On Counter-Intuitive Logic

by sequinnedmannequin

This is going to be one of those serious, probably ‘intense’ (I wish I knew what people meant when they described me thus), entries I’m afraid, so if you’re looking for that tone of cynical jocularity that occasionally passes for wit I’d skip on by and come back next time. I’ve been meaning to write this for a while – by which I mean I did actually write this a while ago, on the back of a Heidegger essay (oh no, sorry, Walter Benjamin), but never got around to typing it up. My main reason for doing so now is that I’m trying to clear away the many stacks of paper currently loitering on all surfaces in my living-room and I’ve been moving Benjamin around, unable to shove him under the bed with the rest of the crap I don’t know what else to do with, in anticipation of this very blog post that you are reading right very now.

Before I experienced it myself, I always wondered why it was that one of the classic symptoms of people who have been sexually abused is promiscuity, or being sexually forward. In fact, even afterwards I didn’t really identify that kind of behaviour in myself and therefore felt almost like I couldn’t ‘really’ have been raped (funny how what were once descriptive observations soon pass into diagnostic criteria and become almost requirements – like dictionaries, I guess, which set out describing how language is used and soon become the measure of what is ‘correct’). But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that actually I had become more free and easy with my sexuality, I did attach less meaning to sexual acts – and that doesn’t have to mean simply The Act itself, and that in myself at least it was far more strange because I have never liked sex. It has never been something I sought for the sake of physical gratification – only as the shortest route to something that vaguely approximates emotional closeness. I engage in the sexual because it is the closest I can come to satisfying my need for intimacy and closeness. However, having an abnormally high moral standard for sexual contact and an inability to divorce the physical from the emotional, I didn’t often find myself in situations where there wasn’t already a link between the emotional and physical – i.e. random kissing/sex with people I was unlikely to ever follow up with (or, if we’re honest, people with whom I may have followed up with but knew they wouldn’t with me) was something I avoided both because I sort of had a naive belief that it denigrated the act of sharing one’s body with someone else and because I knew I couldn’t handle it – i.e. I would either become attached to that person beyond all sense because I actually liked them, or I would become attached to them because I couldn’t quite get on board with the idea that I might just kiss someone drunkenly because I felt like it and not because there was anything more to it than that so I had to create an emotion to justify the action.

This has changed, though, over time. I’m excessively abnormal when it comes to this, so I still don’t think I’ve reached the realm of what is usual (as in, everyone else seems to be able to just flit about kissing and fucking whoever they feel like and the next day they carry on without having two thoughts together about that person and I can tell they think I’m insane for ever thinking there might be more to it, that I even want there to be more to it… but where’s the fulfilment in the random encounter? It always seems like a tantalising taste of what there could be, of what’s missing, that ultimately leaves me feeling more empty. But then most of the time I don’t know I want something until it’s given and just as quickly taken away), so anyway I’m still not normal in this respect but I have noticed a decided shift. Not just that I have more random encounters – and we’re still not talking a lot here, and we’re very much mostly talking kissing and not sex – but that they don’t matter like they used to. As in, I don’t link them emotionally in the same way. I thought for a while that this was just a natural consequence of getting older and wiser and less fucking naive, but the more I considered how I feel about my body, and what’s changed about it, and my general attitude to permission, I had to see a correlation.

The older I get, the more I place my value in my sexuality. And the less I value sexuality. Thus goes the inverse relationship that effectively destroys any sense of worth I may have had. A couple of months ago I was talking to my mum about some boy that I was going to have a drink with and I was marvelling about the fact that I had an actual active desire to sleep with him – something that has never happened. And she told me not to, something along the lines of that sex keeps men interested but mainly that they don’t want to be with girls who offer it all up right away, that I should make him wait. The idea was impossible. Not because I was so desperate to leap into bed with him that I couldn’t conceive of the idea of waiting, but because I couldn’t think how on earth I would go about saying no. I couldn’t imagine it. I still can’t imagine it. And I hate myself for the fact that in the cases of both people I have slept with since D I had no real desire to do it, I just didn’t feel like I could say no. I went along with it because I knew that was what they wanted from me and if I said no they’d have no interest. Now my argument is slightly undermined by the fact that I know this is actually true in the case of these people, but even if it wasn’t, even if potentially a guy wanted more than just a fuck-hole, I can’t imagine denying them access even though my own desire usually registers somewhere around zero. Comparing this to my first relationship, in which I made J wait six entire months before we slept together (and although I was eight years younger than him I was 18 – 19 when it did eventually happen – so not like I could use the age card or anything; I was still a very late developer in that, and all, respects), I absolutely marvel at my younger self and my ability to not give in to pressure. I had absolutely no qualms about putting the brakes on if someone wanted to go faster than I did back then. Now, one of my biggest anxieties is the idea of meeting someone and taking a shine to each other and negotiating when the sex happens. A friend of mine started dating someone quite recently and they didn’t sleep together for quite some time. I can’t imagine that not only because I can’t envisage being able to say no if they wanted it, but because I would fall to pieces if they didn’t.

For me, this is a large part of it. If we were to make a very generic and offensive list of female ‘roles’, I know where I fit in. I may have written about this before – I’ve certainly spoken about it to several friends, and each time I do I sound like a twat and want to stab myself in the face, but I do still think it’s true even if it is somewhat objectionable. The way I see it, there are three loose categories of women that men could potentially be attracted to (I’m obviously using a highly simplified model of heterosexual culture here): the Friend, the Girlfriend, and the Lover. These are quite self-explanatory. The Friend is the girl he gets on with really well but has no physical chemistry with; the Girlfriend is the girl he enjoys the company of, he finds her attractive but this is probably a secondary characteristic in terms of his appreciation of her, which spans a greater breadth of traits that make her a good partner; the Lover is the girl his penis can’t keep its eye off, who he would give his little toe to have a night with but whom for whatever reason he can’t bring himself to consider in relationship terms (reasons include but are not limited to feeling threatened by her attractiveness, her being too ‘complicated’, a preferment of maintaining the mystery rather than getting to know her thus upholding this ‘complexity’, allied to that she becomes an excellent screen for his projections, etc.). In fairness this is no less true of women, but right now we’re not talking about them.

So when I say I know I fall into the latter category I feel like I’m humble-bragging or something. And I’m not. For one thing, even if it were a good thing it’s just a fact and I’m trying to resolve this issue whereby it’s apparently arrogant to acknowledge ‘good’ things about oneself even when one has no power over them. Feel free to disagree with me on the categorisation – I’d actually love it if you did. Of the three categories – and I know I’ve created this model myself and am therefore just sort of entrapping myself by constructing a set of negative criteria into which I fit so we could question why I don’t just abandon this point of view and begin again with something more healthy but… – of the three categories I’m really not very enthusiastic about being in this one. I’ve come to the conclusion that all men who like women pretty much want to fuck all women and they aren’t too fussy about which women they are. They are more fussy about the ones they want to be with though, and once they’re with someone they have sex on tap so it’s all dandy. They will always be happy to have sex with their girlfriend, even if sometimes they might fantasise about having it with someone else. But the Lover loses her sheen as we all do when we get older, and then she’s just a woman that all the men used to want to fuck who now has no-one. The Lover can have a million wonderful qualities, but they will all be eclipsed by the desire to fuck her, and the men will never really be able to be friends with her properly because that sexual tension will always be there, and the women will never really be able to be friends with her because they will either envy her or be threatened. I’m making this sound very hopeless and simplistic, like there’s no way of working with this constructively and of course there is, but my experience of being here is that it alienates people and you have to work extra-hard to make any kind of relationship work.

I don’t help myself. I know I don’t. I dress in a way that sexualises my body, and I admit I enjoy the power of it. I love to go out feeling hot and I both love and hate the comments I get shouted at me in the street and I both love and hate the way people look at me and I both love and hate being looked at. I hate the comments and the looks because they’re demeaning, but I have come to expect them and if they don’t come then I feel worthless. As much as I hate being seen primarily as a sexual object, nothing terrifies me more than the idea that I one day won’t be – because what then? Then I am just this unlikeable, cold, distant, difficult person whose relationships are frayed in part by the tensions created by the power which has now been lost. And it’s not power really – it’s not empowering. I can’t DO anything with this; the only times we see women ‘do’ with their sexuality it’s the femme fatales, the manipulators, and the only thing they can do with it is destroy. And the most destructive thing of all seems to be that the understanding of my ‘value’ in the world leads to a lesser sense of my own value. Because I don’t really place much value on sex appeal; that’s not where I want my worth to reside, and so I can’t take heart in the way I am appreciated yet all the while I am working to comply with it so that the appreciation doesn’t stop. Thus the idea of saying no to a guy who wants sex and who I like is impossible; the idea that he might want more from me than that is impossible and so along the same lines I take what I can get while I can get it and have taught myself to expect little more. Which of course begs that eternal question of how can you expect someone else to respect/love/value you if you don’t respect/love/value yourself and I don’t know the answer to that but what about the other question – how can you respect/love/value yourself if no-one has ever shown you how to do it?

Which, at great great length, leads me on to the actual bits of scribble I wrote on the back of Walter Benjamin. I know not why I was thinking about this sexual abuse/promiscuity conundrum whilst attempting to do reading for my MA but regardless it popped into my head and I didst scrawl it out:

And of course, of course we who have been raped are more promiscuous because fo us it has lost meaning. It has become nothing more than a base physical transaction based on the same laws of power and exploitation experienced daily in all aspects of the subjectified, objectified female existence under patriarchy. Where once perhaps there was discrimination of choice based on who was worthy of the honour of closeness, who was admitted into that vulnerable realm, there is now indifference. BEcause once it has been desecrated what difference does it make? It is always violated, broken,open, trampled upon. The bond of trust has no meaning. Trust is no longer a prerequisite.

(I’d like to clarify that I am of course aware that rape happens to all genders and is committed by all genders; I am speaking partly of my own experience and partly in broad terms in which anyone can be rendered into the pose of ‘subjectified, objectified female existence under patriarchy’ regardless of whether they are a woman, etc.)

Then I took it a bit further a few days later when I was waiting for someone in the pub. Just started writing and out it all came…

And if love means nothing any more either then how can we expect to do anything other than throw it all away, than say love me love me love me love me all the while knowing we cannot be loved we cannot love we wonder why only we are the empty and lost and abused and not worthy of love or respect or gentle tenderness. I remember realising that you really do have to love yourself to love another, saying ‘if you don’t treat yourself with love and tenderness why would you expect anyone else to?’ but it does actually go both ways – if you have been treated carelessly by those who claim to love and support you then how can you know how to care for yourself?

We are told that to love means to cherish above all things, means to care deeply for, to respect, to protect, to support and to hold in sickness and in health. Yet who has ever been treated this way by one who ‘loved’ them? Do they not love? Does love exist? Maybe love is undone by our idea of love. We think it is one thing and when it fails to be that we assume we are not loved and this in itself damages us so we become less capable of loving, less capable of being loved.

I was abused. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually violated. Something I thought was mine (my body) was used without my permission. Something I thought was sacred (sex) was enacted as violence and power-play. Something I thought was beautiful and loving (my relationship) became the very means through which the violation could be possible Something I thought was safe and innocent (sleep) was made a site of trauma.

So the meanings attached to these things are emptied and new meanings replace them, or confuse them at least, and now I don’t know what is real. A fundamental lack of trust. Losing trust is not about knowing that my body will be violated, that sex will be taken from me, that relationships will be extorted, that sleep is dangerous. It’s about not knowing that it won’t be. It’s about the difference between believing that when I go to sleep in a bed with my loving partner he will not rape me and not believing that any more because I have been given reason to doubt it. Which is not to say that I believe it WILL happen. I just don’t know any more. If I was good at maths I could calculate it or explain it using probability perhaps. That if something has never happened on all the days of the year the probability, based on history, is that it will not happen. Then one day it happens and the seal is broken and even if it happened only on one day of 3000 days, the probability is 1 in 3000 that it could happen on any of the 3000 days following and you don’t know which day. When it comes to air travel or something we can look at safety statistics and feel heartened. Even if we look at rape statistics – frightening as they are – we can feel heartened if we have never experienced it. We can still believe it will never happen to US. Once it has happened that belief no longer holds – we don’t give the benefit of the doubt; we just have doubt. Something has been broken. And it is unfixable. And strangely the impulse then is not to guard oneself more carefully, lest a similar thing happen again, but to give away more freely. Where once I was guarded with my body I am now ambivalent. Fuck it, take it, it’s not mine any more anyway. It’s not a sacred place worth protecting any more. And also, I suppose, with partner rape there’s this extra dimension of the fact that the body was stolen by one who claimed to love it, by one who had free access to both the body and the soul, to love, to all dimensions of the person. So it’s as if somehow none of that is satisfying; love and companionship and sex when consent was given was not enough. Or, even more, and this is the one that really explains promiscuity for me – the body is all he wants. By choosing sleep, not only is she at her most vulnerable but she is her most empty. Just a vessel. Fuck it, I’ll take it, the body is all I want anyway, I just put up with the rest as a means to an end. So that’s all you want? Have it. Let’s not even bother with the pretence. This body doesn’t mean anything to me any more. This body isn’t mine any more. No-one wants me for me, not even the people that say they do. Have it. Take what you want – it’s the only way I can be wanted.

I derive literally no pleasure from random encounters, physically. Not kissing, not sex, none of it. In fact, even in a relationship I’m mostly ambivalent about sexual contact. And yet I’ve kissed more people drunkenly than I’d like to have, I’ve had flings, one-night stands – not many, but for someone who doesn’t like sex definitely a high enough amount to be irregular. Why? It makes me feel wanted. I used to be so uncomfortable with this that I’d persuade myself I really liked these people in order to justify it. To make it seem less desperate. I’m better at not doing that now, but I’m worse than ever for getting involved when I really don’t want to. I feel a bit like a failure if I go out, or go to a party, and don’t mildly hook up with someone. I feel unwanted, unwantable, and I hate myself for it [because I'm not wanted but also for feeling unwanted]. Now, it’s not that many people because I don’t go out or to parties very much, but the impulse perturbs me, When did I start putting so much of my worth in my appearance/attractiveness? Around the same time I realised that it was where others placed my worth. Around the same time I realised that this made me, as a human being, worthless in their eyes.

So
My worth = my body
My body = violatable at the expense of my me
My body/worth = desirable only when devoid of my me
My body/worth = a husk, a shell, a vessel for gratification
My worth = worthless

I put up a barrier. He tore it down. What difference does it make now? There’s not much point shutting the gate after the cows have escaped.

Both of the above were written back in November. The second one, which I haven’t read since then, is a bit disturbing in light of what I’ve been saying above. Hmmm.

My overall realisation has been that I need to cultivate some nice qualities that make me a person who is wanted and appreciated even when people have stopped wanting to sleep with me. It won’t be too many years before I’m not looked at in this way any more, and whilst I can probably get away without a pleasant personality whilst no-one’s paying any attention to my personality anyway there will come a point at which I will just be everything that I am now – difficult, unfriendly, serious, intense, negative, bad-tempered, narcissistic, awkward, lonely – but more so, and more old, and more lonely, and all my friends will have their partners and children and good jobs and I will still be swimming around in circles like a duck with one leg wondering why I never took the trouble to learn to be nice.