An Open Letter To People Concerned About Kink

You gotta love it when people shame each other, in the name of opposing shame.

No, not “love.” What’s that other word.

As regular readers know, I’ve been posting excerpts here from my kinky erotic fiction book, “Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.” (Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!) Yesterday’s excerpt was from a story titled “The Shame Photos,” which read thusly:

Here’s how it begins: a photographer, and a woman in her thirties or early forties. He is a porn photographer who sometimes does other professional work; she is a professional woman who sometimes looks at porn photos. They meet in some business capacity: a conference, or a corporate shoot. They talk. His camera is on the hotel bar next to their untouched drinks.

“No, it’s not that,” she says. “I like your photos. They’re good. They’re very hot. It’s just…”

“What?” he says. He’s defensive, a little prickly, and also more than a little curious. Apart from critics, not too many people tell him to his face what they think of his work. Or what, precisely, it is that they want from their porn and are not getting. This could be illuminating.

“Well,” she says. “You have these lovely photos of these — scenarios. The women licking someone’s shoes, or dressed up like ponies, or what have you. But they always look sort of — posed. The faces are all wrong. They’re too relaxed, too composed. For the things they’re doing — it’s all wrong.”

“What do you want to see in their faces?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “I want to see shame.”

“Say that again.”

So when I posted a link to this excerpt on Facebook, with an excerpt from the excerpt, I got the following responses. (I’m not going to quote their names, since people have a somewhat higher expectation of privacy on Facebook than they do elsewhere online.)

Luckily, I have never found shame sexually appealing at all.

To which I responded: I don’t consider it unlucky to be kinky, or to have the particular kinks that I have. A lot of people eroticize shame: I’m not the only one. Is there some reason you find it “lucky” to not find shame sexually appealing?

And then I got the following (from two different people, not the original commenter, making a total of three people expressing basically the same sentiment in the course of about eight hours):

“Is there some reason you find it ‘lucky’ to not find shame sexually appealing?” A disinclination for people to feel ashamed, perhaps. I don’t like for people to feel shame.

I have a concern about shame being eroticised. It’s that I just worry it’s psychologically unhealthy. If it isn’t then hey whatever.

Sigh.

Okay. Let me spell this out, as patiently as I possibly can.

I am entirely happy to consensually eroticize shame in my sexual fantasies and my sex life. It is a central part of my sexuality, it makes me happy, and I am at peace with it.

But I don’t appreciate being non-consensually shamed about my sexuality.

Consensual SM — including the consensual eroticization of shame — is just as psychologically healthy as any other consensual sexuality. There’s a significant body of evidence backing this up, and a large community of happy, healthy kinksters who will testify to it. Again: I don’t consider it “unlucky” to be kinky, or to have the particular kinks that I have. A lot of people eroticize shame: I’m not the only one. And I find it troubling that people would not only consider themselves “lucky” to not find shame sexually appealing… but would say this to kinky people, to their faces, in a space dedicated to talking about their kink.

These are people who would almost certainly not tell gay people that they consider themselves “lucky” not to be gay, or that they are “concerned” about their gayness. But kinky people, apparently, can’t expect get the same kind of respect.

This sort of “concern” for the people who practice it, however well-meaning, is part of what stigmatizes us and marginalizes us. It makes it harder to live our lives. Please stop it. Thank you.

An Open Letter To People Concerned About Kink
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"I want to see shame": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Bending cover
Excerpt from “The Shame Photos,” one of the stories from “Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.” Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords! Content note: Kinky sex.

*****

Here’s how it begins: a photographer, and a woman in her thirties or early forties. He is a porn photographer who sometimes does other professional work; she is a professional woman who sometimes looks at porn photos. They meet in some business capacity: a conference, or a corporate shoot. They talk. His camera is on the hotel bar next to their untouched drinks.

“No, it’s not that,” she says. “I like your photos. They’re good. They’re very hot. It’s just…”

“What?” he says. He’s defensive, a little prickly, and also more than a little curious. Apart from critics, not too many people tell him to his face what they think of his work. Or what, precisely, it is that they want from their porn and are not getting. This could be illuminating.

“Well,” she says. “You have these lovely photos of these — scenarios. The women licking someone’s shoes, or dressed up like ponies, or what have you. But they always look sort of — posed. The faces are all wrong. They’re too relaxed, too composed. For the things they’re doing — it’s all wrong.”

“What do you want to see in their faces?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “I want to see shame.”

“Say that again.”

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

"I want to see shame": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Some Nice Things Some People Have Said About "Bending"

Bending cover
Here’s a collection of some nice things people said this week about my erotic fiction collection, Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More. Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

On Twitter:

Chris Hallquist @UncredeibleHalq: .@GretaChristina Bending is a great novella. I just hope I don’t get *too* distracted while trying to work on other things!

Rachel Kramer Bussel @raquelita: New @GretaChristina #erotica #ebook Bending is out & it’s HOT! I’m a fan. Creative & very kinky.

Adele Haze @AdeleHaze: Check out @GretaChristina’s collection of erotica, everyone. I read it, and it made me wank on the tube. Just sayin.

PZ Myers @PZMyers: Bought it. Read first page. Scared me into closing it. Will have to screw up courage.

Jo Alabaster @joalabaster: I popped my ebook cherry tonight and bought @GretaChristina’s latest. Oh my goodness, can she write.

WilloNyx @WilloNyx: Just read the intro to @GretaChristina ‘s new book “Bending” this is gonna be good. Think @VeronicaDire should check it out.

Matt Bunyan @mtbunyan: Just read the first story in @GretaChristina’s new book. It’s suddenly got rather hot in here…

WilloNyx @WilloNyx: Not saying I needed to stop for a sex break a few chapters into Bending by @GretaChristina but yeah I kinda needed that.

Jessica Lloyd @jlloyd714: Bought @GretaChristina’s new book, and I’m in awe of her imagination.

Sonia Zamborsky @pulpologist: Reading the intro to @GretaChristina’s new book while I file my taxes. #nowthatISkinky Yum (and thanks for the brill gift, @scottgrvs)!

julia @j00licious: Dear @GretaChristina: Curse you for writing something I cannot put down for more than 5 mins at a time when I have shit to get done.

WilloNyx @WilloNyx: that was one incredibly hot story. I am up to the bending section. I really love this book.

Matt Bunyan @mtbunyan: @WilloNyx @GretaChristina I’m halfway through power section, absolutely loving the whole book. Every story has been smoking hot so far!

Jo Alabaster @joalabaster: @j00licious @GretaChristina Sadly, it will be over far too quickly. Thankfully, its reread value is still quite high. 🙂

WilloNyx @WilloNyx: Finished Bending. Have to say @GretaChristina’s novella at the end is the best part and there were several stories that were hard to top.

Laura @Laura_Rhymes: @GretaChristina Stop, stop! I’m getting all flushed. I’m about a quarter of the way through the book and couldn’t be happier.

Ozy Frantz @ _ozymandias42: omg @GretaChristina’s Bending is SO HOT everyone should go buy it

Ozy Frantz @ _ozymandias42: …okay so that’s a story about a rainbow and a unicorn having sex???? @GretaChristina wtf

Mercutia @LadyMercutia: @_ozymandias42 @GretaChristina Some of her stories inspire major WTF, but they’re impossible to put down. Or forget.

And on blogs:

Rachel Kramer Bussel, guest blogging on Smokin’ Hot Firemen, Sexual Diversity in Erotica:

I was blown away by Greta Christina’s new ebook Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories about Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More because even though I’ve read a lot of erotica in my lifetime, she still managed to surprise me. Her characters are varied, and approach their sexual desires and fantasies differently. She doesn’t shy away from scenarios that will very likely make many readers uncomfortable—and likely, uncomfortable and turned on all at once.

Avicenna, A Million Gods, Greta’s Book – Bending:

Greta’s book on erotica is out and it’s quite the book. I got a copy for Tigasuku who has been getting some interesting ideas from them…

And PZ Myers, Pharyngula, Greta Christina has a new book:

It’s called Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More. I bought it. I read the first page of the introduction, my gnarled and liver-spotted hands trembling, and saw words that were threatening to my comfortable cis male heterosexual conventionality, and then started getting palpitations. I set it aside. Maybe when I’ve recovered and my heart gets a little stronger, I’ll try the second page.

Unless…maybe one of you can read it and tell me if it’s got stuff suitable for a geezer. Or, you know, I’m not really into unicorns, so maybe you can tell me which page has the hot cephalopod action.

Another possibility is that I could give it to my wife to read. I’m just afraid that if she really likes it, I might not survive the experience.

Or maybe I could ask her to read it aloud to me. That ought to be safe. Like a children’s book, right? Bedtime stories?

Thanks, everyone!

And if you’ve said nice things about Bending on Twitter, blogs, or elsewhere in the public eye, and I haven’t cited them, let me know! I’ll put it in next week’s round-up. If you’ve read the book and liked it, an Amazon review would be awesome. And once again, you can buy the book at Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

Some Nice Things Some People Have Said About "Bending"

Greta Interviewed on "The Thinking Atheist" Podcast!

The_Thinking_Atheist_Logo
My interview on the “Thinking Atheist” podcast has just gone up!

We talk about sex, sex writing, religious repression of sexuality, how people’s sex lives when they leave religion, the process of deconversion, New Age religion, neuropsychology, persuading believers out of religion, religious bigotry, parallels between coming out as atheist and coming out as queer, and more! I had a great time — thanks so much to Seth for having me on the show!

Note: In addition to the awesome podcast, Seth Andrews is author of Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason. Check it out!

Greta Interviewed on "The Thinking Atheist" Podcast!

"It was completely weird": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Bending cover
Excerpt from “Elephant Walk,” one of the stories from “Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.” Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

*****

He was actually talking to her. Like she wasn’t just Josh’s kid sister. Almost like he knew she existed. Which he hadn’t for, like, eight years. And he said she looked good. She was suddenly self-conscious of her little sundress, the skinny straps that kept slipping off her shoulders, the thin fabric you could almost see through in the sun. She pulled her legs up under her, trying to relax, and said, “Oh, you know. Pretty good. Graduation was yesterday, so done with that, thank God. Now I just wanna chill out before, you know, college and stuff…”

“Yeah? Where you going?”

“Berkeley.”

His eyes widened. “Really? Damn. You must be a brain. I had no idea.”

“No — it’s not — I’m not — ” God, why had she said that? Now he was going to think she was stuck-up or something. She tried again. “I mean, I know Berkeley’s all, it seems like, but it’s really not –”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he laughed. “It’s cool to be a brain. You’ll probably make a million dollars.” He took another gulp of her soda. “So, God, it’s been a million years since I saw you. A year and a half, or what? You must be, like, two feet taller. You were such a little shrimp back then.”

“Yeah, yeah. Late bloomer. Whatever.” She hated thinking about that. Last in her class to get her period, last to get breasts, last to get everything. “I’m sick of hearing about it, if you want to know.”

“I bet you are. Hey, Squirt, come here a sec”… and he reached out to the sofa, grabbed her hand, and pulled her into his lap.

She froze. He was acting all casual, like having his friend’s kid sister sit on his lap was something they did all the time. But it was completely weird. She’d known him almost ten years, and she hadn’t sat in his lap once. She’d have remembered. She sat perfectly still, her brain focused on the place where her back was touching his chest, and where the backs of her bare thighs were pressing against his legs.

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

"It was completely weird": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Greta Speaking in Kansas, Orange County, San Francisco, D.C., and San Diego!

Hi, all! I have some speaking gigs coming up, in Kansas, Orange County, San Francisco, D.C., and San Diego! If you’re going to be in any of these areas, I hope you’ll come by and say Hi!

CITY: Lawrence, KS, at the free ReasonFest conference, University of Kansas
DATE: April 19-21; I’m speaking April 21 at 11:20, and am co-hosting/ performing at the Godless Perverts Story Hour on April 21 at 6:00 pm
LOCATION: Woodruff auditorium, 5th floor, Kansas Union, University of Kansas
EVENT/ HOSTS: The Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agoostics, University of Kansas
TOPIC: Sex, Morality, and so much more
SUMMARY: The sexual morality of traditional religion tends to be based, not on solid ethical principles, but on a set of taboos about what kinds of sex God does and doesn’t want people to have. And while the sex-positive community offers a more thoughtful view of sexual morality, it still often frames sexuality as positive by seeing it as a spiritual experience. What are some atheist alternatives to these views? How can atheists view sexual ethics without a belief in God? And how can atheists view sexual transcendence without a belief in the supernatural?
OTHER SPEAKERS: Matt Dillahunty, Taner Edis, Amanda Knief, JT Eberhard, Seth Andrews, Teresa MacBain, Nate Phelps, Bridget Gaudette, David Fitzgerald, Keith Lowell Jensen, Jerry DeWitt, more
COST: The entire conference is free and open to the public!
EVENT URL: http://kusoma.org/reasonfest/

Also at ReasonFest: The Godless Perverts Story Hour takes the show on the road for the first time! In addition to GPSH co-founders and co-hosts Greta Christina and David Fitzgerald, Amanda Brown, Bridget Gaudette, and Keith Lowell Jensen are going to share their insights on religion, godlessness, and fucking. The Godless Perverts Story Hour starts at 6:00 pm.

CITY: Fullerton, CA, at the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference
DATES: May 3-5; I’m speaking at 11:00 am on May 4
LOCATION: Howard Johnson Hotel, Fullerton, CA
EVENT/ HOSTS: Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference
TOPIC: Coming Out: How To Do It, How to Help Each Other Do It, And Why?
SUMMARY: Coming out is the most powerful political act atheists can take. But coming out can be difficult and risky. What are some specific, practical, nuts-and-bolts strategies we can use: to come out of the closet, to support each other in coming out, and to make the atheist community a safer place to come out into? What can atheists learn about coming out from the LGBT community and their decades of coming-out experience — and what can we learn from the important differences between coming out atheist and coming out queer?
OTHER SPEAKERS: PZ Myers, Jessica Ahlquist, Matt Dillahunty, Margaret Downey, Darrel Ray, and Jamy Ian Swiss
COST: Pre-Registration $160, $175 at the door, $35 for students
EVENT URL: http://freethoughtalliance.org/fta/annual-conference/

CITY: San Francisco, CA, at Perverts Put Out!
DATE: Saturday, May 11
TIME: Doors 7:00, show 8:00
LOCATION: The Center for Sex and Culture, 1369 Mission Street, San Francisco
EVENT/ HOSTS: Perverts Put Out!, San Francisco’s long-running pansexual performance series
TOPIC: I have no idea. Sex, probably.
OTHER READERS/ PERFORMERS: Sam Sax, horehound stillpoint, Na’amen Tilahun and Virgie Tovar
COST: $10-25 sliding scale
EVENT URL: http://www.simonsheppard.com/pervertsputout.html

CITY: Washington, D.C., at Women in Secularism
DATES: May 17-19 — my panels are on the 18th and 19th
LOCATION: Washington Marriott at Metro Center, Washington, D.C.
EVENT/ HOSTS: Women in Secularism, hosted by CFI
TOPICS: Panels on “Gender Equality in the Secular Movement” and “What the Secular Movement Can Learn from Other Social Movements”
OTHER SPEAKERS: Susan Jacoby, Katha Pollitt, Maryam Namazie, Ophelia Benson, Stephanie Zvan, Jamila Bey, Rebecca Goldstein, Rebecca Watson, Amanda Marcotte, Debbie Goddard, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Amy Davis Roth, Desiree Schell, Shelley Segal, Soraya Chemaly, Vyckie Garrison, Teresa MacBain, more.
COST: $249; $219 for CFI members; $50 for students
EVENT URL: http://www.womeninsecularism.org/

CITY: San Diego, CA, at the American Humanist Association conference
DATES: May 30 – June 2
LOCATION: Bahia Resort Hotel, San Diego, CA
EVENT/ HOSTS: American Humanist Association 2013 conference
TOPIC: I’m not giving a regular talk — I’m being given an award, the LGBT Humanist Pride award. Neat!
OTHER SPEAKERS: Katha Pollitt, Phil Zuckerman, Rebecca Hensler, Ayanna Watson, Teresa MacBain, Amanda Knief, David Tamayo, Katherine Stewart, more
COST: $299, $25 for students, with travel scholarships available
EVENT URL: http://conference.americanhumanist.org/

Greta Speaking in Kansas, Orange County, San Francisco, D.C., and San Diego!

"She thinks about his hands": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Bending cover
Excerpt from “His Hands,” one of the stories from “Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.” Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

*****

This is what she thinks about, when she thinks about him. She doesn’t think about his eyes, like she likes to tell herself; or about his lips, like she’d tell her friends if they knew about him; or about his cock, like she tells him when she’s in a good mood. She thinks about his hands.

When he wants her, it’s always his hands that go first. Brushing lightly against her face. Sneaking up on her thigh. Massaging the back of her neck, and then inching down over her collarbones to entice her breasts. His hands are smart — smarter than he is, probably — and his hands are sweet when they want to be, and they can make her feel calm and drifty, safe and befriended.

But it isn’t these nice sweet things she thinks about. His hands also do things that make her blush when she remembers, things that make her flinch and quickly look for something to stare at on the floor, convinced that anyone who sees her can read her mind. When she thinks about his hands, these are the things she thinks about.

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

"She thinks about his hands": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Rewriting "Mystery Date"

Mystery Date box cover
In the conversation here in this blog about the “Mystery Date” game and how it served to enforce rigid gender roles and female passivity, one commenter, cubist, has proposed that we create a feminist version of the game.

I’m intrigued by the idea of re-writing the game. I have now wasted waaaaay too much time thinking about how to create game mechanics for a dating-themed board game that reflect the dating world in a way that I like, a way that reflects my values but that also reflects reality, and that would also be silly and fun to play. So I’m jumping off cubist’s ideas and am going to take a stab.

cubist proposes “mutually satisfying relationship” as the goal of the game, but I think that might be too large. Maybe just “enjoyable date”?

First — you get to pick your date. Maybe you have to pick them out of a limited set — that’s how it works in life, you don’t get to date absolutely anyone you want, and after all your dates get to have preferences too. But you could draw, say, five cards from a large deck, and pick the one of the five that you like best.

Dates are of all genders. I agree with cubist that it might be difficult to depict trans people in a simple graphic designy way without being exploitative or exoticizing. Maybe have some dates who are of indeterminate gender? Or with a gender presentation that doesn’t match the gender of their name? And for the poly crowd, maybe some of the “dates” could be couples.

Dates have multiple interests printed on their cards, from a pool of overlapping interests. Say there are twenty total interests in the game, and each date has three. Some of the dates’ interests should be unexpected and break out of stereotypes: a punk rocker with an interest in folk dancing, a business executive with an interest in Burning Man. And of course, some dates can have the same interest as each other: the punk rocker and the business executive can both be interested in Burning Man.

Each interest has three items you need to collect to engage in it. (Or maybe each interest has four or five items connected with it, but you only need to collect three to win.) They don’t have to be clothing items, although some of them can be. Some of them don’t even have to be physical items. For “atheist conference,” for instance, you could need to collect a Surly Amy necklace, a nerdy T-shirt, and a loss of religious faith. Some of the interests could share items: you could need a nerdy T-shirt for both “atheist conference” and “science museum.”

And maybe there should be some sort of wild cards. If you have the “irrational sexual chemistry” card, for instance, it can stand in for any item… since if you have that, it’s going to make pretty much any activity you do more fun. And maybe there should be an opposite: if you land on the “You two are perfect on paper but you just can’t stand each other” space on the board, you have to ditch your date and replace them.

The first player to collect three items connected to one of their date’s interests is the winner.

Thoughts?

Rewriting "Mystery Date"

"Open the curtains": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Bending cover
Excerpt from “View From the Fourteenth Floor,” one of the stories from “Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.” Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords! Content note: Kinky sex.

*****

Elizabeth looked around as the door closed behind her. The room looked untouched, except for an armchair sitting at an odd angle in the dressing nook off the bedroom. The decor was elegant and unpretentious, with tall windows that took up most of the outside wall. Dana switched on all the lights, switched off the one in the dressing nook, settled into the armchair, and began to speak.

“Did you know that every week, dozens of telescopes are sold in the city of New York? Hundreds even, on a busy week. Interesting statistic. Nobody seriously thinks all those people are stargazing in Connecticut on weekends. Everyone knows exactly what all those New Yorkers are doing with all those telescopes. And yet everyone goes on with their lives, in front of their open windows, as if they actually had privacy.

“Open the curtains.”

She could see Elizabeth flinch before she obeyed. Good, she thought. This could work.

*****

If this intrigues you, check out the rest of the book! Now for sale on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords!

"Open the curtains": Excerpt from "Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More"

Mystery Date: Gender Indoctrination for Fun and Profit

Mystery Date box cover
Mystery Date
Are you ready for your Mystery Date
Don’t be late…

An old friend of mine from grade school just shot me a Facebook message, with a “Do you remember when we used to play this?” link to an old TV ad for the board game “Mystery Date.” Boy, howdy, do I remember. It’s set off a whole line of reminiscences and thoughts and internal rantings about pop culture and early childhood gender indoctrination.

Here’s how Mystery Date worked: Players collected cards representing parts of different outfits, appropriate for different kinds of dates: bowling, skiing, the beach, a formal dance. (“Folk dancing,” “lesbian bar-hopping,” “atheist convention,” and “sex party” were, alas, not among the options.) Once you’d gathered an outfit, you spun a doorknob to a little plastic door… and hoped that the man who appeared at your door was dressed for the same date you were. One of the men on the dial was a “dud,” marked by his scruffy, unkempt appearance. Sort of like the 0 in roulette. (According to Wikipedia, there was also a version with a construction worker as one of the “duds” — gee, that’s not classist at all — and I’ve heard of a version where the “dud” was a nerd in Poindexter glasses, but I never saw that one.)

The game, if you hadn’t already guessed, was marketed to girls. Age 6 to 14.

So.

If you’re a girl, and you’re interested in dating and romance, pretty much what you can do is (a) go shopping, and (b) hope. You can’t, you know, actually do anything to ensure that you get to go on the date you want. Like communicate with the guy you’re going out with, to make sure you’re on the same page. Or — okay, this is a wild idea, but hear me out, it’s so crazy it just might work — ask a guy out yourself, for the activity you’d like to do. No, no, that’s ridiculous. All you can do is hope that the right man shows up at your door, who wants to do the same stuff you do. And in the meantime, shop for clothes.

Like, duh. This game has been analyzed to death by feminist critics — it’s pretty low-hanging fruit — and I don’t know that I have a lot to add to the obviousness mix. But seeing the TV ad is sparking some memories of how that indoctrination played out in my own little brain.

Mystery Date dud
I remember, for instance, that I liked the dud. I always thought he got a raw deal, and I always sort of hoped I’d get him, even though getting him meant losing that round of the game. Part of this was probably my stupid “I can fix him!” complex, which wrecked my dating and romantic life for years. But I wonder now if part of it was resistance to the indoctrination. I think I resented the fact that I was being told who to like and who not to like, which guys were winners and which guys were losers. Especially because the “winners” were so insipid, clean-cut to the point of absurdity and out-of-date to boot, like a sarcastic cartoon depiction of a 1950s matinee idol. And besides… bowling? Skiing? Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t know what I wanted to do for romance at age ten or however old I was… but whatever it was, it sure wasn’t that. Definitely — give me the dud.

But I also remember years of dealing with dating and romance by spinning the wheel and hoping the right person showed up. I remember years of waiting to be asked. I remember years of saying “Yes” to people I wasn’t really all that interested in, for fear that nobody else would ever ask. And I remember how ridiculously long it took me to figure out that I could do the asking myself.

Even after I came out as a dyke, this was hard. I remember going to a lesbian sex club once — okay, fine, more than once — and being struck by how few of the women there were actually having sex, and how many were just standing around watching, obviously wanting to get into the action but not knowing how to even get started. I remember realizing that most of the other women at the club were having the same anxious passivity I was, and that if I wanted to actually get laid, I’d have to be the one to do the asking. And I remember how hard it was to screw up the courage to ask a woman to have sex… at a freaking sex club.

Mystery Date game board
For the record, I don’t think this was just Milton-Bradley’s fault. Girls and women get taught passivity in a zillion different ways, and I’ve always had my own self-confidence issues anyway. But yeah: a childhood spent collecting a bowling outfit and hoping a ski bum didn’t show up at my door sure didn’t help.

You wanna know the interesting thing, though? The thing I hadn’t remembered until now? The thing I’d totally forgotten until my friend reminded me of it?

The friend who pinged me to say, “Hey, remember when we used to play ‘Mystery Date'”? He was a guy. Still is, as far as I can tell.

I have no idea what made my childhood self ask one of my male friends if he wanted to play “Mystery Date.” But maybe we were already a little ahead of the indoctrination game. Not far enough ahead to dump the game in the back of the game closet where it belonged and just play “Clue” or “Hang On Harvey” instead… but far enough that it didn’t occur to me that boys wouldn’t want to play, too.

Mystery Date: Gender Indoctrination for Fun and Profit