Sexual intercourse

You Were Just Convenient—Don’t Trip

You can make yourself look and feel like a fool when you think that a person was and is so mesmerized by you sexually—when in reality, he or she was just having sex with you just because you were available.  Some people think that because a person was asking and/or wanting to have sex with them a significant number of times means that he or she has an obsession.  If you’re this type of person, then you need to reconsider your thinking.  If a person has a high sex drive or is just looking for affection because there is really not many options available in the area, then you’ve got to understand that it’s not really about how great you are, but more about you being able to supply the person’s needs.  Therefore, don’t go around thinking that you’re all that because the person was desiring you so much—he or she could have been just using you for sex, and you’re going around thinking that he or she just cannot get enough of you.

You have to understand that people have sexual needs and when options to have sex are limited, you may just be their means to an end.

While you are out telling people that the person is obsessed with you, you must have been obsessed with the person too because you were willing to have sex with him or her so many times.  Did you ever think about this?  Did the thought ever cross your mind that you were the one getting dominated and played?

Just because someone asked and/or wanted to have sex with you a significant number of times does not mean that you are a good sexual performer.  Again, if he or she has limited options available, then you are just his or her most reasonable option to having sexual intercourse.  Now, when people have extremely high sex drives, they may try to get sex from almost anyone available.  Therefore, you could be that person who was just available to help them satisfy their sexual appetite.

For those of you who think that you are some type of sexual prize, you might need to reconsider your thinking. You might just be someone’s useful idiot.  Did you ever consider that you are and/or have been someone’s useful idiot?

Things are not always what they seem.

Excessive arrogance can cause you to overestimate your sexual worth.  It can cause you to not try to make yourself better each time you have sex.  Therefore, while you thought that you were providing the individual with the greatest sexual experience that he or she has ever had each time you had sex, you really were not because your excessive arrogance led you to never ask how you performed.

If you’re a whore, that is, you have had sex with so many people, then you should not be parading around like you’re something special.  Please! Everyone in town has probably slept with you.  What’s special about you now?

Be careful about thinking that everybody wants you.  It can be that they see you’re just easy and always available.  Do you feel so arrogant now?

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Toward a Better Understanding of Relationship and Sexual Desires

The things that we desire can be really complicated sometimes. Many of the things that we desire we know are complicated—it’s not like we are blind about the complexity of many of our longings. Have you ever wanted to hook up with someone and later discovered that the person is really not what you thought? Have you ever longed to be in a relationship with someone, but later found out that there’s no way that you could ever make it in a relationship with the person? Have you ever had a deep sexual desire for someone and then, as time goes by, end up feeling like why in the world did I ever sexually desire this person? Have you ever had sex with someone and experienced just okay sex with the person, but you still want to have sex with the person so bad—even though you know you’re not going to be completely fulfilled after you have worked so hard to get with the person and the sex is again just okay? No, I have not been listening to Brandy’s “Have You Ever” lately, but I have been seriously contemplating how complicated our relationships and sexual desires can be sometimes.

Although desire emerges from natural human emotions, Karl Marx has evinced that desire becomes much more complicated when it comes into contact with capitalism. The economic and social influences of capitalism can cause our desires to become unstable and difficult to comprehend. Your desire to constantly have sex with someone who you know is not going to give you the sexual experience you long for can be a product of you attempting to find a way to satisfy your economic shortcomings that result from capitalism. The societal expectations to be sexually involved with someone can lead you to constantly pursue someone you know is not going to fulfill you sexually, and to make matters even worse, this person can be someone who it’s challenging to get him or her to have sex with you—even though you have had sex together before.

Although I have had the opportunity to read some very good (and a few great) blogs that concentrate on relationships, there is little to no discussion and analysis about the impact of the economic system, namely capitalism, on relationships. Relationships of all types are heavily affected by capitalism. By thinking about the impact that capitalism has on relationships, we can move more toward offering advice, critiques, and discussions about relationships that are informed by something greater than one’s personal experience and background; we can all begin to think about how capitalism is at play in what goes on in relationships and how we conceive relationships.

Envisage how much better Steve Harvey’s relationship advice would be if he solemnly contemplated capitalism’s impact on the relationships in which he analyzes, and imagine how much better constructed his relationship advice would be if he firmly situated it within a theoretical or conceptual framework that offers him the ability to critique capitalism’s effects on relationships. I don’t think this is asking too much of him, but his largely naïve and/or desperate audience may begin to run away from this more substantive and focused relationship advice.

Some people will say that they do include capitalism into how they think about and analyze relationships, but I would just like to see you be more explicit in your critiques of capitalism’s effects on relationships in your discussions and analyses.

When you no longer desire to be with a person who you thought you were interested in, I want you to think about that you may have learned something meaningful about yourself and what you want, as opposed to there being anything substantively wrong and/or disappointing about the person.

When you no longer want to hook up with a person for a one-night stand (or jump off), I want you to think about the possible economic and social factors at play that could be contributing to your discontinued desire to be with the person. You can learn much about yourself by engaging in this critical self-evaluation of your thoughts about relationships and your words and actions within your relationships.

When you continue to have sex with someone you really are not being fulfilled by, I want you to consider the possibility that you really don’t want to be with this person, and that you are only having sex with him or her to mollify larger economic and/or social problems and challenges that plague you.

It is my hope that relationship discourses, advice, and analyses will begin to include thoughts about capitalism’s impact on relationships. I’m not trying to discourage people from using their own personal experiences with relationships in their advice, discussions, and analyses about relationships, but I would certainly like to see a greater effort employed to contextualize and conceptualize your personal experiences within larger factors that will offer wider applicability and relevancy. Your personal relationship experiences can be useful to people, of course. However, don’t ever present your relationship experiences as the standards for all relationships. Just because you have been involved in some or many relationships does not make you a relationship expert, especially when you have not really internalized anything you have learned from your relationships.

Give more thought to your relationship and sexual desires—they can be highly complicated. Make stronger efforts to ameliorate the level of sophistication of your relationship advice, critiques, and discussions.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Legalize Prostitution in America

Just how free are we really in America? Of course, there are valid reasons that make it essential to place limitations on freedom to avoid pervasive chaos. However, is forbidding prostitution a truly necessary limitation on our liberty that we need, or is prohibiting prostitution more about moral and religious values of the majority of Americans being imposed on everyone? Now, I’m sure that there will be many people who are not willing to even entertain the idea of legalizing prostitution in America. Although you may not want to become a prostitute, why would you prevent other people who would like to make money from engaging in sexual intercourse with others from seeking this form of self-employment?

What’s really so illegal about prostitution? While many people will argue and have argued that prostitution is immoral, I contend that the real reason why the government has outlawed prostitution is the difficulty with trying to collect taxes off of money earned through sexual intercourse. If this is the dominant reason behind why prostitution is illegal to engage in, then why don’t we just legalize it and require prostitutes to report their earnings? This will stimulate the economy (and stimulate other things), generate significant tax revenue, and help to give the unemployed an additional legal profession to enter. We could help so many prostitutes to come out of the shadows and be substantially integrated into the center of American life. I assert that many more prostitutes will do a better job of protecting themselves if we would legalize prostitution. Prostitutes would not have to meet their clients in unsafe places if we legalized prostitution.

If you don’t like the products and services offered by a company or entrepreneur, you have the freedom in America to go to seek those products and services elsewhere. For those who have no interest in pursuing what a prostitute is offering, then they simply will not purchase any services from prostitutes. However, for those who would like to purchase the services of a prostitute, then they should be allowed to legally make this purchase.

We are unnecessarily denying people the legal right to pursue prostitution as their means of earning an earnest living.

By legalizing prostitution, we can enable the oldest profession to become much more professional. Prostitutes could purchase offices and buildings to conduct their services—just as any other legitimate entrepreneur is currently able to do.

For all of you self-righteous people out there, how many of you have had unprotected sex with someone you just met? How many of you have had one-night stands? Be honest. You engaged in just as risky sexual behavior (maybe even more so) as a prostitute does. What makes you any different than the prostitutes? Exactly. You got screwed and they got paid. Now, you’re mad.

I have personal problems with prostitution. However, I don’t want my personal problems with prostitution to bar others from being able to be prostitutes. Let’s begin to examine how we can increase liberty in America, even when increasing certain liberties would not necessarily comport with our personal moral and religious values.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Men Get Raped Too

Grown men get raped too. For many people, they cannot even fathom the thought that it’s possible for a man to get raped. Some people think that if a man gets raped that he needed to get raped because he should have been man enough to prevent it. Of course, a man getting raped by another man or by a woman happens much less than a woman gets raped by a man. We still, however, need to engage in serious discourses about men who are raped. One of the dominant reasons why men who are raped is largely underreported to the authorities is shame. The shame that male victims of rape experience may be greater than the shame women face. When one thinks about the hypermasculine expectations that American society places on men, especially men in the African-American and Latino communities, the thought of a man who “lets himself get raped” is unacceptable. Men who are truly raped are not letting themselves get rapped—they are being victimized in the same ways as women who are raped.

We must create spaces where men who are victimized by rape can speak and where they can find support and refuge. Those of us who are committed to truth and justice need to include male victims of rape in the work that we do. There’s a true need to find real and innovative ways to counter the shame that men face when they are raped. Shame is keeping many men from coming forth or causing them not to immediately report the vicious sexual attacks on their body.

It’s important to give people some examples of how a grown man can be raped because many people don’t believe it’s possible. A grown man can be raped by a group of bi-sexual or down- low men who outnumber a man who is alone. You have to understand that sometimes a group of men will want to have sex with a man so bad that they will set him up to be sexually gang-banged. Moreover, a woman can use a date rape drug to rape a man. The date rape drug can render him powerless to her desire to rape him. Many men are too hypermasculine to see this as rape because they will see that he’s a man and he’s receiving something “good” out of the encounter. It’s rape! A gay man can overpower another gay man and rape him. It happens!

Just because you have never heard about a man getting raped does not mean that it has not and does not occur.

Rape is one of the most violent acts that can be inflicted on a person. Women are, of course, most often impacted by rape. We have to, however, become more sophisticated about the ways in which we discuss rape because men are not included in our popular discourses on rape. Since men are mainly the rapists, their relationship to rape is primarily as victimizers. There has to be an understanding that they are victims too when discussing rape. In no way am I trying to diminish the focus on the impact that rape has on women, but I want us to realize that men are being victimized by rape too.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Make Healthy Sexual Choices

Black Gay Men

Too many people are dying because they are having random and casual unprotected sexual intercourse. Too many people are getting sexual transmitted diseases because they are choosing ephemeral pleasure over safe sexual intercourse. Now, I know there may be times when sexual intercourse cannot be planned, but the one thing you can do is make sure you use protection during sexual intercourse. As you know, a condom cannot protect you from everything. A condom cannot be used during every type of sexual act to make every sexual act safer. You will, therefore, have to exercise some control and good judgment. The way that many people are acting it seems that they value a penis or vagina more than they do life itself. In case you did not know, there are real diseases out there you can get that can kill you.

I would like to recommend to student organizations on college campuses that are seriously concerned about students making healthy sexual choices to be more serious and use less entertainment in your approach to students. When you engage in acts that are intentionally over-the-top to get students’ attention, they remember the over-the-top things you did and not the serious messages about good sexual health you are offering. While I do support abstinence only sex education in middle and high school, I do not think that abstinence only sex education is realistic and effective on college campuses. We should make more investments in helping students to make healthy sexual choices and help them to do more things that prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. I do not, however, want student organizations on college campuses telling students about using abortion as an option to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Although women should not have to worry about if what they are wearing will make them more likely to get raped, the reality is you do have to worry about it. Women, make sure that you dress in a way that is going to make you less likely to be raped when you are out late at night. If you can, try to go out with at least another woman so that you are not traveling alone. Making a healthy sexual choice involves you dressing in a way that is going to make you less likely to be victimized by someone who is not concerned about your sexual health. Mothers, please let your daughters know when they are leaving the house looking like whores. If they get raped, then you will at least have protested them leaving the house looking like whores.

Many people think it is cute to go around and have sex with everyone possible. Please get wiser than this. We live in a time when just one wrong sexual choice can lead you to death. It’s time out for trying to sleep with as many random people as you can. Make a commitment to improving your sexual health by reducing the number of people you have sex with and the number of times you are having risky and unprotected sex.

To men and women, don’t allow random people to ejaculate in your mouths and swallow it. A condom will not prevent you from a potential disease that you may get from engaging in such an act. If you are going to do this, then make sure it is with someone you have had a committed relationship with.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison