books, writings, shoes & nudes

Tag: relationships

  • hoes before bros

    Some people would say marriage is a trap. Me, I am some people. Marriage is highlighted as the goal or the way of life in our society and friendship comes as a sidekick. The “love interest” can be found in almost every movie, but we do not get to meet the best friend or the group of friends in those movies. Although marriages have been around since forever, studies have found that friendships are healthier and last longer. It can be argued that marriage provides deep intimacy, but so can deep friendships. 

    This topic is important because with the rapid mental health decline in America, marriage tends to support more of the negative side given the divorce rate peaked at 22.6 divorces per 1,000 married women. Making friendships be the center instead could positively help. Marriage affects everyone and has been around for centuries. It is a timeless institution. The wedding industry is a huge successful industry. While marriage is often celebrated as a cornerstone of adult life, friendship plays a more important and enduring role at the center of our lives by providing emotional support, personal growth, and a sense of belonging that transcends the formal commitments of marriage.

    People believe marriage provides deep intimacy. Marriage provides legal and financial security, and the excitement of weddings tends to make people want to dive headfirst in. Dating is exciting. That adrenaline surge as your heart races. Then dopamine giving you the feeling of pleasure and reward, mixing with oxytocin that deepens bonding and intimacy; all dances around when we fall in love. Having someone propose to you makes you feel like you are the only human in the world. You were chosen. Someone chose you. Plus that gorgeous ring you get to show off on your left hand. Then that big fancy beautiful wedding that you go into debt for. Double dose of serotonin to make us really happy. It is magical. Who would not want that? Connect with one person who loves you deeply and will be your person. Marriages also provide legal and financial security, two huge pros. Two incomes in this economy are always better than one. People married can benefit from each other’s inheritance when relatives die. The tax breaks are better when you are a couple. Health insurance is cheaper and has better coverage. So many people get married specifically for the health insurance. Increased borrowing power when you need a loan. Social security benefits is a fantastic benefit later in life. If you are not good with money, but you marry someone who is, it can be very balancing for people. One partner can do the laundry and the other the dishes. Having someone to be sexually adventurous any time they consent is a huge benefit of marriage. 

    When you get hitched, you not only add your partner to your family, but you also add their entire already existing family. Double holidays, double celebrations, double the gifts and love. You also have the option of creating a family of your own. Getting married also gives you the opportunity to change everything about yourself, including your name. 

    Friendship is statistically healthier explained by the American Psychological Association. Friendships can provide almost all the same benefits as marriage and are so much more flexible. When it comes to friends there is less pressure to spend all your time together. You can go do your own thing for a month and come back. The friendship is still there right where you left it. There are no long-term financial agreements made. If you have a disagreement or get in a fight, you can easily find solutions. You can take a break from each other or reevaluate the friendship without having to get the law involved. Friendships provide vital social support that can buffer against stress and protect against mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Studies have shown having strong friendships has been linked to lower rates of premature death.

    You can have multiple friends that bring you joy for different reasons. Friendships are built on a foundation of shared experiences, allowing for a deep understanding of each other. You can have work friends that you only interact with at your job. You can have hometown friends you see when you come back to visit. The hockey friends you get together with every Thursday from October to May. You can have friends you only see when you travel. Book club friends that only discuss the latest smut book you read. You can have internet friends all over the world that you have never met but still feel so close to. There is not a limit on the number of friends you can have. There is a legal limit on how many spouses you can have. You can be yourself with your friends. You do not have to look your best. You can snort when you laugh and there is not a fear of being abandoned. You do not have to hold in your farts until your stomach hurts for the first few months of friendship. It is a safe space, and if it is not, you can remove yourself from the friendship. Strong friendships can make you feel like you belong and are good enough. They can bring you laughter, love, and memories. When you marry someone, you are stuck in what you both agree your life is going to look like. For example, if you marry someone who is afraid of flying, you may never get to travel to Iceland with them. If you marry someone who gets a life changing condition, it is now both of your sickness. If you marry someone who develops an addiction, you now both have that addictions. Their bullshit is your bullshit. Friendship has so many backdoor escapes that marriage does not have.

    Given our cultural conditioning and religious beliefs on marriages, they will not be going away any time soon. A better plan is to normalize a new way of life, such as groups of friends living in a neighborhood together or coexisting. We live with our friends. We spend most of our time with our friends. Our spouses can be people we see on the weekends or occasionally go on vacations with. Highlighting the support of platonic relationships with multiple people for multiple reasons. Normalize long distance marriages. When it comes to the legal side, marriage licenses should have an expiration date, one that you must renew every four years or its void. Just like we do the president. We could even have a second term limit considering the dreaded 7-year itch. There are so many people in the world, we should not be tied to one person for the rest of our lives. Normalize bringing friends home for the holidays and celebrating friendship anniversaries. If we switched from marriages being the goal to focusing more on our friendship, we would see the rates of sexual assault and intimate violence decrease. If we were with our friends more and not isolated at home waiting for our husbands or wives to come home, we would live safer lives. Plus friends are just way more fun.

    In conclusion, although marriages are an incredibly common practice with some positives, there are benefits to having marriages take a backseat to friendships. 

  • My parents’ differing  actions, words, and behavior played a significant role in shaping my understanding of gender expectations for myself and the perception of gender in the rest of the world. My family of origin is the institution that has the most influence on my personal understanding of gender roles.. This matters because the lack of my dad’s presence majority of the time helped my mom combat a lot of the social conditioning, but then my father would randomly pop in and shove gender stereotypes down our throats causing us to have complexes. 

    My mother had a very equal mindset while my father did not. My mother was forced to be a single parent so she took on both roles of mother and father. I grew up not knowing where a “woman’s role” ended and a “man’s role” began because she did it all.  She taught me about feminist theory by questioning the status quo to promote equality for everyone, not just women.

    Growing up my mother did many things to challenge gender roles. One being through gifts she gave us. When I was eight I received a pet sea monkeys kit for my birthday. Stem is stereotypically not encouraged for girls. The box was blue and could be found in the boy’s toy section in the store.  When I was 10, for Christmas I received a sling shot (It was taken away four days later for shooting out my neighbor Edna’s window). I did not grow up with a pink bicycle, my brothers didn’t grow up with blue bikes. We had green or orange or red or black. Easter baskets were not color coated pink and blue. They also contained things like potato shooters, soda, cookies and nerf guns not the norm of barbies and race cars.

    When it came to choosing our extracurriculars, my mother challenged gender norms by encouraging us to learn, not focused on gender traits while never discouraging our curiosity or passion. She would not let me join Girl Scouts because  “There is more to life than learning how to care for babies and cook.” All my siblings and I were signed up for snowboarding and swim lessons. I was put in horseback riding lessons because “You’re not going to be afraid of animals.” No matter what our gender, all activities and sports were an option (with the exception of Girl Scouts). There were no gendered sports and if there was a gendered sport we wanted to play, my mom would fight for that spot. For instance, my freshman year of high school, I wanted to play football. I was told no by the coach. “We don’t have the kind of equipment to keep a girl safe.” I let my mom know, and I was on the team, along with three other girls the following week. My younger sisters played competitive coed hockey from age five to eighteen. My youngest brother was in showchoir. Singing is usually reserved for girls and women. I also never had gendered sport equipment such as pink cleats or pink gloves. My father would take my brothers hunting, I was never allowed. 

    The tasks around my home growing up were not separated by gender, but instead were set by skill set. My brother and  I are allergic to poison ivy so my younger sister mowed the grass because she had no allergies. Mowing grass is typically a male task. Christmas lights were hung not by the man of the house, but by me, the only one not afraid of heights. We all had to learn how to change the oil or a tire on the car before she would let us take our drivers test. I grew up watching and helping with the home maintenance my mother would do, from laying new flooring, painting, and installing doors. 

    I grew up in overalls, muddy, and barefooted. At my dad’s house, I would get disciplined for having dirt under my fingernails when my brothers did not. To my mother, marriage and babies were never the goal. Education was. Even my father’s family would reinforce gender roles by saying  “When are you going to give me grandbabies” as if that was my only job in life. My brother heard “Are you going to play for the NFL?”. Being a mother and being expected to be good at sports are not the same, but to my father’s family it was life. 

    Emotions were meant to be felt. If my brothers were hurt, they were given the opportunity to cry but not by my father. They were “given something to cry about”, or “suck it up, men don’t cry”. My mother did many things to challenge gender roles when it came to clothing, but my father saw life a different way. I was forced to wear dresses to holiday events. I went through a “tom boy” phase where I only wanted to wear ball caps and my dad would make negative comments “you look like a boy”. 

    This had such a big impact on who I am as a person now. I have a deep rooted belief that I am capable of anything. I work in a male dominated field. I am the owner of a business. I teach self- defense and coach Brazilian jiu jitsu. I also grapple for recreation. I challenge power, roles, and expectations that are shaped by gender and I often challenge traditional ideas that keep women in less powerful or unfair positions. Traditional ideas like marriage. I am attracted to female lead relationships. I am the head of my household. I make the decisions in my intimate relationships. I am very comfortable as the protector. I also respect women as leaders more than men. 

    Although I am very grateful how I was raised, I am aware being a white woman raised in a feminist, inclusive home equals privileges. I benefit from racial privilege, meaning society often treats me more fairly just because of the color of my skin. Growing up in a feminist environment, I had access to ideas about equality and self-confidence that helps me challenge unfair stuff. I had more support to pursue my goals without being boxed in by traditional gender roles. 

    My maternal side mostly spaced how I understand gender, with the occasional social conditioning from my father. Thus highlighting my mother’s way vs my fathers way which is a fantastic example for the broader stereotypical world.

  • booo porn

    In today’s society, sexual experiences or sexual expression, including but not limited to pornography use, are very nuanced and widely debated. On both sides of the aisle, there are arguments about how porn usage may or may not impact sexual behavior and neuroplasticity of brain development. This will discuss the arguments for each of these perspectives: arguing that porn enhances sexual experiences, versus arguing that porn inhibits sexual experiences.

    This topic is important because understanding the implications pornography has, both on sexual behavior and the neuroplasticity of brain development, can influence the treatment provided to patients seeking sex therapy for such issues. This is debatable because sex educators and sexual health therapists and practitioners take varying stances on whether or not the overuse of pornography either enhances or inhibits sexual wellness overall. In a society that is wrought with debate regarding sexuality, sexual expression, and access to sexual healthcare, debating these topics can be vital in informing policies and securing funding pathways–all of which can be utilized to advocate for further research that could bridge the gap towards services needed. 

    Some sex therapists believe pornography enhances sex and will even prescribe it to their individual clients and couples. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number of people in sex therapy, although it’s estimated that around 43% of women and 31% of men are engaged with sex therapy services. Additionally, Affection Exchange Theory is a theory that argues that humans express affection to form and maintain close relationships, and that this expression of affection is linked to both physical and mental health benefits for both the giver and receiver. As such, some therapists argue that watching porn together, as a couple, creates this level of intimacy in meaningful relationships and thus enhances sexual experiences with couples.  

    The AACEPT American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, & Therapists states pornography is not addictive. “AASECT recognizes that people may experience significant physical, psychological, spiritual and sexual health consequences related to their sexual urges, thoughts or behaviors. AASECT recommends that its members utilize models that do not unduly pathologize consensual sexual behaviors. AASECT 1) does not find sufficient empirical evidence to support the classification of sex addiction or porn addiction as a mental health disorder, and 2) does not find the sexual addiction training and treatment methods and educational pedagogies to be adequately informed by accurate human sexuality knowledge. Therefore, it is the position of AASECT that linking problems related to sexual urges, thoughts or behaviors to a porn/sexual addiction process cannot be advanced by AASECT as a standard of practice for sexuality education delivery, counseling or therapy.” 

    Although I agree that pornography is not addictive, its frequent use causes the brain to become reliant upon the release of dopamine that causes dependency upon pornography to achieve sexual satisfaction. We now see that images of brains of pornography users are similar to that of brains of people battling drug addiction, attaching to the constant need for a dopamine hit. Approximately 11% of men and 3% of women consider themselves addicted to porn. 

    Arguing against Affection Exchange Theory, some practitioners would say that adding a third party, such as porn, doesn’t help the viewer connect deeper with their partner while viewing something entirely separate. You are connecting more with the performance than your partner. You don’t go to the movies to have deep conversations or get closer to someone. As a result, if people are watching unrealistic porn, and you attempt to mimic what you see on the screen that isn’t reality, it’s going to have a negative impact of guilt on your own sexual performance and desire. If you see men having intercourse for 20 minutes on the perfectly edited video, you are more likely to expect your partner to be able to last the same amount.  47% of U.S. families consider porn a major issue. Marriages suffer from porn use. 68% of divorce cases involve one partner’s online involvement with pornography. 

    The utilization of pornography fundamentally alters the elasticity of one’s brain, teaching the brain to deprive itself of sensory immersion one can only achieve from physical intimacy, and thus negatively influencing sexual behavior. Approximately 67% of American men and 41% of American women view online porn each year. Additionally, 28,258 people access porn every second, with 37 porn videos are created daily in the U.S. and an estimated $3,075.64 being spent on adult content every second. 

    The best analogy I can come up with is, sex is a road trip to Florida. Florida being the climax. Disclaimer, the climax isn’t always the goal of sex, but in this example it is. If the point of the road trip is the experience until we get to the destination, we can leave Cincinnati, stop and have a drink in Nashville. We can see the bamboo forest in Alabama, then see some shows in Atlanta. In this example, the road trip is sex, hitting all the 7 senses. OR we can go from point A to point B. Driving straight through from Cincinnati to Florida. Porn. We get to the same end destination (climax) but the experiences are two very different paths. One, hitting all the senses, the other hitting visuals and possibly audio.  

    Studies have proven pornography alters brain elasticity and development, including modifications in the prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for higher-order cognitive functions such as decision-making, planning, and impulse control. This part of the brain typically reaches full maturity around the age of 25. However, the average age at which children are first exposed to pornography is around 11-12 years old. Even further, pornography exposure can occur as early as age 10 or even younger, with some studies indicating that 15% of teens reported first seeing pornography at age 10 or younger. Porn also has neurological implications on the striatum. Studies have shown a negative correlation between hours of pornography consumption and the volume of gray matter in the right caudate, part of the dorsal striatum. Which just means messages send slower between the parts of the brain. This reduction could reflect changes in neural plasticity resulting from the intense stimulation of the reward system.  

    Pornography causes the brain to attach to sexual completion instead of sexual experience, leading to desensitization and sensory deprivation caused by chronic pornography usage. This also has implications on mental health and self-esteem, with 60% of men watching porn daily reporting feeling lonelier and more isolated. Consequently, 78% of men who watch porn frequently are unhappy with their appearance. 

    Pornography disinhibits sexual experience because it causes the brain to develop new neuropathways, essentially “shortcuts” in the brain, leaving out vital sensory experiences that are vital for sexual satisfaction and intimacy. Sex is supposed to be a sensory engaging activity. Why would the brain do its full job when it has been trained that it doesn’t need to hit all the switches? 

    In conclusion, sexual experiences or sexual expression such as pornography use are widely debated in today’s society. Though some argue that pornography usage may or may not impact sexual behavior and neuroplasticity of brain development, this essay has provided information that both for and against the overutilization of pornography and its impact sexual experiences. Consequently, it remains important to understand the implications pornography has, both on sexual behavior and the neuroplasticity of brain development, as well as how this can influence the treatment provided to patients utilizing sex therapy services. The importance of debating these topics is that it can assist in driving policies and securing funding pathways that can be used to further sex research as well as brain development and sexual wellness overall.