Editing

content/news/2020-01-15-trains.md

@@ -8,9 +8,13 @@ Long trip, long trip.
 > Is this honestly the best use of it?
 <!--more-->
 
-What's wrong with talking about difficult subjects when you're prevented from doing literally anything else? No cell reception, might as well rip open old wounds.
+What's wrong with talking about difficult subjects when you're prevented from doing literally anything else? No cell reception, might as well rip open old wounds. Two train rides and a bellyful of antisleepy. Long trip.
 
 ### New Content
 
 * [Sex 5](/sex/5) through [Sex 10](/sex/10)
 * [Rape](/sex/rape)
+
+### Updated content
+
+* [Earlier sex sections](/sex) have been pretty heavily edited.

content/sex/001.md

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ And while I don't necessarily have fond memories of childhood--
 
 > Clearly not
 
---some part of me does rather miss the childlike curiosity with which I was able to approach sexuality early in puberty. It was all so abstract and confusing. Every time I'd try something new, there would be this thrill of danger, this rush of excitement. The lone copy of *Joy of Sex*'s assurances aside, was each burst of pleasure actually something going *horribly wrong*?
+--some part of me does rather miss the childlike curiosity with which I was able to approach sexuality early in puberty. It was all so abstract and confusing. Every time I'd try something new, there would be this thrill of danger, this rush of excitement. The lone copy of *Joy of Sex*'s assurances aside, was each burst of pleasure actually something going *horribly wrong?*
 
 > Ah, to be young and anxious.
 

content/sex/003.md

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Not for lack of trying, mind. I played around with my partners, tamping down my
 
 It was a few things, I think. The most obvious being the increasing dissonance between my body and my identity as 'male' started to fit less and less. When having a penis seems odd and discordant, engaging with it feels unsatisfactory at best, nauseating at worst.
 
-Another was simply the mess of it all. Water-based lube gets sticky. Condoms are finicky. Fluid-bonding is great, but then the mess is magnified. Foreskin is complicated --- a rough weekend left me scarred, the resulting phimosis making sex something of an adventure.
+Another was simply the mess of it all. Water-based lube gets sticky. Condoms are finicky. Fluid-bonding is great, but then the mess is magnified. Foreskin is complicated --- a rough weekend of too much masturbation left me scarred, the resulting phimosis making sex something of an adventure.
 
 I think, most often, it was just that it was a lot of work. You had to set aside time. You had to negotiate. You had to have the condoms handy. You had to have the lube handy. You had to both be willing and on the same page. All perfectly doable, but whether or not it was worth it was something that seemed to vary from day to day.
 

content/sex/005.md

@@ -3,15 +3,27 @@ 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.
+I can't let this go.
+
+> Why not?
+
+I just can't. I doubt it's possible, but I need to somehow get this off my chest. I need to be able to throw enough words at it that it leaves me alone. I need...not a solution, but perhaps some sense of closure, of having explained it well enough that I may be forgiven.
+
+> Forgiven what? Your trespasses? Your sins?
+
+Perhaps. Perhaps I need to be forgiven my inadequacies.
+
+> Explain away, then.
+
+I spend 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, is capable of even enjoying 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.
+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 role-play seem to be the bailiwick 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.
+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, as it were, the flesh, 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?
 
@@ -25,7 +37,7 @@ No.
 
 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.
+Not only that, but I dove into furry halfway through puberty, and I dove in *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.
 

content/sex/006.md

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Why should I? We both know.
 
 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.
+> 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?
 
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ So?
 
 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.
+> 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 despite him being a man.
 
 Point.
 
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ 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.
+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 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."
 

content/sex/007.md

@@ -11,13 +11,13 @@ 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.
+Because to not 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?
+> So if the sex was pretty good, if you 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.
+Perhaps because I resented needing sex. I 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.
 

content/sex/008.md

@@ -3,13 +3,13 @@ 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?
+> So if sex makes you feel anxious and confused, how does being asexual --- or, as you say, 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.
+I guess it makes me feel anxious and confused, just in different 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.
 
 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>.
 
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ We had penetrative sex for the first time --- a sort of exploratory thing --- wh
 
 > 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.
+I did, that hasn't changed from what I mentioned before. Sex can feel good, physically. It feels better now after surgery than it did before, too. Sometimes, I think, "Aha, this must have solved it. Now I'm able to do what I never was before." And then, when confronted with the reality, everything is still problematic.
 
 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.
 

content/sex/010.md

@@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ Surgery helped. Hell, transition as a whole helped. Being a girl has helped. Sur
 
 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.
+Even kink has helped, as 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.
+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. I would be plenty happy with that.
 
 > But you're not unhappy now.
 

content/sex/rape/01.md

@@ -7,6 +7,6 @@ weight: 1
 
 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.
+> Talk in circles around it, then, and then tell me why you won't tell me about it. Or vice versa. I don't care. I'm not picky as to the order.
 
 Fine.

content/sex/rape/04.md

@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ Not that I'm blaming myself for what happened, of course. I was young, I was dum
 
 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.
+> "Coming to terms with being a terrible 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.
 
@@ -38,3 +38,5 @@ 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.
+
+> The blackbird whistling, or just after.