Sol, I realize my first response to you was a bit over the top, but I tend to get a bit riled up when people get judgemental.
Yes, I read all of your points, and I read the whole thread. The reason I only concentrated on your first two points is because everyone else had already addressed the rest of them.
And I stand by that. Why must people seek flesh-and-blood relationships?
Because every minute spent with a real live SO is a minute they can’t spend on an internet message board, getting in fucking idiotic arguments, and trying to make out anyone who says “sucking on a stranger’s pubes while jacking off is gross” into some kind of judgemental prude.
What the fuck is your problem?
What does he have against the rodeo?
At the moment, my “problem” is being stuck in a ridiculous thread, and you keep trying to make it out that I’m saying something I’m not. First you try to make it out like I’m saying all masturbation is wrong and unhealthy. And when I point out that I never said that, you respond with basically “okay well maybe I was just a little over the top but still why do you say that all people who are single are wrong and unhealthy?” I make a smart-ass comment about how fucking ridiculous the whole “argument” is, and you get all uptight. And I’m the one with the problem?
You want a straight answer? Fine. I asked you earlier to re-read my post so that you’d see where I put together all the relevant points one can infer from the letter in the OP. I never said that masturbation is wrong. I never said that being single is wrong. I said that targeting another person plus masturbation instead of real contact with that person plus needing an elaborate process to get off plusneed for approval and rationalization that this behavior is “normal,” is unhealthy and wrong. You want to say that there’s no difference, no middle ground of acceptable healthy behavior, between the guy who lives alone and jacks off to beer commercials, and the guy who’s sneaking into bathrooms and taking some guy’s pubic hair to put in his mouth while he masturbates?
But you know what? Yes, it is better to be in a relationship. That’s what other people are for. Maybe a person doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of a relationship, or is just plain happy being alone. Fine, but he’s missing out on what’s possible when we go past what a single person is able to experience on his own and really experience intimacy with someone else. And if such a shocking and ground-breaking statement gets me labeled a “judgemental prick,” so be it.
I think the assumption is that C is male because of C having access to the urinal that the guy he like uses.
Fine, this thread isn’t worth your time, and it isn’t worth mine either. And I take back tha “judgemental prick” comment. That was wrong of me. And I really don’t want to get into a fight with you. My original intent was just to say that some people aren’t in relationships, and there may be many reasons for that, some of which you pointed out. That, and human sexuality can be a very complex thing, and it’s a tricky thing to stand in judgement of another person’s sexual choices.
Sorry that I flew off the handle.
Sol, I don’t think anyone said there was anything wrong with saying it was gross. Because, well, it is gross. Icky. Pretty fuckin’ weird.
But there’s a big difference between gross/icky/pretty fuckin’ weird and sick/wrong/unhealthy, and it’s your insistence on the latter that’s upsetting people, not on the former.
I’d also like to let you know what Dan Savage ACTUALLY said to this guy.
Note the qualifications in there - IF he’s careful about sterilization and IF he’s still able to have a urinal-pube-free sex life, then it’s not NECESSARILY unhealthy.
No one, except perhaps the letter-writer, is going around here and saying, “Urinal pubes! What a wonderful idea!”
Oh, well that’s just fine then. The really skeevy part about the whole thing was the senseless waste of plastic bags and proper clandestine storage thereof. As long as he’s recycling and making sure it’s properly hidden, then there’s absolutely nothing remotely unhealthy there. God speed, Correspondent! Wank away with impunity!
Try to stop working out the logistics of foreign pube storage for a second, Otto, and put down the bullhorn and the “wave your freak flag high” sign. If you’re going to take the time to call people names for disagreeing with you, then take the time to actually think about the OP and what the letter says.
If you’ve got kink material that you’re keeping private just out of a sense of basic discretion, then you don’t write to newspapers and columns to “confess” about it or ask for validation that you’re “normal”; you just keep it. And if you’re in a relationship with someone you trust, then you don’t ask Dan Savage if clandestinely sneaking into public bathrooms to take sheddings and hide them in a place where no one will ever find them; you talk it out with the other person. If you’re in a relationshp with someone you don’t trust, that ain’t healthy. And if you’re single but obsessing on a stranger enough to use their droppings for masturbatory purposes, that ain’t healthy either.
It’s exactly what I said earlier – it’s perfectly possible to get off by hand without making such a huge production out of it. Lube and a magazine are an inconvenience; when you get to the level of pre-planning and sneaking around that our correspondent describes, you’ve either got way too much free time on your hands, or an unhealthy (meaning time-consuming at best, since I know you’ll harp on it) obsession. Or, you’ve had so many people telling you that “it’s all good! everything is normal!” that you find normal sex boring. So you have to come up with something that any sane and rational person should be turned off by, just to get excited.
What the fuck? But your just saying that it’s fine makes it so? If my hairs were the ones in question, and I found out that somebody was collecting them and jacking off with them, you bet your ass I’d be creeped out by the whole thing. Therefore, it’s an invasion of my privacy. Just the same as if he’d been stealing my underpants or had a shrine with pictures of me in his basement. You think your healthy correspondent is going to bring it up with this “guy he likes?” “Hey, Bill, did you catch ‘Lost’ last night? By the way, I think you might have crabs.” It’s fucking creepy.
And yeah, because I said so. Instead of shouting “prude!” why don’t you take a second to explain how it’s not creepy and stalkerish? I’m fighting from the high ground here.
Charming story, thanks for sharing, Otto. Unfortunately, this thread isn’t about you, as much as you’d like it to be. You’re going to have to sort out your own issues with romantic attachments, I’m afraid, instead of using Our Correspondent’s story to validate yourself and your “anything goes as long as no one gets hurt” approach to morality.
Surely even you can distinguish between fantasizing about a stripper, a person who presents himself to the public as an object of sexual desire, and using the props from their sexual “performance” as a sexual aid, and fantasizing about a stranger (presumably a co-worker) who’s just trying to do his job and go to the bathroom? If you can’t, then I’m afraid I’m as unable to explain it to you as I am to explain why keeping fetishes of other people for sexual purposes is an invasion of their privacy. You’ll have to go ask a grown-up.
For starters, jack-ass, don’t paraphrase me incorrectly and try to use that to make your argument. I did not make that claim; I claimed that asking a newspaper for reassurance that one is normal is an indication that one is worried about being abnormal.
Secondly, yeah, people did and still do ask advice columnists for reassurance that it’s okay to be gay. Straight people ask for reassurance about their sex lives, too – homos don’t corner the market on sexual repression and dysfunction. There are poeple who say that any kind of gay sex is wrong, just as there are people who say that any kind of sex at all before marriage is wrong. So fucking what? This has fuck-all to do with being gay or straight; it has to do with being functional and happy.
Don’t try to act like just because people repress it, it must be okay. There’s a range of homosexual behavior, just as with anything else. If a guy has a crush on another guy at his office, any advice columnist worth a damn is going to tell him not to sweat the gay thing, and see if he can pursue a relationship. If a guy is obsessively collecting droppings from said crush, or indiscriminately sucking guys off in parking lots, or going from meaningless sexual encounter to the next while wondering what’s missing, then any advice columnist worth a damn is going to knock some sense into him, not just keep enabling him.
And definitely not say, as roger thornhill indicates was the response from the column, “you’re normal, but don’t ever ever ever tell anyone else about it.” If that’s not repression, I don’t know what is.
Blah blah blah you don’t agree with me because you are hateful and intolerant blah piss moan blah! That bullshit is played out.
Sorry you have such a hatred for common sense. And I’m genuinely sorry you lack the maturity to hear opinions different from your own without being a defensive, condescending bitch about it, because if you were I never would’ve gotten pulled into this nonsense.
I’m saying that it does harm someone else, because there’s a guy out there who’s the unwilling object of somebody else’s obsession. I’m saying that it does harm the person getting off, because it’s obsessive and self-destructive and the time could be better spent going after a more satisfying relationship. I’m saying the guy should either get a boyfriend, or ask the “guy he likes” directly if he can give him a blow job, and dispense with the sneaking around and debasing himself around toilets. You’re patting him on the head, telling him he’s fine just the way he is, and offering to buy him more sandwich bags.
Sounds to me like I don’t hate him; I’m actually proposing a way out. And you do worse than hate him; you’re indifferent to him except for where it affects you. This gives you the perfect grandstand to validate yourself and whatever sexual dysfunctions you have or think you might have.
Correspondence course. It’s all I could afford, because some horny loser kept stealing my best shirts and jacking off into them.
Well gee, when you put it that way, it sounds… no, it still sounds pretty much exactly like what I’m saying. Usually when you paraphrase things enough times, they start to sound better, but that still sounds every bit as gross and sad as the first time I read the OP.
Well, that would’ve saved some time, as I agree pretty much entirely with Savage’s response. I still think there’s enough in the original letter to indicate that “Sick in Nashville” is harboring an unhealthy obsession, and I disagree with him because I believe it is a violation of the target’s privacy.
I suppose after all this typing, it’s too late for me to turn it into a pitting of roger thornhill for not including the link? I guess not.
No worries from me if there are none from you. Lots of flying off various handles going on here. Now my hands hurt from so much typing, making it painful to masturbate.
Oh.
Um…
We need to talk.
Well don’t look at me. I’m already in a relationship.
I don’t think it’s creepy or weird at all. I’m pretty straight (would that I were pretty and straight…) , but if anyone reading this has this strange desire to take my discarded pubic hairs, or hell, even my discarded, shredded tighty-whities for whatever purpose you have in mind, go nuts! I don’t think it’s that much an invasion of privacy. After all if would freak you out so much to know someone’s doing that to you, you should probably be more sanitary about leaving your pubic hairs around enough that someone can reliably pick them up from you.
Metacom raises some thoughtful points, especially his or her belief that there are certain types of sexual behaviour that are not appropriate for public discussion; behaviour that Otto and Sol refer to as ‘kinky’, which seems as good a word as any for describing what the correspondent, who styles himself ‘Sick in Nashville’, likes to do.
While still focused on the text, I should also say I was inaccurate in saying that only DS and Otto had actually used the word ‘sick’. The letter-writer himself had of course used it to identify himself when signing off his letter. (Thanks to elfbabe for the link, incidentally – I typed the original from the local weekly mag where the “Dan Savage” column appears.)
What DS’s response does highlight is his desire to have it both ways, which, to be kind to him or them – however many people are behind the column – might perhaps be put down as much to commercial pressures as anything else, being mindful of the pressure to come up with new and ever more sensational content in a column that is syndicated across the globe.
Let’s hope DS reads the SDMB. (He seems like the sort of person who might.) Perhaps next time he gets a letter of this type, rather than giving it the oxygen of publicity, he will take his own advice and make sure that no one gets to know. A private mail to the individual remains of course an option if Dan considers it prudent.
As for Otto’s question as to why I brought this matter to the attention of dopers in the first place, he has already provided the answer. It is in the hope of making people think. In that respect, the thread seems to have achieved its purpose.
I think it’s just adorable how you’re the one who hyperbolically went off about the supposed mountains of pube-filled baggies lining this guy’s apartment and then, when it’s pointed out that you’re being hyperbolic, you try to wriggle off with this bullshit.
Right. Because it could never possibly be that someone could simply be wondering about something. Just asking about it means you’re sick.
Yeah, I can imagine this guy comng to a partner like, say, you, and trying to discuss this. After your pin head stopped spinning around and exploding, and after you got done calling him a sick freak, I’m sure he’d get lots of love and support.
The simple fact is that sometimes it’s easier to ask advice from strangers in an advice column or on a message board or a helpline than it is to ask a close friend, family member or even a lover.
Yes it is. So does that mean because it’s possible to get off without the production that it’s required that one get off without it?
Ah, OK, so the standard of “invasion of privacy” is “creeps Sol out.” What a crock of horseshit that is. Stealing your underpants is an actual invasion of your privacy. Having a “shrine” with your picture in it isn’t, as long as the act of taking the pictures themselves was not.
Right, condemning other people for their sexual practices is the high ground. I’m sure the pope and Fred Phelps would agree with that sentiment.
And it’s not about you either, as much as you’re desperately trying to make it so. Your entire argument boils down to “I think this is skeevy, therefore the person doing it is unhealthy.” And you’re totally oblivious to the ironic fact that the exact same “logic” has been and is used to condemn every non-mainstream act of sexuality, including and perhaps especially your interest in sucking cock.
Fuck you, asshole. I have no need to validate or justify anything. I was hoping that you’d pull your fat head out of your tight ass long enough to grasp the parallels between the two stories, but I guess that was too much to ask for.
Oh, so as long as the person who’s being fantasized about it is presenting themselves in a sexual manner, then it’s all right? You’re saying that presenting oneself in a sexual manner reduces one’s right to privacy. That’s pretty fucking disgusting.
Sweetie, if you’re going to lie, you really ought not to lie when the proof of the lie is in the same thread as the lie. As one of your six offers of proof that the behaviour is “unhealthy,” you said
You didn’t say one goddamn word about it being “an indication that one is worried about being abnormal.” You offered it up as proof of the abnormality.
And you have no proof that C is non-functional or unhappy. He’s apparently concerned that one aspect of his behaviour might be unhealthy; the judgmental prick contingent has slapped him with that label whereas those of us who don’t feel the need to label the guy sick haven’t.
I love your use of the word “droppings.” I bet you chose it on purpose, knowing that generally “droppings” doesn’t refer to shed hairs, but to fecal matter. Anything you can do to make C sound more disgusting, eh Sol? As for Savage’s advice, just because you disagree with it you’re not justified in ladling on the “enabling” psychobabble.
You’re the one reaching for the tar and feathers for the guy, not me. You’re the one who’s projecting his loathing of the practice and turning it into psychopathology.
Way to take responsibility for your own actions. And if you’d care to review the thread, it turns out you were the one who started in with the immaturity, responding to my request (directed to an entirely different person) for an explanation as to why the behaviour is unhealthy, with babble about being overly-PC and claiming that questioning your opinion on the topic was an attack.
How is that person harmed, any more than Brad Pitt is harmed by being the object of so-called “obsession” of some of his fans? How specifically is being the subject of someone else’s fantasies, even if the fantasies are “obsessive” (and I don’t grant that C’s fantasies are obsessive), harmful to the subject? Is the unknowing subject being harmed physically? Financially? Emotionally? Psychically? Where is the specific harm?
How exactly is the behaviour self-destructive? Is C being harmed physically? Financially? Emotionally? Psychically? Where is the specific harm? How do you know that C is not in a relationship? How do you know, if C isn’t in a relationship, that he isn’t looking for one? How do you know that C even wants to be in a relationship?
And again, you don’t know that he doesn’t already have one.
What?! Offer to give him a blow job? But whatever happened to “getting to know someone” and “mutual respect and understanding” and “sex as a consensual act of mutual pleasure and devotion”?
Um, no, what I’m saying is that based on the information provided, this particular aspect of his life should not be cause for concern. Beyond the extremely limited information in the letter, I know nothing about this person’s life and so I have tried to refrain from making judgments about it. Maybe you should try doing the same.
Did you lift this quote from an Exodus press release? Because it sounds awfully familiar…
I have no need to validate myself, and I have no sexual dysfunctions, you pompous prick. And if defending someone I’ll never meet from judgmental assholes like you, who condemn a person’s entire life based on one aspect you find disturbing, constitutes indifference, then I should only hope that everyone would have such indifference.
See, here’s the problem right here. I agree that the behaviour is a bit gross. It’s not something I would do and it’s not something that I would find exciting. The difference between us is that you’re condemning this person in his entirety on the basis of this one sexual habit. I won’t condemn the entire person on that basis. The sad thing here is your small-minded insistence on condemning the person.
So let’s see: comparing me to Fred Phelps, invoking “ex-gay” ministries, point-by-point one-line responses to quotes, liberal use of “judgemental” and “condemning,” dismissing pop psychology terminology, calling other person a hypocrite, calling other person a liar, calling other person intolerant, “you started it,” and making both contradictory sides of an argument in the same post… hang on, we’re getting the score…
Oh! So close! If only you’d figured out some way to compare me to a Nazi and mentioned the First Amendment, you would’ve had an SDMB clean sweep. Better luck next time, Otto.
Hmmm. I found Hong Kong relatively easy to walk around in. People seemed to have a purpose and didn’t wander all over the place. It was easy to get around them or anticipate where they were going to go. Try Dubai where hordes of people walk abreast, shoot off at angles for no seemingly rational reason, and will stare you in the eye as they run into you. Kind of like how they drive, too. Nah, Hong Kong was easy.
The touristy areas and central business districts by their very nature and ethnic make-up aren’t the best places to observe or indeed experience this phenomenon.
This discussion on a local blog should provide further elucidation for the keen people-watcher, or -avoider, as the case may be.
I lived there for 9 weeks. Hiked up and down Lantau, Lamma, around HK itself, and into the New Territories. Never had a problem on the hiking trails. Sometimes the crowds in Kowloon and Hk could be problem, but given the amount of people there I think it would be unreasonable to expect clear sailing. Experience in hockey allowed for a judicious and unobtrusive (to other than those affected) use of the elbow cleared the way in those cases!
We liked it so much there that we are looking to move there sometime in the future, assuming the wife can land a job. It’s a helluva shorter commute for me to go there than 10 times zones back to Calgary.
The shoe fits you so well, darling…
If you don’t want to be compared to Phelps and Exodus, then don’t use rhetoric that echoes them. If you don’t want to be called judgmental, then don’t be judgmental. If you don’t want to be called intolerant, then don’t be intolerant. If you don’t want it pinted out that you started it, then don’t start it. If you don’t want to be called a liar, don’t lie.
Why you would have a problem with point-by-point responses is a little beyond me. And I think you mixed up the word “hypocrite” with the word “hyperbolic.”
Now, did you have an actual response to what I said in that post, or is this little dance your charming way of saying you give up?