h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

h2g2, I find, tends to be the best place for explaining myself, both to myself and to the world. When one considers that the way I choose to figure out who I am is by writing about it, I honestly can't think of a better place than h2g2 - especially since here I'm at least partly divorced from the anchors of the "real world" and the people I deal with there.

On that note, I'd just like to explain that I wrote the entry A17692112, "Memories of My Head", about five months ago, in a user account I created specifically for that purpose. It is rawly written, exactly as I thought it in my head, with no attempt at structure. It is exactly how I felt shortly before the 26th of November, 2006, when it was written. It has not been revised since then.

Five months ago, I was very nervous about articulating anything sexual under my own name, something which has carried over into real life and my real-life blog, as well. I'd like to change that, and to change the aura of guilt and confession that has come to surround my sense of adolescent sexual exploration. Prompted slightly by a writing contest about sexual taboos on a sex-ed site for teenagers, I have now written A22159244, "Too Much Information". I hope it's a more realistic and mature expression of myself, five months along in a serious attempt to understand myself and the world into which I fit.

So where is all this going? Part of writing this journal entry is just to explain that I wrote the first entry, because I loathe being duplicitous or dishonest about myself and I don't like there to be any secrets. Part of it, though, is to invite comment. I am fully cognizant of the strangeness inherent in asking adults I've met over the internet to comment on my writings about my sexual identity - but I'm asking you to consider me not as a person, but as a writer, and I'm asking you this not as random adults, but as my friends (and not all of you are adults, anyway!).

Anyway, I just wanted to say, the same way I posted a journal a year ago when I decided I was bi, that this is who I am.

Regular programming will now resume.

I really wish I knew you in real life, I just sometimes feel like we'd have a great time muddling through problems, though you always seem to approach everything fairly maturely anyway so I imagine you'll always be fine.

I'm not sure why but I've wondered for a long time if you into the scene and thought you were probably a sub. When I realised I had an interest in that world (though it's mostly fantasy, nothing real time) I was lucky enough to have a friend with which I shared a game, that game being to freak the other person out as much as possible with various levels of sexual perversion we could find readily available on the internet. It was pretty obvious though that this was a mixture of grotesque humour, fascination with the obscene, curiosity about the human mind (one of the recent entries into these 'annals' was pterodactyl porn, something that still baffles me) but there always seemed to be a sense that in the middle of all this were little hints of what we were into. It didn't take him too long to realise my particular fetishes and totems, I don't think we've ever explicitly admitted it, but I know he knows what I'm into.

I regularly go in a Faceparty chatroom that's based around the scene, despite its overtly sexual name, the room is probably the least sexed up on there and is mostly a bunch of regulars who happen to be into the scene chatting away, it's amazing who knows who and that sort of thing, makes you realise that perhaps we are no more than 6 degrees away anyone else. I rememeber noticing once that a member of my primary school had popped in the room, that was embarassing. More immediate is a girl in there joining my university next year; she's desperate to get me to explore the Glasgow scene of munches, bizaars and fet nights. Gonna be a scary time for me come September. But it's all good fun.

Ah yes, pterodactyl porn, that's made the rounds in my real-life circle.

I wrote another essay today sort of about exactly that sort of allusion, hinting at but not quite stating what exactly it is that we're into. It's also a function of the internet culture, this establishment of a definite, private sense of certain fetishes or, as you say, totems (hadn't heard that word before). And yet porn collections are undeniably private, as is knowledge of their contents.

I'm not sure whether this is a bad thing, or a good thing, or neither.

Thanks for your response - your perspective is an interesting one.

How odd, I just clicked on the link to this conversation to say "I don't know if any of that helped but I thought an open discourse into my encounter with the world might help" and when the link loaded up a reply had been written.

Totem isn't used in the scene as far as I know, however there was a (if you want to avoid a long waffle skip ahead, but I can't resist filling my world with detail, I've made simple stories last hours to the glee, tongue-in-cheek appreciation and chagrin of others) Batman story arc in the early nineties that ran for about a year and a half through far too many issues culminating in a 900 page set of paperbacks which miss out various chunks. However, the upthrust (as opposed to upshot) of this story is that Batman has his back broken and is put out of action for a long time, during which he hands the mantle of the Bat over to a prodigy of his. When the prodigy turns out to be a bit twisted, Bruce Wayne needs to train harder than ever before to take out the new Batman; he trains with a ruthless assassin named Lady Shiva who realises the importance of the mask that Wayne wears and how it gives him a power, that sense of mystery and confidence. As the Bat Mantle is taken by someone else at this point, she offers him the Mask of Tengu (a Japanese supernatural bat-spirit), ordering him to find his identity, using the mask as a totem within which he can find his anonymity and strength oncemore.

I don't know if that does transpire for you, but for me I've felt ever since reading it that it links into the scene in the way that people use clothing, masks, leashes, pseudonyms and all sorts of other things to both hide from one element of their life, ie gaining anonymity, but also strengthening another, ie finding courage in this totem. Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' glosses over the fetishistic nature of superheroing costumes come to think of it.

I'm not sure how North American culture is heading right now, but I'm fairly sure (though it could just be paranoid narcissism or that condition where everything you see reminds you of one thing, I can't for the life of me remember the name but must find it out one day) that more and more people are finding an element of BDSM inside themselves, even if it is primarily for sexual reasons rather than a lifestyle choice. Certainly over the past year on TV there has been several references to women taking the role of men in sex (I hope I don't have to be anymore explicit than that), mostly for comedy reasons but still it's a good way of breaking taboos. Also my theatre lecturer mentioned it rather cavalierly during her talk on Queer Theory and sexual ambiguities - "What about a lesbian who has sex with a man on the weekends, but only on the condition that she penetrates" - so I'm inclined to think that, in Britain at least, this is a seething underworld as opposed to a secret society. The more I learn of the codes the more I feel part of a community, but also notice more and more subtle jokes placed here and there throughout the ether. In one of your articles you said that you feel you have to suppress amusement at certain things, you can flip the coin and like me laugh at the use of vanilla or other words and people will look at you with slight bemusement, but some of them will know.

Also, on your point about porn collections being undeniably private: this semester's theatre exam has been replaced with a performance (meaning that after the essay hand in date there was nothing to be learnt in terms of acadaemia, thus we've had no lectures this term :D) which has taken on a life of it's own and I'm worried we've deviated somewhat. Then again it's me, when do I not deviate. The task was to represent a modern take on the Naturalistic play Miss Julie by August Strindberg, more specifically a scene in which the eponym and the anti-hero go off stage and consumate their affair. Strindberg wanted the play to be so Naturalistic that the time progression was in real time so to speak, to fill in for the time while this was happening there was a silent ballet, or dumb scene. We have to look at a modern take on this ballet. We've instead focussed on how in modern theatre you could look at the sex, we've done this through a series of installations which begins with me, as Jean, tied up by the wrists (it's just bound to happen really) dancing with a version of Julie; then the crowd go out the room and follow a different Jean&Julie who walk along a corridor then go in a room, they're just about to get it on when they see the onlookers and close the blinds. The audience are invited then to carry on walking swiftly, the next room to their side shows a piece of hardcore pornography projected onto an entire wall. Thanks to the internet I considered myself, for better or worse, to be unoffendable in terms of pornography - but watching a man and woman have sex over a sink, one leg cocked up on a sideboard, the size of a wall while standing with my tutorial group was an interesting experience. Not embarassing but still quite shocking and breathtaking. The porn came from a member's friend's personal collection, which was purportedly large. Not everbody's collection is too private it seems.

I find it odd, both unsettling and comforting that thousands of miles apart adolescents are laughing at probably the same piece of pterodactyl porn thanks to the internet. I don't know whether THAT is a good thing or a bad thing.

my personal opinion, is that coming to terms with your secual identiy in your teens is pretty advanced

Yes, lots of peopel can figure out if they are gay / straight / bi in their teens, but submission / fetish is something more.

Even in my late (crys) 20s, I'm still trying to work out where I am sexually, as are many of my friends

In the last few years, my gf has floated from bi to lesbian and back to bi with lots of angst surrounding each change. I'm still coming to terms with her BDSM submission and she is coming to terms with her ballon / burlesque fetishes

Another friend is trying to work out that if she is not having penative sex with her partner, but he is willing to submitt to a strap on, is her realtionship normal

Me, I'm stuck in the roots of growing up in a repressed family / socity and cnfused to as if I'm bi or straight.

So being able to, as you do, but for feelings and analysis into words is most impressive to a confused old soul like myself

"But there is very little in the way of resources for teenagers, and I've often wondered about this."

Two reasons: Porn of any kind is restricted to those over 18 9if not older in some places).

But also because the world of BDSM is still pretty much undercover, and considered to be dark and weird, dangerous and perverted. To include teenagers - anyone under the age of 18 - in that is asking for trouble. Not because people under that age don't know what they want (I did from before I got into double figures! I just didn't know it was different from how other people were) but because anything that people still think is bad and wrong is the wrong thing to try to include 'children' in. It's too dangerous for people who enjoy it to risk problems by breaking the laws in that way.

Try searching for: university bdsm clubs and you might be surprised what turns up. There seem to be quite a few clubs run in universities. I realise these aren't under 18s, but they are still teenagers...

T2T, I'm pretty convinced that as far as people of my (our?) generation are concerned, the availability of porn of all shapes and sizes has really had a lage role in the breaking of certain taboos. If it's out there - and if it can be found before prejudice can be instilled - discovering it from a neutral stance may well be a factor in counteracting prejudice. On the other hand, though, the people with whom I discuss such things are (bound to be, really) more open or tolerant or accepting or whatever than most other people of my age, I think.

As to the pterodactyl porn? It's a pretty good thing, I'd say. That's the power of the internet for you.

tjm, I think it's pretty safe to say that I haven't really discovered anything permanent yet. I'm only sort of gradually making further steps down a rather long road, to use a trite metaphor. Hmmm.

Mina, I'd more or less figured those are the reasons. But in my state, sex of any kind is illegal for those under 18, that being the age of consent. And yet the state sex ed curriculum still recognizes that teenagers are having sex, and provides relevant information concerning contraception, safety, etc. Of course, this information is only really applied with the assumption that the adolescents in question are having straight, vanilla, baby-making sex (and so we're told not to make babies). If what they're explaining is something illegal to start with, it wouldn't take a lot to branch out, though it would take a considerable change of perspective for the staid attorneys who run the educational system.

After all, though, like I said, this doesn't really have to be about graphic sex, or porn, or anything. This is about understanding yourself as a person, in a very similar way to the way discovering your sexual orientation is (though of course schools don't talk about that either). Obviously, sexual orientation very much impact's one's sex life and the sort of sex one has, but more importantly in the high-school sphere, it impacts who one associates with, how one is received by one's peers, one's sense of self and one's sense of belonging, etc. These are all questions that could be addressed by some discussion of the exchange of power in relationships - a concept that could certainly apply to vanilla relationships as well.

Then again, now that I think about it, I can see how this subject is a tad more complicated than putting a condom on a banana. I could see why, just like other more complicated questions concerning depression, for example, it doesn't fit into a state politician's conception of school sex ed curricula. But still. All I ask for is the information to understand myself, the same information I was able to find about sexual orientation. That shouldn't be that difficult, surely?

have you seen the 'naked in school' collection of stories?

it started off as a kind of erotic story, but has developed a community of people who write, partly about sex and a lot about relationships and attitudes to sex and how a more open attitute to sex would help society and kids in general

I have now.

But in the interests of cleanliness and my own prudish feelings of propriety, perhaps we should keep erotica out of the discussion.

fair poitn, apologies

" Of course, this information is only really applied with the assumption that the adolescents in question are having straight, vanilla, baby-making sex (and so we're told not to make babies). If what they're explaining is something illegal to start with, it wouldn't take a lot to branch out, though it would take a considerable change of perspective for the staid attorneys who run the educational system."

If they are talking about baby-making sex then it seems that the reason they include it is because they want to stop teenage pregnancies, not necessarily because they want to tell anyone how to have a great sex life, so including anything that doesn't result in a baby would be a waste of their time.

I have to admit to thinking that where would they stop if they included everything that it's possible to do. BDSM, pony girls, messy play, etc. I've got a lot of literature on the different things that people like to do and you couldn't include all that in a lesson.

But school sex education isn't (or shouldn't be) just about pregnancy. It's about safety and responsibility as a whole: STIs, saying "no", and a lot of broader topics like "sense of self", as it were. How they can do this without mentioning sexual orientation and without giving some serious attention to the use of power in relationships and how this may be consensual or nonconsensual seems to make for an incomplete lesson.

This isn't about specific sex acts - it's about a group of kids who will grow up to be the world's next sexual society.

there was a program on TV over here the other week

contrasted the Dutch approach to sex ed, with the British ...

Dutch, sex ed & relationship education were together and the whoe thing was much earlier, topics introduced at the age of 8 or 9.

By 13 they were being shown sex ed cartoon & vids that were much more explicit than anything that any British pupil would be likely to see.


Over here, were have (and I'm ment to teach this), a few sex ed lesson in science at age 11/12 (which, depending on the school, can be just limited to the mechanics and little else. At that age, this lesson can be so embarasing, that nobody will take anything in

There is also some discussion at age 15 in Citizernship / personal social education

Between these ages is the time when the majority of kids will first have sex

I'm pretty sure the dutch teen pregancy rate is about 4%
Great Britians is 15%
America's is 22%

>>I'm pretty convinced that as far as people of my (our?) generation are concerned, the availability of porn of all shapes and sizes has really had a lage role in the breaking of certain taboos.

Here's a thought. Have you read the Nancy Friday books? The one about women's fantsies is quite varied. The one about men's is repetitive...plus many of them read like they're cribbed from porn 'plots'. And, in my experience, porn is the most formulaic genre there is.

So is porn breaking open underlying taboos? Or is it putting new ideas into impressionable, vanilla heads? I'm making no moral judgement here, just asking...which came first, the chicken or the egg?

(Actually, I suspect that most people's sex lives fall into one of two categories: More interesting than you'd have though or more boring than you could possibly imagine. Obviously all sorts of variants will have been around since prehistory)

btw...I've led a sheltered life. I know what (T2T) 'fet' means...but 'bizaar'? (as a scene?)...and does 'munches' mean what I assume?

Has anyone (apart from me) seen clown porn? . Each to her/his own, I guess.

Oh God clown porn is one of the msot scary things I have ever seen, it doesn't even produce the hilarity that pterodactyl porn does. I was at a 21st birthday party where a girl had dressed up as a clown (I later found out that she wanted to kiss me, I was 17 and she was 23 - go me) and had made her own pom-poms; she Googled clowns to find out how to make them and found clown porn first. Scary scary stuff.

I misspelled, Bizaar is an Insane Klown Posse album whereas I meant to say bazaar as in a marketplace. There's a couple of fairly big BDSM marketplaces around, probably the biggest in Birmingham called the Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar - aren't they clever. A munch isn't as scary as it sounds, it merely means a very informal social gathering for people who are into the scene though discussion isn't by any means limited to sex. As far as I'm aware it's the most comfortable place to attend if taking an interest in these sorts of activities, they tend to be at pubs (gastropubs, I assume from the name) so everyone is dressed down. They happen fairly regularly, all depending on where you live naturally.

I don't know if I think it would be a particularly good thing to teach such things at school; for one there is the point that there are a whole host of fetishes out there which would a) take up too much time and b) potentially be ill-described by the teacher. I think the internet makes it easy enough for anyone to explore their sexuality, even if the pressure from your peers is to conform to hetero, vanilla sex.

I can't think of many teachers I know - and I had some good teachers - who I'd be comfortable with talking to be about being tied up and degraded. I mean really, sex education should come primarily from the parents on a one-to-one basis with someone who's close to you. Sex in schools surely is meant to be a back up to make sure that children know the risks and consequences of what is involved with sex; I don't see how someone who has little or no emotional attachment to you can prepare you for such an emotional experience. Not to mention that in big groups, teens and sex cause red faced giggling from the girls and "harrr, harrr, knob" remarks from the boys. It's a shame when parents aren't there to offer everything, but is it really the state's fault(?)

Braver and braver, that's our Em'.

If this goes pear-shaped young Padewan you can always repair to the Sanctuary - remember that.

Bright blessings,
Matholwch .

xcuse me for intruding but I found this very interesting.

I recognised everything in the entry you link to xcept I never thought it was wrong to like to make characters suffer. I liked the drama of it. Knowing I am masochist never made me feel confused either but maybe because sex is not very central to my life and does not preoccupy my mind much. But I think you are wrong that schools should teach about orientation and types of sex. The reason public schools spend public money on public sex ed is to prevent things that harm the public like teenagers with babies. The public does not care if you have sexual identity issues and there is no particular reason they should so why spend public money on it? I almost laughed out loud when you said sexual community come on!

Hi folks all!

I'm honestly puzzled by the belief that schools should not provide a comprehensive sex ed curriculum that incorporates more than mechanics. Yes, ideally sex ed should be provided by parents. But to be honest, I'd rather talk to my biology class/teacher than to my parents about sex, even the usual mechanics/contraception/STDs stuff. Being told by my health or science teacher (in some years we've had dedicated "health" classes) that I could go to Planned Parenthood if I ever became pregnant or wanted to avoid it is a far more appealing option, to me, than having to tell my parents or going through it alone. That's just an example, though, and a humdrum one - if kids don't want to talk to their parents (as most don't) and parents don't want to talk to their kids (as many don't) the burden does lie with the school system. For myself and a lot of my friends, what we learn in school sex ed right now is review. But for some of my classmates, it isn't.

Furthermore, the emotional involvement of sex, as well as the physical, can be incredibly important to society as a whole, and therefore have a great deal of importance in school sex ed curricula. To take an example I actually know something about, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual kids are at great risk of depression because they are not adequately informed or prepared to deal with their sense of self, and because heterosexual or otherwise homophobic kids put them under such pressure that they are confused, withdrawn, etc and some LGBT kids in this situation end up hurting themselves or killing themselves. I have known kids who have been in this situation.

Finally, sex ed doesn't have to be something shared by schools and parents, necessarily. There's a lot of information on the internet about things school doesn't cover, like LGBT issues, masturbation, etc. But there isn't much to be had on BDSM, which just doesn't strike me as reasonable.

I certainly think that LGBT issues should be discussed in schools, for the reason of depression and feelings of isolation; also it might stop the LGBT crowd getting so boistrous and nauseating but mainly the first reason.

However, BDSM is more of a hobby than an orientation. I realise that it is partially an intrinsic part of someone's character, however I don't feel it's as important to realise about one's self so young as orientation is. I doubt many people will feel like they've betrayed themself or feel confused and saddened if they had 'nilla sex, whereas a homo having hetero sex would probably feel a lot more disturbed or strange. BDSM is something that you can live without but feel much more comfortable doing and probably inadvertently indulge in the power exchange even if it's not TPA, whereas sexual orientation, well, Queer theory not withstanding, your partner either has a bit that hangs or a bit that don't.

Also I disagree that there isn't stuff out there on the internet, as you said HooToo has bits and bobs and there's plenty of websites with info, even Wikipedia has a moderately extensive collection for those who are green on the matter, not to mention that it's more interestingly engaging in a societal manner as opposed to cold hard facts, hence munches, bazaars, fet nights etc. Also it'd probably scare a lot of people to learn about in school, which would lead to those interested in it being too embarassed to ask questions in front of their peers.

Also I find part of the fun of sexual kinks is that they are private and somewhat taboo.