Author: badinia

Virginia Jones is a comedian, writer, and actor- probably in that order.

Adventures In Sexbot!

The next generation of interactive sex robot will be available starting next year. New tech includes warm skin and warm sex organs. And it’s scaring the crap out of us.

There’s already a website about the campaign against sex robots, (campaignagainstsexrobots.org). There’s an international meeting taking place in London promoting and exploring the problems and benefits of sex and love with robots.

We’re so worried that over and over articles go up saying “Holy crap sexbots!”

What is it that we are we afraid of?

We fear men will prefer loving a robot, who is never in a bad mood. A sex robot is always up for anything. How will this affect men’s relationships with real women? What if a sex robot makes men forget about consent– a sex robot has no boundaries and doesn’t say no.

And the proposed user is universally male- just as the existing sex doll market is aimed at straight men. There are male dolls for gay customers, but the sex doll market is small for straight women.

We’re afraid that sex with a perfect, endlessly servile, sexy robot will replace sex between humans, reducing our birth rate.

What happens when our expensive sex robots go out of date? Imagine how embarrassing it’ll be when your friend’s robot can speak in four languages and your robot can only moan and point at stuff!

We fear the end of human intimacy, that men will fall in love with sex robots. We’re afraid that men will become addicted, filling their days and nights with computer games and dirty robots. We’ll be a world of single people, men at home with their sex robots, and women making increasingly intricate Pinterest pages.

Women could be jealous of sex robots, who don’t gain weight or sweat or have body hair, unless you have requested some on the form.

The fact is, technology has always been scary in the bedroom.

Vibrators were originally developed as an easy way for doctors to give women orgasms as treatment for “hysteria”. Hysteria was medical talk for women being stressed out by life without the release of orgasms, because their spouses didn’t believe women could have them. The vibrator has existed since the 19th century, and men still regard them with suspicion, worried that women prefer them to sex with a partner.

I think sex robots will be much the same- no matter how good they get, they won’t be the same as sex with a person. When we say people are “in love” with their sex robots, that’s a fallacy.

They may enjoy their experience, but it’s not love. I like my vibrator, but it’s a tool. I don’t connect with it. Even if it was attached to a Hugh Jackman RealDoll, I wouldn’t love it. I don’t care if silicon Hugh Jackman has an orgasm or experiences pleasure. I can’t connect or bond with him, and that’s a big part of having sex with another person.  There is no eye contact with the Hugh Jackman RealDoll, who also doesn’t exist, because I just made him up.  The smell of another person, the feel of their touch, the look in their eyes, the condition of being desired by another person– these won’t be replaced.

When we examine these fears, we can say: there will be men who are so challenged and frustrated with human relationships that they will only interact with sex robots. But they will always be a minority.

Sex robots could be a practical comfort on long trips, during space exploration, during breakups or between relationships. To say that all men want from relationships is subordinate sex is to grossly oversimplify what relationships are. To believe that sex equals love is childish. Having a realistic sex robot doesn’t stave off loneliness. Like legalized weed won’t make for a world of marijuana abuse, sex robots will only add to the human sexual experience, not replace it.

 

A Portland Ghost Story- From HAUNTED, a show by the amazing Rebecca Leib

This is a real ghost story from Portland, OR.  

The Neighborhood

I had a house there, in a nice neighborhood.  There was a brunch place in walking distance where they’d just put a basket of scones on the table when you sat down.  And when you got the scones, you’d need ‘em, cos you’d been standing outside for an hour, holding a cold coffee and a newspaper.  You could grab a scone and leave, but that’s against Brunch Code.

 Before it was Fancy Brunch Place, it was an old bar where they would fry something that was technically breakfast and you could eat it while smelling every drink from fifty years before, soaked into the wood paneling.  So that was the neighborhood, it was getting gentrified. I’m sure it’s even nicer now, but ex-husband lives there with third wife, so I don’t go.  

That’s not the awful thing I’m telling. This is about another awful thing.

Anyway. No matter how nice a place is, bad stuff happens there.  A woman in my neighborhood had been kidnapped and kept in a basement for a couple of weeks, and she managed to stretch her restraints to one window and get one finger out of the blinds and was trying to signal for help, but nobody saw, not even my friend who lived next door.

My friend felt terrible, but in her defense, would have to be a pretty sharp observer to see one finger scratching at a basement window.

This is not about that awful thing. This story is about another awful thing.

The Neighbor

My next door neighbor’s house had been rented to a few groups of people, and then it was renovated and sold, and when the woman who bought it moved in, I tried to introduce myself to her a couple of times, but she always seemed tired and upset.

 When a friend looks upset, you can ask: hey, are you OK?  But when it’s a stranger, you’re too embarrassed to say, hey, you seem fucked up, are you OK?  Unhappiness is embarrassing.  I avoided her.  She just never seemed to be in the mood for a chat. I didn’t see her much anyway.

 That Spring, I see her in front, planting flowers and looking like a different person, and I went over to say hi. I introduced myself and we talked about the really boring stuff people talk about who have nothing in common except for living next to each other, and finally I say, I’m sorry this isn’t my business, but you look so happy and different! I’m glad you’re feeling better?  And she looked at me happily and said yes, I’m much better!

The Story

Then she explained: my house was haunted. How did she know?  She said, the first night I slept there, a man appeared and beat the shit out of me.  I said oh wow, did you call the police? And she said, no, because he was a ghost.  And that’s true. Police don’t come out for ghosts.

 It happened the second night too, she said, just for months, every night this ghost would appear and beat the shit out of me.  And I said wow that sounds bad, because what else do you say?  I didn’t know what to say.  

She said, at first I thought I’d sell the house, or find out if I could cancel the sale, but then I thought, what if the next buyer has a kid, someone who can’t defend themselves, so I thought I’d have to take care of it myself.  And I said, what did you do?  And she said I found a great exorcist who smudged the house and BOOM!  The ghost disappeared and I’m finally enjoying my house!  

So, I’m planting these flowers, and the next thing I need to do is get rid of some furniture and stuff, because it’s really too crowded in there, and I said, isn’t it a two story house? And she said yes but. I couldn’t afford to get the upstairs smudged yet, and I’m worried the ghost just moved upstairs, so I just stay on the ground floor.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

How To Get A Boyfriend!

A friend gets engaged. Another friend gets engaged. Two friends move in together.

Checking your phone, you don’t have a response back from a text you sent last night.

Why does your boyfriend say that you expect too much?

Well, he’s not your boyfriend officially, but you’ve been dating for a couple of months, so at some point he’ll be your boyfriend, right?

Congratulations! You’re dating an avoidant!

Does this sound like your partner?

“My partner always seems to be comparing me unfavorably to some past, or ideal future partner”

“My partner flips on me, very affectionate one day and cold the next.”

“This person seems to find it difficult to emotionally connect with or support me.”

“They get uncomfortable when I get too close.”

Conversations with an avoidant:

A: “I’m surprised that you’re angry that I was seeing (other friend), I thought you knew I was seeing other people.”
B: “Of course I knew you were seeing other people, you kept giving me your address and re-introducing me to your cat, and going offline for long periods of time. What is it that you want?”

A: “Oh, I don’t like to stay in anything too long if it’s not working.”
B: “It seems like you planned for failure- I didn’t hear from you much, and we weren’t really building on any kind of intimacy. Romantic attachment is not something that just happens to you, like winning a lottery or being hit by a bus. It’s something two compatible people who like each other build.

If you’re just running through women looking for the ‘right’ one who will make you have emotions, that’s not going to work.”

It sometimes feels like everyone on the dating scene is an avoidant. That’s because avoidants are busy meeting new people! Like Alice’s White Rabbit, they’re always late for another date! Although it’s hard to believe, they only represent 25% of the general population.

Only 25%? Are you sure?

50% of adults have a “secure” dating style, they’re people with healthy boundaries who aren’t afraid to connect with the right person, and who are actively looking for that connection. 25% are “anxious”, people who are obsessed with connection and overly concerned about their partner’s love and fidelity, and 25% are “avoidants”, who are always looking to meet but never to connect.

It can feel like everyone on the internet is an Avoidant because:

Secure people tend to enter into healthy, balanced relationships, and they tend to stay in them for long periods of time. If you meet one, it’s because they’ve left a long relationship, not because they just “have been dating around” for a decade.
Avoidants tend to bounce out of relationships pretty quickly, and they don’t date other avoidants, because if two people are not returning texts, that fizzles out pretty quickly.
Avoidants see most people as “crazy” or “clinger stage 5” because they see healthy interest in another person as something to be avoided.

What do I do to stop dating avoidants?

First thing- let go of the idea that it is naïve or old-fashioned to want a relationship. Relationships make us live longer, happier, more fulfilled lives.
Second thing- They say that the only way to find a prince is to kiss a million frogs. Your path to meeting someone who actually wants to get to know you and have a relationship is through filtering avoidant partners. Call ‘em f*ckbois, call ‘em ghosters, call ‘em whatever you want, but stop calling ‘em if they do the following:

If you meet someone who says “All my exes are crazy.”
“You want to know if we’re dating? I really don’t like labels.”
“I need a lot of space.”
“Work’s so busy, I don’t have time for anything serious.”
“Women are always trying to trap guys into relationships.”
“I’m not ready to commit” (even after dating for months or years)

How do I do it?

Just stop interacting with them. You don’t owe them anything. Keep meeting new people. When you meet someone you like who’s clear about wanting to see you again, who makes plans and keeps them, who listens to you and shares intimate details with you, think about continuing to see that person.

I was talking with a friend, and she told me a story about “my boyfriend, but he isn’t really my boyfriend, he’s just a guy I’m sleeping with, you know. I mean, who has a boyfriend anymore?”
Well, I had one.
She asked, “How did you do that?” She thought maybe I had some grandfather clause or a deal with the devil.

“I have a new rule I’m following, and it’s simple: I don’t have sex with people who don’t want to be with me.”
She stared at me wide-eyed.
“I know it sounds weird and unachievable, but it isn’t. I met someone who cared about me, and who wanted to be in a relationship. Before that, I made out with a couple people, and kissed lots of people, but I didn’t have sex with anyone until I met someone who really wanted to be with me.”

It’s totally OK to date casually, but it’s also OK to want something more. Don’t listen to people who tell you differently. Date to find the people worth keeping, and move on from partners who don’t want the same thing that you do!

Based on quotes from Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.

Nemesis, Goddess of Revenge: A Story

I am not the hero of this story.

Let’s start off by saying that.

Also, I love and value my female friendships.

Women hurt each other more deeply than men.  Many of my women friends list their worst betrayal as being dealt to them by another woman friend.

We will hurt each other over men, because women don’t value their friendships of many years over some dude who’ll be gone in a fortnight.

I’m going to anonymize this woman by calling her Jen, although that is also her name.  We were both born in the 70’s, when everyone was named Jen.

She was never my friend.

The Past

In high school, in suburban Dallas, Texas, she was in love with the first boy I ever had sex with, a chubby goth with a mild speech impediment.  “Cotton” and “Latin” sounded like “Coddon” and “Laddin”, and it was adorable.

He tried to have a Dave Vanian (of the Damned) white streak in his black hair, but since he did it at home, it was usually a duck-yellow streak or a slightly green one.  Now he lives in San Marcos, Texas and has a wife and kids and we are facebook friends.

Jen hated me for being with him.  Women do that.  It had nothing to do with me.  After I broke it off with the Dallas suburban speech-impediment Dave Vanian, she slept with him that night, which annoyed me but was out of my purview.

He did not become her boyfriend after this.  Nothing between them changed, except that they had slept together.  If he had wanted to be her boyfriend, it would have happened when they met, probably.  It had nothing to do with me.

She went to college in Austin and I went to college in Dallas.  I heard a story about her getting kicked off campus for beating the shit out of her roommate.  After graduating, I moved to Portland, Oregon.

Tom Waits did a show in Eugene, two hours south of Portland.  For the next ten years, everyone I was ever friends with or dated had been to that show.  Also Jen.  Of all the people I didn’t want to see, she was it.

The Theory

There is a theory of human communication called disruption.  If someone is mean or dismissive or cruel to you, and you are kind and patient back, it is difficult for them to continue to treat you badly.  We want to mirror behavior to each other- so if you’re shitty to me, I’ll be shitty back, and it can just escalate.  If you’re shitty to me and I am kind back, it’s hard to keep going in that direction.

She did not respond to my attempts at disruption.

“Hi!  Jen!  Man, I didn’t think I was gonna see anyone from high school today!  How you doin’?”

Jen: “When the fuck did you move here?  I guess this town really has gone to shit.”

Then What Happened

A little after I moved to Portland, Oregon, I started dating a deathrocker who looked more than a little like Nick Cave, so much so that my admiration of the actual Nick Cave has been tarnished by the experience.

He worked in a record store, because what else was he gonna do, and he mentioned his co-worker Jen.

I shared with him our history.

He paused for a minute, and said, I should just tell you now, I have a past with Jen.  I don’t want you to find out later and be angry.  When I was married, we had an affair.  It’s long over and we’re just friends.  I’m also not going to cheat anymore- my marriage ended badly and I learned my lesson.

(This was not true, but it is another story entirely.)

We started seeing each other seriously, and one day, she looked over his shoulder at work as he was sending me a note on Myspace, because I am very old, older than any of you can possibly imagine, and she blanched and started screaming.

GINNY RYAN?  YOU’RE DATING GINNY FUCKING RYAN?

This is not my name now, but it was my name then.

An Odd Synchronicity

For some reason, despite being opposed in all things, we had the exact same taste in men: Men who tried to look like the lead singers of seminal goth and punk bands.

She let him know that I was a bad person, a dishonest person, that I was untrustworthy, and unworthy of love.

He said ok, but that he would give it a shot anyway.

In the following weeks, she called him repeatedly, at different levels of drunk, trying to seduce him.  Sometimes I was with him, listening to her messages as she left them.  This is before cell phones!  You could write someone an email or you could call them, but you couldn’t booty text!  Imagine that, children!

She had him fired from the record store, so fiancee was unemployed for a year, because managing a record store is really the only job he was fit for in life.

The Present

A couple of weeks later, I was drunk in a parking garage in downtown Portland and I saw her car.

Portland is a small town now, and back then it was a tiny town.  She had left her car in a garage across had gone drinking in the bar across from the record store.

I had had a drink myself.  Several drinks.  I was drinking something called the dirty monkey at the bar on the ground floor of the Crystal Ballroom, and after a few dirty monkeys I leaned into the bartender and asked, now make me a FILTHY monkey.

Important Fact

The statute of limitations in Oregon for property damage is six years.

This story is from ten years ago.

She drove a very distinctive car.  I checked with my fiancee to see if it was her car.  He said he thought it was, because he had had sex in it before.  I checked the cement garage for cameras.  There were none.  I put down my handbag and turned my ring around, like I was getting ready for a high school fight.

First I scratched down the side of her car first with a key, which is a rookie move, but which was a warm-up and a declaration of intent.  Orange paint curled up satisfyingly around the edge of my key.

Next, I kicked off her driver’s side rear view mirror with a boot.

There is no sales tax in Oregon, so lots of state funding is provided by traffic stops.  I knew she’d never limp home without getting pulled over.  I pounded her car in the weird, echo-less, sound-dampened garage.

I managed to break a taillight but not a window, and my dude said, that’s enough, let’s go.  You’re done.  You’ve beaten up her car.  I was flooded with endorphins and delighted and proud and ashamed, but I couldn’t tell anyone, not until now.  Not until you.

The Future

Her job at the record store was over within the year, after she punched a customer in the face.  The regional manager let her know that you can be snide to customers, you can ignore them, but you can’t actually assault them.  She sold her record collection to my husband and moved back to Texas, where she was lots easier to avoid.

The Importance of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #122

I first saw Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #122 in 1990 in Columbia, MO when I was an art student, and it’s my favorite piece of hers.

I wrote an art studenty little paper about it then and was delighted to see her used in promotion for the exhibit Imitation of Life at the Broad Museum.

Cindy made it for Interview magazine in 1983, when they lent her a rack of clothes and said “do something cool with this”, I believe this is a Romeo Gigli suit. Anyway, I love her fury and glamour and red-rimmed eye and balled up fists, and she’s who I think of most when I do my comedy: a woman right on the edge of absolutely losing her shit.

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #122

Working With Your Rapist: The Problem With Due Process

Aaron Glaser in the New York Post Comedy Rapist

What we’re told in the Aaron Glaser case is: if a woman doesn’t report a rape, she’s not allowed to talk about it.

If the law doesn’t hand down punishment, her experience isn’t valid. She can’t talk about it, because it was never proved in a court of law.

That’s some witch trial sh*t.  All “due process” means is he can’t be jailed before trial.  It doesn’t mean the allegation can’t be discussed or used as a reason not to book him, or not to employ him.

Other dudes say “He’s a good dude”, which means, “He’s never mentioned being a serial rapist.”

The dude might say “I’m not a rapist”, because he thinks maybe I raped somebody, that’s not what I AM. I baked a cake once, I’m not a BAKER.

If a woman says, “I don’t wish to do comedy with my rapist”, her option is to stay home.

If she says “I don’t wish to file charges and go public about being raped”,  her option is to shut up.

What do we do, as women comics?

We talk about rapists amongst ourselves, in secret groups.

We maintain secret lists of people we’ve heard are sexual predators because that makes us feel safe.

That also means, if a woman is attacked who didn’t remember a name from the list, it’s back to being her fault.

This week a friend asked me about a comic who I know to be someone who sexually assaults unconscious women.  The word is that he raped a comic in my old town when she was drunk.

Is the comic going to report it? No. She feels ashamed, she wants to comfort herself and put it away.

So, when we can’t do anything to protect each other or ourselves, all we can do is repeat, I’m sorry. I believe you.

My own policy on rape and sexual assault is: I believe the victim, because 1. false reports are rare and 2. society is predisposed not to believe the victim.

My policy has lost me friends, because I didn’t “back up” an accused assaulter and other men in our circle think I’m not a good pal, because he’s a good dude.

And that’s a thing I’ll have to live with.