Tag Archives: Pop Culture

August 29, 2016 · 7:02 am

Starfire: Profile of a Sex-Positive Superhero

I intended to move onto another topic to start this week. I thought I said enough about jealousy and rejection last week, at least for now. Well, I may have been premature and as a man, I do not use that term lightly. Before I get going on another topic, there’s one last item I want to discuss regarding jealousy and rejection. That item involves superheroes.

I know that sounds like a non-sequiter, but hear me out. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I am a big comic book fan. I tend to refer to comic books and superheroes when discussing issues on this blog, including the sexy kind. I’ve actually referenced the Deadpool movie as an example of progress in our culture’s attitudes towards sex. I promise it’s not as crazy as it sounds. I’ve also highlighted a recent issue of an X-men comic as an example of a balanced modern romance.

It’s not my fault that superheros help make my points so well and this issue is no exception. As I wrote about issues surrounding jealousy, rejection, and our cultural attitudes towards sex, I made some connections to a lesser-known superhero, but one who fits into this discussion in an important way. It’s not Superman. It’s not Batman. It’s not Wonder Woman. It’s not Captain America, Iron Man, or Wolverine. No, I’m talking about Starfire.

Who is Starfire, you may ask? Well, she’s an alien princess named Koriand’r. She can fly, has super strength, is super durable, and can shoot green energy bolts called starbolts. By all accounts, she’s very similar to Supergirl. She’s not as well-known as some of the other mainstream heroes. She still has quite a history and has done a lot to set herself apart from a crowded superheroes market. Oh, and she looks like this.

I think that tells a good chunk of her story right then and there. However, what makes Starfire special isn’t just her ability to look good in skin-tight outfits. A lot of female superheroes can make that same claim. Looking good in an obscenely revealing and/or extremely impractical costume is par for the course for female heroes and even male heroes to some extent. Anyone who remembers Michelle Pfeiffer’s memorable take on Catwoman in the old Batman movies knows this.

So what sets Starfire apart? Why am I singling her out from the countless other super-powered heroines who wear overly revealing costumes, have an awesome rack, and give pre-teen boys all sorts of strange new feelings? Well, it’s because Starfire embodies a special trait that sets her apart from every other superhero, male or female. She is, by far, the most sex-positive superhero in comics right now.

What do I mean by that? Well, superheroes having sex isn’t new. Superheroes having strange, deviant sex isn’t new either. Starfire exists in a universe where Superman and another female hero named Big Barda made a sex tape. It’s also a universe where Batman and Batgirl have sex on a rooftop. So clearly, comics and comic creators aren’t afraid to get kinky.

What sets Starfire apart is that she isn’t just comfortable with sex. She conveys it in an overtly positive way. She doesn’t treat it as an act of deviance. She doesn’t treat it as something callous or meaningless either. She treats sexuality as part of her overly loving, overly emphatic personality. She always frames it in a good, positive context. In the superhero world, that’s not just rare. That’s an aberration.

Traditionally, when a female character becomes more sexual, it makes them come off as more deviant. Overly sexual female characters take on a stereotypical vixen, one who flaunts her sexuality and exploits it to the utmost. I already mentioned Catwoman as one example, but Catwoman is a lightweight compared to Emma Frost of the X-men. I won’t get into all the way she’s conveyed her sexuality, but just assume she exploits it in ways even an erotica writer can’t imagine.

It’s an unfortunate theme that has played out in superhero stories in various ways over the years. Like slasher movies and teen movies, it reinforces this puritanical subtext that the more sexual a woman is, the more deviant she is.

Men aren’t immune from this subtext either. While they can get away with having more sex than female superheros, there’s still this unspoken impact attached to it. If a male hero is going to be more sexual, then he’s going to be more of an asshole. Like the jocks in 80s teen movies, they don’t come off as positive or upstanding like Superman or Captain America. The best example of this would be Namor, a character who has actually slept with Emma Frost. This is what he looks like and this is how he usually dresses.

I think that effectively conveys the traditional dynamic of sexual superheroes. It’s also why Starfire is so unique in her persona. She dares to defy this tradition. She dares to be a compassionate, loving hero while being openly sexual. She does not carry herself like some superhero vixen, flaunting and flouting her sexual traits. In fact, flaunting sexuality is downright alien to her.

For Starfire, sexuality is just a simple, natural part of life. It’s just one of the ways she shows love and affection to those around her. She doesn’t do it with an agenda. She doesn’t do it to exploit. She does it for all the right reasons. She’s also very comfortable with her body. It doesn’t just show in her skin-tight superhero outfit either. She’s also very comfortable being naked. Having written extensively about the joys of nudity on this blog, it’s something I can definitely appreciate.

There’s one other trait to Starfire that sets her apart. It has to do with jealousy, the less joyous topic I’ve brought up on this blog. In being so sex-positive, Starfire doesn’t experience jealousy the same way we see in other characters. Throughout the history of superhero comics, there have been all sorts of crazy love triangles and convoluted love stories. Wolverine’s love life alone is a testament to this. With Starfire though, these sorts of convoluted emotional entanglements are a moot point.

The best example of this manifested in a solo series she starred in earlier this year. In that series, she deals with multiple male characters with which she shows a romantic interest. Dick Grayson, the first Robin, is just one of them.

However, it’s her reaction to another relationship with a character named Sol that really sets her apart. While she’s off fighting monsters and exploring subterranean civilizations (it’s a long story, but one that’s totally worth reading), he finds love with a co-worker. What’s Starfire’s reaction to this? Does she get angry, upset, or sad? No. She doesn’t. She’s happy for him.

Does that sound strange? Does it sound downright alien? Well, think about it for a moment. Someone Starfire really cares about finds happiness. Being a loving, empathetic person, she’s happy that he’s happy. Besides, if you love someone and they find a new source of happiness, shouldn’t you be happy as well?

It’s one of those strange thought experiments that makes too much sense for our culture. As I’ve said in other blog posts, our culture does a lot to create unhealthy attitudes towards sex and intimacy. The idea of being happy that a lover finds happiness with someone else feels alien because our culture creates this strange nation that we’re supposed to own the love and happiness of another.

Think about that for a moment. We’re supposed to own the intimate affections of someone else and should be upset when they find it with others. The idea of owning the thoughts and feelings of others doesn’t sit well with me. I imagine it doesn’t sit well with a lot of people on some levels. However, this is what our culture commands us to some extent.

It’s for this reason that Starfire is such a remarkable character. She embodies a different brand of sexuality. She embodies an attitude towards sex that sets her apart. Given that she’s an alien, these attitudes certainly feel alien. However, they’re attitudes that we can and should learn from.

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August 26, 2016 · 9:35 am

Inside The Mind Of A Misogynistic Man

This is probably going to be the most ambitious, contentious, and volatile post I’ve written to date on this blog. If any post is going to incur hate mail and outrage, it’s going to be this. I’m bracing myself for whatever backlash I’ll incur because I know I’m going to offend someone here. I apologize in advance, but offensive things can contain harsh truths.

To date, I’ve tried to keep things fun, enlightening, and non-controversial. Granted, you’re bound to be a little controversial when you say orgasms have health benefits, religion is undermining our sex lives, and being naked is good for your health. This time, however, I’m going to touch on something that is already controversial. It’s gotten people fired. It’s generated death threats online and in real life. It’s been the butt of jokes and a talking point for presidential candidates.

That’s right. I’m going to be talking about feminism. Yes, I mean that kind of feminism. It’s the kind that deals with sexual assault, patriarchy, male privileged, and rape culture. It’s the kind that generates hashtags rather than aids poor girls in third-world countries working in sweatshops. If you’re a regular reader of this blog and don’t care for this issue, this is your chance to close this tab and wait for my next post. I promise I’ll get back to the fun, sexy, entertaining topics soon enough, but this is something I think needs to be said.

Still with me? Okay, then let’s do this. Let’s talk about this strange new brand of feminism that is sweeping the internet, undermining the video game industry, and getting people fired in some cases. If you’re not in your safe space now, you probably should be.

Now let me make one thing clear. I do not like talking about this. I’m a man. I can’t win these arguments because the deck is stacked against me. In my experience, discussions about women’s issues are best handled by women. It’s a crazy concept, I know. As a man, I can only bring so much to the table because I only know the perspective of a man. So how the hell am I supposed to understand the complex, sociopolitical struggles of contemporary women?

Well, being a man does give me some level of insight. I’ve noticed that discussions about this brand of feminism says a lot about how women think and feel about issues such as male privileged, patriarchy, and rape culture. The thoughts and feelings of men are a lot less scrutinized.

As a result, there are a lot of assumptions about what men think and how they justify their male tendencies. The way some feminists talk, they give the impression that men conspire in Illuminati-like meetings to conjure ways to subjugate women. First off, let me say that this does not happen. If a lot of men are going to meet in secret, it’s to tailgate at a football game or watch a My Little Pony marathon. So to all you feminists out there, you can stop worrying about that.

This still begs a very important, very relevant question. Why do men get so upset about feminism? Why do men get so hostile over women who criticize their masculine traits? Why do men cling to these unequal power structures between genders? Well, I can’t speak for all men, but since I am a man, I can provide some insight.

So here’s what I’m going to do. Again, if this is something that makes you want to punch your computer screen and start a hashtag, here’s your chance to leave. I really don’t want to offend anybody who is going to get that upset, but I’m willing to take that chance to say what I feel needs to be said.

What I’m going to do is tap into the mind of the misogynistic, patriarchal male that so many feminists despise and offer an explanation as to why men feel the way they do. Please note that this is just a thought exercise. These do not reflect my personal views. I strongly believe in equality, understanding, and empathy between all people, regardless of gender.

For the rest of this post, however, I’m going to take on the mentality of a pure, undiluted misogynist. Once you read this text, I hope feminists and non-feminists alike have a greater appreciation for why men feel the way they do. So here goes. Here is a letter from a misogynistic man to the feminists of this world.

Dear Ladies,

There’s no easy way to put this so grab your tissues, get a box of chocolate, and sit down. What I’m about to say is going to piss you off and that’s good because it pisses me off too, way more than you’ll ever know. So here it is. Here is the cold, callous, testosterone-laden truth. We HATE you.

I’m sorry, but it’s true. On some deep, primal level, we can’t help but HATE you. I’m not talking about the hate you have for bullies or poor wi-fi connections. I’m talking about a hate that is so deep, so unspoken, and so reserved that we couldn’t express it fully if we tried. It’s a hate that consumes every man, be they gay, straight, white, black, old, young, and everything in between. We don’t like this hate, but we can’t escape it.

Why is this hate so strong you ask? Well, that’s hard to explain. This isn’t the kind of hatred that we show. In fact, most men go through their whole lives never showing it. They just know it’s there. It plays out in all sorts of ways, but for the sake of clarity, here’ s a quick scenario that should give you some idea.

Remember that beautiful, sexy, popular girl that every guy wanted and every woman wanted to be? Remember that stereotypical cheerleader type that was in every bad teen movie ever made? If you do, you probably remember how we men loved to say mean, dirty things about her. We talk about all the nasty, pornographic shit we’d do to her. Then, we’d call her names like whore, slut, and bitch. We’d shame and scold her the first chance we got. Why would we do that? Why would we do that to anyone we barely know?

The simple truth is that these girls are not having sex with US. I’m not talking about US, as in men in general. I’m talking about US, specifically. It’s inherently selfish, which is why we tend to do it in groups, but it’s true. We resent pretty girls who don’t have sex with US and only US. We see it as either some other man taking something that’s ours or some girl denying us something we want.

Imagine yourself in a cafeteria. There’s all this food, but there’s only some that you really like. You find this food. You go up to the counter. You ask for it as politely as possible, but the cashier just flat out says no. You’re not getting this food. You’ll NEVER get to eat this food. Only a very select few that the cashier chooses by entirely arbitrary standards will get this food. You’d be pissed, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s how men see it when you women refuse to have sex with us.

I know. Comparing sex to food is a poor analogy, unless you’re into a specific kind of fetish porn. We don’t like it either, but this is what evolution does to us. It wires our brains a certain way. That wiring still assumes we’re cavemen roaming the savanna, hunting elephants and escaping hungry tigers. It gives us two primary drives: survival and reproduction. It’s not rational, but it’s how we survive as a species.

The problem is that when you tie survival and reproduction together as such strong imperatives, some wires are going to get crossed. We’re going to equate the act of acquiring food to acquiring sex to a ridiculously illogical degree. We kind of have to because logic doesn’t fill your stomach or propagate a species. If we had another choice, we’d take it, but this is what we’re stuck with.

It’s because of this hate we feel when you deny us sex that we feel the urge to control you. Think of a man fighting off a tiger that doesn’t want to become dinner. We fight with every bit of primal rage we can to survive and secure our next meal. As a result, we try to do the same to you.

Take a look at history. Look at how so many societies went to absurd lengths to control female sexuality, manage gender roles, and structure the dynamics of sex. There’s a reason why most of it is overtly patriarchal and no, it isn’t because of some shady conspiracy. It isn’t even done out of the inherent hate we feel towards women. It’s all about economics.

I’m sorry. I know that’s not a very satisfying explanation. That’s like the IT guy telling you that your computer is slow because pigs in Wyoming are farting too much. It’s true though. Economics, including those involving sex, drive a lot of this patriarchy shit you complain about. I’m sorry, but we kind of owe our entire civilization to that shit.

After we stopped hunting and gathering, we formed farms. We needed to protect those farms so we formed tribes and kingdoms. We also needed a lot of people to work on those farms so we needed to do a lot of boning to produce a lot of kids. That means subjugating women on a farm and doing everything we can to make them focus on producing those kids, knowing some of them will probably die in childbirth.

On top of that, we had to account for a good portion of those kids dying before their second birthday so we needed to control the lives of the women pumping them out. I know it sucks, but there’s no way around it. We can’t make these kids on our own. If we could, we’d have no reason to hate or subjugate you. We still need you though. Our survival depends on it. Remember, our brains are wired for survival, not reason.

While we’re on the subject of those kids, there’s something else to consider. We kind of need to make sure that they’re ours. We need that because again, we need to protect all this land and property. We need to make sure it stays within the family. That means we can’t have you women fucking around with other men. That means we need you to be virgins on your wedding night. We also need you to fuck us and only us to make sure that the kids you make are our kids.

Because there’s a lot of money and wealth at stake, we come up with all sorts of crazy ways to make sure you fuck only us. We create these crazy religions, myths, and cultural practices that say you should not have sex, you should not enjoy it too much, and you should focus on making babies for the tribe. Some of these excuses are pretty fucked up, but remember there’s a lot of money and wealth at stake. We’ll justify them any way we can if it helps us survive and reproduce.

So we create this whole system around men working the fields while women pump out the babies that grow up into more workers or baby-makers. Along the way, other men in other tribes do the same. They aren’t always good at it for reasons that aren’t always their fault so they form armies to invade their neighbors. That means we need to have an army too. That means even more boning to make more babies so they can become soldiers. You see the pattern here?

This is where we get into the whole rape culture/sexual assault thing. I know this is a big sticking point for women. I know you get so outraged when you see stories about blaming victims and men claiming that women are tempting them. Well, if you’re with me so far on the economics at work here, you should be able to figure out why this is a thing in the first place.

Keep in mind, we didn’t stop living as agrarian tribes until very recently. For most of our civilized history, we needed a steady supply of men to farm the fields and fight the wars. So when a man rapes or assaults a woman, we tend to make more excuses than we care to admit.

We need that man producing food and fighting wars. The woman he rapes may be hurt or traumatized, but she’s not going to protect the tribe or make the food. She’s going to produce babies and is likely to die in the process. So overall, the man will do more for the tribe so we’ll come up with any excuse we can to avoid punishing him too much. On top of that, the woman may have a disease or be carrying a child that isn’t her husband’s so that’s kind of a big problem. It’s just easier and more economical to blame her.

I get that we’re not living in a Game of Thrones society anymore. I get that we don’t need women pumping out babies to work on farms and fight wars as much as we used to. The problem is, our biological wiring is still the same. On top of that, there are still economic incentives to control women and in case you haven’t realized it yet, we’ll come up with any excuse to justify the economics of a situation, no matter how fucked up it might be.

We can’t escape the economics any more than we can escape our biological wiring. That’s why we hate you. That’s why we continue to hate you, shame you, and scold you for trying to achieve some level of equality or authority over us. The way we see it, you already have too much power over us as it is.

Think back to that pretty popular girl I mentioned earlier. Did she just fuck anyone who politely asked? Of course not! The men who wanted to have sex with her had to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops. They had to be rich, play sports, or be charming on some level to win her attention and access to her sex.

At the end of the day, she couldn’t pick everyone. There were bound to be more rejections than acceptances. That means all these men worked so hard and got nothing in return. We thought we did the work. We thought we earned the privilege of having sex with a beautiful girl, but she chose otherwise and that pisses us off.

On top of that, we can’t be honest about our masculine inclinations. We can’t be overt about them. The culture we live in now basically shames every masculine trait. To be a man is to be a bully or a tyrant. To be a woman is to be a princess and a saint. Men cause and fight all the wars. Men are the victims and perpetrators of most crime. We are disposable, dirty, pathetic excuses for flesh in the eyes of this culture and you expect us to NOT be resentful on some levels?

We men spend so much of our lives trying to secure and impress you, the beautiful women our biological programming wants us to have sex with. We can’t control the sheer intensity of this desire. We hate that it consumes us so completely. Some of that hatred is projected onto you as well. We can’t escape it and neither can you.

That’s why we hate you. That’s why we can’t help but hate you. That’s why we do what we do. If you don’t understand it, or don’t even TRY to understand it, you’ll just make it worse.

Sincerely,
Men

Full Disclaimer: What I just wrote was a thought experiment and nothing more. It does not represent the sentiments or values of me, Jack Fisher. This is just something I wrote to explore a sensitive topic. I apologize for any offense I may have incurred on readers, but I hope it offers some perspective on these issues.

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August 25, 2016 · 6:54 am

How Our Culture Is Ruining Our Sex Lives And Driving Men And Women Apart

We don’t agree on much in this twisted culture of ours, but we have reached a consensus on a couple issues. One, jealousy is toxic to every relationship, real or potential. Two, rejection is the worst feeling short of injecting molten steel into our veins. Third, there’s nothing that ketchup can’t make taste better.

Other than the last one, we don’t really question the end results of these assumptions, but we don’t question the circumstances either. I’d like to give those circumstances some additional scrutiny because I think it reveals a lot about just how unbalanced our culture is towards sex, love, and intimacy.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how jealousy may or may not be an entirely natural feeling. I pointed out that our feelings of jealousy towards those who reject our sexual or romantic interests create this unhealthy mentality that we own someone or are owed by them. In the 21st century, we really shouldn’t need to remind ourselves why owning someone else in any capacity is a bad thing.

The problem is that certain elements of our culture were built on foundations of owning land, passing it down through bloodlines, and protecting it against those who would steal it. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with protecting your property, we as a society just take it one step too far when we see our lovers and prospective partners as property. We don’t understand that our brains didn’t evolve to be so rational and understanding. Our brains evolved to keep us alive and because of that, the wiring gets a little faulty at times.

Irrational wiring in our brains inevitably leads to irrational understandings of our world. Irrational understandings, in turn, leads to irrational behavior. It’s the same force behind every misguided social movement and stock market crash in history. Some are just harder to sniff out or overcome than others. So how has this undermined our ability to love, make love, and share intimacy with one another?

Well, in order to illustrate that, let me lay out a common scenario. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll use a man and a woman, but the same circumstances can apply to same-sex partners as well. So keep that in mind.

Man: Hey there, ma’am. You look really nice today.

Woman: Thanks! You look really nice too.

Man: I appreciate that. Since we both find each other attractive, would you like to have sex?

Woman: What? You pig! You’re disgusting!

I know this scenario is a bit simplistic, but it’s supposed to be for illustrative purposes. Read over this dialog for a moment. How does the man sound? Does he sound polite or generous when he asks the woman for sex? Or does he sound like every crude jock from every 80s teen movie ever made?

I ask because our culture creates in us certain expectations of how certain social interactions play out. This is just one. A man is expected to be interested in only sex. A woman is expected to reject him. Subsequently, the man who dares to ask a woman for sex is shamed. In a follow-up scenario, we may get moments like this among other men and women.

Woman: You see that guy? He asked me for sex! What a pig.

Man: That’s just wrong. What kind of man does that?

Woman: I hate him. I hope every woman rejects him. Those that don’t are horrible!

Take a moment to think about the less obvious implications of this interaction. A man who simply wants sex and asks politely for it is shamed, shunned, and castigated by everyone. He’s seen as a pig, a misogynist, and a creep.

Here’s a crazy question though. Is it possible that he’s just looking for the most basic forms of intimacy and wants to share it with someone? Perish the thought! Our culture doesn’t allow that. If he really wanted that woman, he would have jumped all the elaborate hoops this culture has set up for men to get sex. If, after all that, she still rejects him, then that’s too bad.

Is this overly simplified breakdown of these events fair? No, it isn’t. Our culture doesn’t let men simply walk up to a woman and ask for sex. We make him go through all these elaborate rituals and even if he succeeds, there’s still no guarantee that he’ll get what he wants. For men, it often means that those who aren’t adept at those rituals (and most men aren’t) will end up isolated, distant, and sexually frustrated. As history and current affairs have shown, this tends to be unhealthy for society.

Now, in the interest of gender fairness, let me paint another scenario that shows what our culture does to women who are interested in sex. In our culture, we have all these irrational expectations about female sexuality. The diverse varieties of lesbian porn alone are a testament to just how irrational these expectations are. As a result of these expectations, we create situations like this.

Woman: Hello. You’re really handsome.

Man: Why thank you. You look really nice yourself.

Woman: Thanks! Would you like to have sex?

Man: Wow! Already? Um…is there something wrong with you?

See the difference? Well, there are gender differences. There are double standards. No, they’re not fair or rational. That’s just the nature of gender dynamics in our culture. Despite these differences, the same irrational expectations manifest in this interaction.

When you read the woman’s words, what do you imagine? Does she sound sweet, caring, and affectionate? Or does she sound sloppy, ugly, or disheveled? Our culture demands that something be wrong with this woman. How can any normal woman simply ask someone for sex? She can’t just be looking for that toe-curling joy we feel when we have sex and the intimacy it inspires. That would just be wrong. That last sentence was sarcasm by the way.

Just as we had with the first scenario, there’s often a follow-up scenario surrounding these interactions. They play out among those who see this interaction and interpret it in the context of our cultural expectations. This is how it manifests.

Woman: Did you see that? That girl just walked up to that man and politely asked for sex!

Man: Wow. She must be a real slut. We need to shame her for offering more sex than she’s allowed to give.

Read over that overly simplistic logic again. Is that fair? Is that moral? Is that even natural in the context of a species that’s so social and passionate? No, it isn’t. That’s why the wiring of our brains needs to be warped a certain way. Culture, often with help from religion and government, does this fairly effectively.

As a result, our society creates this horrible imbalance among those seeking intimacy with one another. Men want sex from women, but shame them when they offer it too eagerly. Women want sex from men, but shame them when they ask for it too eagerly. It creates all these mixed messages that our brains struggle to process. Remember, our brains aren’t wired for rationality. They’re wired for survival.

At birth, our brains are already wired for sex and intimacy. Our brains drive us to seek sexual and intimate gratification the same way it drives us to seek food and water. Denying it these needs creates distress. Excessive distress in any system, be it a brain or cell phone, causes problems. We may bemoan these problems, but on some levels, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

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August 23, 2016 · 6:49 am

Jealousy vs. Rejection

This post is a follow-up to both yesterday’s post on jealousy and another earlier post where I asked the readers for ideas. That request for other topics of discussion wasn’t rhetorical. I really do want to hear what readers want to talk about on this blog. It’s a good way for me to gauge the audience and adapt my work accordingly. Knowing the audience is among the first steps to becoming successful in any media, be it erotic fiction or clown porn.

One reader in particular, InsidousTemptation, read my post about jealousy and how natural/unnatural it may be and brought up an equally relevant topic. I’d like to talk about that topic because it’s closely related to jealousy. In fact, it’s the uglier side of jealousy, as if jealousy itself weren’t ugly enough. That’s right. I’m talking about rejection.

For this concept, there’s far less context to consider. Rejection feels awful in pretty much every form. Other than being rejected by a crippling disease, it’s one of those few things that every society and every culture can agree is universally bad. I’ve certainly dealt with it before. Recently, I announced that my manuscript for “The Big Game” had been rejected by a publisher. For this post though, I want talk about a more specific rejection.

Have you ever loved someone and learned they don’t feel the same way? Have you ever put time and effort into showing sexual or romantic interest in someone, only to be shot down? It doesn’t matter if it’s thoughtful, callous, or cruel. It still sucks. It feels like a gut punch, a slap in the face, and a pin to the heart all at once. It can even be worse in some cases. Just ask this guy who had his marriage proposal rejected in a very public way.

As an awkward teenager, I certainly had my share of rejections. I was not charismatic. I was not attractive. I was not confident. I had very little to offer the opposite sex. For me, every girl I showed interest in felt like a looming gut punch because they all had boyfriends. Every girl I liked was either dating someone, not interested in dating anyone, or didn’t know I existed. Being a teenager was hard enough. Adding rejection to it was like breaking a few extra bones along the way.

So what makes rejection so much worse than jealousy? What does it have to do with the concepts I discussed yesterday? Well, the difference isn’t only in degree. The difference involves sentiment and style. Jealousy mostly involves thoughts and feelings. Rejection is more active. Rejection is a tangible behavior with tangible effects that are fairly universal for the most part. It’s hard for rejection to be misconstrued or mixed. With jealousy, it is possible to feel and think things for the wrong reasons.

That said, there’s a case to be made that our culture and our approaches to romance and sexuality don’t just evoke unnatural sentiments of jealousy. They make rejection even worse. Why do I say this? Well, let’s go back to that primal mindset I call “caveman logic.”

I said in my article about jealousy that from a caveman’s perspective, jealousy makes no sense. We evolved to be a social, communal species that can work together, love together, and share intimacy together. Being jealous or upset about the romantic and erotic affections of others may make sense in some situations, but is overly arbitrary in most. It wasn’t until society developed concepts of property ownership and passing down assets through family lines that jealousy really took hold.

So how does this make rejection worse? Well, the fuel to the fire comes with turning sexuality and romance into a commodity of sorts. Keep in mind that for most eras in human civilization, marriages were arranged. They were loveless business arrangements whose sole purpose was to ensure that land and assets remained within a family. That’s why so many epic love stories involve forbidden romance because most individuals didn’t get a choice in their partner.

This callous commodification treats love and intimacy as something to be bought and sold. That’s bad enough, but popular culture in the 20th century somehow found a way to make it worse. How did it do this? Well, the media we love and consume sold entire generations on all these false promises. Think about every romantic movie. The hero is a nice, honorable, upstanding guy or girl (but mostly a guy). They fight and they struggle to win the love of a stereotypical beautiful partner and they succeed by being themselves.

Spoiler alert. That doesn’t happen in real life. There’s one scene in one movie that accurately encapsulates real modern life. It comes courtesy of Alec Baldwin and its this:

Is it harsh? Yes. Is it cold? Definitely. Is it accurate? Sadly, it is. This speech reveals something sad, but relevant. We, as a free and modern society, care about results and what others can do for us. If we’re not “closing,” then why should we be accepted? We aren’t entitled to all the love, sex, and satisfaction we want. We have to earn it.

This is why rejection feels so awful within our culture. When someone rejects us, we feel like we’re being denied something we’re owed. We want sex. We want love. We want it from this specific person. How dare they reject us! Say that out loud to a mirror and see if it sounds right. It shouldn’t.

So what’s the solution? I don’t like to just complain about things on this blog. I do like to leave some slivers of hope in the mix. In this case, I do hold out some hope that changes in technology will help us overcome a culture that makes rejection worse.

We’re entering a world where we can interact and inform one another more effectively than ever. Social media, online dating, and smartphones give us an ability to find others who share our passions. It gives us a chance to circumvent the worst rejection in some cases.

That said, technology can only do so much. For us to really minimize the pain of rejection, certain parts of our culture and our sexual practices need to be reassessed. What parts am I talking about? Well, that’s a discussion for another post.

Thanks again to InsidiousTemptation for suggesting this topic. I appreciate it. If anyone else has ideas on topics of discussion, feel free to let me know in the comments.

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August 22, 2016 · 6:50 am

Is Jealousy Natural? An Honest Question

Is it really so natural to be jealous of someone when they love or lust over someone other than you? To anyone who has ever been jilted or cheated on, this may be an outrageous question to ask. How can anyone not feel outrage when the person they love has feelings for someone else? It’s the basis for at least 85 percent of all love stories and around half of every episode of Jerry Springer.

Jealousy seems like one of those emotions that’s so natural. We’ve come to see it on the same level as fear, hunger, or horniness. Few really question these assumptions beyond a certain context. Today, I’d like take a sledge-hammer to that context and dare to probe deeper. If that sounds overly lurid, I apologize, but I’m being genuinely serious here.

If ever there was an emotion that brings out the worst in people, jealousy seems tailor-made for it. One of my favorite comedians, Christopher Titus, once described it like this:

Is it somewhat extreme? Yes. However, I think there’s a sizable portion of the population that agrees with this sentiment. Jealousy can make people do horrible things. Sometimes, just seeing someone with someone else is enough to make us upset to the point of doing horrible things we wouldn’t otherwise do. Jealous and jilted lovers have committed serious crimes, including outright murder.

It’s those irrational extremes, however, that should beg the question. Is this feeling really a basic product of the human condition? How much of it is in our genes and how much of it is in our heads? It’s something we need to think about it, if only to assess the horrific behaviors it inspires in people.

Now I admit I didn’t really think about this question until recently. I admit I’ve felt pretty jealous at numerous points in my life and it’s not a pleasant feeling. I went through a period as a teenager where I got downright fatalistic whenever I heard a girl I liked had a boyfriend. Some of that can be chalked up to teenage hormones and serious personal issues. Others, however, are a bit more complex.

The first time I really thought about this issue came while reading Darrel Ray’s book, “Sex and God.” It’s a book I’ve recommended on this blog before and while it does primarily discuss the effects of religion on sex, it also frames jealousy in a very different context that makes it seem less a natural emotion and more a byproduct of sorts.

It goes back to the whole “caveman logic” I’ve used in discussing other topics on this blog, such as nudity. Biologically speaking, we’re still the same cavemen and cavewomen who roamed the African savanna 50,000 years ago, hunting and gathering for food. Then, something happened that changed our way of life and in evolutionary terms, it happened fairly recently. That something is agriculture.

That’s not to say this is a bad thing. The Agricultural Revolution is a big reason why civilization, as we know it, developed in the first place. However, it did come with a specific byproduct. It introduced the concept of land ownership and passing down property through bloodlines. It’s a concept that is not strictly Western. It occurs in almost every society in every part of the world that relies on agriculture to some extent. The culture develops its customs around owning and managing land. So naturally, some of those customs extend to owning and managing people.

Using caveman logic, the concept of owning land is entirely arbitrary. Unlike a tool or physical good that we create, we can’t hold it or lock it in a safe. However, we still treat it as something we need to protect from theft. We treat it as something that we associate with our own name. This is where the idea of passing possessions down to children enters the picture. It’s one thing to just give a child a tool or heirloom you made. It’s quite another to leave them ownership of a farm or property.

This is why marital fidelity, virginity, and knowing that your kid is really your kid became so important. Before the days of Maury Povich and blood tests, the only way to truly know that your kid is yours is for your bride to be a virgin on her wedding night and to have never cheated on you. It’s not so much about nature as much as it is about economics. There’s an economic and legal incentive to treat sexuality, child-rearing, and sexual relations as a commodity. As a result, we guard it like we do other commodities.

From that perspective, it’s easy to see how jealousy emerges. It’s like seeing someone with a nicer car or more food than you. It makes you envious and jealous. It stirs up all sorts of negative emotions that don’t always manifest in healthy ways. We think it’s natural, but take a second to consider the implications of this feeling.

To be jealous of another person’s feelings over someone else implies that you own that person to some extent. It implies you own their emotions, their sentiments, and their sexuality. For most people in the modern era, the idea of owning another human being in any capacity is abhorrent, yet we don’t bat an eye when we think we own someone’s emotions.

In the context of caveman logic, it doesn’t hold up. As small communities of hunter/gatherers, the idea of owning another person’s emotions wasn’t very pragmatic to say the least. Two people and whatever children they have aren’t enough to fend for themselves against a pack of sabretooth tigers. They need to band together as a community and a by-product of this, as we see in other primates, is that sexual monogamy isn’t the norm. It can and does happen, but it isn’t the ideal. It’s just a variation.

Now it’s one thing to make a promise of sexual fidelity to someone and break it. It’s quite another to just assume that someone else’s emotions must be managed a certain way. That undermines the very concept of what it means to be a sovereign human being. However, our culture is still structured around this idea that one person owns the love and lust of another and this is somehow an ideal.

It’s for this reason that I now see the concept of jealousy as somewhat flawed. When I think about my own romantic inclinations, I don’t want to own another human being. I don’t want to be owned either. I want the love and lust I share with another to be freely exchanged for all the right reasons. There’s room for romance. There’s room for lust. There’s room for commitment as well. Jealousy feels like a perversion of this sentiment and something that needs to be re-evaluated.

So once again, I’d like to open this up a little. What do you, the readers, think about our current concept of jealousy? What is your experience with it? Do you think it’s natural? Do you think there’s room to change our perceptions?

This idea has given me plenty of think about for future books. There is one new idea I’m developing, hopefully for a short, sweet, and sexy story I can write after I’m done with my next project. I think there are too many stories out there that focus on love triangles and scorned lovers. I think the marketplace is ready for something new and I hope to provide it.

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August 19, 2016 · 9:17 am

Why The World Needs More Nudity

Yesterday, I confessed to the world that I, Jack Fisher, sleep naked and love it. I praised the joys and even highlighted the benefits. I even got a few generous commenters to express support for my nude sleeping preferences. To those commenters, I thank you and I hope you get a chance to experience those joys as well.

After writing that post, it also got me thinking. If sleeping naked offers so many benefits, then does that mean there are other benefits to being naked in general? Using the same caveman logic I used yesterday, it seems logical. Our bodies evolved on the African savanna. It’s very hot in the African savanna, which means wearing a lot of clothes isn’t all that practical. So for our species to survive, we had to evolve some benefits to walking around in the buff.

However, caveman logic alone isn’t enough. It also doesn’t explain why there is so much taboo surrounding nudity. We all see it in most forms of popular media. There are movies, TV shows, and music videos where people shoot, stab, and bludgeon each other horribly. This is all fine, but showing a female nipple? That’s somehow so horrific that it traumatizes society as a whole. That’s why Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl XXXVIII half-time show caused society to crumble as millions of people were traumatized.

Oh wait, that didn’t happened. Society didn’t crumble. A generation of children wasn’t traumatized. It’s almost as if human beings aren’t biologically programmed to faint in terror at the sight of their own physiology. What a radical concept, right?

So why are “wardrobe malfunctions” a thing? Why is the sight of a female nipple or an exposed penis so horrific for some people? Well, that’s difficult to answer. It is fairly well-documented that America’s approach to sexuality is downright schizophrenic at times. America loves to champion freedom, but goes out of its way to shame or inhibit sexual expression. Tech Times did a nice job of highlighting some of America’s odd prudishness on the internet, despite being the home of the biggest porn industries in the world.

It is an odd quirk of western culture in general, claiming to promote freedom while clinging to prudish attitudes towards sex. Some of this probably stems from outdated cultural practices meant to stem excessive promiscuity. As I’ve discussed before in previous blog posts, western property-owning societies did have a logistical reason for discouraging promiscuity because it undermined the transfer of property and spread disease. Many of those reasons are no longer valid, thanks to advances in technology and medicine. That still doesn’t stop people from clinging to these concepts.

Most people these days don’t claim that exposed female breasts alone will traumatize children. If not, they should take a trip to New York City. There are women on the streets standing around topless, in front of families and children, and nobody is traumatized. Even children have some innate understanding that naked bodies are not disgusting. It’s the adults of the world that want us to believe as such.

As a result, we get entire societies and cultures promoting modesty as a high virtue. We especially see this in the Middle East where there’s this assumption that men can’t control themselves at the sight of a naked woman. As a man, I find this extremely offensive. I’ve seen many naked women before in non-intimate settings. It really wasn’t that hard to control myself. If I, a writer of erotic fiction, can do so, then how can anyone else claim otherwise?

We evolved to be naked. We’re all naked underneath our clothes. Get over it. There are a great many joys to being naked. There are also many health benefits, thanks once again to the wonders of caveman logic. Today.com even did a nice write-up on the benefits of being naked. It’s good for your skin, it improves your mood, and it increases Vitamin D levels in your body. So for the good of your health, ditch the clothes and embrace its naked glory!

If you still need more proof, check out this video from DNews. If it still doesn’t convince you, then you’re just being difficult.

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August 12, 2016 · 8:47 am

A Sexy Thought Experiment

Here’s a sexy thought that anyone can do comfortably clothed. It’s a thought I think everyone has to some degree once they start contemplating their sexuality. I imagine it’s a thought parents have as they watch their children approach sexual maturity, albeit with silent horror. It’s not a kind of thinking that matches up with reality just yet, but it has the potential to be so it’s worth contemplating. So here it is:

What will happen to our understanding of sex if we’re able to remove all its known consequences?

Admit it. This thought has intrigued/troubled you to some extent. It’s a thought that I think people have entertained throughout human history. What would it be like to live in a world where nobody has to worry about getting pregnant or getting some terrible disease when they have sex? Would it be like nearly every bad porno we’ve ever seen? Would society implode, like some social conservatives claim? Would our understanding of marriage, love, and relationships remain intact?

These are all intriguing/distressing questions. How much of our sexual expression is restrained or shaped by our understanding of these consequences? If tomorrow morning, someone announces they’ve cured every infectious disease and created the perfect birth control product, what would change? Would people have more sex? Would they have riskier, more elaborate forms of sex? Would they have sex in ways that even aspiring erotica writers cannot contemplate? It’s hard to say, but it is worth contemplating because this is the 21st century. These are no longer entirely empty questions.

To provide some perspective, it wasn’t until recently that science has advanced to a point where people can control the consequences of sex. When it comes to birth control, the most common method of birth control throughout human history was simply pulling out. That didn’t always work because human beings can’t always be expected to exercise such discipline. It wasn’t until 1957 when the FDA approved the first birth control pill, giving women a genuine medical mechanism for controlling when they became pregnant. It wasn’t perfect. It did have side-effects, but it was a major advance.

There are more advances on the horizon. Today, the options for birth control are varied and becoming more varied with every year. Methods like IUDs (intrauterine devices) provide some of the most effective, reliable forms of contraception on the market today. Since there has always been demand for women to control their fertility, basic economics ensure that even more effective methods will emerge in the future.

Then, there are diseases, the ultimate libido killer. For most of human history, society was at the mercy of these diseases. Encouraging restraint had a real, legitimate purpose because many of these diseases could kill you. You didn’t even need religious zealots telling you that promiscuity was dangerous. These diseases were everywhere and pretty scary. They could actually kill you if left untreated.

As with birth control, it wasn’t until the 20th century that we gained an actual medical method of fighting these diseases. Enter antibiotics, courtesy of Alexander Flemming and the advent of penicillin. For the first time, we had a way to treat these terrible, life-threatening diseases. It’s gotten to a point where a few shots and a round of pills will cure most people of the diseases that ravaged ancient societies.

From a medical standpoint, sex has never been cleaner, so to speak. There are still dangerous diseases out there. However, only one disease, AIDS, is definitively deadly and even that condition has become more manageable over the past decade, so much so that it’s no longer the death sentence it once was. Other diseases can be debilitating, but modern science continues to advance. It’s advancing to a point where we may very well enter an era where every infectious disease is either curable, treatable, or completely preventable.

It’s a promising world, one where suffering and hardship are significantly reduced. Our world is already so much safer and healthier than it has been in the past. People today have more freedom to safely explore their sexuality than ever before. However, a lot of our sex education classes basically amount to this.

It’s a sign that, despite all these amazing advanced, certain parts of society are reluctant to embrace this world. They see these advances and worry that their children will live in a world where recklessness has no consequences. That, or they’re jealous that they’re too old to enjoy that world. It may be a combination of the two.

As I said before, for most of human history, there was a legitimate reason for people to exercise restraint in their sexual expression. However, society has tacked on a lot of other reasons that medical science can’t sure.

Religion and culture have ascribed this arbitrary “holiness” to chastity that has no basis in reality. These same forces hijack the human capacity for guilt and shame to scold those who dare explore their sexuality in ways that society deems inappropriate. This is a major theme in my book, “The Final Communion.” It offers an extreme example of what this kind of sentiment can do to people.

While religion and culture will continue to fight ardently to preserve their current state, we can take comfort in the knowledge that they tend to fail miserably in the long run. No matter how many obstacles or consequences are ascribed to sexual expression, be they legitimate or not, the drive to express these feelings remains strong. It’s one of the most powerful forces in nature. For that reason, it’s impossible to know for sure how society will change.

With all this context in mind, I’ll rephrase the thought experiment. Flash forward to some arbitrary point in the future. In that future, birth control is easy and accessible to everyone. In order to ensure that nobody need suffer the consequences, men and women are given injections around puberty that provide 100 percent effective contraception. In terms of disease, there are now special smart-drugs that can target or prevent any major or minor disease with perfect efficiency.

Now, an entire generation can grow up in a world where they never have to worry about the consequences of sex and they can explore it freely and openly. What kind of society will this generation create? We may not get there in our lifetime, but it will manifest at some point. It’s an important question to ask and one that I hope to explore in future books.

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August 11, 2016 · 6:57 am

Trends in Sexual Activity: Why Are People Having Less Sex?

We hear it all the time. Older generations complain constantly that young people are out of control. They’re too deviant. They’re too rebellious. They’re out there in the streets, running around naked, worshiping demons, and having sex like jackrabbits on crack.

Talk to anyone over the age of 45 and they’ll probably tell you that young people these days are more deviant than their generation. They’ll say young people are detached, distant, and selfish. They’re more concerned about texting on their phones than spending time with family, working on the farm, or volunteering at their church. Is there some merit to their criticism? Yes. Is their sentiment valid? No. In fact, it may be the opposite.

Last week, the Washington Post did an article highlighting the trends in sexual activity among Millennials. Some of these trends don’t fit the whining and complaining that older generations bemoan. It turns out, young people today are having significantly less sex than Baby Boomers or the Gen X crowd. The portion of youth that remains sexually inactive has more than doubled over the past 30 years. That’s a pretty big shift and nobody really knows why.

There are some theories. The article highlights concerns about sexually transmitted diseases, which grew significantly in the 80s and 90s. However, that alone doesn’t account for the data. Others suggest that the easier availability of porn, thanks largely to the internet, has made it easier for people to fulfill their needs without a partner. This is probably only partially true at best. Anyone who lived before the age of the internet will tell you that even without porn, they found ways to get off. They may not tell you before a few drinks, but it is true. People still masturbated before the internet.

I’m not a scientist. I don’t have any expertise in this area other than writing books centered around sexy themes. That said, I have learned through my many years of hearing people complain about sexual trends to notice a few themes.

Anything that’s happening in the sexual landscape of a culture basically becomes this big ink blot test. People are having more sex? This must be due to some perverse religious trend, some devious new form of media, or some widespread rebellion against authority. People are having less sex? This must also be due to some perverse religious trend, some devious new form of media, or some widespread rebellion against authority. People see this and use it to inject whatever conclusion they feel fits their agenda. They do the same with politics, religion, and tastes in fast food.

So what do I think? Well, I think like most things involving the complexities of human society, trends in sex have multiple influences. It’s not just smartphones, media, or diseases alone that affect these trends. It’s a combination of many forces, some more powerful than others. So if I had to give more weight to one force in particular, I’d favor the one that tends to govern most human affairs to a significant degree: economics.

Let’s face it. Sex and being in a relationship is expensive. Men and women expect a lot more these days and not just in terms of fancy dates. Between the cost of divorce and the conflicting expectations, getting sex requires a lot of time and energy. In an era where young people have to work a lot harder to achieve the same level of financial stability of their parents, there’s just not as much to dedicate to sex.

It’s not a very sexy explanation. I admit that. People are having less sex because they can’t find good jobs or are shackled with too much debt? That’s not a satisfying explanation and it doesn’t lend itself to a simple solution. People like things that are satisfying. Ironically, it’s kind of like sex. If it isn’t satisfying, they look elsewhere. In this case, however, what isn’t satisfying may also be valid.

Money does affect relationships in a major way. According to the Walls Street Journal, millenials in particular are shackled with a lot of debt, mostly from college loans. Few things kill your sex drive more than the knowledge that you can’t pay your bills and barely have enough money to survive. In terms of our basic needs, survival does take priority over orgasms most of the time.

Is it the only explanation? No. I don’t claim that this is the sole explanation for the decline in sexual activity among young people. There are likely other factors in play, such as changes in feminism and growing awareness of sexual assault. It’s hard to quantify just how much those factors affect the results. It may even be impossible in some ways.

Be this as it may, the success of the porn industry and the continued success of erotica give me hope that people of all generations still have a healthy libido. I hope to nurture it with my books. In the meantime, here’s an insightful video from Think Tank that explores this issue in greater detail. Their explanations are probably only part of the story though. What do you think is causing young people to have less sex? Nobody knows for sure, but that won’t stop plenty from speculating.

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August 9, 2016 · 6:42 am

Sex, Drugs, and their Effects

Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll are a big part of popular culture, but what happens when you take away the rock n’ roll part? Despite what the Nixon administration, D.A.R.E., and every after-school special ever made would have us believe, human beings have used drugs in some form or another to enhance some part of their lives. Naturally, one of biggest parts we use it for is sex.

I’m not just talking about the drugs rock stars do with groupies. In 2015 alone, the drug company, Pfizer, made $1.708 billion in revenue from Viagra alone. So yes, sex sells and it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. So rock n’ roll really isn’t necessary for this potent combination to fly and no matter what drug warriors do, economics will keep this potent combination in business.

As we speak, these same billion-dollar companies are trying to make a Viagra for women as well. Like the female orgasm, however, it’s not quite as simple as getting blood to flow to the genitals. The greater difficulty women have in achieving orgasm, not to mention differences in evolutionary function that I’ve touched on before, make crafting such a drug a challenge. That hasn’t kept people from trying though.

Again, there are billions of dollars at stake. There’s too much incentive to give people drugs that enhance their sex life. At the moment, the only “female Viagra” that has this potential is called Flibanserin. It’s not quite an orgasm in a pill just yet, but it’s a vital first step and we can expect more like it in the coming years.

So why bring up sex and drugs? Well, it plays into some of the other issues I’ve talked about regarding ways that technology is changing sex. History shows that any advance, be it the advent of the latex condom or the birth control pill, is going to change attitudes about sex and the ways in which humans relate to one another. With the pace of technological change advancing at a rate that’s hard to keep up with, it’s difficult to imagine what kind of changes we’ll see.

These changes aren’t like trends in computers and smartphones either. Advances in drugs don’t always follow a simple pattern in terms of how they effect sex. There are drugs that negatively affect our sex drive, many of which are available at any drug store or with a prescription. The same goes for illicit drugs. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol isn’t an aphrodisiac. It can actually hinder sexual function. It’s only associated with sex because it removes inhibitions, thereby making people more open to sexual encounters.

The interplay between sex and other drugs, illicit and otherwise, is extremely complex and too much for a single blog post. It’s also unresolved because, despite mixing sex and drugs for years, we still don’t know everything about the way the two interact. Last year, Vice did a thorough report on how different drugs effect sex during their investigation into “Chemsex,” a topic I’ll cover in another blog post. You can read the article here:

Vice: This is your Sex on Drugs

There’s a lot in this article to examine. Drugs and their effects on the human body are complex and varied. At the moment, there’s no single drug that enhances sex for everybody in every instance. This quote from the article sums it up nicely:

Given how long—and often—humans have mixed drugs and sex, you’d think we’d understand the two pretty well by now. But as Johnson—who runs clinical trials testing narcotics’ effects on human behavior—can attest, drugs affect us all a little differently. Some have a direct pharmacological impact on the way we experience the world, while others affect our brains so dramatically that their impact on sex is a total crapshoot.

So as it stands, the interplay between sex and drugs is extremely varied and unpredictable. That unpredictability can make for interesting stories. At the moment, I’m throwing around a few ideas that explore this unpredictability. However, it’s the future of sex and drugs that I’m most interested in.

Every year, more and more drugs are emerging, legal and illegal alike. If there’s a way to mix these drugs with sex, people will find it and they will exploit it to the utmost. It may improve our sexual experiences. It may hinder them. One day, we may be able to control that. What kind of society will that create? How will that affect the way we relate to one another? Those are all important questions, but they’re best addressed in future blog posts.

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August 7, 2016 · 9:31 am

Sex, Robots, and the Future

Do you find robots sexy? That’s not a joke. That’s a serious question and one that we may need to answer sooner than you think. We’ve all heard people raise concerns about the robot apocalypse. When most people think of it, they tend to think of world described in “The Matrix” or “The Terminator.” While these make for good Hollywood action movies, there is one part of this so-called apocalypse that isn’t touched on very often. That’s to be expected though because this part can’t fit into a PG-13 movie.

It’s going to happen. It’s actually already starting to happen, as Men’s Health reported earlier this year when a man professed his love to a life-like sex doll. We are going to have sex with robots. We are going to develop intimate relationship with robots. As they become more advanced and more capable of interacting with us, our human emotions will come into play. Along with those emotions will come desires. So how will they manifest? How will our society function in a world where men and women can have romantic sexual relationships with robots?

Now the concept of sexy robots is not at all new. The first “Austin Powers” movie gives us our most basic and crude concept.

These kinds or robots, as colorful and comical as they may be, are currently beyond our technical capabilities. So far, you can’t purchase a real sex robot today. However, you can purchase a very lifelike duplicate through RealDolls.com, a company that has been in business for years. While you can have sex with these dolls, they don’t interact. They can’t talk or exert themselves with any meaningful intelligence, emotional or otherwise.

That will eventually change because our technology is progressing rapidly. We already have robots who can beat people in chess and Jeopardy. We also have robots that can interact with some level of personality, such as Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. How much longer until we have a robot that’s advanced enough to be a real person? We don’t know yet, but we are starting to give the idea serious consideration. Last year, the movie “Ex Macina” built an entire story around it and it ended up being a lot more mature (not to mention darker) than “Austin Powers.”

Like “The Terminator” though, this story is limited in vision and scope. It focuses heavily on creating conflict more than exploring the implications. Those implications will show up before the conflict and some are giving it serious thought.

The New American posted an article last year about how some are already advocating for human/robot marriage. Marriage has already undergone significant changes with the recent advances in same-sex marriage. Will marriage with robots undergo a similar process in the coming decades? It’s hard to say, but there’s no question that we are becoming more and more linked with our technology. Is it just a matter of time before we start developing emotional, romantic, sexual relationships with robots?

On the surface, it has some distressing implications. A robot has no rights. A robot cannot sue for spousal abuse. A robot can be turned off, reprogrammed, and shut down. A robot can also be made to look like anything someone wants. What if someone wanted a robot that looked like a child or a specific actor/actress? What are the legal implications of that?

It’s hard to imagine how a human/robot relationship will function now, but then again same-sex marriage was in a similar position 20 years ago. Who’s to say that 20 years in the future won’t follow a similar path?

I tend to be more optimistic when it comes to the robot “apocalypse.” I believe that once robots become intelligent enough for us to have relationships with, be they sexual or otherwise, it’s going to change us as individuals every bit as much as we’ll change them. If a robot is smarter than us, then they will know how to accommodate us. They’ll know how to provide every emotional need we may have. Will that be healthy? Could having all your emotional needs being met by a robot be good for us?

Some may claim that robot relationships will lead to the extinction of the human race. Actually, it may do the opposite. If we can make a robot capable of having sex, then we can make a robot capable of giving birth as well. Artificial wombs are a real concept that’s in development. We may very well get to the point where we don’t need sex to reproduce anymore. If a society wants to grow its population, it can do so without putting women through the rigors of childbirth.

How will that society function? How will a relationship between a human and a robot function? It’s an intriguing question. It’s one I’m contemplating for a possible book. Nothing is set for now. I have other projects I’m still working on. In the meantime, I’ll let this video from the Huffington Post continue the discussion.

https://s.embed.live.huffingtonpost.com/HPLEmbedPlayer/?segmentId=560c199399ec6d3aff0001fb&autoPlay=false

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