On Porn: The Blinders are Off

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TRIGGER WARNING:

SEXUAL ASSAULT

PORNOGRAPHY

SELF-INJURY

The short version is a response to a post on Alternet about the summer's most popular porn.

Reading this turned me off rather than on. 

Porn is utterly unrealistic, and yet it's what people have come to expect sex is like. It harms rather than helps relationships. Yet we as a society glorify it.

A lot of people think of porn as just people being filmed having sex. You've got your guy-girl porn, your girl-girl porn, your guy-guy porn, and your group sex. If it's consenting adults, no big deal, right?

If it were just consenting adults having sex, it would be no big deal and would, in fact, be kind of boring. If you're not the one having sex, sex looks kind of silly.

Once on the Howard Stern show, Howard asked one of my favorite people, Angus Young, how much porn he watched. Angus replied: "I don't get off on watching butts bouncing up and down, especially not hairy man butts."

Angus may not be aware of just how much more disturbing than butts bouncing up and down porn can be. Hopefully he never finds out. I use his statement to illustrate that for the uninitiated, "butts bouncing up and down" tends to be what they think porn is. Thus, they can't understand the argument that porn is harmful, and view those making said argument as pearl-clutching fuddy-duddies.

For many years I had myself convinced that porn was okay and that I was being closed-minded in my knee-jerk reaction that it really wasn't okay and was exploitative of women. 

I also had a complicated relationship with porn, because my own past abuses led me to be simultaneously aroused and disgusted by humiliating fantasies. Part of me believed that I deserved to be hurt and humiliated. While I would never have sought it out in real life, I would spend entire days sometimes watching scenarios in which one person was the target of sexualized demeaning acts.

Back in 1997, I was involved with a very bad guy. He was looking for a victim, and he found a perfect one in the thirty-two year old me, with her untreated mental illness and terrible self esteem.

I had a history of two full-on sexual assaults, and most of my sexual experiences had been coercive. I was molested when I was very young. I was everything a guy like this abusive misogynist could want.

It started out with regular porn, and then he started bringing in worse stuff. At first it was scat, then it moved to bestiality. When I got upset, he laughed at me and threatened to withdraw his "love" from me if I left. 

If you're saying that anyone with any sense would have left, you're partly right. My sense was telling me that I needed to get away from him. My butchered self-esteem told me that I was throwing away "love." I was so desperate to have someone care for me that I put up with this abuse.

My boyfriend started flaunting his other conquests in front of me, and when I got upset he told me that men were incapable of being monogamous, and I needed to understand that. He made me kiss his feet.

At one point I showed up at his house at two in the morning with my wrists slashed, after having wandered about the neighborhood cutting myself repeatedly.

I finally mustered the courage to leave him for my son's sake rather than my own. I didn't care about myself. I thought I was garbage. I was still obsessed with him. It took months for me to fully realize what an absolute piece of crap he was and that nobody deserved to be subjected to his monstrous behavior.

It would be another seventeen years before I could break free of the cycle of psychologically abusing myself by watching demeaning pornography.

I'm going to keep this post in the material realm. One of these days I'll talk about how Gem helped me break free of my porn obsession.

Follow-up:

I should not be surprised that I had someone Mansplain to me that my argument was "completely invalid" because his experience with porn had been the opposite of what I described. Porn is totes realistic, you guys.

As we know, nothing will change a woman's mind quicker than Mansplaining. The poor dumb bitches don't know their own minds, after all.

Well, you've convinced me. Porn is wonderful and makes the world a beautiful place. It does not create unrealistic expectations about what sex is like, and it is never violent, demeaning or ugly. I will now return to my invalid existence, gleeful in the knowledge that at least I can always have porn.

~Cie~

What a Doll: Using Doll Magick to Connect with Spirits

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The use of dolls in magick tends to be portrayed negatively in fiction and film. There are plenty of wonderfully entertaining stories of angry individuals utilizing dolls to wreak havoc on those whom they feel have wronged them.

The use of dolls or poppets is known as sympathetic magick. The doll or poppet is utilized to establish a connection between the spell caster and a specific person or animal. Far from always being negative, magick utilizing a poppet can be used to bring focus to healing spells.

The doll does not have to be particularly realistic looking. It can be a general human form, such as the doll illustrated above, available from Etsy.

The doll does not have to be made from cloth. Candles in human form are available from various sources. These are generally utilized in love spells.

I have several poppets that I made. While I am proud of them, I am not going to show a picture of them because I do not wish to inadvertently bring any sort of negative or disturbing energies to the people they were created to represent.

I feel that unless specific permission is given by the party the poppet was created to represent, a poppet should never be used as a focus for sex magick. The energies created by sexual arousal are extremely intense and could be disruptive or disturbing for a person who has not given his or her consent to receive such.

One of the poppets I created helps me to strengthen my connection to Gem. I will cradle the poppet and send comforting energies to him. If Gem and I have been having trouble connecting with each other, usually due to exhaustion or depression on my part, this helps us re-establish our bond.

I also created a poppet version of myself. I have a history of self-harm to my own body, but I won't harm the poppet. Whenever I am feeling like I might self-harm, I look at my poppet to remind myself that I was born innocent and do not deserve the hurt I'm thinking of inflicting on myself.

I keep Gem's and my poppet wrapped up in one of my shirts, embracing each other. 

While I do not have a poppet to represent my late father, who died from various cardiovascular complications in 2010 after a six year period of decline following a stroke in June of 2004, I do have the comfort objects he kept: a stuffed parrot I gave him and a stuffed corduroy bear that my mother gave him. 

My mother wanted to have these cremated with my father following his passing, but when she told me this, I felt a strong energy of distress in my heart chakra. I begged her to allow me to keep them. They are still with me today and help me keep the bond between my dad and me alive although he is in spirit.

The next time you see a movie or read a story where poppets are used to terrorize and control a victim, enjoy it. There are some great tales of terror involving the use of poppets. One of my favorites is "Sweets to the Sweet" by Robert Bloch, in which an angry girl gets, well, shall we say, sweet revenge on her abusive father.

If you are a fan of horror fiction and you can find a copy, you won't be sorry about picking up Ten Tales Calculated to Give You Shudders. It's billed as a book for children, and I received a copy on my tenth birthday from my mother. 

Although mom didn't want me reading horror comics when I was younger, she came to realize that I had an affinity for this sort of thing and gave me what remains one of my favorite books. Don't let the idea that this book was compiled for kids fool you: these are excellent tales by some of the finest writers. The book contains the classic cautionary tale "The Monkey's Paw," and to this day part of me fears the possibility that I might see the hideous monstrosity from Frank Belknap Long's "Second Night Out" floating towards me from a darkened room.

Perhaps when I'm retired I'll find the time to create poppets representing my favorite authors so I can tap into their collective creative consciousness when writer's block hits.

I'm only joking a little bit. From a crafty point of view, creating such dolls would be a fun activity. Also, I'm not new to working with spirits when I write. Without Gem, Team Netherworld's WIP novel, Fetch, would never have been imagined. It is his story: I am only the scribe.

Sympathetic magick is only one of the forms of terror that Fetch's protagonists face from Nyarlathotep's high priestess Yadira Root and her lackeys.

No, that wasn't shameless self-promotion, not at all. But if that sort of thing sounds like its your bag, click the link and follow along with us as the story takes shape.

~Cie~

One of these times, I need to discuss Chaos Magick, which is the system that I utilize. Like my mind, my magick is more chaotic than most people's. 

In the meantime, check out the page where I found this symbol.