The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Equality

"Invalid Entry" 

I'm in way too snarky a mood. Came out of nowhere, this 'what the hell is your problem?' kind of mood. I know what started it, but I've no clue how to reset the day. I can't dwell on it too much, though. It is what it is.

So, I read this leading entry and my head had nothing new in it. I stared at the screen and lost my mind because I really had nothing new to add to this very old subject. My stance has always been that equality is a given, covered it in an entirely different entry a couple days ago to be exact, and I'm over it. Sounds jaded, I'm sure, because the overall sentiment in the leading entry was so positive and light, but it wasn't new to me. Like I said, it should be a given.

I moved away from the generic nature of the post and tried to find my own flavour because that's the point, isn't it? Inequality is everywhere, and I really don't think it's going to be corrected any time soon because I truly feel that it is part of human nature, but which part of it truly ticks me off? What really lights my fire? Racism, creed wars, the battle of fat against skinny? Tired, tired, tired...Old stuff, clean bones, empty plates and I'm still hungry.

Today, my sex is up, and I'm loathe to admit that I had a naughty dream last night about Bret Michaels which ended with a whimper because even in the dream, hungry as I was, I wasn't feeling his hair extensions and hillbilly do rag. Now, even in his heydey, back in the 'Talk Dirty To Me' summer of eighty-whatever, I wasn't into him. He wore more makeup than I did, his pants were so tight I could see what he was thinking, and he sang songs about women which didn't honour or revere them but instead objectified them, which he continues to do today, but with much less hair. Somehow, though, women were into this, and apparently my subconscious isn't as discriminatory as I thought it was, because in dream world I was getting it on with one of the saddest excuses for men, ever.

I woke up confused. I suppose I had the dream because I'm all lusty and such, but also because his show, which I have seen under the guise of 'guilty pleasure' is all about exploiting women and bedding indiscriminately. If you've ever seen the show, you'll know that he always ends up with the girl who seems the smartest of the bunch, which is not hard to accomplish, as they're kind of whorish in the broadest sense of the word. The smart girls (ahem, winners) then usually break up with him because he's really insufferable, just in time for the next season to begin. I associate him with dirty sex, in other words, and he fit the bill when my dreamy self wanted it, the kind you have in dark alleys with men you never want to have dinner with, the kind of body tangling you have when the person your doing it with means nothing beyond a long, body-shuddering orgasm. I say this, and I know this will bring on a bit of discomfort in some people, because a lady isn't supposed to be dirty.

The women we often associate with the word 'dirty' tend to have enhanced breasts and makeup thick enough to require a popsicle stick for scraping off. Bad weaves, plastic heels, gum-chewing and pharmacy perfume. They can barely utter an intelligible sentence, use curse words for adjectives, wear clothing which is three sizes too small, and have had a host of venereal diseases which they don't know the latin for. These are the animals of the woman kingdom-the cougars, the bitches, the cows. We call them these names and immediately we know everything about them: low self-esteem, selfish, stupid and most of all, over-sexed. I know that I always envision these women as bruise-covered, oddly enough. I imagine their long, fake-tanned limbs to be hiding all kinds of obnoxious, tiny islands of purply roughness, never thinking of them as soft and smooth. I also imagine dirt-crusted necks, the smell of nicotine on their fingers and the scent of alcohol on their breath. This is because of the images I've bought into, that women who love sex and aren't afraid to admit to it must be irreparably flawed.

Then, the dream. It's not the first, probably won't be the last. I'm not talking about Bret Michaels, though. Last night was his first and hopefully last time on my ethereal body. What I mean is that I sometimes have those kinds of dreams, the kind where I'm having the dirty kind of sex with people I would never normally give a second thought to, and frankly, those dreams are ridiculously hot, for lack of a better word. What does this mean, though? Does it mean I want to have wild, anonymous sex with people I have a deep, physical attraction to, without the connection and mutual respect? Probably, but my conscious self would never allow it.

The inequality lies in the standard that ladies, or women who have manners and use three syllable words, don't want to have nasty, foul-mouthed sex on occasion. It's like any kind of revelation about the perversions in a lady's character undoes all the other facets to her personality. All we remember is that she likes leather, or that she took on three guys at once, or that she enjoys being tied up. How does any of that change the rest of her personality? If what she likes doesn't interfere with anyone else, how does it matter? Why would we villify her or think less of her just because she has animal instincts like anyone else?

The recent rash of sex tapes which are being 'leaked' the media is really bothering me. That they are being used as payback or as a tool is extremely upsetting, given that everyone at some point or other has sex and it shouldn't be that much of a shock that certain people elect to film it. Now, what I find the most egregious is that it is almost always a woman who is being outed in these films, that the intention of exposing the tape is to either discredit her or to simply exploit her. You almost never hear about a man's reputation being tainted after such a thing happens, all we remember is that the woman was in it, that she was naked, that she did whatever she did to the person she was with. I say 'sex tape', and you think of a female celebrity, right? We think less of those women, too, but hardly ever think of the men involved as having bad morals. It's like as women, we need to keep our sex out of sight, and out of mind. This is how the plastic-shoed, lip glossed, illiterate kind get all the sexual attention, because the rest of us are too afraid to be known as 'whores' or 'women of ill repute', when I'm willing to bet that most of us are probably better at it than they are. We have real passion, you see, and when we get to unleash it, we are on our A-game.

The thing is, though, that very often a lot of women are too shy or ashamed to put their sex out there. I know that I have that problem, too. Like today, M. is on his boat, doing 'boat stuff', and he brought his lap top with him. We decided to connect via webcam, and for a moment, I considered getting naked. It was titillating, that one to two minutes of contemplation, until I considered how shocked he might be, or even, god forbid, offended. Obviously, he's seen me naked before, but the woman in me, the real animalistic woman wants more than incidental nakedness. I want my body to be admired and lusted for before a hand is laid on me. I want to feel like a burlesque performer in a giant champagne glass who is being ogled by amorous eyes. I want the woman in me to burst through the shy girl, to be seen as sexual and desirable as any girl with D-cups and fake hair to her backside. I want what I have to be enough, and for that passionate part of me to be able to break from the cuffs of repression and get locked into the ones on the bedposts. And yet, admitting to this might be...distasteful to some people? As though admitting to my sexual proclivities will somehow dismiss all my intellect and self-respect.

No, it shouldn't be about that, and yet, it kind of is. There is such a ridiculous unspoken standard that overt sexuality translates to promiscuity. I want to get sexual with one man, to explore all of my fantasies with him and to feel comfortable when his eyes rove my body, not only feeling comfortable, but proud and aroused that he's doing so. I want to know that when I'm speaking to him afterward, that he still hears my voice and takes me seriously, never dismissing me because of the things I might say when I'm out of my mind with eroticism. I want the dual personas to be reconciled in a way to allow for both to co-exist without judgment. Just because I want to do it here or there, that way or this way, does not mean I'm not a mother, or a daughter, or a woman who uses three syllable words. Sometimes, the so-called good girl wants to roll in the mud, and I think it's a gross injustice that she often gets judged for it.

No matter what people say, if a woman is blunt about her sexual needs and desires, very often this is all that she is remembered by, and that needs to change. There needs to be some kind of balance between the woman and that which makes her feel like a woman. We need to be able to love our breasts, the way our hips are shaped, the curves of our backs and the way we sound when we're delirious with sexual fever without feeling self-conscious about what it means with regard to our character. I say, we take sex back. I say, I want to feel like a woman; a raw, savage, sexual woman. Sometimes I want to be the hunter, and sometimes I want to be the prey, but I always want some variation of the hunt when it gets down to it. This does not make me a whore, or a woman on shaky moral ground. What it makes me is alive.

If that can't happen tonight, though, I'd really rather have dreams with someone other than Bret Michaels. I mean, come on. All things being equal, he still is kind of a whore.