the flip side to the gay chicken is equally as interesting;  but in a how rather than a why way…the how of gay chicken is clear, its a remarkably simple exercise.  the reason it works its because its so short and sharp of an experience, just enough to provoke a brief panic within the engineered and complicity intrusion, the penetration of an intimate zone by someone we don’t really want there.  a

the opposite of the gay chicken thing is interesting to me - the whole point of that game is engineering the circumstance to test who pulls away first; the point of it is the pull away, the flight.  but what’s the process of staving off that part of our head?

for example, people put themselves out for others all the time.  we accept strangers into our homes, our beds.  we let them hold our children.  personally, i’ve sublet my room in melbourne to a girl i don’t even know - and for a week of that time, she’ll be in my house alone as my roommate’s are going away.  of course; there’s not a huge risk of anything terrible happening, in any of those circumstances - but the risk is there.  how do we abate our niggling instinctive reaction to withdraw/defend/cover ourselves in the circumstances where we willingly put ourselves at some sort of risk?  what is the mental process of justifying, of telling ourselves that “it’ll be fine”, when we don’t actually know that for certain?  and at what point, in the case of evidence mounting that it won’t actually be fine, do we react? how do we then feel about all that auto-assuaging?