Ask A Question, Get An Answer #2!: Why Do You "Feel The Need"?

Well that was fast! This one didn't come in via the approved big ol' button (TO THE LEFT - CLICK IT TO SUBMIT, you know you want to!), it came in through good old e-mail. Which is fine! It's totally cool if a questioner wants to preserve anonymity, I won't "out" you.

Mel, I don't really know what to tell you on this one.

Just kidding folks! It wasn't Mel. I just use Mel as an example. She's quite exemplary. Anyway, "Unnamed Questioner From The Internet"-who-is-NOT-Mel emails a question to the effect of, "Why do I 'feel the need' to make such an ass of myself with such ridiculous, exhibitionist disclosures?" Of course, more polite than that! But same gist: what's wrong with me, to talk so jolly about stuff others generally don't mention?

Now, I can only assume this has reference to my recent 3-part post about my penis length (which, ow! - that sounds painful. Maybe I should combine it into a one-part post. Arguably, more impressive?). And again, the questioner was perfectly polite, and made no implication of wrongness. I was totally kidding about that. The question was just honest, frank curiosity and a willingness to question! And really, when you get right down to it - what IS wrong with me? Why do I feel the need?

All shucks aside, it's a funny question to me because I don't "feel the need" at all. I get a thought, on a lark I might set it down. If I like the result, I might put it out! If something strikes me interesting, or funny, or odd, I just don't feel much inhibition. Why not share it? And a thought can be about just about anything.

Yet I have noticed, the question "why do you feel the need" does come up. It has come up before. Strikingly, it almost always comes up only in reference to sex. Which for me, is kind of curiouser and curiouser. Sex is a less-common topic for me (especially when I'm getting any), but by no means an irregular, or off-limits topic. I hope nothing in the human scope to wonder about would be off-limits! And it's striking that any time I put some clearly idiotic interpretation of quantum physics out there, nobody bats an eyelash at why I "feel the need" to. Every time I put out a cockamamie Artistic Integrity or cock-eyed God Blog Theology post, nobody really blinks. They chime in! Comment, question, jeer, sure! But nobody ever seems to ask "Why do you feel the need to excoriate Søren Fucking Kierkegaard?" Nope. Nary a flutter!

Now all of that is totally cool with me. It's cool for anyone to wonder why, because I myself wonder why, about all kinds of things. So it's cool to me, for anyone to ask me why I wonder at anything! It just makes it all more wonderful. Thank you, to the questioner for asking.

But I also wonder, why people only feel the need to question my feelies and needies when it's about just that one thing? Hmm! Curiouser, but I guess, not so very curiouser. It just goes to show that sex is an unusual area. A peculiar area. It can definitely be a sensitive area. And it can be a funny area! I for one think there is strong reason we should be pretty open about examining it, and examining why.

Because, look: so many people put themselves and others through so much misery and discomfiture, over the things that they think people should be more inhibited about. Over stuff they want people to act more taboo about. And if I were able to make fun of some people's shameful demonization and rejection of the natural? If by some well-placed jape I could get people to realize that hey, it's pretty stupid how defensive and distraught we act over plain biological fact and wild romantic fancy? Dang, that would be all right with me! Wouldn't it be a fine thing?

But I find I can't get so grandiose about it. Because really, I have never been trying to revolutionize society. Mostly I'm just trying to share something I find innocent, and perfectly amusing.

To me, it's always such silly stuff that people find off-putting, and I am always, well, shocked! - when I find I have shocked. It's a jolt like a needle in the gums. I'm surprised every time that a thing so normal and natural and silly and potentially brilliant and wondrous is a touchy topic, off-limits to discuss. Because I really do believe (with Diogenes, who had it right two thousand plus years ago) that "nothing natural is shameful."

But "not shameful" doesn't mean it can't be pretty funny! Or pretty fascinating. Or pretty absurd, especially in all that we make of it. But where's the shameful aspect? "Nothing natural is shameful" - well, at least, it can't be shameful to talk about, can it? Just because some people may think it might be shameful in some cases to do it. Or, all cases. Let's be honest: there are people who think that sex in all cases is shameful to discuss, and at best questionable to do. Now murder might be called natural, arguably, and shameful! But nobody seems to call it all that shameful to bring up. There's no blushing and gasping on that score. Even for people who see sex as a problem - and plenty do - plenty of them are happy as can be to talk about the problem of murder.

Where sex is concerned, for an awful lot of people the "problem" seems to be talking about it. I bet it's because with murder at least, people feel pretty strong and confident saying what about it they think is wrong. Hence, it is not sensitive to discuss. And hey - if so, I'm with you on that one guys! Murder is wrong. Murder is defined as: The taking of human life in a manner not sanctioned by law. And that shit's just wrong. Heck, it's even illegal! Bonus.

But come on, people. Man up, woman up with me on this one: sex is a big deal, sure! But if those ever-popular hypothetical alien beings landed on our planet, you know they would laugh their heavily-evolved asses off at what a big deal we make down here, over our flaps and pockets and nubs of flesh, over what goes where and who should care. And by the way: these aliens would not be the sexless, genderless beings of scientific myth. That's just a projection of our own neuroses. We believe sexuality is low, and base, and gross, and unevolved, and so we imagine weinerless grays with bald, smooth, pointed intellectual heads, and big, inscrutably watchful glossy black eyes. The eyes of the abyss. The eyes that judge us, for being so unevolved: for being such messed-up, neurotically psychosexually-preoccupied beings.

And so what do these beings do, first thing they get down here in the land of vagina wang-wang? You guessed it! Out comes the butt-probe.

Total projection of our own neuroses. Come off it.

I bet you anything the real space aliens are not gray. They're all kinds of funky colors, and they all have way bigger, sexier genitals and secondary sex glands than any of us, and they're out in space getting their jollies on a galactic scale, not down here hassling us pervs and prudes.

Of course, maybe they're into that sort of thing. If they were, it would be pretty funny.