Enemy of Entropy

Why make an exception for rape and incest?

4 December 2009, 6:25 am. 7 Comments. Filed under Civil Rights, Sex, politics.

I always look for­ward to Dr. Marty Klein’s Sex­ual Intel­li­gence newslet­ters, so I was tick­led to see one in my inbox today. But one of the head­lines took me by sur­prise: End Rape & Incest Excep­tions to Stu­pak Abor­tion Ban. Dr. Klein always has excel­lent analy­ses, and this one is no exception.

If you’re against repro­duc­tive choice for so-​​called “moral rea­sons” (as if any­one get­ting an abor­tion or sup­port­ing its legal­ity isn’t “moral”), be con­sis­tent. If killing a fetus or even a fer­til­ized egg wan­der­ing around a woman’s body is the same as killing a per­son (the posi­tion of every anti-​​choice activist), why should it mat­ter how the fetus or fer­til­ized egg got there? Why is a fetus’ right to live dimin­ished because its father was a rapist or a sadist? After all, we don’t say the chil­dren of such men have fewer rights than other children.

Interview: Chronic Pain and Sex

14 May 2008, 3:08 pm. 4 Comments. Filed under Health, News, Relationships, Sex.

The inter­view we did is up!
Chronic Pain and Sex: a Couple’s Gen­tle Bat­tle With Fibromyalgia

I’m pleased with it. There are very few, mostly imma­te­r­ial inaccuracies.

Adult: FMS from What?

5 February 2008, 11:50 pm. 3 Comments. Filed under Geekery, Humor, News, Sex.

I have a Google Alerts search going for “fibromyal­gia,” because if there’s some­thing out there that will make this crap bet­ter, I want to know it yes­ter­day. The alert brings in all sorts of non­sense from quack reme­dies to naysay­ers, in addi­tion to the actual content.

Today’s alert takes the cake, though. Some­body wrote to Dan Savage’s Sav­age Love col­umn ask­ing, “Can I Sue Some­body for Fisting-​​Induced Fibromyal­gia?“1

Savage’s med­ical expert is out of touch regard­ing the lat­est FMS research, but I have to agree with his reply to the letter-​​writer.

Sam and I tried to game a lit­tle tonight, but he was sleepy and I’m fad­ing, too. I did some writ­ing today, and more web­i­fy­ing, and worked on a cou­ple of school assign­ments. Then I got all-​​too-​​obsessed with try­ing to fig­ure out how to make the out­put of a cou­ple of Word­Press plu­g­ins work nicely with my template.

I hope y’all had a lovely weekend!

1 http://​www​.vil​lagevoice​.com/​p​e​o​p​l​e​/​0​8​0​6​,​s​a​v​a​g​e​,​7​9​0​4​4​,​2​4​.​h​tml

The Three Love Systems From Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

27 November 2007, 11:44 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Reading, Relationships, Sex.

From today’s Delancey Place newsletter:

In the ter­rain of the human heart, sci­en­tists tell us, at least three inde­pen­dent but inter­re­lated brain sys­tems are at play, all mov­ing us in their own way. To untan­gle love’s mys­ter­ies, neu­ro­science dis­tin­guishes between neural net­works for attach­ment, for care­giv­ing, and for sex. Each is fueled by a dif­fer­ing set of brain chem­i­cals and hor­mones, and each runs through a dis­parate neu­ronal cir­cuit. Each adds its own chem­i­cal spice to the many vari­eties of love.

Social Intelligence by Daniel GolemanAttach­ment deter­mines who we turn to for suc­cor; these are the peo­ple we miss the most when they are absent. Care­giv­ing gives us the urge to nur­ture the peo­ple for whom we feel most con­cern. When we are attached, we cling; when we are care­giv­ing we pro­vide. And sex is, well, sex. …

The forces of affec­tion that bind us to each other pre­ceded the rise of the ratio­nal brain. Love’s rea­sons have always been sub­cor­ti­cal, though love’s
exe­cu­tion may require care­ful plot­ting. … The three major sys­tems for loving—attachment, care­giv­ing, and sexuality—all fol­low their own com­plex rules. At a given moment any one of these three can be ascendant—say, as a cou­ple feels a warm togeth­er­ness, or when they cud­dle their own baby, or while they make love. When all three of these love sys­tems are oper­at­ing, they feed romance at its rich­est: a relaxed, affec­tion­ate, and sen­sual con­nec­tion where rap­port blossoms. …

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Jaak Pansepp…finds a neural corol­lary between the dynam­ics of opi­ate addic­tion and the depen­dence on the peo­ple for whom we feel our strongest attach­ments. All pos­i­tive inter­ac­tions with peo­ple, he pro­poses, owe [at least] part of their plea­sure to the opi­oid sys­tem, the very cir­cuitry that links with heroin and other addic­tive sub­stances. … Even ani­mals, he finds, pre­fer to spend time with those in whose pres­ence they have secreted oxy­tocin and nat­ural opi­oids, which induce a relaxed serenity—suggesting that these brain chem­i­cals cement our fam­ily ties and friend­ships as well as our love relationships.

Daniel Gole­man, Social Intel­li­gence: The New Sci­ence of Human Rela­tion­ships, Ban­tam, © 2006 by Daniel Gole­man, pp. 18

Def­i­nitely a book that I intend to read! I found Emo­tional Intel­li­gence quite good, but had some­how missed this newer book.

I strongly rec­om­mend the newslet­ter, which brings inter­est­ing excerpts from an incred­i­ble vari­ety of books to your mail­box every day.

What do you think? Is it all about the opi­ates? Do you have, or have you had, a romance in which all three sys­tems were go?

Review: A Lick of Frost, Laurell K. Hamilton

4 November 2007, 11:37 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Reading, Sex.

I hon­estly didn’t think Lau­rell K. Hamil­ton had it in her, but A Lick of Frost moved me to tears in spots. She man­aged real romance. I don’t even like read­ing romances, and I really hate cry­ing, but I couldn’t help it. I even found a quote to keep.

A Lick of FrostI don’t want to give out any spoil­ers, espe­cially since it’s quite new, but this novel could rea­son­ably be seen as the end to the Merry Gen­try series. I believe Hamil­ton will write at least one more book, to tie up some details and bring the series to seven vol­umes. All of the vol­umes have been fairly slen­der, and Hamil­ton is a guar­an­teed cash cow, so who knows how many books there will actu­ally be? I could, how­ever, stop read­ing now.

This series is not one to start if, like me, you don’t like wait­ing for another book in order to know “what hap­pens next.” Gen­er­ally, I try to wait until a series is fin­ished before I begin to read it, in case it isn’t ever fin­ished. I detest cliffhang­ers, most espe­cially, and Hamil­ton has indulged in several.

Unlike most, the Merry Gen­try series is good enough that I keep read­ing despite my per­sonal pref­er­ence. I’ve never lost track of any impor­tant details between books, which is also strik­ing. I’d actu­ally like to have copies of this series to keep, as I might re-​​read them. In con­trast, I stopped buy­ing the Anita Blake books years ago, although I would con­sider pick­ing up used paper­backs to accom­pany those I already own just because Katie has expressed inter­est in them.

Sam is totally dis­in­ter­ested in just about any­thing hav­ing to do with vam­pires, were­wolves, or any­thing else that is too sim­i­lar to World of Dark­ness. I think it’s a reac­tion to hav­ing been so immersed in research and devel­op­ment when he worked for White Wolf, but I’ll leave him to explain it if we wishes. He does tend to scoff at any­thing too far off the “canon,” as it were.

Since he was involved in Changeling (his favorite), I would have thought the same applied to urban fan­tasy con­cern­ing faery. That’s true, usu­ally, but he’s been drawn into the Merry Gen­try books once or twice, and that’s say­ing some­thing (if only for the qual­ity of some sex scenes).

I know that one rea­son the Blake series has got­ten so tire­some is that sex has taken them over, but Hamilton’s attempts to make the sex part of the plot fall flat. An even big­ger one is Anita’s angst over the species and num­bers of her loves and sex part­ners. While she occa­sion­ally men­tions her reli­gious upbring­ing as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, as an ani­ma­tor (one who raises zom­bies) she left the safety of the Catholic church behind years ago. One could argue that its the­ol­ogy left real­ity behind, but in any case, her life is per­me­ated by and depends on magic that is bound up in reli­gion, but her overt reli­gious beliefs no longer match her real­ity or how she’s truly living.

I don’t even like to include the books in that short list of those that truly deal with polyamory, due to the fact that Anita has been so guilt-​​ridden and unhappy (until the last book or two), while con­tin­u­ing to fol­low her crotch (okay, the magic, if you believe Hamil­ton, but seriously…).

Mered­ith Gen­try never has that prob­lem. It is unfor­tu­nate that Hamil­ton has to reach into an imag­i­nary cul­ture to depict peo­ple who are com­fort­able with their sex­u­al­ity, includ­ing mul­ti­ple sex­ual part­ners, but at least she has done so. There is still an annoy­ing “I must pick only one!” theme, but it is made clear that Merry is being forced into such a choice by rel­a­tively recent Sidhe cus­tom — not her heart or her con­science. She repeat­edly stresses, in her inter­ac­tions with humans, that she has absolutely no shame about her lifestyle, and that the Sidhe have very dif­fer­ent ideas about such things than humans do.

I espe­cially appre­ci­ate the repeated theme of accept­ing diver­sity and appre­ci­at­ing beauty in every­one. “Every­one” never goes to far as to includ­ing, for instance, fat peo­ple, but there don’t seem to be any of those in fairy. Her lovers are all ter­ri­bly beau­ti­ful, even the half-​​Goblin and half-​​Sluagh, but she expressly does not reject those who are scarred or “dif­fer­ent” because of their her­itage or expe­ri­ences. There is over­much atten­tion to descrip­tion of appear­ances for my tastes, espe­cially details of every character’s cloth­ing, but that seems to be all too com­mon in any­thing with any focus on rela­tion­ships these days (or I’m just notic­ing it more — was it always there?)

While there’s still a lot of sex, the rea­sons for the abun­dance of sex and vari­ety of part­ners has been inte­grated into the Gen­try plot from square one. Despite that, it doesn’t feel like the sex scenes take over the books. Any­one with the least bit of prud­ery should still stay away from the series com­pletely, of course, but that’s made clear on the cov­ers and in the excerpts on the book flaps. Nobody who has ever picked up a Lau­rell K. Hamil­ton book in the last five years, at least, has any excuse for claim­ing naÏveté if he finds the con­tent too racy!

 

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