Furries
I don't know what kind of tweaky message the universe is trying to send me, but furries keep coming up in casual conversations in my life. Maybe it started last year with Harlock's Cant column, followed more recently by Dan Savage's column about furries, or some random friends bringing them up at dinner one night. I don't know where it started or why; I just want it to stop.
Furries are not interesting. No, really they aren't. People dressing up like stuffed animals to fuck, or wanting to fuck stuffed animals, is not anymore interesting than people dressing up in "naughty nurse" lingerie. Come on people, it's just role playing - what's so shocking about it? So what if someone gets off on Disney animals? Weird, sure, but not exactly the weirdest thing I've ever heard of, and certainly not the most disturbing by any remote long shot. Heck, as for weird-fetishes- I-wish-I'd-never-heard-of, I'd start with the people who like to have their cocks stroked by virgin Keds tennis shoes, or the bacon fetish people (even if that was a joke. Gods, I hope it was a joke).
As dressing up in whatever costume you like and getting sticky is one of the more mundane things people can do with sex, and since as far as I know no one is forcing others to participate in this plush-covered fuck-fest, I don't see what the problem is. It's just not that interesting! Please, can we talk about something truly perverse instead?
(Note: This is the response of my rational reasonable brain. I do have to admit, in all honesty, that my first reaction to the photos of giant stuffed animals with naked beige-pink erections poking out and being, uh, manipulated was "ew." Not as loud an "ew" though, as the whole bacon thing was. *shudder*)
Slash
Ok, so I'm making a sincere effort to get over my extreme guilt regarding my latest addiction, i.e. reading slash. Why all the guilt in the first place, you may ask? I blame the Church. I was raised a good Catholic girl: lots of guilt, parents never really talked about sex, etc. So of course I was fascinated with sex and stumbled into things like aberrant sexuality and sadomasochism in the library a tad bit too young to really understand what was going on. I hope I do better with my kinds. Then again, I can't really imagine myself not babbling about sex all the time just because they were around; can you?
So anyway, I blame residual Catholic guilt. Plus some politically-correct guilt that I shouldn't be getting off on gay boys because Gay Boys Are People Too and because I hate it so much when men get off on lesbianism. It's not nice to objectify people.
But um… I suspect that guilt kind of turns me on all by itself. Which makes slash a pretty deadly combination to me.
Aside from my own personal kinks and whatever their origins may be… someone in a news group I read recently proposed an interesting idea. I've been turning it over and over in my head and I think I agree with it, that it fits me. I think I like slash and/or male romance/erotica because heterosexual romance is often just so damn boring. There's no social stigma to overcome, no "what will our friends and families say," no "hey I didn't know I could be attracted to someone of your gender," no, you know, angst. (I like angst.) Plus a lot of the stuff I read is all about opposites attracting, people who shouldn't be together, who aren't really on the same side (at least in the "cannon" texts), being undeniably attracted to each other and/or falling in love anyway. So there's a lot of exploration of the nature of good and evil and character psychoanalysis. We also get issues of control and manipulation of the good boy by the evil boy, which you rarely get in straight couplings. Way, way more interesting than the obvious and boring heterosexual pairings the actual official author is hinting at. I like angst. (1) I like character development. The actual fucking is really fairly secondary. Not that I don't like it or want it, just that without the first part, it's no good.
Plus, you know, all that stuff I said in least year's "Queer Theory 201" column. They're just HOT. Yummy yummy yummy boys, all for me and my greedy dirty little mind.
1) It's not really related but this just makes my brain itch to include one of my favorite quotes from E.M. Forster's Maurice, "Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love." I don't necessarily agree with that as much now as I did when I was nineteen, but… it's still a provocative idea.