VirtualExile

I had to work for a couple hours this morning, Hiring Committee stuff, but now I've got the rest of the day off!  Tomorrow I'll have to work a couple hours again, but it will be Clean the House Day Because T is Coming Home anyway.

The rain has not been heavy enough to overwhelm our temporary defenses.  Not yet, anyway.  But now we have a flood warning for the afternoon, although the heavier rain from Hurricane [nameless] is moving a bit south of here.  I think the house will be fine.

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I've become more willing to say unpopular things on Reddit, heh.  The up/down voting system creates a groupthink, the Correct people vs. the Trolls.  I'm not a troll, but sometimes reality disagrees with groupthink.

I've got Karma to spare -- I've received thousands of upvotes, so I can spare a few downvotes.

Mainly, I'm supportive of people's unpopular feelings.  A guy gets jealous on the Polyamory Reddit, I'm supportive of his jealous feelings.  Everybody has feelings, we cannot control our feelings, all of your feelings are valid.  Jealousy is OK!

What you choose to do with your feelings, that's a different matter.  Actions are not feelings.  If a guy is upset with his wife for reasons that people don't like, well, he's still upset, he still needs support.

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Liberals in the US tend not to realize how their groupthink turns people off.  My favorite example is abortion -- acting like abortion is a civil rights issue turns people off -- it's a difficult decision, it involves a potential human life, we need to balance this potential human life against other concerns.  It's not just a Woman's Right to Choose.  There's also the father, and the potential child, it's tough.

But liberals turn people off in lots of other ways, and they have no idea they're doing it!  It's the righteousness.  Liberals are so sure they're Correct, anybody who disagrees must be a Troll.  Any other perspective must be Fake News.

Authoritarianism is not just a right-wing thing, folks.  Lefties do it too.

These days the social media site where I interact most with strangers is Reddit.  But only when I have the spare energy, sometimes I ignore Reddit for weeks.  Other times I post several comments per day.

Yesterday a younger gay fella wrote something disparaging about guys who jerk off to themselves in the mirror -- saying he would never date somebody like that.  When I questioned why he feels this way, he refused to even explain!  He said if I don't understand what's wrong with jerking off in the mirror, he's got nothing more to say to me.

I then expressed sorrow that he feels so much shame toward his own body, and ... my comment was downvoted by several readers.

I suppose it may have to do with how I was raised, that I don't understand this abhorrence toward jerking off in the mirror?  I don't know.  My parents didn't teach me to be ashamed of being gay, they were relatively feminist and anti-racist.  Although they were religious, they were religious in uplifting and positive ways.  I left the Church because I thought it was illogical, not because I felt persecuted.

I was aware that the Church considered masturbation to be a sin, but I didn't feel it actually was.  When I was a teenager, once I figured out how to masturbate to orgasm, I did so freely.  Except for one time when I had a competition with my best friend to see who could go the longest without an orgasm, like they did later on a Seinfeld episode.  Damn, I was so horny, I will probably never be that horny again in my life, as a 16-year-old who was trying to give up masturbation.  I think I lasted 11 days before fucking my pillow senseless.  I know, pillows are already senseless.  But fucking that pillow was the best orgasm of my life.

I didn't make a point of masturbating in front of the mirror every time, but I didn't think anything was wrong with doing so, I just didn't have a mirror in my bedroom.  I think there was a full-length mirror in the bathroom I shared with my father, I think, I think sometimes I masturbated in front of that mirror before taking a shower.

Much later on, a couple decades later, I started getting into playing with butt toys.  After a while, I started playing with butt toys in front of mirrors, so I could watch the action.  Technically not masturbation in front of a mirror, but doing kinky stuff to myself in front of a mirror.  One time I accidentally knocked down a mirror in my bedroom while doing this, I was probably intoxicated, heh.

Although I still play with butt toys, I stopped doing it in front of mirrors.  I'm not sure this was a conscious decision ... more of ... I switched from doing it in my bedroom, where there was a mirror, to doing it in my living room, where there wasn't.  Not a conscious decision.

I've never felt shame about playing with my body in front of a mirror, or looking at my body in front of a mirror.  I prefer that when I see myself in front of a mirror that I like what I see -- it is part of my motivation for exercising regularly, although I also enjoy the health benefits of regular exercise, and I enjoy the physical sensation of exercise.  It also seems to increase the amount of attention I get from other guys if I exercise regularly.  But, sure, part of it is that I have the ability to admire how I look in the mirror.  I've never felt shame about this.

So, to encounter a stranger who won't even explain to me why this is wrong -- it is so wrong it is unspeakable -- and I get downvoted for my response -- it's strange to me.

I think people should love their own bodies.  I think it is important to love yourself, and your body is a pretty huge part of yourself, you wouldn't exist without it.  Even if you are physically disabled in some way, you are still your body.

I'm not a mind/body dualist, I don't believe in a soul that is separate from the body.  The brain is part of the body, and if something goes wrong with your body, your brain will most likely also be affected, which will change how your perceive yourself -- your consciousness, your self-consciousness.  I don't perceive a separation between my body and the rest of myself.

Sure, how I appear in the mirror is only one aspect of my body, and I do try to keep this in the proper perspective.  Just as I've learned that the weight on my scale is just a number.  There are many aspects of myself that I try to keep in proper perspective, such as my sex at birth, my sexuality, my race, my age, even my politics.

I just don't get it, and he wouldn't explain it to me.  What's wrong with jerking off in the mirror?