@85, Sean. That is a nice description. Yes, that sensitivity that comes from experience.

@80, "I've had men question my relationship with my father, look for abuse that isn't there, think I have poor self-esteem because of the way I like to have sex."

OMG, I am so sick of this mind-set! And I'm only mildly kinky and submissive. It bothers me the most because my dad is a great father, with great parenting instincts, who raised a healthy, secure daughter. I always think, Dude, if you're trying to make my relationship with my father into something sick, I really think there's something wrong with YOU.

@80, BTW that was all beautifully-put.

Joe Newton gets a lot of Nerd Love from me today.

@107 Hunter - that one occurred to me as well. Not "get medieval on me" as I said above, but "get Teutonic on me". (The mouse probably wants his Teutonic all over it, knowing this column.)

@108 it's kind of the counterpart to the father in the SLLOTD today--pathologizing something that doesn't require pathology to explain.

I confess it seemed to make sense to me a long time ago to explain sexuality not in the middle of the bell curve that way, before I was exposed to any kind of diversity of sexuality.

@111, yeah Freud and the Catholic Church did a good job of poisoning that well.

@80 Iwasnocutename As a writer and a dirty motherfucker, I always appreciate that kind of sustained, brilliant exposition on one of my favorite subjects.

May I ask your permission to copypasta that to a friend who is taking the first steps on her journey as a submissive? I think she would find it illuminating.

To answer your question, what does the Dom get out of it, I can speak only for myself. As you know, each of us is a special snowflake with our own philosophy and motivations.

I started to figure out who and what I was at 19. At first, I thought I was a monster, because I possessed a totally natural virtuosity of brutality that I couldn't understand because it was so out of character with the person I am outside of a sexual situation.

In time, I came to see it as a gift, as I saw firsthand that BDSM can be medicine for people whom life has broken. My natural inclination is to help, and being able to help those women heal is something I will treasure for the rest of my life.

I'm a CIS hetero woman despite the pen name. BiDanFan -I generally enjoy what you write, but you're missing the point about women being dominant. I was formerly vanilla, but have really stepped up my game in response to falling in love with, and marrying, a kinky man who likes to be dominated. Domination is fun, but it's also work. Ultimately I find it another form of submission to men's desires to put on leather and order my husband around. Luckily I like it because I love my husband and it keeps sexual variety in our monogamous commitment. But I periodically have to take breaks from the role, not because I don't enjoy it, but because it bums me out as just another way hetero guys can get women to do the lion's share of the work. It's much les work to be ordered around and just follow the leader than be the one doing the creativity, physical work, and having the general responsibility that things go well.

idreamofhorses, I'd be honored. Just please change "disordered mine" in the second paragraph to "disordered mind," thank you.
I hope your friend enjoys her journey.

Just to be clear, I don't believe I use my only mildly kinky sex to heal anything and I have not been broken by life. I think I'm healthy and the way I like to have sex is healthy.

I highly encourage you to read this bewildering post...from the /lgbt/ board of fourchan.

Ms Cute - You explain the situation well.

*****

Mx Wanna - I've been wondering whether there might be any good comparisons to marriages mixed in other ways.

*****

My main idea for the week is to contemplate what I'll call (as Mr Savage is so fond of musicals) Prodigal! the Sequel. The great party is all well and good and perhaps the brother even relents enough to celebrate the homecoming - but then what happens the next week?

@Phil: Do you really think that tribes are less egalitarian than American society?

The "noble savage" lives.

There isn't and never was any one type of tribal culture. Throughout human history and prehistory, you'll find tribes that were peaceful, tribes that were violent, tribes who were egalitarian, tribes who were hierarchical, tribes who wandered around, tribes who stayed put, tribes who numbered in the 10s, tribes who numbered in the 10000s, tribes who were partial to Lennon, tribes who preferred McCartney, etc, etc etc.

Unlike chimps and bonobos, humans evolved the ability to adapt to almost every environment the earth has to offer. Relocate a pack of wild chimps to the midwest and they wouldn't last a single winter, even if you gave them all the matches and firewood they wanted. Culture is one the tools we used to adapt.

Thus, you had tribes in the bountiful Pacific Northwest who would ceremonially burn their excess possessions because food and resources were everywhere. Others like the Apaches moved around, fighting with competitors and using their wits to eek out nourishment from the desert. The cultures of these two groups bore little resemblance to each other.

I deliberately said "much of human evolution" to account for cultural variability.

Venn @ 117
“Mx Wanna - I've been wondering whether there might be any good comparisons to marriages mixed in other ways.”

Not sure what you meant by this remix- same sex couples? Other multi-faith couples?
I myself have dated non-Jews in the past and didn’t have any problem with it, nor was my Jewishness a problem to them.
I guess in yet another twisted way I can truly say, “Some of my best friends are gentiles.”
That said, the ex is a member of the tribe though we’re both self-identified secular (and we are still “friends” to some degree, but certainly not “best” anymore.)

As for same sex inter-faith couples: It is my impression that Jews have always been at the front of many liberal fronts in the US, and this is one of them. I have met quite a few such couples where I reside.
A while ago, way before the issue was even considered to be on the ballot, a cantor in one of the main reform synagogues here was openly dating a non-Jewish man and both were fully accepted by the congregation.
From what I hear and read it seems like Israeli Arab-Jewish same-sex relationships may be more popular than opposite sex ones. Nothing scientific, maybe they just get more media coverage.

@nocute: Thanks, kindle loaded!

Nocute: Thanks for that thoughtful and enlightening post.

MrBombit @100: Welcome to Savage Love. Or should I say, welcome to the Internet. There is this thing called Google. Lava @102: Your definition is right on. By the way, I got that you and your husband switched. Question: If you (not Lava "you", general you) are vanilla and take it in turns to be on top, can that be described as "switching"? In other words is "switch" a term reserved for D/s?

Johnette @114: "you're missing the point about women being dominant." Excuse me, I am talking about myself being dominant. I never purported to speak for all women or claim that my motivations/experience with domination are everyone's. Your additional points are quite welcome. I think the point you are making is actually about submission: Why do people want to submit? Because that means relaxing and letting the other person do all the work, which is fair enough. I do agree that being a full-time Dominant could be exhausting.

I am a self-loathing American...

Sean @85: "Does it make a difference to you if the male who's submitting to you is more stereotypically masculine or feminine in appearance?"

That's not really a question I can answer, because I am not attracted to men who are stereotypically masculine in appearance. At all.[1] That's like asking you whether you prefer dominating men or women.

If you were to analyse my sexual activities, you'd conclude that I'm about 90% vanilla. But that's if you're defining "kinky" as "into BDSM," which seems a very common definition. I have an androgyny fetish, and a kink for gender-fuck. That means if I find a partner who is androgynous in appearance -- or perhaps a woman who digs my androgynous side -- my kink can be satisfied even by nothing-but-vanilla sex with that person. Pegging is fun, but not essential -- I can think of nothing less fun than attempting to penetrate the ass of an unenthused partner.

Where has this kink come from? Like nocute, I have analysed my upbringing and found logical clues, but I'll spare the board my navel gazing.

"Women submit to men twenty-three hours a day, why on earth would they want to submit during sex as well?"

That was a rhetorical question. But, back to reality: when I was first entering the world of BDSM, the submissives I met were generally individuals who had high-powered day jobs. So it made sense to me that in their down time they'd want to cede control as an escape from career pressures.

[1] Okay, over the course of my 27-year sexual history, I have made a couple of exceptions (I'm horny enough to sometimes be androgyflexible -- particularly when it comes to good friends who dress like Victorian dandies; it's true every girl's crazy for a sharp-dressed man. Shame they had to take their clothes off to reveal body hair and muscles, though). But these encounters -- like most of my sex life -- did not involve domination. One of these friends liked pain and had a little wheel, like a pizza cutter, he liked me to roll over his chest. Which I did, being GGG, but it didn't do anything for me.

I have German blood. Few generations back. One of my relatives was bashed to death, because he was German. Could have been during the FirstWorld War.
My genealogy is sketchy. English on my mother's side. German on my father's. Mixed in with these wild colonials.
This fantasy this girl has, disturbs me. Her words just seem to have too much disconnect from the man. He doesn't sound human, the way she talks of him.
I don't believe healthy kinks are about that. Treating the other as a non human. This LW needs some help, to learn to have intimacies as well as kinks.

Lava @124: "One of my relatives was bashed to death, because he was German."

Wow, that's awful. Puts into perspective the guy who hurled verbal abuse at me for starting the Iraq War.

@125: Wow, BDF, you started the Iraq War? By yourself, or are you saying that Dick Cheney's a friend?

@121: seandr: I hope you like it--British novels from the late 1930s are not everyone's cup of tea. But Huxley, despite his rather stilted language, really understood human nature.

@28 My BDSM/CD play is (apparently this is self-study and from no objective analysis) somehow attached to financial security.
When I am feeling flush, financially secure, I desire to be dominated physically and sexually by a powerful female figure.
When I'm in fear of financial failure, I revert to a fantasy of dominating a female.
Of course I also have the older-woman fantasy, the Asian-female fantasy, the A-A female fantasy, the homosexual fantasy, group-sex fantasy. on and on.

I still don't understand what 'cis' is? Is it just another way to say regular/normal?

Novute @126: I know, right? And here I thought I'd left the US in part because I disagreed with the Bush administration. Shows me what I know.

Mrbombit @128: Yes, it's a way of saying that without implying that trans people are "abnormal."

Whoops, Nocute. Darn typos.

SB53 @127: Interesting. One of my partners has observed that I get more dominant when I am stressed, which surprises me not at all.

I have been with my Miss "N" for decades. There are very rare times when she is dominant and also the rare times when she is sub.
Problem is most of the time she just wishes to be left alone. I would love to be able to figure out if she has patterns like mine, (or, hell, patterns of any sort) and "move the needle" in one direction or the other. How is it that I have notoriously bad timing and intuition when it comes to her psyche?

Seandr - humans evolved the ability to adapt to almost every environment the earth has to offer
You mean, humans learned to use tools to cut open other animals and wear their skin and become the top hunters. Maybe our species invented skin-wearing, or maybe one of our ancestors or off shoots who we later killed off or interbred with like Neanderthals.. Sapiens didn't invent fire, that was some previous homo. Anyway, migration was 100s of thousands of years before agriculture, when we learned to farm and breed livestock and could stay put. 10000 tribe members seems pretty impossible before agriculture too. Which only started 10000 years ago. I may very generously estimate 10% of sapiens' evolution was massive societies with classes and hierarchies. Everything in the last 10000 years like the tribes you mention. That just doesn't seem like much to me. We don't know what it was like before civilization, but we can guess from the little evidence we have.

Also.. survival of the fittest applies in completely different ways in civilization (after agriculture), evolution is different with us. I think that the closer we have gotten to a renewable sustainable, safe society, the more that every life was valued regardless of genes. Now we can genetically screen. It's different now and involves cultural evolution too.. Race wars are probably not new. or a taste for breeding with the exotic.. they seem to pre-date our species. But I would call both consensual BDSM and American culture very new.. hundreds of years instead of hundreds of thousands of species' history. Before last century I don't think BDSM was around in any widespread sense except as abuse (Neither was birth control). Compared to hundreds of thousands or millions of years... Abuse and war are old, though. I could see that sexualizing abuse could be selected for as a coping mechanism. Like Stockholm Syndrome. But I think modern BDSM is more about playing with power games and pain, and the excessive force is mutually desired, which I'm not sure happened much in human history. 400 years ago people still thought the female orgasm was required to produce pregnancy, but things changed.

Humans.. we seem to interbreed when we can despite race or culture with some exceptions..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew…

I think that idreamofhorses may have referenced my story-editing link. A boy is obsessively thinking about how Frankenstein scared him, until he claims he peed on him:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots…
It's likewise a common phenomena to reenact trauma in order to "get it right" to get out of an obsessive cycle. I doubt that's the only reason for BDSM kinks though. Some people have learned to like it because they enjoyed pleasing their partner this way, or because it's portrayed as sexy by the culture, etc.

Mr. Bomb IT
Not only trans, it is also a reference to sexual orientation.
"Cis" is a person acting as "expected" from their assigned gender role and are attracted to the opposite sex.

As Her BD Effness wrote it is a kinder, gentler "normal."

sb 53
"How is it that I have notoriously bad timing and intuition when it comes to her psyche? "
Sounds familiar. It is only now, few years after the divorce, that I begin to think that our last few years together were some sort of dom/sub relations with both of us actually rejecting our assumed roles.

SB - Problem is most of the time she just wishes to be left alone
I like your bravery and directness on this board. You can try to change things, but you risk losing what you have. I don't think there's a right answer for you, how much risk you "should" take. You could try to introduce more mystery and exploration into the familiarity. How to do that in a way that doesn't completely insult your wife depends on her idea of fairness. If she really values the emotional intimacy and familiarity, she should be willing to put in the effort to keep it (keep your sexual glue strong, keep the relationship growth going strong) if she thinks that you are treating her fairly. I guess you need to introduce distance and mystery so she is interested in bridging the gap with sex again. Some people do this by asking for an open relationship, it's a win if it sparks her interest in your sexuality again, or a win if she doesn't mind your exploration with others and truly desires less sex. But it can also backfire, she might feel inadequate. I think it's safer to directly confront but not sure. First be clear that you are pained by rejection and desire sexual growth. Ask her "what is wrong with my attempts to please you sexually, that you reject them.. or are you unhappy that our sex led to kids or do you just dislike sex for some other reason now?" & ask for ways to help her solve her hang ups if she doesn't know why she isn't interested in sexing up her mate anymore (can include ruling out medical conditions or getting her a therapist as well as trying new things in bed). I don't think that ignoring the problem or glossing it over will improve things, but it is the safest way to keep the status quo if you aren't suffering too bad. Whatever you decide, good luck!

@BiDanFan: That's not really a question I can answer, because I am not attracted to men who are stereotypically masculine in appearance.

Well, there you just answered it. The reason I asked was that it occurred to me that a submissive masculine male might for some be more potently symbolic of redressing the power imbalance.

Shame they had to take their clothes off to reveal body hair and muscles, though

Lol.

@Phil: My answer was kind of crappy. It's a complex topic, and hard for me to do justice in this format.

But, my point is that culture is itself a tool, and different situations call for different cultures/tools. In situations where people are competing for limited resources, for example, you're more likely to see cultures that promote violence, hierarchy, and injustice as a means of survival. My own experience working with small groups in highly competitive environments suggests that under those circumstances, humans sort themselves into hierarchical ranks just as naturally and instinctively as dogs. That suggests to me that at least some of human evolution took place under highly competitive circumstances.

And you're right that we really don't know what most of prehistoric life was like. As a result, people have been projecting their politics onto early man since at least Hobbes and Rousseau. So, I'm suspicious when someone asserts a story of humans in their natural state that just happens to corroborate their political beliefs.

I may very generously estimate 10% of sapiens' evolution was massive societies with classes and hierarchies.

Well, that's roughly about the percentage of people who are into BDSM.

One last thing - you mentioned creationism, which is kind of funny, because Eden is essentially a variation of the noble savage myth, with the tree of knowledge symbolizing civilization/agriculture/cities/etc, which precipitated our fall from grace.

Having been following the Philophile/seandr discussion regarding BDSM, evolution, tribal behavior, animal hierarchies, and the like, I just want to make an official statement of how--given that this is a comment thread on a widely-disseminated sex advice column that reaches a large variety of readers--unusual this group of commenters are in both the types of discussions and the level and relative civility of discourse are, and how much I appreciate them.

In light of NSP's letter, I thought y'all might appreciate this

In my experience it's contact with real world evils that sours BDSM 'evil'. My wife and I have all sorts of sexy fun and orgasms where we touch on rape, misogyny and objectification. I don't think it has much to do with self-loathing, it just really makes her pussy wet to be used like a fleshlight. Go figure. And then when we are done we cuddle and eat pizza.

The problem is when reading the news it's not hard to find people using others in a similar way, but nonconsensually, and it feels gross that the same thing that's loving fun for us is life-ruining trauma for someone else. I made the mistake of reading the wikipedia article about Dahmer while baked the other day, and I couldn't 'dom' for long time after. Even though I'm not about to murder someone for my sexual gratification the ability to empathise even slightly with the desire to objectify someone else was super gross and disturbing.

So all that is to say our Jewess should go for it (after all, it's just for sex right? Little to lose, lot's to gain.) but do so from a lighthearted, fun place that shows to her partner that this is about playing pantomime dress-up, not about real tragedy. Start light and work your way up. let him know that you can be trusted not to break down sobbing, or report him to the Mossad. But try to reinforce the line between your naughty play and the real history, that he can be the Aryan meanie of your dreams and still be a good, caring person. I'll bet he'd come around eventually, I mean have you seen German porn?

It's really very simple "why evangelicals support a thrice-married misogynist reality-TV star who never goes to church."

They like the racism.

@nocutename: Having been following the Philophile/seandr discussion ... the level and relative civility of discourse

That's generous of you considering how hard I bombed in the other SLLOTD thread. :-)

Jesus. It's a choice between the Saturday Papers and this interesting thread. Lucky it's lay around day.

@seandr: I take things on a thread by thread basis.
Here, you're fine.

What the fuck is wrong with you? I mean, seriously, you need to get yourself checked if this is what gets you off. If I was your boyfriend and was asked for this, I would have just left, instantly and never look back. This is one of the humankinds deepest tragedies and you want it turned into a kink... I'm fucking revolted. And yes, Holocaust did affect my family, indirectly. And millions of other people. What the fuck? And I thought reading about some dude leaving his wife for his mother was bad enough for the day. This is why the world is going to hell. Fuck that letter. You have some serious issues. I hope your boyfriend gets to leave before you fuck him up mentally.

@BitchLover @145: Do you get this angry when people want to role-play rape? 'Cus rape ain't that great, either, especially considering its systematic use as a weapon of war.

The Nazis had the ultimate "bad guy" uniform. People have power-play fetishes, people have uniform fetishes, it's not that big a leap. The only real problem with this chicky is her inability to see that her real-life German boyfriend is the wrong guy to ask this of. (Well, and maybe that "self-loathing" bit, but that's a bit beyond my pay grade.)

Oddly I'd expect such an angry "you have issues" comment to come from someone with more of a "kumbaya-can't-we-all-just-get-along" moniker...

@nocute: I appreciated your thoughtful post @80.

Mx Wanna - I was thinking more or less culturally, vaguely mulling over comparisons to straight-bi couples or possibly cis-trans OS couples, but then I got so focused on what would have happened after the party to welcome the prodigal home that the other drifted out of mind.

I first suspected that @145 BitchLover is someone who gave us all a very warm farewell last week, and is now pulling FACTS and coming back as a “friend.” Much to my disappointment, it seems like that person has already posted here their stuff for some time now which rules out my conspiracy theor.

The Holocaust did affect me, quite directly despite my best efforts to avoid it, and I’m afraid some of it has also reached the kids. It still doesn’t make me an expert on other peoples’ sexuality and desires.
It does, however, make me wonder about Sportlandia @ 146.

@145. The kink itself is just role play. Such a scenario has been enacted in movies, it's not taboo. Haven't you noticed? Humans enact their experiences into our art, it helps to keep us civilized.
It's how it is played that matters, because it is such a deep deep scare that is being aroused.

Scar. Why is there always one word I miss? Is this how it's gonna be now. One word, then two.

No, cis does not mean straight.

CMD @133: Alison is correct; "cis" has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It is just to do with gender.

Sean @136: "The reason I asked was that it occurred to me that a submissive masculine male might for some be more potently symbolic of redressing the power imbalance."

Well, possibly -- you're thinking of me as being a dominant who has certain preferences regarding my taste in men, which is backwards. I'm an androgyny fetishist first and foremost, with a side order of dominance. "For some," indeed, that symbolism might be paramount.
The other issue for me personally is, I'm kind of tiny. I'm 5'6" but I weigh less than 110lbs soaking wet. A six-foot, average-build guy could easily be twice my weight. And I find it difficult to feel powerful and dominant over someone who physically dwarfs me. It's an awkward fit in both vanilla and not-so-vanilla situations. I read, possibly here some time ago, a woman saying she loves topping large men because it makes her feel even more powerful, but that's not the case for me.

Bitch @145: What the fuck is wrong with you? I mean, seriously, you need to get yourself checked if you have such a strong reaction to reading about a complete stranger's sexual fantasies. This is one of humankind's most basic animal desires and you want it turned into an opportunity to be a judgmental dick. You have some serious issues.

Hunter @147: I don't recall commenting on self-loathing Jews. I'm sure the stereotype comes from somewhere. Probably Woody Allen movies.

Hmm, NSPP could possibly come to a comfortable compromise with her German SO, and still mostly fulfill her fetish by acquiring a '60s era Chinese Red Guard uniform. The olive green uniform isn't terribly different looking from a Nazi Uniform, they both represent repressive regimes that caused the death of millions, and most of all, it should be distant enough from being a Nazi to not traumatize the BF. It could be a comfortable compromise.

Wikipedia to the rescue. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hatin… for further details and history, apparently the term goes back to nineteenth-century Germany, and was made popular by Theodor Lessing in his book of of the same title: Der Jüdische Selbsthass (1930).

Reg Euro @ 158
The expression goes even further back and was used for Jews who revoked their Judaism, often in the hope of promotion or a job they wanted. It didn't necessary help them, like in Heinrich Heine's case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_H…

There was a rise in this revoking tide, especially in Germany, once the nationalistic wave got stronger all across Europe in the 1920s- 30s. It didn’t help them.

My earlier attempt to explain the term referred to one of the very few present forms.

Alison and BDF-
I stand corrected- thanks!

CMD: Interesting. I guess I assumed "self loathing Jew" was a similar concept to "white guilt" -- a sense of shame at having been saddled with a religion as a birthright, with all the baggage that comes with being one of the "chosen people." I guess that comes from looking through an American lens, because Jews, of course, run Hollywood and all the banks, or so their detractors would have us believe. Guess the original meaning was more the opposite.

I haven't really wanted to address the "self-loathing Jew" issue because I've already put so much into the "BDSM/Kink: what trauma does it spring from, and how can it heal that trauma?" thread.

But yeah, the self-hating Jew is a real thing--a person who either internalizes the anti-semitism from the culture, much like a gay man with internalized homophobia, and tries to distance him/herself from other obvious Jews or doesn't want to want to be associated with Jews or organizations that are Jewish and doesn't want to be perceived as being "Jewish" in any way or to have stereotypically "Jewish" traits or characteristics.

Often this was done because to be Jewish meant to be left out or denied opportunities for social, economic, educational, or political advancement. (Harvard adopted the SAT as a way for being able to deny admission to Jews, since it was feared that they were going to "take over" the university and they couldn't be denied admission based on their grades alone.)
Jews have been discriminated against historically, and in some places and some ways, still are, though that discrimination isn't as blatant as it once was (famous Groucho Marx anecdote: he responded when the members of an anti-Semitic swimming club refused admission to his daughter: "She's only half Jewish. How about if she only goes in up to her waist?"). Some of us therefore, respond to people who publicly behave badly and turn out to be Jewish with a sense of why did you have to be Jewish? Why did you have to give the ignorant and the anti-semites of the world more ammunition or more fodder for their hatred? Why must you contribute to this stereotype, the response to which hurts us all?

Some Jews extend this feeling to those who are ultra-orthodox or the Hassidim, the "black hats," the "ultra-frum." They are aware that these people look like snobby, misogynist, fundamentalists (indeed they are all those things) who are intolerant yet demand tolerance, who don't serve in the Israeli army, even though secular Jews must, who look at secular people with thinly-disguised contempt, who ask women to move on airplanes so that the man won't have to inadvertently touch a woman not his wife. They feel that Jews like this, who are often the only visible Jews a non-Jew thinks he knows, are an embarrassment and paint an inaccurate picture of Jews to the Gentile world.

Some Jews seem to want to distance themselves from their religious and cultural or ethnic identity (and that's one of the issues with Judaism: it's an ethnicity and a culture as much as or as well as it's a religion. For instance, I'm a Jew, but I'm also an atheist), which enrages other Jews. Mendelssohn was a composer that seems to have denounced his Judaism, which has earned him the title of a self-hating Jew to many Jews, which is why you'll almost never hear his Wedding March as the recessional at a Jewish wedding.

I don't suppose the bridal chorus from Wagner's Lohengrin is very popular either at Jewish weddings.

@164: "(Harvard adopted the SAT as a way for being able to deny admission to Jews, since it was feared that they were going to "take over" the university and they couldn't be denied admission based on their grades alone.)"

Hrm, I don't think that was necessary considering they had explicit "Jewish quotas" already in place to limit acceptance.

@165: You'd be right. At least to a certain generation. I'm 53 and when my friends and I were planning our weddings, all our parents were adamant: no Wagner, no Mendelssohn. I don't know if 20-somethings today know or care about that "prohibition."

@166: The SATs were a way of no longer having the "Jewish quotas" and still limiting the number of Jews.

@166: see http://www.salon.com/2015/01/11/ivy_leag…

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/…

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/…

Or maybe I'm wrong about Harvard.
I don't know. I've got a raging fever and not thinking clearly.

The point is that some Jews hate being Jewish. Some Jews try to hide the fact that they are Jewish and other Jews hate them for it.
Unless we're all being Mendelssohns about it, I don't know how you'd automatically spot a self-hating Jew. That shit can be pretty internalized and only come out when talking about other, more not-self-hating, or even self-loving Jews.

Seandr - I have no idea why you brought up this "noble savage" thing. Is that the opposite of "unprincipled tribalist"? And I don't believe that some unfathomable god stuck us on earth and sat back to watch. I am saying that we lived in small groups for the vast majority of species history, and that abuse doesn't work well in small groups, except when warring on other small groups. Take the common chimp, one of the most hierarchical tribe examples I've seen, running mostly on might makes right. The alpha is more of a fighter used to defend and expand territory than used as a mediator, with a high risk and high reward life. But if he loses his alliance due to rampant abuse, or is injured, and can't modify his behavior to submit to a more appropriate alpha, he's killed off or shunned from the group. Cooperation wins over strong individuals, so intratribe abuse is limited, while warring with other tribes is always viciously lethal. Likewise, a good team can't have a horrible manager; yes, people seem to submit to, or try to learn from, greater skill or experience when they have a personal interest in the team's production, but I don't think that people listen to a stupid&strong, or abusive leader. They seem more likely to be condescendingly agreeable, do their own thing anyway, then spit in his drink later, if it's not worth it to band together to revolt. This team would not be as successful as a team who admired the director and felt respected; Google just completed project Aristotle on teamwork; the successful teams are the ones where everyone feels like their feedback is valued and their work is appreciated. I would call successful human teams a natural division of labor more than natural hierarchy formation ala chimps, where each member's job is valued as much as the director's. And again, for the vast majority of our history we lived as many small teams in a tribe (or just a small team-like tribe), as we couldn't stay in one place for long without renewing the resources through farming or breeding livestock.

Massive societies and huge hierarchies.. abuse often runs rampant, the worst effect is enslaving other dangerous humans.. we tried to get it right in this country by writing personal freedoms into the framework of the law. But we still bought slaves. And we weren't able to eliminate corruption, the ability of the top of the hierarchy to take advantage of their position to abuse the lower levels... I'm thinking of congress members who can benefit from the laws they pass through stocks or gifts, and vote themselves higher salaries and more vacation time. Same with CEOs. And although the internal population of the US hasn't increased in decades I believe.. people become jobless and homeless too often, the homeless die unremarked too often, minimum wage is not a living wage etc. It's unstable, not sustainable, although I believe we have the capacity to create a sustainable renewable society, without infanticide or slavery or other abuse, especially since widespread birth control, formal education & industrial revolution happened.

Anyway, I'm not saying that humans are natural martyrs or selfless. I am saying that we have a sensitivity to fairness which is not unique to our species, because it's adaptive in tribal societies. But it doesn't apply well to massive societies. Although we tend to interbreed with as well as kill off competition, so some stockholm syndrome or sexualizing abuse may also be adaptive, basic traits of our species.

Really I don't think what we are discussing has much to do with modern consensual BDSM, only abuse in general. Cultural evolution, which is mostly about education; family values, religion, formal education... reinforcement and punishment spreading the cultural idea of fair play and good behavior.. that's a cool topic too, and much more relevant to modern humans. Usually, though, I think that "evolution" refers to biological evolution, and involves traits which are shared by the whole species. And wanting sex for pleasure seems to be a universal trait, rather than wanting sex for pain or to submit control; it seems that kinksters describe pain and submission (or inflicting pain or assuming control) as pleasurable, but I always wonder how that compares to expertly stimulating genitals.. Using pain to enhance pleasure... as well as our tendency to dislike boredom and to seek intense experiences... that sounds more universal.

I'm suspicious when someone asserts a story of humans in their natural state that just happens to corroborate their political beliefs.
I understand. That's why I responded to you.

I also used common chimps to try to compare to your POV more, but we are a bit more closely related to bonobos, and I think they have hidden estrus like humans because more egalitarian mating benefits their society. But also their lack of aggression led to less expansion... mixed bag.

@167: I'm 24 and I learned from my parents that we STILL don't like Wagner because he was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite who thought Jews were genetically incapable of producing great art.

Ph @71

but we are a bit more closely related to bonobos

? I don't think so. As far as I know, bonobos are a late offshoot from the "chimp branch", after humans and chimps split. So bonobos and chimps have the same evolutionary distance to humans.

nocute - thanks for chiming in and giving us some important past and present perspectives.

BDF- a research I’ve seen lately predicts that in about 10-15 years the vast majority of Britain’s Jews will be the ultra-orthodox nocute was talking about.
As you may know Tottenham Hotspurs are historically associated with the Jewish community of northern London, something I wasn’t aware of until my British tour many years ago. Their current owner’s last name is Levy.
The fans, Jews and non-Jews alike, used to call themselves “Yids” but can’t do so anymore due to the strict anti-racist laws. A friend told me that during the 1990’s fans of opposite teams used to tease Spurs fans with a “tssssssssssssssss” sound, a reference to gas coming out of the pipes…

Wagner- beyond his own anti-Jewish sentiments he also stands out for the way his music and ideas were glorified by the Nazi regime. An attempt to play some of his music by the Israeli philharmony decades ago ended with some angry members of the audience jumping on stage.

@112. Sandiai. You really equating Freud with the Catholic Church? He was Jewish.
Believing in and understanding the unconscious, looking at how it generates energy, influences our conscious behaviour.. Don't think the Catholic Church are at all into that.

Philo, from my scant learning re tribal cultures,some of the behaviours are not that friendly. Survival for the group, one assumes is paramount, so individuals didn't/ don't have the room we westerners have for expression.
What a tribal group didn't/ don't do is rear their offspring in isolation, like we in the west do. Our isolated nuclear families, particular and unseen.

RegE - bonobos are a late offshoot from the "chimp branch", after humans and chimps split
Agreed. And thanks for pointing out that I had it backwards. It looks like we share a bit more dna with the common chimp than bonobos. Our chromosomes look more like bonobos in some areas, and roughly the same amount looks more like chimps, although we are unique from both in our chromosome 2 fusion. Maybe I read some outdated or misleading headlines.

Lava - re tribal cultures,some of the behaviours are not that friendly
Agreed. Notably most primate tribes will war lethally on other tribes, even of the same species. Also infanticide. But between tribal adults, aggression appears to be more showy than vicious or lethal. And rules of good behavior, or fairness, that can be punished severely up to ousting and death if broken, seem pretty universal across primates. In small societies, abusing others in the group seems to work against self interest. In massive societies... it seems that warlike behavior happens within... by or between criminal subgroups, or misfits striking back with mass killings.. sometimes a low class or slave class is used for profit and eventually revolts.. have you heard of that happening on the small tribe level? I think that all started with agriculture.

@176, Lava, I wasn't equating them at all. Earlier I was complaining about men who slut-shame me AND think I have daddy issues, just because I'm kinky. The last two men who did that, by the way, were practicing Roman Catholics. Then Hexalm mentioned something about pathologizing something (kink) that is not a pathology. It certainly is not in my case. I do not have daddy issues, and I am not ashamed of my sexuality. Men who try to imbue my sex drive with those characteristics (and even try to convince me of that) are, in my opinion, being abusive (not to mention, ungrateful!). If they persist in that regard, I generally get them out of my life pretty quickly. I mentioned both Freud and the Catholic church because those seem to be two main sources for those two lines of misconceptions about kinky women.

"Believing in and understanding the unconscious, looking at how it generates energy, influences our conscious behaviour." Yes, well, Freud was a VERY creative guy. Like, a genius at making up stories to explain human behavior, but he was one sick misogynist as well. The unconscious, btw, is just our non-verbal brain (for me my right hemisphere) trying to communicate with us. We can study it very easily using modern tools of neuroscience, so we don't need Freud's myths any more. And yes, I realize his psychology can be seen as just another perspective on human development, but it's done a lot of destruction as well, so I wish it weren't taught as gospel, especially to lay-people. The fact that I don't have a penis, and therefore cannot ever resolve my infantile sexual urges, and become an adult in the complete way that a man can, is horseshit, if you don't mind my saying. Oh and the fact that a girl has to resolve her infantile attraction to her father is by "transferring her primary erogenous zone from the infantile clitoris to the adult vagina"? [that's Freud]. Yeah, that's funny. My clitoris IS important to my sexual pleasure; I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me immature.
[[ok, more ranting...I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at S. Freud]]
Oh, and do you know how he came up with these theories? He was counseling two women with dissociative disorders. The women had clearly been traumatized. We would call them PTSD victims nowadays. Anyway, Freud was trying to get them to talk about their erogenous zones, cause you know, that's his thing, and those kinds of questions caused them MORE distress. Finally, he gets one to talk about how her father molested her when she was a little girl. And then he got the same story out of the other young woman. So, does he think, "Oh my Gott! That's terrible! I need to help these women and explain that it's not their fault!!"? Nooooo. He surmises that they are fantasies! That's right! Instead of believing them, he thought they secretly wanted to have sex with their fathers. He thought the source of their trauma was their unresolved attractions to their fathers, and BOOM, infantile incestual attraction as a theory of psychosexual development was born (and two victims were further victimized). Thanks Freud!

Yes Sandiai; I've read enough Freud to know he had some issues, some Big issues.
And like most( many? some?) male philosophers, theorists etc.. wanted to believe his way was the only way to interpret human beings.
However, he and his mob opened the door to amazing discoveries.
The unconscious is just that. Unconscious. Our experiences that we have locked away in our continuum, until we make the effort to try and bring them to consciousness. Preverbal experiences. Childhood experiences.
The negative patterns many of us notice about ourselves, have their origins here.
Sorry those guys tried to interpret your life with superficial insights.

Philo, I'm guessing you are right that slave type classes dev with agriculture.
My point was that the rearing of the young was/ is a communal endeavour.

Hi Dan and everybody,
Wow---late in the comment thread for Griz this week, but I have had a lot going on.
Nothing like spring in my little nook of the world to refresh, rejuvenate, and renew.
Thank you all for the informative and poignant reads.

The enacting of Nazi fantasies?!? Mein Gott! NO! The Holocaust, after 80 years, is indeed a grim reminder of what hopefully doesn't ever repeat itself. Insane mass destruction and far too many millions of innocent lives lost. Right now I'm scared SICK about the vomit-like rise of Donald Trumpzilla in the Divided States. I'm not German born, but I am blessed with a wonderful little Love Bug with a Karmann-Ghia engine.
What say we wage-----peace?

@178, I WISH we could say we were more closely related to bonobos. They are just a lot nicer people. My fantasy is that, someday in the distant future, we'll be as culturally evolved as bonobos are today.

@180, you're right about the unconscious, Lava. Sorry, I was thinking of the subconscious. Yeah, the unconscious can't communicate at all, even symbolically or in dreams.

@140 - I think it's excellent that you & your wife have all kinds of naughty fun roleplaying transgressive things with each other. We humans live much longer than we used to, & if you're together &/or married for much of your life to the same person, ya gotta jazz some things up. Keeps it lively. It's also self-aware of you to have the occasional bout of conflicted feelings about it. You're a caring fellow.

Past that, I couldn't disagree with you more. If NSPP/LW 1 wants to *keep* her German lover, she will *never* ask him to indulge her Nazi fantasy. I'm half-German myself, Mom was FOB - married Dad & moved here. & I went to Germany for a work-related function, a gaming & comics convention a few years ago.

One of the products that my then-partner & I had for sale was a tee shirt with our comic book character in its center. Around the character was a ring of various religious / cultural symbols, printed pretty small: Star of David, a cross, a triskelion & on one of the corners, a swastika or gammadion cross, but used in the way of the Buddhists/Hindus/Jainists. Despite its context, as soon as those tee shirts hit the convention table, we were approached by a very earnest member of the convention staff who said we couldn't sell them there, that in fact, any depiction of a swastika in Germany was illegal. (More research after the fact showed that in fact the section of the Criminal Code they were referring to clearly stated that intent was key, when displaying or using symbols, flags, emblems, etc.) We were guests there, so of course, the shirts got put back in their boxes. But that prompted some conversations with young Germans at the show - which was in Essen - about the war & its modern-day ramifications. The Germans I talked to, some of them have a very deep sense of guilt about their role in WW2, & are keenly aware of how quickly tendencies of national pride can change into xenophobia.

On the same trip I met German family members I didn't know I had & saw a photo of a great-uncle who went missing during the war. Apparently, he'd served in the military, didn't like what started happening as the Nazis came to power, tried to go AWOL & was then sent off to some front line in Romania, & never seen again. In the photo I saw he was in full uniform, but his expression looked heartbroken. It haunted me.

Anyhow. I think it's a difficult thing to explain to someone else, but the guilt felt by some Germans about the war is a huge thing. If NSPP *respects* or *cares about* her lover, she won't ask him to fulfill her Nazi fantasy. The way she talks about him I'm unsure that's true. She says it's just sex & says he's already too sensitive in his awareness about the Holocaust. I'm with the people upthread who said that part of the transgressive thrill for her is that this is likely one of the last things he would comfortably do. If she just has to get her "evil Nazi / dirty Jew" thing on, pay a nice clean sex worker to do it. Sex work is way more accessible in the parts of Europe I've been to than it is in the US, nobody will come out of her transaction worse for wear & there's tons of kinky people in most of the major German cities who can help her find someone to help her get her self-loathing rocks off.

But if she wants to break up with her German lover in a hurry & can't think of a way to do it, asking him to do that with her would take care of that, no problem.

@159
Well first of all it isn't red, "Red Guard" is just what they were called, which you would have seen if you looked at the picture I linked to. It is olive green, and has a red armband, with Chinese characters on it.

Sandiai @179: Yeah, Freud certainly didn't know much about human anatomy, as well as, it appears, projecting his own rather fucked-up sexual desires and toilet training experiences onto humanity as a whole. Most people are repulsed by thinking of their parents in a sexual way. Most children's motivations have absolutely nothing to do with sex. Dude needed a cold shower.

I don't think you can discount all
of Freud's discoveries so easily, Fan.
I remember having feelings of sexuality as a young child. Playing romantic games with other children at around the age of five or six. Not touching each other's genitals, rather games of cuddling; playing at romance. Then it subsided till adolescence.

I don't think Freud was talking of children thinking of their parents in a sexual
way; it was that at a certain age the child, especially the male child, had to accept the father is around and the child's connection with the mother, has to take second place to the father. If this process malfunctions, ie the mother transfers erotic energy onto the child, rather than keeping it directed towards the father, dysfunction can occur, for the child.
He was describing the heterosexual family dynamic, of a century plus ago.

I give Freud credit for trying to understand things that no one had thought about or tried to codify before. There may be something to his Oedipal complex, except I think it works both for sons and daughters and isn't so much sexual as it is the competition with the father for the mother's love and attention. I also like his piece on creative writers and daydreaming.

But beyond that . . . I think he did a lot of damage to a lot of people--people who came to him seeking help, but also all the people who accepted his theories as truth and fucked up a lot of other people. He may have understood and helped a few men, but his misogyny and utter lack of understanding women, from the way their anatomy functions to all the rest of his cockamamie proclamations (the only time I have penis envy is when I'm waiting in a long line for the ladies' room) really did a number on entire generations and brought some seriously stupid ideas into the general culture. And I don't even want to get started on psychoanalytic criticism. Jacques Lacan can eat a bag of rocks.

@ Philo
Thnx Philo I try to be open. This forum is important to somebody like me who works for themselves alone all day. This group is articulate with lots of experience in relationships and is so helpful. I have no clear answers but I keep observing my Miss N. and apply lessons where I can. There seems to be a basic poor self-image problem that makes her associate sexiness (and indeed sex with her hubby) as something totally inappropriate for her. I reject this opinion. She deserves love and intimacy as do I. Surely we may get so old that we abandon our love life but not now, at least for me.
All of us long-term married guys know that a person (male or female) outside my marriage can give our spouse a compliment and it has 100 times the power of a positive comment from me. I actually coach my adult daughter to help me build up Miss N's self image. I would not say this out loud to her or anyone in our circle, but the truth is that she was the most sexy and confident when she was being pursued by the husband of one of the couples in our social group.
Re Open the relationship? Yes, but ONY If it would bolster her self-image. I would never attempt anything that might harm the fragile ego she has maintained this far.

Nocute @191: "the only time I have penis envy is when I'm waiting in a long line for the ladies' room"

And there is the original reason to scrap urinals and have unisex bathrooms with stalls for all. Hopefully the current plight of trans people will, finally, help achieve the urinary equality that we women have been denied for so long.

@nocutename: I also like his piece on creative writers and daydreaming.

I also liked "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious" and "Civilization and its Discontents".

BiDanan @193: I've never understood why we don't have all unisex bathrooms with lots of stalls and a row of urinals behind some sort of privacy wall. After all, how many people do you know who have sex/gender-segregated bathrooms in their homes?

seandr@194: Okay, those are good, too. He just really, really got women wrong. And he made up most of the dreams he analyzed.

I don't like urinals. Not only is it difficult to piss with someone standing right next to you (see also Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine), there is no toilet paper to clean the "last drop" from your dick.

@196: Well, you wouldn't need to use the urinal. Any one could use a stall for any reason. But having urinals speeds things up and helps cut down on those long lines, and you can only have so many stalls in one bathroom.

What a civilized man you are, RE, wanting to use toilet paper to finish the job. No way men here do that. Shake the last drop around they do.

How do you know Freud made up his dreams, nocute?
He and the circle around him revolutionised thought about humans and their psyche, for the west.
Yes, he threw out some sexist nonsense, yet some of his analysis would have been true for the time. He just assumed it was universal.
Amazing mind of inquiry that man had. As did so many who were of his circle. And the minds of inquiry that have followed. Would we have the therapy of today, without him.
And his grandson, Lucien, one of my favouite Artists.

@nocutename: He just really, really got women wrong.

He sure did.

While I think some of his philosophical work is redeemable, I credit him as being the father of really, really bad psychotherapy. Equipped with his proverbial hammer, everything he saw was a nail. His influences can still be felt to this day in the offices of thousands of awful therapists.

I never understood where he got the idea of penis envy. I mean, I like penises as much as the next straight girl. But I have never once in my life wished I had one. Not even in a long bathroom line. In such circumstances, I tend to wish for more bathrooms.

It would make more sense if it were meant metaphorically, as in, envy of the power that men have, or of the various advantages of being male (all time-period appropriate, of course); but I get the feeling it wasn't a metaphor. It was about actual penises. Which is just odd to me.

Why not uterus envy? Those things *grow new life inside them*, which seems a fair bit niftier than letting you pee upright.

"But between tribal adults, aggression appears to be more showy than vicious or lethal."

It's easy to say aggression is "more showy than vicious or lethal" when you're not the one getting the shit beaten out of you. Have you ever, actually, had the experience of being non-lethally beaten? Being on the losing end of non-lethal aggression will shorten your life expectancy, even in modern society, more so if you're making your living by hunter-gathering, and if you're heterosexual male, it'll restrict your "access to mates" big time.

I read, recently (but can't remember where so it could be wrong), a statement that sometimes a high-status male chimp would beat the shit out of a low-status male chimp, and that the other chimps were much more sympathetic to the low-status male afterward if the low-status male had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and the high-status male had taken his frustration at something else out on the low-status male; "more sympathetic" compared to their attitude towards low-status males who had given the high-status male "cause" to beat them up.

As a low-status (and autistic) human male that sounds to me EXACTLY the way humans run our societies. I don't think pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer tribes were nice places to be for the people on the lower rungs of the social status ladder.

@198: LavaGirl, my apologies; I was sure I remembered hearing that new evidence had shown that Freud made up many of the dreams that supported his theory, but a Google search just now doesn't lead me to that information.
Sorry for the misrepresentation of Freud's research methods.

Yeah, bathrooms…
As someone who is eligible to use both men’s and women’s I suspect many women may have an issue with the co-ed system considering the mess men often leave on the seat.
I always sit while using the women’s, part of who I am in my female persona and also as respect to other users who may not be so comfortable with the idea of me being there to begin with.
As a man in the men’s restroom I only sit when I really have to, and even then the seat is well covered with lots of paper.

Reg Euro @ 196- you mentioned your discomfort with urinals goes beyond the lack of available paper. Is part of it is stems from your assumed European uncut version, as opposed to the mostly-circumcised US men?
I sense some of this “difference” while in Europe.

Ciod @ 200- Michael Bloomberg, former NYC mayor, came up some ten years ago with an ordinance that all women’s restrooms should have twice as many stalls as men’s. Not sure what happened to it.
As for penis envy- I know at least one male-born who often experiences “breasts envy.”

@ciods: But I have never once in my life wished I had one.

Denial, with a hint of reaction formation. Very interesting.

Let me guess - sometimes you feel tired or suffer from bad moods? I knew it. These sublimated thoughts have a way of leaking into our daily lives.

My recommended treatment is seven sessions per week for at least 6 months. I'd also like you journal any thoughts you have about penises during your daily life, be they dreams, fantasies, anecdotes, or actual experiences, so that we can carefully analyze them here.

. The penis envy story was a strange one. Freud had some very strange ideas in amongst the gems. Maybe it was a sort of projection? He wanted penis, was repressed homosexually. His connections with a lot of his fellow male therapists got very intimate. He had fall outs with many of them, like lovers breaking up.
People like Bowlby, Winnicot.. amazing theorists around children and development, would they have existed without that man Freud. He worked closely with Jung, till their falling out.
I went thru a period in my 20s where I read so much about Freud and his theories, and the wild stories of his followers. it must have been amazing to live amongst all that intellectual ferment. And women were there as well, wasn't just a men's club.

@seandr: Ah, if you were here now I'd shoot you what, in the internet's infancy, we used to call a *weg*.

---
And now, a grammatical question. In American English, nonsensically, it's proper to put some punctuation inside quotation marks even though that punctuation is not part of the quotation, e.g., "What a bizarre custom," she said. British English has this right, I believe, but being only a lowly American, I try to stick to the local rules. When in Rome and all that. I also read a decent explanation some time ago having to do with kerning and the ability of the human eye to distinguish small dots which indicate something (periods, commas) from small dots which are only dust on a page; an ability apparently much assisted by the proximity of the small dot to an actual letter. I digress. Anyway, I can't help but wonder if the period above should go inside the old-school-internet emphasis marks, i.e., the asterisks, like so: I would shoot you a *weg.*

(Apologies to any non-grammar-nerds who found that aside unnecessary and unpleasant.)

Now I really want an update from the LW whose boyfriend had a thing for calling him abusive and homophobic slurs during sex but was otherwise respectful and (at least to that point) generous with non-abusive sex as well.

Apropos the discussion of Nazis and the attempts of modern Germans to process their legacy: Netflix has a new German-made film about Hitler coming back to life in present-day Germany. Weird, disturbing, and apparently quite funny in some parts, while not-so-funny in others. It's called "Look Who's Back," based on a German satirical novel by the same name. I listened to a review of it on NPR today, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. If you don't speak German, you'll need to enable the English subtitles.

Hunter @190, I nominate you to be Foreign Military Correspondent, since you appear to be a expert on the military uniforms and gear of various regimes past and present. CMD as Lingerie Correspondent can then further inform us on what lies beneath.

cmd @203

Reg Euro @ 196- you mentioned your discomfort with urinals goes beyond the lack of available paper. Is part of it is stems from your assumed European uncut version, as opposed to the mostly-circumcised US men?
I sense some of this “difference” while in Europe.

No, my being uncircumcised has nothing to do with it. Why would it? FYI, when urinating the foreskin is pulled back completely, so there is no practical or visible difference (well, maybe if you look very closely) between cut or uncut.
It's more a psychological thing: with other people in close proximity, it is harder to tell the appropriate muscles to relax and "open the floodgates". It takes some extra concentration, thinking of waterfalls, etc.

Not my bag at all hunter. Torture equipment. A dominating man just needs a nice hard cock the right attitude and I'm satisfied.

Having to be a troll must be so sad for you. Tick. Tock.

Nocute @195: Retaining urinals would not solve the problem of women having to queue while men do not. It just means we'd be able to get a better look at them bypassing the queue to head to the urinals while we waited for stalls. Grr. And just wait for women to complain that a man who likes his privacy has used a stall while women can't use the urinals...
No, ban those uncivilised things, I say.

Ciods @200: Couldn't agree more. Privilege envy, definitely. Penis envy, not so much. (Well, it would be nice for variety, but that's my fetish talking.) Particularly when we are the ones who can have multiple orgasms. If only Freud knew human anatomy a bit better, perhaps he'd have theorised that men have clitoris envy.

CMD @203: I'm sure you've experienced women leaving a mess in bathrooms as well. Ladies, if you're going to perch, wipe off the toilet seat when you're finished. Your aim isn't as good as you think.
Re: RE: It's my understanding that some men (and some women) are what can be termed "pee shy." And given that I've been told it's a HUGE faux pas to look at the penis of the man urinating next to you, how would any individual know who was circumsized and who wasn't?

I have breasts envy. Big time.

Lava @205: Interesting theories. Perhaps Mr Freud himself had (large) penis envy? It certainly doesn't make sense that so much of women's motivations can be linked to the desire to pee standing up when in a pinch.

Hunter/Lava @213/214: One or both of you has confused "top and bottom" with "dom and sub."

BiDanFan: You are right about the issue with urinals. I was just talking about bathrooms with a male friend of mine who said all should be unisex and should have a urinal option; He said that in order to use the toilet, he would have to raise the seat and there's no way he's going to touch the seat of a public toilet with his hands!

Makes me shudder, Fan. You putting my name with the troll's. Please never do it again. And the week was almost idiot troll comment free.