Ms160 (museum curator, currently curating a traveling exhibition on kinky couture)

I know what you mean about feeling old or I think a beter term is experienced and travelled.

That behavior that you describe when combined with my observations of the (my age and older) crowd at the museum would serve for a good basis for the theory that the majority of people in our culture are never educated or encouraged in sexual aspects beyond the level of children.

Ha. May’s comment on this is “Duh!”

When I was fourteen, I had amassed a considerable collection of penthouses, which I kept in a compartment of my bed’s frame which was difficult to access. I had a number of friends who would come over when my parents weren’t home, to view my stash.

One fellow I remember, while turning each page (containing wholly vanilla pornography), would mutter “sick” which what sounded like sincere revulsion. And yet he kept turning the pages.

Children cast derision on things they know they are not permitted to appreciate. The more the appreciation, the greater the derision.

Confrontation is an option, but not a very effective one. It migth be my ever-present instinct to be easy going, but I find those confrontations, if you need to have them, go better when framed as half joking. Instead of “I happen to like the thing you think is icky” I’m more likely to say “Seems kind of hot to me” with a sly grin on my face.

I’m surprised to hear that Folsom had so much of the same attitude. There was a street fair here in NYC recently that apparently got a *ton* of mainstream attention. I hope you still had a good time!

I’ve been feeling like I was older than people my age for years. Not quite the same as feeling like an adult among children, since I was smart enough at the age of 12 to know that feeling older didn’t make me an adult. My adulthood is relatively new.

I resist the temptation to say something nasty.

Aw. Thanks.

Yep. I just had a dose of that at, of all places, the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. I do agree with everyone else on here that a large part of it can be chalked up to nervous interest, but still…doesn’t feel good to be laughed at, and I can’t help but shrink just a little further back into the closet when I hear people making disgusted faces and “gross!” comments about stuff I enjoy. I wish I had a better way of dealing with it than simply ignoring as much as I can, and trying not to let it get to me. But what’s the alternative — confronting people about it? “Hey, I happen to like that thing you think is so icky and weird and perverted…”