#sex should be about what you actively desire and enjoy! not what you can theoretically tolerate for your partner’s sake!

[pjharvey-moved]

if you are having sex with someone you know for a fact doesn’t enjoy or want it and doesn’t experience sexual attraction to you you legitimately should burn in hell. i don’t believe in hell but they should invent it so u can burn in it

[juniorgman187]

The Unsaid (Spencer Reid Imagine)

Summary: Spencer and Reader spend Halloween doing something unforgettable.

Category: Smut *NSFW Content 18+  A/N: This is my first time writing smut and I promise I’ll try to improve and not make it so cringy next time Couple: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid Content Warning: cursing, choking, unprotected sex/creampie, penetrative sex, Dom! Spencer Word Count: 4.3K

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

Call it cliche, but you looked fucking hot. 

Pigtails on either side of your head were tied with a red ribbon bow. Your white polo button up wasn’t buttoned at all but rather, secured with a knot right at your sternum. The shirt was pulled so taut, cleavage was showing. Just south of your red plaid, pleated mini skirt was white knee high socks with little bows at the top seam. You wanted to wear black heels, but they would’ve killed you by the end of the night, so you settled for the next best thing - black high top Chucks. 

Hell yeah - you were a sexy schoolgirl. Granted, you had to keep it somewhat P.G for the younger trick-or-treaters, but you didn’t mind giving the hot single dad’s a little show. At some point, you actually stopped checking the peephole and took your chances, not minding running the risk of high school trick-or-treaters on your doorstep seeing a little more leg than deemed appropriate. After hours of handing out candy, you tried not to lose your charm despite your exhaustion. That worked in your favor. 

When you heard your doorbell ring, something in you told you that it wasn’t a little kid knocking, so you provocatively leaned on the door frame once you opened it. And your instincts were right - for the most part. 

At first glance, it was like you were looking at a living paradox. His boyishly charming face and unwillingness to meet your eyes for longer than a couple seconds made him seem so young but how he was dressed reminded you of your grandpa’s church attire. Unabashedly, you eyed him up and down, whereas he was looking . . . respectfully. Yeah - that’s the word. Respectfully.

You crossed your arms over your chest, making your breasts push together further. This caught his eye, but he tried to pretend it didn’t. 

“Mmm, alright, I give up. Whatcha dressed as? Sexy professor?” You flirted. He cleared his throat, evidently unused to the forwardness you were exhibiting. “A federal agent actually,” He answered, flipping open a badge to reveal his credentials. “Y/N Y/L/N?”

Your demeanor completely changed. Your posture straightened out and you dropped the smirk on your face. You were rendered speechless, so you wordlessly nodded. 

“My name’s Dr. Spencer Reid. Um, can I come inside?” His voice was so sweet, it was misleading. Were you in trouble? If so, why was he being so nice? 

You did your best not to feel scrutinized while he observed the interior of your house. He was paying special attention to all of the Halloween decors. You thought you saw him smiling as he accidentally walked through a fake spider web because he was so tall. You took the seat straight across from him making things feel sort of like a homemade interrogation, what with the singular dim light hanging above the two of you as you sat opposite one another.

“I think maybe I should change into something more . . . appropriate.” You were about to get up from your seat when he stood up and put his hand up to stop you.

“That won’t be necessary. Here.” He jerked his dark gray cardigan off of himself and handed it to you before sitting back down. You stood there, clutching his large sweater in your hand. It happened so fast you didn’t have time to process. 

“Um, thank you.” You slipped it over yourself and pulled it closed across your chest with crossed arms. 

“Yeah, no problem.” He said with cool indifference. You thought this would’ve been a bigger deal - an FBI agent handing you his sweater - but his display of equanimity made you choose not to pay any more attention to it than you already did. 

He began asking you questions about the neighborhood, the people, even about the town. You became acutely uneasy with every question you answered, hoping you were saying the right things. It wasn’t like you were guilty of anything, but being interrogated like this just put you on-edge. You hoped that he was able to distinguish that the source of your anxiousness came from the situation, and not from any possible criminal activity that could be related to the case he was working on. 

As curious as you were about why he was asking these questions, to begin with, you thought it might actually be better not to know. Otherwise, you might grow paranoid, but still, you couldn’t help but ask the obvious - “Should I be worried?”

“Not at all. And if you do find something suspicious, just give me a call.” He reached inside his satchel and retrieved a card to hand to you with all of his contact information on it. 

“So how do I know you’re not actually the guy I should be suspicious of and this was all just to get me off your radar? Or a ruse to get into my house?” You joked, flipping the card between your index and middle finger. 

He had to chuckle at this. “Well, if you truly suspected something about me, why would you open the door for me?” He crossed his arms and put them on the table. “What was it about me that told you I was trustworthy enough to cross the threshold?” 

Without missing a beat, you told him, “You wouldn’t hurt me.” 

You’d never spoken with that kind of confidence or speed before, but something incredibly right about what you said. 

He wouldn’t hurt you. You just knew.

“What makes you think I won’t?” His question sounded serious, but you swore there was some sort of a sexual undertone in his voice. 

You tried to think of a satisfactory answer, but all you knew for sure what that your gut was telling you he wasn’t bad. Maybe it was something soft about his eyes, maybe the color that resembled sweet honey.

“A hunch, I guess?” 

He seemed delighted that his smoldering intensity had an effect on you. He was proud of how the heat of this moment alone shook your confident core. He caused you to revert back into a blubbering mess after he looked at you. You were intimidated by him. 

“So you’re not scared of me?” However, you chose to answer him would build up his ego either way. Because even if you lied, your body language wouldn’t. It would tell the truth and nothing but. 

You tried your best to make your voice smooth, and free of shakiness caused by fear. “No, I’m not scared of you.” 

‘Well, you should be.’ His eyes seemed to say. 

That’s when he reached both hands onto one side of the table and pushed, causing the table to slide out of the way. Like how a prey bolts when the predator nears, you shot up from the chair and backed up into the nearest wall. Theoretically, it wasn’t the best idea if you wanted to escape, but you didn’t want to escape - you wanted him to attack. You liked it. 

Spencer’s massive hands encased your neck completely, occasionally adjusting the force with which he used to choke you. Sometimes he’d let go, just for a second, so you could breathe, but it only made things crueler because, in the next breath, or lack thereof, he’d tighten his grip and choke out any air you were gasping for. Before you started seeing stars, you watched his eyes. They were darker than wine. He was enjoying this.

While your head lolled backward, the rest of your body seemed to tranquilize too. You had no control of your movements, so your body was shed of his cardigan when your arms straightened by your sides. You were like a rag doll. A toy. 

You were completely submissive to him. He had you under a spell that was cast by the magic of his dominant touch. 

“Still think I won’t hurt you?” He growled into your ear. He was so close you could actually smell him and feel the heat radiating off his body. 

He loosened the noose he made with his hands so you could speak. 

“You want to . . . but you won’t.” You replied between short breaths. 

Finally, he removed his hands completely, making your feet crash hard onto the ground. You didn’t even grasp that he was suffocating you using such a firm grip that you actually levitated off the ground. He managed to hold all of your weight and lift you up just by bracing your neck. 

“You can hurt me if you want,”

He looked too eager to hear you say that, making you want to fight for dominance.

“But only if I get to do what I want to do, too.” 

His sweet honey eyes intensified with fervor.

He put one hand on the wall and leaned forward, shortening the distance between you two. Soon enough your faces are millimeters apart. You look down at his soft lips with doe eyes, so he feels comfortable making the first move to kiss you. At first, it’s gentle and hesitant. A total departure from the dominance he was displaying just seconds before. But then he sneaks his free hand into your hair and pushes your head slightly to deepen the kiss. 

Not even meaning to, he bucked his hips forward, making your back arch against the wall. Reid takes this opportunity to remove his hand from the wall and place it on the small of your back. Slowly and sloppily, he moves away from your lips to leave a trail of kisses down your chin, neck, and onto your collarbone. Meanwhile, his hand has traveled up to the knot that secured your button up, and in one swift tug, the knot came undone.

“You are way too good at that.” You breathlessly acknowledge, shrugging the shirt off of yourself. 

You feel him smirk against your skin. 

Cocky bastard. 

His ever growing desire to see more of you overcomes him, and he can’t stop after just removing your shirt. So with the same unbridled passion he used to choke you, he pulled at the hem of your skirt, forcing it down and off of you. Threads practically ripped at the vigor of his actions. 

He must’ve recognized a look in your eyes that said he was a little overdressed in comparison to you because he didn’t stop you when you pulled at his tie and worked it free, so he could unbutton his shirt.

With your body nearly bare and the only thing stopping him from railing you being his pants, he continued the deed. Reid puts a hand on the back of your thigh to hike your leg up. You gasp at the hasty change in positions. He was as ravenous as a predator, but his hunger was something only you could satiate - and he was hungry for more.

Spencer left a trail of wet kisses from your collarbone, to your sternum, and then along your tummy. All the while, your leg is still hiked up. When Spencer goes on bended knee, your leg rests on his shoulder, keeping your legs spread out.

“Tell me what you want.” He commands, before placing slow kisses along your inner thigh. 

“I-” You’re at a total loss for words as Spencer’s kisses deliberately inch closer and closer.

“Is this what you want?” 

In an almost chivalrous way, rather than taking your panties off and leaving you completely exposed, he pulls them to one side, giving him complete access.

“Yes. Yes.” You cry out, while you watch Spencer briskly lick his middle and ring finger. 

Your body betrays you when he grazes his fingers along your lips, teasing you. You’re almost certain your legs would’ve given out underneath you if it hadn’t been for Reid stabilizing you with a steady hand on the leg that wasn’t hooked over his shoulder. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop.” He purrs, slowly easing into the penetration. It’s almost worse having him enter you so unhurriedly as the process of adjusting to his fingers is drawn out. He refuses to increase his speed, wanting to see her beg for more. 

“Does that feel good?” 

You nod.

“Use your words, love.” 

“Yes, yes, it does.”

Your validation does the trick. He begins to sink into you deeper and faster. You begin to fight for breath as Spencer curls his fingers. Until he knows you’re on the brink of finishing, his pace is relentless. You were so close, but devilishly, he pulled out.

“Spencer!” You yell, but before enough of your scream makes a sound, he plunges his fingers deep into your mouth, to taste yourself on them. This gesture is well received as you begin to suck on his fingers, pleasing him greatly. 

“Good girl.” He utters. 

You let your eyes drop from his honey ones to the growing bulge in his pants. For you cannot speak, you peer down at his pants and up at his eyes to ask for permission. He nods once and watches as you begin to unzip his trousers.

As you palm him through his briefs, you feel the warmth of his precum through the fabric. Without being able to control yourself, you lowered his briefs just enough to completely reveal him. Your eyes enlarge at the sight. 

“You like that?” He coos. 

You still can’t speak with Spencer’s fingers in your mouth so you nod instead. 

Graciously, Spencer gives you room to breathe by taking his appendages out of your mouth and uses them instead to grip your hips and turn you away from him. He slammed the front of your body into the wall, causing your cheek to press against it. 

“Tell me if I’m hurting you.” It was so bewildering how he managed to say things like that, proving he cared about you, but still dominated you with unrelenting aggression. 

“Do you want me to wear -” You didn’t even let him finish his question. You cut him off by arching your butt so it would graze over his cock. In this, you gave him your answer. Your body yearned for him and you desperately needed to feel him raw.

Unlike when he was fingering you earlier, he accelerated his movements. He fucked you with an animalistic speed. You didn’t even have time to adjust to his full length before he pulled back and thrust again. His pelvis rammed into your ass so hard with each forward movement that would surely leave bruises on you both. 

What you felt was indescribable. The pain would be quickly replaced by pleasure, only for you to feel pain again. You didn’t know why, but it felt so good. He was hurting you, but in the best kind of way. Your bodies were tangling and merging. The heat that circulated in the air around you and the humidity emitting from your skin was ruthless. 

On fire. 

That’s what you felt - on fucking fire. 

Spencer’s strokes picked up and started hitting you in a spot that made you cry out in anguish. You actually started standing on the balls of your feet, practically tip-toeing. With your palms pushed against the wall, it was only a matter of time before you clawed a hole into it. Truthfully, a guy never made you cum before, so this was a completely new feeling. It was like pressure was building up inside of you and you had to release it, but right when you thought you’d come undone, the pressure only increased. Neither you nor Spencer had to vocalize that you were reaching your peaks because your bodies were saying everything unsaid. And just when you thought the air couldn’t get stickier, and the heat couldn’t get hotter, you and Spencer came at the same time. The only word you could use to describe the feeling was sublime. Not the sex (well partially the sex of course) but Spencer. 

Sublime.

His pace slowed down exponentially while he drew you closer to him to leave butterfly kisses along your shoulder. His arms enveloped you at his waist, and you almost indulged in his embrace by leaning into his chest, but there was no time when the doorbell rang. 

“Trick-or-treat!” A group of kids yelled from outside. 

You looked behind you exchanging looks that read, ‘Oh shit.’

Spencer flipped the light switch off that was right beside you before you took his hand and ran with him down the hallway giggling. 

Here you were - two grown ups running from kids that wanted candy. How childish. 

It was the combination of being choked, having sex, and running that left you breathless, but after a few minutes your heartbeat slowed down. 

“I think they’re gone.” Spencer observed.

You trusted he was right and retreated from the room with extra caution. You reached into the dark to feel for the light switch. After the lights came back on, you saw Spencer crouching down, gathering your clothes off the floor. 

You wanted to stop him to save him the inconvenience, but he was already helping you back into your clothes before you could even say, “I’ve got it.”

Spencer gingerly slid your mini skirt up your legs, frowning slightly at the tear in it that he caused. It was like evidence of his roughness, and he didn’t like it. 

“Sorry about that.” He murmured. 

You told him not to worry and that the rip made the skirt look cooler, which you could tell didn’t lessen his guilt, but it was good enough to make him smile and that was the intention anyway. Next to dress you in was the button up, and you had to laugh when, instead of tying a knot at the front, he opted for buttoning it up all the way to the collar. It was like he was trying to protect your modesty and dress you to look more respectable. Last to put on was his cardigan. After a small comment about letting you keep it, he started redressing. This is a moment you duly noted. 

He took care of you first. 

Was it stupid to fawn over such a small thing? Him helping you dress up first before he even dressed himself? 

Your thoughts carried you so far away you didn’t even realize he already finished dressing and was putting on his messenger bag. 

“Happy Halloween, by the way.” You nudged his shoulder with your index finger trying to be lighthearted, even though the heavy weight of your inevitable goodbye was weighing on you. 

He chuckled and licked his lips before responding. “Happy Halloween.” 

You turned around to begin the miserable walk toward the door, while he was right on your heels, following closely behind. You opened the door for him to walk through and you smiled as the two of you lingered in the doorway. Evidently, neither one of you was quite ready to say goodbye. 

Your mouth must’ve become a completely separate entity since you started hearing words rolling off your tongue without even processing them beforehand. “I knew that you wouldn’t hurt me not because of what you said or what you did, but because of what you didn’t say or what you didn’t do.”

There was something about the unsaid and the undone that told you everything about the unknown.

With an understanding nod, Spencer took a step away from the threshold. 

He kept his head down and his eyes on the floor as he walked away with his hands in his pockets. The hopeless romantic in you wished he would look over his shoulder and back at you, or stop walking and turn around and run back up to you, but he didn’t. You almost thought he’d stop at the gate and say something, but no. He didn’t say a single thing. And for some reason, that was okay. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

You clasped your black push up bra behind your back, adjusting it in the front for maximum cleavage. Then you put on fishnets and a pair of black booty shorts. Last to put on was a white polo button up. That’s when you remembered it was the exact same shirt you wore for last year’s costume. It was weirdly nostalgic. You only fastened the shirt until it hid your midriff, but left the buttons that would expose your bra unclasped. 

To say what happened next felt like some supernatural spirit came into the room with you would be a gross understatement, because as soon as you stopped buttoning your shirt, you could see and feel Spencer’s ghost in front of you buttoning the rest. All the way up to the collar just as he did last year. 

So, just for Spencer, you fastened one extra button.

You painted fake blood under your nose and straightened your hair, which wasn’t giving off the desired effect. A black wig or a prop cigarette would’ve made your costume much more clear, but you’d been too lazy this year to obtain either of those things, so really the only obvious sign of who you were was the bloody nose.

Mia Wallace. Pulp Fiction. 

Before stepping out of the house to join your friends, you put on thigh high black boots. 

Luckily, they all saw what you were going for with your costume, so you felt slightly better, but there was still something weighing on your heart that kept you at a distance from your friends tonight. 

Handing out candy to trick-or-treaters wasn’t really your speed this year, so you opted for joining your friends at a club. At first, you were able to convince yourself that you were having fun and that you weren’t completely miserable, but as the night continued, it became harder to lie to yourself. You weren’t having fun. Sitting in the silence here was most definitely not fun. Not to say the club was quiet, but you were. And the silence was deafening. See with Spencer, when you didn’t speak, whether it was when he left you that night wordlessly, or when you came together without even vocalizing that you would, the silence was okay. It was welcome. But here tonight, watching your friends enjoy themselves on the dance floor - the silence was suffocating. The longer you sat there watching them, the more you noticed how they weren’t calling you onto the dance floor to join them. No one cared to include you. It felt like a sign. That you should leave, because if your presence didn’t matter, your absence wouldn’t either. So you slipped out of the club, not surprised that no one saw you and stopped you or begged you to stay. You got into your car and instantly unzipped your boots. No wonder you wore converse last year, heels hurt like hell. When you threw the shoes into the backseat, you caught a glimpse of something lying on the floor. 

Dark gray cardigan. 

You’d forgotten that that was even there. Would it be weird to wear it again? It was a cold autumn night, and it wasn’t like you were wearing much to shield you from the cold, so merely for the warmth, you put on the cardigan. 

You were in such a rush to be in your own bed again that you probably broke a couple traffic laws. After all, there wasn’t anything quite like seeing your house again after hours of wanting to be home. 

But then again, nothing could compare to seeing Spencer Reid sitting on your doorstep reading. Absolutely nothing. 

“Spencer?” You asked while blinking hard to make sure your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you. You didn’t know how you could tell it was him, but there was something in you that just knew. The same kind of gut feeling that told you he wouldn’t hurt you.

He looked up from his book and shut it with a smile when he saw you. You opened the gate and met him halfway in the walkway. 

“You still have my cardigan,” He laughed while taking in the sight. “Mia Wallace, right?” 

You nodded, unable to take your eyes off of him. In the light, you could actually make out his features. He looked older now. His hair was longer and much curlier than you remembered. He even had some scruff on his face. 

“Happy Halloween, by the way.” You recited the exact words you said and poked him in the shoulder just as you did last year. 

“Happy Halloween.” He grinned, immediately understanding the reference. 

“So . . . who are you dressed as this year?” It was only a playful question, but it seemed like he was ready to give you a serious answer. 

Though his looks were deceiving and telling you that Spencer changed, his behavior told you he was still the same Spencer he was before. He looked everywhere except for right at you as he tried to think with an answer, and when he finally did speak, he couldn’t meet your eyes for very long. He still had his boyish charm. 

“I, um, I’m dressed as someone who didn’t get very much sleep, spontaneously booked a flight, and came straight here to tell you he needed to see you again.”

“Mmm, very cool costume.” You quipped. When your laughs died off, a new type of silence emerged. It was very different from the kind you were drowning in at the club earlier. This time, the quietude was rejuvenating. The two of you were simply taking in the feeling of being in each other’s presence again. 

“Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?” You asked, quoting Mia Wallace. 

Of course, he knew what the next line was. “I don’t know. That’s a good question.” He replied, quoting Vincent Vega. 

“That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.” 

With that, the comfortable quietude returned to fall upon the two of you again, but you enjoyed it because you’d found somebody special that made things like silence sublime.

So much more was said in the unsaid. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

[sanchezashton1992]

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[baegin-ace-blog]

Put that thing back where it came from or so help me: Sex repulsion

I’ve talked before about how sometimes, for various reasons, asexuals choose to have sex.  Now I want to talk about one of the big reasons why we choose not to have sex: sex repulsion.

Sex repulsion comes in a few different flavors. It could mean that one is repulsed by the thought of having sex. It could mean that one is repulsed by sex in general. Repulsion can cover just the act of penetrative intercourse, all sexual acts, or even all intimate acts. An asexual can personally be repulsed by sex but not mind it when others do or talk about it. And not just asexuals are sex repulsed! If someone has a sex-related trauma, they may be allosexual but sex repulsed. And even an allosexual with no trauma may be repulsed too. I mean, let’s face it, sex is a weird, messy act; it won’t appeal to everyone.

So the big question you’re probably wondering is, what about you Emma?  Are you sex repulsed?  The short answer is probably.

See, I’ve never been anywhere close to having sex.  In fact, I only had my first kiss last year, and that was done more as an experiment than something done as a romantic gesture. I went into the kiss as a curious experimenter, and it was...alright? Nothing to write home about I guess? I’m open to trying again, but it wasn’t what I imagine other people feel like kissing is. Also, I find the idea of tongues in kissing absolutely disgusting. Like, it does not seem appealing to me at all.

I also have an inordinate fascination with sex.  One of my favorite research topics is human sexuality.  In fact, I have seriously considered getting a degree in the subject, that’s how interesting I find it.  I think part of it is because I am asexual; the fact that I have no personal references for sex makes the unfathomable subject something keenly interesting for me.  I’ve done research on the biology, psychology, anatomy, mechanics, literature and art, and social perception of sex.  I’ve glutted myself on the subject of sex so much so that in some cases I’ve actually known more than my allosexual peers about sexual activities.  So on the one hand, I don’t know if I could truly say that I am repulsed by sex.  I mean, clearly the subject itself does not disgust me.

But on the other hand, the personal idea of sex still unnerves me.  I’m sometimes alright with people I know talking about their sex lives as long as they don’t get too graphic or give details, but even then sometimes I find the reminder that those I’m close to are sexual beings to be disturbing. In fact, I don’t even like it when people kiss around me; it makes me feel like a voyeur and I get super uncomfortable. I also get supremely uncomfortable anytime someone thinks of me in a sexual capacity, for example making jokes about my theoretical sex life. I can’t look at images of real-life genitals (I am strangely okay with cartoon or illustrated versions, I think because they aren’t real). And even the thought of someone else coming anywhere near me with their genitals makes me want to throw-up. I’ve put off going to a gynecologist for years now strictly because the idea of having anyone else near my vagina is so nauseating I can’t stand it.  Like, I hear what you’re saying, everyone finds the gynecologist uncomfortable, but I don’t think y’all understand how deeply disturbing the idea is to me.  It’s on par to me telling you that you should go to a doctor who’ll, without pain, cut open your stomach and feel around your intestines while you’re awake and aware.  Feel uncomfortable with that scenario?  Well, that’s what a gynecologist feels like to me.

So reading this you might think, dang Emma, well clearly you’re never going to have sex!  And yeah, I’d say odds are 99.99% good that it’s not gonna happen.  But, like Adrian Monk, I’m often not 100% about anything. If there’s one thing that humans are known for, it’s our boundless curiosity; there is a part of me who has looked at all that research and read all those books and is just so darn curious!  I mean, I can read all the erotica I want and still not really know what it would be like to actually have sex. So while I don’t desire it, and while just the thought of it makes me want to bury myself alive, I’m still a small bit curious.  I’m positive it’s never gonna happen, because I would need to be in a mindset that just doesn’t exist for me at the moment to even come close to wanting it, let alone enjoying it.  So right now?  Yeah, sex is never on the table.  

So I’d say I’m mostly sex repulsed because while I don’t want to have sex, I find it too fascinating to cut out of my life entirely.  

[postmetaectotranscendentalism]

“Feminist Manifesto”

The feminist movement as at present instituted is

Inadequate

Women if you want to realize yourselves-you are on the eve of a devastating psychological upheaval-all your pet illu- sions must be unmasked—the lies of centuries have got to go— are you prepared for the Wrench—? There is no half- measure—NO scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition, will bring about Reform, the only method is Absolute Demolition

Cease to place your confidence in economic legislation, vice- crusades & uniform education-you are glossing over Reality. Professional & commercial careers are opening up for you— Is that all you want ?

And if you honestly desire to find your level without preju- dice—be Brave & deny at the outset—that pa- thetic clap-trap war cry Woman is the equal of man—

                                   for She is NOT!

The man who lives a life in which his activities conform to a social code which is protectorate of the feminine element— is no longer masculine The women who adapt themselves to a theoretical valuation of their sex as a relative impersonality, are not yet Feminine Leave off looking to men to find out what you are not —seek within yourselves to find out what you are As conditions are at present constituted—you have the choice between Parasitism, & Prostitu- tion—or Negation

Men & women are enemies, with the enmity of the exploited for the parasite, the parasite for the exploited—at present they are at the mercy of the advantage that each can take of the others sexual dependence—. The only point at which the interests of the sexes merge—is the sexual embrace.

The first illusion it is to your interest to demolish is the division of women into two classes    the mistress, & the mother every well-balanced & developed woman knows that is not true, Nature has endowed the complete functions—there are no restrictions on the woman who is so incompletely evolved as to be un-self-conscious in sex, will prove a restrictive influence on the temperamental expansion of the next generation; the woman who is a poor mistress will be an incompetent mother—an inferior mentality—& will enjoy an inadequate apprehension of Life.

To obtain results you must make sacrifices & the first & greatest sacrifice you have to make is of your ”virtue” The fictitious value of a woman as identified with her physical purity—is too easy to stand-by       rendering her lethargic in the acquisition of intrinsic merits of character by which she could obtain a concrete value—therefore, the fist self- enforced law for the female sex, as a protection against the man made bogey of virtue—which is the principal instrument of her subjection, would be the unconditional surgical destruction of virginity through-out the female population at puberty—.

The value of man is assessed entirely according to his use or interest to the community, the value of woman depends entirely on chance, her success or insuccess in maneouvering a man into taking the life-long responsibility of her— The advantages of marriage are too ridiculously ample— compared to all other trades—for under modern conditions a woman can accept preposterously luxurious support from a man (with-out the return of an sort—even offspring)—as a thank offering for her virginity The woman who has not succeeded in striking that advantageous bargain—is prohibited from any but surreptitious re-action to Life-stimuli—& entirely debarred maternity. Every woman has a right to maternity— Every woman of superior intelligence should realize her race- responsibility, in producing children in adequate proportion to the unfit or degenerate members of her sex—

Each child of a superior woman should be the result of a definite period of psychic development in her life—& and not necessarily of a possible irksome & outworn continuance of an alliance—spontaneously adapted for vital creation in the beginning but not necessarily harmoniously balanced as the parties to it—follow their individual lines of personal evolution— For the harmony of race, each individual should be the expression of an easy & ample interpenetration of the male & female temperaments—free of stress Woman must become more responsible for the child than man— Woman must destroy in themselves, the desire to be loved— The feeling that it is a personal insult when a man transfers his attention from her to another woman The desire for comfortable protection instead of an intelligent curiosity & courage in meeting & resisting the pressure of life sex or so called love must be reduced to its initial element, honour, grief, sentimentality, pride and & consequently jealousy must be detached from it. Woman for her happiness must retain her deceptive fragility of appearance, combined with indomitable will, irreducible courage, & abundant health the outcome of sound nerves— Another great illusion is that woman must use all her introspective and clear-sightedness & unbiassed bravery to destroy—for the sake of her self respect is the impurity of sex the realization in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex—except in the mental attitude to it—will constitute an incalculable & wider social regeneration than it is possible for our generation to imagine.

Mina Loy (1914)

[bedlamgames]

Q&A #22

Anonymous: I love the lore of the world for No Haven and Whorelock's Revenge. Even if it's only shown in bits in those games, it feels like a lot of thought has gone into the world setting. Would it be possible at some point to have all the lore bits posted somewhere where they can be enjoyed outside of the games? Also, more out of curiosity, but do you have a name for the world No Haven and Whorelock's are set in? Finally, what's your stance on fan works (ie: fanfiction or games)?

Thank you! If a wiki was set up that seems a good place for it. 

Don’t have a name for the setting so No Haven will do for now. 

Fanfiction and fanart absolutely yes! Games I’m a bit more leery on, but if you did want to do one then at least I’d appreciate a pm before hand so I could give some input. 

More questions answered under the break.

Anonymous: Seems like the difficulty of Whores for the Whore Makers is way too high. I keep losing slavers and slavers to it with no returns, making it feel like it's very much not worth it. Even when successfully the gold you gain seems low. The high difficulty seems justified if selling a slaver, but way too high for something that should be as routine as selling a slave.

Anonymous: Hi! Thank you for your work! 2 questions: 1) How can I complete such a task "Mandatory: Male - Human Cathayan - Slutty - Weak - No Training (Preferable: Human Fancy - Advanced Lesbian Training - Magic: Biomancy)" - mean Cathayan / Fancy and No Training / Advanced Lesbian Training mutually exclusive? And 2nd one - Ensnared Rose say doesn't accept slave that fulfill her request. There no messages like "That slave is not currently in good enough condition to fulfill this request" or any other.

Two connected questions so I’m answering them together. Whore Makers is intentionally bad as it’s to encourage you to find other options in the city and unlocking the auctions. The problem is it’s possibly toned too high, I need to rework how slavers are selected rather than based on their traits, and more importantly the requests are far, far, far too hard to fulfil and apparently bugged too.

First step towards fixing this is next update I’m going to completely rework listening to whispers so that you can try to fulfil the opportunity with any slave and the close you can get to what was requested the easier and more profitable it will be.

xcomcommander12: I've been using Dominator on the sub slaver, so I can try to break them into a slave but the person will always accept the job in encampment.

Ah gotcha. Too slutty clothing or getting them to drink shakko sounds like the answer then. 

Anonymous: Bug Report: Upon a failed recapture slave mission where I sent out two of my slavers, it brought back a bugged slaver version of the slave with no name, even though the log refers to him by name.

The slave that escaped and reappeared as a slaver without a name but listed with it's name in the logs also can't be sold, apparently, and comes back even after being auctioned at the docks.

Nasty one. Okay will check it out. 

fieltor: [BUG] NoHaven 0.7032 : On caracter creation as a Demi-angel Fallen if you take Biomancer, the game force on you to take Corrupter too. Seems to only be the case for fallen demi-angel.

[BUG] NoHaven 0.7032 : Caracter creation, Biomancer trait reduction cost for Keldan is not working.

NoHaven 0.7032 : Caracter creation (again ^^), you cannot select any traits after you have the max even if you points left, the game only allow you to validate or repick. (example : (Current points: 2, Negatives Taken: 10/12, Traits Taken: 9/9)). We should be able to still pick green traits to consumme the remaining points.

[BUG] NoHaven0.7032 : Basic Obedience Training, wrong slave indicated after the slaver : "Your slave Traci tried as hard as they could to resist the tender ministrations of Carmen, but were soon broken down to the point that they followed every order and command without complaint. Carmen Moescher - Competent Mistress - High Morale (90+) - (Dom)(Sed) - 50 xp earned Slave - Celleste Greygood - (Partial)(Slt)(Sub)(Sex) - Basic Obedience Training "

[BUG?] NoHaven 0.7032 : Does Biomancy can create wing on random error? Seems like one of my slave got wing after a biomancy effects thats should have ass expends or breast don't remember but now she got decorative wing that she didn't have before when i got throught ealier logs of her estimate.

Thank you for the work you’ve put in finding those! I really do appreciate it. The last one is from corruption only.

Anonymous: I would like to ask about characters with "Sex addict" trait. Those guys from time to time got overwhelmed with desire and end up losing morale. Sex addicted neko slave loses moral from the trait even if she had sexual activity that day. And what about slavers? Why those sex addicted slavers don't make use of slaves? Instead they end up losing moral from being "overwhelmed with desire"

Yeah, that’s an inconsistency that I need to apparently take another swing at. It’s basically a timing issue where I want the chance for sex addicts to be treated as slaves but if there are slaves available they should have a chance to use them instead. 

Anonymous: Are you planning to add huge customization, like the opportunity to "create" your own dungeon in Whorelocks Revenge, when you can choose which race may appear and which may not(Like I would like to play without dwarves, goblins, maybe orcs), opportunity to choose their position on the map or being able to randomize it for better experience in new game instead of static one, or being able to choose which encounters you dont want to see (like if you dont want to see male sex scenes).

Theoretically yes? I mean that’s all possible, but I’d say it’s a long way off as the game would need to be done to do that and I have a huge amount of work to do on WR to get it from RAGS to Twine. 

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

This contrast—of women raring to assert their agency in one context, then willing, even eager, to relinquish it another—captured my interest in part because of its familiarity. I’d seen it crop up recently in widely praised works both written by and featuring brazen, outspoken, and almost always middle-class white women. It’s in Sally Rooney’s “Conversations with Friends,” when Frances tries unsuccessfully to get Nick—older, married, kind—to choke and hit her during sex. And in Rooney’s “Normal People,” when Marianne discloses to gentle, sensitive Connell, her on-again-off-again boyfriend, that another man has hit her with a belt, choked her—that she asked for it, enjoyed it. It’s also in the second season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s TV series “Fleabag,” when Fleabag confesses—literally—to the priest she lusts after. All she truly wants is someone (by implication him, or maybe Him) to tell her “what to wear every morning,” to instruct her on “what to like, what to hate, what to rage about . . . what to believe in . . . how to live my life.”

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These scenes both do and do not seem like ordinary kink. All sex, of course, is psychological, but the source of the charge here is more than just a dom-sub mind game. What vitalizes them is the friction of the characters’ incongruent desires: on the one hand, to embrace the simplicity of someone else’s authority; on the other, to assert their own authorship. Popkey’s narrator, though not a writer, has a literary sensibility—her dissertation is on “female pain in Jacobean revenge tragedies,” and her idea of a beach read is “The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962”—and it’s on masterly display in the scene with the single moms. Like a plotting author, she engineers a game: they will go around in a circle relaying their origin stories, the narrative that explains how they got to this place, “with the wine and the kid and the no partner, the moment when that became inevitable.” It’s a premise that grants her permission to deliver a personal monologue, to test-drive the story of her becoming. She tweaks some of the facts (instead of a student, she’s an intern; instead of a professor, he’s a peer), but she is emphatic in the authority of what she’s saying. She tells the single moms that “there’s a line” through her life, and “it runs straight from that hotel room.”

Does she believe all this? Is she trying to make herself believe it? Years earlier, listening to Artemisia, she envied the older woman’s narrative control: “I, at twenty-one, did not, had not yet settled on the governing narrative of my life. Had not yet realized the folly of governing narratives.” And yet, a part of her seems to hope authorial mastery will overcome personal folly: “of course life is random, a series of coincidences, etc., but . . . to live you must attempt to make sense of it, and that’s what narrative’s for.” Maybe if she tells the narrative well enough it will be true. And, if it is true, then maybe she can finally be coherent; the past decisions that perplex her most, those moments that reek of self-sabotage or that hurt people she loves, were all along foreordained, set in motion by that catalyzing moment. Even if she had tried to, she could never have done anything otherwise. The right narrative, she understands, can release her of responsibility.

Rooney’s Frances and Marianne and Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag share with Popkey’s narrator a literary proclivity, which can also manifest as an anxiety. They, too, want to assemble the type of story that is also a kind of proof. Frances gets her first story published in the course of the novel, Marianne is bookish and academically successful, and they are both so-called digital natives. For them, communicating through text and e-mail, Facebook and I.M.—which is to say through writing—is as instinctive as speech, sometimes preferable to it. “I had been so terribly noisy and theatrical all the way through,” Frances worries after sleeping with Nick the first time, “that it was impossible now to act indifferent like I did in e-mails.” To be online is to craft—and control—a persona, however deliberate, however fussed over, however much it resembles (or not) one’s I.R.L. self. Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag is likewise aware of her audience—not an online one, although all of us watching at home are, in a sense, her followers—and may in fact be the one who’s most invested in authorial control. When she turns to the camera, to us, with direct narration, her clever quips and wry asides annotate and editorialize the plot. We are not observers of a neutral story unfolding; we are observers of a story unfolding the way she wants it to.

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These women behave in ways that are harmful to people they care about—Frances to Nick, Marianne to Connell, Fleabag to her best friend, Popkey’s narrator to her offenseless husband—sometimes with tragic consequences. Most of all, they do things to hurt themselves: drink too much, eat too little, carve wounds into their skin. What kind of person am I, they worry, to be so self-contemptuous, so bent on self-defeat? Their behavior mystifies them, and they discover that the selective work of authorship can relieve their confusion: if they choose some moments from their past and discard others, if they arrange these moments in just the right way, they might be able to understand themselves as logical and consistent, free of the messy task of figuring out what they want, and the even messier one of fully accepting these wants.

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER

New Words, Favorite Clues, and the Year in Crosswords

Is whatever these women want—and however they decide—O.K.? What if they want bad things? “Bad” because they have been deemed perverse, or illogical, or are likely to undermine longer-term goals; “bad” because they could be harmful. Such vexed questions spurred me to revisit “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?,” a vibrant, perspicacious essay by Amia Srinivasan, a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford, and published in 2018, in the London Review of Books. The essay, among other things, resurrected a feminist debate that for years had been mostly dormant: Should feminism have anything to say about desire? Should feminism develop a political critique of sexuality? During the sex wars of the nineteen-eighties, anti-porn radical feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin argued that heterosexual sex under patriarchy inevitably normalizes male violence and reinforces female inequality; women should, on account of this, consider repudiating their desires. Celibacy and political lesbianism were the theory put into practice.

Sex-positive feminists countered that the radical critique denied women the right to pleasurable sex. Women should instead be taken at their word: if a woman says that she enjoys submitting to a man—the activity that, at least superficially, seems most to reënact women’s subjugation by men outside of the bedroom—or if she says she finds it emancipatory, then feminists must believe her. For feminism to do otherwise risks slut-shaming, prudery, and charging others with false consciousness—creating yet more binds for the very people it means to liberate. Srinivasan reactivates the argument because, although she too is wary of these risks, she is equally distressed by the implication that a feminism without a critique of desire gives cover to wants that replicate more general patterns of oppression and exclusion. The “rape fantasy,” or the “unfuckability of black women and Asian men,” or the “sexual disgust expressed towards disabled, trans and fat bodies” passes for mere personal preference—nothing at all to be done about it.

Popkey is plainly conversant in these debates. In an early chapter, the narrator listens to a woman’s story about a date rape that took place on her college campus, at a party she attended: a twenty-one-year-old undergraduate, still a virgin and in her behavior more innocent than most, was assaulted by a thirtysomething male grad student, widely known to be something of a lech, a “sexual predator.” The friend wonders why no one tried to alert the unworldly undergrad, much less intervene. “We told ourselves she must have known what she was getting into. We told ourselves that she was an adult. . . . The porn wars were over and porn had won and we were porn-positive, we were sex-positive, we probably wouldn’t have even called ourselves feminist. Who were we to judge.” Walking home after hearing the story, the narrator ruminates on the woman’s account, tries to assess her own desires in light of it. “Could what the graduate student did be wrong,” the narrator asks, “and what I sometimes felt I wanted also be right.” Of course, what’s right for some may not be right for others. As Srinivasan notes, in a summary of intersectional feminism, sexual submission may have an altogether different valence for a woman of color, or a trans woman, than it does for a white woman—like Popkey’s narrator, who “by virtue of her whiteness, is already taken to be a paradigm of female beauty.”

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If the feminist debates parse desire on a theoretical level, Popkey’s novel reveals where these analyses intersect with the more mundane, familiar kinds of self-analysis: Should I choose one direction or the other, act this way or that? She depicts what it feels like to exist, actually live, at that intersection, which can so often bring about paralysis. Always there is a “churning,” as the narrator calls it, that ongoing fusillade of impulses and counter-impulses reverberating through the closed system of the mind; we weigh facts and then counterfactuals, consider social or cultural conventions, weave a thick weft of reality and fantasy, deference and denial, then wish we could tear the tapestry apart. How can we ever know what it is that we want, rather than what we have been taught to want, or what we resist wanting because it, too, is what we have been taught?

Years after her ur-erotic hotel-room encounter, the narrator finds herself in another hotel room, this time with a man she has picked up in the bar downstairs. Her husband is at home and thinks she is away at a job interview or visiting friends; she can’t remember. Alone with the stranger, the narrator tells him that she wants to be dominated. This time she’s articulating her desire, rather than discovering it through someone else’s, and in the act of articulation she can’t help but come face to face with her own agency. But the fantasy itself is for the opposite: “I hate making choices,” she says. Desire inevitably leads to a paucity of control; we make decisions, take chances, but don’t always get what we want. Or we get what we thought we wanted, but it leaves us worse for the wear, exposes the way we didn’t know ourselves, or someone else, well enough. Giving up control to someone else can be a way of regaining control by relinquishing the stakes and, in turn, the possibility of being disappointed—of trying and failing, of feeling responsible for doing the wrong thing. If choice can be its own kind of prison, submission can be an escape plan.

At the end of the novel, we find the narrator facing entrapment and casting around for an alternate means of escape. She lives with her son in Fresno, where life is lonely and remote. The days of relaying stories with women seem to be in the past. Now, when others inquire about her life, she no longer holds forth: “Sometimes I say nothing. Silence: The great conversation killer.” Once more, she seeks an explanation for how she has arrived at her destination. She bought a house in this small town, she says, because of a short story she read. The short story is by a man, about a man. The author is an “exemplary jeans wearer”; the protagonist is a promiscuous husband who leaves his wife, driving off into the distance, from Maine all the way to California. En route he stops in various towns and calls up former mistresses, asking each one in turn to run away with him. All the women decline. When eventually he dials a number that is disconnected, the story ends. The town he’s in—it’s Fresno. The man must have stayed there, Popkey’s narrator concludes, because “he has run out of road.”

The narrator seems to fear that she, too, has reached the end of the story; the “line” that she traced for the single moms has turned into a dispersion of dots. And so, it seems, she has turned to other people’s “governing narratives,” just as she once turned to Artemisia’s. In the story, inspired by Sam Shepard’s short story “Coalinga 1/2 Way,” the man is “abhorrent,” and yet the story demands that the reader empathize with him. “Did I imagine myself as the lone driver, making a life for myself in a town full of strangers?” the narrator asks. “Yes, I did. Pay attention to enough men and you will begin to think of yourself as one. You will think of this as an improvement over fantasizing about being mistreated by one and you will, probably, be right.” On the one hand, this new independent life might be seen as an achievement, proof of her autonomy—the kind of life that women are judged for having and men are not. But it’s not just a man’s freedom she has borrowed; it’s literally a man’s narrative. The act of submission is replaced by the act of substitution. And if she’s merely borrowing, can we really say she’s gotten what she wants?

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When a literary protagonist introduces the question of literary influence, we ought to wonder what all this means, at the meta-level, for the novelist herself. One clue comes in the novel’s end notes, in three and a half pages of “Works (Not) Cited,” an expansive list of titles including books by the authors Annie Ernaux, Norman Rush, Janet Malcolm, and Mary Gaitskill, films by Olivier Assayas and Paul Verhoeven, and episodes of “Frasier” and “Mad Men.” (It also includes Srinivasan’s essay.) These are works the author credits for giving shape to the novel, and, in some cases, she says, they are referred to only “elliptically.” This polyphonic model of influence—of many voices speaking and listening, avoiding and arguing—might be seen as an alternative to the narrator’s longing for a single origin story, her longing for total authorial control. In acknowledging that she is part of a wide-ranging conversation, rather than a singular narrative, Popkey, by contrast, suggests that she may be willing to cede some of this control. On the novel’s final page, the narrator finally admits: “Perhaps all this time I have been wrong about the story’s protagonist.” She is referring to the “abhorrent” protagonist of the Shepard story, but, in a book that grapples explicitly with how and why we craft narratives, with the perils and gratifications of the stories we invent and inherit, the line invites another reading. Popkey may in fact be making an admission of her own, casting doubt on the narrative that she herself has constructed, acknowledging the ultimate impossibility of the authorial pursuit.

[eventwriter]

Embracing the Interrogative

This is the full version of a blog post that was commissioned by Books@Work and published on their blog in a condensed form.

The interrogative is a dying form - not only of grammatical expression but of life.  At a time when efficiency and productivity seem the driving forces of culture, it makes sense that emphasis should lie on the generation of answers rather than the formulation of questions.  Answers, after all, mean closure - answers grant one permission to put one thing to rest and move on to the next, and that seems the very definition of progress.  Questions, on the other hand, are messy, imprecise things that tend toward the propagation of their own kind, leading ad-infinitum to heaven knows where.  

 Contrary, however, to the common association of questions with innocence, the posture of inquiry is a sophisticated one.  The asker of questions has already committed - or is on the verge of committing - to a laborious, time-consuming, possibly futile, and inevitably frustrating program of observation and analysis.  This commitment to a journey without a definite goal is anathema to the current cultural climate.  It is a throwback to an earlier time when the cultivation of the intellect was allowed to constitute an end in itself.   In the late 1860s, the English writer Matthew Arnold defined "curiosity" as: "a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are, - which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. ... [T]he very desire to see things as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity."  Writing at the height of the Industrial Revolution, Arnold was already feeling the pressures of an increasingly relentless drive toward progress, and his argument for the life of the mind was simultaneously a plea for the preservation of humanity, insofar as that term might be associated with qualities of moral sympathy and an openness to communion with creatures and conditions not lying immediately within one's own frames of reference.

 It is difficult not to see the relevance of Arnold's words for our present moment when the forces of standardization are effectively eliminating the interrogative from our schools and eviscerating children of their natural and healthy curiosity.  At least from middle school onward - if not earlier - children are taught to answer questions, not to ask them; to see closure at all costs as the means to success in life.  And success, more often than not, for schoolchildren to college graduates, is proscribed by a limited pallet ranging from A to E, where "all of the above" indicates vague possibilities too tedious to spell out.   Interestingly, however, when I talk to eople who are - by others' estimation as well as their own - "successful" in their careers, the common factor in their accounts of what they most enjoy about their vocations is the challenge of formulating questions.  My friend the veterinarian who cares for some of the top race and competition horses in the country must string together symptoms with sets of branching questions in order to reach any diagnosis or prescribe treatment.   My friend the commercial photographer spends his days wrestling with questions of space and lighting in order to capture the beauty of his subjects.   And my former college roommate who is now a theoretical astrophysicist poses questions about the universe in terms that exceed my knowledge of the English language. Questions make us vulnerable. They bring us face-to-face with our own ignorance and invite us to step beyond the safety of ready-made answers and assumptions.  If we accept the invitation, they can open us up to the the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and, occasionally, the wonderful.

 If you are a fan of National Public Radio, you have no doubt listened to Terry Gross interview guests on Fresh Air, a show that seems to have hosted every notable person of the past generation and the present.  Ms Gross lives her life in the interrogative mode, and to listen to her in conversation with her guests is to experience a sense of both intimacy and possibility rarely achievable in the rush of daily living.  What sets Ms Gross apart from the other capable hosts on NPR is a passionately genuine curiosity about the lives of her guests and about the worlds in which they live.  She boldly, fearlessly, pursues this curiosity, at times trespassing beyond the boundaries of what others might deem appropriate.

 In a recent interview with Joel Grey - the 82-year-old father of actress Jennifer Grey and a Broadway star in his own right - Ms Gross found herself addressing Mr Grey's sexuality. He had come out as a gay man only two years previously at the age of 80.  "I don't know how - this might be too personal, and I'm not quite sure how to put it," Ms Gross begins, her hesitation as apparent as her curiosity. "But you ended up coming out at a time in life when people are typically less sexually active because of how the body ages.  Did you feel bad that it was at that stage of life - it was only at that stage of life that you were able to be open?"  Now, asking an octogenarian about his sex life has got to be one of the more uncomfortable moments for a journalist.  To do so, as Ms Gross did, in a way that not only avoids offending the guest but further reinforces intimacy in an explicitly public context is a function of faith in the honesty of inquiry as well as in the safety of the space that has been created by the preceding conversation. "Safety" is a term that has been bandied about and politicized of late, especially in academic institutions, such that the very definition of the term - already one harnessed to subjectivity - has come under question.  But what Ms Gross's interviews make clear is that "safe spaces" are predicated upon a recognition of shared vulnerability. She exposes to her guests the risk she takes in posing the hard questions, and it is in the space of this mutual vulnerability that the most poignant moments of her show take place.

 This, it seems to me, is one of the greatest challenges in leading a successful Books@Work session - how to get a group of strangers, many of whom do not consider themselves "readers" and for whom being in a room with an English professor evokes unpleasant classroom memories - to embrace their vulnerabilities and enter into an interrogative mindset.  Because the goal of these sessions, as I see them, is not to offer answers on the text at hand but to create an environment where participants feel comfortable enough to pose their own questions - not just about the text but about their own perspectives and assumptions.  Being able to create such an environment requires a certain understanding of the stakes involved for the participants, and for many in a workplace setting, in the company of colleagues, what is at stake is often nothing less than the integrity of their professional identities.

 The challenges - as well as potential gains - involved in assuming the interrogative stance in a work environment were made apparent to me in a recent session at a company where I have been facilitating Books@Work discussions over the past year.  I was asked to lead several groups in reading William Carlos Williams' classic short story "The Use of Force" as part of the company's annual safety protocols initiative.  As it turned out, my sessions were slotted after a talk by one of the plant managers on the dangers of laceration and accidental amputation in the factory and warehouse locations.  My first group - which included several regulars from my previous book discussion groups - easily made the transition from the practical considerations of physical safety to Williams' more abstract presentation of the term and jumped right into discussing the different motivations of the characters and their conflicting perceptions of danger.   The last group of the day consisted almost exclusively of "shop" employees, none of whom had heard about Books@Work and all of whom made it clear from the get-go that they had better things to do than talk with me about a story they found boring and pointless.  Several of them sat with their arms folded tightly across their chests, their copies of the story conspicuously absent or pointedly discarded on the ground at their feet.  The wariness with which they regarded me beautifully and ironically replicated the central dilemma of the story, which is about the distrust of a poor family toward the doctor they have called in to examine their sick child.

 "The kid is just a brat," someone in the group muttered, referring to the child's refusal to be examined by the doctor.  The others in the group nodded assent.  A conclusion had been drawn.   End of conversation.

 "You think?" I said.  Busting through this kind of resistance can feel like trying to pry open the lid of a rusted paint can with the flat end of a screwdriver.

 Long silence.

 "She just dirty," someone finally said.

 "Dirty?" I repeated.  it was not a word that had come up in previous discussions of the story and my interest was piqued. "Dirty how?"

 "She just dirty. Filthy.  They don't want nobody seeing how dirty they are."

 "Yeah," someone else chimed in.  "They trying to hide that from the doctor from the start" (referring to the mother's embarrassment about the conditions of the house when the doctor first arrives).  "He probably think they the ones that started the sickness" (referring to the fact that other children in the school also have a similar bacterial infection).

 And then, the first man who had spoken - the one who first brought up the issue of dirt - looked me straight in the eye and said, "They don't want some doctor coming in there, passing judgment on their lives, talking shit they don't understand, and telling them what to do."

 I let that settle on all of us for a minute.  Sometimes the honesty of a statement can resonate more loudly than anyone had expected or intended, and I think all of us in the group lost our footing for a moment.

 "That must feel a lot like an invasion," I said after a bit.  "A violation."

 Which is, of course, what the doctor in the story does in a visceral way, forcing his instrument down the child's throat, despite her violent protests and finally securing the diagnosis he had suspected.  But instead of giving him satisfaction and closure, the affirmation of his knowledge leaves the doctor questioning his actions and motives, transforming what should have been a clear-cut case of diagnostic protocol into a story about the complexities of power and authority.  As much as anything, the story is about the inadequacy of answers.

 Was I able, in the course of that hour, to break down the wall of resistance in that group? No.  But if I see my work as helping people inch closer to the boundaries of the familiar where their understanding of the world and of themselves is momentarily destabilized and expanded, then that session was a qualified success.  More than anything, difficult sessions like this reinforce my conviction in the power of literature to allow us to enter those vulnerable spaces without sacrificing the illusory but entirely necessary shell of our identities; to ask of ourselves and of each other the tough questions while at the same time offering the safety of a graceful closure.  When the session is over, we close our books, toss out our photocopies, and leave each other's company.  But the best of the stories remain with us and within us; their questions linger, continuing to pry open the edges of our existence, insisting on the suspension of closure.