Oh, Siri, You Uptight Prude: The Speed Of Rage
So Siri, the iPhone’s voice-recognition search engine, is anti-choice. Asking it to find an abortion clinic finds nothing, showing that Apple has baked in a pro-life bias right into the iPhone.
…or maybe this displays another bias built right into the Internet.
See, as it turns out, searching for abortion clinics via a sketchy search engine just doesn’t produce consistent results, partially because Planned Parenthood doesn’t advertise “ABORTIONS: BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!” on the front page of their website, and partially because, well, Siri’s searching is mightily impressive in some ways but really quite lacking in many other ways. And it’s not like, you know, Apple products haven’t ever been lacking in their first-generation incarnations.
The “scandal,” however, highlights the problems with people on the goddamned Internet.
First off, what happens with every Internet blow-up is that people know the reasons why. Could it be that abortion clinics don’t usually tend to use the word “abortion” prominently when describing their services, and that Siri might overlook it? Could it be that Siri has a lot of problems with a lot of searches, and that abortion is merely one of many things it’s bad at finding this early on?
Of course not. SIRI HAS BEEN SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO FILTER OUT ABORTION RIGHTS AND CONTRACEPTIVES. Which means, of course, that Apple are a bunch of right-wing Nazis who’ve set out to purposely knock the knees out from women’s power by rendering them helpless to find the very tools that would give them power over their own bodies. Because, you know how Apple is just seething with Rush Limbaugh fans.
But that’s what happens on the net: one person jumps to a large conclusion, and another person reads their Tweet and retweets it, and next thing you know it’s “APPLE WANTS TO FORCE-BREED ALL WOMEN, FILM AT 11.”
The second problem here? The arrogance with which people demand an answer. The Internet is a big place, and there are a lot of things, but there’s this expectation that Apple should be a quivering tuning fork eagerly combing every reference to them like some egotistic movie star, waiting to respond to every conspiracy theory, no matter how crazy. I saw Tweets within 48 hours decrying that APPLE HASN’T RESPONDED, THIS PROVES THEY’RE PRO-LIFERS AT HEART TRYING TO CONCEAL THE TRUTH.
Well, no, pal, it may just be that your cries haven’t reached critical mass yet…. Or that they have heard, but they have to talk to the Siri team to figure out what the problem is so that they can respond accurately, and as it turns out gathering correct information may not be doable at your whim.
But that’s the Internet for you: I WANT A FULLY-FLESHED OUT, THOROUGH, SATISFYING RESPONSE TO A COMPLICATED TECHNICAL QUESTION TWO MINUTES AFTER I’VE BECOME AWARE OF IT, OR YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON.
(And yes, maybe Apple does need to hire a bunch of people to monitor for crazy-ass conspiracy brushfires starting up, just because it looks bad if they take, oh, a weekend to formulate an answer. But anyone who’s worked in retail will tell you that customers are often greedy dumbasses who get bent out of shape over the most moronic things, and yes you try to satisfy them… But that doesn’t mean they’re not touchy douchebags who would make the world better by being decent human beings.)
Then there’s the third problem, which is WHY ISN’T APPLE TELLING US THE INTIMATE DETAILS OF SIRI? IF THEY ONLY OPENED UP THEIR SOURCE CODE TO US, WE’D KNOW THE TRUTH. WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO HIDE? Oh, I can’t see a reason in the world why Apple might not want to explain the intimate workings of their #1 new feature. It’s certainly not like Google or Bing or all the other phone manufacturers in the world would be eager to find what Apple is doing right and try to steal it in a heartbeat. But no, the fact that they have not produced a 20-page PDF with diagrams to explain how this accident happens, instead marking it off quite legitimately as a bug they hope to improve, is proof that Apple are secretive and awful.
Dude. You’re kind of awful. I dig that this sort of herd mentality is going to crop up from time to time, but instantly assuming the worst possible motivations and then demanding a full explanation instantly approaches insanity. It’s a literal shit-storm, a tornado of outrage that’s kicked up out of someone noticing something weird, and it just makes it harder to be civil or rational, and more importantly if we have this level of furor over everything then it’s harder to sort out the genuine problems. Of which there are, you know, many.
I’m not saying not to investigate. But allow for other options, like, “I dunno, man, does anyone have any problems with other drugs or other types of businesses?” that would let people come to saner conclusions. Don’t let Apple off the hook, but do recognize that if someone collared you on the street out of the blue and roared, “SO WHY HAVE YOU NOT ANSWERED MY QUESTION ON THAT RACIST SHIRT OF YOURS?” you might not only be stunned by the question, but might have to take a while to not just ask what the fuck is happening and see why people think your shirt is insulting, then carefully formulate a proper answer on why your plaid shirt is causing an uproar rather than aggravate this angry guy even further.
The problem is that the Internet puts people in such close proximity with the things they love, they come to believe that everything has become a tool of theirs, existing only to provide them with answers on their schedule. And it’s good to realize that hey, maybe they’re human, maybe there are some genuine screw-ups here, let’s try to give the benefit of the doubt before lowering that rage-hammer.
The Ease Of Polyamory
Last week, Gini and I gave a talk to a classroom on polyamory. And there, as here, people wondered how we made polyamory work.
And though every poly is different, for us there’s one trick that makes it easy for us to date other people: We want to spend all of our time with each other.
It’s pathetic, really. We work at home, a situation that’s driven some couples insane, and yet Gini can’t work in her back office for more than a couple of hours before getting lonely for me and joining me on the couch. After a week spent at home working side-by-side and watching Deep Space Nine, I needed a date day with Gini where we could window-show at the mall and hold hands and make snarky comments about the awful overpriced items we somehow still desire.
And then we snuggle in the bed and talk some more.
I dunno. Maybe other polyamorous primaries have issues because getting time with their spouses involves fighting off Skyrim and the need for isolation and the hobbies they want to get done and the guys’ night out. But with us, our need for each other is as clear as our need for water, and if there’s any chance we can be together, we will.
So when Gini wanders off for a weekend with S, or I go off with a weekend with J, I don’t think we get too many of the “Do they really want me?” willies. Because I know when Gini returns, she’s going to get out of that car smiling and she’s going to fling her arms around me and then we’re going to go inside and cuddle the heck out of each other.
In my darker dumber hours, I doubt she loves me. I never doubt she likes me.
That makes it easy.
I Put On Some Make-up, Turn Up The Tape Deck
So it’s a Saturday night and I’m sitting in my living room, tying up my wife’s feet. Well, her legs, really; I’ve been trying to master limb locks and the two-column ties after watching the videos at TwistedMonk.com and the diagrams in the Complete Shibari book. And I’ve been advised that I should just practice at will instead of trying to invariably link the complex intricacies of “ropework” with “hot sex,” since the frustration of “SEX NAO?” will magnify the frustrations of knot-learning.
So I’m on my second drink of the night, watching DS9 with Gini as she lays across the couch and periodically I go, “Okay, try to get out.”
She does. Too often. Not entirely my fault. This Home Depot nylon’s really slippery rope.
I text pictures to a few friends showing them my odd Saturday night, and Jenphalian – a true rope-bunny – wonders what the hell kind of two-column tie I’m trying. She’s bored, I’m happy to learn, so I install Skype and we webcam it up. Gini stands as Jen teaches me her foolproof method of securing limbs – a lot quicker and bunnyproof than the two methods I know – and then I’m holding the Complete Shibari book up to the screen as she squints and tries to make more sense of the book than I have.
Suddenly, my life implodes a little as I realize the oddness of it all. Here I am, chatting with a beloved sex partner of mine on the Internet webcam as we’re discussing better ways to tie up my wife, and this isn’t sexual, we’re genuinely working hard to untangle this problem, and I reflect on all the ways kink and poly and friendship and the Internet have been knotted up in a way that I couldn’t possibly explain to others but makes such a raw and intimate sense to me.
And the strangest things seem suddenly routine.
The Gift Of "Slut"
(WARNING: This one’s a little more explicit than most of my posts. Also, I’m exploring gender issues as gingerly as I can, so please. Be gentle as I question and explore.)
The comedy “Yes, Minister” introduced me to the concept of irregular verbs that shifted depending on who you were talking about: “It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I have an independent mind. You are an eccentric. He is round the twist.”
Talking dirty has introduced me to a set of irregular nouns: “Slut” and “Whore.”
I’ve only recently begun to introduce more verbal erotica to my bedroom activities, but it’s been enlightening in the sense that calling my lover “whore” becomes a tipping point. It’s an insult in real life, but once unleashed in the bedroom – and I don’t say it until she’s sufficiently squirmy – it becomes this volcanic release.
“You fucking slut,” I say, shoving my hand down her panties. “Look at how wet you are. You want it, don’t you? You’re so enslaved by lust you’ll do anything, any time. Not just for me, you want to fuck everyone. You are filled with filthy fucking thoughts. In the office, on the street, a dripping dirty whore…”
And they writhe, and cry out, and suddenly the sex is ten times hotter because that was like the key. It’s on. Sometimes they moan no, they’re good girls, and I point out that good girls don’t do what they’re doing to me now, and oh God does it get good.
But I’ve been considering that, because it seems to be a fair constant across a number of women I’ve either been having sex with or eroticaing with. I’ve always been loath to call women “whores,” because I like women who fuck. I don’t want to shame them for indulging in urges I consider not only beneficial, but actively healthy. I like women who aren’t repressed, and as such slut-shaming them in bed seemed like a mean thing to do.
As time has gone on, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reaction is societal. It’s not mean, in that context – society is so full of contradictions for women in that they’re told they should be eternally skinny and big-titted and desirable, yet keep your virginity for as long as you can because you’re not supposed to like that and don’t sleep with men unless it’s a stop on the cattle car to Marriageville.
Whispered in the right context, “slut” is freeing. It’s an acknowledgement that yes, you have just as many lusts as men do, not just about me here and now but all the time – and in this moment here in the bedroom, I’m telling you that’s all right. I like that. I want you to be depraved, it turns me on, and let’s open up this space where we admit that the only difference between you and me is that society tells you that you shouldn’t but makes excuses for me.
It’s uncomfortable, viewed from that lens – being the gateway to a temporary freedom feels like I’m surfing a power given to me that I shouldn’t necessarily have. Is it an exercise in male privilege? I’ve been wrestling with that for some time. But on the other hand, they do want it, or the women who trust me enough to share their sexuality with me wouldn’t keep coming back to have me whisper it in their ear…
And I think, after a lot of thought on the topic, that it is ultimately freeing. I think that it’s chipping at that big old concrete wall with an icepick, letting women know that yes, they not only can but actively should harbor sexual desires. It’s picking at a knot in their psyche that needs to be untangled, and sometimes that intersection between “the dominant culture says no” and “your desires say yes” leads to fucking explosive sexual heat.
And I mean, hey, I’ll tell you that here now in a non-bedroom context, as a take from J. Random Guy: it’s good to have those feelings. It doesn’t make you a slut. It makes you a sexually empowered human. And the fact that you’re looking at that cute guy (or girl) behind the movie popcorn counter and picturing all the depraved things you want to do with them? That desire is perfectly okay, and anyone who tells you that it isn’t has an agenda designed on some level to cripple and shame you.
But saying it here doesn’t have the impact that it does in the bedroom. Here with me, with my hands on you, you can be a slut and it is such a good thing and you are such a good girl. I’m crossing the streams. It’s fine.
On Writing
I’ve said before that my Clarion classmate Kat Howard is far smarter than I am. Allow me to let her prove this to you.
Go read her essay “On Being A Writer.” It’s about what it really takes to be a writer, at least in the sense that people traditionally mean it. And she fucking nails it. It’s what I would have written, had I the time. And talent.
A Love Follow-Up
Interestingly enough, though I love a lot of people, I am “in love” with only a handful. So maybe that’s the break-point in my mind.
Then again, I only approach that break-point for romantic love, which seems strangely limiting.
What Is Love? Tell Me, Tell Me, If You Think You Know
I fall in love easily. But I do not think that word means what you think it means.
For me, “love” is an inefficient word, like “Democrat” or “Polyamory” – sure, it contains a loose definition, but when you scratch the surface you’ll find the only people who definitively know what it means are the people who know the least about it at all.
By which I mean that the only people who know for sure what polyamory is are the people who want nothing to do with it because they saw a poly guy once and he was scum and ugh I know all about it. Whereas those who are polyamorous know there are so many ways to be poly that the only thing it really means is “You can date more than one person.” And sometimes, like bisexuality, the accent’s on the “can,” not the “you actually are.”
So love. What’s that mean?
I dunno. I love a lot of people I’ve never even met. To me, love is a form of concern – if they were in trouble and I’d be distressed about that and want to help, to me that’s a sign that I love them on some level. Their happiness has become integral to my own.
Now, it’s not like if an email pal of mine loses his job, I won’t be able to function until he’s re-employed. I’ll just fret about him at times until he manages to get picked back up. But to me, that’s a love.
Which means that friendship is love to me, even weak friendships. I love a lot more of my friends’ list than I think they’d ever suspect.
Sex is love, to me. I mean, it doesn’t have to be, but at one point I was talking to a friend of mine who was having problems connecting with some of her sexual partners, and what I told her is that the way I do things, I have to like the person I’m with before we can have sex. And in that moment of intimacy, when we’re trusting each other enough to do all of the foolish things that sex consists of, all the goofy faces and fear of being bad and exploring pleasure honestly, I have to fall a little in love.
We’re sharing something that’s an act of trust, and the fact that they are trusting me in this moment of literal nakedness means something, and so I let the love flow for this hour that we’re together, feel that flow through me, and accept it. And when it’s done, it’s not necessarily a deep romantic love (though it can be), but is usually the sort of friendship-bonding that we’ve had a moment together that can’t be shared effectively with anyone else.
I can do sex without love. I just find it unsatisfying. Always have.
Yet that love is not the love that swells in my heart when I think of my girlfriends or my wife. It’s a tiny love, but that makes it no less real, any more than large sunflowers are better than a small cluster of baby’s breath. The love I feel for Gini means more, but that doesn’t mean I can entirely discount what happened.
I dunno. Gini says that my love is so wide as to be meaningless at times – what I call “love,” others would call “friendship.” And I can’t debate that. But to me friendship is love, just a different flavor of it, and love permeates so much of what we do that it’s hard for me to distinguish it on any meaningful level.
If I were to measure love it’d be distinguished by not how I feel, but by what I would do, and that’s a tricky thing. Obviously, I’d do anything to ensure Gini’s happiness, whereas maybe I’ll see if I know anyone in the area for my out-of-work friend. But even then, it doesn’t mean I don’t love them both, it just means that my love has practical limits thanks to time. Or maybe that difference is how it’s measured for everyone.
It’s simpler for other people, I guess. Some people dole out love like it’s an award you’ve unlocked on the X-Box, giving it to three or four people in their lifetime after a certain emotional catharsis has been reached – and that’s not bad, but it just strikes me as being limiting in some way, because I think they feel the same emotions as I do, they just don’t want to admit it until they’re absolutely convinced the other person won’t hurt them. Or maybe they do feel it differently, and I’m a free-loving freak.
I dunno. Love is a universal, for me; I’m lucky enough to be swimming in a wash of love from friends and lovers and families, and I find when I hand it out it tends to come back. But there are times when Gini’s words nag at me and I wonder whether I’m misusing the word “love,” and whether it means anything real.
I feel it does. But there’s no way of knowing. Because everyone measures it so damn differently.