Chaucer’s take is a little different.

In Troilus and Criseyde Troilus is, in fact, rather passive in his actions. True, the drama of his feeling almost overwhelms the poetry of Book I, but he actually does very little. Meanwhile, Criseyde is continually resistant to any mention of his affection (and even when she gives into it, she is adamant that she wants to keep the independence she has as a widow).

But, of course, a passive hero and a resistant heroine are never going to come together of their own free will, and so Chaucer creates the character of Pandarus. Friend to Troilus, and uncle to Criseyde, Pandarus is a bizarre creature, who initially seems to genuinely care for both of the lovers, and even speaks some sensible words to Troilus. But as the narrative goes on, he becomes more and more manipulative, putting into action the things Troilus lacks the will to do.

By lying to her, Pandarus in fact takes over almost complete management of Criseyde’s physical being.

In Book III, for example, he uses lies to persuade Criseyde to come to his house, and then to stay the night, and then to take a room in a quieter, more intimate part of the house, and then to allow Troilus to visit her in her bedroom that night, and so on and so forth. Almost always, his final argument is that if she won’t do as he says, Troilus will surely die of heartache (and Pandarus will die from sorrow over the death of his friend).

Reading this, as the lies build and Pandarus becomes ever more manipulative, you can’t help but question Criseyde’s consent. At one point Pandarus practically strips Troilus and forces him into Criseyde’s bed. Criseyde often says no to things initially, but Pandarus always gets her consent in the end. However, the way he gets her consent is by lying to her, and whilst, to my mind, there is no question as to whether or not Criseyde is being coerced – she is! – this dynamic has brought to mind an entirely different question.

Can anyone give their consent if they are being lied to about their situation?

In the past I have been on all three sides of cheating; I have been cheated on, I have cheated on people, and I have slept with people who were cheating on their partners. I won’t ever deny this, and I still strive to withhold from judging those who do cheat – after all, every situation is unique – but I made a decision never to participate in cheating again. I wish I could say this was for moral reasons, but whilst I may have taken on some sense of morality, the main reasons I made this definitive decision were selfish: cheating made me feel bad, and I realised that I deserved more than half a partner.

Having given up the need to defend my own actions, I now have a different view of cheating, and, perhaps because I no longer have to deny it to myself, something about it really bothers me. Reading Troilus and Criseyde over the past five weeks, I have finally figured out what it is about cheating that makes me feel so uncomfortable, and it is this question of consent.

Let me give you an example:

John and Jane are married. Unbeknownst to Jane, John has been sleeping with somebody else. If Jane knew that he was cheating on her, she might withdraw her consent to sleep with John. But she doesn’t know, and so when they have sex, she is giving her consent based on the incorrect belief that John is being faithful.

Therefore, is there not a question as to the validity of Jane’s consent?

On the one hand, we as human beings have to take into account that at any given moment, we may be lied to. By being part of society, we accept that we may not always get the truth. Therefore, when anyone gives their consent to sleep with someone, they accept that there is a chance that the other person is lying to them, and that has to be taken into account as part of their decision.

But we all know how important trust is in relationships. There comes a point when consent may not be based on the individual’s own instinct, but on how much the individual trusts his/her partner. Therefore, if his/her partner is lying to the individual, the conditions of their consent may be undermined.

Really, what I wish to do here is to present uninformed consent as the grey area between informed consent, and non-consent.

There is no final answer to this problem: people cheat for a variety of reasons, and I have even come across cases – mostly where children are involved – in which cheating seemed to be the lesser of two evils. But still, this question of consent bothers me.

We can rarely be 100% sure that the conditions of our consent are being met, but there is most definitely a difference between the kind of knowledge we need in the early stages of dating, and the kind of trust we rely on in long term relationships in order to make an informed decision.

The only kind of conclusion I can come to is this: perhaps when we, as human beings, make the decision to sleep with someone, we ought to also take into account how that decision may affect the consent of the other people in our lives. Because in this world of sexual freedom, and BDSM, and polyamory, the importance of consent seems to be the one thing we all agree on. But are we really defining it honestly?

The post Pandarus: the gatekeeper of consent appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Welcome to e[lust] - The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at e[lust]. Want to be included in e[lust] #38? Start with the newly updated rules, come back July 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

~ Top 3 ~

Coming to Terms with Being Gay – From the time I was seven I was raised Mormon, which meant I wasn’t allowed to have a girlfriend until I was 16 or to have sex until I was married.

What I Want – I want to be humiliated. Call me a slut. Call me a whore. Slap my face. Expose me.

Dinner Party Entertainment – At that moment, J’s eyes went wide–he finally realized I was leaving him there, tied to the bed.

~ Featured Post (Picked by Lilly) ~

My Abstinence Only “Sex Education” – The speakers were a married, Christian couple, and the man told us about how he had pledged to stay a virgin until he was married.

~ e[lust] Editress ~

Your Crappy Writing Turns Me Off – Your written words are your clothes, your power, your voice, your facial expressions and that by which we measure intelligence, personality and even attractiveness.

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

A New Found Respect for Bondage Educators
Cunt: Healing sexual abuse
Equal but Different
Fuck you. Without a condom
Harper Eliot’s Guide to Surviving Drop Alone
PolyAnna’s Musings: What About the Kids
Settling down–bullshit free

Sex News, Interviews, Politics & Humor

Sweet Valley High Meets the Story of Oh My!
Women’s rape fantasies
Why May is Nat’l Masturbation Month

Erotic Writing

Ache
A Word on What Your Words Do to Me
Anything the Lady Wants
Breathless
Cemetery Sex
Dropped Call
Fucking a Stranger’s Wife While He Watched
Folly, part 4
Getting His Attention
Jerk and Tug
Jill’s Look Back at Masturbation Month
Like a Faggot
Phontographs (fiction, part 1)
Release
Senses and Scents
Spearmint Rhino
Swing: Part I
The Dance
Touch Me, Tease Me

Kink & Fetish

Earning My Wings
fantasy with beast/the train ride
His first crop spanking
Learn the rope of knots: Larks Head
Popping my anal cherry
Stress Relief
Staying power
The Cutting Edge
Tie Me Up! ~ I think…
Why chastity is hot
What I Like and Why

The post e[lust] #37 appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

Welcome to e[lust] - Your source for sexual intelligence and inspirations of lust from the smartest & sexiest bloggers! Whether you’re looking for hot steamy smut, thought-provoking opinions or expert information, you’re going to find it here. Want to be included in e[lust] #31? Start with the rules, check out the schedule and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

~ This Week’s Top Three Posts ~

Crotch Topiary & Other Delights – I admit I started simple, I realised my teenage dream of having a Winona-inspired heart emblazoned on my mound. It was perfect. I used Contact paper to design my heart and just went to town pulling out every hair that was not covered.

In Defense of Exclusion – Sometimes it’s nice to be with people who are like you. It’s nice to be around people who get your kink, your fetish – to be somewhere that you don’t have to explain it to.

The Boy At Summer Camp – It started with an email with the subject line ‘butch at your service,’ and an offer for a blow job. And I thought, hm. Well, you know, I do like those. But I’m not usually attracted to boys.

~ e[lust] Editress ~

Ask Lilly: “My sex toy stinks – what should I do?” – Would you put it in your mouth with that smell? Would you gag from the smell and taste? If yes, then why the hell put it in your vagina or ass??

~ Featured Post (Lilly’s Pick) ~

A Day At The Circus

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the ‘read more?’ tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!

Erotic Writing

A Long Hot Weekend
A night time walk
A Summer Honeymoon
Blithely Sauntering
Cleaning Up
Cigar
Dreamweaver
Ep 2: One Last Time
Full Frontal Nerdity
Get ready for take off…
Hear this
Let’s Play a Game
Le Glamour, the best swing club experience ever
Perspective
Patience for What She Wants
The Cane
The Car Wash
what makes you happy?

Kink & Fetish

A First Ever Punishment
crunk
Having Respect for Dominants
One Year. Today
Spider silk
Those inside-out, head-exploding orgasms
To Munch Or Not To Munch?

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

assplay and me…
Comparisons
Here Comes The Bride
Lover as Chameleon – Flexible Sexual Kinkery
Must we all get along?
Not all conclusions are easy to come by
Non-Monogamy and Starbucks
The (Female) Phenomenon of Emotional Masochism
Why I Love Sex (In That 70′s Show)

Sex News, Interviews, Politics & Humor

Internet Drag
Selling Used Socks on eBay for Extra Money
Sex in Sin City (Yes I had me some…)
The Curses of the Scarlet Woman
Things I Looove Thursday

The post e[lust] #30 appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).

This in and of itself is not something I see as a problem. Mostly it just seems to be the way we’re made.

But there is another saying, which seems to be far too true (for my comfort). Oscar Wilde said “All I wish to point out is that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” And he was right. Our trends, our fashions, our lifestyles, our choices are often based on those we hear about, read about and see. And unfortunately, our view of women has become one of neurosis, clinginess and obsession.

I recently started watching Sex and the City again; I had forgotten just how much of that show is based around women worrying about, obsessing over and analysing their relationships with men. And that aspect of this show is not unique. It seems that a large number of TV shows/books/films aimed at women give a fair amount of their time to this kind of thing; Bridget Jones, Eat Pray Love, Sleepless in Seattle, even Austen, – not to mention the literature aimed at adolescent girls – all seem to be encouraging these obsessive tendencies. And if we are modeling our lives on those we read/see/hear, then I have to ask: isn’t our society encouraging bad behaviour?

Furthermore, all of the agonising those fictional women (and, by association, us real women) do, seems to be based on this constant struggle between how we believe men should act, and how they behave in reality. Which begs the question, who sat down and decided that if a man doesn’t call you for three days, if he wants to have his own life, if he flirts with someone else, he is, automatically, an asshole? And what – to me – seems particularly unfair about this state of affairs is that men are, for the most part, unaware of the rules that have been made for them because (shockingly) they don’t watch Sex and the City.

At this point – as I always seem to do, – I have to insert a few disclaimers: of course, for many women, this isn’t an issue. Many – if not most – of the ladies in the room seem to have made up their own minds about how they should be treated and how they should treat others, and so the whole question of “should” versus “does” is null and void. They’ve taken the view that men and women are just people and it’s up to us to decide what we’re looking for. On the other side of that, I’m sure there are things men do that are just as bizarre as this situation seems to me; but I’m a woman, and I’m commenting on this side. For now. And as for the fiction we are consuming? Well, there is evidence to show that people who read novels are better equipped to live in this World because they have more understanding of how other people experience life. We thrive on our own experiences, so consuming other people’s – whether they be real or not, and all good fiction has some truth in it, – is, most likely, going to enrich our experiences.

However, despite the collective intelligence of women, men and books, I have still come across enough hand-wringing girls to prompt me to write this article. Try as they might, it is evident, daily, that many women expect more from men than they are ever likely to get – and in some cases more than any man could give. And the prevalence of this “he hurt me, ergo he is an asshole” attitude is starting to grate. In fact, in some cases it has reached ridiculous heights; I saw a facebook status a few days ago reading “[insert male name here] just dumped [insert female name here]; what an asshole”. I decided to give this girl the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that he must have done something more than just break up with her to warrant the label “asshole”. But when I asked, it became clear to me that he hadn’t. He just dumped her because, presumably, it wasn’t working for him. Of course, she’s allowed to be angry, fair play; and then I read the collective hatred coming from her friends, who all agreed that he was/is an asshole. I know in this case it’s probably more a show of solidarity than genuine feeling, but – again – is this not just an undesirable trend that is going to lead to yet more bad behaviour?

If I had read more of the books that were aimed at me as a teenager – and I have done since – rather than being distracted by Hanif Kureishi, E. A. Poe and Ian McEwan, I’m almost certain I’d have wracked up a fair amount of presumptions about how guys were ‘supposed’ to treat me. It seems that at some (indefinable?) point in time, romance gave way to obsession. When did our heroines stop being swept off their feet and start analysing their relationships to death? I’m sure, at it’s core, it was a push for realism that led us to this point – because people are rarely swept off their feet in real life – but it’s gone beyond that.

This actually ties in very well with another belief I have been nurturing for a while now. It’s not original and I come across it quite often on other blogs – particularly those based around unconventional relationships – and it is the idea that we need more relationship models. Human beings seem to be programmed to compare and contrast – or educated to, since “compare and contrast” was the title of my most important piece of A-level coursework – and so we compare relationships. With disastrous effects! Comparing your situation to other people’s has always proved to be a bad idea. You’re either not having enough sex, or you’re not talking enough, or the age gap is too large, or – my favourite one – you both deserve better.

And worst of all? Comparing relationships ultimately becomes comparing men. But I’ve never met a woman who didn’t want to be appreciated for her uniqueness. So why can’t we do the same for men? I’m a firm believer in tough love, and have sent many crying girl friends off to read the brutal words of Greg Behrendt (author of He’s Just Not That Into You). However, sometimes people are just busy. Three days of silence from a high powered businessman is not a lot, and it’s certainly not cause for talk of assholery.

A good friend of mine spent the first six months of this year in Canada, where she met, dated and fell in love with an Earth-loving, soup-kitchen-volunteering, soft-hearted guy. Sure, he wasn’t perfect; he was scatty and difficult to get hold of, but for the most part, he tried to keep a balance between work and their relationship, and openly asked her to live at his house at the weekends. Being the age they are, money was an issue and he couldn’t afford broadband, and sometimes the phone got cut off, and she knew this well. Yet, every time she couldn’t get in touch with him – and we’re talking a matter of hours, not days – she would start questioning his motives, wondering if he really cared about her at all, and branding him an asshole for not making her his priority. I comforted her as much as I could until I decided I’d had enough.

This is not a unique example. I could give you a list of female friends who have given me almost identical complaints about their respective male counterparts. Likewise I could present each of these girls with a list of movie-moments where a woman is sitting beside her phone or bitching about the guy she eventually ends up with.

But back to those relationship models. I find it disappointing that in a World of polyamory, fuck buddies, long distance relationships, divorce, childless-by-choice marriages, kink, (I could go on), the majority still cleave to this one idea of how a relationship should look: daily contact, dates every three to four days, monogamy, sex (that is enjoyed modestly and not shouted about), trivial gifts (to, presumably, show feelings that we can’t trust without materialism), a carefully calculated schedule – date, have sex, meet each other’s parents, say “I love you”, move in together – etc. Why are we still measuring our pleasure by what’s expected of us, and not by what we find pleasurable? And these expectations are crushing! because suddenly, if something isn’t where it’s “supposed to be”, all those girls who were raised on chick flicks and modern romance fiction, think there’s something terribly wrong with their relationship.

But, of course, we’re not stupid. Pointing this out to my female friends has only ever elicited the answer “Yeah, I know.” And they do! They know this over-obsessing is unnecessary, and yet it continues – prompted, I am certain, by the examples that surround us – because… well, why? The only conclusion I can ever really draw is that far too many women want or are willing to put themselves in harm’s way. I call it ‘emotional masochism’. And I do not understand it.

I will do almost anything to avoid romantic, emotional pain (which is, admittedly, another problem for another article). I have rules for myself, to avoid exactly this kind of upset, so to me it is completely incomprehensible when women (and men actually) put themselves in situations where they are likely to get hurt. If you know you are an unfairly jealous person, why would you ask your partner if [insert the main antagonist of your jealousy here] had been at that party? If you know you need daily contact, why would you be in a long distance relationship? If you asked to just be friends, why would you get pissed off when he/she goes out with someone else? This kind of behaviour is something I truly cannot fathom.

At the end of the day, I really don’t have any of the answers, but I boil it down to one simple truth; if you are unhappy in your relationship more often than you are happy, then you probably shouldn’t be in that relationship. But, for fuck’s sake, give yourself a chance and don’t make yourself miserable. And can we please stop comparing relationships and just find the cut that fits us?

The post The (Female) Phenomenon of Emotional Masochism appeared first on (It Girl. Rag Doll).