pretty dumb things

is there a google bomber in the house?

Because I'd really, really like one. I will be your friend for life and pay cold, hard American cash. Email me if you are, or if you know, the stealthy motherfucker for the job.

shoot me, now!

 Help! I need a high-resolution, preferably attractive author-type photograph to accompany an article I've written for a big glossy magazine. Unfortunately, I also need the photo by Monday, 22 December. I know, it's a fast turn-around. If you are photographically inclined, live in Gotham, and want to do engage in a rush-rush labor of love (as opposed to a labor of money because I'm wicked broke), or if you know someone who conforms to the aforementioned criteria, please email me at chelseagsummers@gmail.com and let me know. I'll be forever in your debt.

kissy-kiss and happy Chrismukkuhkwanzivus,
chelsea g.

a pair of middle-aged men needing some/same help

For whatever constellations of reasons, my readers often feel comfortable asking me for advice. Last week, I received questions in the comments to two different posts from two separate male readers. As if to prove that the universe has a strange predilection toward events in confluence, or as if to prove that strange human lemming instinct that causes everyone in a restaurant to suddenly order the fondue, or as if to prove some other mystical force, the questions of these two men overlap.

The first one wonders about the change in his post-marital sex-life:

Why, do you think, as a married man, I have lost interest in oral sex?

My wife sucks a good cock -- but we seem to get right down to fucking and skip foreplay.

And that goes for me, too. Living in a college town, I'll see a hot, young girl (I'm 45, so everyone looks young these days) and think, "Boy, her pussy probably tastes good." Meanwhile, I have a hot wife at home -- she's 36 -- and it's been too long since I've gone down on her. What's wrong with me?

We both work ungodly hours and we have a 9-year-old son, but still . . .

If I fantasize about eating a stranger's pussy, why not my wife?

The second man queries, not unrelatedly, about his inability to get rough with his girlfriend whilst fucking:

[On the Susie Bright podcast] you said something interesting about men, falling in love with a woman and not wanting to cause her any pain. guys are taught to treat women carefully. never to hurt them and always to help. open door, help old ladies across the street, fix "things" for them, always lend a helping hand. not a sexist thing but this is how "real men" treat a woman. At least this is what I've always been taught and what I teach my son.
the old saying; If women can't find you handsome at least they can find you handy.

So with this lifetime of respecting women, in grained in my head. I would find it hard to inflict pain, during sex. my current girl friend, whom I love very much. likes it when i hold her down, telling her what to do. I believe she would like the sex to be a bit rougher. I don't know how far to go and what if I don't like it.

whats a guy, who was 2 years old when JFK was shot, to do?

On the surface, these two queries might appear to have as much in common as, say, a kumquat and a tennis ball. Sure, both objects are round (just as both men are in relationships) and, sure, both objects boast citrusy colors (just as both men are having issues performing certain acts during sex), but beyond those superficial appearances, what do they have in common?

A lot, actually, and while I could wax poetic on the arcane intersections of kumquats and tennis balls (both are mystifying objects to the uninitiated, both float, both can be “smashed,” both were historically the provenance of the elite, both appeared in England around the Restoration of Charles II…need I continue?) I’ll try to restrain myself and focus on the sexual issue at hand.

Though to be hard-case analytic, the question ends up being less a question of sex than one of emotions.

Here’s the macro view: men often, not always, have a hard time doing the naughty-erotic things they have done/will do with a strange woman with a woman with whom they are in love. It is, in the words of my therapist, who is in fact Italian, the Madonna/Puttana dilemma. It goes like this: men in a relationship often have a hard time reconciling the sexual, which has been connoted as base and dirty, with the maternal, which is connoted quite oppositely. It’s kind of like in the eyes of dominant culture, women have a sweet spot of sexuality that is the brief interlude between virginity and motherhood, for being a mother is, unfortunately, often incompatible with being sexual (even if, ironically, being sexual is generally what makes a woman a mother).

This sticky emotional reaction gets even murkier when you consider that a woman doesn’t even have to become an actual mother to make this emotional dynamic churn. The first woman that little boys fall in love with is their mom (it’s the same for little girls, I might add). Therefore, the template for love has already been stamped with maternity. This stamp can—again, it doesn’t always—shape the way that men understand their relationship to all women whom they love intimately. In short, love = mother, but mother ≠ fucking.

Ok, I’m willing to put down my Li’l Sigmund Home Analysis Kit and say we throw out all the psychobabble I’ve so convincingly laid out. Let’s try this idea on for size: in current American society, marriage is overdertermined. Which means that it’s burdened with so many concepts, laden with so many signifiers, heavy with so much expectation, that it’s often difficult to make it all work.

I’ve never been married, so my giving advice on marriage might be like a passenger who has ridden in a car a lot telling the driver how to drive. On the other hand, I have lived with a lot of men, so maybe it’s more like the motorcyclist giving advice to that same driver. And what I can say from my view is this: that when you expect your spouse to be your best friend, business partner, co-parent, co-pilot, confessor, personal assistant, gardener, chef, masseuse, chauffeur, cleaning person, social organizer, and lover, something’s gonna give. I know I’ve had relationships where it felt like the man was already so far up my ass that sex was redundant. Good, steamy, naughty monkey sex, sadly, is often the victim in a committed relationship. It can just be intimacy overload.

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be the case. People—men or women—who find themselves in this stagnant missionary position can recognize their conflicted feelings, and rather than bludgeoning themselves with guilt, can effect change. Is change easy? Not unless it’s the kind from a coin-op laundromat, but you can make it.

You can push your limits, whatever they are right now. If you’re not rocking the foreplay, make yourself. If you’re not taking the time to play, slow down and make a game of it. If you find yourself imagining some co-ed’s genitals in loving Technicolor detail, don’t smack your imagination; tweak the fantasy and put your wife in it. You are the master of your inner domain, so make it work for you.

You can also compromise. If you’re not comfy getting seriously rough in bed, find something that doesn’t make you recoil on the inside. Don’t spank her if it doesn’t feel right to you. You don’t have to dive off the high dive just because your friends do. Start small with figurative baby steps. Put her over your lap, and pull her panties down. Caress, prod, pinch her ass. Talk to her about what you see. See how that works, and move from there.

Finally, don’t be afraid to continue to find help. Clearly being willing to ask me in my comments is a really, really good sign. Seek and ye shall find, you sexy muthahfucking grasshoppers, and there is a plethora of sexy hot fun-making writing, DVDs and objects out there on the Interwebs, in bookstores, and in adult toystores around this wet, blue planet. Find stuff that speaks to you, give yourself permission to make mistakes, and see what happens.

Sex can be the tender, rose-petal-strewn, Sarah McLaughlin meaning-laden meeting of two hearts beating as one. It can also just be a whole lot of dirty gutter-uttering fun. It’s totally fine to have both flavors with the same person. Free your mind, and your cock—or tongue—will follow.

I’m curious what my readers who are married (or not) have to say on the issue. What advice can you give these men? I feel confident they'll appreciate your kind words of wisdom. (My readers are so very erudite.)

a pervert's guide to good grammar: part 3, subordination and coordination

Once more, I hold you, my audience, in the cross-hair grammar and kink. Nothing adds credence to your pervert's pedigree like seriously well-endowed self-expression.  If you're interested in further building your skill set, here's Part One, on comma use, and here's Part Two, on semi-colons and colons.

Sometimes grammar just sounds naughty. Dangling participle. Passivization. Periphrastic. They’re terms like “mukluk” or “mastication” in that they sound far more prurient than they really are (which is not to say that one couldn’t express a naughty thought about mastication in a passivized syntax: “Trussed in twine, Bob’s bulbous balls begged to be masticated, but I forbore,” for example.)

But of all the kinky-sounding grammatical terms, the ones that seems to announce their own smuttiness most boldly are “subordination” and “coordination.” It might be my own polymorphously perverse imagination, but it’s hard for me to hold those terms in my head without seeing a seething, roiling mass of promiscuously mixing bodies. But that just may be me.

question from a reader: foreplay, please?

Every once in a while, a reader emails me for help with some kind of relationship/sex/dating issue. Being a generally altruistic kind of chick, and loving to be perceived as an expert even more than an altruistic one, I do what I can to help out.

The most recent question comes from a woman who is having trouble getting her boyfriend not to directly pass Go and collect the fucking $200. She would like him to slow down and enjoy the fornicating journey a bit more, but he seems to wave off her requests like a road-worker with an orange flag. Here’s what she said:

for a variety of reasons, i waited for a loooong time before either having sex or dabbling in basic foreplay. the man im with now is the one i lost my virginity to, and generally speaking, our sexual communication is great.

until we had sex. once we began having sex several things happened:

thing 1 - he stopped paying attention to the rest of my body. sure he goes down, i get a few nipple pinches, kisses etc, but really? hes completely preoccupied with cunt. even when hes licking me, i feel like screaming, 'hey! sir! i have an entire body that is NOT my vagina!"

thing 2 - when i try to focus on him, he humors me for a second, maybe 3, before flipping me into position and... see thing 1.

thing 3 - our communication is ineffective. i asked for more time enjoying process (which before he also enjoyed), he agreed. things 1 and 2 continue to happen regardless. i asked if i could spend more time focusing process on HIM, he concurred, and things 1 and 2 spoiled the fun.

a part of me wonders if i am just THAT bad at the extracurriculars. since im not that experienced, i figured i needed direction to make it better for him. asked for that direction, got none. asked again, still got none. before we ever started a relationship he told me that he doesnt really go for oral. i happen to LOVE giving head, can perform a few decent tricks (very well controlled, nearly non existent gag reflex), take it slow to tease and build anticipation... and still. he lets me play for a few minutes and then stops me so we can start having sex.

what gives? what should i do? im tired of asking for direction on what needs to happen to make foreplay good for him and not getting answers. im also tired of being a vagina. i want to be legs, arms, back, knees, neck, face...

sigh.

suggestions?
Tired of Being a Vagina

Dear ToBaV,

This is a problem I myself have encountered in the past, when in the past I was having sex. It’s sad to lose the foreplay. Every once in a while the thunderfuck can strike like lightning and feel just as awesome, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.

So the first thing you need to do is to sit down and talk like an adult with the boyfriend, if you’ve not already done so. People can be incredibly sensitive when you're trying to discuss sex with them, unto the point of hearing things you don't even say; therefore I urge you to begin the conversation with a bunch of compliments. Tell him what he does well and why you like it, and use that positive reinforcement as a segue to telling him that, gosh, you really miss foreplay.

In my mind, you need to have a clear end in mind when you bring up topics to discuss with your mate, whether it's more kissing, or more time with the girlfriends, or more parity in household tasks, or more bondage, please. However, not merely do you need a clear end in your mind, but you also need an idea of what you're willing to do if the partner doesn't follow through with what he or she says. Which means that you can't bring things up over and over, get an assent from the partner, find his or her ass is unwilling to cash the check the mouth has written, and then stay in the relationship. You need to be willing to walk if the partner doesn't hear you and at least take measures to meet you half way. Only you know what your limit is, and you'll know when you've had enough of not getting what you want.

That said, talking isn't always the answer in bed. You might want to make a game out of it. Tie him up. In short, take the upper hand here and put him in the position wherein he has to do what you want or he doesn't get what he wants. Feed him your nipples. Kiss his mouth. Blow him. Alternate all three. But take the upper hand and take control of the sex. He can't get his way all the time. It's boring for you. So fuck him, literally.

You might also take control short of tying him up. Get into bed fully dressed. Remove an article of clothing only when you get the attention you want. Or don't let him move below your throat, breasts, belly, whatever until a certain number of songs have played. Or tell him to kiss you in certain places and not to move on until you give him permission. Let him know that he'll get the cunt when you're good and ready and not a moment before. If he's not willing to play along, you kind of have your answer.

My theory about sex tends toward the psychological. I feel that men get flipped by what they perceive as too much intimacy, and so they have a tendency to take it out in sex. They often have a hard time seeing the woman they love as the chick they want to fuck, so they compartmentalize in one way or another. It's entirely possible your dude is going through a similar intimacy overload. That doesn't make it ok, but it does help you understand it.

To that end, you might also try talking with him about his relationship issues. This territory is much murkier than merely talking about sex, and that itself is a fraught swamp. However, if you really, really like this guy, and you really, really want to see where you two can go in your relationship, you might want to try to push him to discuss things he might feel uncomfortable about. Sometimes talking about fears can lead to a sense of freedom that gives both of you the emotional space to be more intimate and playful. It’s a risk, but “fortune favors the brave” and “the greater the risks, the greater the rewards” wouldn’t be clichés if they weren’t also true.

Best of luck. Maybe my readers can give better suggestions than I; they’re a pretty savvy group.

a pervert's guide to good grammar: part 2, colons and semi-colons

Apparently there is quite the contingent of grammar sluts out there lurking in the digital gloam. I had no idea that so many of you would be so hungry for a little syntactical discipline. But then who doesn’t want to feel the stinging lash—as well as the mollifying lick—of the grammarian’s tongue? No one I want to share a turkey sandwich with.

Now that I’ve explained the wonder, the power, the flesh-cleaving glory of the comma, I’ll move on to  two of my favorite marks of punctuation: the noble colon and the oft-debased semi-colon. Several of you asked for it, so let me comply with your polite requests, as I am oft wont to do, both in the boudoir and out.

Colons and Semi-Colons: Putting the Kinky in Your Thinky with Punctuation

Colons and semi-colons function very similarly to commas in that all three punctuation marks indicate a close kinship between separate ideas contained within a single sentence. However, if commas often indicate that your ideas work together as a series—as when they separate items of adjectives in a list, or if they show what’s not entirely necessary but kind of fun in your sentence—as when they indicate non-restrictive clauses, or if they help to prevent misreading—as when they separate two independent clauses joined by one of those seven magic words known as coordinating conjunctions, then your colon and your semi-colon usually form a logical or analytic link between your ideas.

Think of it this way, if it helps: in the orgy that is writing, commas are kind of the lube. You can fuck without it, but why? Without commas, sex is going to be pretty straight-forward and possibly boring. However, in the great syntactical gang-bang, colons and semi-colons make for some truly interesting coupling. These punctuation marks slam, slide or otherwise seduce two or more often fully-formed concepts into close copulation. In brief, colons and semi-colons make sentences do some pretty kinky shit. Which you really kind of have to respect, if not cherish.

a pervert's guide to good grammar: part 1, commas

I am not in a minority about this matter: I find good grammar sexy. There’s something about a properly honed turn of phrase that can make me a bit damp around the lacy bits, sometimes even if the sentiment expressed is profoundly lacking in apparent sensuality. Grammar, you see, is nothing more than a set of rules that order discourse, and in that way, it’s just a slender shade away from other human endeavors bounded by agreed-upon rules. Like tango, say, or BDSM.

Because I do love rules as much as I love breaking them, and because I love knowing the difference between ignorance and style even more than I love breaking rules—and that does mean something, I present to you the first in a hott, hott grammar series.

A Pervert’s Guide to Commas:

All punctuation shows an explicit relationship between ideas. Sometimes, as with a period, the idea comes to a full declarative stop when the sentence ends. Other times, as with an exclamation point or a question mark, the punctuation indicates not merely that the idea has ended, but that it has done so with a specific emotional marker—quizzicality on the part of the question mark, and surprise on the side of the exclamation point.

Commas also show a relationship between ideas, but rather than being the definitive end that a period, exclamation point or question mark provides, commas are rather more subtle. You can, if you want, think of those ending marks as an orgasm. The deed is done. Another may be begun. Or it may not. A comma, however, is more like those little somatic susurrations that flicker and twitch, but don’t signify the end. Rather, they show a close and intimate relationship between single words, dependent phrases or whole independent clauses.

Commas are the most useful little things marks known to punctuation. Acting like “cleave,” they are the contranym of the world of punctuation, joining as much as they separate. If you ever were told to insert a comma where you would a breath, take your next vacation to hunt down and punish with furious might that person who instructed you thus. Here are seven simple rules for utilizing commas correctly.

i ask, you answer, and other ass-hanging meditations

Since I put up my post sending out a query to you, my gentle readers, about what you men would like to see more of in bed, and what you women are reluctant to do, I’ve found myself on quite the journey of edification.

Discounting the replies I received from women for the moment, I’ve compiled a quick breakdown of requests from men. This sample is far from scientific, being that I gathered it from about ten or so emails and fifteen or so comments, but I find it rather interesting. When looking at the list, be aware that for simplicity’s sake, I lumped activities as disparate as watching a partner flirt with other men, watching a girlfriend masturbate and watching a girlfriend with another lover under the broad heading “voyeurism.” Similarly, I classified a man’s wish that a partner play with his junk whilst driving, a dude’s desire for a partner to ride his face, and a guy’s hope that a girlfriend would just “surprise” him under the general subheading “Female more active,” so some of the terms may be a bit wide for strictly scientific purposes.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

• Sissification 1
• Bukkake 2
• Flogging and/or BDSM (of men) 2
• Flogging and/or BDSM (of women) 2
• Female more active 6
• Anal (women receiving) 4
• Anal (men receiving) 6
• Shaving (of women) 2
• Threesome (any variety) 5
• Dirty patter 3
• Piercing nipples (of women) 1
• Voyeurism (of women) 5
• Blow jobs/deep-throating/face-fucking 5
• All-nighter 1
• Public displays of affection 2
• Menstrual sex 2
• Watching/making porn 1
• Gentle instruction 1
• Toy use (for women) 2
• Having left nipple sucked (of male) 1

There are a few things about this list I find completely unsurprising, and a few I’m really rather shocked by. First, color me a robust and stalwart flesh shade for my complete lack of shock that more men want to enjoy more anal sex (woman receiving) and get more blow jobs. Anal is the final frontier, the last great taboo in monogamy that you can enjoy without stepping into polyamory or buying gear. Plus, anal gets a lot of good press from the male’s end, as it were. And everyone {hearts} blow jobs, so the fact that four men expressed a wish for anal from their girlfriend and five a desire for more, better head, leaves me breathing regularly.

What does cause me some small astonishment is that six men have expressed a wish to be anally stimulated themselves. And what causes me yet more shock is that the same number of men have stated a desire for their partners to be more proactive. To be honest, the latter causes me more surprise than the former. It’s not all that shocking that men want their p-spot stimulated, given all the press and other exposure that pegging has received lately. I only had to watch Road Trip once to make me wish I had a prostate. On the other hand, I’m frankly thunderstruck that men continue to complain about their partners’ unwillingness to seduce and amaze them. I truly thought we’d reached an age where women felt free to express themselves sexually with an impresario’s flair.

Apparently, not so much.

Less easily categorized under these broad headings is the general subtext present in many of the emails and comments that as relationships go on, the sex gets more lackluster. This phenomenon may be something I’m projecting because it seems to be my current experience—my boyfriend certainly seemed freer to enjoy himself in me when he didn’t love me so much—but committed-relationship malaise seemed to run like a slogging current through many of the emails.

This makes me sad. I wonder how much we limit our sexual passion when we find ourselves emotionally tied to others. Maybe it’s because, as I experienced with my X known here as Ernie, that we find ourselves so inextricably tied up with this other person that sex seems redundant. Or maybe, as is the case with my boyfriend, the risk of profound physical intimacy seems ameliorated when it’s not amplified by the keening need of love. Or maybe it’s that when we get so involved in the quotidian drudgery and tender debris that makes up every day life with another person, we find it hard to see him or her as the primal keening beast we want to see in a lover. Or perhaps it’s some combination thereof or something else altogether.

I kind of have to feel for that one dude who  just wants his wife to give him more head and suck his left nipple (concurrently, not simultaneously, I suppose, unless they have an exceptionally nimble family). I have to wonder what keeps him from asking, or if he’s asked , what keeps his wife from complying. I wonder if it’s just the fear of the risk—of stating obliquely your secret desire, of setting it out naked and bold in the bright light of mutual scrutiny, of feeling the visceral twist in the request—and the fear that if turned down, he’ll feel like his ass is out the window, bare and hairy and faintly disturbingly comic.

It would be an ideal world if we could ask for what we want without the ass-hanging fear, and if we could also say no, or maybe, or later, without feeling the unpleasant squelch of guilt. I’m too skeptical to put stock in a prelapsarian world, a utopian society where people act like our favorite swingin’ 70’s Swedish free-love parties, where everyone can happily do anyone and there’s always a crockpot bubbling with cheesy goo in the corner. For one thing, I think we humans are hardwired to enjoy some aspects of sex because they are outright taboo, or even mildly scandalous. For another, the idea of a prelapsarian culture of swingers swinging and goo bubbling gives me willies.

But if I could teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, we’d at least be able to ask for what we want without the flesh-prickling fear of our asses being hung out in the breeze for all to point and laugh at, even if only metaphorically.

grabbing it by the short curlies: thoughts on the hair down there

There’s nothing that says “Happy New Year” like pubic hair. To that prickly end, I wish to address an email sent to me yesterday from a reader named David. He writes:

I've been reading your blog for quite a while.  Something I don't understand and hope you can provide some insight on:  why do so many women today shave their genitalia?  It's so commonplace, one can not find a working woman who isn't shaved.  I don't understand it.  Smooth skin down there suggests a child--eeeeew!  I'm not interested in sex with a child.  I want a woman.  A real one.  One with a bush.  Something you can feel through her panties (some of the time, anyways).  Any thoughts?

Putting aside for the moment what the writer means by “a working woman,” David raises an interesting question. Our current culture puts a tremendous amount of emphasis on the women’s bush—how it should be kept, ways to maintain its topiary forms, manners for dressing it up. It is such a commonplace that women should be trimmed at the very least that waxing or shaving bare is almost the default setting for female pubic hair, and those women who do like their hair “down there” wild as the outback seem either defiant or apologetic about it.

(I should note that this hirsute demand is not for women only. Men have been feeling an increasing pressure to manscape. Perhaps this trend was most hilariously captured by a recent web advert for the Phillips Bodygroom that features a smug, milquetoast man wearing a white terry-cloth robe, judiciously bleeped-out words, and well-timed images of fruit.)

There’s a lot to argue in favor of a more topiary bush. Being waxed or shaved has health benefits such as a lowered chance of urinary tract infections and other issues—in fact, epidemiologists have argued recent lower rates of pubic lice, aka crabs, stems from more people having less pubic hair; lice have nothing to nest in when you’re bare. Additionally, naked labia are more sensitive, and some people—myself included—just think it feels better to be licked or fucked when hairless. Finally, many people find it more pleasant to lick a hair-free or hair-reduced pussy.

But these benefits aren’t in and of themselves enough to argue for the trend of hairless genitals. Most women aren’t sitting down and making a checklist of pubic hair pros and cons before they make their appointment with their waxer or get into the shower with a new blade and copious shaving cream. Most women, we would argue facilely, choose to wax or shave their nethers because culturally we are pressured to do so, and that pressure has come from the media.

ripped off by a douche

I love the idea of Intellectual Property. I love the concept that what I think and create from the sheer power of my own mind has an innate value, a value I can appreciate not merely from a purely subjective stance but also from a purely objective and empirical, pecuniary standpoint.  Even more than the idea of my intellect owning property, I love the reality built into the legal system in the form of copyright law that what I think and write belongs to me and to me alone, until such time I should choose to sell it to someone else. Intellectual Property, and its attendant laws, makes me feel as if I can sit back and look at all the great heaving mass of my writing and feel like I have created something as real, as tangible, and as valuable as a shopping center or an automobile.

As I’ve become more and more comfortable in this new skin of a writer, as I’ve more and more often gotten remuneration for my writing, and as I begin to see my future as a bright and shiny horizon of publication, I have come to take my writing more seriously. It is, after all, not merely the musing of my scattered mind, the emo off-gassing of a burdened psyche, or the busy work of a person who really should be doing something else; it is increasingly my livelihood. More and more, my writing puts food on my table, keeps a roof over my head, and buys me all those DVDs, Frye boots and books I need and love.

Therefore, I take it very personally indeed when I am plagiarized. A person who steals my writing is not merely stealing my words and my ideas; he or she is potentially stealing money from my bank account. A person who plagiarizes—and in the specific case of the plagiarism brought to my attention by an unknown reader last night, she—is doing more than just appropriating something that is not hers; she is also diluting my voice, reducing my ideas with her unethical appropriation, and taking credit for a creation that is not hers.

I recognize the praise implicit to someone stealing my writing. One doesn’t steal stuff that one doesn’t value, not unless one is more into the act of stealing than one is into the actual stolen goods. I know that the woman who lifted my post “so a girl walks into a bar…” did so because she felt impressed by my writing. Nonetheless, it angers me that she stole it, stole it willingly, and stole it so that others would read the post on her blog—edited of some difficult syntax, embellished by ellipses and increased in length by a Sex in the City quote—and think that she wrote as well as me, though she clearly does not. I recognize this blogger’s inherent appreciation of my writing, but it provides only some small cold comfort.

In other cultures, plagiarism doesn’t exist in quite the same way. In some Eastern traditions, notably Japanese painting and print-making, aspiring artists are encouraged to copy, to copy studiously, to copy copiously, and to copy until such time that they have reproduced every nuanced brush stroke with reverence to the original. This, however, is not the tradition of the West.

The tradition in the West, beginning with Hogarth’s Law enacted in England in 1735, a law that sprang from artist William Hogarth’s anger and frustration at having his prints ripped off by every immoral man with a printing press, gives legal weight to the person who created the reproducible art the exclusive rights to reproduce the art. When we sell a piece of art, be it music, writing, or visual, we sell our rights to reproduce it. When a person copies the art without attribution and/or payment, depending on the venue, she does so illegally.

The Internet has complicated copyright law. The Internet is, of course, a hot-and-cold running stream of writing and images. They seem free for the taking, and some of them are. I have no problem if someone uses a paragraph or more from my writing and gives me proper attribution. This kind of borrowing and citation is equivalent to when print writers cite other articles in their own pieces; plus with the immediacy of hyperlinks, my writing gets exposure that it might not get otherwise. If there’s attribution, there’s no copyright violation. If there isn’t, there is. But the Internet is so big, and growing every day, that policing plagiarism is nigh unto impossible.

I can even forgive new bloggers, people who don’t understand how to do hyperlinks, or haven’t been blogging long enough to know that when one borrows, one should give proper attribution. I have taught college on and off for years; teaching Freshmen what is and what is not plagiarism comes with the territory. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

It’s another thing entirely, however, to not merely make a mistake in attribution but to steal piecemeal and then, as the blogger who plagiarized my piece did, act as if the writing is her own. Responding to comments that praised the writing of the stolen piece, this blogger said that she had “two sides” to her writing,  averred that she could “pull out the high-falutin’ vocabulary” when needed, and offered that she “would do more of this kind of editorial writing” if she had more time. The blogger in question is also a thirty-something year-old college student. It’s impossible that she didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong; it is, however, possible that she didn’t think she would get caught.

Plagiarism really hurts me. It makes me red spitting angry. Plagiarism in this Western culture is wrong. It is stealing. It is lying. It is unethical. And it is illegal. It is also a problem that is growing with the bloated urgency of J-Lo’s belly. To that end, let me do a little good and provide three links to help people like me who have found their work stolen, as well as help those of you from having your work stolen.

This link helps you to protect your work from plagiarism: How To Protect Your Website's Copyright When Someone Steals Your Content

And this one, for a small fee, helps you detect if it has been: Copyscape

(The title to this post comes from a common misconstruing of a lyric to "Blinded by the Light" copyright Bruce Springsteen, ASCAP.)