonconsensual is a matter of just...stopping. Come up with an excuse. Come up with some lie. Eschew the truth in favor of making the other person happy, as you would your father.
+
+> That's not possible. Being pressured into typefucking is just as easy as it is to be pressured into sex in the embodied world.
+
+I'll agree with that. Take it for granted, then that this is what you believe. You believe that consent is implicit in the act, because to revoke consent is as simple as signing off or pretending that your parents walked in on you.
+
+> Okay.
+
+Now take the type of person who takes all that for granted, and put them in a situation with someone who has an overbearing personality, who gets what they deserve, and who deserves you. Take that type of person and put them in a situation where sex is expected of them.
+
+What do you suppose happens?
+
+> The topic at hand.
+
+Yes.
+
+Now, what do you suppose happens to such a person who gets taken advantage of, who winds up in a situation they shouldn't be in, who gets raped, and then put them out into a world full of sexual people, where it is expected that one be sexual.

content/sex/rape/03.md

@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 3
+---
+
+> Do you think that you are asexual because you were raped?
+
+No.
+
+> That was quick.
+
+No, I can promise you that, if there is a simple cause for me being ace (and there emphatically isn't), it's my reliance on TS. I found sex confusing, baffling, and kind of gross long before I had my own little struggle with consent.
+
+Being ace, being autochorissexual, even if I didn't have the words for it, even if I didn't believe in such a thing, even if such a thing couldn't possibly apply to me, was the case from the very beginning of my embodied sexual interactions. It was the case from the very beginning. It was the case from when I lost my virginity, however slippery the concept is.
+
+> Ah yes, was it the first time you masturbated with someone? Was it the first time you had oral sex? Anal?
+
+Life's complicated for a gay boy.
+
+> So much easier for a trans girl.
+
+We've been over that.
+
+> Fair enough. Do you think that being raped prevented you from coming to terms with your asexuality?
+
+I think so, yes.
+
+> Less quick.
+
+It's unclear to me. It's something of a new thought I've had lately. Was part of what kept me struggling and striving to have a healthy sexual existence due to me trying to overcome this aspect of my past?
+
+Beyond that, was <a class="pulse" href="/self-harm">TIASAP</a> me accepting that I wasn't succeeding?
+
+Perhaps.
+
+> Perhaps. Perhaps you needed exposure to a certain level of knowledge surrounding identity before you could truly accept it. Perhaps you needed to circle around it like you're circling around the event at hand. Perhaps you needed to side-eye it, because looking at it directly would surely blind you. It was too bright. It was the wrong color, some impossible shade of blue. It made your head hurt and your gorge rise.
+
+Perhaps.

content/sex/rape/04.md

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+date: 2020-01-15
+weight: 4
+---
+
+> So why **are** we talking circles around it?
+
+Because, at some level, the experience itself is unimportant. I was young, I was dumb, he was an asshole.
+
+What *is* important is the ramifications. What is important is the fact that I have to live with the person I became when I was disabused of all of those silly, romantic notions of implied consent and this strange idea that I could just stop an act, even if it meant lying.
+
+> Lying always worked so well with your dad, did it?
+
+No, and now I was finding out that this was the case in relationships beyond just typefucking. It made me realize, on some level, how superficial my interactions up until this point had been. I had gone from being the type of person who believed she was living an earnest life with earnest people, enjoying deep relationships, falling in love.
+
+> Were you not?
+
+Perhaps I was on some level, but I was missing this key component: that my actions have consequences.
+
+Not that I'm blaming myself for what happened, of course. I was young, I was dumb, he was an asshole, after all. But non-action is still an action. Not saying no was still an action. Being unwilling to learn about the fact that my actions have consequences was an action.
+
+It called into question how passive I had been in the past. It called into question how little I had been saying no in the past. It called into question how little I had actually learned about how the world worked.
+
+> "Coming to terms with being a horrible person," you wrote.
+
+Yes, and I wrote that in the thick of this realization. At that point, I was coming to terms with all of these things, the passivity and the willful ignorance.
+
+I was coming to terms with how much I was hurting those around me, and just how much I had to learn.
+
+> And boy howdy.
+
+Yeah. I would continue to hurt those around me for years. I still do. I'm getting better, though. I'm willing to learn, now.
+
+> "I cannot possibly bow low enough, I cannot possibly apologize with enough sincerity to make up for the hurt I've caused you," you wrote.
+
+Yes. And I stand by it.
+
+I have much to learn, but I've come a long ways from who I used to be.
+
+The specifics of what happened aren't really important. What is important is the moment before, and the moment after.

content/sex/rape/_index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+---
+type: serial
+background: '#330000'
+color: '#dccccc'
+quote: '#cbbbbb'
+---
+
+<div class="cw">Rape</div>

static/map.dot

@@ -116,12 +116,26 @@ digraph Map {
     "Poly 6" [href="/poly/6"]
     "Poly 1" -> "Poly 2" -> "Poly 3" -> "Poly 4" -> "Poly 5" -> "Poly 6"
 
+        node[group="rape",style="filled",fillcolor="#330000",fontcolor="#dccccc"]
+        "Rape 1" [href="/sex/rape"]
+        "Rape 2" [href="/sex/rape/2"]
+        "Rape 3" [href="/sex/rape/3"]
+        "Rape 4" [href="/sex/rape/4"]
+        "Rape 1" -> "Rape 2" -> "Rape 3" -> "Rape 4"
+
     node[group="sex",style="filled",fillcolor="#eeeef8",fontcolor="#111111"]
     "Sex 1" [href="/sex"]
     "Sex 2" [href="/sex/2"]
     "Sex 3" [href="/sex/3"]
     "Sex 4" [href="/sex/4"]
-    "Sex 1" -> "Sex 2" -> "Sex 3" -> "Sex 4"
+    "Sex 5" [href="/sex/5"]
+    "Sex 6" [href="/sex/6"]
+    "Sex 7" [href="/sex/7"]
+    "Sex 8" [href="/sex/8"]
+    "Sex 9" [href="/sex/9"]
+    "Sex 10" [href="/sex/10"]
+    "Sex 1" -> "Sex 2" -> "Sex 3" -> "Sex 4" -> "Sex 5" -> "Sex 6" -> "Sex 7" ->
+    "Sex 8" -> "Sex 9" -> "Sex 10"
 
         node[group="kink",style="filled",fillcolor="#17111a",fontcolor="#ffffff"]
         "Kink 1" [href="/sex/kink"]
@@ -130,6 +144,9 @@ digraph Map {
         "Kink 4" [href="/sex/kink/4"]
         "Kink 1" -> "Kink 2" -> "Kink 3" -> "Kink 4"
 
+        node[group="aside",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
+        "Dreams 3" [href="/aside/dreams/3"]
+
     node[group="software",style="filled",fillcolor="#eaf5ff",fontcolor="#05264c"]
     "Software 1" [href="https://github.com/makyo/ally/pull/4/commits/c7d73fc7a727d34728b353a2c428b0da71788bf0"]
     "Software 2" [href="https://github.com/makyo/ally/pull/4/commits/04b7300615386bccbb331caebcf396077f6fc9ea"]
@@ -447,6 +464,8 @@ digraph Map {
 
     // Sex
     "Sex 4" -> "Kink 1"
+    "Sex 8" -> "Rape 1"
+    "Sex 8" -> "Dreams 3"
 
     // Writing
     /*"Writing 2" -> "Koans 1"