Emerald's Blog, page 25

e[lust] #34

I have a post included in this month's e[lust], a project organized by the lovely Dangerous Lilly. If you're unfamiliar with e[lust] and would like an introduction, or if you would like to submit, see this page for information. Thanks for visiting!

Love,

Emerald

e[lust] #34

Photo Courtesy of JM from There is No Spoon!

Welcome to e[lust] - Your source for sexual intelligence and inspirations of lust from the smartest & sexiest bloggers! Whether you're looking for hot steamy smut, thought-provoking opinions or expert information, you're going to find it here. Want to be included in e[lust] #35 ? Start with the rules, check out the schedule and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates! Note: Wondering why there is no Top 3 this edition? Read the latest Editor's Note to find out why, and what you can do to help prevent this from happening in the future.

~ Featured Posts (Picked by Lilly) ~

The Ultrasound and the Fury- I cried softly and my partner moved closer to the table so I could lay my cheek against him for comfort and support. Then they brandished a wand and explained they needed to take pictures inside of me. And told him to get out.

Vagina in the Wild – Adventures in Pantslessness – They are self-cleaning and self-lubricating. They are a wonderfully well designed body part that speaks of feminine power and beauty. They leave wet spots on the couch.

~ e[lust] Editress ~

The Ultimate Guide to Silicone Sex Toys — With Metis Black of Tantus, Inc. – I picked the brain of Metis Black, the fabulous woman behind Tantus Inc, makers of some very awesome silicone sex toys. Get your sex geek on and find out some myths and facts about silicone sex toys!

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the "read more…" tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!

Kink & Fetish

As Is Custom
Consent and negotiation
Fishnets and Spanking and Sleep
In room entertainment
Ladies' Night: My First Time at an All-Womens' Sex Party
Learn the rope of knots: Overhand Knot
slapping…drinking…and other wacky fun…
That Moment

Sex News, Interviews, Politics & Humor

An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh
Erotic-On Me
Eyes Wide Smut
Strangers on a Train

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

Bondage Insecurities
Cunnilingus 101
Getaway Sex vs Everyday Sex
Gifts from Lover's
Innies, Outties & 3-Ways
Im 35 and My Mum Can Hear Me Having Sex
Mono or Poly
Mmm, the kissage!
Never Pinch a Sadist #3: Relationship Rules
Primary? Alpha?
Safewords in the Real World
Shields
The long distance thing
The Next Evolution — Swinging-Open Marriage-Polyamory

Erotic Writing

A Good Day and Sexzy Night
50 Ways to Fuck Your Lover
Blissful Candlelit Climax
Cunny Honey
Easy Like Sunday Mornings
Fingertips
first date
In which… I go to my first party (Part I)
I'm the Slut
How It All Started
Mount'n Dew
Our Sex Diary (Part Two!)
Rain
Rendezvous
Some Truth…About Cocksucking
Sensuality
She Takes Control
The Chair – The Execution
The Beast
That Familiar Maddening Thrill
The Importance of (Emotional and Physical) Self-Love
Vignette 2: Traffic Stop
Working Out
Whore's Mouth

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Published on March 16, 2012 11:50

An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh

March 3rd is International Sex Worker Rights Day. My post in honor of it is combined with a few other things I want to address and is in the form of an open letter to Rush Limbaugh.

Dear Mr. Limbaugh:

From what I have interpreted in the last week, it seems you do not like the idea of birth control being funded by health insurance companies. It further appears that you found it appropriate to speculate about the personal life of an individual who disagrees with you about that and spoke about it before Congress.

Do you have health insurance, Rush? Would it be safe to say that you feel you should be able to eat all the french fries you want and that your insurance should still pay for treatment for you were you to develop heart disease (I certainly do not wish this on you or anyone), and that if you did happen to experience a heart attack, insurance should pay for your medical care during and after that as well? If so, we are on the same page.

If not, then for whatever reason, we do appear to disagree. Not that I would describe the above situation as taxpayers being asked to satisfy the eating habits of radio personalities, but if we are going to have a system of health insurance, it seems appropriate to me that it should cover the health care needs of the people it insures—even if those health care needs seem influenced by the lifestyle choices the holders of it, citizens of a free and democratic republic, make.

You mentioned that you felt that Sandra Fluke, who testified before Congress about contraceptive coverage in relation to health insurance, was a "slut" and a "prostitute" because she she feels birth control pills should be covered by health insurance. "Slut," of course, is a subjective term—since it seems to me it has no actual definition, it would be hard to claim it to be slanderous. Furthermore, some of us don't see it as a denigrating label. You could call me a slut, for example, until you're blue in the face, and it wouldn't disquiet me in the least because I simply don't perceive the word as an insult.

Similarly, I don't see labeling someone a prostitute as an insult. In the case of that word, it does refer to an actual job, so the label could be incorrect. Claiming that I am a prostitute at this time, for example, would be incorrect, but it would hold about as much power to insult me as claiming I am an accountant. Both are erroneous, but I certainly don't take offense to either.

Because we have ignorant, puritanical, and inappropriate laws in this country about it, however, prostitution is illegal. So stating that someone works as a prostitute is claiming that person does something illegal. Thus that, if not true, is slanderous. I wish Ms. Fluke all the best in introducing legal action against you as such should she choose to.

Probably you didn't know that today, March 3, is International Sex Worker Rights Day. One of the things supporting that means to me is advocating for the decriminalization of prostitution so that one day what you said about Ms. Fluke would not be slanderous because 1) it wouldn't be accusing someone of doing something illegal and 2) the ignorance and judgment of collective society would have subsided so that what you said would not even be perceived as an insult.

Of course, the energy with which you said it would probably still make it an unsavory thing to say. It wasn't the words but the judgmental and disrespectful energy with which it was said, the relatively unconscious place from which it came, that made it so unfortunate.

To be frank, it would seem to me that one who underwent what became a public challenge with substance addiction as you did would have developed more empathy both for the basic struggles of your fellow humans and also for those whose personal business is intruded upon by a culture that seems to find it okay to do so to those considered famous or public figures. Why that didn't appear to happen, I don't know, but it seems doubly sorrowful to me because I suspect it means you are suffering all the more in order to close your heart off to the natural development of empathy.

I don't doubt that you struggle a lot. Anyone who treats others with the degree of vitriol and contempt I have observed in you almost certainly feels those things toward oneself, whether it is realized consciously or not. I wish you all the best with the struggles and challenges you experience. In truth, it is not actually hard for me to do so—I recognize that we are ultimately all one, and even when I feel enormous frustration with what I perceive to be the ignorance or unconsciousness someone displays, I am still aware that there is something much bigger than that.

The truth is, Rush, I suspect that someday you will perceive and feel true regret for the degree to which you've treated your fellow human beings with disrespect. It may be on your deathbed, perhaps before. Or, perhaps it will not happen at all. I just suspect it will. Remembering that reminds me of the compassion I feel for you, as true compassion (which I feel we all have the intrinsic capacity for, whether we recognize it or not) is compassion for everyone—it's indivisible. I don't want to intrude on your process, so I beg your pardon for saying that; it is not for me to speculate, really. It's just something that has occurred to me as I have observed this situation.

I wish you all the best, and indeed I do plan to continue to have as much sex as I want, with however many partners as I want, as often as I want. That happens to not be the reason doctors have recommended birth control pills as part of my health care, but it is a choice I make just like many citizens who choose to eat french fries and still receive health care for heart and other diseases. As long as I work for or pay for health insurance, I expect it to cover my health care needs to the same degree it does the rest of the citizenry, regardless of what my employer finds appropriate.

Sincerely,

Emily McCay

aka Emerald

Tell your leaders love's in town, to turn this whole thing upside down, yeah, we can't take it anymore…

-LIVE "Transmit Your Love"

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Published on March 03, 2012 17:38

On Behalf of the Real

I went to a workshop a few weeks ago. It was residential, lasted five days, and I spent much of it reeling or in a state of stunned silence or contemplation. That is not hyperbolic.

The workshop, as many I have attended, was inner Work-focused. The things I saw and learned about myself were life-changing…so much so, paradoxically, that it feels far away somehow to remember them now. I feel and felt the shift in me, on a pre-verbal, non-conceptual level, but residing in everyday consciousness makes it almost impossible to "remember" what it is I learned.

Not that that's always the point. Remembering is done by a part of the mind that wasn't where I accessed the seeing I did that weekend. But there is a degree, I think, to which I haven't fully integrated what I learned. I don't know if I yet know how.

The reason I'm writing about it here is that much of it had to do with sex. More pointedly, I realized—or remembered—dramatically something that had occurred to me before. There is a way in which I have wondered if it is hypocritical, inappropriate, misplaced, or somehow all of those things in combination or some other adjective that hasn't occurred to me for me to experience myself as an advocate for authentic, sacred sexuality.

Because I am so far from understanding and living my own.

I haven't always known this. Within the last year I have seen things about my own sexual experience and perspective that stunned me beyond words. Things I thought were, were not. Things I had had no inkling of a clue about were suddenly clear in my consciousness.

I think on some level the past repression I have experienced around sexuality made me think when I overcame it that the game was over. That I was free of that now, and I was thus in control of my own sexuality. To some degree, that was true. There was definitely more of my own conscious choosing around sex for me at that time, and the shift was indeed enormous. I do appreciate it beyond description and do not underestimate it.

 Where I was wrong was in thinking that was the be-all end-all. The more I've seen about myself, the more I've worked on myself, the more it seems I've understood that there is no such thing.

So, I have found myself wondering if my own deep revelations of the areas and degree of illusion and unconsciousness in my own experience of sexuality mean I have been and am unfit to advocate on behalf of sexuality, since I am so far from living an authentic sexual life—and having done so when I thought I was—myself.

But when that question has arisen, it has almost always been followed closely by the recognition that to my recollection, I have never claimed such. I have advocated with utmost sincerity for openness, awareness, authenticity, appreciation around sexuality—our own individual sexuality and on behalf of sexuality as the fundamental entity it is. I still do. I have not, in doing so (or at least I have not intended) claimed that I exhibit the utmost health and awareness of my own sexuality. Even if I may have thought I was doing so—which I most assuredly was not—the point, to me, in the advocacy I have done is not because I've felt I know it all in myself and am trying to get everyone else to fall in line.

It is, indeed, that the seeking to know is what is important.

The seeing. The asking. The receiving. The staying with. All of those things in regard to ourselves—as the essentialness and relevance of self-awareness, as I have said before, and as I passionately feel, may virtually not be overestimated.

It is not, it seems to me, where we are, but rather how open we are to seeing it and allowing shift to occur. Things are not in me what I thought they were. But my highest aspiration is to see that, to wake up, to allow consciousness to see itself through me. I have not had a clue what was going on in me, but I want to learn. I want to know. It is that openness to learning about ourselves, to self-awareness, that strikes me as of utmost importance.

So there has been tremendous unconsciousness in me around sexuality. What I have seen does not change any fundamental view I have shared about the importance of sexuality, its sacredness, any of the perspectives about our experience and appreciation of it really at all. Those are all larger than my own perspective. In fact, what I have seen reminds me of that—of that which is larger than I; and that in all of the advocacy I have done around this subject, that is always what it has been about—that which is bigger than I, and the sincere desire in me for us all to awaken to it; and that I aspire to that most of all.

That has not changed. In a way, nothing has, even as in me, the perception has expanded profoundly. And a shift has occurred with it, even if I don't know how to articulate or verbally express it at all. I do not know everything. Or anywhere close to it—even (perhaps especially) about myself.

But that's not why I advocate. I don't advocate because I know—because I have it all figured out. I advocate because I don't. And I see a potential in that that is beyond words. And it's in us all, and the truth is, that is what I'm really advocating for: the seeing. The awareness of what is, what really is, beyond the unconscious patterns in us of which we often aren't aware and which we think sometimes are what's real. I had quite a taste of the reminder of that a few weeks ago. It is, actually, what I want for us all. That we see things we didn't know about ourselves, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's stunning, and we stay with that and hold ourselves in love and awaken more as a result of it.

That's authenticity. It looks unique for everyone. It's not a certain thing, or a certain way of doing things, or a certain look. I have not advocated for any of that. I have advocated for authenticity.

As I continue to do.

Love,

Emerald

"I wanted to run, you made me stand there and breathe…"

-LIVE "Where Do We Go From Here?"

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Published on February 23, 2012 23:26