this makes so much sense to me: the way from the outside our lives might look put together, but on the inside it’s like juggling one too many plates - and the way that habits can become compulsions
yeah! I follow someone who talks about how diff things can became versions of diet culture- we're supposed to be evolved past diet culture but are we just transferring the moving goalposts, deprivation-as-morality thing to like, having a perfectly clean house? lots of ways to transmute anxiety/dep
perfectly clean and tidy houses frighten me so much. like i have my own weird habits that i certainly wrestle with but the tidying and cleaning is very much to me like - does anyone live here? is this (like you're saying re: diet culture) another exercise in making ourselves smaller
this article was so good! Made me think a lot about the function of "i hate men" reflexiveness/how romance novels are getting ""spicier"" but also less horny simultaneously/it's easy to say "romance is feminist!" while still being ashamed of it/new Ali book
I had some complaints about For My Lady’s Heart, but it has seriously stuck with me for years in a way that’s hard to describe. It’s so immersive that it feels like a recurring dream or something? Very movie-like. It’s a classic for sure.
ah, I already had this in my inbox because Sanjana is one of my fave tiktokers (and now substack...ers? is that the word we're using there) but I hadn't started yet so this might now be my bedtime reading!
this was also a great article. lots to think about: one thing comes to mind - the way that romance (which i love as a genre) has a tendency to explore desire deepening through these escalating scenes of sexual intimacy that are meant to move narrative forward, except oftentimes they end up looking
very similar to each other? like what does that mean about the supposed things that foster emotional intimacy being practically identical for lots of sets of partners? which i think is one important thing about romance getting more diverse lately, although it also seems like it's calcifying
i also think sex is one of the few remaining places we let adults 'play' and i mean that as much about kink as i do in the way of like, legos/blocks/crayolas. and so in some ways it doesn't surprise me that putting on roles/exaggerating 'structures of power and subjugation' yields pleasure
i guess i also need to read deep end...i love ali and also what do we think about it? does it work? somehow i did not realize she was exploring kink in it and now i'm like, holding my breath about itđź«Ł
yeah, this whole section was very good! there's a lot of m/f romance that seems to fall into the "he RESPECTS her, she feels RESPECTED by him" now instead of like...desire!
like "she felt powerful on her knees giving him a bj" vs "she liked giving him pleasure" both can be true! But the first feels more "acceptable" in those negotiations (which i certainly do...am i a Bad Woman for writing pure subjugation kink in these times etc)
Yeah, it’s hard for me to articulate in a way that doesn’t sound like “it’s not that deep babe” because it IS that deep dammit but also there is something about the pleasure of leaving the question of acceptability behind… but also the frame follows the picture… I’m not articulating well.
Like: so much of so many kinks can feel like they are “negotiation” with an unacceptable reality — okay so we take as given that you are violent but can we make you violent in a way that is hot to me? Can I invert objectification into self-affirmation? Can I find a way to be turned on by “breed?”
I do need to read it a few more times to gather my thoughts but this part jumped out to me - thinking about “I need him in a way concerning to feminism” begs the question: what kind of feminism?
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https://baskinsuns.substack.com/p/romance-and-heteropessimism