So I’m going to cheat a little bit and just drop a bunch of links.
But first, the IRS has given me my tax return and now I’m up $1,000 bucks. which is pretty nice. It’s fake money that I was planning on having from the beginning, and I’m still stuck on $60 a week (the good news is, maybe I’ll get to stop paying per week for this stupid Magic: the Gathering hobby that I am totally obsessed with. In other news, I’m winning at Magic, and I’m therefore a badass). Also, I feel better about buying that Chromebook (for some reason I was scared shitless of the IRS taking all my money despite the fact that I’m a broke-ass homeless dyke).
Economic news that I’d love to share, from a former professor whom I adore: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/02/hooray-first-genuinely-good-employment-report-of-the-recovery.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal+%28Brad+DeLong%27s+Semi-Daily+Journal%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
“All the same, behind Savage’s pragmatism stand some fairly strong claims about how sex relates to selfhood. Whatever else he ends up advising a correspondent to do, Savage tends to insist that sexual inclinations—from high libido and a desire for multiple partners to very rare kinks and fetishes—are immutable and even dominant characteristics of any personality. Some desires may be impossible to fulfill, others are flagrantly immoral, and most any can be destructive when pursued without regard for the kinds of ethical guidelines Savage lays out. But for Savage, no matter how we direct its expression, our sexual self is our truest self.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2011/1103.dueholm.html
First I’d like to defend Savage by simply saying that sure, sexual desire and sexual inclination are definitely not immutable. But here’s the deal: nobody ELSE should be telling you what to like, or what you want. It’s the same with self-identity: I always respect what somebody identifies as, regardless of what my opinion would be otherwise. Nobody else is going to tell you what you want. So sure, Savage treats sexuality as immutable, and it isn’t. But the thing is, nobody but yourself has the right to tell you what to do – and he’s an advice columnist. Period. End story.
Now for my personal reaction: So this is really interesting to me, partially because it comes from a Protestant minister and partially because I often wonder this about myself. Coming from a Catholic background (I went to Catholic school for 10 years, and by extension therefore I feel Catholic guilt despite the fact that I do not identify as Catholic), it’s really easy to tell yourself that sexual desire and fantasy is wrong. I’ve never really rebelled against the Catholicism, so it’s built into a kind of monstrous wall of foreboding in my consciousness, never really saying “No” outright, but making it all feel somehow forbidden. Not to mention the queer aspect. But I’d say the best way to imagine me as a sexual person is by transposing the image of a pubescent boy, possibly with a fetish for well-articulated feminine attributes. And that’s how I feel comfortable imagining myself, too – if I remember I’m a girl, it all becomes so forbidden that it’s completely incomprehensible, so I avoid that.
“You can have strict monogamy or you can have a low libido, ladies, but you can’t have both,” he [Savage] wrote. [excerpted from the same article]
And to round it all off, a random spreadsheet with information about RPGs available online. There’s not a single person in the world who could possibly be interested in all the things I’ve posted in this post. Oh well, sorry guys, here it is:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apt6Jq5m137TdGhkekJ4YTMtcU04X2dzcWRuUUJxMHc#gid=0
chipperdyke 