gender

Podcast: Knowledge Gaps in Intersex Health Care (undark.org)

I always thought that if I had kids I'd want to raise them fairly gender neutral. I would allow them to decide what they want to wear, play with, participate in. tho I admit, I will cringe my little girl will only wear pink and play with dolls, or if my little boy only wants to play with guns and wear camo. 

this extends to if i had an intersex child. unless it was medically necessary, I wouldn't want to have my child undergo gender "assignment" surgery. like, what if I make the wrong decision? what if I choose for my child to be a boy and they grow up feeling like a girl? or what if they never want to choose? ugh. no thanks. kid, you can decide and I'll support you no matter what.

I understand that childhood will be much harder for an intersex kid. for some reason people are obsessed with sex and gender. people apologize to me and roux when they mislabel him as a girl. like, what difference does it make? least of all to him! but I think being honest with my child, and allowing them to make their own decisions is the most respectful thing I can do. this is their life and I don't think I should be able to, basically unilaterally, decide this for them.

trans rights

"discrimination laws don't apply to transgender people"?! well, I looked up the laws and can see how they don't. =\ I mean, technically transgender people change their gender, but not their sex (which is biological and has to do with the x and y chromosomes) so I can see how a total asshole of an employer can legally discriminate someone over this.



an article about Aminee Stephens and her case: She came out as transgender and got fired. Now her case might become a test for LGBTQ rights before the US Supreme Court.

the case is still pending, but hopefully, if SCOTUS does hear it, they will make the right decision. trans people already suffer so much, they need to be protected against employment discrimination.

4x

taken from theskimm on Oct 8th:

A new report shows that LGBTQ+ diversity on TV is at an all-time high. Last year, the advocacy group GLAAD called on the TV industry to do better when incorporating LGBTQ+ diversity. And called for 10% representation on screen by 2020. Yesterday, it released a report saying the industry delivered with 10.2%.
The study also shows that LGBTQ+ women characters outnumbered LGBTQ+ men on broadcast TV for the first time ever... There was also an increase in the number of transgender characters. But GLAAD doesn't want to stop there.
It's challenging the TV world to get to 20% by 2025. And that within the next two years, all platforms should make sure at least half of the LGBTQ+ characters in shows are people of color.

I'm definitely not against representation, but how much representation is "fair"? a gallup poll in 2017 "concluded that 4.5% of adult Americans identified as LGBT." so at 20%, GLAAD wants a major over representation of a minority group, which seems kind of uncool.

of course, 20% is still very small compared to 80%, but with any over representation you're in a sense discrimination against the other. I don't care if there are fewer straight characters on tv, but what if we were to request the same representation of other minorities?

asians make up about 6% of the general population of america; should we ask for 1 in 4 of characters in media to be asian? that may not be a problem, but hispanics make up 16.7%, so 4 times that would be nearly 67%. we're out of percentages if we add all up all the non-whites in america and multiplied that by four, so there would be negative caucasians on tv.

do i sound gay?

i recently watched the documentary "Do I Sound Gay?"

i won't get too much into the premise other than that a guy, who is gay, worries that he sounds too gay. he does a bunch of interviews and visits two speech coaches.

apparently gay "sounds" like either, but apparently it's speaking with a lisp, increased nasality, enunciation, a wider pitch range, breathy voice, certain lengthened vowel sounds, and adding like an "s" sound to some non-s sounds. gay speech is also stereotyped as resembling women's speech, maybe because young gay boys hang out more with women (because straight guys make fun of them, beat them up, etc.)

so i'm curious. what about gay guys who grew up around men only? or straight guys who grew up surrounded only by women (one guy in the documentary did, and he has a very high pitched voice. i don't think his speech had the other stereotyped traits, but from pitch alone, he certainly sounded female)? and do gay russian or chinese or bolivian guys also "sound gay" the same way americans do? can people identify sexual orientation people speaking foreign languages? probably not, because we're not particularly good at correctly identifying sexual orientation from speech alone, even when it's all in english.

but i'm also curious about lesbians and everyone on the spectrum. do lesbians speak differently as well? and if there really is a "gay" characteristic of speech, how to bisexuals or asexuals, etc sound?

interesting blog post that addresses some of my questions. https://joeclark.org/soundinggay.html

scared

Guys ask why women are so pissed off. Even guys with wives and daughters. Jackson Katz, a prominent social researcher, illustrates why. He's done it with hundreds of audiences:

"I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.
Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.'
Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine. Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don't go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don't put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man's voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don't use parking garages. Don't get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men. Vary my route home from work. Watch what I wear. Don't use highway rest areas. Use a home alarm system. Don't wear headphones when jogging. Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime. Don't take a first-floor apartment. Go out in groups. Own a firearm. Meet men on first dates in public places. Make sure to have a car or cab fare. Don't make eye contact with men on the street. Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.”

 ― Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (The first man to minor in women's studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, holds a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and education from UCLA.)

i read this and related to the women, but, strangely, also very much to the men. honestly, i don't normally think about my physical safety, even when i travel alone.

from the above list, i only do two. 1. hold my keys in between my fingers to use as a weapon and 2. meet men on first dates in public places. the 1st i haven't done in years. I honestly don't remember the last time I did it. as for the 2. well, i don't date anymore. but when i used to i would put dating profile time, "real" name, phone number, and meeting place into my gcal so if i went missing, my friends could look up who i last went on a date with.

these lists make me wonder if 1. there's something wrong with me or 2. people (in this case, specifically women) aren't too scared. i too have been sexually assaulted. i suppose that it wasn't a violent thing by a stranger means i don't have an increased fear of random men. but i don't seem to have much of a fear of them at all?

i remember once saying to r that i don't know the last time i was scared of a person. i'm scared of all kinds of stuff, bugs especially. i also startle easily, and am not particularly brave, yet, most people seem harmless to me. i wonder why that is, and if i'll end up regretting not having that fear.

china notes 3

Gender parity - there are a lot of women doing what in America is generally considered men's jobs. Lots of ladies on the airport tarmac, in Security, and doing construction jobs, even carrying heavy loads of rocks in straw baskets on their backs. 

Minorities - cool that they highlight them but it seems a little exploitative too. 

Tibetans - that yak butter tea isn't bad and I love their traditional clothing, those simple robe-like things and long skirts? I wish I could've bought one tho really, where would I wear it?

Clothing - the women here dress so femininely. Dresses, skirts, and blouses with flowers, lace, and ruffles. After coming here I always think i should dress a little more girly, especially this year, what with the short hair. Still, there are a lot more women in sneakers now, and shorts are shorter too, tho tank tops are still uncommon. I actually went into a store with the full intention of probably buying something but just could not find anything I wouldn't feel stupid wearing. I need to satorically branch out...

Cute guys - almost a complete lack of attractive men here. And it's not just where I traveled to this time. I've thought this every time I've come. A big part of this is probably because I was brought up in a western society so my tastes skew away from east Asian guys, but a lot of the men on their TV and advertisements are good looking so where are they irl? Their clothes don't help tho, lol.

Tattoos - way more now on the young people, even the women. Still rare tho, and very few big pieces like half or full sleeves. Very little color, and mostly abstract pieces. 

Smoking - less than before, but still a lot. Don't think I saw a single woman smoke tho, interestingly enough.

I'm tall! Not by a lot, but a couple inches than most of the women here, old or young. Imma keep visiting south China, lol.

Grooming - lots of guys with long fingernails with one super long pinkie fingernail. They openly use toothpicks and also clean their ears at the dinner table. Females rarely shave. 

Kids - the little emperor thing is real. But I did see multiple families with more than one kid, which was always surprising.  

On my 6th trip to China I'm a little surprised by how easily I become Chinese again: jaywalking, cutting lines, verbally snapping at randos, I rarely even take photos of bad English signage anymore. I've been assuming this is going to be my last trip for a while. No longer being safety director likely means no thank you china trip. on paper I'm still the head of the uscdbc so who knows, tho I can't be bothered to try to earn this trip anymore. Honestly, I've seen so much of China I can't believe it. I've really tried to pack it in each time (excluding my first icdbf trip) and I'm so thankful for the financial gift of nearly every flight, and especially for the highlights of china tour in 2005 from my parents which has proved invaluable for time saving in all my subsequent trips. Coming back to xian was a bit like coming home, and that it may serve as the book ends to my China travels is so fitting. of all the cities I've seen I feel like I've done them all thoroughly enough I don't need to visit them again (excluding chengdu, which I've passed thru four times already but have yet to spend a full day there). I've seen the best of the historical, cultural, modem, and now natural side to China and I'm ready to finally cross it off my bucket list. ...tho having said that, I'd still love to return :)

female privilege

we always hear about male privilege, which totally exists. but you know what else exists too? female privilege. some examples from a random internet article. this author doesn't mention the other really big one that makes me angry: that women aren't required to registered for the military as soon as we turn 18, which means that we'll never get drafted. the other terrible one is #6 and #7 which i'm pretty sure i've mentioned before as being ridiculously unfair.

i don't agree with everything on the list tho. #12? no, people do express surprise that i have feelings. and i don't think #15 is even true. yeah, we do graduate more than men, but i don't know how much of that has to do with being encouraged and supported. and i'm pretty sure that female are NOT favored in school, regardless of age. i know there were numerous studies about how boys were called on more often than girls, and i can't imagine that in the 10 years since learning that things have changed so much girls are now being called on more than boys.

anyway, didn't really want to comment too much on this. just wanted to say that we each have our struggles. everyone deals with discrimination of some sort, and on the flip side, everyone has their privileges also.

trans-racial?

rachel dolezal - white person who identifies as black (and head of the spokane chapter of naacp)
caitlyn jenner - biologically male who identifies as female

here's why people shouldn't compare dolezal to jenner: there are significant physical differences between male and female brains and there are none in brains of people with different ethnicities.

scientists can look human brains and be able to identify the sex of the person the brain belonfed to (maybe not like, just, on the surface, with after poking around the brain a bit). scientists can do this with good certainty and be correct a large majority of the time. they can't for brains of people of different color. not even "purebreds."

a lot of what we consider ethnicity, honestly, is culture. sure we have a lot of physical differences and some of those are not entirely superficial (like how hair, eye, skin colors are pretty much insignificant, whereas differences in muscle and tendon physiology makes for different kinds of athleticism which certainly influenced our history as developing cultures [which isn't so important now, but would certainly matter if zombies turn out to be real and we need to run from them {tho really, physical fitness will matter far more than types of muscle striation}]).

some people have come out to say they doubted dolezal's "blackness" based on things she would say. specifically, how she said it. read: accent and slang. but that's dumb. if a black person were raised in an amish community, in rural mongolia, or by the british royal family they wouldn't talk the way blacks do here. those are cultural differences. they are not innate. identifying as black implies that there are significant biological differences amongst races, which i think most people would deny (and not just so as to appear politically correct).


speaking of biological differences in the brain. i'd love for transgender people to donate their brains to science so we can see if there are differences. esp if the transgendered person wasn't on hormones.

dress codes

High School Crop-Top Dress Codes Send the Message That School Is for Boys

i've never understood why women need to protect the chastity of men (or vice versa). how difficult it is for a man to NOT rape a woman anyway? i would think that it should be quite easy, should he respect her as a human being who has rights to her body the same way he has rights to his own. and since you can't completely cover up every woman, covering up the majority of them really draws attention the ones who aren't dressed as modestly. furthermore, rape is a global problem. but it seems like the majority of violent rapes (or group rapes) are in counties where there are less individual liberties, and are especially high in countries with more gender inequality.

on a less broad topic though, should minors be allowed to wear whatever they want to school? i would argue no. not because girls who dress provocatively will distract boys, but because minors shouldn't dress sexily at all! there should be modesty codes at school because they are kids. just as a kid shouldn't swear in school, they shouldn't wear crop tops, sag so their whole ass is hanging out, or wear unsafe shoes. unsafe shoes? yeah, i  think kids shouldn't be allowed to wear stilettos or flip flips to school (well, kids under high school anyway). those shoes aren't good for your feet. arch supported flip flips i can get behind, but since it would be crazy for schools to allow some flip flips but not others, they should probably just ban them all. anyway...

the author does make a really good point about how schools do allow boys to go shirtless when playing sports, btw. i didn't realize how much more sexual a girl's belly is than a boy's whole fucking torso.

another girl took to her senior quote to speak out about dress codes.

cheating stats

a few infidelity statistics

Marriage Infidelity Statistics	Data
Percent of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional	41 %
Percent of men who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had	57 %
Percentage of women who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had	54 %
Percent of married men who have strayed at least once during their married lives	22 %
Percent of married women who have strayed at least once during their married lives	14 %
Percentage of men and women who admit to having an affair with a co-worker	36 %
Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity on business trips	35%
Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity with a brother-in-law or sister-in-law	17 %
Average length of an affair	2 years
Percentage of marriages that last after an affair has been admitted to or discovered	31 %
Percentage of men who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught	74 %
Percentage of women who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught	68 %
Percent of children who are the product of infidelity	2.5 %

Infidelity has a lot of names; cheating, adultery, extramarital sex, or having an affair. Most people would consider any violation of a couple's assumed or stated agreement regarding emotional or sexual exclusivity. It is reported that 2.5% of all children born were secretly conceived with a different partner.

interesting stuff!! i think the most shocking stat for me is that the average length of an affair is two whole years. i mean, that's a damn long time! also interesting is that it seems as tho the main reason people don't cheat is they they're afraid of getting caught. i wonder what exactly they're afraid of? i believe that a lot of people who cheat still honestly love their spouse. so are they afraid that if they're caught cheating then the relationship will be over? because that seems like a pretty likely. or are they afraid of hurting the person? (i hope this is the one!)

btw, i think the % of kids resulting from infidelity is so low because these adults are lying to themselves (or are being lied to). but, of course, cheating can be defined in many ways and it doesn't always have to involve sex.

another interesting article about how cheating may be genetic. 

what we all want

What Guys Really Want In A Partner Is Super Depressing

numbers aside, what it comes down to is this. men want wives to be nothing like daughters. which is, in case you didn't get it, an impossibility. in general, men prefer daughters to be smarter, stronger, and more independent than their own wives. good thing for wives tho, we're supposed to be pretty in a way our daughters are not encouraged to be. lol.

the article does a weird guy bashing thing where it tells men to "get over it." that's rude. i imagine women feel much the same way about their husbands and sons. no one wants the short end of the stick. and most of us would prefer a spouse to be successful enough to make enough money so that we can loaf around at home all day. but you wouldn't want your son (or daughter) to marry a lazy gold digger. even tho you'd like to dig right alongside of them!

fyi, the article this article talks about is also worth a read: an insight into the 21st century man

last meal

On Death Row, Women Want Salad for Last Meal. It’s no secret that men and women eat differently. Turns out, they stay true to their habits to the very end.

firstly, i wonder what women in other countries / cultures want. is it the same type of thing? do women or men in the isolated jungles of the amazon also do this?

second, i wonder what i'd want! i'm tempted to list every food i love, but they'd never let me have so much... i'd definitely order a lemonade. maybe steak and mashed potatoes. well... some kind of potatoes. or maybe a grilled cheese sandwich and herbed potatoes. mac and cheese with scalloped potatoes? or ramen from santouka, or a cup o noodles, or french onion soup, or soondubu. maybe some charcuterie and a simple cheese plate, with olives. a fruit salad with berries mango and pineapple, or strawberry surfrider smoothie from jamba juice. or a small bit of french bread with tons of butter. for dessert i'd want either a fruit sorbet or rainbow sherbet. hahaha, i'm pretty set for the drink and dessert, it's everything in between i'm having trouble with. there are definitely fruits in my last meal tho. veggies... not so much.

third, alcohol is prohibited, right? that's why no one got any? that seems a little unfair. i mean, they haven't even have like, half a shot of whiskey or half a pour of gin?

what about you?

big and tall

petition to old navy to stop up-charging for women's plus sized clothing:
https://www.change.org/p/gap-inc-stop-up-charging-for-women-s-plus-sized-clothing

video of the issue and gap inc's (gap owns old navy) response:
http://www.today.com/style/old-navy-defends-charging-more-plus-size-womens-clothes-1D80283144

it doesn't bother me that retailers charge more for plus sized clothing. it absolutely bothers me that they charge more for plus sized women's and not plus sized men's! but after watching the today show video, i wonder if there isn't some truth behind why they charge extra for women's than for men's. however! i think the main reason they charge women more is that they know women will pay it. in my life, the women all have way more clothes than their significant others. they all shop more than the men to do. so i think that it does come down to sexism. which is unfair and wrong, tho not entirely unexpected.

women routinely are up-charged for all sorts stuff. everything to shampoo to razors, lotion to deodorant, even hair cuts. you'll notice that salons prices differently for men or women. but no on the complexity of the cut! it's true that many men have simpler hair styles than women, but not all of them! some people refer to this as the "pink tax."

i don't like the color pink, or most pastel colors, so i don't at all mind buying men's products instead. i have before, actually. problem is that they don't sell the same. men's scents are musky and not my thing. i do like floral and citrus scents. which men's personal products don't smell like. bah. but anyway. the pink tax is bullshit.

transgender law

i'm confused. for a transgendered man (i think this means was a woman is now a man), if the US military starts drafting people, will he get drafted? or if the US doesn't change the laws and "continues" to only draft men, will a transgendered woman be drafted?

...see this is one of the reasons the govt should not draft based on sex. made no freaking sense to begin with, makes even less sense now!

no offense

rip and i were talking about about transgenders recently. about how awkward it can be during the transition period. if people don't know you very well, how to people refer to you? i certainly don't want to offend you in anyway. but i guess i couldn't really offend you if i'm talking about you rather than to you (that sounds rude, but just something like "oh, i ran into jesse the other day. s/he was wearing the coolest shoes!")

since we were actually talking about a person rip knows, i asked how s/he dressed: more feminine or masculine? whichever you identify with more i'd refer to you as. rip said that he now wears earrings, but wore gender neutral clothes. ...well that's no help. rip said that he thinks he's on hormones, but he hadn't changed his name. but ricky can be a female's name too, ricki lake, for instance. (we don't know how he spells it)

rip said that another male to female he knows uses to women's restroom. i said that made sense since she identifies as a female, and, i guess in some way more importantly, dresses as a female. rip said that he thinks she hasn't had bottom surgery tho, so would i, as a woman, be uncomfortable with her in my restroom? i said only if she came in, whipped her penis out, and started peeing in the sink. i have no idea what she's doing in the stall so i don't care. tho it would weird me out a little if i looked over and saw feet facing the toilet while hearing peeing sounds. but as long as woman (a person looking female anyway) walked out, i'd be okay with that. i said that it seemed much easier that she use a women's bathroom than men's bathroom because it would take basically no explaining at all. even if she used a urinal in a men's room, there'd still be the awkward moment when she walks in and no one knows what to think.

i emphasized "identifying as" rather than already fully transitioned, since transitioning can take a lot of time and money. also, i have no idea what's in your pants, even if you did get surgery to change it, so it would seem a little weird to refer to you by whatever is in there.

rip said the "identifying as" thing bothered him. what if he identified as a little person? what if he was tired of everyone thinking of him as tall so he decided to live life as a much shorter person? i feel that analogy is a very poor one, since, well, you're either short or tall, you can't really "fake" it. it's not like gender, where you can change your name, wear another style of clothing, and have people refer to you as another pronoun.

anyway, i think it's weird that rip seems to have more of a "problem" with transgenders when he personally knows a few. i thought it was more of the "gay friend effect," where the more gay people you know, the more likely you are to feel that there's nothing wrong with being gay. EDIT: to be clear, he doesn't actually have a problem. the identifying thing bothers him. though i'm not entirely sure why?

altho, both of us think it's a little weird when a transgendered person is gay. like if you were born a female, but identify as a male (whether or not your transitioning i don't think that matters), and like men. so you're gay, but you're also straight. hahah, this stuff is confusing. i'm glad i never questioned my gender or my sexual preferences. makes life a lot easier! i mean, sheesh, i imagine it's less confusing for a person actually going thru this stuff, but it can't be much easier, right? then you got ignorant people like me and rip wondering about stuff but are too embarrassed to ask questions! (since neither of us knows anyone in this position exceptionally well, and it's certainly none of our business anyway!)

natural woman

First transgender MMA fighter goes public

so here's in interesting story: a man who used to be a woman is now fighting women professionally in mma. yes, she's had gender reassignment therapy and yes, she's been on "hormone therapy long enough to remove gender-related advantages."

now, i don't know any of the science behind this stuff, but can hormone therapy remove all gender-related advantages? this is fighting we're talking about. physically stronger fighters have a distinct advantage over physically weaker ones, training and natural talent be damned. it's one of the reasons there are weight classes. men are, on average, quite a bit stronger than women. and men also tend to have much stronger upper bodies than women. it's just the way we're built. i don't see how hormone therapy is able to change physical differences to the point of us having insignificantly different muscle mass ratios.

i'm not not saying that she shouldn't be able to fight professionally. but i do wonder if there should be other restrictions. maybe she'd having to fight in a higher weight class, i don't know.

this does all bring to mind, tho, the story of hermaphrodite runner Caster Semenya.

we're all delusional!

a must read. seriously. it's hilarious! Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends"

"...men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt... men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends." i can't tell you how true this rings to me. haHA! rip thinks almost every girl likes him that way. even my friends. friends with whom i have confirmed that they have never liked him at all. he thinks they're lying. it's madness! i almost never think it anymore. maybe i'm too self-absorbed to notice the "signals"? and when the occasional guy does express attraction, i'm always like "what?! where did this come from?"

"Although men were equally as likely to desire “romantic dates” with “taken” friends as with single ones, women were sensitive to their male friends’ relationship status and uninterested in pursuing those who were already involved with someone else." this one is really interesting. i've had a couple guys tell me that they would "wait for me" or something nutty like that. i've never felt even vaguely inclined to say that to someone. i've never even thought it. he's taken. i'm moving on. duh.

"These results suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just friends.”" which is why rip pretty much hates every new guy friend i make because he thinks they're all attracted to me. and i am always shocked when they actually are! and also why i've always been right about those couple girl friends of his i was worried about. though apparently i should have been worried about all of them!

"Males were significantly more likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships." not sure what to think about this one. probably because i wouldn't list it as a benefit, lol. we are our stereotypes!!

halloween

it goes without saying that i have a huge problem with unnecessarily slutty halloween costumes. there's a pretty funny tumblr called "fuck no sexist halloween costumes" that has side by side comparisons of some costume ideas.

but i'm actually blogging about the video clip from abc's "what would you do?" if you're too busy/lazy to watch the 7+min clip, you can see the gif summary here.

rip and i talked about something similar, which i blogged about. i'm not going to go into detail about how i feel and why (since my opinions haven't changed), but i wouldn't have too big of a problem if my kids wanted to cross dress for halloween. i myself did it in high school for god's sake.

bachelors in china

a single man: one chinese bachelor's search for love

omg what a freaking sad article! btw, this is about a bachelor in china, not about a chinese guy here in the states.

“China is probably the only country in the world that mandates a girl to marry someone two years older than herself,” says Cai, referring to a law that allows women to marry at 20, but requires men to wait until 22. 

“For Chinese women who want to date or marry, it’s easy. ridiculously easy.”

"And as the gender imbalance grows, it increasingly affects poor women in even darker ways, contributing to a rise in forced marriages, prostitution, and human trafficking."

"For the past 20 years, eternal bachelorhood has become an increasingly likely fate for Chinese men, particularly for those in remote areas without access to jobs. As this group of desperate, sexually frustrated men grows, the situation could become even more grim... In 2007, Edlund published a study that showed that a 1 percent increase in sex ratio could lead to a 5 percent increase in crime rate"

"This trend could create a new marriage economy, she says, encouraging lower-class parents to sex-select for daughters while the wealthy continue to have sons. Relegated to the underclass, women’s growing financial value could prime them for exploitation by their impoverished parents who could sell them to wealthier families for ever-increasing bride prices."

cheaters2

"Study Claims Men Resent Sexual Infidelity, Women Jealous Of Shared Love"

"while men felt guiltier for cheating on their partner sexually, women felt guiltier about being unfaithful emotionally. Men... would feel guiltier about having a one-night stand than falling in love with someone else (without sex). Women had the opposite response."

another study asked "400 people if it would be more upsetting for their partner to form an emotional bond with another person or sleep with them, men tended to be more disturbed by sex and women by the emotional bond."

i wonder if this might be true in my case. altho i have liberal views about sex outside of relationships, i think that sex (or anything relating to it, even fantasies [i know that sounds crazy. but if you're to do it, you shouldn't indulge your fantasies. and please don't fucking tell me about it]) within a relationship should be between the couple only. in other words: no fantasies about others, no porn, and certainly no sex workers (e.g. strippers and whores).

a big part of me not wanting my boyfriend to engage in any sexual activity outside of me (not physically me, you understand) is that i feel that i should be enough. if you're sexually satisfied, then you shouldn't want to look at / touch other naked people. if you're not sexually satisfied then we should work on that. i also think it's a matter of respect. i have all the same parts as any other woman (tho not the same size), and since you love me, you should prefer mine. and since i do not deny you access to my  lady bits, you should enjoy mine exclusively.

my boyfriend does not see it this way. apparently porn and strippers are just visual stimulation. nothing to do with me, our relationship, or emotions. i don't see how this is possible. if you see something you like, and you don't currently have it, don't you start to make comparisons and maybe start to wish you had it?

example, i can't "shake it" (nothing specific, but i don't have much to shake on top, and i don't know how to shake what i do have on bottom). if he sees some naked lady shaking her stuff in a way he finds pleasing, wouldn't a natural progression of thought lead to "i wish stephanie did that" (if he even bothers to think of me at all!!). maybe he'll describe the act to me, which i might try and fail at. he'll see her in his mind, very adroitly shaking, and forever more, whenever he thinks about shaking lady bits, he'll think about how great she was and how damn lousy his girlfriend is.

obviously comparisons will be made about other things, "that other girl tells jokes better than stephanie," "that other girl is prettier than stephanie." but none of it as personal as sex.

our relationship has some pretty serious issues from the beginning, so many of our arguments come back to that i don't feel like i'm the number one girl to him. which, of course, is a pretty damn terrible feeling. especially considering that i'm generally pretty self-confident, this sits particularly unwell with me. so i guess for me, cheating either way hurts equally. no matter what, i'll feel like i'm not a priority to him and that he'll always think someone else is better.

oh, btw, that second study i quoted "also implied that these reactions to cheating have to do with more than just gender and are rather explained by how a person was raised to deal with intimacy. ...both men and women with "dismissive" or "hyperindependent" senses of detachment -- meaning that they were taught as a child to avoid intimacy -- were more jealous of sexual infidelities. Those with "secure" attachment, male or female, were more likely to be disturbed by emotional infidelity."

this is actually kind of funny, because when reep and i were "fighting" the other day about porn i brought up that i think he's emotionally stunted. turns out science might actually back me up on this!