The Journal Of The InnKeeper

Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive?

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 00:11:33 GMT

https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/index.html

Basically, music has always had a mix of repetitive and non-repetitive music, and the most popular music *of any era* tends towards the more-repetitive end of the spectrum. Which I find annoying, but I do like a *little* repetition in my music because totally free-flowing, non-rhyming music doesn't work for me either.

Basically, people in general like "catchy" music, and that involves some amount of repetition. That's just how it goes.

This debate has always reminded me of the Dragonharpers of Pern book where a girl born to a fishing village has a unique skill for, what comes down to, "pop music". Her fishing family dismisses and actively discourages her talent for music in a classic blue-collar, working class anti-elitism way that many working class people feel about artists in general.

When she finally gets to their version of Juliard (where music and education are one and the same thing and a very elite profession), her catchy little ditties are dismissed as "twaddles", kind of like the vicious rivalry between opera and musical theater or opera and rock music. There is only One True Way to play music!!!

But much to the dismay of both her high-brow professors and her working class family, the bulk of the population loves her music because it's catchy and fun and easy to remember. Since music is used to teach in this society, "easy to remember" is a very important element. It brings their most cherished lessons out of the tightly grasped fists of only the elitist of the elite singers / academics and into the open arms of the general public.

If Mozart were also a history lesson, we would have even more trouble remembering history than we do today with our focus on dates. But if Britney Spears could also sing an accurate song about history and *that* was taught in classes instead, we'd have a lot more well-educated people in our population these days.

Anyway, point is that the reason why music is so "repetitive" has nothing to do with "kids today" and everything to do with how our brains work as humans. In spite of the hipsters out there who adamantly deny that they like repetition or that music keeps getting "watered down", human brains in general like repetition *to some degree*, and always have.

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Wellness Is A Scam

Sat, 09 Jul 2022 21:29:31 GMT

https://theoutline.com/post/350/the-sickening-business-of-wellness

"The wellness industry has exploded into superfoods, detoxes, and celebrity healers selling magic crystals, and the press and the public have gobbled it all up in a shitshow of capitalism and pseudoscience. So are any wellness products worth your money, and is any of the advice being shilled by its gurus going to make you healthier? Evidence says… no."

"How, then, does a cleanse, even one made with organic fruits and vegetables, detox your system of chemicals? Simple. It doesn’t."

“studies have shown that fasts and extremely low-calorie diets invariably lower the body's basal metabolic rate as it struggles to conserve energy.” - This one is personal to me. Because of my anorexia, I have an extremely low metabolism. This means that, now that I'm aging, I'm putting on weight as one does with age, but I can't diet to lose the weight because any drop in calories sends my metabolism into "starvation mode" where it starts hording energy deposits (like fat). I would have to *literally* starve before I would see any weight loss from caloric reduction.

"Health is all the stuff that you know you should do. Wellness is all the peripheral shit that someone marketed to you because it sounded almost like health. It’s modern-day snake oil, and today it either comes from extremely well-off celebrities who look healthy under 18 layers of makeup, internet charlatans who probably know they’re full of shit, and people who might not know there’s no science to back them up, but they do see your open wallet and know when business is good."

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If You Are Not A Morning Person You May Never Be

Sat, 04 Sep 2021 23:29:13 GMT

www.vox.com/2016/3/18/11255942/morning-people-evening-chronotypes-sleeping

I've been suffering from this since childhood. I say "suffering", although it's not a hardship at all when I'm just allowed to follow my own clock - the suffering is because the rest of the society won't let me. It typically starts up in the teen years, and most teens outgrow it as they age, but for some of us, it lasts pretty much for the rest of our lives.

I'm on the far end of the bell curve, with my internal clock being set to bedtime around 4 AM and waking around noon or 1 PM.

It has been an ongoing struggle just to get people to understand that it's not something I can fix or change, and I can only barely compensate for it and that comes with some extreme consequences. No amount of "just get on a schedule" fixes this problem. I've tried both therapies listed in this article, and like the subjects of the article, all it takes is one day off my therapy schedule and the whole thing resets.

So now I don't bother - I sleep and wake when I feel like it unless I have a gig the next day and then I just deal with the jet lag. It's one of the reasons why I do the work that I do instead of a regular 40-hour a week job, but it also means that I will never make a lot of money because I can't keep it up every day, so I only take a couple of gigs a month and fill in with lower-paid side work that has later hours.

"It turns out our internal clocks are influenced by genes and are incredibly difficult to change. If you're just not a morning person, it's likely you'll never be, at least until the effects of aging kick in.

And what's more, if we try to live out of sync with these clocks, our health likely suffers. The mismatch between internal time and real-world time has been linked to heart disease, obesity, and depression. This all amounts to a case — not an absolute case, but a compelling one nonetheless — that we should listen to our bodies and not the alarm clocks. "

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A Menstruation Aid That Can Be Worn During Penetrative Sex

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 02:29:11 GMT

Btw, just in case anyone else needs this info, I found a menstruating aid that can be worn during sex.

I decided to finally try out a diva cup type thing so I could go without underwear (which means no pads, and even though I can't wear tampons (TSS), I didn't want the string hanging down either). I assumed I would be limited to no PIV, just other activities with a cup in, and that was fine as long as I could show up in a short skirt and no underwear and not get blood everywhere.

But right next to the cups was this package of something called Softdisc (disposable discs) that said on the side it could be worn during sex. I know there are other products that can be worn during sex, but this was the only one on the shelves that said so on the package. Probably my very first time wearing an internal menstruation aid shouldn't have been a product I had never heard of before while doing something ... questionable with it on.

But I tried it on the night before to get the hang of it and to see if it would trigger my TSS or otherwise be uncomfortable, and told him that if he could feel it and it was bothersome, we could stop and do other things. He was all for trying it.

It's a large plastic ring with a soft, crinkly bag attached, like an internal condom, only the bag is much shallower. You squeeze the ring to make a long strip instead of a circle, and push it in and *down*, not up. Then, once it gets past the pubic bone, you push the ring up to form a seal around the cervical opening. It just kinda hangs out there, hovering above the vaginal canal.

I could feel the ring with my finger (which is good because how could you take it out if you can't find it again?) so I assumed the hard ring would either be uncomfortable for him or get slammed into my cervix. Neither happened. He said he could barely feel it and it wasn't uncomfortable, and I didn't notice it at all.

However, it did slip a little, so I spotted afterwards until I changed it out. And because it wasn't sucked up where it should have been, it slipped a lot during a bowel movement push. That's how you remove it, btw, you push to make the ring more accessible and then hook a finger under the ring and pull while still pushing your bowel muscles.

So I would recommend changing it after penetration, but it worked as advertised. And now I can have penetrative sex while on my period! (I don't like messy sex, so I refused to before)

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But How Can I Rape Someone And Still Be A Good Witch?

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 01:08:55 GMT

www.quora.com/Can-you-please-reply-with-a-good-white-magic-spell-to-get-hot-sex/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is a good white magic spell to do to get sex?

A. Even if magic did exist (which it doesn’t), using it “to get sex” would be violating another person’s agency.

Which is rape.

There is nothing “good” or “white” about making someone have sex against their will, regardless of the tool or method.

Learn how to actually talk to people and find people who might want to have sex with you. It might be a slower process, but it’s the only one that will work and the only one that doesn’t make you a creepy rapey creeper.

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My Experimentation With Bremelanotide PT 141

Tue, 28 May 2019 17:39:09 GMT

OK. I tried an experiment and this is how it went for me.

First of all, this is not a review of the product. This is an analysis of how my own body works. I am not recommending for or against anyone else trying this for themselves. My body does weird things, and this is what happened to me.

Have you heard of PT-141? Also known as Bremelanotide, it's a peptide that someone once tested for use as a sunless tanning agent and discovered that everyone in the trials got really, really horny.

So, lots of political shit happened, and they switched to researching it as a potential solution to low libido, stopped researching it, and then started up again. It's currently in trials for libido treatments, rather than the sunless tanning properties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremelanotide

I got a hold of some. It's not terribly expensive, and it's not illegal to take things that are not currently FDA approved for that purpose, as long as the thing is not *banned* for use. So I decided to experiment on myself.

See, I have a Responsive Libido. In Western Culture, we assume a "default" sexual state, based on a stereotype of a "typical man". Anything that falls outside of this "typical man" stereotype is considered an aberration which, by definition, means that all "women" sexuality is an "aberration".

Men think about sex every 6 seconds of the day (so the stereotype goes), so women not only don't because they're not men, but it's an *aberration* that they don't and our libido is considered "low" in comparison, rather than our libido being considered average and men's being "high". And, of course any men who don't fit the stereotype are also considered aberrations, even if it's not actually causing them any hardship.

Ahem. Anyway, the "default" for libido goes like this: "Hmm, I'm feeling arousal. I should go find something to have sex with!" Now, when someone is in an ongoing sexual relationship of some sort, and they have a regular partner, the answer to the question is immediately available, so most people probably are not even aware of this thought process. It goes from noticing the arousal to rubbing up on their bae with very little conscious thought in between. But that's essentially the brain's decision-tree.

Arousal for someone with a responsive libido goes more like this "Oh, hey, this thing that's happening to me? That's right! I like this. OK, I guess we can have sex now". That would be the bae currently getting rubbed up on by the amorous partner in the cliche from above.

So you can see how this stereotype takes on gendered roles. The "man" gets horny and starts touching his female partner, the "woman" starts getting touched and starts to reciprocate. This is the stereotype.

I have been struggling with this Responsive Libido for my whole life, in part because I wasn't aware there *was* a such thing as a Responsive Libido. My libido is actually kind of all over the map. See, I *think* about sex all the fucking time. But I'm rarely actually aroused until stuff starts happening to my body.

Except when I'm going through a breakup. Suddenly my libido spikes and I find myself with the other mindset - looking for "something" to have sex with pretty much constantly. Which makes my rebound hookups and/or new partners ecstatic, until my libido settles back down to it's "normal" state and then they feel rejected because I am no longer initiating sex.

I would LOVE to have control over my libido. I would love to be able to turn it on and off at will. Failing that, at least turning it on at will, so that I don't find myself sitting passively waiting for "something to happen" to my body to remind me that I actually do like sex, I just forgot about it.

Or, worse yet, knowing that I do like sex and that my body often waits to feel arousal until things start to happen to it, so I get into a sexual situation, only to find that nothing "happening" to my body is inciting the arousal even though I want it to.

Enter PT 141. When I heard that this drug was currently in trials, explicitly as an "aphrodisiac" treatment for *women* with sexual dysfunction, and that I could get some without waiting for the 10-year research and FDA process, I jumped at the chance.

I know one person IRL who has tried it, and I've seen a bunch of videos and blogs of others who have tried it. It seemed very promising. Basically, you inject a tiny bit of this stuff subcutaneously, wait about 4-6 hours, and then you get aroused for a few hours. Some people maintain their arousal even after orgasm, some don't.

As someone who is a one-time-shot, once-I-orgasm-I-want-to-roll-over-and-either-go-to-sleep-or-get-food kinda person, the idea that I might be able to maintain an arousal after orgasm sounded brilliant.

There are some mild side effects, including burning and itching at the injection site, nausea, headaches, etc. But records of this all seemed pretty acceptable trade-offs. It basically sounded no different than the side effects many diabetics I know experience with their insulin, and they go through this process several times a day, so I figured why not?

So I started taking it. Another friend of mine decided to experiment with it too so I got him a vial to try in parallel with me (not together *with* me because we have a platonic relationship). We have been comparing notes and tracking each other's responses for more data points to see if this thing works or not.

I wanted to use it with a partner, because I felt that if it worked, and I suddenly got really turned on, it would be better to have sex *with* someone than being at home alone and super horny. The first vial I obtained (10 units), I actually held onto right up until its expiration date because it took me that long to find a willing partner to experiment with.

So my new partner and I both tried the first dose - 3 units of the liquid peptide in a nasal spray (the recommended dose via nasal spray) - and waited to see if there was any effect. I felt no difference in my libido, but as I had been expecting and thinking about sex all day, we decided to have sex anyway. It was a normal arousal for both of us.

He gave up after the first dose because he did not like the idea of injections. So I switched to the injections, in case that method was simply more effective. I took 1 unit via injection the next time (the recommended dose via injection), and 2 units via injection the next time. I felt no difference in my arousal each time, although I still had sex those days.

To rule out the possibility that the vial I had was simply expired or damaged (it's a very fragile molecule and banging it around can break it), I obtained a second vial (from a different producer, just in case it was a quality control thing) and tried again. With the new 10-unit vial, I repeated the procedure with some modifications.

The first 3-unit nasal attempt, I felt most of it had run out of my nose, so I doubled the nasal dose. Again, I felt no effect at all that differed from my usual feelings. My arousal did not spontaneously start up, and when the sex got started, I felt a typical increase in arousal from the sex, and when orgasm happened, the arousal died immediately afterwards.

Next, I tried the recommended 1-unit injection dose. Again, no difference in how I typically experience arousal. This left 3 units left in the vial. Since I had tried a double nasal dose on this vial and a double injection dose on the first vial, I decided to just go for it and use up the whole triple dose. PT 141 has a very low toxicity and some of the trials used up to 6 times what I had started out with.

Unfortunately, I thought at the time, I no longer have a local partner to try this out with. So I waited until I had one whole day with literally nothing planned. I figured, on the off-chance that it worked, getting suddenly aroused while out at a social function or work would be awkward, even though I had not felt any effect so far. But that was my only concern. I really wanted to have a partner on hand, just in case it worked, but getting horny alone was less problematic than getting horny in public with no partner, so that's what I opted for, rather than letting this vial reach its expiration date too.

Apparently, triple is a huge mistake for me. About 4 hours after I took my injections, I started to get nauseated. OK, I knew that was a possible side effect, but I hadn't heard any horror stories about it. Just some notes by some people that they felt mildly nauseated and then it went away and arousal kicked in.

Not me. No, when my body decides to reject a drug, it goes all the way. You see, I'm allergic to everything with codeine in it and anything even codeine adjacent. I can't have Tylenol with codeine, I can't have Oxycontin, I can't have Vicodin. None of that. So having invasive medical procedures is something I avoid until I absolutely can't anymore. I'm not allergic to acetaminophen but it also doesn't do shit for me at all. Ibuprofen, however, is a fucking miracle drug, as long as I get enough of it. Alcohol gives me a reaction like lactic acid buildup in my muscles similar to the burning sensation you feel when you work out a little too much. Plus my core body temperature rises (which is not the warm flush you normally feel when you drink alcohol, your core temp is still the same). Weed gives me migraines. So shit reacts weird with me.

So the nausea kicked in a few hours after taking the triple dose. And then the vomiting started. 10 hours later, I could finally walk upright long enough to get from the couch in my friend's living room out to my RV to go to bed without throwing up halfway there.

Yesterday was fucking miserable for me. I felt like I had the flu. The only respite I got all day was sleeping, which is something I have trained my body to do as a response to pain because of how long it took me to find the right type and dose of painkillers that actually work on me. If I yelp or make sounds in response to pain, it's probably not very bad. If I go silent, it's probably bad. If I start to get sleepy, that means I'm fucked up.

So my body does not like PT 141. And I'm extremely disappointed about this. I was really hoping I would have found a treatment for my libido issues. It has no noticeable affect on my body at low doses and then immediately jumps to "oh god make the vomiting stop and just let me die!" in the medium doses.

The other person I know who tried it before me reports pretty consistent results. He gets mildly nauseated about 6 hours after taking the drug, it lasts for about 15 minutes, and then arousal kicks in for about 4 hours and the arousal lasts even after orgasm.

The person who took it in tandem with me reported noticeable but inconsistent results. He noticed arousal anywhere between 4 and 6 hours, and the arousal sometimes lasts after orgasm, sometimes doesn't. He still has some left to continue experimenting.

So if anyone is interested in trying this out for themselves, I am not cautioning you against it. My body does weird shit with drugs. My experience is not typical. This is not a review of the peptide itself, this is a review of my own body doing its weird shit thing that it does. This is simply a post about my own body, for my Me Manual. PT 141 is not for me and I'm very disappointed about that.

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A Woman's Orgasm Shouldn't Be The Goal Of Sex

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 04:10:28 GMT

https://theestablishment.co/a-womans-orgasm-shouldn-t-be-the-goal-of-sex-b0c15cc38c03

This is why I, not only disbelieve any man who claims to be "good" at getting women off (or who offers to get me off), but I actively am repelled by the claim. A woman's orgasm becomes just one more trophy for which men compete, not an experience for the woman. The woman as a person and her pleasure is incidental to the fact that *the man got her off*.

Fuck that shit.

A man who is genuinely interested in a woman's pleasure because he cares about her experience, not his own score card, does not generally feel the need to proclaim his prowess, either publicly or in private conversation as part of a proposal to talk a woman into sex with him.

"A new study published in the Journal of Sex Research has found that men derive a sense of “achievement” by bringing women to orgasm. But not just any achievement — not the sense of satisfaction that comes from giving someone else pleasure — but the kind that comes from self-validation"

"That’s right — a woman’s orgasm and pleasure have become about reassuring insecure dudes that they’re real men"

"Being treated like a project is exhausting." - Suddenly, not only do I now *have* to orgasm (even if my body or mind doesn't really feel like it), but I also have to do emotional labor whether I orgasm or not. If I'm the one who just had sex without an orgasm, I have to spend my time consoling THE GUY for "failing". If I did manage to have an orgasm, I have to put my own afterglow on hold while the guy celebrates HIS accomplishment and I have to properly thank and reward him for receiving the benefits of his hard work.

"Because of this, reaching orgasm can feel like work and often is. It’s tiresome enough, the constant self-objectification and pressure to perform like a pornstar, without the added pressure to “come” to validate the man."

MY ORGASM IS NOT ABOUT YOU. IT IS NEVER ABOUT YOU. MY ORGASM IS COMPLETELY AND SOLELY ABOUT ME, MY BODY, AND MY FEELINGS. YOU'RE FUCKING LUCKY THAT I ALLOW YOU TO WITNESS IT AT ALL.

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How Impact Bias Affects Polyamory, Poly n00bs, And Couples Wanting To "Open Up"

Sat, 10 Mar 2018 21:11:40 GMT

Couples wanting to "open up" their relationship for the first time (besides being impossible, because you can't just "open" an existing relationship and expect it to be exactly the same as before just with more people, you actually end up creating whole new relationships) often spend a great deal of time fantasizing and worrying about hypothetical future relationships with people they haven't met and have created in their minds, who they make up to be either their greatest fantasies or their biggest fears.

Then these couples go about looking for these hypothetical, mythical people. They simultaneously seek for some magical goddess (because it's usually a bi cis woman) that will fit their giant laundry list of qualifications, while seeing monsters peeking out from behind the eyes of everyone who doesn't fit that list.

What they're doing is overestimating the happiness that they expect to find with their mythical pet and overestimating the UNhappiness that they expect to find if their new pet doesn't meet all their criteria.

This is called Impact Bias.

"The impact bias is our tendency to overestimate our emotional reaction to future events. Research shows that most of the time we don’t feel as bad as we expect to when things go wrong. Similarly we usually don’t get quite the high we expect when things go right for us." - Jeremy Dean www.spring.org.uk/2008/05/why-youre-sucker-for-impact-bias.php

In other words, people are notoriously bad at predicting what will make them happy. (paraphrase of Franklin Veaux)

Impact Bias does several things, two of which are particularly relevant to polyamory:

1) When predicting how an experience will impact us emotionally, things we haven't experienced yet are REALLY difficult to accurately predict and we usually get it wrong.

2) We have our own "theories" based on our culture and our cultural experiences, and those "theories" are often wrong.

What all this means is that couples, if they want to find success in polyamory, need to be aware of Impact Bias in a similar way that they are told to be aware of NRE. They don't actually know what will make them happy, even though they feel really strongly that they do. They are likely basing those predictions on cultural assumptions. But those cultural assumptions come from our monogamous culture, which means that they don't apply to poly relationships.

Trying to apply mononormative assumptions over poly relationships tends to make them fail because poly relationships, fundamentally, run contrary to those very mononormative assumptions. The couple's background, past experiences, and cultural exposure are all conspiring against them to give them bad information when they make their predictions. Predictions made on faulty premises usually come out wrong.

When everyone in the forums is saying "stop focusing on a single bi woman to love you both equally in a live-in triad" and "all those rules aren't going to help you 'protect your relationship', just let go and trust", and the couples are feeling upset and defensive because hey! they've thought all this out and they know how they feel and what they want! ... no, you probably don't.

I mean, yes, you probably do feel all that fear and hope and desire, but it probably doesn't reflect reality. Everyone falls victim for Impact Bias, just like everyone falls for all the other cognitive biases. They're what our brains do. The advice for NRE is to feel what you feel, but keep in the back of your mind that it's a temporary state and likely an illusion so don't make any *real world plans* based on NRE because NRE is lying to you. Fiction can be a fun experience, even a meaningful, profound experience, but at the end of the day, it's still a fiction.

The same goes for this Impact Bias - feel your feelings, just know that they're probably lying to you so don't actually make plans based on them. You are probably overly optimistic about how happy you will feel if you find some magical unicorn with perfect boobs and a penchant for childcare, and you are very likely overestimating how terrible things will be if you try dating someone who doesn't meet all your criteria, like someone who is only interested in one of you or who maybe has a penis or doesn't want children.

So just relax, acknowledge your fears and your fantasies but let them go and just meet people. Dating someone a little different from all your rules probably won't be as bad as you think it will, and searching for The Perfect Match probably won't bring you as much happiness as you think it will - at least not enough to be worth the price of dehumanizing all your interviewees and missing out on other potential sources of happiness.

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Logical Fallacies In Polyamory Research

Sat, 24 Feb 2018 04:21:25 GMT

Logical Fallacies are difficult for people to wrap their brain around. We employ them all the time in regular conversation, in debate, and even in research.

"Begging The Question" is probably the most misunderstood logical fallacy name, because it's not just *not* understood, it's understood incorrectly. Most people use it to mean "that statement you just made leads us to ask a followup question..." But what it *actually* means is "that statement you just made assumes the conclusion in the premise, making it a circular argument".

A Loaded Question is a question which has a false, disputed, or question-begging presupposition behind it. Here's an example:

"To what degree have you and your partner discussed the boundaries or “rules” related to sexual and/or emotional connections with other people?"

The way it's phrased, in particular "discussed THE boundaries or rules", this begs the question. This assumes that we have rules (and the word "boundaries" is used incorrectly here in this sentence too, which is another begging the question) related to sexual and/or emotional connections with other people.

Because of this presumption, it can't really be answered if the premise is incorrect. If we don't have any rules telling each other what we can and can't do with other people, then how can we have had any conversations about it? But, of course, it *is* possible to have lots of conversations about things that we ultimately decide not to participate in. Except we can't answer "we have talked about this a lot" because then it implies that we do, indeed, have these rules in place when we don't. There isn't an option for "we have talked about this subject but we do not have any rules regarding this subject", because the person writing the question assumes the premise, and so did not provide any options to accommodate for a false premise option.

Now, had the question writer not had this assumption in mind when the question was written, it could have been written exactly the same but minus the word "the" - "To what degree have you and your partner discussed boundaries or 'rules' related to sexual and/or emotional connections with other people?" This is a general "have you discussed this topic" question. But, because of how English works, that article "the" implies a specific set of rules, while the absence implies a general "concept or subject of rules".

If we say "we discussed it a lot" under the original wording, then it implies we discussed *our* rules on what we can do with others a lot, but we don't have rules that needed to be discussed in the first place. If we say "we didn't discuss it at all" because we don't have rules, then it implies that we *do* have rules and we just didn't discuss them at all, we just went ahead and implemented them. Both assumptions are not only wrong, but things I actively want to combat about polyamory in general.

These kinds of things are really sneaky. Preset assumptions and biases sneak into all kinds of things, usually without our notice. Lots of times, when we read or hear things like this, we know that something is wrong and we have an emotional reaction to what was just said, but we can't always deconstruct *why* we know it's wrong and *why* we're feeling emotional about it.

Someone who has incorrect presuppositions and asks Loaded Questions gets to "just ask questions" while people get pissed off about it, and they don't ever understand why everyone is mad at them and the people who are mad can't always even explain why it was so angering. It's because we can tell that you have an embedded assumption. You're not "just asking questions", you're revealing what you think about the people you're "just asking questions" of.

This question is not a particularly offensive or antagonistic one. It just happened to be a pretty decent example of several things at once: of the logical fallacy, of how people get that logical fallacy wrong, and of how subtle this fallacy can play out and how simple it can be to correct for, as long as we know what to look for. We often use the really obvious example of "when did you stop beating your wife" when we talk about this logical fallacy because it's crystal clear how there is no good answer to that question that won't get you in trouble and it's so obviously an offensive question.

A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is "loaded" with that presumption. The question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded.

Since this example is a yes/no question, there are only the following two direct answers:

"Yes, I have stopped beating my wife", which entails "I was beating my wife."
"No, I haven't stopped beating my wife", which entails "I am still beating my wife."

Therefore, either direct answer implies that you have beaten your wife, which is a presupposition of the question. So, a loaded question is one which you cannot answer directly without implying a falsehood or a statement that you deny. For this reason, the proper response to such a question is not to answer it directly, but to either refuse to answer or to reject the question.

Which makes supporting and participating in research on polyamory very difficult when their questions are written as Loaded Questions with false, disputed, or question-begging presuppositions behind their premises.

That famous scene from My Cousin Vinny where the lawyer asks the girlfriend a question that's "impossible to answer" is also a Loaded Question, and he doesn't even know that it's a trick question that can't be answered as-is (at least, that's how it's played in the scene, IMO). He didn't know the answer (I believe), he was just banking on the fact that she wouldn't know it either (mansplaining). Since he didn't know the answer, he made a lot of assumptions in his question, like that Chevy made a Bel Aire in 1955 or that it came in 327 cubic inch engine.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nGQLQF1b6I

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A Connection Between Limerence & The MRA Movement

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 21:42:51 GMT

I just made a connection that I've been dancing around for years but I don't think I ever drew such a bold line between before. Most people who have heard of the word "limerence" confuse it or use it interchangeably with NRE, and they are not synonyms.

NRE is that giddy feeling of being "in love" that you have at the beginning of a relationship. It has some characteristics in common with limerence, but it also has some very important distinctions.  For instance, what it has in common is that, during NRE, you may think about the other person to the extent that you have trouble concentrating on other things. That can be characterized as "intrusive thoughts".  But limerence is *really* about "intrusive thoughts", more like a mental illness has "intrusive thoughts". Those thoughts become downright obsessive.

Limerence also does not require any relationship to actually exist. It requires the right combination of Hope and Fear - hope for the "limerent object" (i.e. the person you're limerent about, and "object" is really a very accurate term here because they are often objectifying the other person) to reciprocate your feelings and fear that they won't. People can be limerent about strangers they have never spoken to (like the cute bank teller that you see every payday or the person who always sits 3 seats behind the driver on your bus commute home), and even people they have never come in contact with like celebrities. In fact, the scary kind of celebrity stalking has all the hallmarks of limerence.

Once you're actually *in* a relationship, limerence is more likely to fade because, now that you've "secured" the relationship, the amount of fear that they don't reciprocate drops (for most people, anyway). But having a crush on someone who is also willing to be your friend? That's a recipe for maintaining limerence indefinitely because the friendship keeps feeding the hope and the continued not-dating keeps feeding the fear.

One of the hallmark symptoms of limerence is in a particular daydream. The daydream involves the limerent person in a situation requiring them to save the limerent object's life. This act of saving them is what finally brings them to the attention of their L.O. The L.O. falls for them because this selfless act pulls the scales from their eyes and they finally see them as worthy of love.

Many times, this daydream actually results in the limerent person's death, because if they were to actually achieve their goal of obtaining a relationship with the L.O., they would have to live with the reality of relating to another human being, not the perfect angel casing they have constructed around their L.O. So their "love" remains "pure" and "unsullied" because it is only a moment of sacrifice and recognition, perfect in its transitory nature.

To give an example, a very common daydream for someone suffering limerence is to imagine that they are walking down the street one day, and they pass their L.O. on the street. Sometimes they come up with elaborate reasons for why the L.O. is in that particular place and time or why they are (mine as a kid was that I finally convinced my parents to take me to this touristy island near where I grew up, where I heard my teeny-bopper celebrity crush liked to hang out). But regardless, they are both there, on the sidewalk.

Suddenly, a bus comes careening around the corner. It has no brakes! It's barreling down, heading right for the L.O.! They dash across the street, or down the sidewalk, or wherever they are, and make it to their L.O. in the nick of time, pushing them out of the way to save them from the bus, but not quite fast enough to jump to safety themselves.

The L.O. picks themselves up and runs over to where they lay, broken and bloody. The L.O. cradles their head in their lap and cries. The L.O. thanks them and profess undying love to them, begging them to please hold on, help will be there soon.  They stare up into the beautiful eyes of their L.O., they smile through the pain, they say it was nothing, that the L.O. deserves to live because the world will be better by having the L.O. in it. And then they die, held in the arms of the one they love who literally loved them until death did they part.

The daydream does not *need* to have death at the end of it to be a limerence daydream, but it's common. Sometimes, the daydream ends with the saving, but instead of the hero winning the victim, the hero graciously, magnanimously accepts no reward and walks off into the sunset, leaving the L.O. staring wistfully after them.

And this is the connection I just made. This is basically every MRA, incel fantasy (incel = "involuntary celibate"). The reason they are the way that they are is because they have a toxic dose of misogyny mixed with limerence. The whole incel subculture exists for misogynists who are also limerent-prone.

This makes everything make more sense now.

This realization comes because of a story I just read about some dorky dude who saves his L.O. from a would-be mugger while her jock boyfriend freezes, and he saves them all by pulling out a "judo katana" (I shit you not) in the face of a gun and calmly lectures the mugger into fright. Then his L.O. kisses him in thanks, but he doesn't even smile, he's just "doing his duty".

When I read this story, my first thought was horror at limerence, as it is every time I cross paths with it. I've always found this obsessive state to be a terrible thing. But the comments kept mocking this story for the MRA drivel that it is, which I initially overlooked.  So, I was hit by a connection. This entire subculture is completely fueled by limerence and tainted by misogyny, like a particularly potent and noxious gasoline additive. That combination leads to exactly this group of people.

I don't know what to do with this connection that I always kinda knew but never really had it out in front of me before. But as someone who thinks of limerence as almost a mental disorder, like any other obsessive disorder (disclaimer: I have at least 2 of them myself), I feel that this connection Means Something.

In the book, Love and Limerence by Dorothy Tennov, the author goes on to explain that there are people who are prone to limerence and people who are not prone to limerence (although people not "prone" to it can still have experienced it, just not regularly). And the people who are not prone to it have a very difficult time understanding exactly what it is, but when they do seem to understand it, they all think it sounds like the worst mental state ever to be in. It doesn't sound pleasant at all, it sounds like torture. If they do have a brush with it, they all universally hate the experience and take steps to avoid it in the future.

People who are prone to limerence can range from people who think it's awful to people who think it's fun, much like those who are prone to NRE. It's an emotional roller coaster, and some people enjoy roller coasters while some people don't.

But people who are not prone to limerence have more trouble understanding it. When you read the book, if you think "OMG that's totally me!", then you are probably prone to limerence. If you read it and say "well, I experience some of these things too, have I ever had limerence?" but then get to the chapter describing what not-limerence is and then give a sigh of relief, you're probably not prone to limerence.

I am *not* prone to limerence, in spite of a brief visit to Limerenceville in my hormonal puberty stage for a handful of teen actors. To me, I think it sounds like the most horrible awful thing a person can go thorough, but I also really dislike NRE, which is much less ... just less. Toxic maybe? It'll make you make bad decisions, kinda like being drunk, but I don't think it's *inherently* an objectifying, brain-fucking, selfish mental state to be in, which I think of limerence as.

And to suddenly realize that this is what incels are going through, and the fact that nobody outside of a few narrow "relationship and the brain" communities know about it, means that we have no structures in place for building up defenses for it or treating it once limerence has taken root. We even have rom-coms ('80s movies are lousy with limerence!) celebrating and rewarding it! Throw in systemic support for misogyny and boom! A culture ready-made to create MRA incels.

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My Attachment Style Is Relaxed-Engaging (Secure) But Just Barely

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 06:07:35 GMT

www.idrlabs.com/attachment-style/test.php

This is pretty accurate, I think. I'm on the Relaxed side of the spectrum but not very far, so I have some bits of On Edge anxiety. I'm also on the Engaging edge of the spectrum but just *barely*, so I have a lot of Avoidant traits too:

Relaxed-Engaging (Secure): Relaxed-Engaging individuals tend to have good self-esteem and typically find it easy to share their feelings and opinions with others. They spend less time fretting and second-guessing themselves than individuals in the other three quadrants, [all me] and they generally find it easy to ask others for help or support when in need [I do not find it easy to ask for help].

They are usually straightforward and trusting in their relations with others [I am straightforward, but not always so trusting], and their usual state is one of being open, approachable, and relaxed [I am open but I am not always perceived as "approachable" because some people find me intimidating, apparently]. For this reason, they typically have fewer interpersonal defenses than others [this is patently not me - I have tons of interpersonal defenses].

They naturally seek to connect with others while remaining realistic about the transformative power of intimate relationships: Relaxed-Engaging individuals don't expect to be swept off their feet, or to have their entire world turned upside-down by the arrival of some romantic savior or the like - they're already "comfortable in their own skin," so to speak. Instead, they seek to cultivate simple virtues, such as mutual trust and a sense of shared intimacy with others. They generally don't play games, but seek to establish uncomplicated and mutually beneficial relationships. [This is definitely all me]

Relaxed-Avoidant (Dismissive): Individuals in this quadrant often take a dim view of others, preferring to keep their distance and guard against invasions of their autonomy and privacy [I am cynical and my experience has been that my autonomy will be violated repeatedly because the world experiences me as "woman", so life has made me "avoidant" in this sense].

Relaxed-Avoidant personalities tend to have a strong belief that others are too different from them for truly intimate relations to be worthwhile. They may have a spouse and family, and even be solidly anchored in a stable network of friends and acquaintances, but at the end of the day, they tend to avoid entering into relations where emotional interdependence and intimacy are required [I do not avoid intimacy or emotional interdependence and in fact crave it, I just don't find it very often because people really *are* very different from me, at least in how we each perceive the world. It is because of the fact that I don't avoid these things that I keep finding how different I am from most people].

Unlike individuals who fall in the On Edge-Avoidant quadrant, Dismissive personalities tend to be quite content keeping their deepest feelings and views to themselves, and they often have a deeply-held belief that the opinions of others are mildly irrelevant or even second-rate [Again, I don't keep my feelings and views to myself - I blast them from the rooftops, but I do tend to think that other people's opinions are basically irrelevant]. Consequently, many Dismissive types are often quite good at dissimulating, that is, appearing to share their innermost thoughts, while in reality, they are simply appeasing others without ever letting them come close. [Yep, not me at all. What you see is what you get]

Independent and proud of it [me], these individuals can typically achieve remarkable feats of social manipulation and self-restraint [funny, but every time I've tried to do this, in order to "better" a community, I've failed spectacularly], but on the downside, they may have trouble kicking bad habits (such as drinking or smoking) which they can enjoy in solitude and use to comfort themselves, independently of the company of others [not me at all].

They can frequently be unmotivated or lazy with regard to the duties that others expect of them [depends - if it's expected of me and I didn't agree to it, i.e. gender roles, I'm unmotivated to adhere, but if it's something I agreed to like working out with a friend, I'll stick to it better than if I didn't have their expectation to motivate me], but on the other hand, they are often very original (since they are not hindered by concerns about having to conform to the expectations of the group).

Finally, they also tend to be intelligent risk-takers, since they are at heart relaxed and cool under fire. [yep, me]

The Horizontal Axis: Relaxed-On Edge

This axis pertains to the individual's root affection towards themselves. Roughly speaking, individuals who fall towards the Relaxed end of this axis appear self-sufficient, confident, and low in anxiety when engaged in social situations. In short, they give off the impression of being at ease with themselves. [yep, me]

By contrast, individuals who fall towards the On Edge end of the spectrum tend to give off an impression of being more vulnerable or concerned than their Relaxed counterparts. In a nutshell, On Edge individuals feel a sense of unease about themselves whereas Relaxed individuals tend to be more at ease. [this is accurate of my experience being Relaxed]

A complicating factor in the precise administration of this axis is that On Edge personalities have often learned to counteract their root uneasiness, for example by being intensely gregarious and charming, thus causing others to believe that they really are Relaxed (whereas in reality, they are overcompensating because they feel that if they did not, others would not notice them). [Yep, this is not me, so being on the Relaxed side of the axis is accurate]

The Vertical Axis: Engaging-Avoidant

This axis pertains to the individual's root affection towards others. As a general rule, individuals who fall towards the Engaging end of the axis appear approachable, open-hearted, and open to forming relationships with others. In short, they give off the impression that one could easily become friends with them and form a relation where they will keep you in their thoughts. [Depends - some people tell me that I appear approachable, open-hearted, that I'm a good listener, that they surprised themselves by confiding things in me they haven't told others, but some people say the opposite of me]

By contrast, individuals who fall towards the Avoidant end of the spectrum tend to give off an impression of independence, coldness, aloofness, and of being hard to approach. [This is what the other people say of me, so it depends on the person and whether they associate "independence" with coldness and being hard to approach or whether they find "self-confidence" to be "indimidating"]

In essence, Avoidant individuals feel a sense of unease about others whereas Engaging individuals tend to have fewer fears about forming connections with others. [This is why I'm on the Engaging side, but just barely. I don't feel unease or fear about connecting with others, I just don't often think it's worth trying when I can tell that we're very different people]

Avoidant individuals may give off the impression of being simply private or closed, but according to Attachment Style Theory, this demeanor is really an adaptation; a counterattack against their root feeling of uneasiness about others. [And this is why I'm not Avoidant, but just barely. My closed-off-ness is a defense mechanism, but it's not in response to "unease". To me, it's like wearing a seatbelt - I'm playing the odds and choosing caution, that's all]

(Note that an Avoidant Attachment Style is not the same as an Avoidant Personality Style.)

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When Scientists Step Outside Their Field And Dismiss Polyamory

Sun, 11 Jun 2017 21:53:19 GMT

Oh Mayim. ::shakeshead:: I was already annoyed with you for your anti-vax position. As a scientist, you should know better, but also as a scientist, you think that just because you're smart, that your conclusions must also be correct. Scientists are NOTORIOUS for being the most fucking wrong they can wrong when they step outside their narrow area of expertise. You just keep proving the rule.

So now you have to shoot your mouth off about non-monogamy. Please sit down and shut up. You're making educated white women look bad. Not that they need any help in that area, but you're just making it worse.

Your biology is outdated, your sex and gender essentialism is outdated, your anthropology is outdated, your psychology is outdated, and your sex education is way outdated.

AND you make the same mistake as so many others before you of believing that, assuming that even if all your so-called "facts" were completely true, that humans stopped evolving millions of years ago around the point at which we split from apes and that our brains aren't incredibly plastic and highly susceptible to non-genetic influences like culture and higher-order thinking.

You're just so wrong on so many points that it would take me forever to correct you on each one. You're not just wrong, you're fractally wrong. Every single thing you said was wrong.

Except the part where you said that you don't get open relationships. That was 100% accurate - you don't get them.

I'll give you this: it's a good thing that you know your limitations. It's excellent that you have discovered that you lack the attention span and the emotional capacity to care for more than one human and one relationship at a time.

I just wish you had discovered that before you had children.

I'm not linking to the original post because I don't want to give her traffic. But if you really need to see it, do a YouTube search for Mayim Bialik and open relationships. She rants and raves about how she "gets" certain "excuses" for open relationships but then goes off the rails on all the things she doesn't "get" that are strawman arguments, using outdated or incorrect "science facts" to back up what amounts to her personal opinion that *she* is not capable of doing these strawman things. And she completely ignores gender diversity, boiling everyone down to biological "men vs. women" sexual dimorphism.

So. Much. Wrong.

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