POP FEMINIST PERBLOG

Marc said this thing about penetration recently that was pretty neat to me. I usually say penetration is boring to me, but what I mean is that penetration is way less stimulating, intellectually speaking, than being a prude; (people are way more uncomfortable with my prudishness than they are with my pussy and that’s endlessly fun to me/joke-rich); that privileging penetration when we talk about intimacy/sex/exchange (esp. when talking about with v-havers who luv it pen[etration] so much) is really alienating and stressful to me for reasons; because sexxxual penetration—really of any order—is just too gross for me to like but not gross enough for me to care about; but this really gets to another center of it:

Penetration is boring to me because Sartre and ontological insecurity because things moving in/out of your body or coating your body is boring to me because sex is exciting for a little while but then it’s not exciting anymore and part of the reason it ceases to be as exciting is that all that boundary confusion starts to go away and you go from ohmygd how is that inside me? to how hilarious that anything can be inside me to i guess this is the part where things are inside me

Ofcourse I understand that in equating sex with penetration here we aren’t just talking about putting things in my holes, we are talking also about the penetrative nature of sex to begin with, but I’m suddenly way interested (finally, after everyone else is bored with it) in exploring ways that sex acts can be non-penetrative.

Most of all this really nails the way I feel—literally but also in a theory-space—about sex. I am always, constantly, uncontrollably disrupting my own physical boundaries. Every second of my life is an exercise in taking things that are in me out of me (often first through a penetrative ceremony). It makes sex different for me. It makes boundaries different for me.

But I hate it when I talk about things being interesting or not interesting, because that’s the stupidest thing of all.

CHASTE AND PURE AND NAKED BASICALLY ALL THE TIME

Are you filling them? They look GOOD. I’m sort of nervously circling my pencils, keen to start pencilling but worried I’ll get addicted.

Yeah, I am. I don’t always need to anymore but I do. They had grown completely back (and darker than they ever had been), but then I relapsed on righty. It’s been a while since I touched it, but I’m still filling in. I could get away with leaving them, but I honestly feel naked without it.

I know a few people who have trich and work with hair. Do any of you know anyone who has trich and became an esthetician? I have been seriously considering that, but I’m not sure how well I would be able to manage it. Sometimes you have to admit to yourself that you would be comfortable giving people bikini waxes for the rest of your life, you know? It’s always on the table.

I would give anything to be able to relate to my pubic hair/lack of pubic hair in terms of ideology, aesthetics, politics, or choice.

makingandunmakingselves:

Jessica Lagunas

Retorno a la pubertad
Return to Puberty

New York, 2005
Single-channel digital video
58 minutes
Color, Silent
Photographs

Video close-up of my pubis in a static single shot, in which I depilate most of my pubic hair with a pair of tweezers continuously for one hour.

In the name of beauty most women will put on makeup, do their hair, nails, depilate, diet, fix their noses and breasts. Although few women will reach society’s beauty ideals, they will sculpt their bodies as needed. In this video I play along with women’s beauty rituals, performing them in exaggerated ways to reflect the pressures imposed by today’s society. The camera focuses on the part of the body where the action takes place: With repetitive gestures I depilate my pubis continuously for one hour, questioning the pressure to have a pre-pubescent appearance.

I’m not really down with the message here, but obviously this is relevant to me.

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to pull hair out of the skin on her knees until she could touch the bone.

How can I type. How can you put your hands where you want them. How can you be content not digging holes to the center of the earth.

The disability center has been really understanding. Everyone’s been really understanding. She asked me how it affects me on a daily basis and I said “every moment I have to make a decision. I can go to sleep or I can spend four hours pulling out my hair. I can’t do anything else.”

I wanted to tell her the other thing I’ve been thinking about. I need to relearn how to be in my body. I need to relearn how to touch myself. I need to relearn what my skin feels like, to touch with my palms instead of the pads of my fingers. I need to saw my fingers off. I need to look at the ceiling, I need to close my eyes and think of Thatcher, I need to do anything. I need to relearn how to relate to my body so that I can have control over it again.

Lucas touches my skin, says he’s never felt anything so smooth. I say, can’t you feel them? Can’t you feel all of them? Thumping under the floorboards, I guess.

I cannot do my homework because my legs are squirming and if I don’t shave and cut them immediately I will die. I try saving hairs, lining them up on the fiberglass, picking them up with tweezers and reorganizing. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. There is only one drink that quenches and no nevermind it never really quenches.

I love my professor so much. I wish I could tell you what it was like apologizing to her, saying “I know I should have been more proactive, I know, I know” and she laughed with me. She’s so great. I wish I could hold myself upright.

Can you give yourself arthritis? I wish I was dead.

Cherry Stems (by grayrainymonday)

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Given that the practice of giving a random thing up for Lent isn’t, you know, canonical, I’m not really sure how to do this.

But I have broken my Lenten abstinence. For two hours, I would say. I broke it for a good two hours.

This is a confession.