• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
The Old Hack

Story Monday May 15, 2017

Recommended Posts

Another thing about my being so darned old is I've seen attitudes about sex, sexual preferences, and sexual expression change over my lifetime while most of you know it as history. The Kinsey scale looks pretty superficial now but it was revolutionary in the 1950s. In the Sixties males who cross-dressed could still do jail time. The love that dared not speak its name had damned good reasons not to.

Anyway, the last panel on this page gets my vote for best in the whole series about this subject. Maybe best in the whole series, period.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
24 minutes ago, Ran-san said:

And that my issue with humans being attracted to non-sentients. Because animals cannot consent, it squicks me out and I don't like to talk about it. 

I've seen enough to think that "animals cannot consent" is too sweeping a statement. I've seen a male dog withdraw consent to mate with a female dog. (Much to her disappointment... but considering that she could walk under him with her head up and not brush her ears on his belly, probably wise.) I've seen a male cat encourage another male cat to mount him.

On the other hand, I haven't seen any instance of an animal of one species consent to be mounted by an animal of another, not-closely-related species.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
52 minutes ago, Ran-san said:

 if a person likes a fetish, they'd prefer to share it with the genderform(s) they are attracted to. They aren't mutually exclusive.

I've met an awful lot of people who would disagree.  They see the shared kink as far more important than what sort of body the potential playmate comes in.  The phrase I've heard repeatedly is, "My sexual orientation is 'kinky'."

1 minute ago, Don Edwards said:

On the other hand, I haven't seen any instance of an animal of one species consent to be mounted by an animal of another, not-closely-related species.

My orange tabby never gave any sign of displeasure when my papillon did it.  And there are a fair number of people who will let their dog mount their leg.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

I've met an awful lot of people who would disagree.  They see the shared kink as far more important than what sort of body the potential playmate comes in.  The phrase I've heard repeatedly is, "My sexual orientation is 'kinky'."

In that case the person involved is probably bi or omnisexual. Being attracted to everyone means you would value the "style" more than the "who" involved.

6 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

My orange tabby never gave any sign of displeasure when my papillon did it.  And there are a fair number of people who will let their dog mount their leg.

My argument is more about the ability of a non-sentient lifeform to consent to a human's advances, not the other way around.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I thought all orange cats were male: Heathcliff, Garfield, Sunshine.

Sunshine?

Sunshine was an orange cat my grandmother kept. He was a farm cat, unfixed, and lazy--except when he wasn't. He would catch hummingbirds right out of the air, something that Grandma hated.

My favorite memory is when a mama cat from across the road came trooping with her kittens behind, and one of them was a little Sunshine. And Sunshine was doing a very credible double take, like, "Who, me?"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

My favorite memory is when a mama cat from across the road came trooping with her kittens behind, and one of them was a little Sunshine. And Sunshine was doing a very credible double take, like, "Who, me?"

Now I want to know if the expression on the mama cat's face was "Ahem! Child support! Naow!"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

I thought all orange cats were male: Heathcliff, Garfield, Sunshine.

 

Nope, just three out of four of 'em.  Calico and Tortoiseshell, on the other hand, are always female, with the extremely rare exception of anomalies like XXY chromosomes.

15 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Sunshine was an orange cat my grandmother kept. He was a farm cat, unfixed, and lazy--except when he wasn't. He would catch hummingbirds right out of the air, something that Grandma hated.

My favorite memory is when a mama cat from across the road came trooping with her kittens behind, and one of them was a little Sunshine. And Sunshine was doing a very credible double take, like, "Who, me?"

Cats are one of those species where there is frequently more than one father for a given litter.  That said, orange cats aren't exactly rare, so Sunshine may or may not have been the daddy.

17 minutes ago, Ran-san said:

In that case the person involved is probably bi or omnisexual. Being attracted to everyone means you would value the "style" more than the "who" involved.

Sometimes.  Or sometimes someone who is otherwise straight has so much stronger an inclination to their kink(s) that the sex or gender of their partner just isn't important enough to worry about.  Not always, of course, some people are just as rigid in who they'll play with as who they'll sleep with in non-kinky contexts.

Personally, I always liked Captain Jack's description of putting people in little categories as "quaint."

17 minutes ago, Ran-san said:

My argument is more about the ability of a non-sentient lifeform to consent to a human's advances, not the other way around.

Hey, I was just giving a counter-example to a specific assertion, not to the whole overall argument.  There are cross-species examples of consent.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Sometimes.  Or sometimes someone who is otherwise straight has so much stronger an inclination to their kink(s) that the sex or gender of their partner just isn't important enough to worry about.  Not always, of course, some people are just as rigid in who they'll play with as who they'll sleep with in non-kinky contexts.

Personally, I always liked Captain Jack's description of putting people in little categories as "quaint."

You'll note that I list Captain Jack as the very definition of "Omnisexual". Maybe that definition should be expanded to say "One who cares little about the genders, races and species of those involved, as long as all involved are having a good time."

Hmm...also sounds a bit like Ford Prefect as well...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
18 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Nope, just three out of four of 'em.  Calico and Tortoiseshell, on the other hand, are always female, with the extremely rare exception of anomalies like XXY chromosomes.

The last cat we had was the first of a litter of 5 by a stray we had found and brought in when we found out she was pregnant. The mother was a longhair Tortoiseshell, the first kitten that we kept was also Tortoiseshell, 2 kittens were completely black except for a little bit of white under the neck, and 2 were orange tabbies.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
28 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hey, I was just giving a counter-example to a specific assertion, not to the whole overall argument.  There are cross-species examples of consent.

Freefall last week.  FF by 2 comics as well (it's today's so no permalink till Wednesday)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
6 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hey, I was just giving a counter-example to a specific assertion, not to the whole overall argument.  There are cross-species examples of consent.

Freefall last week.  FF by 2 comics as well (it's today's so no permalink till Wednesday)

The list of cross species consent in comics would be very long. But note that both of them are sentient in this case (although the possibility of direct order would complicate matters a lot).

6 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Sometimes.  Or sometimes someone who is otherwise straight has so much stronger an inclination to their kink(s) that the sex or gender of their partner just isn't important enough to worry about.  Not always, of course, some people are just as rigid in who they'll play with as who they'll sleep with in non-kinky contexts.

The main lesson of Kinsey scale missing from this discussion is that there are more options than just having on not having some trait (kink). Unless you can prove causal connection or at least very strong correlation, you should consider all traits independent. Meaning that it's not surprising if someone who has high score in kink and low score in gender preference would consider the king more important, while someone with similar score in both would insist that gender matters as well.

7 hours ago, Ran-san said:

Yeah, people attracted to non-sentient forms (animals) was a level I was trying to avoid myself. It brings up a lot of squick to me. Mostly due to reasons of consent.

Are you similarly squicked by missing consent from non-live forms (things)? Like dildos? What about plants? Those are technically alive, and yet you can't expect much consent from banana or cucumber.

Sure, you can force many animals to do things they don't like, but I fail to see why having sex with them will be worse than anything else. It's not like you can make them pregnant. Also, I don't really believe the animal isn't able to show it doesn't like something - at least until you deliberately train it out of it.

(I also fail to see them as attractive in reality ... anthropomorphized animals may be different case, but they are often sentient as well.)

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
14 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Are you similarly squicked by missing consent from non-live forms (things)? Like dildos? What about plants? Those are technically alive, and yet you can't expect much consent from banana or cucumber.

Sure, you can force many animals to do things they don't like, but I fail to see why having sex with them will be worse than anything else. It's not like you can make them pregnant. Also, I don't really believe the animal isn't able to show it doesn't like something - at least until you deliberately train it out of it.

(I also fail to see them as attractive in reality ... anthropomorphized animals may be different case, but they are often sentient as well.)

Reminds me of my sister telling me how veganism is discriminatory against non-animal life forms.  (I don't share that view, although I'm not a vegan either.)

But yeah, back on topic, I think it's reasonable that an animal could express a desire for or against something.  Might be difficult to prove though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, HarJIT said:

Reminds me of my sister telling me how veganism is discriminatory against non-animal life forms.  (I don't share that view, although I'm not a vegan either.)

The correct reply is "I do and therefore I'm not a vegan" :)

Human is not able to survive without eating other lifeforms or at least parts of them. Arguably least "violent" food is milk and eggs (unfertilized of course), despite many vegans not eating it.

5 hours ago, HarJIT said:

But yeah, back on topic, I think it's reasonable that an animal could express a desire for or against something.  Might be difficult to prove though.

Even just recognizing that animal is expressing desire against something is not so easy. Starting with the relatively common knowledge that cats and dogs have almost opposite body languages ...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"Character is what you are in the dark."  

Elliot has been dividing her life for the past year(?) between sleeping as a woman and waking as a man.  When she sleeps she communes with the koan of her dreams, and paints the walls of her subconscious with a landscape that is shifting, over time, from what it was when he was only him.

The pm has dropped into her waking mind like a stone in a pond, and the ripples continue to draw her thoughts deeper.  She does not swim these depths with ease, it is closer to  a struggle for her to move here.  The effort of it renders her supine, and then takes half her breath as she drops to a whisper while speaking a truth to herself about who she is become.  It is a revelation, a truth not anticipated, and it advances on her like a great wave.  

This is why her main expression is worry shading into fear.   She does not fear judgement - her blood family is accepting to the point of indifference, her friends are literally every color of the rainbow, and her girlfriend actually really digs her difference.  This is  about identity, and that very uncomfortable sensation as you discover that its not at all simple.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Human is not able to survive without eating other lifeforms or at least parts of them. Arguably least "violent" food is milk and eggs (unfertilized of course), despite many vegans not eating it.

Fruit is intended to be eaten - in hopes that you (or some animal) will swallow the seeds and deposit them somewhere else in a nice lump of fertilizer.

This even extends to hard-to-eat fruits like ghost peppers. (Yes, botanically they are fruit. So are tomatoes, and several other things that are culinary vegetables.) The catch there is that the seeds will rarely survive the typical mammalian herbivore's teeth and digestive system, so US eating them is not good for the plant's genome. They can pass through a bird's beak and digestive system with a rather high survival rate, though... and birds don't have the receptors to notice capsicum.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
13 hours ago, Nayl said:

The pm has dropped into her waking mind like a stone in a pond, and the ripples continue to draw her thoughts deeper.

What the heck is "pm" supposed to mean here? If it's supposed to be "PM" as in "Post-Meridiem", that actually refers to the time after noon. Dreams are more native to the "AM" or "Ante-Meridiem" portion of our 24-hour day.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 5/15/2017 at 11:45 AM, Ran-san said:

omnisexual - One who is sexually attracted to any and all genderforms and variations therein. SEE: Harkness, Captain Jack

I think "pansexual" is the established term for this.

On 5/15/2017 at 11:45 AM, Ran-san said:

XXXXsexual - One who is sexually attracted to a specific individual, regardless of both that person's and their own current genderform. (i.e. "Teddsexual", "Ranmasexual", etc.)

This is at least similar to "demisexual" (at least if the person isn't normally attracted to others).

Also, from other threads, I think "gender-meh" ≈ "cis-genderless".

On 5/15/2017 at 11:45 AM, Ran-san said:

Now, if someone could make a Kinsey Scale to accompany THAT, I'd be impressed.

If being hetero/homosexual separate from being andro/pansexual is actually a thing, then at least in theory we'd need to distinguish people who were, e.g., always attracted to females and always attracted to the opposite sex (like a hetero male with the transformation gun) from those who are only attracted to people if they're female and also the opposite sex (so, asexual when female) (both could be described as "both gynesexual and heterosexual").

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
44 minutes ago, chridd said:

Also, from other threads, I think "gender-meh" ≈ "cis-genderless".

Yep, that is what I meant when I started using it.  Has a gender, doesn't care if changes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Physics is simple.  There's one set of laws of physics, which apply everywhere; there are a relatively small number of particle types, and all particles of a given type behave the same.  Whereas with humans, each human has slightly different genetic code, which is then influenced by slightly different hormone levels etc. and also different experiences etc.  If we were dealing with a multiverse of universes with slightly different laws of physics, but there was only one universe with each set of laws; or if each electron had slightly different behavior, physics would be much more complicated.

Also, humans can lie (to others, to themselves), and humans can change their behavior based on their understanding of human behavior.  Physics doesn't care what we know about it.

Oh, and there are ethical concerns in studying humans, too.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

Is it just me, or are gender issues becoming more complicated than string theory?

I suggested that a while back. Considering that I had a list of 14 dimensions of gender identity and attraction to others, and the currently-most-prominent version of string theory is content with only 11 dimensions...

(No I don't remember what all 14 dimensions are. Two for gender identity, two for sexual attraction, two for romantic attraction, two for aesthetic attraction... I don't remember the others.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now