totalitarianism today

How societies cope with female sexual desire.

It's not a new book but it's a book that matters. Daniel Bergner writes:

Women’s desire — its inherent range and innate power — is an underestimated and constrained force, even in our times, when all can seem so sexually inundated, so far beyond restriction.... Despite the notions our culture continues to imbue, this force is not, for the most part, sparked or sustained by emotional intimacy and safety..... one of our most comforting assumptions, soothing perhaps above all to men but clung to by both sexes, that female eros is much better made for monogamy than the male libido, is scarcely more than a fairy tale.

In an interview with Tracy Clark-Flory, Bergner expresses the belief that females might be even less suited to monogamy than males: "I do think that men who’ve been blessed to happily think that it’s only they who are having trouble with monogamy, and that their wives or long-committed girlfriends are more or less just fine with it, they may have a lot to worry about."

Evolutionary psychology as wanking

For Bergner, a journalist, a fan of close observation, a chronicler of sub-Saharan war zones, sex research began with an interest in cross-cultural sexual extremes. He describes how writing a book on research into female desire dispelled the circular reasonings of evolutionary psychology:

I guess the first thing to say is how struck I was by the distance between reality and the fable that we’ve been taught most recently by evolutionary psychology, that is, that men are driven to spread their seed and women, by comparison, are more driven to find one good provider, and that, therefore, while men are very poorly suited to monogamy, women are much better suited to monogamy. But that just really doesn’t stand up when you look at the science.

Surprise that female monkeys objectified male monkeys in field research, Bergner concludes that "the reason we’ve ignored this is because we’ve managed to convince ourselves that one gender is all about reproduction and the other is all about sex." 

On research that reveals the polymorphous perversity of female subjects, Bergner notes that arousal and fantasy need not imply consent. 

The realm of arousal and the realm of fantasy can tell us something about ourselves psychologically without indicating that we really want to experience that thing, far from it.

Why the preponderance of "rape" or domination fantasies, whether in visual media or romance novels? Bergner leans on socialization and the subconscious:

The force of culture puts some level of shame on women’s sexuality and a fantasy of sexual assault is a fantasy that allows for sex that is completely free of blame. So that’s one reason. Another, which Meana brings up, and which I think is very compelling, is this idea that the feeling of being desired is a very powerful one, a very electrical one. And I think at least at the fantasy level, that sense of being wanted, and being wanted beyond the man’s self-control is also really powerful.

In a sense, the study of female lust and sexual desire demands a greater tolerance for perversity and diversity than our male-oriented culture permits. The pathology of sexual "deviancy", perhaps best exemplified by the DSM, socializes women to bite their lip and hold their tongue at an early age.

Women who want it all: The mind of female lust

In 2009, Bergner published two articles about female desire in the New York Times Magazine. The first, "What Do Women Want," focused on Meredith Chivers' research into bonobo pornography. 

Lisa Diamond's exploration of "sexual fluidity" and "persons-based attraction" yields insight into the "Chasing Amy" effect:

Diamond doesn’t claim that women are without innate sexual orientations. But she sees significance in the fact that many of her subjects agreed with the statement “I’m the kind of person who becomes physically attracted to the person rather than their gender.” For her participants, for the well-known women she lists at the start of her book and for women on average, she stresses that desire often emerges so compellingly from emotional closeness that innate orientations can be overridden. This may not always affect women’s behavior — the overriding may not frequently impel heterosexual women into lesbian relationships — but it can redirect erotic attraction. One reason for this phenomenon, she suggests, may be found in oxytocin, a neurotransmitter unique to mammalian brains. The chemical’s release has been shown, in humans, to facilitate feelings of trust and well-being, and in female prairie voles, a monogamous species of rodent, to connect the act of sex to the formation of faithful attachments. Judging by experiments in animals, and by the transmitter’s importance in human childbirth and breast feeding, the oxytocin system, which relies on estrogen, is much more extensive in the female brain. For Diamond, all of this helps to explain why, in women, the link between intimacy and desire is especially potent.

The second article,  "Women Who Want to Want," drew attention to Lori Brotto's research into female libido. Brotto's studies reinforce the degree to which desire's mental components are as important as its physical manifestations.

Using the Basson Sexual Response Cycle, Brotto attempts to understand and ameliorate conditions of low libido in middle-aged women:

An underlying theory is that while her patients’ genitals commonly pulse with blood in response to erotic images­ or their partners’ sexual touch, their minds are so detached — distracted by work or children or worries about the way they look unclothed, or fixated on fears that their libidos are dead — as to be oblivious to their bodies’ excitement, their bodies’ messages. The skill of fully attending to sensation is essential within Brotto’s vision of women’s desire — a vision that she imparts to her groups partly by introducing a diagram called “the Basson Sexual Response Cycle,” whose circles and arrows have lately been imprinting themselves on the field of sex therapy and helping to guide Brotto’s formulations for the next D.S.M.

In some ways, Brotto's research and the Basson model raise additional questions about the extent to which  American females are currently socialized against their natural sexual desires. Confronted with male images of desire-- and masculine representations of the lusty female-- some women find it difficult to recognize or even relate to their own desires as they are presented: 

....Basson’s lesson for women, which has been distilled by sex therapists into three words, “desire follows arousal,” is a real rearrangement of expectation and a reweighting of sexual theory. The model with swollen red lips gazing out with molten need from the billboard or the MTV dancer pumping her half-covered hips at the camera — these icons in heat embody a cultural standard. And though some women, according to Basson, do feel such craving some of the time — at the beginning of a new relationship, for example, or possibly at a certain point in the menstrual cycle — and though a few women may sense such electricity surging regularly through them, these images, she suggests, are largely illusory ideals. More likely for most women, Basson argues, the start of plenty — and maybe the great majority — of sexual encounters is defined not by heat but by slight warmth or flat neutrality. And there’s nothing wrong with this, she says, nothing disordered.

What, then, is the disorder? Brotto notes "a dim or missing sense of excitement during sex itself." Here, Bergner connects the forest to the trees and asks:

What if the lack of excitement is due to a partner’s ineptitude? What if it’s caused by a lover’s emotional disconnection? Suddenly the realm of mental disorder, which is supposed to be delineated, as the introduction to the D.S.M. puts it, by “dysfunction in the individual,” is being distorted by the role of others. Is it the patient who has the condition, or the partner, or the couple? In building on Basson’s “responsive desire,” Brotto’s criteria run repeatedly into this fundamental problem. A partner’s involvement is more or less inescapable.

And my favorite part of all-- because what is more rich and voluble than research that gives rise to a paradox:

Brotto and Basson are about to publish research demonstrating that low levels of testosterone in women do not correspond with low libido. Yet there is a paradox. Brotto explained that giving extra testosterone to women with desire problems can, it appears, spike sexual interest. For reasons unknown, the administered hormone has a unique effect. But there’s a further complication. In studies, women given a placebo report a similar result, not quite as marked but definitely not insignificant either. To add to the intrigue, the women using a placebo often report testosterone’s unwanted side effects: facial hair; acne. Speaking about all this, Brotto smiled in bewilderment — and in something close to awe at the inscrutability of the human mind, the organ that is the locus of desire.

 

More to chase:

A video that lays out the sexual response cycle, for those in need of visual excitement

Lisa M. Diamond's Sexual Fluidity, free in PDF format

A compendium of red pill research: The Men's Rights Activist Movement.

1974

Warren Farrell publishes The Liberated Man as an addition to the growing women's movement. In it, Farrell argued that gender roles wounded men as well as women by forcing them to carry the burdens of supporting a family and stifling their natural emotions. 

1988

Warren Farrell publishes Why Men Are the Way They Are, depicting a world in which women wield enormous influence and power.

Even those women who are less successful have "enormous sexual leverage over men" and "can use the power to get external rewards," he wrote. Men, on the other hand, have been reduced to "success objects," judged solely by their status and earning potential. *

1993

Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex is published. In it, Farrell suggests that the American male is the new "nigger", and that feminism allows women to pursue their goals through charges of sexual harassment. It becomes the holy script of the MRA movement. 

2009

Paul Elam launches A Voice For Men from his laptop. It serves as "the vanguard" for a growing activism to reclaim male privilege by reducing female power. 

2011- November

Anders Breivik murders 77 children and adults at a camp in Norway. His manifesto is published online. In it, Breivik rages against political correctness and offers an engaged expression of men's rights ideology in which females use "erotic capital" to "manipulate" men, fathers become "disposable", and "using terror to wake up the masses."

2011- December

A Voice for Men launches Register.her, intended to mimic sex offender registries and claiming to track female murders, rapists, and schemers. The site's motto: "Fuck Their Shit Up."

2013

MRA's continue to refine and propagate their "doxing" techniques, which involve publicizing personal information to make someone a target of harassment. See the case of Ohio college student, Rachel Cassidy.

2014- June

Journalist Jessica Roy travels to an MRA conference and attempts to digest the ongoing sense of victimization she hears in the room. The article is published in Time, a major news outlet. 

2014- September

Anita Sarkeesian and other female game designers are targeted in the Gamergate campaign.

2015 - January

Warren Farrell does an interview in which he boasts of a forthcoming book with John Gray titled Beyond Mars and Venus.

2016- November

Donald J. Trump is elected President of the United States of America.

Why I love Jessa Crispin's critique of feminism.

Confession: I did not vote for Hillary because she is a woman. I voted for Hillary because I have never seen anything dumber, less qualified, and more deplorable than Donald J. Trump. In my resistance journey, however, I discovered many friends who voted for Hillary because she was a woman. Because the election of a woman to the executive signified hope to them. Those conversations have been interesting and illuminating. 

Enter Jessa Crispin's controversial new book, Why I Am Not a Feminist (excerpted in New York Magazine): 

In order to withstand the pressure of a culture constantly telling us that women are only meat, only sex, only property, we create this idea of our specialness. We as women are naturally more compassionate, more loving, more authentic than men. This idea shores us up against the constant degradation caused simply by living in this particular time and place.

Sometimes we as women are special in our compassion. For people to be able to survive on the margins, they often must be. They must form alliances, they must look out for one another. They must develop some characteristics and attributes because they have to create networks of solidarity and mutual care to withstand the experience of marginalization. Those characteristics are developed by facing hardship and opposition. We also have to find ways of convincing our oppressors not to hurt us, not to kill us, to bother keeping us around at all. That can make us clever.

But these attributes are not innate. In fact, the idea that women are naturally more empathetic and nurturing originates with men. They used it as an excuse to keep us at home, tending to the children. They used it as an excuse to dismiss us intellectually. Don’t try to be smart, sweetheart, it’s not your strong suit. And yet we adopted this belief because it suits us to believe it about ourselves. 

“The [most common] online feminist response to being disagreed with or ‘attacked’ is, ‘We don’t have to do any work on ourselves, we are amazing, we’re perfect as is. Because of the patriarchy, we get to do whatever we want.’ It makes us special.

What should make us feel special instead is our method of survival. If we believe these skills are born into us we will lose them once they are no longer needed. We can still use the lie as a cover, as a way to avoid questioning or reckoning. “Oh, I’m a woman, so of course I’m going to be a better listener, more emotionally attuned, I am definitely not going to abandon these principles and work in my own self-interest given the first opportunity, just like everyone else.”

Currently, I see this as women line up behind female politicians, their support thrown behind them almost solely because they share a gender. Despite a long history of supporting military intervention, I watch women talk about these politicians’ natural diplomacy and how they’ll keep us out of war. Despite a long history of gutting social services, I watch women talk about these politicians’ understanding and attention to poor women and children. Despite a long history of money grabbing and corruption, I watch women talk about these politicians’ sense of fairness and economic justice. 

If the genders were reversed, that support would be withdrawn. There would be no assumption that these politicians would act more ethically and compassionately than their male counterparts unless these women had convinced themselves that these qualities are inherent in all women.

The extent to which empowerment feminism mobilizes Kellyanne-style accommodation is depressing. The extent to which Trump's victory prevents women from pushing the Democratic Party further left is a story of silence-- how we agree to keep mum if a sister is standing on the podium. How we mute ourselves for fear of "disempowering" a sister. How the myth of empowered womanhood creates problems of its own, not the first of which might be this notion of "solidarity" (quickly trotted out when a woman wonders aloud how butt implants are truly saving the world);

It’s easier to complain about the power you don’t have than to think about how you are wielding the power you do have. Simply re-creating the exclusive systems and inequities that the industry had when it was male dominated — with the only difference being that a small subsection of women are inside rather than outside — has not made the industry fairer. And because they are able to blame the creators of the system, their own actions can go unquestioned, despite their efforts to retain that exclusivity and unfairness.

Women, because they are humans, work and operate as humans, which is to say, in a clannish mode. But with the added emphasis on identity in today’s society, with identifying yourself as a woman first and a human second, this clannishness becomes entrenched. Solidarity becomes not about all womankind, but about the women in proximity to you, the women you can see yourself in.

The gender socialization continues to privilege rigid masculinity. It's that look on a boy's face when someone tells him to "stop acting like a girl". It's the glow in little girl cheeks when her daddy proudly declares her "his little princess" but also a "tomboy":

One of the reasons self-empowerment leads us to these places of dehumanization and exclusivity and narcissism is because we are still operating with patriarchal values and patriarchal definitions of what success is, what happiness is, what the meaning of life is.

Much of contemporary feminism uses the language of power. Girls need to be “empowered,” women need to fight for “self-empowerment,” “girl power,” etc. There is little conversation about what that power is to be used for, because that is supposed to be obvious: whatever the girl wants.

But growing up in a system that measures success by money, that values consumerism and competition, that devalues compassion and community, these girls and women have already been indoctrinated into what to want. Without close examination, without conversion into a different way of thinking and acting, what that girl wants is going to be money, power, and, possibly, her continued subjugation, because a feminism that does not provide an alternative to the system will still have the system’s values.

For centuries, the patriarchal system has defined happiness as having someone else subject to your will. You had someone else to hold all of your shit for you, so that you would not have to acknowledge its existence.

If women are one-upping one another in their competition to gain a seat at the patriarch's table, at what point do we sit back (stop leaning it, just STOP leaning in) and say the table sucks? Why do we only agree to say the table sucks if we're not invited? These are burning questions for feminism, and Jessica calls them. She is relentless in her interrogation.

And then there's the Jezebel interview, when it becomes clear that Jessica is everything you feared-- an unapproachable, iconoclastic bibliophile that could hardly care less about your approval:

...this is not where I insist I am not a feminist because I’m afraid of being mistaken for one of those hairy-legged, angry, man-hating feminists who are drawn up like bogeymen by men and women alike. Nor will I now reassure you of my approachability, my reasonable nature, my heteronormativity, my love of men and my sexual availability—despite the fact that this disclaimer appears to be a prerequisite for all feminist writing published in the last fifteen years.

If anything, that pose—I am harmless, I am toothless, you can fuck me—is why I find myself rejecting the feminist label. All of these bad feminists, all these Talmudic “can you be a feminist and still have a bikini wax?” discussions. All these reassurances to their (male) audience that they don’t want too much, won’t go too far—“We don’t know what Andrea Dworkin was on about either! Trust us!” All of these feminists giving blow jobs like it’s missionary work.

How could I do anything but sigh and exhale small love bubbles after reading this? I might even be tempted to say, "Amen sister", if I hadn't heard the same expression used to buttress two-for-one pedicure self-care sales at the local "look seventeen" spa. 

 

Criticisms of this book have focused on attacking the lack of "alternate strategy", but that's not the trajectory of the book. This isn't self-help for the feminist movement. She isn't offering a strategy or checklist for modern feminism. Instead, Jessica wants to know why the hell it has become so hard to talk about audre lorde and Adrienne Rich without sounding like a sexless granny.

Maybe, like me, she wants to know how the hell shitty sex became the model for sexual liberation. How porn became the picture of freedom. How golden showers became a national security dilemma. For all the toxic masculinity we've socialized, there's a huge market for toxic femininity that no one wants to address. Because calling it toxic would be a form of disempowerment. And conceding Lena Dunham's indie-chic "sex-positive" sitcom would be nothing if not for the lame, disappointing sex. The normalized disappointment of the unhappy American female sex life. 

We are so good at selling things. Have you been sold? Are you buying this app?

Why does a feminist have to insist she likes sex? Why is questioning the cum-shot-socialization considered a form of un-liberated prudish?

Sex-positive-- as a label-- is primarily defensive, a response to the slander that a feminist is one who hates men and sexuality. I regret using the word "sex-positive" to insulate myself against criticisms of prudery. And I don't regret my lack of prudery or my enormous appreciation for sexual pleasure.

Here's the rub: the "sex-positive" label has become a form of religious marketing. "Sex-positive" talk is all I heard in the halls of megachurches and evangelical marriage seminars where any sex, all sex, every sex is positive inside the cage of heterosexual marriage. Why can't we assume that feminism wants good sex for females? Is it because some feminists (especially self-styled evangelical marriage counselors) presume men are by nature wired to want rape or bad sex or aesthetically-repulsive porn? If men are wired to "want" bad sex, then porn shouldn't matter to the religious right-- boys will be boys and porn doesn't affect it. 

The boxes and false dichotomies are facile escapes; we can plug in without the burden of re-imagining an alternative. We can accept our aspirations and herd behaviors while enjoying the hubbub of the stadium. We can continue to struggle inside the system while toasting pinot to the next wave, the one we expect others to build for us. We can write a book and hope a small press will publish it. We can have these conversations and believe in the possibility of an unwritten future. 

"I don’t feel hopeless because I know how quickly things historically change. One day there’s a Berlin Wall and the next day there’s just fucking not. One day there’s a dictator and the next day there’s just fucking not. Change is possible, but we’re in a weird place where people on the left, particularly writers and artists, have lost their imagination of how things can be different."

For feminists that would take her to task for ignoring the intersectional debate, Jessa says:

I don’t feel like feminist acts are just making posters and knitting caps and marching in the street. As a writer, it’s become increasingly important to me that everything I write lines up with my value system and not make work that doesn’t or write for publications that don’t line up with my value system. I do feel like we’re in a place where even at the baseline, we don’t know where to find value. We used to get our value from religion, but that was bad so we got rid of religion. But where do we get it from now? Do we get it from the capitalist culture that values greed, competition and selfishness? 

Where do we get it from? I think that we think that we can figure that out on our own, but we can’t. Human beings are not that smart. We’re not that logical and rational. We absorb shit just from observing, so really rethinking and understanding that our values need to be recalibrated is really important—especially for feminism, which has, if anything, taken on patriarchal values. In the last 20 years, feminism has embraced competition and greed, like, “I’m making in-roads if I make six figures a year because I’m a woman.”

We can do more. We can demand more. And we can ask questions.

Why Shikha Dalmia gets paid to whine about International Women's Day is a measure of how accommodation skews the market for independent thought. After slamming the "Day Without Women" for its "cheesiness", Shikha reveals her complete disconnect from the crowds that massed Trump stadiums:

The reason a show like MadMen lampooning the sexist treatment of women in the 1960s office was even conceivable at this point was precisely because we have overcome such regressive attitudes. This progress was neither automatic nor inevitable. It required constant struggle and "consciousness raising." Nor is it over. There are plenty of "women's issues" still left to be tackled. 

No, Shikha-- the reason a show like MadMen was successful is the same reason that Lena Dunham and "The Apprentice" earned high ratings, namely, misogyny sells. Female self-loathing is a buyer's market. Breitbartian bigotry and Trumpist Christo-fascists were nurtured in the womb of the Men's Rights Activist movement, after traveling through the tubes of America's thriving neo-Nazi fallopian complex. 

Shikha can afford her convoluted complaint cycle. She can afford to nanny her menses and self-care her split ends. And she can end an opinion piece the following fluff-off that completely ignores how "the women who really need a day off" are currently living right here, in these United States, caring for toddlers, sweeping her gutters, processing dry-cleaned clothes, baking cafeteria food, and so on: 

....a Day Without A Woman that calls for a mass strike on behalf of women who have cushy jobs in plush Western offices is just plain obtuse. The women who really need a day off -- day laborers on construction sites in Inida, rice pickers in paddy fields in Bali -- can't afford to give up a day's wages. Hence, all this holiday will do is impose the Western woman's understanding of women's problems -- and their solutions -- on all women.

Single motherhood and low-wage labor is not just a Bali problem-- it's an American problem.

It's an Alabamian problem.

It's a perma-temp labor problem.

It's a Right to Work problem.

It's a facet of how much silence we can stand in our nanny-privileged echo chambers.

It's also why so few minorities will participate in the Day Without A Woman, since the working poor can't afford to risk their job for a principled statement or position. It's an absurdity that Shikha feels the need to look across borders in order to describe what is happening in the nail salon across the street. And it's a pity that her position of whoa-there-let's-not-ruffle-feathers has become a debate among women who rely on their privilege to assert their decidedly successful female voices.

Perhaps we should scrub the "feminist conceit" from our own faces before paying a Vietnamese immigrant to do it.

 

MORE TO SWALLOW:

Hadley Freeman on how "empowerment feminism" lost its meaning.

Jessa Crispin on Planned Parenthood and boredom as incubators for consciousness raising.

Maria Bustillos' semantic issues with Crispin.

Jia Tolentino on how the market for empowerment earned its niche.

Jessa Crispin on the blah of American literature and why monetizing Bookslut was not an option.

Insomnia: Authors and artists for whom the moon is a harsh mistress.

Insomnia by Kristie Holiday

"Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with
posters advertising faraway places." 
Charles Simic

Since adolescence, insomnia has been a dear friend to me. While questioning its utility in making me a successful member of our so-called world, it certainly makes for unexpected reveries and unlikely mental pairings. 

I've often wondered how other people cope with their insomnia- those who don't take sleeping pills to medicate their way through it. Like Jon Stewart, I've often felt "insomnia is my greatest inspiration". But there are other voices to consider.

For Louis-Ferdinand Celine, insomnia plays the role of mentor:

"My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line." 

David Benioff expresses the tinge of envy that insomniacs feel for those who find success in counting sheep:

"I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed." 

The Sloping Midnight Line by Carson Ellis

Jonathan Lethem points towards the pathos and pathology of insomnia, the way it feels self-defeating:

"Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off." 

Stephen Goodwin  finds opportunities nestled within his sleepness nights:

"So I just live with my insomnia. I do crossword puzzles, or wander out to the music room and fool around on the piano, or read. Those late hours when the world is completely still, when the only sound is the rustle of the air in the vents and the wind visiting the trees outside, when the darkness is tucked tight around the house and you feel as life itself the movements of your own consciousness-these are wonderful hours to read. There is no interruption."

Leonard Cohen admits the unspoken elitism, the extent to which many of us feel we have been chosen for better things than mere sleep:

"The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world."

Insomnia by Jeff Wall

In Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov applies his usual elitism to his lifelong insomnia, deciding that sleeping is for the simple-minded:

“All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanour, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. The strain and drain of composition often force me, alas, to swallow a strong pill that gives me an hour or two of frightful nightmares or even to accept the comic relief of a midday snooze, the way a senile rake might totter to the nearest euthanasium; but I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.”

Chuck Palahniuk's fictional description of insomnia carries a whiff of the autobiographical:

"With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy." 

Cathy Ostlere fondles the extent to which insomina deprives us of the assumption of sanity:

"Women can go mad with insomnia.The sleep-deprived roam houses that have lost their familiarity. With tea mugs in hand, we wander rooms, looking on shelves for something we will recognize: a book title, a photograph, the teak-carved bird -- a souvenir from what place? A memory almost rises when our eyes rest on a painting's grey sweep of cloud, or the curve of a wooden leg in a corner. Fingertips faintly recall the raised pattern on a chair cushion, but we wonder how these things have come to be here, in this stranger's home.

Lost women drift in places where time has collapsed. We look into our thoughts and hearts for what has been forgotten, for what has gone missing. What did we once care about? Whom did we love? We are emptied. We are remote. Like night lilies, we open in the dark, breathe in the shadowy world. Our soliloquies are heard by no one." 

Michaux and his wife on Mont Joly by Brassai

Emil Cioran ponders the extent to which insomnia may result in an entitlement complex of sorts, one which depends on tending and overlooking nonfunctional behaviors:

"Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself." 

Perhaps Barbara Kingsolver is the one who describes it best. Her analogy encapsulates what insomnia does to my head, and how it carries within it the potential for a more destructive restlessness:

"Insomnia’s different,” I said. It was hard to explain this to people. “You know the light that comes on when you open the refrigerator door? Just imagine it stays on all the time, even after you close the door. That’s what it’s like in my head. The light stays on." 

Alas, the insomniac is guilty of unspeakable infidelities. How can I ever declare having lost sleep for love of a man when my sleeplessness is unrelated to events in the world? And how can I explain the wild thoughts that come to me at 2:45 am without implicating myself in the fact of having thought them? 

Maybe this shared guilt- this sneaking suspicion of self- is what makes meeting a fellow insomniac such a soothing pleasure. "Do you medicate?" being the question that begs asking. Kindred spirits of the secret midnight cabal, we are guilty of things beyond blurred vision and bloodshot eyes. We are guilty of things you will never be so sleep-deprived as to imagine. 

"Call me a sinner,
Mock me maliciously:
I was your insomnia,
I was your grief." 
Anna Akhmatova

Jon Cloud explores whether science
can prevent nightmares.

Insomnia as a route to existential
meaning and early death.

A compilation as the debate over hook-up culture continues.

La Mariée by Marc Chagallin

For the sake of elucidating all the furrows and lines drawn in the sand, here's a compilation/playlist of positions and arguments on the hook-up culture and its benefits, drawbacks, and social effects. But first, allow me to show my hand.

I believe gender to be largely a matter of social construction. Specifically, in this day and age, gender norms are communicated to most Americans through media and ad campaigns- we are consumers of gender norms rather than reflective, self-narrating individuals.

Laura Sessions Stepp, like many who are concerned about the hook-up culture, relies on sexist essentialism to support her view that men get more from hook-ups than women. It would be far more interesting if she considered hook-up culture from the perspective of 21st century gender construction- how girls seek to imitate the cultural norms established for men in an effort to prove themselves worthy of respect or power. And, it would be even more interesting to see an analysis of how these male gender norms prevent modern males from experiencing the richness of uncompartmentalized modes of cognition.

THE CRITICS
Those who enumerate the costs or inconsistencies

"9 reasons hook-up culture hurts boys too" by Ryan Sager (Time)
"In hookups inequality still reigns" by Natalie Kitroeff (NYT)
"What is hooking up?" interview with Laura Sessions Stepp (Unhooked)
"Hookup culture run amok" by Ruth Marcus (Real Clear Politics)
"Sexual hook-up culture" (American Psychological Association)
"Sexual assault on campus and the curse of the hookup culture" by Jonathan Zimmerman (L.A. Times)
"For students, hookup culture leaves much to be desired" by Eric Niehaus (The Miami Student)
"Why a real date is better than hooking up" by Jill P. Weber (Psychology Today)
"The college professor changing the way we date" by Cassie Shortsleeve (Shape)
"Time to stop hooking up" by Donna Freitas (Washington Post)
"The hookup elites" by Lisa Wade (Slate)
"Is hooking up bad for young women?" by Elizabeth A. Armstong, Laura Hamilton, and Paula England (Contexts)
"Hook-up culture is good for women, and other feminist myths" by Amy Julia Becker (Christianity Today)
"Hook up feminism" by Emily Esfahani Smith (The New Criterion)
"Does hooking up hurt you?" by Colleen Oakley (Marie Claire)
"Hooking up" by Tom Wolfe (MacMillan)

THE CHEERLEADERS 
Those who extol the benefits 

"Boys on the side" by Hanna Rosin (The Atlantic)
"Sex on campus: She can play that game, too" by Kate Taylor (NYT)
"#Love: Design for it" by Jordan Crook (TechCrunch)
"Hookup culture", a how-to by Brenna Dilger (UC Highlander)
"Finally someone says it: Hook-up culture is good for women" by Katie J. M.  Baker (Jezebel)
"We don't think she should play that game though..." by Jessia A. Joseph (inkblot)
"Hook-up truck: Bay Area's rolling venue for private acts in public" by David DeBolt (Contra Costa Times)
"How hook-up culture is helping women gain power" by Ashley Lutz (Business Insider)
"New poll reveals singles want a Fleet Week Hook Up in the Dugout at Yankee Stadium" (PR Web)
Hookup with Canadians Guide, bearers of market niche
Local Hookup and an endless array of websites that promise you a quick hookup ASAP with pictures of teenage girls that resemble 1970's porn

THE NAY-SAYERS
Those who don't believe the hookup upculture exists in a signficant way

"Another study shows that hookup culture is a myth" by Eliana Dockterman (Time)
"6 reasons the hookup culture is a myth" by Nicole Weaver (Your Tango)
"Radcliffe women have always enjoyed hooking up" by Mitch Wolfe (Huffington Post)
"New study on hooking up shows no sexual sea change" by Brian Alexander (Today Health)

THE INTERESTED PARTIES
Those watching the numbers and taking notes

"Demonizing sex, then trying to get laid: The art of hooking up at CPAC" by Amanda Marcotte (Slate)
The Casual Sex Project, an ongoing study by Zhana Vrangalova
"The sociology of hooking up" by Andy Guess (Inside Higher Education)
"Hanging out, hooking up" by Anna Lockhart (Times Free Press)
"Sex without intimacy: No dating, no relationships" by Brenda Wilson (NPR)
"Tons of people are hooking up with their co-workers" by Martha C. White (Time)

MY PERSONAL FAVORITES
Because it's not the same old drivel

"On hookup culture and an imagined sexual liberation" by J. A. Martino (Feminist Current)
"Sorry feminists, I'm too oppressed to hook up" by Evette Dionne (Policy Mic)
"Hook-up culture's bad rap" by Kate Harding (Young Feminist Wire)

A few brief notes on secrets, sociopaths, selfies, and integrity.

[Image source: Thinking Through My Lens]

Keeping a secret is hard work for the brain. And the bigger the secret, the harder it is to keep.

Unless you are a sociopath.

For sociopaths, nothing is sacred.

Sociopaths tend to stare into people's eyes intensely. This act of unabashed staring, often despite social cues which encourage the contrary, is known as the "predator's stare". 

A sociopath suffers from antisocial personality disorder, or APD.  Technically, APD is “a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others.” Typical characteristics include overconfidence, lack of remorse, high levels of manipulation and an inability to confirm to social norms.

Lacking an established sense of self, sociopaths are social chameleons- they adapt to different social settings depending on what the situation demands. They constantly change and transform to get the best out of the world around them.  

Integrity involves loyalty to one's core beliefs and principles. It requires a strongly-held concept of self. 

To have integrity is to be loyal to the "self" we try to be. 

There is no such thing as a sociopath with integrity.

Sociopaths are drawn to employment that involves wielding positions of power over people– the more helpless and less likely to be listened to the better. They flock to working with children, animals, the elderly, and the mentally, emotionally, or physically challenged. They also enjoy power-heavy jobs as police officers or prison guards.

They are aware of projecting a personality, though they have no remorse over failing to identify with this projected self.

[Image source: Design Instruct]

Some sociopaths teach Sunday school in the Church of Latter Day Saints. E.M. Thomas is one such sociopath. She likes to look into people's eyes:

Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of my confidence is the way I sustain eye contact. Some people have called it the "predator stare." Sociopaths are unfazed by uninterrupted eye contact. Our failure to look away politely is also perceived as being aggressive or seductive. It can throw people off balance, but often in an exciting way that imitates the unsettling feeling of infatuation. Do you ever find yourself using charmand confidence to get people to do things for you that they otherwise wouldn't? Some might call it manipulation, but I like to think I'm using what God gave me.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, the basic physics of flirting involves making eye contact with someone, giving a small smile, then looking down and averting your gaze. 

I find myself wondering if sociopaths' sustained staring making it impossible for them to be coy. 

Sometimes people envy sociopaths for their lack of moral inhibition. They don't do what most of us call "regret". 

[Image source: Alapan]

Nor do they bother with what philosophers and psychologists call "human self-reflection", or the capacity of humans to exercise introspection and the willingness to learn more about their nature, purpose, and actions. A reflection is defined as "a thought, idea, or opinion formed or a remark made as a result of meditation". Sociopaths are very conscious and adept at observing their own reflections. A reflection also means "an image that is seen in a mirror or on a shiny surface".

Rachel Simmons says selfies are "good for girls". Erin Gloria Ryan says selfies are "a cry for help". We are drawn to ugly selfies. Scientists have linked selfies to narcissism, addiction, and mental illness. 

Many women take a large number of exciting, half-nude selfies after healing from breast implant surgery. Post-surgery selfies even include credits- the name of the surgeon or implant size is mentioned.

A sociopath is just as likely to take a selfie photo as any other American. They may even take selfies at funerals. But what they see in the selfie is rarely a self with whom they identify- only a personality they pretend. 

Selfies are the sociopaths propaganda machine, allowing them to flit rapidly from one personality to the next. Now you see them, now you don't.

[Image source: the new is tired of you]

I'm a big fan of shadow selfies.

Unlike selfies that reveal false facial expressions or newly-bleached teeth, shadow selfies reveal only the darkness that comes from the way our bodies block or absorb light. They depict only what they can afford to inhabit- a shadow of a self.

Shadow selfies, unlike sociopaths, have integrity.

Fernando Pessoa and the multiplicity of the modern self.

[Image by Rodrigo Ferreira de Ribeiro]

From the first moment I closed Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, I found it hard to distinguish between his dreams and my concurrent musings.

As a writer, Pessoa nonlinear, plot-laziness anticipates many contemporary novelists, some of them literary super-stars. As an individual, however, Pessoa is hard to pin precisely because he overflowed with a multiplicty of selves- he was an ardent nationalist of one country divided by others against the pretension of selfhood.

Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.

The spectating of the self. A man who cultivates the spectacle of the self doesn't mind not being "known" by others. What he loses in intimacy and friendship he gains in time and freedom to reinvent himself as he pleases.

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect.

More than watching himself in shop windows, he watched others watching him in shop windows. The mirror serves as a form of access to other people; it reveals the reactions they hide in face-to-face contact. The revulsion comes from knowing the attention of others is directed at a false version of self, a contrivance that keeps us impure and more faux than the smiles we use to keep others from comforting us. 

The ancients hardly saw themselves. Today we see ourselves in all positions. Hence our self-horror and self-disgust.

Like any self-respecting flaneur, Pessoa grew to know the streets of Lisbon inside and out. Wandering through the year of 1925 led Fernando to write a guidebook. The modern man- the one who sleepwalks his way through the daily routes- knows street signs and cafes as if they defined an internal topography. 

We stumble through ourselves struggling, somehow, to envision a map. The signifiers and sign-posts come to us from billboards and 

There is nothing that is as it should be, for we have no reference or recourse to an ultimate plan that would put all of us- and our mountains of stuff- in the proper place. Nothing to orient us apart from the effervescent commercial promises of progress- the ones that rotate to reveal new colors and machinations. 

There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.

There are no universal stories to save us from the exceptional nature of our daily lives. 

 Julio Pormar's neo-expressionist portrait of Pessoa, 1985

For Pessoa, the flaneur is at his best when approximating the gestures and reveries of romantic love.  Because self-love is the only true love.

"We never love anyone," insists Pessoa, "What we love is the idea we have of someone". Only the dazzling costumes of love are worthwhile. And so, the circumstances lead us to situation in which the mantra lies, hatching, snug within the nest of the parentheses.

To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)

It would be easier to label Pessoa a "narcissist" and avoid the perfection of his prophecies.  

Every man, to be able to live and love, needs to idealize himself (and, ultimately, those he loves). That’s why we love. But as soon as I see myself and compare what I see to an ideal—not high, even low—of human beauty, I give up on real life and on love.

Fernando Pessoa, like the standard iPhone-carrying citizen of the 21st century, was never alone. His need for love was reduced by the plethora of personal alternatives. 

Each of us is several, is many, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways.

These alternatives included a virtual reality of countless "Others" inhabiting the unitary notion of the self. Pessoa honored each Other with the acknowledgement of its own name, or heteronym. The first such heteronym was Alberto Caeiro. Pessoa explained Alberto as follows:

He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower... the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him... this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absence of sentiment, he makes poetry. He is free of metaphysical entanglements. 

Alberto was the first in a line of many heteronyms. In a sense, while narrating the inner lives of his characters, Pessoa was always exposing an aspect of himself, a self which he honored with a separate name. Alberto, for example. The fact that Pessoa served as his only muse and only fictional character is suggested in various passages and poems. 

For the superior man, others don’t exist. He is his own other. If he wants to imitate someone, it’s himself he tries to imitate. If he wants to contradict someone, it’s himself he endeavors to contradict. He strives to hurt his own self, in its most intimate reaches. He plays tricks on his own opinions. He has long conversations with the sensations he feels, talking down to them and . . . .

Every man that exists is Me. I have all society inside me. I am my best friends and my truest enemies. The rest—what’s on the outside, from the hills and plains to people and . . . . . . —is all just Landscape . . .

The great defect of work and effort is that they can become habits. The same defect pertains to inaction. It also tends to become a habit. The right way for the superior man to be contrary is to refrain from having habits, or opinions, or a definite individuality.

Statue of Pessoa in Lisbon

“I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided,” said Fernando, as if referring to his previous support for monarchism and military dictatorship. Staring at the pristine architecture of his top hat, I find it easier to make sense of his remark in the context of his social relationships. For a jaded lover, nothing beats a few hours reading The Book of Disquiet.

Yet the wounds of all the selves Pessoa avoided- the selves that belonged to other human beings- toughened into scars. So I read with the strange sentiment of massaging a series of scars that tormented a man so much he felt the need to name them. Each section scaffolds a scar- a simple piece of skin tissue developed to maintain the physical divide between interior and exterior. The scars are grostesque; the skin kept supple by the blood coursing beneath.

Site of Disquietude 

Poems of Fernando Pessoa

"The Film of Disquiet" (YouTube)

"A cold in the soul" by Benjamin Kunkel (The Believer)

"Fernando Pessoa and the surrealist self"  by Vilma Bader

"On Fernando Pessoa: 'The metaphysical courier'" (Truth Tableaux)

"Pessoa and the multiple faces we show on the net" by Syma Tariq (The Guardian)

"The magical world of Fernando Pessoa" by Gary Lachmann (Southern Cross Review)

"Fernando Pessoa and his heteronyms" by Carmela Ciuraru (Poetry Society of America)

"Four ways of seeing: Pessoa's Book of Disquiet" by Jessica Sequeira (The Harvard Advocate)

"The reality of dreams: Antonio Tabucchi and Fernando Pessoa" by Robert Gray (Eclectica)

"In which Fernando Pessoa reports his own death" (This Recording)

"In which we receive the love letters of Fernando Pessoa" (This Recording)

"Disquiet and solitude in Fernando Pessoa" (Ther Hermitary)

"Aleister Crowley and Fernando Pessoa" (50watts)

Fernando Pessoa and his heteronyms (deviantArt)

Fernando Pessoa (Aldous Eveleigh)

Pessoa's Trunk (Marc Widenbaum)

A few flashbacks from the marvelous mythologies of Progress.

A few images from the The Book of Progess, which is no longer in print.

Up to my neck in primary texts of mythologies made to usher in the era of mechanical progress and its industrial capitalist sponsors. Some texts include the diaries and journals of the growing class of immigrant laborers manning machines in the factories. Yiddish poet and publisher Morris Rosenfeld described a day in a New York City garment district sweatshop as follows:

".... often I forget in the roar that I am; I am lost in the terrible tumult, my ego disappears, I am a machine, I work and work and work without end. I am busy and busy at all times. For what and for when? I know not and ask not! How should a machine ever come to think?"

For Rosenfeld, the center of gravity known as the "self" (or ego) is no match for the magnetic force fields of mechanized labor and mechanized life. Like many social critics, he found his voice through poetry and the printing press. Rosenfeld's Songs of Labor and Other Poems offers a less transcendentalist approach to American history. 

The diaries of the factory workers are rare and hard to find. The primary texts that tell the most shocking story are the ones that were prepared and distributed for mass consumption. 

The Scientific American War Book published in 1915 celebrated the fine art of industrial warfare. In 1919, Scientific American published the three-volume Book of Progress. It was a celebration of man and his machines, a paen to the rising industralization and the dawn of the consumer sapiens. Granted, Scientific American served as a rah-rah squad for industrial capitalism since its creation in 1840, so these books did not come as a surprise to their readers or sponsors. Neither did its consecration of cinema as "the carrier of utopian possibility". Who could blame them for believing that the camera could solve what the human eye had thus far failied to manage- the simultaneous transmission of a series of events from a single, unified perspective. 

But it wasn't just scientific journals that shilled for the myth of unstoppable progress. The youth of tomorrow needed to be socialized into the age of machines. Unfortunately, their parents had no background in state-aggrandizing propaganda, so the newspapers and book publishers took it upon themselves to train American youth for their roles in the new economy.

The Ladybird Book of Progress aimed at middle-school audiences. (Hat flip to The Age of Uncertainty for providing this text and illustrations in their entirety.)

Vocabulary words were bolded so that young readers could make sure not to miss out on terms like "pebbledash", "accident", "compensation", "investment banker", "nervous breakdown", and other such novelities of the modern age. Perhaps a few excerpts are in order:

The fields are dug up and an old church from long ago is demolished. 

The ground is then flattened so that there will be space for a car park and a row of coffee shops. 

To make sure that the ground is hard and the grass cannot grow back, the builders use concrete. 

When the concrete is dry, they can begin to make the new homes.

This is Charles. He used to be an investment banker, but had a nervous breakdown. This happens when people are very worried and unhappy. 

Charles' wife would like him to be a banker again. 

As the town grows, it will need extra electricity. 

This new power station will give people the energy they need and also make new jobs.

The town is big, but it can get even bigger, as there is a lot of countryside. 

To-day, many homes are old and draughty. One day, perhaps we will all be lucky enough to live in a bright, clean new town like this one.

I leave calling oneself a "progressive" to those who are comfortable with the cost of such mythologies. Certainly, the historic cost included eugenics funding, unethical scientific practices, the worship of man as labor machine, and disregard for human rights at the expense of deified Progress.

Why are so many thinking individuals prostrate before political philosophies that cater to divinities or abstractions? And why do so many Christians make all kinds of romantic promises to a piece of cloth with red stripes and stars and a Made in China sticker in the bottom left corner? Perhaps it's a personal shortcoming of mine that prefers the dignity of actual human beings to an idealized outcome promised at a future date.

Back to the myths- and to the lesson that history offers us on Progressives and Conservatives alike. Life wasn't ideal in the past, and it won't be ideal in some once and future utopia. To say it will be "real" is lovely enough.

MORE:

The papers of Morris Rosenfeld (Center for Jewish History)

"Toil and testament: Sweatshop poets" (Yiddish Book Center)

"Powerful retro propaganda posters remixed for progressive purposes" (Optimal Human Modulation)

The People's Cube 

The mechanization of modern marriage.

Frank Adelstein's Rube Goldberg Wedding Machine provides a generative metaphor for the mechanization of modern marriage ceremonies. In a sense, marriage has always been vulnerable to mechanization. The input- a combination of two humans, a few magic words, and officiant- guarantees a conventional, yet somehow still remarkable output in the form of a two-for-one. Or two-now-one. 

To create this Rube Goldberg Wedding Machine, Frank and his cohorts followed an "organic, bottom-up process" which amounted to "total chaos, experiments, and duct tape." Here's the short version of the building process: 

1. Examine objects to come up with an idea how they can be used
2. Design a way for them to perform their function
3. Figure out how the object can connect to the other parts of the machine
4. Design a way to trigger it and to prevent it accidentally self-triggering

Intelligent young lovers, take note. This four-step process beats any pricey pre-marital counseling sessions or workbooks. Frank and friends deserve credit for their insight into the basic mechanics of the marriage market as well as the marital assembly process.

A self-described "high-tech luddite", Frank can wax comedic on everything from churned butter to gifsicles to tv things. There are things one might hold against Frank, namely the 20 odd minutes I wasted on a game of Telephone Pictionary. But I don't hold grudges for long. Not when there's a marriage-machine-making assignment to pass on to the captive audience otherwise known as homeschooled children....

MORE ON ADELSTEIN AND MARRIAGE MACHINES

"I Want My FTP", the lyrics
"The Great Debate", a short story by Frank
"Japanese couple married by robot named I-Fairy" (video from Telegraph UK)
Free middle-school lesson plan on news about I-Fairy officiating weddings (Education.com)
Katy Waldman on wanting a robot at her wedding (Slate)
Alan Boyle wonders if we should just say no (Cosmic Log)

Why long-distance romance brings out the best in us.

In a brief essay for Pacific Standard, Nicole Allan probes her long-distance relationship in the context of recent scientific research. Citing a recent research paper "showing that long-distance couples feel greater intimacy than those who live in the same place", Nicole wonders if the idealization engendered by long-distance intimacy ultimately amounts to a net cost or benefit.

The study in question showed that members of long-distance "couples reveal more about themselves, and perceive their partners to be more revealing as well". Nicole wisely observes the writing on the wall:

This is a form of “idealization,” or the tendency to view your partner and your relationship in an unrealistically positive light. It is a hallmark of long-distance relationships, a reason why many geographically remote partners feel more connected to each other than those who wake up in the same bed do. This effect is likely familiar to the three million married Americans and up to one-half of American college students who are currently geographically separated from their partners. Given these numbers, it’s also worth noting the flip side of idealization, which is that it contributes to making long-distance couples more likely, whenever they do manage to align their geographic trajectories, to break up.

This is the point where it seems fair to confess that Nicole is my favorite kind of girl- a woman asks herself big, impossible questions and sets about to find answers. A girl after my own curious heart. For example, Nicole pays close attention to the indiscreet details of how we revise others in light of romantic love. She worries about the way her "nightly conversations" with Joel make it easy to become curators in the museum of self. She pauses before the way in which selective self-presentation offers a lop-sided picture of life- one weighed heavily towards the sublime, one that finds little space for the mundane. And she doesn't shy away from a study by communications theorists Laura Stafford and Andy J. Merolla which found that the long-distance couples who idealized each other the most were the least stable upon reunion. Pragmatic thinking suggests Nicole should idealize "not too little, not too much".

Idealization, in a sense, implies an ongoing infidelity. The ideal person to whom one is faithful is a perfect creature whom we can count on remembering fondly in the near future, especially with many miles between us. At some point- usually when the geographic distance is overcome- we must decide whether our fidelity applies as surely to the real lover as it did to the ideal one. And there are no two ways about it- no way to split the difference between idealization and reality. The supernatural essence of idealization makes it hard for me to imagine how one might go about applying an Aristotlean course of moderation to a perspective that insists on pies in the sky. 

Any self-respecting Protestant will tell you that demystifying the sublime leaves you with pizza and indoor basketball courts.

As an avid former practioner of the long-distance romance, I discovered my own reasons for cultivating cross-country relationships. There was nothing quite so exciting as those weekends where the most fascinating thing we could find to do was each other. Unlike the pickled romances of my colleagues, my long-range lovers and I rarely bickered or argued over trivial matters. Granted, we weren't that involved in the trivial aspects of one anothers' lives.

But the pros generally outweighed the cons. I appreciated the way every communication proved amenable to my editing and rewriting skills. Frankly, a person is never quite as pliant in the flesh as they tend to be on paper. My long-distance lovers benefitted from my tendency to interpret their comments and actions in light of the stories I longed to tell. Likewise, I found myself impressed by the tenderness with which they approached their own editing tasks. This woman they loved- the character they wrote me into- I couldn't get enough of her charms. 

It's a fact that long-distance makes great fodder for fiction. Loving from far away gives us more control over the creation of our own narrative self- the person whom we wish to be when we line up our emotions, values, feelings, and hopes. Not to mention the time saved by only having to shave one's legs once or twice a month before conjugal visits. 

In his book, The Happiness of Pursuit, Shimon Edelmen describes the narrative self as the "growing, often rehearsed, incessantly revised personal anthology", the series of scripts, social behaviors, and stories we use to construct and maintain our personal identity. Edelman observes that human emotions are essentially "computational shortcuts that funnel" the results of our self-monitoring and observations. Our emotions matter in the grand scheme of things because our emotions ultimately structure our responses and reactions to the world around us over time. We need the past, Edelman insists, to deal with the future. This imperative to construct and maintain a narrative self is key to our survival and thriving. 

Putting a positive spin on things keeps us from wallowing in melancholy and adding too many Leonard Cohen songs to the party playlist. Our narrative selves learn from mistakes and adapt accordingly. The love we lost wasn't such a bad thing since it made way for the love we currently inhabit. But idealization, as a cognitive approach, makes level-headed analysis almost impossible. 

Long-distance love is an ideal vehicle for nourishing and sustaining romantic love. But only over the long distance. Usually, the lovers tend to feel betrayed by the sides not represented in the ideal. Sharing an apartment means you don't have to vacuum it in a mad dash before your lover's weekend visit. Instead, you have the opportunity to argue over whose career or schedule most sensibly accomodates vacuuming duties. These are the sorts of conversations that make or break the kingdom of couple-dom. Sadly, my long-distance lovers and I wasted many years before arriving at a point when the importance of vacuuming duties could be dully addressed and divvied. 

Infographic sourced from LDR magazine.

If my descriptions of shared domestic life sound as if they emanate from another planet, that is because they do. The distance between long-distance love and day-to-day-coupling can be measured in light years. Waiting to cross that bridge when you come to it only ensures the costs of divestment accrue over time.  

Fortunately, I am not the only sourpuss with opinions on the merits of long-distance love affairs. When the goodbye's get tough and you find yourself wondering why pining and loneliness share so many common traits, you can thank your lucky stars-and-stripes for the way in which the free-market responds to all our needs, including the needs we never knew existed until we bought the latest how-to-be-happier book on a longer-than-expected layover in Atlanta's awful airport. As a matter of social scientific fact, the emerging market for long-distance lover self-help might be able to give you what the perfect lover cannot. 

LDR magazine (yes, that's "Long Distance Relationship" magazine) can give you tips on everything from the best instant messaging services to how to plan your long-distance wedding. The visually-inclined will also find a cornucopia of infographics illustrating the various costs, benefits, dividends, retrenchments, and pay-offs of a love that refuses to be bound by city, county, or nation-state. While ordinary couples spoon themselves to sleep at night, you can master the much-needed skills involved in self-soothing rituals. You can also explore the ways in which a small, furry pet can satisfy your need for company and physical touch. 

You can tap into an online community of experts, personal coaches, and fellow LDR's eager to assist you in your struggle to love someone elsewhere. Self-described long-distance lover Besski Livius extols the benefits of loving from afar:

Even if for a while it may be linear during all those months that you stay far from each other, the intensity of your missing of each other and desiring each other and wanting to hold each other is just unbelievable, it’s not even comparable with the missing that you have in a classic relationship. 

If Nicole ever feels overwhelmed by the ways in which long-distance love doesn't quite measure up to its promised passion and intensity, Besski offers paid coaching services and products to help long-distance lovers meet their full relationship potential. My guess is that Nicole won't find Besski any more comforting than I did. 

Infographic sourced from LDR magazine.

Nicole concludes her essay with the hope that she and Joel will "find each other extraordinary enough to defy geography". At the risk of sounding cynical, I might add that this hope is remarkably similar to the hope of every couple in the throes of romantic love, including those couples who are not currently geographically-challenged.

Is it any less dramatic to admit I hoped my partner and I would find each other extraordinary enough to defy the tendency for our generation to engage in a series of seven-year marriages interspersed with a few years of single parenthood and the occasional career change? For couples today, there are greater distances and dangers than those maintained by physical miles. Nicole, geography might be smallest hurdle to the love you decide to live.

For the sake of full disclosure, my current partner and I did the long-distance dating activity for six months after he moved back to Atlanta. In a now-legendary trail of tears, text messages, and letters, we ended our relationship. He decided to accept a career opportunity in Asia.

Then, one weekend, we ran into each other, got engaged at a truck stop somewhere in Ohio or Kentucky, simultaneously quit our jobs, and spent the next two months doing nothing besides dreaming and planning our wedding. So our LDR had a happy ending. But I can't help thinking the happy ending came about because we elected to drop everything else in our lives and put meat onto our idealizations of one another. 

If I stand by any of my previous contentions, it's the one that posits a choice between pragmatism and idealization. My choice leaves me shooting the moon and admiring pies in the sky. The view remains anything but dull.