Sponsors or Members?

I am out of money. I'm out of money in a way I'd never contemplated before. (Fortunately, I'm not in credit card debt - those little plastic cards of 16 digits absolutely terrify me and I haven't owned one for 6 years.) It's been a year now since my unemployment benefits ended. It's been nearly as long since anyone's even returned my phone calls in regards to my disability case.

So, I'll be making videos and writing blog posts again, but I need them to generate me an income. YouTube STILL won't tell me why they suddenly and with no warning (or apparent reason) yanked my Partner status and haven't paid me the 2 grand in advertising revenue they owe me. I have to do this directly, with my fans and friends.

I can see at least two possible solutions to both my writer's block and my financial troubles (which are really one and the same.) The first solution would be to make my blog a pay site. I don't like that for a lot of reasons, including my Open Internet ideals. I'd also like people to be able to share what they read on my blog, and that's limited when people have to pay to view.

The other solution I can think of immediately (other proposals in the comments or to my Twitter @antitheistangie are welcome) would be to have a few committed monthly donors. If fifty readers can donate $10 a month each, that will meet almost the entire gap between my boyfriend's part-time job, his student loans, and the free food we get from the local pantry, so that I can pay my bills and stop freaking out. Instead, I can write!

So what do we think - can a few people commit to being sponsors, or should I require site membership for all?

I've got a few video ideas brewing in my head and I plan on actually recording at least one of those tomorrow (probably the one on Privilege and how it's invisible if you have it.) I miss writing. I miss being here with all of you. I want to be back, but my head's been full of nothing but worry and stress for so long, it's been hard to get my thoughts out of my head and into a coherent form on paper.

Oh, and before someone comes up with the idea: I'd love a part-time at-home job. If you can find me one that isn't a phishing scam or sex work, I'd love to know. (I have no moral or ethical issue with phone sex or other sex work, but I wouldn't be good at it.)

If you'd like to make a one-time donation now, please feel heartily encouraged to do so. You can also track the donations I receive (I'm not a televangelist after all) through my ChipIn page.

p.s. I swear tax returns were invented to lower springtime suicides among the lower classes. If I'd earned ten times what I did in 2010, I'd still be below the poverty limit.


Image for this post from Blaugh.com

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Taking the Womb out of a Woman

I was Tweeting last night about how I’d love to get my uterus carved out of me. One of my male, pro-choice friends astonished me with his reaction. He said, “You don’t mean that. Your uterus is wonderful.”

Wonderful is it? I can imagine using the same line on someone facing a tonsillectomy, “Your tonsils are wonderful!” That would be a ridiculous thing to say. So why is it less ridiculous when we’re talking about reproductive organs? I conveyed some of my loathing for my uterus, and the pain it routinely causes me.

“Small price to pay for being a real woman.”

What’s a real woman? Is a Real Woman a woman with a uterus? My grandmother had her uterus removed (along with my aunt who she was pregnant with) when she was 6 months into her 5th pregnancy. My grandmother had ovarian cancer. Incubators and at-the-time modern medicine were able to keep my aunt alive. (She’s now a kick-ass grandma who competes in triathlons and has the figure of a Barbie doll.)

Was my grandmother, a semi-professional non-medically-trained midwife, not a “real woman” during all the time I knew her, because her uterus and ovaries wer gone? What about my god-mother? She had breast cancer. When I was 14, she underwent a double radical mastectomy (bye bye boobies.) Did she stop being a “real woman” when her breasts, the mighty organs capable of providing nutrition to live young, were lopped off to save her life? What about trans women? Are they not real women? Of course, you can’t fit that into 140 characters, so what I said instead was this:

“If being a ‘real woman’ requires bleeding, cramping, feeling suicidal and being a total bitch to the ones I love, I’ll pass. “

To which he responded:

“I think your uterus is sacred despite the monthly misery. None of your loved ones disagree.”

The second sentence was easy to debunk. Viking (my boyfriend, and step-father to my son) supports my choice to remove the organ that causes me to double over in pain and cry for hours, even though he wishes my health and our finances were otherwise, so that we could have a child mixed of our genes.

The first sentence was bafflingly woo-ish in its language. (Like me, my friend is an atheist and doesn’t believe in souls, spirits, or I had thought, the sacred.) To me it all sounded a bit too much like fertility worship, and my childhood cult was, at its core, a fertility cult.

This sense of awe and wonder surrounding the uterus is a good way to keep women separate, different, other. I mean, in a way I guess it’s nice to have these things praised rather than vilified (so glad I don’t have to spend my rag-week hiding my “uncleanliness” from the men folk in a tent.) But at the end of the day, making women about their wombs is bad for women.

I was molested, for a year, as a small girl. When I finally broke through “this will be our secret” and found the courage to tell my mom what was happening with that old man neighbor down the street, I went to a doctor for a rape-kit exam. At 8 years old, sneaking in doorways, I overheard the doctor describing the damage to one of his nurses. “She’ll be lucky to ever carry a kid to term.”

I spent my childhood thinking I was barren, that biological children were not in the cards for me. Belonging to a Christian sect focused on the act of birth itself, this made me an outcast. I felt I was flawed, broken, wrong, and most of all “not a real woman.”

I was jealous of women who could conceive and bear children with (relative, apparent) ease, and I despised women who had abortions. Didn’t they know childless women were jealous?? I planned to adopt, and as I grew older and came to care more about social justice, I planned to adopt an older non-white child out of the foster care system. (Still plan to, when my son is grown.)

I am not my uterus. I am my brain. All my memories, thoughts, feelings, ideas, loves, and hates are there. My uterus is just full of lining which must be sloughed off routinely, in a brutal and messy fashion.

Like many people who want to voice their opinions on my uterus, my friend is a man, someone who has never and will never experience menstruation or PMS. How “small” of a price it is should always be up to the bearer. (I’m pro-choice when it comes to birth and abortion. I’m also pro-choice when it comes to removing one’s bodily organs. MY body, MY organs, MY choice. This also applies to men in their decision to get or not get vasectomies. Their bodies, their organs, their choices.)

So, for those of you who haven’t experienced menstruation (whether you’re a “real woman” or not) let me break it down for you.

Puberty hit and my first period arrived when I was 12, on April 1, 1995 (it had to be on April Fools, and the first day of Spring Break the year I’d bought a one-piece white bathing suit, of course.) Since then, in many ways I feel that I (my brain, my mind, ME) have been at war with the Other: my uterus.

I like to think of myself as a rational person (and who among us doesn’t?) I try to be fair with the ones I love, and be mindful that words can be hurtful and even abusive. Three weeks of out four, I can do this. One week a month, in a way I find not at all comical, my personality is taken over by a weepy, hysterical, and frequently suicidal bitch who says hateful things to people I adore. I do not like MYSELF when I am being so affected by hormones.

I have cramps for four days leading up to my period. These are painful enough to be distracting – I have to stop mid-conversation to make a face and concentrate on breathing through the pain. Frequently, Viking will give me his hand to squeeze during this.

When the bleeding starts, it is heavy. I go through a super size tampon or maxi pad (designed to hold 10 oz of fluid!) every two hours for the first five days of my period. Then it gets a bit more reasonable for the remaining 5 days of bleeding. That’s right, I bleed for ten days. And sometimes, my periods don’t have the decency to wait a full month before coming back again, the bitches.

I've gone through times in my life when I had 10 periods in six months. That’s 10 periods of 14 days of pain and discomfort, blood and expensive feminine hygiene products. And let’s not forget the luteal phase of my menstrual cycle! I get cramps during and after ovulation, too. I have severe, painful, distracting cramps about half of my life.

Now, as it turns out, my cycle is somewhat worse than what most women experience. Still, 2% of women have endometriosis (which is, what I believe without being able to afford medical tests to know for certain, what causes me so much misery.)

An evolution-accepting atheist like my friend should be able to recognize that while our bodies are COOL and NIFTY and GROSS and WEIRD, they are not intelligently designed. Things go wrong, in every organ of the body, male and female.

My fertility does not define me. It doesn’t even define my femininity. I desire, strongly, to be infertile. While I have an admitted case of penis envy (or really, Not Being Female envy) I am still a woman. Wanting kids, being able to bear them, being unable to bear them: None of these TOUCH what womanhood is, not to me.

Pregnancy with my son was a shock and I learned about it at 19 weeks past conception (oops.) Multiple ER trips, months of bed rest (that I couldn’t afford to actually take,) two occasions where I nearly lost the fetus, and one occasion where I nearly died myself (and lost 10 pounds! During my 8th month of pregnancy,) and a 98-hour back labor later, I was “lucky to ever carry a kid to term.” I have my son and it’s a “miracle” but I won’t be banking on any more of those coming through for me.

My friend went on to tell me,

“I’ve always been in awe of the power that lies between a woman’s hips. Don’t knock it. There’s true magic there.”

What lies between my hips is a malfunctioning organ with the power to kill me. There’s nothing magical about that, and thanks very much but I’ll knock the pain, the nausea, the cramps, and the personality-overhaul as much as I damn well please.

Now, who wants to send me money for an “elective” hysterectomy?

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Shopping & My Ex-Husband

My most depressing and most empowering shopping experiences were both because of my ex-husband.

Shopping for a maternity wedding dress used on eBay was the single most depressing shopping experience of my life. All five plus size dresses available were ridiculously, ludicrously white. There were ruffles and flounces and fabric trains all desperately trying to hide (and thus drawing even more attention to) THE BELLY. The belly made it down the aisle half a second before I did, protuberant as it was on the day of my ill-fated nuptials. I ended up wearing my sister's wedding dress, altered to fit my third-trimester girth.

The best, most satisfying shopping experience I have EVER had happened two and a half years later, long after I'd left the drunken lout I married because I didn't want my son to be a bastard (which, it turns out, doesn't matter *at all*.)

There was a phone call, and then a 16-page hand-written death threat (that rhymed, badly), and then QUICKLY after that there was a restraining order. But that was what started my PTSD. That was the first blow that led to my confined state.

I went with a friend, at the advice of one of my university's mental health counselors, to the local Army/Navy surplus store. I walked inside and a man who looked like Jamie from MythBusters greeted me at the door.

"Hi, what can I help you with today?"
"I'm looking for something in personal protection."

He spent a full hour with me, letting me test out his wares on a martial arts dummy. I ended up leaving with a pepper spray keychain (in hot pink! Fashion-fear doesn't have to be all black, m'dears) and an extendable steel baton (which I loved but then lent to a friend who never returned it.) He didn't load me down with weaponry I was likely to have used against me (why arm your assailant with a gun if they don't already have one?) and he didn't belittle me. It was at least as good as the therapy for helping me deal with that semester of school.

Maybe I should buy more weapons. I carried knives all through high school and I know it helped me with my sense of fear. Panic attacks are such a bitch, ya know? But weapons don't seem so great when you have a get-into-everything 5-year-old in the house.

Any suggestions?

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Omnipotent Lite

Honestly, I don’t think I ever worshiped an all-powerful god. Oh sure, I had faith and I believed, but fact of the matter was, there were times God didn’t protect us, no matter how faithfully we adhered to his word. Bad things happen to good people. Needless suffering – children being raped, abused, enslaved, or else starving to death – happens on such a grand scale it’s no wonder we do our best to block it out and not think about it. Of course, I can’t seem to do that.

The Problem of Pain has always, always, always been the seed of my doubt. I see that now. I wanted a god who was loving and awesome (in the old school sense) and kept his word. And hey, since my dad walked out on us before my earliest memories, I liked the idea of having a daddy who was always there looking out for me. But I didn’t think he was all-powerful.

I "knew" any number of demonic forces, generational curses, soul ties, unconfessed sins, etc (ad nauseum) could “shorten God’s arm” as my Giggy said, and could be a hindrance to Him, or could stop His blessing from being received. It’s funny, I think I had an answer to Euthyphro’s dilemma when I was six. God stopped as much evil as he could, and he was still more powerful than anyone or anything else, just not 100% powerful. In the black-and-white world of my grandmother's teachings, I had to make my god a little gray to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever really did believe God was ALL powerful. Pretty powerful, sure. Creator of the universe? Absolutely. Infinite deity? You betcha. Capable of overcoming the logical paradoxes created by an omnibenevolent omnipresent omniscient and omnipotent god existing alongside observable reality? Nope.

My god was never that cool.

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Is the Bible Reliable?

Today's counter-apologetic is brought to you by Matt Slick of CARM and by the letter Q.

One of the most important questions asked by non-Christians as they look into Christianity is whether or not the Bible is trustworthy. Can the Bible be trusted? If it has been corrupted, then we cannot trust what is attributed to Jesus' words and deeds. So, is the Bible reliable or not?

Corrupted is an interesting word choice. It’s funny, because Matt Slick here appears to be giving us only two options – the Bible is accurate, “uncorrupted” and trustworthy, or it is none of those things. He’s painting an either/or scenario. Either the Bible is the word of god or it isn’t – and if it isn’t, then it’s also apparently not trustworthy or reliable. Please keep this black-and-white either/or premise in mind as we continue. It will come into play later.

Yes, the Bible is reliable. The original writings of the Bible have been lost. But before they were lost, they were copied. These copies were incredibly accurate, very meticulous, and very precise. The people who copied them were extremely dedicated to God and their copying tasks. They took great care when copying the original manuscripts.

Tee-hee! I love the attempt at conflating two completely different things. The copying of the Bible may very well have been accurate or reliable, however (and this is important, kiddies) that does not mean the *content* of the Bible is reliable or accurate, just reliably and accurately copied from an original source *which we are supposed to trust without question.* See, the underlying implication is that because the Bible has been accurately copied (or at least, the New Testament hereafter referred to as NT), that means they are “right” with the suggestion there was some original “right” version of the Bible at one time, and that therefore accuracy *with that original* is the same as accuracy with *reality*.

This copying method is so exact, and so precise, that the New Testament alone is considered to be 99.5% textually pure. This means that of the 6000 Greek copies (the New Testament was written in Greek), and the additional 21,000 copies in other languages, there is only one half of 1% variation. Of this very slight number, the great majority of the variants are easily corrected by comparing them to other copies that don't have the "typos" or by simply reading the context. You should know that copying mistakes occur in such ways as word repetition, spelling, or a single word omission due to the copyist missing something when moving his eyes from one line to another. The variants are very minor.

Huh, so you mean the NT *has* been corrupted? I mean, .5% of it is NOT reliable or accurate! Going by Matt's opening black-and-white premise, I guess this means the whole book should be thrown out. I mean, it was either reliable and accurate and perfect, or it wasn't, right? (Apparently, the best God can do when inspiring a book to be written and copied, is to get 99.5% accuracy. Clearly 100% is too much to expect of the creator of *this* universe.)

Nothing affects doctrinal truth and the words and deeds of Christ are superbly reliably transmitted to us.

Handling snakes and drinking poison. These are doctrines (granted, not ones Matt himself follows) based *entirely* on Biblical forgery, which is knowingly copied by Bible translators today. Oh yes, the NIV includes the forgery and a little footnote at the bottom of the page saying "This is not from the original." Ah yes, the wonderfully accurate and reliable Word of God with no doctrinal truths affected by copying and scribe errors, right Matt? (Here's more on the doctrine and Christians who have died following this forged verse of Scripture.)

And hey, what’s so superbly reliably wonderful about non-eyewitnesses who never even met Jesus-the-man writing their thoughts down about him 40 years after his supposed execution? Matt, be less Slick and more honest. What you really mean here is “The words and deeds of Jesus, according to the original unknown Gospel authors, have been very well preserved and copied over time.” And hey, even if they were eyewitnesses (which they weren’t according to serious Biblical scholars and historians) that would not make their testimonies factually correct.

As a preteen, I had the job of typing up my grandmother’s diaries for posterity. Her letters are big narcissistic loops and her handwriting is worse than most doctors', but, with great accuracy, I was able to very often decipher the original meaning of a page. I’d then take my translation and type it up, thus accurately and reliably copying the words she had written. Does that make my grandmother’s diaries reliable in the way atheists *really* mean when we ask if the Bible is reliable? (Hint: No. It just means I was a damn good office assistant.) My grandmother was mentally ill, among other things, and her perception of events was not just colored or filtered through her beliefs, but sifted through them like flour. She wrote down events and details in the way she perceived to be true, but hey, I was alive during most of these events. I can compare her recollection with my own, or with newspapers and court records or the other people involved. I can see how well her writing matches up with reality, an option we don’t have as readily available when it comes to the anonymous Gospel authors (though we can and should still try.)

The science of studying ancient literature and its accuracy of transmission to is called historicity. The Bible is so exceedingly accurate in its transmission from the originals to the present copies, that if you compare it to any other ancient writing, the Bible is light years ahead in terms of number of manuscripts and accuracy. If the Bible were to be discredited as being unreliable, then it would be necessary to discard the writings of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle as also unreliable since they are far far less well preserved than the Bible.

Beautiful! Here the double-meanings of "reliable" come clearly into focus. I read Plato’s “Republic” in college, because it was assigned and I have a thing for A’s. There were parts I liked and parts I hated and at one point, I even chucked the book across the restaurant where I was studying because I was so furious. Finding out that the Republic was not copied with perfect accuracy over the centuries changes my feelings for that book not one jot or tittle, as Jesus would say (according to anonymous Gospel authors.) Hell, I don’t even care if it turns out Plato never existed and “his” ideas were really someone else’s. Because Plato’s not my god, and he never was. Homers writings are beautiful and epic, in the original sense of the word. But we don’t worship the gods in his stories anymore, so no one minds quite so much if the stories have shifted ever so slightly over time.

No one takes the writings of Homer, Plato and Aristotle as “gospel truth” and that’s the kicker. Little children aren't asked to take the Iliad into their hearts and turn their sins over to Zeus for forgiveness. Whether or not they are reliable, accurate copies and translations of the originals has *nothing* to do with whether the originals were factual or fictional. You can copy a lie all die long and no matter how accurately you copy the lie, that won’t make the lie truth.

Also, Matt Slick has shifted from claims that the New Testament was incredibly accurate to now claiming the entire Bible is more accurately copied than other ancient texts, but the OT doesn’t have the same “accuracy rating” as the NT and Matt Slick knows that. He’s just a deceptive little booger.

The Bible was written by those who were inspired by God, so it is accurate and true, and represents historical occurrences.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Your entire argument rests on an unsupported CLAIM that the authors of the Bible were inspired by God?! What a crock of rhetorical shit! Honestly Matt, I expected better of you (though I don’t know why I did – I have no good reason to.)

Also, please Matt, if the Bible is so historically accurate, why wasn’t there really a mass exodus of Israeli slaves from Egypt? Why is there no record of Jesus’ trial or execution amongst Roman court documents of the time? Why are their no contemporary extra-Biblical accounts of any of Jesus’ miracles or actions? Why didn’t anybody BUT the Gospel writers jot down when zombies started rising out of their graves and wondering the streets of Jerusalem? Oh yes, very historically accurate, uh huh. Pull the other one – it’s ticklish.

When we look at the New Testament we realize that it was written by those who either knew Jesus personally, or were under the direction of those who did. They wrote what they saw. They wrote about the resurrection of Christ. They recorded His miracles and His sayings.

Matt is either intentionally ignorant or consciously lying here. He certainly has access to the same information on Biblical authorship that I do (you’d think more so, as the head of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry) and I know this is flat out BULLSHIT and I’m calling him out on it.

From the Iron Chariots Wiki titled “Overview of Early Christianity”

On inspection, the four gospels that provide the core understanding of Jesus' life not only appear to have not been written by the apostles that are attributed to them, but they were misleadingly not written by any first-hand eyewitnesses of Jesus at all. They were all written many years after the purported life of Jesus by people who had never met him. In the case of John, as late as the early 2nd Century CE. The rest of the new testament is made up of parables by people like Paul of Tarsus and Luke the Evangelist, who, by their own admission, never met Jesus during his lifetime and never witnessed the events and miracles claimed in the gospels. As such, even within the context of the bible itself, there is no first-hand account of Jesus' existence.

From "Did Jesus Christ Really Live?" by Marshall J. Gauvin (circa 1922)

What, then, is the evidence that Jesus Christ lived in this world as a man? The authorities relied upon to prove the reality of Christ are the four Gospels of the New Testament--Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These Gospels, and these alone, tell the story of his life. Now we know absolutely nothing of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, apart from what is said of them in the Gospels. Moreover, the Gospels themselves do not claim to have been written by these men. They are not called "The Gospel of Matthew," or "The Gospel of Mark," but "The Gospel According to Matthew," "The Gospel According to Mark," "The Gospel According to Luke," and "The Gospel According to John." No human being knows who wrote a single line in one of these Gospels. No human being knows when they were written, or where. Biblical scholarship has established the fact that the Gospel of Mark is the oldest of the four. The chief reasons for this conclusion are that this Gospel is shorter, simpler, and more natural, than any of the other three. It is shown that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were enlarged from the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark knows nothing of the virgin birth, of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Lord's prayer, or of other important facts of the supposed life of Christ. These features were added by Matthew and Luke.

So… the Gospel writers really didn’t personally know Jesus (in a flesh-and-blood person way of knowing, not in the “Jesus is in my heart” way modern Christians mean). They weren’t writing down their own life events. They weren’t writing down events they witnessed or quoting a guy they palled around with. They were copying Q (except for John.) Oh yeah, and since Q (theoretical believed original document the synoptic gospels are all drawn/copied from) isn’t around today to compare with the Gospels, all those quotes about supreme accuracy to the original kind of ring hollow. Matt Slick really should know this stuff. Do you suppose he does, and he pretends not to, or do you think he’d really rather not know?

It comes down to whether or not you believe what it says about Christ. Do you?

Well, no. Why should I? Men, non-inspired men, wrote the Bible. I have no reason to believe otherwise. Sure, Matt made a claim that the Bible was inspired by God but the evidence he had for it (none) wasn’t overwhelmingly impressive. Neither Matt nor I know who wrote the Gospels, but anyone with the ability to Google can discover for themselves that it was NOT four guys named Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, whoever it was.

Was the New Testament hand copied well from the earlies manuscripts we do have (though not the originals of either the gospels themselves nor Q)? Sure. Does that mean the Bible is reliable? Fuck no! What a silly argument :D

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Up all night

3:32 a.m. on the laptop clock. Child tucked in bed, fed, bathed, and tooth brushed? Check. Boyfriend likewise tucked and snoring beside me? Check. Sleeping pills taken? Check. Video games played? Email checked? Face exfoliated, squeezed, and moisturized? Check. Feeling sleepy? Not a chance in hell.

I miss you. I miss writing. I miss feeling like I did something every day, but man is depression ever a bitch.

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Touch Yourself

Here's my blush-and-giggle post. I've been asked by AAG Blogger to participate in a Sexual Education blog carnival for Scarlateen (a great sex-positive queer-friendly sex education website geared towards teens.)

So, which topic among many did I pick? Did I choose to write about the failure ratings of abstinence-only sex miseducation, or maybe abortion and how accurate information should be given about what an abortion does, how it may feel, and how Post Abortion Syndrome isn't a real, medical condition?

Nope. I picked masturbation! Maybe because I hadn't done it that day, so it was on my mind.



I think masturbation can be beautiful, and I think it can be important. In my ideal universe, sex ed classes would talk about masturbation as one part of an individual's sex life.

If you grew up Christian, chances are, you grew up being taught to stuff your sexual feelings. "Masturbation is wrong" you probably heard. (If you heard it was unnatural, a simple day trip to the monkey habitat of your local zoo should disabuse you of that notion.) But why is masturbation wrong, exactly? Here are the two Christian justifications I heard. Maybe you heard the same ones.

1) Onan. "God struck Onan down for masturbating."- Random Fictional Christian

Funny thing about that - Onan didn't masturbate. He pulled out. I really don't think the two can be compared. One invovles being (presumably) alone and touching yourself to bring sexual gratification. The other involves sleeping with *someone else*. Whatever Onan was "guilty" of, it wasn't hiding in his tent with a stack of Playboys.

The true "crime" of Onan was that he disobeyed God. God told him to knock up his dead brother's widow, and Onan didn't want to. He had sex with her, but pulled out (a primitive form of birth control with a much lower success rate than hormonal and barrier methods.)

2) Lust. "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." - Matthew 5:28 (KJV)

Ah lust, the good ole imagination. This isn't a reason to avoid masturbation - it's a reason to avoid Christianity. Thoughts are not actions. I thought about smothering my ex-husband in his sleep while he snored drunkenly beside me. However, seeing as I didn't do it, I'm not guilty of murder. Mudering him in my heart? Meh, maybe. But the thing about fantasies, whether murderous or sexual or filled with material wealth, is that they aren't real. They are constructions of our minds.

Unlike Christine O'Donnell (in every other respect as well), I don't think male masturbation renders women unnecessary in heterosexual relationships. I know there is more to me than my vagina, and I know that not every day is a day I want to have sex. Sometimes I have some of that old chronic pain flaring up, and my joints or spine or knees just aren't up for fornication. Some days the depression and anxiety I suffer from numb my sexual urges down to nill, and I can't imagine wanting to be touched much less penetrated.

A man (or woman) who watches porn for a visual aid to masturbation is not cheating on his or her future or actual partner. Likewise, a man or woman who fantasizes through imagination only is not being unfaithful. Fantasizing about killing someone is not the same as killing them, and fantasizing about sleeping with someone is not the same as sleeping with them. Masturbation and sexual fantasy allow my lover to be sexually gratified, even when I have a headache. Mutual masturbation (masturbating simultaneously with a partner) can be fun, too while still not introducing the risks of vaginal or anal intercourse.

Sex is natural. Sex can be quite fun. Sex with a partner also carries certain risks. Masturbation is safe, fun, and personal. You can masturbate with or without aids, while thinking of the one you love or a stranger in a magazine or just how much you like to be touched. It's also a great way to learn what you like, information which you can then pass on to your partner (whether you have one now or in the future.)

Whether you're just exploring your first sexual feelings, or you're not sexually fulfilled by the one you love, or you're waiting till marriage for intercourse, masturbation is a great way to get the endorphin rush and stress relief benefits of sex. Women achieve orgasm in wildly different ways and different levels of pressure, speed, intensity, etc. in touching a woman's body can produce different levels of sexual fulfillment.

Masturbation can be anything from quickly rubbing one out to release stress (or reduce an erection) to a night with yourself. Light some candles, run a bath, find a juicy book or movie. Touch yourself the way you want to be touched. Don't let the shame of your childhood teachings intrude into your bedroom. Sexual repression never made anyone happy (except perhaps the asexual.)

Love yourself. Then you can teach someone else the way you want to be loved, or you can go the distance alone but well sated.

Divinyls - I Touch Myself - Watch more Funny Videos



p.s. I'm fine in the general sense realizing that I probably have fans out there who think of me when masturbating, but I really would prefer you not TELL me about it. Sure I'm sex-positive, but I'm still a prude! :D

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