Association

I’m sorry in advance that this is going to be a long post, but I felt inspired to write about this topic.

Let me start with a story. When I was in college, there was a girl on campus who we’ll just call “Jill.” Jill was (and perhaps still is) a slut, and I say that word without any negative or positive connotations. In other words, whether you think it was good or bad, Jill slept around. A lot. There were rumors that she had been with over 100 men, and she confirmed that she was a part of at least one threesome. Jill enjoyed sex, and the men at my college enjoyed Jill. I wasn’t personally friends with Jill, simply because we didn’t run in the same circles and never met. I just knew of Jill. Everyone did.

Some people were extremely upset by this. I lived with a girl (by lottery, not choice, though we got along well enough) who was pretty vocal about the fact that Jill was a slut – only she used the term with a definite negative connotation. Jill had hooked up with one of her friend’s brothers or cousins or something, and even though that guy seemed fine with being loved and left, apparently it made Jill a bad person in her book. Let’s call this girl Melissa.

Both Melissa and I lived with yet another girl, who I’ll name Cindy for the purpose of this story (the lengths I go to protect identities of people who don’t read this site…). Anyway, Cindy and Jill were pretty good friends, mainly because they were in the same major and saw each other in nearly every class, since we went to a small college. Cindy was not promiscuous, at least, no more than the average 20-something girl, and she also got along with Melissa.

Well, that is, until Melissa found out that Cindy was such good friends with Jill. Although they never had a confrontation about it, Melissa pretty much stopped hanging out with Cindy completely, and would talk to me regularly about how she couldn’t believe that Cindy was friends with Jill.

Here’s what I never understood – what did Cindy’s friend with Jill have to do with her friendship with Melissa. She wasn’t forcing them to hang out together, and obviously the things Melissa found so horrible about Jill weren’t rubbing off on Cindy, since she went an entire summer being friends with her and only backed off when she randomly found out there was an association there.

But I was ok. I was friends with Cindy, who was friends with Jill, but that was far enough away from the source that Melissa was still willing to hang out with me. But if Melissa truly believe that it made Cindy a bad person to not boycott Jill, why didn’t it make me a bad person not to boycott Cindy? Or Melissa a bad person not to boycott me? Where do you draw the line, and how do you justify it?

For the record, I would like to say that I don’t think Jill did anything wrong, and while I do think she could have respected herself more in some situations and could have certainly been safer (from what I heard), I don’t look down on her for the choices she made. She had a lot of awesome sex in college, and that’s great.

But in Melissa’s world, Jill was the source of evil. Ground Zero, so to speak. And you know, I support Melissa for refusing to be friends with Jill. It may not have been my choice, but she saw something in the world she didn’t like and she took a stand against it. We’re not talking rallies or something here, but I respect Melissa for saying, “I don’t agree with what you do, and therefore, I want to have no association to you.”

We all say that to some people or websites or companies (whatever). Some people boycott Wal-Mart. Some people blacklist certain blogs. Whatever, the point is – it makes sense.

But once you start moving away from the source, does it really make sense to cut ties? Did it make sense for Melissa to stop being friends with Cindy because she was friends with Jill?Would it have made sense for her to cut ties with me because I was friends with Cindy?

Over the past few weeks, this has been an issue for me because of some things I’ve been seeing in the sex blog/pos community. Actually, this issue goes back even further, years before I even got involved with my own sex blog. Here is a sampling of situations:

     1. Some people are boycotting a certain sex toy company because of their policies. I totally understand that.

     2. Some people are boycotting a certain website because the writer is controversial. I totally understand that.

     3. Some people are boycotting a certain person because they believe he was in the wrong in a he said/she said situation. I totally understand that.

I can continue with instances of people in the sex blog/pos community boycotting others, and seriously, it makes a tons of sense to remove your associations with someone who is doing something you don’t like.

But then…

     1. Some people are boycotting bloggers who still advertise for this sex toy company.

     2. Some people are boycotting a a company that has said the controversial writer has freedom of speech writers that should be defended.

     3. Some people are boycotting anyone who takes the “he said” side of the argument.

Erm…ok. Well, I guess I can understand those things. I mean, if you don’t want to associate with someone/thing, I suppose it makes sense to remove associations that are strong tied to those people or companies.

BUT THEN…

     1. Some people are boycotting bloggers who are haven’t spoken for or against this company, who have chosen to remain friends with bloggers who are still advertising with this copmany.

     2. Some people are boycotting an event that allowed the company who defended the controversial blogger’s freedom of speech to take part in the conference.

     3. Some people are boycotting people who are still associating with those on the “he said” side of the argument, even though they don’t have knowledge of what happened because they weren’t there.

It starts to spiral out of control. It’s like the Melissa/Cindy/Jill situation. Jill is the shady sex toy company. Jill is the controversial writer. Jill is the guy who allegedly did something wrong. If you want to boycott Jill – if you want to flat-out hate Jill…I respect you for that, regardless of whether I agree with you or not.

But when you start hating associates…just please be careful, because that hate can start to consume you. Where do you draw the line? As Melissa, how do you justify hating Cindy, but not hating me?

And as a member of the human race, how do you figure out what associations to make? How do you hate people because of their associations, but then not live in complete fear that you’re linked to that same thing you hate somehow? And really, you are if you go through enough degrees of separation. Everyone’s linked somehow. It’s the Kevin Bacon game.

And how do you not live in fear that when you’ve made all the cuts you’ve felt like you had to make based on associations that you aren’t completely alone?

I don’t want to say it was wrong for Melissa to cut her ties with Cindy. She did what she thought was best. She drew the line in the sand, and I made the cut, staying on side of the line that was still pure enough.

Am I pure enough for you? Are you pure enough for you?

This is just part of a much bigger philosophical debate, I suppose, but for today, I’ll end it here and hope that I am judged on my actions, and that I am able to make decisions about my own associates as fairly as possible.