I asked a question on my new author page: R.B. O’Brien: Up Close and Personal last week, and now I pose it to you: Do you think orgasms beget the desire for more orgasms, like sugar or carbs, like a craving, especially in the form of masturbation, or is the opposite true—that the more orgasms we have the more we can go in between without having them and therefore, crave them less? What say you? What has been your experience in regards to this? But that’s not all I'm asking, so please, continue reading. I tried to see if I could find any evidence one way or the other, more than anecdotal, to answer this question, and sadly, I found out something I didn’t know, never being able to answer the question I was searching for. We all know orgasm-“ing” 😊 is an important part of life and health and happiness. Yes. We know this already. It’s true. The research is there. Orgasms are healthy in many ways. We all have read this by now. We’re less depressed, will live longer, orgasms relieve stress, help us sleep better, curb over-eating, and on and on and on. It’s not a revelation there. Why masturbation was (and still is) so taboo for women is a mystery. But what I didn’t know is that some women can’t orgasm. Not just during intercourse. No. Some women cannot orgasm. AT. ALL. The percentage is startling. And it could be hereditary! In an article in the UK mag Independent, it stated: “15 to 20 per cent of women are physically unable to orgasm, which is known as being ‘anorgasmic’.” This isn’t because their partners are clueless or they haven’t discovered how their bodies work yet or something happened traumatically to make them loathe such experiences. These women can’t climax, PERIOD, never mind the very large percentage (some studies as high as 70-80%!!) of women who say they’ve never orgasmed with a partner, or struggle to, something you can find in multiple sources. And the research states that this could be hereditary! This is absolutely new news for me, the idea that a woman may live her entire life and never experience the gift of orgasm. I cannot fathom a life sans orgasm. My. God. What would that be like? It makes me sad that this is a problem only affecting women, that while men may suffer performance issues, they have no problems when it comes to masturbation and climax. I find I absolutely benefit from orgasm as the studies state above with stress relief and sleep. They even help me concentrate. But, I suppose, if there's any downside, they can, sometimes, distract too…and occasionally (ahem), I am unable to do my best work until that little nagging…thing…you know that thing that has a mind of its own is taken care of…and sadly, without any research but anecdotal, I think more begets more…like anything that you crave, this is no different. And while I feel bad for those who can’t experience such release, I suppose, you can’t miss something you never had, right? Having it and then no longer having it would be far worse…I think. And selfishly, I, luckily won’t have to find that out.
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Do you think money-making is the new morality? Or am I naïve to think that this is something new, that in fact, it has always been this way? Are humans, by our very nature, good or bad intrinsically? Do we need to fight our urges constantly? I have no idea the answers to these questions. I like to think I’m good, not perfect, far from, but ‘good.’ That my conscience tells me right from wrong. But I ask again: Is that simply naïve? Is there no such thing but only what we’ve learned from birth onward? Our environment and upbringing shaping us? Or is it a combo of genes and environment? I’m an indie author by choice, but lately, I’ve been rethinking this. Lately, I’m disgusted. And lately, I think I’ve had enough. Let me tell you something. If you think supporting cheaters and liars and piss-poor writers is a good thing, I neither need or want your friendship. But perhaps you don’t know what you’re doing, so I give you the benefit of the doubt and, at this point, feel it a duty to tell you. If you haven’t heard, there are several authors (okay MORE than several) who have been cheating the Amazon system. I’ve been hearing about this for weeks. I try to keep my nose clean. Stay out of things that don’t affect me, e.g. MIND MY OWN BUSINESS, do what makes my heart sing and my soul soar! Fuck what everyone else is doing. I’ve got books to write. Poems to bleed. Friends to support. But I can no longer remain silent. Part of being that “good” person I spoke of above is doing the right thing. And the right thing is saying something about this. I will not be a passive supporter of this crap anymore. I kept silent because I knew not of the truth or fabrication of accusations. I’m not a torch blazing witch hunter. I need facts. I do research. I’m not a bandwagoner. If you know me at all, you know this already. But now I know. Some (I’m sure not all) of this BS is 100% true. What am I speaking of? It’s complicated to those who may not understand the system. Here it is simplistically: An indie author who chooses to enroll their books into an Amazon program called Kindle Unlimited gets paid not only from book sales but from page reads. This means, a writer who has readers enrolled in this program get paid for every page a reader swipes across with eager fingers to get to that much-anticipated ending (I am a reader as well as a writer and pay for this myself to read thousands of books a year). Following so far? More simple: For every page a reader swipes past, we writers get paid. Seems pretty great, right? I used to think so. Sadly, some authors are abusing this system. They are “stuffing” the beginning of their books so that readers have to swipe furiously to get to the “new” material. We’re talking CHAPTERS upon CHAPTERS of material before they even get to what they are trying to read. But it gets even worse. Some authors even put GIVEWAWAYS or FREE things but only by SWIPING to the end to get there. And so, as you’ve deduced, the more swipes, the more the author gets paid. Again…seems pretty great for everyone, right? Wrong! And here’s why. This affects me. This affects you. For every swipe and read, Amazon calculates our “rank” and our selling “status.” The higher our rank, the more visibility you, the reader, will see of authors at a higher rank when you shop or turn on your kindle. What does this mean?
And with shitty writing comes a shitty perception of what it means to be an indie author. It equates over and over and over that indie writers are not “good” writers. And I’m here to tell you: The only thing it shows is that some people have class and morals and standards and some are just greedy manipulators who will do anything to make a buck. I equate it with my students who cheat. I can’t change it. They have lost their moral fiber and compass, maybe never having one at all. No one wins. We just get dumber. And EVERYONE—you, me, society-- pays in the long run.
Please stop supporting this as a reader. If you open a book to find this nefarious practice, don’t be a part of it. Don’t do it. Shame on you if you do it knowingly. But as a wise man once said: Ignorance is no excuse. And now, you can’t even claim that. Is social media killing our interpersonal skills? Our flesh and blood lives? Are we spending too much time on the virtual rather than the real? It seems more and more of my friends are making decisions to leave Social Media (SM), or at the very least, put it waaaay in the background of their lives. As a writer, and a published writer trying to sell books, it’s hardly an option for me to leave altogether. Or is that a lie I’m telling myself? If I were to leave it, would my sales suffer or remain the same? So I ask myself: What am I getting out of SM and is it worth it to stick around? By the very nature of the term--Social Media—it seems just that, a place to socialize, which is fine. New ones are popping up, like MeWe, but from all accounts, that is very “social” and perhaps just another time-suck void, a place to "pick up" someone. I'm not interested in that. And what of those of us who use a penname of sorts, completely separate life from our non-virtual world, filled with a completely different set of friends and acquaintances, another universe entirely? Where do we draw the line? If SM means to use “media” to be “social,” where do we distinguish our “real” lives from the ones in cyberspace? How “real” is this virtual world and are we living in a place that doesn’t really exist? Are we creating a fantasy existence we simply don’t have in the outside, flesh and blood world, living our lives here, as if in a dream we can create? Do the lonely need social media the most? Lost in the real world? Unfulfilled? We sure do get caught up in it. We spend an inordinate amount of time here, scrolling, liking, commenting, posting…only to look up at the time and think: Well, where the hell did THAT go? People run the gamut from falling in love to backstabbing on the daily. It’s like living in a video game I think somedays, where we feel more alive and real 'there' than 'here.' My circle of friends are primarily writers (and of course readers—I hope—or this whole thing becomes Theatre of the Absurd). Is that why we like it here so much? Because we are creating, the very fiber of what being a writer is? Are we, then, writing our own stories in essence? Maybe the story we want to have? Isn’t that what a writer does? Write stories? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m asking them. I’m watching it destroy people while lift and free others. Where do I fit in? Is it slowly killing me or is it helping me to live a life of creative freedom, one I may not have otherwise? Or is it like any addiction where we ask the same questions: Is it affecting my real life? Is it ruining parts of my life? Am I ignoring things that should not and cannot be ignored? But then without it, addiction or otherwise, I would ask: Is this the place I NEED to spend time to write, to create, to live out fantasies? Is that just the curse of being a creative being and that this modern-day venue, almost a romantic throwback to a time of love letters and waiting for the touch of someone while basking in it at the same time, is actually a gift to stay alive? There is something so paradoxical about it, isn’t it? It’s so modern and so evasive but is it really any different than old—school paper and pen? Our letters we write to the world? Is social media really just that for writers? Our journals? Our stories? Our poems? Us? I guess I must really answer these things, for me, personally, and through the lens of my existence as a writer. But I will end with this. Either we want to share our work as writers or we don’t. It’s really that simple. If we want to write for only ourselves, there is absolutely no reason to stay on social media. None, except to be "social." And I fear too many writers are using it for only that. But even as I write that, I almost disagree and could argue that social media has made writers of us all…for every post we write is a form of just that, writing. We are human. We want to be heard. But is our quest of wanting to be “liked” slowly destroying our humanity, our true capabilities to love one another? Is it a false love? A façade? A meaningless void of nothingness?
I’ve said it before: I write. Therefore I am. If I cease to write for others, will I, myself, cease to exist? I will exist just as sure as I'm watching the clouds scroll across the sky right the way I'm scrolling my words to you right now. But I think I'd be dead. My post today comes from a conversation I had with an old ‘friend’ from my past the other day. I wasn’t going to write about it, but it’s gnawing away at me, so I must. You know when you think you know how you feel about something or what you believe and then someone challenges that, and you may change your mind or at least THINK about things differently? Yes. That. BDSM. What is it? Where/how did we come to like certain things in the bedroom and beyond? I'm not going to use this post to explain what the acronym means or all the varied nuances of BDSM. It's too varied and that's not my point here. My advice is : If you don't know? Do some research. But it used to be a long-held misconception that something “bad” must have happened to us or “traumatic,” and this is the “why” of why we like certain things, sexually or otherwise. I don’t doubt our pasts shape our present in so many ways (and our future). But must it be traumatic? No. It might be the evolution of discovery. Our journey. Someone may have asked: Hey, wanna try x, y, or z? And you say: Um…Okay. And then you discover you may like something (or not). The BDSM community spends an awful lot of time talking about consent. And it’s confusing when there are books and movies and dark romances that thrive on non-consent or dubious consent—usually, in these tales, the person “victimized” secretly likes it though, wants it, and just needs to discover it…so is there really any non-consent at all? It’s quite confusing in a world of “no means no,” isn’t it? It turns some of us on. And even in real life. It’s not always just fantasy. And, “So what?” I often said. Who cares? It’s not my business what turns on another. But maybe I’m wrong. That friend said to me: “BDSM is nothing more than consent to abuse. Period.” What? I screamed. No. You just don’t understand it. And he paused, let me rant, and then picked right back up. He said: “You misunderstand me. I’m not judging. I’m just stating the obvious. It’s EXACTLY like an abusive relationship. But with consent. You slap someone around. Or you emotionally destroy them. Or you take away their power. And then you give them pleasure after. And then comfort. The only difference is you don’t apologize for the abuse, because it’s consensual. But it’s the same, exact cycle.” (I’m paraphrasing here). For anyone who’s ever been in an abusive relationship, physical or emotional, you know the pattern. You fight. Maybe hit. Get ignored. Or “punished.” Then the “abuser” apologizes, maybe on knees, brings flowers, begs, and then, sometimes, the make-up sex is out of this world, blinding orgasm and bliss may ensue, and a time of calm enters…until…it happens all over again. Damn it. Does my friend have a point? I don’t agree with my friend. I don’t think. But then again, he does use the word consent. Is that what matters? I’m not sure. It’s why I’m writing this. I’m working through it. Some argue BDSM can be equated to being gay. It’s not a choice. It’s our make-up, something we’re born with. Maybe that is true. Or maybe it really is formed from our pasts. Or maybe it’s a combo. When the BDSM community talks loudly about consent, it makes me wonder about some of the stories I like to read (and write) and my turn-ons. It also makes me think of the BDSM Library (if you’re familiar), where most of those stories, dear god, are anything but consensual, and yet, it’s called the BDSM Library. (Not my cup of tea.) And yes, I cannot end this post without mentioning 50 Shades, and all those who call it abuse. I don’t follow that train of thought on that. But, if my friend is right, that much of BDSM is just consensual abuse, the oxymoron, suddenly may make some sense. And damn it, here I am, full-circle ending, thinking... |
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I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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