Fichu @ 75
H_b_t_b @ 96

Harriet, like I said before, a cleaning deal like the one we’re discussing here does not need to be sexual, nor inevitably negotiated into giving anything in return.

Not sure why you repeat “sex work” in what looks like an attempt to shame those who may be engaged in any of it. Even if there is a sexual element here the same can be said about a wide variety of relationships and activities. And mind you, what the cleaner does off duty may be a deterrent to some but may also be a non-issue or even a turn on to others.

Finally, what makes you think Fichu and others aren’t capable of figuring out things for themselves and, who would have thought, may also have experiences and ideas of their own?

@69 curious2: WA-HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Congratulations, curious2, on scoring this week's luscious Lucky @69 Award honors! Bask in the highly envied glory and savor the glow. :)

@100 nocutename: WA-HOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Major congrats on scoring this week's Big Hunsky @100 honors! Celebrate you newfound good fortune and savor the coveted riches. :)

@101 nocutename: As a 56+ year old cis female who just had a full bi-lateral hysterectomy last summer, I now feel a mixture of emotions. While I am relieved to be spared from any further agonizing monthly nightmares---to the point of wildly celebrating---"Waste the Prom, Carrie!!"----I feel your pain, though, regarding hair thinning. I will have difficulty with losing my fiery leonine mane.

@93 CMDwannabe: I love your new avatar! :)

@73: BiDanFan, I'm going to align myself with JibeHo here and say it pisses me off that you haven't been told about estradiol, while you are in perimenopause and you've already had "intermittent issues." Because I suspect that were you a penis-haver, your doctor would be whipping out the prescription pad and the blue pills would be ordered. Hell, if you were a man, you would have come to the doctor's office for the express purpose of asking for the blue pills. That is wrong and it's infuriating that your aging body's sexual needs are not being addressed.

I know you're in England, and I don't know how that medical system treats men's boner problems, but I'm still pretty sure that the reason your doctor didn't inform you about estradiol wasn't a one-time mistake, but suggests a larger pattern of the way women's sexual health is regarded and treated. After all, a man can't fuck without a hard dick, but a woman doesn't really NEED a wet pussy--unless she doesn't want to be in pain or wants to feel good. But who really cares about that, as long as her man is satisfied, amirite? Sorry. Wine-bitterness is setting in, I guess.

Meanwhile, I have told multiple female friends and relatives about estradiol tablet suppositories and not one of them had heard about them from their doctors, despite several of them having spoken to their gynecologists about discomfort during sex. And to make matters worse, when they did speak to their doctors after talking to me and requested the medicine, the doctors tended to brush them off. The medication is frequently not covered by insurance, and even the women I know who have Kaiser couldn't get it for an affordable price. Fortunately, my gyno is a woman older than myself, who recommended estradiol to me because she uses it herself; she also helped me get it through a Canadian pharmacy, where it costs me significantly less than it would even with my insurance here in the U.S.

Because, yes, women's sexual health and comfort are not prioritized in our society.

So I do understand JibeHo's greater point about the inequity of the way men's and women's sexually-related issues are treated, even though I still like Mr. Ven's analogy.

@CMD: I understand that you--and others--take pride in providing excellent service, which well may be completely non-sexual or at least non-reciprocated and I don't mean to dismiss that. I have a pretty strong suspicion that the men I interacted with on OkCupid were less conscientious than you.

I remember years ago you brought up the topic of "Clothed Woman / Naked Man" parties, wherein women would be served and (maybe, but not necessarily) serviced by submissive men and that some women here were intrigued by the idea, whereas I couldn't imagine a situation more designed to make me uncomfortable.
Oh well, vive la difference!

Phi @89, I guess I would think of submissive cleaning as sex barter rather than sex work. It seems unclear who should be paying in that situation, as each person is getting something from the exchange that is customarily paid for. Unlike other sex work, there seems less risk of eg violence or theft. So while obviously not everyone's cup of tea, I see no ethical conundrum. And the feminist in me loves the role reversal of a man cleaning -my- house.

Jibe @90, while perhaps expressed less than ideally, your post has provoked a better discussion than we've had around here for a while, so thank you for making that point. I agree that female sexual function and enjoyment are not prioritised as much as the almighty male erection; this is changing, but there is still a gap. You have a lot of valuable things to say, but you tend to lead with defensiveness, an attitude that gets pushed back against regardless of the content of your posts.

Curious @91, yes, ageing and testosterone are the mortal enemies of the long-hair fetishist! I did indeed meet both while they were in their 20s and had full heads of hair. Ha, perhaps in future I should ask to not only see their photos, but a photo of their fathers. As soon as he turned 30, my younger fellow developed a dime-sized circle of skin on the crown of his head which expanded rapidly. For now he's rocking the David Crosby/Bill Bailey look, though who knows how long he can maintain that. Other partner's loss is less dramatic, he's just a bit more vain. Fortunately, this is a positive aspect of polyamory -- if one or both do decide to chop it, I can keep people I love in my life and seek a new long-haired toyboy for that fix.

Harriet @96, I understand "big dick energy" to mean "having the confidence of a man with a big dick." Not having a big dick, but behaving as if one did. Indeed, it is gender neutral. Personally, I don't like this term, because it contributes to a somewhat body-shaming notion that the only good dicks are big ones.

Nocute @100, runs fingers through hair and gets your joke. :-/ (Wry emoticon, in case Slog eats it.) Sending middle-aged hugs!

CMD @102, I agree. If Fichu does enter into this type of agreement, indeed she might find it's more than she bargained for, or she might find it's everything she bargained for and more. Like every new experience, right? She's a grown adult and if such an arrangement weren't ticking her boxes, she'd be free to end it. Not sure why Harriet threw a wet blanket over the whole idea.

Nocute @106, in my, and the world's, defense, I don't live in the US. I am not part of the medical-industrial complex. I am served by an NHS which for the past year has been buckling under the weight of a pandemic (and prior to that, a lack of funding from a Conservative government). I have not been recommended Estradiol by my doctor, not just because I haven't brought it up with my doctor (intermittent and fixed by lube weren't sufficient for me to divert resources away from Covid), but because I haven't actually seen my doctor. I have three months of birth control pills left, at which time I'll have to see my doctor, at which time I'll mention the issue if it's still an issue.
I am sorry to hear about your friends, though, and join you in being angry on their behalf.

Well, perhaps a risk of petty theft if they are in your house. Edit paragraph 1 of my last comment.

If big dick energy is gender specific, do we then have to have big cunt energy? To even things out.

PS #2, there are no pharmaceutical ads here. None. Minds blown?

I have a notion of what big dick energy means, and like nocute, I associate such energy with cis men.
I know it’s a put down term, it also generates an image of a big dick, not an ugly sight to many of us. Big cunt energy, where to jump with that one.

@108 BiDanFan: Although your comment was a response to nocutename @106, your mention of Estradiol caught my attention. I am currently on Estradiol patches (2 per week), taken concurrently with 100 mg of progesterone nightly for hormone balance.

@110 LavaGirl: I guess then it's truly a relief for Griz to be happily asexual and permanently hysterectomied, given my abysmal track record.

Griz just finished another DVD night with red wine---enjoying classic episodes of Charlie's Angels (the 1976-1981 TV series). It has been chiefly a Kate, Farrah, and Jaclyn night. Girl power!

97- Nocute-- Yes. That's what I've been trying to get at. You said it better than I.

@108 BDF
"...I should ask to not only see their photos, but a photo of their fathers."

Good idea. But it is their #mothers'# fathers' photos which would foretell baldness. Genetically-speaking we have our mom's dads to blame. (Or thank: not having hair has saved me quite a bit of time.)

@114: Don't worry, Fichu, I got your jokes. But yeah, this is often a hard forum in which to try to be funny.

nocute @116: Don't I know it!

LW2, I’ve forgotten your sign off already. Got caught reading comments. Maybe I should change my name to that fish in that movie? The one who forgets real quick.
Anyways, LW, I’m sorry for your change, and congratulate you on your up beat acceptance. Dan has graphically, graphically I say, given you lots of ways to stay in the game. Gay men are awesome. No women involved to bring in any womanly issues. I think being a gay man would have suited me. Bit late now.
/ as I sit at my desk, with my legs crossed, I imagine what it must feel like to have a cock and balls all swished in there. And then to imagine it’s main function, one of them, going on the blink. Suddenly I’m glad I was born with a fanny/ cunt, despite all the work it’s bought me.
I imagine such loss for men, is a big grief.

Hail to the Phallus, in all its transformations.

Ms Cute - There are plenty of men who invest a good deal of positive self-image in their hair. But for very few such is one's hair considered one's Crowning Glory. I don't see that changing any time soon, for reasons that are more sad than anything else.

I'll just remind the enemy squad that the original analogy was one of personal observation, not a selection of one among multiple literary passages. Now, if anyone can expand that into a comparison to lack of lubrication, all well and good. Have at it. But anyone who would seriously have expected me (recalling that I learned everything I ever needed to know about women's sex lives and more from Shirley Valentine) to have any personal experience of hearing about that particular problem would have better luck ordering a birthday cake baked by Marie Antoinette (or for something more modern, getting Mr Shapiro to bake Mr Rubin an anniversary cake). Now that one I readily admit could bear some improvement, but I have five bridge hands to write up this evening and must away.

Estradiol was a really useful idea, thanks.. I've gotten drier with age and the idea of being "all dried up" is sort of terrifying.. But it's important to accept so I can change things up to make sure sex is just as enjoyable and not try to power through dryness in denial anymore.. We never needed pills though, since spit works in a pinch.. In the spirit of augmented female sex function, I've just gotten my first menstrual cups, to prevent the messiness of period sex.. I haven't gotten a chance to try them yet but I'll report back when I do..

You're welcome Venn, for the personal experience of hearing about women's sex problems!

nocute @ 107
Rest assured, a respectful “not my thing” is all it takes and should have been sufficient for those who kept approaching you despite doing so in the wrong venue all along.

As for a CFNM party, the idea originated by a group of women artists and feminists in the Bay Area who decided to have a gathering of their own while being served food and drinks, maybe also an occasional foot massage or a neck rub, by few naked men who can be ordered around and aren’t allowed to speak unless getting a permission to do so in a brief manner.
It evolved into including other activities and challenges for the male servers as decided by the women organizers and participants, which may mean the men can be touched and also perform for the women but not having sex with them during the event.

The concept was hijacked by porn which often depicts such “parties” from a male fantasy POV that include aggressive behavior by the “servers” and numerous sexual acts with the female attendees.

@CMD: Have you been to any CFNM parties (as either the CF or the NM?)

The Missing kink, LW1. I’ve avoided your question because if you’re taking antidepressants, my advice is to look here to sort your issues. Ie; find alternatives to the meds. If you can. Those meds are hard core and to go off them takes a period of weeks as you wean yourself off. Big step, to me, to get onto them. I’m careful what meds I take.. man made drugs/ compounds.
The mind/ brain is chemical, and how we use it changes the chemicals, just like meds do. I believe.
How we think. What thoughts we let in. I’m not going to go all spiritual by mentioning Buddhism, because though I call myself one, my faith in some of its beliefs is not strong. How Buddhist thought explains the mind, and how to train it, is where my faith lies.
Coming of age in the ‘70s, verbal therapy rather than medications, was the go. And I went that path and he was a beautiful man and he helped me. However, my mind was still filled with dumb thoughts and reactions. Went overboard with breeding, little resources to do this, mind.. crazy woman.
You see it yourself, the meds are interfering with other parts of you. Big parts. Important to you, parts.

nocute @ one two three
Sadly, I missed a possible opportunity to learn more about it in the late 80’s when my ex first told me about the phenomenon once we passed an apartment where the shades were all down and the enthusiastic voices were all female. Sadly, back then I was still in denial of my feminine side and my submissive tendencies were only acquired some 20 years later. (I guess this is my unintended contribution to the preferences/fetishes/kinks discussion, as I’m also reminded that once upon a time while a student I had a short-lived career as a residential cleaner and found no reason to embrace it.)

If I knew back then what I know now I would have told her that she is welcome to attend such party if she wants, no reciprocation needed other than giving me an honest account of what was going on and how she felt about it.
Not sure if she would have been interested in attending one to begin with, but if she did, I would have considered opening the door once she gets back home, holding her favorite drink sans clothes. I wouldn’t rule out being trained to be a server in a future party yet would have left the decision for her.

It took me few years after moving out to have the understandings and opportunities to create or attend events that included cleaning/cooking/serving/modeling/performing in any combination and order. They have been in person and online, usually smaller in scale than the one described above, although one of them led to participating in a huge Femdon event twhere a wide variety of dynamics and activities took place.

In all of those events I was in my fe-male mode, meaning a combination of both.

@119 LavaGirl: Phalluses? If only I had ever experienced a time in my life in which sex had been more loving and vaginally friendly. That made me think of the very first man I ever slept with. He was hung like a horse. All I could think of was a scene from the 1987 movie, "The Witches of Eastwick", starring Jack Nicholson as Darryl Van Horne, a mysterious small New England town newcomer who, although he said he was "kind of in the middle, himself" size-wise, describes himself as "your average horny little devil". Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfieffer co-star as a trio of local ladies, who fantasize one girls' night in about their ideal man over martinis and snacks. Penis sizes are debated:
Michelle Pfieffer (as journalist for the local paper and mother of six, Sukie Ridgemont): "HUGE!" (giggles)
Susan Sarandon (as newly divorced music teacher and cellist, Jane Spofford): "I prefer small."
Cher (As widowed sculptress with one teenage daughter, Alexandra Medford): "Oh, yeah, RIGHT, Jane!"
Jane (the only one of the three women with no children of her own): "Aesthetically, I prefer small. Sam was huge, and there were times when I just could not face it."

This plain but also musical Jane can relate well to Susan Sarandon's Jane Spofford.

Nocute @116/Fubar @117, I find you have to include the winkyface when you're joking, and even then, sometimes people don't get it.

Venn @120, indeed the reason the original critique of you was unfair was that as a gay man, how could you have been expected to have any first- or even secondhand knowledge of what happens with women's vaginas? You'd hardly have been anyone's first choice of confidante regarding issues in that area, whereas you can observe hair loss with your own two eyes and hear the complaints that were far more public in nature. Indeed, now you know more about the vaginas of middle-aged women than you probably ever wanted to. Hope your game was enjoyable -- do you play online these days?

I'm wondering if there's been an era in history when a man's crowning glory was considered as important, or more so, than women's. Probably not, since more men do lose their hair, and also since testosterone is associated with both baldness and virility. A bald man is just more manly -- which of course kills any attraction for me. ;)

CMD @122 et al, I expect a difference in dynamic between a nude cleaner and a sissy maid. The nudity would make the experience more sexual, perhaps not in a welcomed manner, for the serviced woman. Maid service from a fully (cross) dressed sub could seem less intimate and more appealing for women who don't want to sexualise the experience.

Griz @126, I love The Witches of Eastwick! I have no attraction to Mr Nicholson, but the cello scene was hot. And I can't eat cherries anymore without thinking of that scene. I agree completely that too much is sometimes too much.

@98. nocute. To me, the expression BDE doesn't gender anything at all. It is not a property of men only to have big dicks. There is nothing especially male to me about dicks. This would be how many millenials understand the phrase, as well as fewer (I would think) progressive and 'down-with-the-kids' people of our generation. (I would think someone like Dan Savage would also chip in and say that dicks are no longer definitionally male--and certainly that women can have dicks).

The expression came to media prominence, it's true, when a young woman boasted her bf had BDE. But you can find disclaimers that you don't have to be a man to have BDE everywhere in the media e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/big-dick-energy-bde-explained-ariana-grande-pete-davidson-what-it-a8421601.html (the subheader is 'Having a penis is not a prerequisite for BDE'). Articles in GQ say Cate Blanchett has BDE; an article in Vox says Blanchett, Cher and Tilda Swinton have it.

I see a fracture, or just a difference in instinct, between different generations of feminism in your finding it 'depressing' that BDE might be a gender-neutral term. It may be you see the centering of trans issue, and opposition to transphobia, in fourth generation feminism as entailing a loss of valuing many things that made women distinctive, or allowed them/us to be taken as forming a natural constituency.

Just to add--I see that you have explicitly steered away from entertaining any thought that might be taken to be transphobic or trans-questioning, and that you have not denied at all that some people with dicks (of whatever sort, however they got them) can be women.

I see all gender as involving performance and masquerade. Being a man might e.g. involve bigging yourself up, projecting swagger to cover up a lack of confidence; and being a woman might involve simulating compassion and attentiveness, when you are more disengaged than it's polite to show. Further, I'd think any language for expressing attitudes which are conventionally seen as marked by gender--like 'swagger'--gendered to some degree, anyway, but not irretrievably, or not such as (say) a skilled individual writer or a cultural movement can't resignify them. This is all I see happening with the apparently male-gendering term 'BDE'.

@102. CMD. I have no intention to shame anyone who cleans a house, with its being a kinky investment for them, nor anyone who has their house cleaned, whether they derive sexual gratification, other gratification or no gratification beyond convenience from it at all.

I do not understand what you mean by saying that the person to whom I was making a comment '[is] capable of figuring out things for themselves'. If this was our rule of commenting--could, ultimately, our interlocutor have figured that out for herself?--it would veto probably almost all exchanges on here. And it would make the rest largely fruitless--a matter of talking to people who could never take one's point.

@108. Bi. I am hereby coining the phrase Small Dick Insouciance. I aspire to have it myself; I have a very small, practically a vestigial, dick, and I couldn't care less about it.

@112. Lava. I think it's a term of praise, and is gender-neutral!

Obviously people use and understand the term different ways.

BDF @85 "Just imagine, for instance, you're a metal musician who starts to go bald at 30?"

No problem. Just switch to the bald-head-with-beard "death metal" style.

@128: Harriet, I don't know why you're so determined to show me as the gender police and the anti-trans, anti-non-binary person you think I am. Even when you acknowledge the fact that I used inclusive language, and have literally never said anything anti-trans, you feel compelled to respond to my criticism that Big Dick Energy is a gendered expression and the words Self Confidence work as well, are understood even by old fogies like myself, and are 100% free of gender associations, by accusing me of harboring anti-trans or anti-non-binary sentiments.

You say: "It may be you see the centering of trans issue, and opposition to transphobia, in fourth generation feminism as entailing a loss of valuing many things that made women distinctive, or allowed them/us to be taken as forming a natural constituency."

I don't know what goes through your mind to make me apparently become some sort of anti-trans crusader in your distorted view, but I'm tired of it. I'm not a TERF and I'm sick of your trying to twist my words around so you can find a transphobia or non-binaryphobia that isn't there. My feminism doesn't need to exclude all non-females from having value, and fourth-wave feminism* is characterized by a focus on sexual assault, being affiliated with the "Time's Up," "Yes All Women," "Me Too" movements.

If that phrase, first uttered by a very-obviously-sexually-satisfied celebrity about her boyfriend, asked in the context of their relationship, which equates confidence with having a big dick isn't gendered is . . . I don't know what it is. And accusing someone of not "valuing" trans or non-binary people because she objects to the idea of such an expression, which people have to tie themselves into pretzels to somehow make gender-neutral, when there is already a commonly-used word to signify that confidence, is . . . I don't what that is, either.

If someone described a non-female person as saying "he's got tight vagina energy,"
(a) 99% of people would assume the person is female.
(b) A ton of people would object to the phrase no matter whom it was used about on the grounds that is is too graphic or explicit, vulgar, obscene.**
(c) Someone would DEFINITELY criticize the phrase as being an example of misandry.
d) No one would EVER argue that it's a gender-neutral expression.

Yes, it depresses me that the Almighty Dick is now supposed to be gender-neutral, that women are defending its use as a non-gendered expression, but my depression has ZERO to do with my attitude towards trans-ness.

*If you would like a good guide to the various phases of feminism, I recommend this article:
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth

**It's always somehow obscene in our society to bring up vulvas and totally a no-big-deal thing to talk about male genitalia.

I guess words just don't mean anything anymore--or put differently, they can mean anything and everything. Mr. Ven would bring up Humpty-Dumpty, but it makes it very difficult for us to mutually understand each other when "kink" gets used to describe both sexual and non-sexual things; or when some people see their kink as asexual, but their partner sees it as an expression of sexuality.

If tying someone up (or being tied up) whether genitals get touched by anything or not is a kink to A, but tying someone up (or being tied up) is a kink to B only if there is some genital touching, while C defines kink as being about the nature of power within a relationship, while D understands kink to include pain with sex and E thinks that kink is about the infliction of pain which only may include sex, but doesn't necessarily have to include sex, and buying handbags is a kink to person F, why the heck are we even using that word?

A lot of us wouldn't necessarily define ourselves or our sex as kinky, while others would see us as kinky because "vanilla" sex isn't itself some monolithic thing wherein all touch is gentle, soft music plays in the background, lights are dim, and missionary is the only position. And most of us would include acts like fisting, piss-drinking, nipple clamping, sounding, spitting, etc. under the broad tent of kink, even if there's no bondage, no spanking of any kind with any implement, and no domination or submission involved.

What do we do with the occasional ass-slap, pretend-choke (but like really obviously pretend: just a hand resting splayed against a throat) or hair-pull during otherwise "vanilla" sex? I like these things and more, but do not consider myself "kinky," partly because I don't ned them to enjoy sex, but mostly because I know and know of kinky people who are much more extreme than I am and who require what they call their kink to enjoy themselves, but I've had sexual partners that couldn't/wouldn't go there--or even to dirty talk--because they were too "out there" for them. I'm pretty sure that those guys would define me as kinky. But those of us here who identify as kinky would laugh at that notion.

Calling something or someone kinky doesn't tell one anything at all, therefore. If someone tells me he's kinky, I don't know what he means by that--all I know is that he thinks of himself as not strictly vanilla. We still have to have a conversation in which we define our kinks (lay our kink cards on the table, as Dan would say); we still have to decide, if the two don't share the kink, whether or not that constitutes a break-up worthy incompatibility.

Same with, apparently, saying someone gives the impression of having a big dick because they project self-confidence.

Why do we bother trying to communicate if we're all of us Humpty Dumptys and every word means what we want it to in that moment?

Harriet, my bad. I thought it a put down. Not a phrase I’ve ever used, so guess that’s why I got it wrong. I still don’t respond to it as gender neutral.
I don’t have a dick, what is big dick energy, and how can I project it? I’d rather call it tight pussy energy, if it’s about a woman having confidence. Wouldn’t use that term either.
Gender, it’s a spectrum, yes? Some at either end and some in the middle. We don’t all sit either end or in the middle.

I watched Russian and other, Ice Skaters over the weekend. A championship on somewhere where there’s ice.
The young women are ultra feminine humans, to my eye. Physically. How they behave, past their majestic routines, that’s an aspect I don’t have info on. I’m way down the line , physically, from those girls. German and English blood in me, and who knows what else. Bloody criminals took over this land.

We all share the X chromosome, guess overall, we are of the same gender.
What is this obsession with gender? I like men/ women genders, no issue for me enjoying the show, in all the multiple presentations.
Not interested in being bullied to see the world as gender less, grey to me. If that’s your path, go for it.

Harriet@128
"the expression BDE doesn't gender anything at all"

While I am certainly no expert on gender, I do think that that phrase I just quoted somehow muddies things.

It seems to me that the one who is being anti-trans here is Harriet. As I understand it, the good cause that Harriet advocates here is against the gender system itself that most people (except people to some degree non-binary, and all respect to them for that) participate in.

If one isn't non-binary (i.e. if one identifies to a degree with a gender) one's sexuality often has something to do with gender. (With also I guess the exception of the bisexuals/pansexuals/etc who are attracted utterly regardless of position on or off a gender spectrum.) Now circling back to my first sentence...

Even in the practice of trans, it is implicit that to some degree there's an assigned gender one isn't, and the other binary gender that one is.

Now, of course BDE is a metaphor for something independent of gender. However the metaphor uses imagery, and is inspired by, something characteristically gendered. (Though of course not necessarily gendered, for example in the case of trans women. Or non-binary folks.)

It seems to me that if it were true that BDE were not gendered IN ANY WAY AT ALL, then it would not matter who the term was targeted at. But since the term's essence is one of toxic masculinity, it seems to me that a woman (and a trans man) might find it an even greater insult than a man would (the later unlike a woman at least having testosterone to choose to throw under the bus). That insult differential suggests to me that the term bears some gender baggage.

It even seems to me that to say that BDE is not gendered in any way at all, puts one philosophically on a slippery slope towards things like implicitly criticizing trans victims of gender dysphoria. While I'm no particular cheerleader for gender, opposing it should not be the same thing as opposing the current masses of people for whom it is in their essence.

Thank you for your comment @138, curious2. I can't speak for anyone else, but I would be less offended and more puzzled if someone tried to compliment me by saying I have BDE.

I find Harriet frequently makes comments that a gender-essentialist would: they have divided sex into sex that women like and sex that men like (I think it came down to feelings/emotion vs. no feelings/emotion); they once played at being a 1950s' era "wife." Wives, even in the 1950s, were not some monolithic entity, so I assume that in addition to doing all the housework, Harriet was alluding to something else which they saw as "wifelike," some way of being or reacting or seeing or feeling that Harriet has decided is "female."

Then there's this Harriet wrote @129: "I see all gender as involving performance and masquerade. Being a man might e.g. involve bigging yourself up, projecting swagger to cover up a lack of confidence; and being a woman might involve simulating compassion and attentiveness, when you are more disengaged than it's polite to show. Further, I'd think any language for expressing attitudes which are conventionally seen as marked by gender--like 'swagger'--gendered to some degree, anyway, but not irretrievably, or not such as (say) a skilled individual writer or a cultural movement can't resignify them. This is all I see happening with the apparently male-gendering term 'BDE'."

Harriet, I hate to break it to you, but there is nothing inherently male in covering up insecurities with a show of bravado, just as men, whether cis or trans, and non-binary people, aren't excluded from occasionally pretending to feel "attentiveness" because that's the socially polite thing to do.

I find it both fascinating and irritating that Harriet is perhaps the commentor here who most frequently genders behavior and yet constantly accuses me of doing that very thing. No doubt, I do gender some behavior--I'm a product of my environment and the world I was raised in, but I don't fall back on it nearly as often as they do.

Hbtb @ 130
I read your post again and this is still my interpretation: You present D/s cleaning as strictly sexual and goes on to suggest that engaging in any of it will inevitably be defined as sex work.
I’m all for exchanging ideas and experiences which is why I joined the conversation since for me, and it may be only me, this came across as being somewhat ignorant about the issues and possibly also a bit condescending as a result.
Your current post on the subject seems more inclusive, though I must admit that we still differ on BDE and probably few other other genitalia-related expressions.

@127 BiDanFan: It's one of my favorite movies, too, although I agree: Jack Nicholson (especially after his portrayal of Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's bizarre 1980 film misinterpretation of Stephen King's 1977 horror novel, The Shining!) is NOT my choice of a sexually ideal man. Usually what I do while viewing The Witches of Eastwick during the sex scenes is visually insert the 1991 Thelma & Louise poster image of a shirtless Brad Pitt in an assumed Oklahoma City motel room, instead. YOWZA!
Agreed and seconded: it is unwise to be eating cherries while watching this film!
I do enjoy the cello / piano scene--it's among my favorites in the film, along with conducting John Williams' delightfully playful film score,

@92 EricaP! So good to see your comments on this thread again! Long time lurker, newer commenter, but I have always really enjoyed your posts and have gleaned a lot of insights from you. Don't ever leave us again!

I clearly picked the wrong week to have insufficient time to devote to the SL comment board. Going back through and trying to get caught up on all the great commentary this week.

A quick "two pints in" thought brought up by Nocute somewhere upthread re: the "hard-wiredness" of kinks. I'm reminded of a letter sent to Dan a week or so ago written by a man who is very into BDSM, mentioning how even as a little kid TV shows of people getting tied up would excite him. So maybe there's something "hard-wired" where many people can watch the same show where someone gets tied up, and only a small handful of those folks are going to get a charge from it (even as young, pre-sexual people).

And as we've seen time and again in Dan's column, there is a world of difference between "this is a thing I enjoy sexually" versus "I absolutely need this thing in order to feel sexually satisfied," the latter of which feels really fraught.

So when do Nocutename and EricaP get their own advice column? Because I want to read the hell out of it.

Men. Hair. Donald Trump. It's not just a lady thing.

fantastic_mrs_fox @142 - very much appreciate the kind words! I still read the letters & comments every week; I just have less time for commenting than before. (And zero interest in running my own advice column.) Mad props to Dan for keeping SL going for so many years!

Harriet @128, but trans women are rarely proud of their big dicks. It is a phrase that is male in origin even if people of all genders can be said to exude BDE. I'm definitely one for reclaiming terms and making them gender neutral; it's my aversion to perpetuating the idea that big = good, and by extension small or medium = bad, which is already too ingrained in most young men's minds, that leads me to reject this phrase and wonder why we can't just say "confidence."

Nocute @133, good point that dicks, like trousers, are seen as gender neutral and vaginas, like dresses, are absolutely not. Indeed, masculinity is aspirational, femininity not so much. The phrase BDE is just a symptom of that. The phrase "don't stick your dick in crazy" came to mind while reading your post, and the fact that it's considered applicable whether you have an actual dick or not. "Don't let crazy into your pussy" would rarely be adopted by cis men, aside from drag queens.

Curious @138: "the term's essence is one of toxic masculinity" -- Yes, exactly this. Thank you for saying it more succinctly than I did.

Mrs Fox @142 re Nocute: This is an oversimplification to be sure, but I view a kink as something that is outside the mainstream of vanilla sex which one enjoys, and a fetish as something that is necessary for the enjoyment of sex. And whether kinks/fetishes are sexual in nature depends on one's definition of sex. Weren't we (Nocute) just lamenting last week that a LW narrowly defined sex as PIV only, with any other sexual acts that happened between her and her boyfriend defined as foreplay? If only PIV is "sex," then kinks are not sex. But if foreplay is also sex, then kinks may also be sex. Does it get someone wet/hard, then for that person it is sexual in nature. But if you are using the heteronormative definition of "sex" as the insertion of a penis into an orifice, you would not see kinks as sex -- and by that standard you should have no problem with, say, your partner going out and getting spanked by someone if you're not into that. (If people were that logically consistent, though, there would be far fewer letters to Dan.)

RE @132, pick another subculture then. Hippies/Deadheads. Goths. Historical re-enactors. Metalheads may have the option to do the shaved head/bearded look, but some don't like or can't grow beards, and I'm sure many of them adopt this look with far more reluctance and grief than you are attributing to them.
https://www.sevenstring.org/threads/being-a-metalhead-without-long-hair.241066/

Although while many men are indeed quite vain about their hair and find it very distressing to lose it, I'm sure approximately 99.9% of them would still prefer to lose their hair than their ability to get an erection.

Good points, fubar. The Trump one had me spit my coffee at the screen.

I agree with Mr. Ven, and all others who pointed out that many men are indeed vain about their hair and insecure regarding its loss. I also agree with BiDanFan@147: most men would prefer hair loss to erection loss.

Still, hair is really important to some people, and not just BiDanFan: my mother said she voted for JFK in 1960 in part because of his hair--I doubt she was alone. I had a boyfriend who was erotically attracted by some kinds of hair and left cold by others. It wasn't a question of length (which would have ruled me right out!), but of thickness, shine, and body: curly was good, wavy even better, hair with bounce was a yes, etc. I remember watching a movie with him that featured a very conventionally beautiful woman. You know, a Hollywood movie--she was gorgeous, with long, straight, silky blonde hair. 99 out of 100 people would probably find her pretty or sexy. I'll link to photos of her from that movie at the end of the comment, if you're curious.

He said, "how can anyone find her attractive?

Me (after a baffled silence, because I think most people would find her attractive, or could see why others find her attractive): "I think she's pretty."

Him: "She's got stringy hair."

(Later in the same movie) Him: "Look at how limp her hair is--you really think she's pretty?"

To be fair, he was one of the few straight men I've ever known who admitted to noticing how other men look (and willing to point out handsome ones) and he was an equal-opportunity critic of hairstyles he did't like--he demanded his idea of "good hair" for everyone, regardless of gender. There was a craze amongst European soccer players where they wore their hair a particular way--I don't remember what it looked like, just his reaction--and I remember him pointing out one player and saying, "he's a good-looking guy; why does he wear his hair that way?" Later he said, "how does he expect to get laid with hair like that?" I remarked that hair styles change, that his haircut, which several of the players sported, was doubtless in fashion, and it was quite possible that to a lot of people, he was attractive in part BECAUSE of his hair.

Boyfriend still wasn't having it. I pointed out that somehow people have found crew cuts/buzz cuts, mullets, and mall-hair/big hair (the kind women wore in the '80s, with stringy, teased bangs, the kind that used up a can of Aqua Net weekly), attractive enough. I said that given he was famous, probably at least a little rich, had a handsome fair and a smoking-hot, fit body, it probably wouldn't be very hard for him to find someone to have sex with, regardless of his hair.

I seem to have gotten off track here, so I'm just going to link to photos of a woman with disqualifyingly stringy hair. I'm surprised she can find anyone willing to have sex with her.

https://spiderliliez.tumblr.com/post/124651378683/melanie-laurent-as-anna-ewan-mcgregor-as-oliver

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/beginners-review/

nocute @148: Your mention of your mother and JFK reminded me of a windy day last April, when our PM brushed his hair out of his face, and instantly caused half the country to cream their jeans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPMWrPtEgs

@149: That was hilarious! I loved the music and the slo-mo.
Yeah, you guys have a history of dishy PMs.

Count me as another happy to see you, Erica. Hope all goes well.

@133. Nocute. But I don't see you as anti-trans. I went out of my way to say that you were not anti-trans or in any sense transphobic. You are saying that I make a point of 'show[ing] you' as something--the 'gender police'--that, as I see it, I made a pronounced and principled effort not to show you as, in fact to disjoin you from.

You say I was 'compelled' to seek to correct you on the meaning of a term... well, is it possible to point anything out, to suggest any alternative view, without being 'compelled' to do so? I didn't address you directly and I didn't say anyone was wrong. This was just a point of interest to me; and I guess I saw no reason for a gender-essentialist construal of the term BDE to stand. There was absolutely no personal grudge in my wanting to be right about this; it's not symbolic of anything, and, though I know how antihomophobic and GQ-inclusive young people use the term, I would not pretend that it's the only interpretation 'BDE' has attracted.

As I've said before, I see you as right, measured, balanced, empathic, incisive on 99%, or even more than 99%, of issues. This being so, it's more interesting to me to discuss the other 1%. It's not interesting to me to be resoundingly correct, rallying-the-troops correct, on 101 issues. Anyone who has read SL for a while, who broadly shares Dan Savage's ethics and belief in the value of unembarrassed communication, and (I would say) who has our degree of education in the humanities or social sciences, 'knows', as it were, the right answer to most lw s' questions. The space for differences in any remit of advice is actually small (even if different commenters imagine, say, the sequence of events behind the problem in contrasting ways). What is more interesting is reflecting on nuances as they pertain to wider issues of sexual, gender and cultural politics.

To me, the spirit in which you responded to my wanting, in effect, to engage you on the interesting 1% of differences was supposing that I was putting you in the wrong--that, rather than resting on an acknowledgment that you were almost always right, and evidently a sophisticated interlocutor, I imagined that you were offbeam and in need of correction. Clearly, I practically engaged you in an inept way, if I provoked that response. Anything I say seems to be Kryptonite to you--you characteristically misunderstand it in a way you don't misunderstand anything else; your level of comprehension of it, it would seem to me, is such as you would habitually put right in your students. Why this is, as I would guess, doesn't devolve on anything to do with gender identity or cis or transfemale experience. If really pushed, I would say that I see you as a 'teacher of undergraduates': someone accustomed to having her authority accepted, her word run, in contexts of discussion where you are the best arguer, the most seasoned observer, and where it is your professional as well as personal avocation to teach and guide. And it's right that your undergraduate students do take your word as a standard. You are unfailingly compassionate with young lw s, especially with women you identify with as they make their way through sticky but learning experiences to, one hopes, a more fulfilled sexual life. But ... this doesn't mean you're right on everything? Isn't what a liberal arts college professor, an English prof teacher of undergraduates, does in the summer--the English Institute courses, the continuing professional development, the research--more interesting than what she does during the semesters? The teaching undergraduates is worthy, of course--but does it open the same opportunities for learning? Or just for being wrong? Would you grant me that point?

On whether some, if not all, people in the culture at large take 'BDE' as gender-neutral, you've accepted they do (just as BiDanFan says). If there was a phrase, e.g. 'Tight Vulva Attitude', describing a woman (typically) who took no shit from men, who didn't customarily adopt an attitude of deference towards men, especially in areas like presuming they had to please men sexually, rather than the other way round, or they had to listen to evident uninformed nonsense from men, but not the other way round, then I would immediately applaud and understand this expression, 'TVA' (it is something like 'twat', in fact), and happily say of myself I had 'tight vulva attitude'.

@152 HBTB
You cannot draw appropriate linguistic analogies between the target of discrimination (women), and the perpetrator of the discrimination (men). Usually that point is valuable in the opposite way (as in the victim being free to call themselves things the abusers can't). But in this case the toxicity of BDE also makes the point even more appropriate, as no one should use a term describing toxic abusers against their victims.

Apropos curious's @138:

'Doesn't gender anything at all' was too casually-spoken. To try to be clearer: Saying that someone has BDE does not attribute an ineluctably masculine quality to her, him or them. The term /is/ gendered, or plays with gender, or refers to gender, insofar as a dick, throughout history, has been seen as the property (and privilege) of one gender, rather than 'the' other. One could even say 'one sex', rather than the other--in that it is perhaps only in the last 65-70 years that gender has been theorised apart from sex, and only in the last 20 or so that historically male body parts, like dicks, and female body parts, like vulvas, have not been seen as indissociably connected with birth-assigned embodied genders.

Among the people I know who use the term, the phrase is much more often said of a woman / nonbinarian than a man; and it is usually something of a joke--'she/they have BDE', implying they're headstrong, sometimes.

@153. curious. But men are not toxic abusers as such. The dick is not an abusive body part. It can be misused, sure. Many men, through specific actions and attitudes, are abusive. The people saying their friends, or those they admire, have 'BDE' are committed anti-sexists saying it of other anti-sexists, most of whom aren't cismen. When they say it of those who are, they are demystifying the dick--which after all is only a small body part and one sex organ amongst others.

It may be that there are a lot of toxic men who big up other thoughtless, presumptuously privileged toxic men by saying they have 'big dick energy'. If this were so, I would go cool on the term; it isn't the use I recognise among the community whose expression it is.

@154 HBTB
"something of a joke--'she/they have BDE', implying they're headstrong"

While myself unfamiliar with usage of the term (probably because I would tend not to associate or even communicate with people who would use it), it sounds to me like an analogous situation might be to call a woman a "bitch" for the same behavior someone would call a man "strong" or "assertive".

Calling things jokes, Harriet, sometimes means that humor is being used as cover by one seeking to demean. Were gender not involved, I think you would see that. In this your antipathy towards gender is showing.

@134. Maybe a 'kink' is either sexual or has an adjacent sexual culture?

Let's take pups and handlers. For many pups, it's not primarily about anything sexual. It's about being unconstrained, free from care.If the pup gets a hard-on, it's like a three year-old child or six-month old puppy (apologies if I'm off on the canine facts) getting a hard-on. But there are people for whom the pup/Handler relationship turns on sex; and clearly one can see that all the pups are doing something broadly similar and deriving something of the same pleasure from their activity.

We would call it a 'kink' to mark 1) how important it is as a means of expression to people, 2) how it is organised with protocols, forms, norms etc. as a culture, 3) how it is not only geared to sex (unlike a 'fetish').

@139. Nocute. In trying to become a woman, I think that in my late 20s and 30s I projected impossibly pure, sometimes even caricatural, ideas of what women were like. Sometimes I was aware of this, and sometimes not. Much of it had to do with embodying the spirit of my mother, who actually was a bottomlessly compassionate, self-effacing person, in the mould of traditional (and doubtless outdated) ideas of femininity. I wanted to be in the place of the woman and wife in my relationship--not quite to occupy the psychology of an improbably essentialised woman; and I would not say that I hold essentialised conceptions of women or men now. The projecting confidence thing was just an example).

Let me say again that I am not accusing you of gendering behavior. I might say that a form of behavior is characteristically that of one gender or another, but this is only about an association, its being culturally marked as such; I would never say that underlying gender manifests itself necessarily in typical ways.

@140. CMD. I don't think D/s cleaning is strictly sexual. I will take the impression I gave back. It just cannot be true empirically that every sub cleaning is going off for a wank afterwards.

I'm one of those people who, after putting on their mother's dresses, then took up the broom or feather duster, rather than putting on lipstick. Though it is of course true that men clean, and that household chores in het households should be shared equitably, with an eye for who has most time and aptitude for doing what, I saw cleaning as female; and my doing the cleaning in a 'giving', subby way has to do with gender expression for me, not with sexual service. So I of course agree with your point. (A corollary in the light of nocute's criticisms of me: this is a fantasmatic projection of women as being the gender that clean. At the level of my identification and compulsions--I'm a neatnik--it's not about who I think actually cleans or should clean).

@145. Bi. Yes, many transwomen tuck, as I do, a lot of the time--and one of the reasons I'm glad I have such a small dick is that it makes tucking less of a faff. Well, I don't know entirely how it is for the better-endowed; but when I was getting ready for a big night out as a younger person i.e. preparing to get fucked I would find it harder to tuck, and that came to be tiresome, even soul-destroying. I think in the phrase BDE, the D is a make-believe D, a phantom or fantasy penis. People aren't exactly imagining that Cate Blanchett is packing the world's swingiest todger. If people could popularise Tingly Clit Groundedness instead, I'd be happy with that.

@158. curious. The term as I have heard it used is not meant demeaningly. The younger people I hear ascribing BDE to another young woman are praising her. The people saying Tilda Swinton or Cate Blanchett have BDE are clearly praising them. There are phrases that riff on historically-gendered body parts e.g. 'big swinging dick', 'cocksucker', that are clearly critical. If BDE came to be like big swinging dick, and was used of women not meriting criticism (for arrogance, insensitivity, etc.), then I would go off the phrase.

[break]
With luck, my statement of how I see Nocute has not further alienated her. I invite her to take some summer courses in feminism, gender studies and queer theory and studies, if she likes, so we can, where relevant, discuss academic feminism.