God loves you :-)

*bites tongue* … **presses down really hard** … ***winces***… ah, fuck it.

Really? That’s interesting, because I have few questions and given I reserve my respect for theories based on the weight of evidence, I’ll direct them towards you, because you’re real.

So, which God is it?

Let me assume, and correct me if I’m wrong, that I can guess this God’s characteristics; he’s omnipotent (all powerful), right? Which means it’s within his grasp not only to decide not to send us all to the ‘hell’ he created, but also to set up a scenario where it’s possible he didn’t have to send his own son (who is also him?) on a suicide mission, for the benefit of a minority of people.

He’s also omnipresent (present everywhere), right? Which means he’s aware of everything that’s happening. He is intimately familiar with the unimaginable suffering of those he knowingly created into situations of inescapable torture and cruelty, and sits there doing nothing other than expecting people to believe in him, to no end.

Oh, and he’s omniscient (all knowing), correct? Which means when he created absolutely everything in 144 hours, he knew exactly what was going to happen. Maybe that’s why he regretted it all when he murdered everyone except for Noah and his family, but that doesn’t excuse him because he knew about war, disease and everything else, and he chose to do it all anyway.

Yet he’s omni-benevolent (all loving), right? So does that mean we must afford him some unique moral platform that we both don’t understand and goes against every fibre of our inner sense of what it means to be good, to excuse him of incalculable cruelty?

I’m not even out of first gear; don’t get me started on biblical textual criticism.

I don’t want to be a downer, and fully expect a drop in follower numbers given this post (hey, you’d be more consistent if you just forgave me), but the time has come for our society to draw a close to this befuddled nonsense. Believe in yourself! You are innately beautiful and capable of producing true goodness in the world. You need no third-party narrative; you are enough, and you are amazing.

Is it a turn off to be a 24 year old virgin?

So this sounds like a ‘way things are’ vs ‘way I think things should be’ scenario. The latter is all consuming and presents a false standard against which we can judge ourselves. The former is, always has been, and always will be, totally fine.

That’s easy to say in theory, but in practice it can be hard and painful. I understand that. Don’t think that a casual Tumblr answer means I don’t get how difficult it can be.

I lost my virginity when I was your age. For years prior, I felt weird and stupid for feeling so behind everyone else. For years later, I felt weird and stupid for feeling so behind everyone else. The reality is, we’re always going to be strange on some douchebag’s spectrum. The answer isn’t to shuffle along in time with their rhythm, it’s to hear our own beat and live according to what moves us. If that means we wait for a while before we have sex, then that’s how it is for us. We embrace our life and we own it. We try not to compare ourselves to ideas of how it could or should be.

Picture our lives as a poetic dance. Sometimes it’s awkward and geeky, but it’s ours. And we are the only ones who can move to it like we own it. Because we do own it. Everyone else are pretenders. So listen for music. Own it and dance. It’s not easy. Sometimes you need to pretend to be a dancer but do it enough and you’ll find your space. You’ll find your flow. And when you do, you’ll align yourself with the opportunities, sexual and otherwise, that happen upon people who have developed their own self-assured sense of security.

Maybe that means you’ll be sexing it up like a motherfucker in the months to come, or maybe you’ll be the most bad-ass virgin the people in your life have ever seen. The key is authenticity and self acceptance. You are worth that.

Do you think porn is wrong and immoral?

We need to define some terms.

Let’s extend the definition of ‘porn’ beyond the big studios and websites so it includes ‘tube’ type sites, cam model sites and – yes – Tumblr blogs. Basically, anything that not only creates but also extends the reach of sexually explicit material. Let’s keep the discussion about heterosexual pornography, just for the sake of this answer. Let’s agree – for the sake of argument – that what’s ‘wrong’ is what’s harmful. And let’s decide that what’s ‘moral’ is the minimisation of unnecessary harm.

When we think about the morality of pornography, we could go one of two ways: the concept, or the reality. I have no issue with the concept of pornography, which should come as no surprise from a blog which is unashamedly pornographic. Consenting adults utilising sexuality as part of a social or commercial enterprise – whether creator or consumer – is very much a matter for the conscience of either party. I don’t see any reason to pretend there are absolute standards of consensual sexual behaviour or some arbitrary measure of purity against which we should measure ourselves.

Even if there is, impurity is fun!

Then there’s pornography as a reality. That’s where it becomes more difficult for me.  We need to own a conscious awareness when we indulge in pornographic imagery. It’s very easy to take unconscious cues about the physicality and sexuality of what we watch, view or listen to. It’s so easy to find ourselves developing subconscious standards in the facial appearance, skin colour, personality or body shape of women, whether that’s women we desire to be with or women we compare ourselves against. For many men, it’s so easy to let porn start to dictate our measure of sexual prowess against how long we last, how large we are, or the reaction of our partner.

So pornography has the potential for huge harm, but does that make it inherently wrong? It certainly doesn’t owe anything to the sensibilities of its consumer. As adults, we own the responsibility to call judgements on what we’re happy to expose ourselves to, and that responsibility is ours alone. The same is true of workers within the industry, which will exploit its performers without pausing for breath. I don’t think any consenting adult could reasonably blame the industry for their decision to use it for work.

Ultimately, we each need to make the call. Pornography is so prevalent that if we don’t watch it or re-blog it, it’s easy to feel like we’re missing out on something everyone else is enjoying, or even that we’re weird for not enjoying it. If you decide it’s not really your thing, please feel fine with that decision. You create the rules, and that includes what’s normal in your universe. You are not as odd as you imagine. If it’s something that you do enjoy, then enjoy, with the discernment and wisdom that stimulation doesn’t equate to benchmarks.