All right. Enough sex and happiness, let’s get back to the angst and soul searching. That’s why you’re here, right?
Right? Guys . . . ?
I finished writing this post on Monday, it hung around in my drafts folder, and I figure I’ll toss it out while I’m on hiatus and let ya’ll yell at me a bit. I would like to make it clear that this has nothing to do with why I’m taking a bit of a break. I was serious about that break thing. But, y’know, I already wrote it.
Unfortunately, many good things have been overdone. Not least among them is Ayn Rand. (If you don’t know who Ayn Rand is, then I apologize in advance.) Especially when one comes up and says “Oh, I love Ayn Rand. She changed my life.”
Oh, I don’t like that I’m going to say it, but I’m saying it anyway. I love Ayn Rand. She changed my life.
I read her philosophies, badly disguised as novels, beginning when I was about 15. At the time, I felt like I’d been hit with a lightning bolt. Here was someone who was articulating a theory I’d been thinking my entire life, but couldn’t say out loud.
I’m not going to go into the nuances of the theory from an academic standpoint, because frankly that’s all crap when it comes to how ideas affect one’s life. What I came out of her books with (including a better ability to articulate my thoughts) was this; I am my own judge, jury, and executioner. I determine my worth. I determine the value of my ideas, my work. I set my own standards, and I meet my own goals. I decide how beautiful I am, how smart I am, how worthy I am.
And I had better work my fucking ass off, because I owe it to myself to have good standards. I am my harshest critic, and I do not often cut myself slack.
What people rarely say, after coming to this or similar conclusions, is that living with these ideas in mind is sometimes heart-wrenchingly hard. If, like Maymay now or like me 8 years ago, you live in a world that constantly batters, beats down, marginalizes, or ridicules a portion of you, it is overwhelmingly hard to accept or validate yourself.
Especially when you are 18 years old, 50 pounds overweight and feel like you can’t possibly wake up and be more ugly.
Especially when your every mistake and hesitation brings on ridicule.
Especially when your desires are considered taboo, your demands unholy, your tastes profane and your orientation sick.
Especially when you put yourself out and get nothing back.
From George Orwell’s 1984: Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
This is approximately how I would feel some nights, realizing that either I was the person I thought I was, or I was going insane.
And eventually I became confident, and spoke out, and felt sexy, and did good work, and had friends and relationships. But then, which came first, the relationships or the confidence?
What I realized eventually was that Rand’s theories are torn to bits within the context of relationships based on respect, or love. In reality, I determine my goals and standards. I am still my own judge and jury. But also in reality, I do like to be validated by those I respect, and love. That’s the proof I wasn’t going insane all those nights ago.
(Rand would yell and scream and say I don’t need that, but I think perhaps my arrogance is more tempered by reality than hers.)
Eileen, what the hell does any of this have to do with kink?
Elizabeth recently put out a meaningless profile on a dating site, and got back over 100 responses in the first few days. I once posted an ad on Craigslist giving my age, sex and orientation, and asking people to write poems for me. I got over 30 poems. At any point, at any time, any woman who wants to can sign onto a chatroom or a message board that fosters female supremacy and be complimented, engaged, or even worshipped.
These are examples of meaningless validation. This is exactly what I’m railing against when I say that you should respect, love, and know your partner. Validation given without respect grounded in reality is meaningless.
And a lot of people sit on the sidelines, watch these exchanges and simply marvel. They don’t understand why or how people can ever feel good about that kind of relationship.
Well, I am not one of those people who sits on the sidelines and marvels. I know exactly how good that kind of validation can feel. I know it because a little part of me, the part that is still aching from the years of hurt and doubt and doesn’t give a fuck how or why as long as the starvation stops, that part of me likes worthless validation.
All the men who want to argue about how we secretly all just love this superiority, blind adoration thing are hungrily leaning in and waiting for me to spill it. Shoo. I am not writing that post. I’m writing the post about how much I hate that a little part of me likes to be adored. Fuck the source, just give me the worship.
(Self awareness doesn’t just mean you analyze your thought processes, you dig into what makes you tick. It means you seek, find, and face down the parts of yourself that you just don’t like.
If you say there are no parts of you that you don’t like, I think you’re a liar.
If you say you have every one of your personality flaws strictly under control, I think you are either a liar, or you’re deluding yourself. I know I am.)
Put a row of people on their knees with their heads bent. You don’t see their faces, and they don’t see yours. The human race has proven time and time again that many of us are capable of worship without understanding. What we haven’t gotten around to admitting yet is that the same capacity may allow us to accept being worshiped without being understood, if we have the strength of self delusion to force our conscience to look the other way.
(Ever wonder why so many smart kinky people are atheists? Think it might be because we’ve got a firsthand knowledge of the dangers of blind faith?)
You will of course be reiterating that this kind of validation is utterly worthless. And that I should know better, and that I do know better. I know this. You don’t have to explain to me all the ways in which these relationships are false, or all the ways in which I do not do what I’m talking about. This is not a post about the hazards, insults and tears brought on by the culture of worthless validation. This is a confessional post. I am not on a soapbox. I am on my knees.
There is a part of me that will forever be convinced that I am dumb, ugly, and sick. This part is hateful, hurt, and has the rational capacities of a two-year-old. It is, I would like to think, firmly under control. But there’s no denying it exists.
And it loves empty flattery, and worthless validation, even while the rest of my mind recoils in horror.(If you say that empty flattery has never once made even a tiny, stupid, childlike part of you happy, I think you’re a liar.)
I don’t want what I could go out and take without conscious thought. But I understand the starvation mode in which any validation is better than none at all.
If within the space of this post I have falsely accused you of lying, my sincere apologies. Instead, I would like to congratulate you.
I congratulate you on living so solidly within a world of principles and rock-solid, confident conclusions. I congratulate you on actualizing good practice and self worth so completely. I congratulate you for doing what I do not.
If I get approached by someone who knows nothing about me beyond the fact that I have ovaries and red hair, and am dominant, and so wants to worship me, almost all of me is squicked beyond all recognition.
But the part of me that is stupid, young, desperate and hurt, and likes to be validated and doesn’t particularly care how or why, the tiny part of me that I don’t like, refuse to listen to, hate to admit to, and undeniably have . . .That part of me smiles.
