#bdsm!

You and me: We have a relationship. We have a moment and a movement.

Today, I'm thinking about the way we use the word relationship. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the common parlance, relationship is most often used to refer to a pair of human beings who like each other enough to openly express a desire for intimacy or even straight up sex.

Rachel is sitting here with me. She probably has a better theoretical concept of the word, which I'm sure you can find out more about in her class: From Fifty Shades to Abu Ghraib: (Mis)representations of BDSM.

Rachel: I wrote a long thing that is not under a cut at the bottom of the post for my comfort. Trigger warnings for the cut - masturbation, BDSM, experimenting with religious practices from religions that I do not currently ascribe to, negative body image as relating to sexual abuse and eating disorders, positive body image. 

Nick: The other day, I was talking to one of my friends about whether it was possible to have a healthy sex life, and despite how fucked up Rachel feels sometimes, I think this particular expression was healthy, so at the very least people can have healthy sexual experiences, and this relates to what I was starting to say earlier, because the word relationship in its common use implies that everything before an intimate relationship isn't one. And it's up to you to decide what intimate means.

Rachel: Websters dictionary– I'm kidding. Connecting to another person... in a meaningful way. Off the cuff.

Nick: We'll get back to you. 

Rachel: Feeling my energy mingle with theirs. Like at a mixer. That's all I got so far.

Nick: More on that story as it develops.

Intimacy for me feels fairly vague. "Duh-Doy" Because obviously it depends on the relationship and there are lots of kinds of intimacy. In this case, the word relationship finally refers to any relationship between any two people.

Rachel: Excuse me, bitch? (Nick may have been typing and MAY have been paraphrasing. Maybe.) Just two people? What about my relationship with the Johnston community, or my relationship with the world?

Nick: Redacted. Between ANY people. Is this BDSM? I think the thing that some of my closest friends bemoan, is that I never pay any of them enough attention. This is because I like treat everyone I've ever spoken any words with as having a relationship to me, and the number of people I have a relationship to, especially a good relationship to is growing by the day. Which explains why I find myself forgetting to sleep or eat, because I just want to keep up with everyone, and those two things seem secondary.

Besides, my relationship to my body is... well. I feel like I know my body pretty well. Or at least my body knows... this doesn't make sense. It's like my body knows how to take care of itself without the involvement of my conscious brain, but it forgets to tell me about things like "I'm hungry" until about dinner time today.

Rachel: So you see your body as separate from yourSelf? Your body is a separate entity?

Nick: No, I think of my body as myself, it's more that I see them as discrete versions of myself, and I'm just teaching my mind self to trust my body self. It's the great equalizer, because we all have that in common. I want to teach it to do as much as it can, to have the full range of movement based expression, because bodies require no prior instruction to recognize and understand other bodies. I've also been thinking about how the unfortunate usual method that many of our modern bodies gain this knowledge is through abuse and violence.

I was talking with my sister over the phone about our family. And our family history (and this goes back to having a healthy sex life), which is riddled with unhealthy sex lives, be they male or female, my family has weird sexual tendencies. I assume this comes from my family descending from a long line of gypsies and whores. But I feel like my immediate family is taking it a step forward, taking this whole tactic to a new level, and seeking other people to be around who also have skewed or unhealthy relationship to intimacy.

Rachel: Wait, what's wrong with whores? I can only assume you mean one or both of the following: whores as in sexually promiscuous, or whores as in people who use sex as currency (trading it for money, goods, services, etc.) Neither of these things seem particularly "weird" (ugh don't get me started on our construction of normality!), and the way that it was used in your comment seems to be seen as a negative. Being a slut (used in this context as a reclaimed term, a la Ethical Slut) or being a sex worker, or both, doesn't automatically mean that you have an unhealthy sex life.

Nick: Well I didn't know that! I probably meant the sexual currency flavor. I don't remember the last time objectifying the body and selling it was good thing. Right?

Rachel: Can you objectify your own body? And if you can, how do you do that, and is objectifying your own body a negative thing?

Nick: By my own reasoning, 1) Yes, 2) hold on a minute, and 3) I can't reasonably say no. A gender neutral version of body objectification is the organ donor program. Which serves a great purpose. 

Rachel: And sex work doesn't?

Nick: That's not fair! You're taking a class in this, what do I know?!

Rachel: myeh myeh, it's not fair to not be educated on current issues, myeehhh.

Nick: I suppose I've heard of porn stars and strippers talking about feeling empowered by some of their experiences, but I've never heard that about prostitution. What does prostitution even imply about society? What is the significance of the existence of this institution? What kind of hole are we plugging with this kind of employment?

Rachel: Well, there are many narratives about why people enter the sex work industry, but the two dominant narratives seem to be: they need the money, and/or they enjoy sex and can make money off of it. No, well, I guess the dominant narrative is always money.

Nick: But we're talking about supply. I want to talk about demand. Like, which barbaric awful human being, was too shy to get as rape-y as the rest of the horrible barbaric human beings. And then which clever (most likely) lady proto human being thought to itself "I could trick this idiot into giving me his belongings in exchange for snoo-snoo (Futurama reference)." How did that get started? Who was the first man to pay for sex, and why did he pay? Especially I wonder why he had to pay? Was he socially inept? Was he a beta male? How could he afford to pay, if he was a loser? If he wasn't a loser, then couldn't he find himself a pretty lady?

Rachel: PEOPLE WHO PAY FOR SEX AREN'T LOSERS!

Nick: Isn't that what I'm asking? Where'd the demand come from? The above scenario is obviously infeasible. 

Katie says "People who don't want to be in a committed relationship." And "People who have kinks that they can't/haven't been able to satisfy in their relationships with the people in their life." And then Nick went into this thing where he was...

Nick: Okay, so I can envision the scenario, wherein a group of like-minded people create the service and it works so well, that the demand appears.

Rachel: Why can't someone have a value system that includes having both a committed relationship and being able to go outside of the relationship and pay for different sexual experiences?

Nick: Conceivably  they could. They existing as mutually exclusive activities, is only tied to a culturally reinforced value system. When we're talking about my Ukrainian gypsy heritage we have to keep in mind that the condition of being a gypsy is to be oppressed, historically. There is a lot hardship in the world. So no, there is nothing that absolutely says sex workers and gypsies have to have an unhealthy relationship to sex, but historically, and especially if my family is any kind of evidence, they do. Mostly because they have a culturally unhealthy relationship to many things. Though I could just be behaving insensitive to other cultures. The value system I currently live reinforces that even if there we don't know which one it is, there exists an appropriate way to relate to intimacy and sex, making many other ways inappropriate. I don't want to invalidate asking:  But what if it wasn't that way? Because that's what the future could be built on, but for now, we're conditioned to believe there is a narrow band into which we can fit that qualifies for healthy-hood. I think what I want to accomplish by taking the word "relationship" to mean ANY relationship between people is to expand that narrow band. I just didn't realize how far it could expand until you showed me.

And then Rachel passed the fuck out.