greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2011-03-10 06:59 pm
greenstorm) wrote2011-03-10 06:59 pm
Model of the World
So my classes have been aimed at improving my model of the physical world. That is, directly (by teaching me how the world works) and indirectly (by showing me how to use tools which offer more information on how the world works) the simulation of the world in my head has been refined and now better approaches some theoretical consensus of objective reality which seems to map pretty closely to observable outcomes.
The scope of this model is pretty broad. It covers a great deal of the world: the sky (not astronomy, but some climatology), the ground and the bits that make it up (geology, which is the study of the more-or-less solid bits: how they formed and what they're doing and what makes them up and how to recognise them; earth science, which is the study of the loose bits at the top and how they move and what *they're* doing and how they formed and how to recognise distinctive parts of them and what that means), and this funny layer in between which contains a number of biotic elements (plants, animals, soil, water to an extent) and some of the processes involved (like fire). The tools at my disposal range from imap (which is an incredible tool) to statistical analysis to digging a hole and putting a bit of dirt between my teeth or noticing the shape of pebbles or a hillside. Some are very low tech or just very old and unappreciated tech; some are very high tech.
This doesn't mean I don't make errors in how I think about the natural or physical world. It means I am more likely to be right in the first place, more likely to think to check my assumptions, and more likely to know how to check those assumptions against the world effectively.
At the same time in the last couple of years -- let's call it three or four -- I've been making a lot of progress on refining my model of myself. I'm admitting to things, like my very strong drive for multiple partners, my need for certain kinds of independence, my better flourishing with certain kinds of food and sex and friends in my life, my sub-superhuman limitations on some hands and my nearly limitless capacity on others, and my ambitions, all of which are not necessarily convenient for me but which allow me to live a better life as myself. And I am myself. Not much I can do about that; I evolve, but I don't evolve unless I am unfolding in a direction which draws me.
This doesn't mean I don't make errors in infusing my life with meaning and joy. It means I am more likely to be right in the first place, more likely to think about a course of action, and more likely to know how to check that it's the best course of action for me. And like everyone, of course, sometimes I am just indifferent to the correctness of a course of action.
Then-- you know, the world has a human element. You know this; you're part of it. Today I'm having trouble with that human element. I have no consistent model for it. I have been learning how to make and keep friends and how to choose kind and caring lovers; meanwhile bad things happen to little girls in the states and to women in Canada and everything in-between and is to a certain extent condoned by this human element. My home country makes a mockery of democracy, etc and my adopted country isn't much better and sometimes seems plain crazy but at least, you know, isn't engaged in an all-out war with itself on my reproductive health with a side of making women in some places into Handmaid's Tale-style incubators and here too and all that sort of thing.
I don't know if it's that I'm becoming better at dealing with these other things in my life and so this human element is a problem by comparison, if we really are living in the end of times as was suggested in a comment on the post below, if I need an outlet for adversity, I could put a million possible explanations in here and it wouldn't change that I just don't know. I don't know if things are getting worse or better. I don't know if they will ever directly affect me, though I expect so. Any way you look at it, this portion of my world is a jumble and I don't know how to order, organise, and empower myself around it. I am tempted to flee, but there are people in my life I love too much and I have some sense of responsibility.
I'm going to put a cut here because the meat of this post is my musing about my sexuality, rape in the real world, consensual rape play, and how I feel about all this stuff, and people have kindly taught me that they appreciate the ability to avoid that sort of thing.
We know I'm kinky. I like, you know, pain and restraint and stuff. I also really like (and I mean really) consensual play with very particular people around coercion, physical force, and sex; I feel like I should not have to add those italics because those things go without saying. I am a nudist by natural inclination; clothing is decoration or masking but I can't actually force myself to feel bad about having someone else see my body (unless they were to be pretty traumatized by that, because I do believe in consent). I have tried and failed. I also like sex. I like having lots of kinds of sex, sometimes quite frequently, with people of various gender IDs and bodies and proclivities. I believe there can be such a thing as implied consent in relationships; not only so far as I enjoy waking someone up with a blowjob and that particular act can be consented to generally within a relationship but also insofar as I like takedown scenes that could be quite unexpected or forceful in nature. I like reading about and playing out situations in which a victim of nonconsensual sexual contact becomes a willing participant partway through. Sometimes I wear skirts, sometimes very short, without panties, or with makeup; sometimes I do this for the purpose of enticing specific people to want to have sex with me. I love being on both sides of a seduction equation. I am snuggly with a number of people and physically affectionate.
I can't stand to be touched by people I don't like. I put up with this sometimes to be socially appropriate but I don't like it. I can't stand the idea of having sex with someone I didn't want to have sex with. It is not a matter of indifference to me whether someone goes there; every time someone touches me, especially in a sexual way, I react. I will either react with joyful consent, or with disgust and withdrawal. There is some taken-for-granted touching somewhere between which is allowed only to my (loving, incredibly respectful) partners and friends who will immediately honour a withdrawal of consent, and who will respect not only a verbal withdrawal of such consent but also the subtler physical signs.
I don't consider a thing to be sex without consent. There are two categories of things, sex and nonconsent. These don't really conflate much in my mind. An observer might not be able to tell the difference between two events, one from each category, except that in my case I like to be held afterwards, but they are different as night and day; maybe they are as different as night and a peanut.
This distinction doesn't seem to be clear to everyone in the entire world.
In fact, there seem to be a pretty large number of places where I could be raped in the most awful ways possible and it would be "sex" and not "rape" in people's minds. There are some places where it would be considered that I had brought it on myself, even liked it, because out of the whole world's population there's more than one person I enjoy or allow sex with, or because I like certain kinds of play with those people.
I'm not so great at dealing with this idea.
There's nothing more to write.
The scope of this model is pretty broad. It covers a great deal of the world: the sky (not astronomy, but some climatology), the ground and the bits that make it up (geology, which is the study of the more-or-less solid bits: how they formed and what they're doing and what makes them up and how to recognise them; earth science, which is the study of the loose bits at the top and how they move and what *they're* doing and how they formed and how to recognise distinctive parts of them and what that means), and this funny layer in between which contains a number of biotic elements (plants, animals, soil, water to an extent) and some of the processes involved (like fire). The tools at my disposal range from imap (which is an incredible tool) to statistical analysis to digging a hole and putting a bit of dirt between my teeth or noticing the shape of pebbles or a hillside. Some are very low tech or just very old and unappreciated tech; some are very high tech.
This doesn't mean I don't make errors in how I think about the natural or physical world. It means I am more likely to be right in the first place, more likely to think to check my assumptions, and more likely to know how to check those assumptions against the world effectively.
At the same time in the last couple of years -- let's call it three or four -- I've been making a lot of progress on refining my model of myself. I'm admitting to things, like my very strong drive for multiple partners, my need for certain kinds of independence, my better flourishing with certain kinds of food and sex and friends in my life, my sub-superhuman limitations on some hands and my nearly limitless capacity on others, and my ambitions, all of which are not necessarily convenient for me but which allow me to live a better life as myself. And I am myself. Not much I can do about that; I evolve, but I don't evolve unless I am unfolding in a direction which draws me.
This doesn't mean I don't make errors in infusing my life with meaning and joy. It means I am more likely to be right in the first place, more likely to think about a course of action, and more likely to know how to check that it's the best course of action for me. And like everyone, of course, sometimes I am just indifferent to the correctness of a course of action.
Then-- you know, the world has a human element. You know this; you're part of it. Today I'm having trouble with that human element. I have no consistent model for it. I have been learning how to make and keep friends and how to choose kind and caring lovers; meanwhile bad things happen to little girls in the states and to women in Canada and everything in-between and is to a certain extent condoned by this human element. My home country makes a mockery of democracy, etc and my adopted country isn't much better and sometimes seems plain crazy but at least, you know, isn't engaged in an all-out war with itself on my reproductive health with a side of making women in some places into Handmaid's Tale-style incubators and here too and all that sort of thing.
I don't know if it's that I'm becoming better at dealing with these other things in my life and so this human element is a problem by comparison, if we really are living in the end of times as was suggested in a comment on the post below, if I need an outlet for adversity, I could put a million possible explanations in here and it wouldn't change that I just don't know. I don't know if things are getting worse or better. I don't know if they will ever directly affect me, though I expect so. Any way you look at it, this portion of my world is a jumble and I don't know how to order, organise, and empower myself around it. I am tempted to flee, but there are people in my life I love too much and I have some sense of responsibility.
I'm going to put a cut here because the meat of this post is my musing about my sexuality, rape in the real world, consensual rape play, and how I feel about all this stuff, and people have kindly taught me that they appreciate the ability to avoid that sort of thing.
We know I'm kinky. I like, you know, pain and restraint and stuff. I also really like (and I mean really) consensual play with very particular people around coercion, physical force, and sex; I feel like I should not have to add those italics because those things go without saying. I am a nudist by natural inclination; clothing is decoration or masking but I can't actually force myself to feel bad about having someone else see my body (unless they were to be pretty traumatized by that, because I do believe in consent). I have tried and failed. I also like sex. I like having lots of kinds of sex, sometimes quite frequently, with people of various gender IDs and bodies and proclivities. I believe there can be such a thing as implied consent in relationships; not only so far as I enjoy waking someone up with a blowjob and that particular act can be consented to generally within a relationship but also insofar as I like takedown scenes that could be quite unexpected or forceful in nature. I like reading about and playing out situations in which a victim of nonconsensual sexual contact becomes a willing participant partway through. Sometimes I wear skirts, sometimes very short, without panties, or with makeup; sometimes I do this for the purpose of enticing specific people to want to have sex with me. I love being on both sides of a seduction equation. I am snuggly with a number of people and physically affectionate.
I can't stand to be touched by people I don't like. I put up with this sometimes to be socially appropriate but I don't like it. I can't stand the idea of having sex with someone I didn't want to have sex with. It is not a matter of indifference to me whether someone goes there; every time someone touches me, especially in a sexual way, I react. I will either react with joyful consent, or with disgust and withdrawal. There is some taken-for-granted touching somewhere between which is allowed only to my (loving, incredibly respectful) partners and friends who will immediately honour a withdrawal of consent, and who will respect not only a verbal withdrawal of such consent but also the subtler physical signs.
I don't consider a thing to be sex without consent. There are two categories of things, sex and nonconsent. These don't really conflate much in my mind. An observer might not be able to tell the difference between two events, one from each category, except that in my case I like to be held afterwards, but they are different as night and day; maybe they are as different as night and a peanut.
This distinction doesn't seem to be clear to everyone in the entire world.
In fact, there seem to be a pretty large number of places where I could be raped in the most awful ways possible and it would be "sex" and not "rape" in people's minds. There are some places where it would be considered that I had brought it on myself, even liked it, because out of the whole world's population there's more than one person I enjoy or allow sex with, or because I like certain kinds of play with those people.
I'm not so great at dealing with this idea.
There's nothing more to write.