Flip-Flops are The Devil's Footwear

1. It fucking HURTS!!! Wherever the infection is will be red hot to the touch, and also be in extreme pain. My infection was in my left ankle and if I tapped my left foot on the ground, I would be crying in pain

2. They are not able of having in depth conversations. The infection messes with your head, even if it is far away from your brain. For me, I was so incredibly tired all the time. You could talk to me, but I felt like I was living in molasses the whole time. It was very, very hard for me to hold a conversation with anyone

3. The person is sick in EVERY WAY. I was throwing up constantly, I could barely keep food down, and anything I did eat made me feel sick afterwards. I was also so weak that getting myself into my kitchen from my bedroom would wind me. My apartment is less than 700 square feet. It is not a far distance between the 2

Which has been fascinating, but I also absolutely have to draw all your attention to a passage I found in Robert N. Willson's "The education of the young in sex hygiene: a text-book for parents and teachers" from 1913 (which is conveniently available on the Internet Archive here).

Now this book is, as would be expected, an absolute mess -- heavily Christian AND written at the height of the eugenics era, which means it's ostensibly kind of progressive goals are uh. There's room for improvement, is all I'll say, while still leaving room for the fact that it's complicated. That's just history for you. I also want to stress that I was NOT actually looking for information on asexuality, just skimming the book to get a sense of what sexual education might have looked like for students in the Anglosphere around the relevant time period. So you can imagine my surprise when I came across this passage, on page 86:

I present this condition of affairs, then, as a simple fact and pass on to another phase of interest and difficulty in the sex question. Certain women and an occasional man are peculiar in their entire lack of sex instinct or interest, and in their failure to experience the sex stimulus that is such an important factor in the perpetuation of the race. Were it only the rule for two such similar sexless or sex colorless animals to mate and exhaust one another’s lack of naturalness, the world would be happier by far, and perhaps such a pair might even enjoy the absence of enthusiasm and interest in one another. Such a state of affairs is conceivable. Unfortunately this sort of pairing is never seen in actual life. The mathematician, who has by close, analytical work so worn out his humanness as to be practically impotent, usually consorts with an intense and passionate vixen of an altogether contrasting type. The result in terms of the home is a foregone conclusion. Or a strong, active, inconsiderate ox of a man marries an aesthetic, supercilious orchid of a woman, and in a short time learns that he can cause her and his life-circles to interweave in no possible manner. He is of the earth earthy, she is spiritual, and as far as we have the ability to speculate there will be neither sex passion nor earthly comradeship since there is to be no real marriage either here or in heaven.

Which is hardly a rousing endorsement of asexuality, sure, but it's also a fascinating counterpoint to the idea that a lack of sexual desire or sexual incompatibilites are somehow new, or that asexuality is an identity without any real history. As I said to another friend -- it's almost like it's been an obvious part of the sexuality spectrum to anyone who was paying attention for a long, long time.

Anyway this is why I love doing primary source research. You almost always find something that runs contrary to popular accounts of the past, if you poke around enough. This isn't even my era but I knew the general shape of it, and sure enough, it didn't take much sifting for something really, really interesting to emerge!

And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:

Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."

The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."

Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.

"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."

And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.

THOU ART CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

*Gregorian chanting*

13.21

*leper bell ringing*

HIGH MEDIAEVAL FM

*recording of John Lackland sobbing as he signs the Magna Carta*

WHENCE COMETH NAUGHT BUT LITURGIES

LITURGIES

AND MORE LITURGIES

*Templar knights praying out loud*

THIS ISN’T THY GRANDMOTHERES STATION

even in the constituency he specifically chose for the high proportion of magic bean and bridge buyers, he still only got 62.82% of the vote. count binface got 26.71% of the vote, meaning that over a quarter of people in his specifically chosen constituency looked at farage and decided to vote for the talking bin. congrats, mate, you beat a bin.

his credibility has also been damaged. he's spent his summer essentially arguing with a bin in a vanity circus that's cost the taxpayer £250,000. he can't say he beat 'the establishment' because the main parties didn't turn up. he refused to stand on the stage with everyone else and go to the declaration, and also lied about the police telling him not to go. the entire thing has exposed just how shit of a politician he really is and how shit his party is.

and at the end of all this, the investigation into him is still going to continue. there will likely be another byelection called, meaning another £250,000 is going to be wasted in the coming months.