Don’t worry about it. It was worth saying twice.
Here. And you stole my “nerf sex” line :D.
I still agree with myself about the creepy non-hetero-sexual element, too: if these things are so damned innocuous, why no guy on guy action? After all, it’s about human contact, not sex, right? Right? Course, if they allowed girl on girl, they could sell tickets.
I think that’s the basic problem with these get-togethers: “Can I put my finger on it?” “No.”
I’m a straight guy and while I’d rather cuddle with female people I would cuddle with guys.
It’s funny that while they enforce that weird nonsexual vibe, and while I think it’s creepy because of that, that the guys are actually still on some level looking at it as a sexual experience. You yourself are obviously not only in it for cuddling with random strangers, since you’d rather be with women. And judging by the photos on the site, you’re not alone. Except those boys won’t touch other boys at all.
Not a shock. Boys are consistent, after all. The fact that this whole thing is based around suppressing your sexual urges while also trying on some level to satisfy them is a new dimension of weird in my eyes.
Check the photos on that site: you can almost smell the desperation on those beardoes as they grimace hopefully for the camera.
This made me laugh out loud. 
So I’ve been thinking about it a bit - cuddling with a stranger, and if there’s anything to get out of it. I think either a) I’d become really horny and frustrated, or b) I’d feel uncomfortable and a bit leery. Neither which falls into the realm of comforting. I think DianaG summarized it nicely in her previous post.
Remember the “Very Vaguely Creepy” thread? I think this qualifies-it’s not “OH MY GOD THAT’S SICK!” creepy, but it’s there’s something there that doesn’t feel right. Or as they say in Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
I note that you quoted only that part of my post that you found easy to ridicule; I did go on to give a real-world example of where I found myself subtly pulled into something I found highly socially awkward; lucky for me that there was a coffee break where I could slip away unseen (although that wasn’t the last of the matter by any means). I have no idea what your examples are about; they look like strawmen to me.
I stand by my position that in a group situation, people can find themselves subtly manipulated into doing things they hate doing, if the number of alternatives is sufficiently reduced, say down to (a)leave, causing a massive scene) and (b)join in, even though you hate to), it’s possible for a person, particularly one who is not highly assertive, to find themselves in a miserable trap.
You’ll note that I am in no way calling for the prohibition of cuddle parties, neither am I expressing moral outrage that they exist (so I don’t think the ‘prudish’ label is particularly relevant here either). My objection (if it can even be called that) is solely that the idea creeps me the hell out, and I think I understand some of the reasons for this. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe they’re wonderful, enabling and free; I guess I’ll never know, because I’d rather eat live spiders than attend one.
Yeah, I think you’ve put your finger on it (haha) as far as my personal feelings about this are concerned. The idea of going to one of these parties brings out an instinctive “ick” reaction in me. On the other hand, I really don’t care if other people want to hold them and the mere fact of their existence doesn’t outrage me or anything. I’d feel creeped out and weird and wrong if I somehow found myself attending a Cuddle Party, but, eh. That just means it’s not for me, not that it’s somehow inherently terrible and wrong and messed-up. I don’t think I’d explode with horror if I found that someone I knew had been to one, or anything. (For the record, I feel almost exactly the same about furries and BDSM. Slightly odd, not for me, but not seeing the harm in it; consenting adults, nobody’s getting hurt, etc.)
Wonder if Dr Tiffany is involved…
One of the places where I lived in Miami (for something like 8 months) was a house owned by a Psychology professor whose whole work was devoted to the beneficial psychological effects of touching. She tried to convince people to touch, to give non-sex-related massages to their SOs, to give massages to their kids…
She also was a bitch whose main mode of communication was post-it notes. Her secretary once got a dozen red roses from her boyfriend, as a birthday present. Dr. T left a post-it saying “take this to the trash now”. We were forbidden from going into her bedroom, where she stayed once a month; you could tell when she was in because there wasn’t any music or scents. We couldn’t use any of the common areas (kitchen included) if she happened to be in.
This kind of party sounds a lot like her: on one hand, trying to get people to lay down barriers which are often artificial (Americans seem to touch so much less and stay a lot farther than other people, and then when you touch or get close it feels more agressive, at least to me and to every other foreigner I’ve talked about this with); on the other, bringing those same barriers with them and turning what should be something that happens naturally with people you like into… therapy.
The whole thing sounds like Dr T meets Woody Allen. Most of the Spaniards I work with would not believe me if I showed them the webpage, they’d think it was some kind of unfunny joke!
Granted. Sorry, I thought I made that clear: I wasn’t replying to you so much as snagging something you said as a (relatively) representative sample of something being said by several people.
If I have the opportunity of either going out for dinner with an interesting & attractive woman or some fellow, I’d rather dine with her. Yes, the reasons for that are directly tied up in my heterosexuality. Dining is not, however, a sexual experience, or at least not what we usually mean when we say “a sexual experience”. Even though it is not outside the range of possibility that she might slip her shoe off and play “footsie” with me under the table. Which itself would not necessarily fall into the category of “a sexual experience” as some folks would use the term, yes?
You’re not entirely wrong but it’s not like people who describe it as “a nonsexual thing” are lying either.
Lots of things are tinged with sexual feelings. I’ve used the example of dancing several times. Are people who dance “suppressing sexual urges while also trying to satisfy them”? I think if you asked people who like to go to dances, they’d say they are doing something they like to do, that yes it’s an environment in which they can flirt and possibly hook up but that that’s not the sole reason they go there, and no, they don’t consider themselves to be sexually repressed simply because they enjoy writhing to music in the vertical mode.
Question for everybody: When you have sex with someone, including, you know, relatively casual sex (if you ever do that) … you don’t cuddle? Not even afterwards, after orgasm? Sex itself doesn’t create at least a temporary sense/sensation of affection and tenderness?
I mean, people (a lot of people, I’m going to refrain from doing what I did with Mangetout and finding a representative example to quote) seem to be saying “I don’t think I’d find it creepy if someone was having casual sex or even going to an orgy for group sex with casual acquaintances & strangers, but there’s something creepy about ‘casual snuggles’, that’s just weird”
This is not a trick question, I really just want to know and understand: isn’t cuddling and snuggling and whatnot kind of incorporated into sex when sex happens? So if it’s part of sex why is it non-weird to do all of that with casual acquaintances and strangers but weird to only do the part that isn’t explicity erotic?
And several people (some of them on multiple occasions) keep saying that the feelings of connection and affection from cuddling would be artificial or not the real thing. But doesn’t sex also conjure up emotional states, the very ones that make you want to touch each other tenderly and hug and etc? How is that not artificial and phony in the same way, then?
(Yes I know that many people who disapprove of sex outside of a loving relationship would say it is phony in exactly that way, but I’m talking to those of you who don’t find casual sex weird the way you find ‘casual cuddling’ weird)
I know I’ve gotten a little hostile and perhaps insulting in here, but y’all seem every bit as weird to me as I apparently seem to you and you.
And you and you and you :smack:
Yes, even with a casual, one-night-stand there’s a little bit of cuddling afterwards. Usually not a lot. If it really is casual, then I don’t want to create the emotional bonds that cuddling creates. If I’m in a relationship, then there’s a lot of cuddling. Much of that cuddling leads to sex, which is one reason I wouldn’t feel comfortable at a cuddle party: for me, cuddling usually is erotic. I cuddle with someone because I like the feel of their body - theirs in particular, not just anybody’s, not someone I’ve just met at a party, or even a casual friend. The other major aspect of cuddling for me - besides being sexual - is emotional security. I cuddle because it makes me feel safe, protected and emotionally intimate with the person I’m cuddling. Cuddling with someone that I don’t have those feelings with would feel awkward and uncomfortable, like we were faking something. For me, cuddling and emotion are more closely connected than sex and emotion. I don’t want to seperate the physical and emotional aspects of cuddling in the same way that many people don’t want to seperate the physical and emotional aspects of sex. I suspect that the creepiness I feel at considering a cuddle party is the same kind of creepiness that others feel at considering casual sex.
Perhaps that’s the key; casual sex isn’t something I’ve ever done, or really wanted to do, but the whole idea of meeting up with a bunch of relative strangers for the express purpose of doing something that is not normally done with strangers is just jarringly weird to my mind; it’s like… I dunno… going to a cinema to watch just twenty minutes out of the middle of a movie.
It just seems to be dissecting something away from the context that makes it meaningful. Only disturbing when I imagine being involved in it. Hell is other people, cuddling with me for no good reason at all.
AHunter, I agree with you on this point. I also find it odd when people say, “I like having casual/anonymous sex, but snuggling afterwards? Eww.” Glory hole anyone?
I don’t think that’s incompatible with being creeped out by the weird combination of lavisciousness and infantilization presented by Cuddle Party.
For what it’s worth, I rather enjoy BDSM and other “non-mainstream” sexual activities, but I find the idea of “Cuddle Parties” to be… well, odd.
Not even in a “Man, that shit is whack!” kind of way, just a “Well, whatever floats your boat” kind of way.
It does seem a bit… juvenile, and somewhat pointless (in the sense that it’s not going to lead to sex), but as long as it’s consenting adults in the privacy of their own home, I’m not going to object to anyone participating.
I do, however, reserve the right to give the participants The Raised Eyebrow Of Doubt and wonder why they’re still acting like they’re in Fourth Form at High School…
The reason anonymous sex is different is because at least it’s real sex. The cuddling at these parties isn’t real, it’s just fake, pretended affection that leads to nothing. There’s something really fearful and sad and immature about it. It’s like asking a stranger on the subway to kiss you on top of the head and call you sweetie. It’s not a normal human interaction.
That’s the thing that I don’t get…the pre-planned nature of it. I am not one for casual sex myself, but I can understand getting swept away in a moment with someone you have a strong physical attraction to. In my mind, this is quite different from swinger parties, where the whole thing is pre-planned. In the same way, the cuddles (geez, do I hate the word “cuddle”) one might have with the casual swept-away sex partner at least come from some deep mometary urge, rather than some pre-calculated plan.