I was considered gifted. I was raised by parents who never showed me any affection, so I excelled in school because being praised by teachers was the only way for me to receive positive attention from a caregiver figure. I ended up crashing after high school and had to do the long, arduous work of treating my deep-seated psychological trauma. I ended up developing an autoimmune disease when I turned 18, likely from the chronic stress, but it’s infinitely better than constantly ruminating about how nobody will ever love me unless I get an A++ in every class. I am suffering decidedly less these days.

Well, the issue is that I have circulatory problems. Mine used to work better, but after my condition developed, I can only get around 60-80% there. I think part of the reason I want a non-penetrative relationship is because I don’t want to get attached to a function that I might not be able to perform, if not now, then in a few months or years if my circulation worsens further.

You’re probably right about the ignorance thing. I’ve never done this before, so I just assume that a softer erection is unusable or wouldn’t be accepted at my age. I don’t have anyone I can really talk to about this stuff because my family doesn’t want to talk about it and they expect me to figure everything out on my own. So I kinda just read and ask questions on the Internet. It sounds kinda pathetic, but it has helped me a lot.

I’ve actually had a few fantasies about using my fingers. I think for me the main thing is that I enjoy sex that is sensual and massage-like compared to something rough or vigorous (like thrusting tends to be). Fast pacing or forceful movements, no matter what the activity is, are turn-offs for me, but something deep and slow-paced that feels like you’re melting into one another is wonderful.

Maybe it isn’t wise for me to fully write off penetration, because I might implicitly be assuming that penetration can’t be slow and melty. And even if it isn’t my favorite thing, maybe I can enjoy the emotional atmosphere and feelings of closeness. So perhaps the most important thing is having that compatible slower-paced energy and being willing to try things rather than completely relying on my flawed human intuition.

I have a habit of casting the things that make me unique in a negative light and getting very doomer-y about them isolating me from everyone else (or at the very least being a major liability), rather than believing that my differences can be appreciated or compromises can be made. Maybe that’s the real issue here.

So I don’t disagree that this is the best way to do it, and I find your suggestions helpful, but… what about the phones in people’s pockets that could be recording and the security cameras inside buildings?

Doesn’t that data end up in the hands of a corporation that aggregates data about everything you do, or am I being way too paranoid/conspiratorial about this? I assumed that machine learning algorithms would make it trivial to automatically parse and aggregate all of that data for every individual, but maybe I’m overestimating the scope and accuracy of these systems.

Why do you need to stop using discord?

I’m worried about the current U.S. political climate. Discord is an American company with data about what millions of people are talking about, including their political opinions, minority status, and what groups they associate with. It seems like a goldmine for the government to compile a list of targets to go after in future purges. I don’t know how easy it is to tie users with real-world identities (certainly payment info would be one way), but I don’t want to find out.

And, well, I guess I’m a coward. I saw privacy as necessary for survival because it might spare me from ending up on the list, at least temporarily. But now I’m starting to realize that hiding might just be a really crappy solution. I’m not doing anything to prevent these purges from happening, and even if I succeeded at flying under the radar, the vast majority of people who believe the same way I do will be dead, hiding, or rotting in gulags. Is that the world I want to live in?

It seems like this short-sighted instinct to save myself is only isolating me and helping the enemy. I just find it hard to accept that I might not get to live much longer after everything I’ve done. I still have hopes and dreams, and it’s difficult to let them go, especially because everyone around me had so much hope for me. I don’t want to believe that my life could be cut short in what may become the largest genocide in history. But if I don’t come to terms with the truth, I will continue hiding in cold, lonely isolation, foolishly believing that the life I seek can still materialize as long as I stay quiet amidst the encroaching horrors.

But isn’t a bottom purely passive/receptive/compliant though? I also fantasize about assertively directing my partner’s pleasure too and find the idea thrilling. I didn’t talk about it much in the post because that was more expected with traditional gender roles. Wouldn’t the right term for me be “switch” or “versatile”?

The reason I need my partner to be assertive still is because I need the back-and-forth aspect to get excited, like in a “You got me good, now it’s MY TURN!” kind of way.

Yeah, I feel like I was pretty intellectually lazy in that part.

What I really mean is that I don’t like sexual activity that looks mean or degrading or painful or has dark undertones. It hits an uncanny valley for me because my preferred type of intimacy is all lovey-dovey and responsive to a partner’s real-time comfort. I don’t think BDSM is bad, it’s just not my thing.

Although maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ll change my mind one day and come up with some unique sunshine-and-rainbows twist on it. It just wouldn’t be what immediately comes to mind when people think of BDSM. I mostly added that section to make it clear that I’m not talking about the kind of control that people often associate with BDSM and meant something more nuanced.

I really like this argument because the only response I can come up with is “I’m uniquely kinky/unlucky compared to everyone else” based on no real evidence

Maybe… maybe I’m not the main character…

Yeah, that’s kind of why I mentioned at the end that this post might sound kind of ridiculous to outsiders lol.

One of the main reasons it sounds like incel talk is because the bedrock of this insecurity is gender essentialism, which is an idea that was hammered into my head constantly and very painfully when I was young. Now, it’s an incumbent idea that I have to viciously fight against, because if I don’t, I default to the established prescriptivist view: that because I deviate from gender roles, the very core of who I am is wrong and incompatible with society, I’m not masculine enough to find love, and my desires aren’t compatible with women. These were not just made-up ideas either; they were socially reinforced by nearly every person I talked to in the conservative communities I lived in. I was a pariah because I was different, even in my own family.

I had to think about this stuff extensively because it was the only counter I had to their speech. If I unquestioningly accepted what everyone said about me, I would be dead right now. But because I am willing to spend the time to seek outside information and deconstruct the toxic ideologies that surround me in the real world, I am able to build self-confidence in the face of universal rejection. There was no mentor figure or safe haven in my life who I could talk to about these issues, so I ultimately faced a long, arduous journey of de-programming myself by seeking outside information through the Internet.

It might be hard to believe from this post, but I feel 100 times better about myself today than I did a decade ago. Today, I wholeheartedly accept who I am and believe that I am capable and worthy of love. I’m just trying to figure out how to make intimacy work with my unique attraction patterns, and I’m making good progress on that, too!

Okay, okay, you’re not gonna believe this…

I don’t have any.

I never tried to date anyone precisely because I saw the kind of intimacy I wanted as impossible. I always just assumed that anyone I dated would flop over like a dead fish in bed, and that’s just not sexy to me. Up until this point, I believed that my own sexual drives were incompatible with everyone else’s and could only be satisfied through fantasy. Only now am I questioning if this is actually the case.