So it has been a significant amount of time since the last time I wrote a blog here, and that's primarily for two reasons.
The first one is that my last post was that rather iffy short story about Planetside 2, a story that wasn't finished. When I write something I find it incredibly difficult to write anything that isn't that until it is finished. Especially if people have read the unfinished thing. Of course, I'm also incredibly lazy so when faced with the choice of finishing a story or whatever so that I can write something else I want to write or try to grind out my quiver I'll usually pick the latter.
The other reason is that I work a lot these days, and while around ten or eleven o' clock in the morning I'll be struck with a powerful inspiration for a blog post--imagine an outline, clever one line paragraphs and all that stuff--I then wind up working until six that afternoon and by the time I get home all I want to do is eat, read, and sleep.
It pains me, not writing when I'm tired. I know if I ever want to actually really be a writer I need a schedule and the will to stick to it. But that's a discussion for another time.
Today I want to write a few thoughts about a saying I've seen floating around the internet for a while. I haven't heard it in real life thus far, and I'm thankful for that, but the saying makes me furious everytime I see it and I feel like this is the best place to vent my feelings--into more or less an empty void.
The saying is, "If a key opens many locks, it's a master key. If a lock opens to many keys, it's a shitty lock."
In case you need some context, the saying is a metaphor for male and female sexuality. Obviously the key is a penis and the lock is a vagina.
At first glance the metaphor actually seems like a good one, and since all the internet cares about are first glances, I imagine that's why it has become widespread. The reality is, of course, that the metaphor doesn't make any kind of sense at all. It just reinforces the disgusting misogyny and ignorance that seems so widespread among many corners of the internet. It should be stopped.
The idea is obviously that a woman is a lock that has to be opened by a man. The woman is stripped of responsibility here--a lock can't try to escape a key--its a question only of whether or not the key is "strong" enough to overpower the lock's defense. It's based on the most basic understanding of sex; a cock penetrates a pussy, that's sex, right? That's all there is to sex in this metaphor. I wonder if this is another reason this saying is so popular with young men who use the internet a lot?
(I can say this without indicating myself these days I think--I might not be quite to middle age yet, but I'm shedding the last vestiges of "young" too.)
Anyway, women are not locks, and men are not keys. A woman can enjoy sex, I imagine most do, probably as much as men. Women can search out sex, just as men. Hell, women don't even need men to have and enjoy sex--I wonder how a lesbian that has sex with many different women would fit into this metaphor?
The realities of how and why people have sex are far too complex and involved for any sort of saying to encapsulate them all, especially a saying as gauche as this one.
So why do I care? People might say that I'm writing this just to "white knight" women, that I'm being nice to try to get laid. I am, of course, in a more or less stable relationship and, not to brag, could have sex pretty much whenever I wanted with as much or as little effort as I wanted to exert.
Other, more cunning detractors might say that I'm buying into a culture of misandry and being taught to hate myself because of all these evil women trying to take over the world.
(A word of caution, that site I just linked to is pretty goddamn awful and hateful, so you probably shouldn't click it.)
The reality is I care because I genuinely believe in equality whenever it is possible, and females and males should be held as sexual equals just as much as they should be intellectual and physical equals (and yes I realize that absolute equality isn't possible, the strongest person in the world will almost certainly never be a woman, but it also won't be you.)
This saying brings me back to what will probably be a recurring theme in this blog, that words affect the ideas people have. These days people say that it doesn't matter how a message is given, as long as you understand it. I think this is totally false, the words we use couch an idea with flavors and textures than will change how we internalize this information into our lives. I have no doubt that there are young men reading things like this on the internet and honestly believing that women are comparable to locks, inanimate objects, obstacles to be overcome and owned. We as a society have to be more careful with the ideas that we form and release into the world, ideas are dangerous, deadly things--more than ever with the incredible speed with which they can be disseminated thanks to the damned internet, with no time for cooler heads to prevail or reasoned discussion and thought.
So don't replace your thoughts with phrases, don't use quotes or jokes or whatever to express how you think about things--think about them, express them with your own words, move beyond memes with bold text and stupid pictures.
And have as much or as little sex as you want, without judging how much or how little sex other people are having.
