A Brief Tidbit Of Dance History: The Sock Hop

#Irony:  Today, sock hops are considered a throwback to a more innocent time, with fresh-faced youngsters in sweaters and poodle skirts or blue jeans and letterman sweaters.  They're considered "good, wholesome, family fun".  Lots of family-friendly organizations ilke church social groups, host sock hops so that everyone can get all dressed up in cheesy costumes and dance to our now-grandparents' music.

But sock hops at the time were wildly controversial.  It's true that they were intended for teens, but the music that was played was considered by the adults to be sexualized and taboo.  All that wild abandon in dancing and sexual innuendo in the lyrics were sure to lead to wanton sexual behaviour!  And music being played by black musicians?!  For our innocent young teenagers to hear?!  The horror! (ah, American racism in the "golden age" of our history)

The reality is that they were more like the dance scene in Grease (which is not a sock hop, because sock hops were informal dances, not proms or otherwise formal events), with double entendres, and kids getting up to "trouble" while chaperones did their best to keep kids in line.  
 

But today, we revisit them as a quaint, retro party suitable for all ages and communities.

 

No, seriously, watch that entire scene of the school dance with the spiking the punch and mooning the TVs and the giant sexual free-for-all hand jive number - this is what a sock hop was actually like, except not a formal dance.

Also, fun fact: they were called sock hops because the kids were literally required to take their shoes off before entering the gym so that the soles of their shoes didn't scuff the floor.  And, apparently, the teachers were the worst offenders of scuffing the floor so they also went in their stocking feet.

#DanceHistory #DanceGeek

Sex Work Is Bad But Low Paid Manual Labor Is Good

It's weird.  When I see arguments about sex work, and people shorten it to "sw", for some reason that makes it easy for my brain to just skip over the term entirely.

So then, if I don't have the word "sex work" being said in my head along with the rest of the words in the sentences, my brain just substitutes "retail job" automatically because all the anti-sex-work arguments apply to my retail job - customers being dangerous, forced into work I don't like just to survive, demeaning, customers who don't value my services, even the false equivalency to sex trafficking (which, again, is not the same thing as "sex work") works for the retail industry because of the sweatshop problems in the production side of retail.

But I have never had anyone tell me that I was immoral for spending literally hours standing on tile (because retail workers in the US are not allowed to sit, even when they're cashiers and don't move from their post), working my body for poverty-wages to make some CEO richer.

I have never had anyone tell me that I was "selling my body" when I perform a dance routine on stage, or climb a truss or load a truck, which is all manual labor using my body in exchange for money, or tell me that I was a bad person for doing so or that I should find some lower-paid job where I didn't have to "sell my body" because that would make me a higher value person / potential wife / mother.

I have never had anyone tell me that they support me but my customers are evil and should not spend money on my services (even though banning all my customers would then put me out of a job).

I've never had anyone shake their head in shame over my being exploited by capitalism (but I've had plenty of people shake their heads at me over requesting a living wage in a capitalistic society).

I've never had anyone tell me that by consenting to work for a retail employer, I am indirectly supporting those aforementioned sweatshops.

Not only have I never had anyone tell me that my job is demeaning, but I have had lots of people try and tell me that it's noble to "earn an honest day's pay for an honest day's work" and to take pride in a job well done no matter what kind of job it is.  The harder the job (and often the lower it pays), the more "noble" it is.  Unless it's making your fast food, I guess.

It's funny how these arguments only apply when the job in question is sex, but it doesn't apply to retail, to cleaning services, to farm workers, to call service employees, or any of the other hundreds of low-paid, high-labor, emotionally and physically draining work.  But Horus forbid a person likes sexyfuntimes enough to want to trade it for money, and someone else has the money to trade it for sexyfuntimes with someone who enjoys the trade.

Literally, replace "sw" in any anti-sex-work argument with "retail" or even with "freelance art / content producer" (such as people who make a living from their Etsy products, or classic artists, or photographers, or musicians) and it applies to my life.

I HATE retail work.  I loathe it with every fiber of my being.  Even though I like the creative process of designing and building custom frames, I hate showing up to my job, I hate my 4-hour shifts that costs me almost as much in gas to get there and back as I make that day, I hate hate HATE our customers, I hate the physical and emotional pain I suffer from walking and standing on that goddamn tile, and I hate my pittance of a wage that I earn in exchange.

I love my freelance work, but I hate the part where I don't work for several months in a row no matter how many clients I call and beg for work, and I hate that I can be fired from a gig for the completely functional clothing that I'm wearing and my employers can pretend that I'm not being "fired" because they can just not call me for more work, but I'm not technically "fired" because this fucking state has no union power for my industry because our union sucks.

Everything that's "bad" about sex work applies to my jobs.  So unless you have a solution to capitalism itself so that *nobody* has to trade *anything* for money, any objection to sex work (as opposed to sex trafficking) or to legalizing and supporting sex work and sex workers is just sex-negative condescending bullshit.

When I see you fighting just as hard to, not just abolish capitalism but replace it with something that doesn't result in me starving to death because I can no longer earn a living, as you do justifying why sex work is bad (or sex work is good but people who use sex services are bad), then maybe I won't block your ass for your deeply embedded misogyny and sex-negativity.

And I better not catch you patronizing a kink club or using sex toys (which were probably manufactured in one of those sweatshops in Asia that more closely resemble your sex trafficking ring that you're so concerned about), or taking pole exercising classes, or wearing lingerie (or regular undergarments, or any clothing that you didn't personally make with your own self-harvested fibers that you wove yourself and then cut into your clothing for that matter) either. You fucking hypocrite.

The Most Challenging Form Of Restraints In Hollywood: The Basic Handcuff

Hey screenwriters: all handcuffs use the same keys*. If you have a "good guy" handcuffed somewhere that there are law enforcement personnel within easy reach, that person is not really trapped.

Like, the guy who just had a briefcase bomb handcuffed to him in a courthouse.  There are literally hundreds of people in that building who could unlock that briefcase from him.

Or the cop who was cuffed to her office door - the second the bad guy leaves the room, anyone in that building can immediately uncuff her.

On top of that, handcuffs are like the easiest restraints to pick.  The locking mechanism is *really* simple (which is why the key itself is really simple).

For most average people, handcuffs are pretty insurmountable, hence the reason why cops use them.  But in a TV show or a movie where cops are everywhere and the person in handcuffs is on the same side as the cops ... perhaps another form of restraint is in order.

---

* There are some manufacturers that modify their keys so that they are specific to their model, but still, all the cuffs in that model use the same key.  Maximum security handcuffs use a different key from standard handcuffs. Thumbcuffs use a different key from standard handcuffs.

What Is The Reverse-Gendered Equivalent To Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft? #WomenOnManAbuse

By now everyone should know that I believe the book Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft should be required reading in middle school and that absolutely everyone must go out and get that book and read it if you haven't already (and I can help you get that book if you need help - it's that important to me that everyone reads it).

However, that book focuses on male-on-female cisgender hetero abuse.  Which, to be fair, is a significant enough problem to focus on.  In a patriarchal society, men have power in a multitude of ways that encourage and support their abuse of women partners.  However, patriarchy can backfire on itself in a variety of ways too, including erasing women-on-men abuse due to the faulty premise that women *can't* abuse men because men hold all the power.  Which simply isn't true.

Men and women both abuse their partners using mostly the same tools.  But men are *protected* from the consequences of their abuse because the patriarchy empowers them, and women are *emboldened* from their abuse of men because the patriarchy renders their strength and power invisible and punishes men for being "weaker" than women (which, by the faulty patriarchal logic, would include any man who found himself abused by a woman as "weaker", by definition).

So, women don't have the systemic structural support to their abuse, but their abuse does tend to go unrecognized and insufficiently punished because the system doesn't acknowledge their power.  And men victims don't have much in the way of structural support for the same reason, whereas women victims have tons of support (with varying degrees of effectiveness, given the nature of the society).

Which means that there ought to also be resources out there addressing the specific issues that men face at the hands of abusive women (or, rather, there ought to be resources addressing men abusers, women abusers, men victims, and women victims, because each category has its own unique qualities).  Unfortunately, I do not know what those resources are.  Does anyone know of a seminal book on women-on-men abuse the way that Why Does He Do That is, in my opinion, the seminal book on men-on-women abuse?  I would really like to read it and add it to my library and my recommendation list.

Emotional Blackmail is another great book, I'm told, although I haven't read that one either. But I would recommend it second-hand on the word of some trustworthy sources who have read it.

Intersectionality For The Most Woke Progressive

I know that Black Lives Matter is getting the most press among the ethnic groups fighting for equal rights these days, and that the history of oppression of black people is horrific and different from the oppression of other POC in the US...

but there are other groups of people who experience racism in the US, including violence, internment, discrimination, microaggressions, and even internalized racism when people use the same tactics against each other as are used against them.

This is not an either/or issue.  This is a yes-and issue.  As each international incident flies past the headlines, the groups associated with that incident see a spike in both violent and casual racism, and our current US administration only encourages it each time.  But then when another "incident" happens, that group's oppression gets forgotten as we focus on the next group du jour, while the blatant and subtle and internalized tactics of bigotry continue unchecked because we're not looking at that group anymore.

Intersectionality is complex and difficult.  In our race to be The Most Woke Progressive, when defending one group, we can't afford to ignore how our defense affects the other groups.  While each group has its own unique background and sometimes differing needs, that doesn't give us the right to ignore the toes of one group while standing up for another.

OTG STOP FUCKING DEBATING WHAT "COUNTS" AS A UNICORN!

We've reached peak apologism for abusive and predatory relationship practices - arguing over whether or not a very specific example a MF couple seeking a very specific partner for a role they've pre-designed and prescipted "counts" as a "unicorn", instead of addressing the fact that the term #UnicornHunting was coined to highlight the *process* they use to find partners and the *dehumanization* of people in the poly community.

• "No, no, see, we're total sexual predators and we completely ignore people's agency, but the fantasy woman WE want is to be a sister-wife, not a bisexual woman to sleep with the existing wife, so it's totally OK because she's not a unicorn!"
   
• "No, no, see, we're total sexual predators and we completely ignore people's agency, but WE are looking for a *man*, not a woman, so it's totally OK because it's not a woman we're abusing!"
   
• "No, no, see, we're total sexual predators and we completely ignore people's agency, but we're looking for sex-only, not a relationship, so it's totally OK because it doesn't count as polyamory!"
   
• "No, no, see, we're total sexual predators and we completely ignore people's agency, but we're looking to build the perfect quad by preying on another couple, not a single woman, so it's totally OK because it's two for the price of one!"

Look, back in the early days when we were still figuring all this shit out and stuff hadn't been going on long enough for us to recognize it all at once, we picked out the most common end-result because it was the most common, the easiest to see, and because we were inundated by the sheer volume of posts and people looking for this one thing.

But it was never about the final configuration.  The reason why Unicorn Hunting is fucking wrong is because of the process.  If you have to get nitpicky about whether or not a specific example meets the definition of "unicorn" by exactly every single bullet point, then chances are you are probably still doing the thing the term "Unicorn Hunting" was coined for.

If you're not using predatory or abusive behaviour and you're not dismissing the agency of people, then you don't have to resort to picking apart the definition of "unicorn" to defend yourself.

If you're not doing the actual wrong stuff, then nobody gives a fuck if the other person in the equation is technically a "unicorn" or not. If you *are* doing the actual wrong stuff, then still nobody gives a fuck if the other person in the equation is technically a "unicorn" or not.

The term "unicorn" is merely a shorthand, and NOT THE FUCKING POINT.  The term "unicorn" is important for what it represents - the dehumanizing and agency-dismissing-ness of the people seeking one, not the unicorn's plumbing or hair color or orientation or expected job duties.

Get A Fucking Pre-Nup / Post-Nup / Business-Friendship Contract

I had a partner once and we bought a house together.  We had an arrangement - she had a full time job and went to school part-time so into our joint checking account (for shared expenses) she put about 2/3 of our necessary money, an amount that was equivalent to the mortgage payment.

I had a part-time job and went to school full time, so I put in the amount equal to all the rest of the expenses, including the utilities, the groceries, etc.  I even applied for food stamps and used my EBT card for the household groceries.  I also managed the household - I paid the bills, I did the grocery shopping, I made sure repairs, maintenance, and cleaning got done.

We had another partner who lived with us but was not on the mortgage.  For reasons I don't want to go into, he did not have a job, so he was expected to do all the domestic duties - dishes, trash, vacuuming, etc.  Within a very short time (less than a year), we were broke and struggling to pay all the bills.  So I took a job that took me out of the house for 6 weeks, including 2 first-of-the-months when bills were due.  I gave her the checkbook, told her the bill schedule, and took off.

At the end of the 6 weeks, I came home to find the power, gas, and water had been shut off and nobody had done anything to get any of it turned back on.  They were both just kind of camping in the house.  So I asked what happened.

Somehow or another, she didn't pay the bills.  I don't remember now if she didn't pay them at all or if she didn't pay them enough or what.  This is when I found out that her usual bill management system was to simply write out a check for the same amount on the 15th of every month and send it in to all the credit card companies she owed money to (except for the ones she was merely transferring balances between, to whomever had the lowest interest rate, but still, that happened on the 15th).

I exasperatedly explained to her that this is not how utilities work.  She has to actually look at the bill, pay the amount they ask for, and do it by the due date.  All the extra money that I had made on that job, that I was hoping to cushion us for the next couple of months went to paying reconnect fees and we were back to being broke.

So I took the checkbook away from her.

She and I both put money into a joint account, out of which our household expenses were paid.  One month, shortly afterwards, I started receiving calls from several bill departments that my checks were bouncing.

After some investigating, I discovered that she had gone to the bank late one night to deposit her share of that month's money and looked at the balance.  It had more in there than the amount she just put in.  So, resentful now at having to pay a higher dollar amount than the rest of us (even though that was the agreement, and she had not even bothered to ask if we could renegotiate our arrangement), she took several hundred dollars back out to pay for her own mounting credit card bills.

When she told me that there was "too much" money in the account, I yelled at her that this is what the account looked like before all the bills were paid.  The mortgage was not the only bill that needed to be paid, so yes, several hundred more dollars than the mortgage payment was in the account to cover those other bills, and that came out of *my* pocket.  Now we had Insufficient Funds fees on top of the bills that were still due.  So I took away her ATM card too, and insisted that she just start writing checks directly to me that I would deposit in our account.

Recognizing that she was getting stressed over money, even though she *still* refused to set up a discussion with me to talk about renegotiating who ought to pay how much, I started telling her every month when I knocked on her bedroom door for the mortgage check that if she couldn't afford it, then she needed to say something, so that we could figure something else out.

Every month she always said "no, I'll get the money", and every month she did.  I found out later that she was borrowing from relatives and taking cash advances out on her many credit cards.  Until one day, she came to my room and told me that she wanted me to leave, that it was unfair that she had to pay more money than anyone else, and since she was the one paying the mortgage, then she ought to keep the house and I should get out.

So I had to explain to her, again, that it didn't work like that.  The bank loan we took out for the house had very specific rules for changing the names on the mortgage.  If she wanted me off the mortgage, she would have to buy the house from me, and she would also have to show that she made 3x the mortgage amount for the bank to accept her as the sole name and transfer the loan to her.  But, since my name was the one in the signature line of every mortgage check, as far as the bank was concerned, *I* was the one who had been paying all this time, so if they were going to approve anyone for a sole mortgage, it was going to be me.

She insisted that I just walk away from the house, that she put in all the money, therefore it was hers (again, completely ignoring all the money that I put into electricity, gas, water, trash, repairs, and managing our partner into doing his chores - which is a whole OTHER rant - or that I furnished the entire house with literally everything in it because I was the only one of the 3 of us who was not previously living with parents or couch-surfing) and I had no claim to the house whatsoever.

She then just refused to give me any more money, and she started sleeping away from home so that I couldn't find her and demand money (no cell phones back then), and she would sneak back in during the day when I was gone.

I am reminded of this story because I was talking with a friend of mine who is going through what is effectively a "separation", even though he refuses to call it that.  His wife lives somewhere up north and his retail job here in Florida is currently supporting both the house they own here and her apartment up there, as well as all her bills and shopping and whatever else she decides to use their joint card for.

She has a job, of sorts.  But it doesn't pay enough to cover her own rent, let alone everything else she spends money on.  He was telling me the other night about his wife doing essentially the same thing that my ex did - looking at the shared account, thinking there was "too much money" in there, taking out a bunch right before bills cleared resulting in bounced checks, and yelling at him that she doesn't need him or his money.

In group of 3 other women and one single man, all of us were telling him that if she thinks she "doesn't need him", then he ought to let her prove that and just get out.  I'm not sure why, but he thinks he needs to stay with her, and is actively trying to build up his retail business so that it can run without him and he can then move up north to be with his wife.

I am also reminded of this story because my friend is not the first person who has told me a nearly identical scenario to the one that I went through.  For some reason, people seem to think that other people would be willing to build something with them, and then when it's time to part ways, those other people will simply give up any claim or compensation to the thing they built together.

I put a lot into that house, and my ex seemed to think that I would be willing to just pack up and move without receiving any compensation for it.  She was livid when I found a house-flipper who was willing to pay us the same amount we paid for it just a few years prior, giving us each a few thousand dollars after the sale because of the equity we had put into the house.

I mean, there was no way the bank was going to put the mortgage in her name.  She *had* to buy me out of it.  Since she clearly didn't have half of a house mortgage, I found a way for us both to part with a small sum, and to do it quickly before the bank foreclosed, since by this time she had just outright refused to write me a check for 3 months, which is when the bank starts sending foreclosure notices.

But, somehow, *I'm* the bad guy here.

My friend has been paying for his wife to live a separate life for a couple of years now, and she expects him to just walk away.  Which, honestly, I kinda think he ought to do.  If she thinks she doesn't need his money, he should just stop paying for her shit.  But he isn't willing to cut his losses yet, and I'm surprised that his wife thinks he would be. #SunkCostFallacy

A couple of exes of mine went into business together, and then one of them brought on a third business partner who made all the wrong business decisions and ran the business into the ground, and then the one who brought in the third person expected the other one to just walk away from the business without buying his shares of the company from him.  Like, in what fucking capitalistic universe does anyone build a business with someone and then just *hand over* their half of the company without compensation when the people involved want to part ways?

So, as I was talking with that friend with the wife, I and the other guy in the group got off on our own conversation (as side-conversations are wont to happen when larger circles break down into twosome and threesome conversations), and somehow or another I mentioned having a pre-nup with Franklin.

The guy said "good! Oh, wait, sorry..." because, as a guy, he's kind of expected to be in favor of things like pre-nups and he's also learned to expect that the women around him will not respond favorably to his response.  He quickly backtracked to fix the implication that he might be suggesting that my relationship with Franklin was not trustworthy enough and *needed* a pre-nup.

So I waved away his apology and said "no, get a pre-nup, get a pre-nup, get a pre-nup, absolutely put all this shit down on paper."  And then I explained to him what a post-nup was, because he had never heard of one.

A post-nup (that's not what they're called, but if you Google search them, it'll still come up with the right thing) is basically a pre-nup but with all the verb tenses changed to indicate that the marriage has already taken place.  It's otherwise the exact same document.  Just like a will, the most recent post-nup supersedes all previous post-nups and any pre-nups.  And, also like a will, it's basically a legal document that says who legally owns what, and how y'all will split your shared property when you separate.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP and if you are already married, it's not too late, GET A FUCKING POST-NUP.

And then, if you go into business WITH ANYONE, but especially your romantic partners, write down somewhere a plan for how to separate the business in the event that the relationship ends before the business does.  Write all this shit out while you still like each other, so that when you write it down, it will be at its most fair.

I've made at least one post like this before (and it will probably show up sooner or later in my official page's From The Archives posts). But I'm saying it again.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP

Here I'm using that term "pre-nup" as a catchall phrase for any legal document, or hell, ANY document at all, detailing how property will be divided or handled in the event of a romantic or platonic relationship ending, necessitating a division of property and assets.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP

If you're already married, get a post-nup.  If you're not married but you live together or otherwise have shared property (like a joint checking account or both names on a vehicle registration), use a pre-nup as a template and change the "marriage" language to suit your situation.

If you're not in a romantic relationship with someone but you are in a platonic relationship with someone and you have shared property or joint business ventures, unless your specific case already has existing contracts to cover it (such as the co-author agreement I have with my co-author to determine intellectual property ownership), use a pre-nup as a template and write your own damn document discussing how to divide up your business or shared property in the event you either don't want to be friends anymore, or you want to stay friends but don't want to be in business together anymore.

Some business plans will have rules about this already, like non-profit orgs that dictate how board members are voted in and how they leave and stuff.

WRITE OUT YOUR EXIT PLAN.  That's basically what a pre-nup and a will really are - an exit plan for property.  If one of you wants to leave, this is how you will split up under these conditions, and that is how you will split up under these other conditions.  Write this shit down.  If one of you dies and your beneficiaries come knocking on the other one's door, this will tell them what property is shared and can be handed over to them and what can't.  If one of you gets divorced and the ex-spouse starts taking half of all your shit, this will tell the courts what the ex is allowed to take because of what belongs to whom.

If you collaborate on projects together, if you take pictures of each other or give pictures to each other (intellectual property), if you share space, if you share toys, if you exchange money, write out something that clearly spells out your intentions for compensation when you split.

And, I mean, spell it out.  Write down that money spent on "dates" are to be considered "gifts" and no compensation is expected, because that shit will bite you in the ass later.  Obviously, not everyone is going to be that petty.  But the problem is that you won't know which one of your partners will be that petty until they are.  And then it's too late.  Like the ex who sent the man who killed my cats into my room to retrieve his spare hairdryer (purchased explicitly for leaving at my house) and was surprised at how pissed I got about that.

If the both of you think it's ridiculous to be writing down stuff like "when either party purchases a sex toy for the other party, that toy falls under the category of 'gifts' and no compensation is required, nor are there any expectations of exclusivity of said toy or reciprocal behaviour or gifts", then great, have a giggle while you make up your document together.

It can be a silly, fun date night, thinking up all the absurd things that other people do to each other that you both know neither of you will ever do to the other.  Congratulate yourselves on how emotionally intelligent you both are, that you will never need to reference this document because you would never even try to do the things that this document is intending to prevent you from doing to each other.

And then make the documents anyway.

Because that one time you guess wrong, you will need that document.  Even if it's not technically legally binding, write it up, sign it, and have someone witness it.  For accountability.

GET A FUCKING PRE-NUP