Technology Overdone to the Demise of Guys or humanity (touch)/sex (porn)

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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on October 4, 2011 at 5:13

Charlotte - I'm so glad you posted all this stuff. Now that you have given us this deeply intimate portrait of what you are doing, I want to say that I think you are some kind of saint or heroine. I believe you are doing something very important and the importance of it is set to increase, not diminish. I see the point of all of it and hope others do too.

I'll cuddle anyone for as long as they and I want. Man, woman, dog, cat, extra-terrestrial - it makes no difference to me. The International Language is the Language of Touch. I am a fluent speaker. I often touch the person I am speaking to, even if I only met them ten seconds ago! I have never once been in trouble for it or found that it caused offense. I wish I could give YOU a cuddle right now!

The only situation in which I never use touch to communicate is when I am called in to be a school teacher. There you tend to lose your job if you even lay a friendly hand on the shoulder of a sobbing student of either sex. This is one of the gigantic horrors of the education system for me. Because the world needs to have some kind of perpetually-running witch-hunt, the spectre of pedophilia settles on the profile of anyone who flaunts this ridiculous and insular prohibition on simple, non-sexual human affection.

I just want to put one seeming paradox on the table to look at here.

If blokes (Aussie for 'guys') are increasingly touch-starved and this is wrecking their psyches and their futures because they are disconnecting from the real world where we have to "be in touch" with each other, why are a predominance of males showing up to your Cuddle Parties?

My point here is, they must be aware, even unconsciously, that this is the case for them, that they are "out of touch" or "losing touch" with real society which includes real women. Otherwise they would surely be staying away in droves like the sheilas (Aussie for 'woman').

I think what you might need to do is hire a professional 'cuddle staff'. What you need are women who you have briefed and trained to accept cuddles from perfect strangers. The blokes in the room don't have to know they are professionals at it.

Remember, men never require woman to mean it. Men only ever require women to look like they mean it for the duration of whatever.

A man goes to a hooker. They have a screw. She moans and groans and does a really authentic and convincing job. The man is happy. He got the experience he believes he paid for.

He says to her "you were really into it there! Do all your clients elicit this type of wild response from you?"

She responds "No darl. Only you do that for me. Same time next week?"

The man is even happier hearing that. He knows it's balderdash in his heart but he loves to hear a woman make the effort to say it even if she doesn't mean it. A woman who is not a hooker would probably look at this and say this response gives him a sense of dominance, of control, of subjugation of a woman which is, of course, traditional male fare. This completes the circle which was always going to end where it began: playing straight back into the hooker's hands. The man is increasingly addicted to the touch - both physical and mental - of this woman that gives him precisely what he wants from an encounter of this kind.

The concept of "arousal addiction" is highly interesting. I would wager that prostitution serves precisely the same function as watching porn. In short, you get what you want - every time. Most men want to dip their wick in many places - that's not evil; it's simple human biology at work and is almost certainly the reason the human race got started in the first place.

Any public porn site will offer the user a choice of thousands of clips to view. A good bordello will offer a reasonable selection of females from which to choose. You can see a different one each time if you want. It's the same as visiting www.xhamster.com or www.pornhub.com. Men want a choice. Men want variety. In one setting (the Internet) you get the virtual reality experience. In the other setting (the bordello) you get the real reality experience. Sometimes the one is more satisfying than the other. None of this is in any measure some kind of statement about a man's ability to love or be loved by a single woman.

As Neil Donald Walsch says (I'll bet you know who HE is) "Just because a man starts loving somebody does not mean that he has stopped loving somebody else".

A young bison and his father are standing on top of a high hill overlooking a vast plain. A green, fertile and flat pastureland stretches out in front of them as far as the eye can see. On this plain the old bison and his son observe maybe 3 maybe 4 hundred or so female bison all grazing the grass peacefully.

"Dad! Dad!" exclaims the son to his father "let's gallop down the hill and screw one!!!"

His father calmly replies "No, my son. Not so fast and furious. Let's slowly and sedately wander down the hill, take our time and SCREW THE LOT OF THEM".

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on October 4, 2011 at 12:57

Kim,

There are women who are as addicted if not more addicted to sex. Paying women for "cuddling" was once mentioned by some really "smart" Asperger's friends. I just thought, sorry, but you are getting the truth here, "idiots!" If one is not allowed to say no, there is no true "yes." This is a communication workshop working on communication and empowerment.

Eastern women do not have the same freedom and empowerment of "no" that the "western" women "enjoy" when they aren't in awful relationships of violence. There are too many blasted articles about women being beat up by parents and male partners to GET an abortion, or be controlled in their lives. And the brilliant guy who thought this all up with Marcia B. isn't even involved in Cuddle Party anymore. He is a sex educator who would rather do the sex stuff--but he gave us Cuddle Party with Marcia.

A man loves somebody and then starts loving somebody else. One of the rules of Cuddle Party is that you can get highly aroused and not act on it. Women know that men do not know this as well as they need to with sex. Otherwise the dark parking lot, the date, and many more venues would be safer for women. You are talking to someone who has held children in her lap who died from HIV/AIDS, so give me a break about "love." I could do the same. There are a few men, not many, who would have liaisons with me. But I see no need to make my life into a soap opera or an opera of tragedy, and unfaithfulness is not stable.

The bison story is nuts. More is better for many people, male and female. It doesn't take many males to repopulate a herd of bison, and Genghis Khan is related to a very high proportion of Chinese people. As many as 8% of males in China (and some of the women that are left over from the high abortion rates of females who are surviving). In an article recently, this was called "love," this fathering a huge number of babies. Perhaps Cleopatra's Antony did the same? I wonder why Jesus didn't? Did Gandhi?

Zoos are in serious trouble with the gene pool because of the high inbreeding people have. Artificial insemination in the same town is doing the same thing with the gene pool in the USA. Purebred animals are having problems with inbreeding. Kim, I wish I didn't know so much.

Kim, and anyone else, what is your first response when a woman says "NO" to you? Do you leave the party with your tail between your legs like a puppy? Or do you take up the challenge? No prostitute and no highly paid porn star can really pull the "no" off. Pay is a de-equalizer when it comes to "no." Same thing with power. "NO" becomes "yes" because there is money for people committed to the profession. At the bar, the alcohol/drugs break down the "no." At a Cuddle Party, the affection drugs inside humans works its way to break down "no," but the way we are given the closing circle, we regroup and are given a workshop on feelings and intent, and we re-engage our minds in new ways so that we don't have to act on what we want but do not need.

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on October 4, 2011 at 13:07

This is really interesting. I am going to print all of this thread out. It is invaluable to me.

Is it really the battle of the sexes? Can men say "no" easily with no fears to/from women? Can men who show up and there are 10 women to 1 man worry about the same things a woman worries about when 10 men show up to 1 woman? (Gene Able, MD Psychiatrist says no, sexual assault is predominately a guy thing.)

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on July 5, 2012 at 2:56

My understanding is that men experience pleasure in the same area of the brain as the violence area, and that women do not experience pleasure in the same area of the brain as the violence area. Women are violent with children often. Men are violent in culture more often (war, women and children, including sex in a more overt way.)

Women who are provided domestic violent shelters are not cornered and do not kill the same higher ratio of men. The same number of women die with or without domestic violent shelters that protect women.

Women do not show up in the same numbers to Cuddle Parties. There are always more men than women, even when the costs are lowered for women, and even if men are given an incentive to ask women to join the group.

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Permalink Reply by Franis on October 4, 2011 at 9:38

Wow - all this has been going on while I went to the zoo today...

My answer is: train people to touch you - and train them to touch each other when they are around you.

I grew up in a very "touchy-feeley" family. When I went out in the world, people never touched each other. Somehow, I managed to negotiate with my friends that I was allowed to touch them. So as I went out in the world and made new friends, I realized that I had to "train people" to accept that I was going to be touching them - sometimes whether they wanted me to touch them at first or not.

Really what happened is they wondered what me touching them symbolized or meant to me.

Might it be useful to do a CAF on people's concerns about being touched?
Here's some of what I've noticed and some of what I've experimented to do about it... and some concerns that I haven't been able to figure out how to address...

Touch must be sexual - or maybe it's not sexual because it's going on in view of others. What is going on?
I would communicate that touch isn't sexual by the timing of when I touch people - seemingly accidental contact. Also I communicate by the place I touch them - I would touch someone in a non-sexual spot - such as from their wrist to their shoulder.

They might wonder, "Why would this person be touching me?" I want people to think about my touching them that I am "just an affectionate person." - I am someone who is going to touch them because they are getting closer to being my friend. I would touch other people I know better than I know them in front of them to show that I am an egalitarian toucher. Me touching them is not a "special" status thing - because I touch all my friends.

Is this person touching me because they need me to do something back for them in some way?
The best time to "train" someone to allow you to touch them is when you are parting and saying Goodbye. Then the other person is not obligated to touch you back or to display whether they enjoy you touching them or not. Another best time to touch someone is when you notice their hands etc. are cold. The human need for warmth is an understandable motive for touching. Another motive is when someone has tripped or is about to lose their balance, (probably a reason why people get drunk around each other!) Or when a person is carrying something that they might need help with, etc. It's also appropriate to touch someone when people are crowded together, as long as you do not directly look at their face. Another situation where touch is allowed is when there is a possibility of healing. In fact, hang out with people who touch others for a living - they are more comfortable with touching in general.

What does it actually mean to them, when this person touches me? What does any tacit agreement mean - such as one that evolves from allowing myself to be touching someone else?
For this I provide a reason, without being asked. I might joke around about my desperate need to be touched in a society that doesn't allow touching. This is a general need that doesn't have anything to do with them personally. I'm just going around, trying to get my needs to be touched satisfied by anyone who might want to do that for me.

I regard the desire to be touched and "in touch," as a sort of a general human request, sort of like being hungry or desiring warmth. I express that by being casual about touching that person who is my friend in more situations, other than the ones outlined above. If they react by physically drawing away, I assume that I have invaded their space and presumed too much. So I remedy my remiss by drawing away, backing up further than they would normally allow. Duration of touch is important to pay attention to. Observe how long they continue to touch someone else, and touch them a little bit longer and then break off as if the duration of the touch was accidental. Watch their response as indicators that what you are doing is OK with them or not. Back off if it's not...

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on October 4, 2011 at 13:32

Cues of touch are and can be learned later in life. The CAF you did is rich, Franis.

I always seem to have cold hands, so reaching out to touch is wonderful I have been going to chapel services, and extended my hand received 20+ hugs from women at a college. It was my sixth time at a service where I was the only minority white person. I know where I want to go to chapel! NOT the popular or the male or the historical places, but the place with the gentle hugs. The extended hand was ignored and it so surprised me.

Leaving them I relaxed more about touch and extended my hand more than I normally would to warm my hands. There is no excuse for Hawaii being cold unless one has gone to the grocery store!

Montagu states we receive our reality through touch.

What does it mean when someone touches long hair or short hair? Our barbers/hair dressers touch our "crown of hair" and it is like the massage, one sided, paid, and usually short in time duration.

Training people might mean instead of saying that one is a toucher, and it is not personal, but wide spectrum, that a serious desire for getting past shyness is needed with a specific touch of hands, or perhaps it is an exercise of relating to people in a new way. Going around with a sign saying, "Free Hugs" works for some people some times. I make the signs and give them away. No idea what I need to actually hold it up and go somewhere and use the sign. Unless I invite people at Cuddle Parties to color their own sign at the party and use it at the party/workshop and later in life. Thanks to an Aussie for that idea of "Free Hugs!"

I may invite other people I know to talk to me about this. Asking people what it means when this person touches me is different from asking myself what it means to me when they touch me. This is in the Cuddle Party as one of the exercises. Ubuntu, as shared by Barbara Nassbaum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ363jLe5dY

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on July 5, 2012 at 3:30

Reciprocal. Going to get a massage does not express the freedom and relaxation of acceptance of being in a consensual relationship of affection--which may lead to sex, and doesn't have to lead to sex. Intimacy of affection may free one from performance, conquest, complicated double binds,giving support to clear statements and understanding including trust.

Affection can be sexual without the expectation that there will be fulfillment/denoument/completion. A form of flirting is not being a tease. It is the enjoyment of the journey.

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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on October 5, 2011 at 11:14

hY "Technology Overdone to the (apparent) Demise of Guys":

What may appear to be a dissipation of male energy to make a difference in the world may be good in the long run. If men take a back seat in some sense for a change, the creative feminine force can arise and take charge for once, as Charlotte herself is doing.

Many people believe in "the Goddess". Before civilisation arose as we know it, the ancient world was in thrall to archetypal female characters. Archeological figurines such as the Venus of Willendorf are a testament to this. Those who smoke Salvia Divinorum can even claim to have met her. In a Salvia trance, one often encounters a strange female, particularly if the subject undergoing the brief (between 6 and 11 minutes only) Salvia trance is a male. This female often appears very angry and rebukes the subject for a variety of reasons. Once the trance is over, the subject often feels cured of some inner malaise. Many who smoke Salvia regularly claim that they have been cured of all their addictions and their angers. In Jungian terms, the strange woman encountered is the anima or the contra-sexual component of the male psyche. Meeting her and submitting to her rebukes is almost the exact corollary of a Jungian psychotherapy session where a dialog with the unconscious dreaming self is initiated by the psychotherapist.

Men have largely stuffed up the world, let's face it. They start wars and battles and they are largely lacking in deep empathetic understanding, in their vast majority. Perhaps such brutish men are now discovering their feminine side, the side of them that is helpless in the face of their own creations. This is good for them. They are starting to climb down out of the war-chariot.

Somebody or other once said "If you want to find yourself, you must first lose yourself". Sometimes this quip may seem silly, but today it seems to me apposite.

Perhaps the obsession with technology is ruining human nature itself. Men, who are largely responsible for technological innovation, are thus perhaps feeling the full brunt of this to their detriment. Boys at school are the "canaries in the coal mine".

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on October 6, 2011 at 5:51

Thank you Kim. I am having so much recrimination for having been strong during a meeting where I said with the other two co-chairs present that I would make the final decisions. Another gent is acting rather Machiavellian since that tongue in cheek comment. It is driving me nuts! He pulled communication out from under and so I don't know where they are meeting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm4l-vIaQ1I This man was the keynote speaker at our last summit in Georgia: Patch Adams.

I wish the above summit were female centered, but alas it is not.

If the men were sparse, they would become even more of an obsession for women than they are now. Speaking about other topics besides men are difficult for a day, much more likely an hour for many, many women. If the balance reached that proportion, it would be strange indeed.

Kim, I have been in relation to many men with anger issues on a daily basis for many decades and I am used to the rebukes from an Anima as some would suppose, although there are those who believe that men just don't get the Anima in the same way possible.

You mentioned children as proof of "touch" and indeed, we don't know how much artificial insemination is being done in Muslim realms. We do know that there is a much higher female mutilation so that she is "tight," has more Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, much less pleasure sans clitoris and more complications than necessary during pregnancy because of the female mutilation. We do know that there are more multiple wives in Muslim realms per male. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/magazine/09afghan.htm?pagewanted=all That being said, women do rebuke men, as Elizabeth Rubin wrote about in my favorite article on women's treatment and possible solutions--the equivalent to the ERA in the USA. The rebuke is in poetry, and some is quite beautiful and sensual in a metaphysical way.

When I am awake I shall be more cogent or more phosphorescent, but never perfect--Charlotte

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on October 6, 2011 at 15:41

The demise of soap operas!
When I was 14 years old, I asked for a Halley's Bible Handbook for my 15th birthday. In it, I read about child sacrifice and later learned that cannibalism is found on every continent. Teeth marks have been found on the bones of children in jars or caves in disparate places like Colorado, (ancient) Andes, and in the Middle East and Europe. I have been told about the selling of girl children for a dollar in India in present time for a time now, and read the history of prostitutes and molestation with females colluding or at the very least looking the other way when children are used badly. I am not in denial about the goodness of people, but I see the warts presented by men and women in regard to children. Would the world be a better place if women ruled? Would sports, building, technology and so much of the world really be better?

Men and women are equal in wickedness. II Kings 6:26-30 talks about the boiling of a child for food. Archeology supports this practice occurred of cannibalism/sacrifice/abortion. The practice was in ancient times and on every continent (archeology). Some sins are more male on the face of it, but if women did not collude with the molester to protect them, someone might stop them. If women did not believe they were powerless, they would have more power. This is one of the reasons I am not in favor of women being protected from fighting. They are victims either way. I have heard some people say that women can be even more violent than men in battle, but those "stories" do not come out because of the negativity about the violence of women. These veterans of war will raise up the next generation, and they are not more civilized and gentle because of battle. Single parent women do not have more gentle children who excel. Men are more than necessary. They are vital to helping balance and protect. Having said this, I do not see women in power physically raping anyone, so our violences are different. So why do I talk about this when you have shared a spiritual response to the feminine, Luis and Kim? The rebuking feminine and the feminine who renders speechless and awareness of awe presented by two men engaged in the technology overdone to the demise of guys topic offered by a women in turmoil seeking the answers of the Universe.

I believe it is the potential that when we are rebuked we can repent and become more wonderful. When we are shamed, called names and devalued (as is sometimes done by both sexes) we become less than we could be. When we experience the worst of a being, male or female, we are all less than we could be. Not many people escape life without being shamed, called names and devalued. Maybe this was the task that Sisyphus was given with the large stone being rolled up the hill. He was unable to get past his shame, label and devaluation, but he started to roll up his task anyway, knowing he was nothing and would not make it to the top? He "bought into" the shaming, name calling and devaluation--and continued it for his monster without to his monster within.

I had a conversation with a man on Facebook who said I looked kissable, but it looked like he was trying to spell likeable. It was misspelled. He clarified the misspelling. So I sent a poem I wrote to a pot bellied, grey haired professor who was a daddy figure in 1979 that I hugged in a woman's college when I was 20 to see where it would lead to a man in another continent today. The next question from a man thinking I was kissable was about my conceptualization of God. For me God can be "God in skin." Otherwise, why does anyone need a minister or people? What I received in return from this man after I sent the poem was silence. A few days later he wrote he could not sleep and he was going to bed and I sent him hugs and laughter. More silence.

If Sisyphus had received the message that "I think I can" like the little Train that Could, then would he be locked into the job of climbing the hill under duress to reach his goal forever, instead of just shy and having the stone roll to be retired to the junk yard? The daily grind with the completion reward? Where is arousal if there is reciprocal orgasm and bonding compared to what so many experience of Sisyphus and Echo and Soap Opera's (tune in next week?), and how does Cuddle Party interface with the awe of the feminine or the rebuke of the feminine or the shaming, and devaluing? Cuddle Party isn't about empowering women. It is about empowering people to say no and the "NO" being respected and valued so that the "yes" is a true "yes." As simple as it is, the 14 rules support this one tenet. The affection of a workshop many think of as a "den of iniquity leading to an orgy or leaving for a motel room" is instead helping people in much more potent ways. Compassion and humanity. I have been spooned by someone living with AIDS. He thinks I did him a favor, and I know he did me more of a favor.


Hug

A hug can be warm, safe, kind, and joyful.

Hugging, I glow.

Thinking of hugs, I twinkle.

When I twinkle and glow,

My mind is thoughtless and dreamy.

For a hug can change history in my life;

All ideas sweeten or fade inside a hug.

Hugging is loving someone

Enough to let yourself be loved.

A hug should be endless, yet renewed--

Not every day, nor every hour,

but every opportunity--unplanned.

I like our hug!

--Charlotte Fairchild 1979

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on July 5, 2012 at 4:28

I go to that place of awe when I am in music. Usually songs with no words find me in worship to God. Crying or laughing radically may be a thin place. I heard a sermon that there are places when there are less than 3 feet between Heaven and Earth, and they are described as the thin places where one can reach the other side. Movies can bring me to laughter and tears. Otherwise I have no big displays. Dancing is unusual for me now, and was natural and common when I was younger.

Imagining a hug is a thin place. Playing a musical instrument, swimming, and being in the presence of children are thin places where I can reach across and touch Heaven with the spectrum of joy, which can be chaotic, cacophonous. The last time I felt that was April 15 when the race relation ceremony took place at Emory University, I sang my high notes, and we could dance holding hands with the other people in the auditorium to loud music. There is no work here. Happenstance. None of what you experience wells up in me. I am blindsided by the concepts of the higher power. I cannot call forth and know that the experience will resonate.

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Permalink Reply by Charlotte Fairchild on July 5, 2012 at 3:59

What does this mean, "Boys at school are the 'Canaries in the coal mine'" regarding performance in school and hyper performance with tech?

The communication workshop I facilitate teaches communication skills of power to stand ones ground and make one's request as well as answer yes or no and never maybe to requests from others. The first question people practice asking is, "Will you kiss me?" The second question is, "May I kiss you?" And this is not specific, so it could mean a question of kissing on the cheek or brow, Being specific and clear in communication is remarkably helpful to communication. I am convinced if I had not been clear, I would never have been kissed anywhere other than my cheek my whole life.

I am back here Kim because Adonis wants to learn piano, and Luis is toying with learning piano. I offered a lesson on SKYPE, and they both preferred a class in a tech program. Garage band for Adonis and a piano virtual keyboard for Luis. I checked out both of them. They both prefer tech over interacting with me, and Dad has been in the hospital 4 times near death in the past 5 weeks, and a friend was in the paper online and people are blaming him for a child with anorexia, and a woman died on the Silver Comet Trail, the original woman who died did so six years ago this month. Meanwhile my sister has a 32 year anniversary, and my husband's parents have been married 60 years near the end of this month or beginning of next month (I forget). For all I know I could croak tomorrow and people either take me for granted or don't want to bother with me or by me. and I could be gone and they missed me forever. Except they heard my youtube and they wrote back and forth with me. Do you even teach music lessons Kim?

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