Balls First

To start off, a short story:

Kitty left the larp we attended before I did.  He was done there, and no longer having fun, and so he needed to leave.  As we were both doing logistics at the time, I took over, and continued to attend.  However, given the amount of time we spent together at events, no one really bothered trying to do anything with me because he was always there.

Well, literally the event after he left I'm walking up to where some people are hanging out to join in on conversation, and a guy who is a known douchebag walks up to me.  He cuts me off in my tracks, grabs me by the shoulders, and tells me he's high, and that he wants to drag me into the woods to fuck me.

Needless to say I'm a little put off by this and say something to the president of the larp.  He comes back to me later, telling me that he said he was just joking.

Um, excuse me, the fuck?  He's not my friend, and if he was, he'd know that any sort of joke like that would be met with a fist to the sternum.  

The next event, a friend and I are staying in a kitchen inside the building that gets used in winter as sleeping space.  I'm up against the wall, and he's across the center of the room.  We're each in our own little set ups, with several feet between each other.  Shortly after we go to bed, we hear the door open, and the same douchebag walks in, and I tell him the room is being used, and to go find somewhere else to sleep.  He asks if it's me, and I say yes, and tell him to go, because I'm tired, and want to go to bed.  

To which I hear him walking up, and unzipping his pants.  As he gets midway across the room, he nearly steps on my friend, who hasn't made a sound.  Douchebag asks who is there, and my friend just says "Hi" grabs his ankle, and twists it until he falls on his ass.  I tell him to go find somewhere else to sleep, and that if he ever comes near me again, he won't be able to.

And now we fast forward to present day.

I read an article the other day that talked about cismenfolk and sexuality.  That they're taught to be predators, that women are to simply fear it, and that it's simply excused away as how things work.  And, given the story above, I have some real world experience that this can be very true.  

It also talked about how men tend to be the one to pursue women, and they are rarely the ones feeling desired.  Which, in a lot of ways I also agree with.  It made me think of conversations I've had in the past, where friends who legitimately meant well would talk about how they were working on getting closer to a girl in order to have a chance at sex with them, and how I'd be telling them that if they have to work on earning sex, they aren't the person you should be having sex with.

It reminded me of a friend and a conversation I had with Lux lately.  About how our friend is throwing himself at people just for the chance of getting laid.  He's seeing women as a source of sex, rather than just people, and so he's attracting the type of women who will string him along while he hopes his dick might get wet at the end of the day.  

Here's the thing though, when you see people as a source of sex, either someone gets hurt, you wind up with sex you don't want, or sex that won't last.  It also is generally very visible, and if people see that desperation, they usually won't bite.  Which, again, starts to go back to the article.  At that point, the men crave feeling desired, but women are taught to repress their sexuality, and makes things way more difficult overall.

Now, I have no problem showing menfolk that I'm attracted to them (so long as they aren't awkward).  I however know that I am very much in the minority when it comes to actively showing men attention.  In return though, I notice that when men see that, they're either offput, or they treat me more like a person than before, which kind of creates more of a problem with it.

There's a lot of issues with how we're bred into sexuality, and it's going to take a while to break all of those habits.