Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Neil Gaiman (thanks to coraline): "'If teenage girls put on elf ears,' I said today, back in the VIP room, pondering the unfairness of it all, 'no matter how gawky they think of themselves in real life, they become beautiful. Whereas if I put on elf ears, I would look like a dissipated Vulcan.'"

Hmm. I was amused by the Rice purity test a long, long time ago. I was intrigued by the 250-question version, tittilated by a couple of speciality versions, and briefly amused by the 400-question version some time later. I thought the standard 500- and 1000-question versions got too long, and like the author of the current "Ultimate Purity Quiz" that's sweeping the net, didn't fancy the inclusion of all the drug/lawbreaking questions into the purity score. Well, it took me a few days, but I finally got around to taking this new test, a bit behind most of my friends, it seems.

( If you really do want to know... )

I was actually surprised by some of the results. The total sounds about right (I think the lowest I scored was 39% on some earlier version, and the highest was somewhere in the 50s or 60s on one that had a lot of drug questions), but I was surprised to get such a high sex-drive score (my cuddle-drive is an order of magnitude larger than my sex-drive, which has frustrated some of my partners), and I was impressed at just how many points one particular group encounter could do. (If you're wondering, it was the night I cloved myself at a convention, and it wasn't the "fucking sick" category that those points came out of, mostly.) I thought the kink section was a bit naive, left out a few kinks, and failed to distinguish between "tried that" and "dependent on that for arousal" -- the nature of a purity test suggests the former, but the phrasing of the descriptions implies the latter. (I'm not sure whether "did that to please a partner" should be counted separately than "did that because it turned me on" or not.) ( TMI? )

One fun part was deciding, as a transgendered person, how to answer the same-sex/other-sex questions. I figure most of my partners have percieved me as male, "both", or "in-between", and relatively few have viewed me as female, so it was easier to answer from a male point of view. (Which gender is "opposite" from intergendered?) The instructions said, "transsexuals, just pick one", so I figured that meant most transgendered folks, not just transsexuals, right? Anyhow, one expects tests like these to be naive regarding intersexed/intergendered/genderqueer and otherwise hard to classify folks.

Perhaps it would've been easier if the test designer had used what I consider a "better but still simplified" model of orientation instead of the cultural standard "gay vs. het" dichotomy? My model has two axes: attraction to women on one axis, and attraction to men on the other. The whole "which is 'other'" question for the purpose of assigning "het" or "gay" values is sidestepped. It's still incomplete, 'cause it doesn't take into account attraction to (or experience with) intergendered/transgendered/intersexed partners, nor does it account for the complicated interplay of kink and partner-selection (I know people who'd gladly flog -- or take a flogging from -- someone of the "wrong sex" for them to be interested in having sex with, for example). But it's still, in my not-so-humble opinion, a more useful model for mapping orientation than the single-axis model typified by the Kinsey scale, manifested in scores of cultural memes, and reinforced by quizes such as this one attempting to measure "gayness" and "straightness". (Though this one does at least make gayness and straightness separate axes, which is a positive step.)

I never did get around to making up the Fannish Purity Test that I thought of years ago -- with question such as, "Have you ever done it under the bed?" and "Have you ever done it under a strobelight?". Would've been more for giggle value than anything else, of course, just like most.

I was actually tempted to not post my Ultimate Purity Quiz results here, since someone I fell in love with had such shockinly higher scores than mine and I feared looking terribly depraved (or at least mis-matched) in her eyes. But I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed anyhow, unless I've misread the signs, and I don't think she's keeping up with my journal lately anyhow. The interesting thing is that this is the first time I can ever remember having been hesitant to reveal my score on a purity test. And it's only because I saw her results first.

And, all in all, the whole train of thought seems very, very silly. The more so considering how I spent last night and this morning. And that's what really captures my attention: the absurdity of my thinking of worrying about it. Somethng to pry loose and examine for clues about the shadowy parts of the inside of my skull, I guess.