I write about social stuff. I do so hoping to better understand social stuff and hoping that my effort to figure it out is valuable food for thought for others trying to figure it out.
I'm not religious. I'm not interested in being judgy in the way people routinely seem to project onto me.
I'm probably far more "live and let live" than most people in the world.
I don't really have any desire to moralize per se and this is an endless source of social friction with other people for seemingly two reasons:
1. They are judgy assholes and things I talk about conflict with their desire to moralize and dictate morality and dictate social behavior to a degree I think is unreasonable.
2. People routinely want to insist that because I read about a particular subject and blog about it, they are entitled to victimize me and justify it with "You believe..." or "You accept..."
I'm generally very much for a high standard of bodily autonomy. It's your body. If you aren't hurting other people, you should be allowed to do what you want to your own body.
Based on that, I'm generally for the decriminalization of drugs. I'm not aware of any drugs I would object to being decriminalized but I can imagine learning of something.
However, I'm allergic to marijuana. I don't really want to be around it or physically intimate with anyone using it.
I have a serious incurable medical condition. That's the basis of my pro bodily autonomy position. I want the right to do as I see fit to my defective body and try to get it as functional as possible.
And other people routinely act like me "respecting their right to do drugs" is me giving up my right to bodily autonomy. If I'm "for" their right to imbibe, they assume I will smoke marijuana with them, they are entitled to blow smoke in my face and slobber on me and if marijuana is illegal where we are, they have a right to tell me they are breaking the law and then think I'm obligated to cover up their crimes that I don't want to know about actually.
I'm on the public record as being for the decriminalization of marijuana. If you want to cite that for some reason in your efforts to get the law changed, cool.
That is not me ceding my right to bodily autonomy, me agreeing to toke with you, nor me announcing I'm the town ho and will sleep with anyone.
People tend to correlate drug use and loose sexual mores and people seem to assume that if you are for the decriminalization of marijuana, you're a hippie and you have no right to say no to anyone wanting a roll in the hay. I don't even smoke marijuana or drink alcohol or use any other drugs, not even OTC drugs.
This abusive bullshit is part of WHY so many people are controlling, judgy asshats who want the church and law to BOTH agree you jackasses can't toke. Because it's never ever ever you just want the right to light up. There's a ton of other crap that goes along with it.
I find social stuff interesting. I like reading up on how things get handled by different groups of people in different contexts and writing about it. This includes writing about things like open relationships and historical practices of wealthy men having both a wife and a mistress.
I don't have any desire to have an open relationship with someone I'm physically intimate with. I've had open relationships with men I knew online and by phone whom I never met in the flesh because it makes no sense to insist it's a committed monogamous relationship when we've never met.
I think planet Earth desperately needs to update social expectations because the internet fundamentally changes a lot of things and we are not really trying to sort that out in earnest. And it's problematic to TRY to discuss it because people just leap to conclusions that anyone who would THINK, READ and TALK about such subjects is a loose woman and la la la not listening to anything I actually SAY.
I have been celibate for medical reasons for over twenty years because a faithful, monogamous relationship is too germy for my needs currently. And I don't think I will ever get laid again because I don't believe anyone will actually be faithful to me.
I used to believe my ex-husband was faithful to me and I no longer believe that. I think he probably had an affair every single chance he got while away from home due to traveling with his job and that's probably why I was so sick.
I'm not sure I'm capable of believing a man will actually be faithful to me. I will likely remain celibate for the rest of my life.
In some sense, I have zero interest in morality, at least not the garbage people project onto me. In some sense, I have an extremely keen interest in morality.
I'm interested in social stuff and figuring out why X was done that way in that time and place and seemingly was okay and not some disaster.
I don't think modern life works well. I think we have a lot of rules and expectations rooted in ancient history and often no understanding of why it was done that way.
Multiple US states have it encoded in the law that if the wife has a baby, her husband is financially responsible for that child and we don't care who the biological father is...No one seems prepared to admit those laws imply our "conservative" ancestors whored their wives out to their weirdo predilections and then as long as you supported the wife and resulting children and kept it quiet, no one really cared.
That's from a piece I wrote called Paternity. It also says Women's lib has a big problem because no one really wants to grapple with how freedom for women changes things we kind of had handled when women weren't granted rights like a human being.
I'm a woman trying to make my life work post divorce. I don't expect to ever have sex again, so I need to figure out how to support myself because a husband is not likely to be the solution to my problems.
I'm a former homemaker who married the second guy I slept with. I'm super old fashioned and conservative for an American my age.
I think about the things I do because the assumptions I based my adult life on for more than two decades no longer apply and I have no idea what does. I'm trying to figure that out.
If you THINK I'm trying to dictate morality, you're wrong.
If you think I'm trying to dictate morality and you don't like what I have to say, don't read my writing. No big deal. I'm not going to hunt you down and read it to you and quiz you on "Did you understand it?" and smack your knuckles with a ruler if you don't agree with me.
People seem to simultaneously imagine that I'm an extremely ridiculously conservative prim and proper person who wants to insist no one have sex ever and I'm pro free love, pro open relationships, pro polygamy and anything and everything that isn't a monogamous heterosexual marriage.
I've said before that I write because I would like to figure out how to have a happily monogamous heterosexual marriage. I don't know how that works. That's my entire goal.
I don't expect to succeed. But I write about all kinds of relationship stuff because MY goal is happy faithful monogamy.
And if I can't get that, I'll just continue to sleep alone because no relationship is better than a bad relationship.
I'm a blogger. You reading a few posts by me doesn't give us an intimate personal relationship.
If you think it does, I strongly suggest you speak with a therapist because you have issues.
If you're in an open relationship and my writing helps you make your life work better, cool. But don't try to invite me to be part of it.
I probably don't really approve of it. If it's not directly impacting my life, it's not my business what you do.
But even if we sat down and had a long, long heart to heart and I concluded you are some extraordinary person who is an exception to the rule that most people seem to be defacto shafting their lover and most people claiming to be "polyamorous" are swingers with updated PC language and I would heartily agree you deserve some award for being an awesome sauce person and I'm downright envious your lovers had the privilege of having you in their lives...
I still don't want you. Because there's no cure for my genetic disorder and I'm not going to agree to sleep with someone who is also sleeping with someone else.
Even if it's just ONE other lover, it's too germy for my needs. And it probably won't be only one if you're trying to actively recruit me.
As some internet acquaintance wryly observed, I write about sex precisely because I'm not getting any.
Those who can, do.Those who can't, teach.
Or TRY to. I don't really feel like I'm accomplishing anything.