Get Equipped
The fine line between "challenging" and "forced."
Hi (No) Wonder-ers,
The Mega Man series of games for NES never disappointed me growing up. For those who haven’t played them: Mega Man games are side-scrolling shooter games in which the player controls Mega Man, defeats Dr. Wily’s eight robots, completes additional stages, fights the eight robots again, and finally defeats Dr. Wily himself. When Mega Man defeats a robot, he gets that robot’s attack weapon, which is inevitably another robot’s weakness.
During the 2019 holiday season I received Mega Man 11 for the Nintendo Switch and promptly started playing it. The first robot I chose to face was Fuse Man, an annoying robot who disappeared and reappeared throughout the screen while shooting bolts of electricity along the walls, along the ceiling, along the floor, and through the air at Mega Man. A real pain in the ass, this guy.
But seven minutes and as many energy tanks later, my Mega Man prevailed in a white-knuckle victory that would have made Pyrrhus blush. Never mind rage-quitting – I didn’t have enough energy for that – I simply saved my hard-won progress, switched to MarioKart 8, and proceeded not to play Mega Man 11 again for almost four years.
Fast-forward to a few months ago when I revisited the game and defeated the other seven robots in short order. In doing so, my Mega Man defeated Bounce Man to gain a Bounce Ball attack. As the name suggests, Bounce Ball releases a barrage of bouncy balls all over the screen. Which struck me as a bit silly… until I realized how useful it would have been against that jerk Fuse Man! Next time I faced Fuse Man, I released the bouncy balls – to which Fuse Man succumbed in less than 30 seconds, as if he hadn’t spent ANY time AT ALL dodging wrenches or learning the 5 D's of dodgeball.
This got me thinking about the often subtle but always noticeable difference between “challenging” and “forced,” and the forces that make life, relationships (including with ourselves), and sex more difficult than it needs to be. How much time and effort did we waste pigeonholing ourselves into some gendered “ideal” instead of honestly discerning who we are and what we want? How much money did we pour into products and services that promised to bring us closer to said gendered “ideal?” How much did we suffer and self-flagellate at our perceived “broken-ness” that we never could quite measure up to these expectations? How many relationships did we stay in and artificially prop up far longer than their natural lives, with great mental and emotional cost? How much great, satisfying intimacy did we miss out on by internalizing a rigid, narrow, exclusionary, poorly-informed sexual script?
Obviously it would be naïve, and frankly victim-blamey, of me to imply that everything forced is due to the individual. No matter how knowledgeable, secure, and self-aware we are as individuals, being our authentic selves can feel forced as long as cis-heteronormative society has a problem with it. As is the case with trauma, it’s not the individual’s fault… but the individual still gets to deal with the consequences. (Sweet! /s) But at the very least, being knowledgeable about the diversity of of gender/sexual/relationship/ability identity and expression can help us “stick to our guns,” stay true to ourselves, and mitigate the supratentorial infighting within ourselves. (Even so, unfortunately the process remains exhausting in a world bent on dictating and regulating who we are.)
Get equipped: with knowledge, with self-acceptance, with openness. While I can’t guarantee Bouncy-Balls-Smothering-Fuse-Man-level effectiveness in addressing challenges affecting our relationships… some knowledge, grace, and earnest self-assessment can help us be kind to ourselves and others in a world that is often anything but.
Sex-Positively Yours,
Merrit