Enlightened Sexism

It’s been a while since I was as disappointed in a work of non-fiction as I was in Backwards in High Heels.

The book is beautifully produced – interesting font, idiomatic and pretty full-color illustrations, even satisfyingly heavyweight paper – and it is charmingly written: the idea that love is not the answer is “an intellectual mouse scratching behind the skirting board;” they often use the word “hoary,” which I love.

But I have three standards when it comes to writing about sex, gender, and relationships: scientifically accurate, helpful, and well-written. With exceptions, Dan Savage tends to meet all three. And Susan Douglas’s Enlightened Sexism met all three. Everyone should read that book. My own writing is clumsy enough that I usually settle for two out of three. Backwards in High Heels meets only one.

Still, there are worse sins than unhelpful, inaccurate, but chewily written prose. Sadly, the book commits a worse sin, albeit inadvertently.

I knew going in that the authors were only writers, not context experts, so I didn’t have high hopes of learning anything, but I did have the expectation of unique and creatively expressed insights. What we get instead is creatively expressed pablum, the ordinary, bland, offensively inoffensive tropes you can find in virtually every issue of “Red Book.”

Authors Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine say in the book’s Introduction that the book is about “making up your own mind and trusting that mind.” It is, they write, “the literary equivalent of the conversations women have every day of the week.”

This is where that “worse sin” mentioned above comes in.

Why then is it 389 beautiful pages of unenlightened platitudes, like work-life balance is about finding the balance that’s right for YOU, and you will recover from grief if you allow it to move through you? I mean, both of those things are true as far as they go, but they’re just the same old obvious stuff. Are we making up our own minds if we’re sitting around like frogs in a swamp, wallowing in the mire of the ideas that pop culture put into our heads? If oodles of Oxbridge-y literary allusions can’t lift our perspective out of the swamp and into the creative world of novel insight, what can?

Take the section called “What to do when your husband/boyfriend/lover runs off with a tall blonde who is half your age and dress size.” We all know without needing to be told that tall, blond, young and thin is more appealing than short, dark, aging, and round, which makes the paragraphs that follow (“let your girlfriends rally round” and “Go out and buy yourself a bunch of flowers”) not only unnecessary but pointless. He betrayed you because he’s a man and you’re not up to standard. The flowers and the rallying of your girlfriends can’t fix that. Here, have one of my flies, I’m trying to watch my weight and you could use some cheering up. Ribbit.

Of course they don’t MEAN it that way. They mean it to be girl-talk, supportive, “Oh men are hopeless but you are AMAZING.”

Excellent writing should show us something new, should dig deeper than we ordinary mortals dig and bring up something beautiful or jolie laide from the ditch. And all they do is wander around in the already-dug trench and describe it to us. Disappointing.

But my own personal reaction was even worse than that. If these are “the conversations women have every day of the week,” no wonder I have so few female friends. I want to believe that women are not so small as the thoughts in this book. I want to believe we’re capable of digging new trench, to overuse the metaphor from the last paragraph.

Actually, the whole book reminds me of this dinner I went to with my BFFL, back when we were both grad students. It was him and me, a professor (in the BFFL’s department) and his wife, and a visiting speaker and his girlfriend. The men were talking about animal epistemology and the women were talking about recipes. I swear to god. Can you guess which conversation I wanted to participate in? But the women tried to include me in their conversation and I felt rude rebuffing them – I don’t cook, I don’t knit, I don’t have or want or even particularly like kids, but they were being nice. But really I just wanted to talk about how squirrels know where all the nuts are.

My friend Bill – not that Bill, the other Bill – once described me as a guy with a vagina. But is my lack of engagement with the zeitgest of femininity a barrier to my finding someone to date? Does Bridget Jones bring all the boys to the yard? If I’m a guy with a vagina – and not in the sexy Carmen Diaz I-can-belch-just-as-loud-and-swear-as-fluently-at-professional-athletes kind of way but in an in-fact-I-know-more-about-this-than-you-do-and-I-won’t-pretend-otherwise-just-because-I-have-no-penis kind of way – am I therefore as unappealing to men as I am to women?

So this book that purports to want to make me “feel that I am all right” makes me feel simultaneously very lonely and sad for the state of women in the industrialized west. If this is the best we can do with all our advantages… god.

advice with little science

I said in my last post that sex is a destination, not a journey – it’s not about getting to orgasm, I claim, but about enjoying the experience of erotic sensation, building arousal, and intimate connection.

So there’s this theoretical model of emotion I’ve been reading a lot about lately, that goes like this:

Imagine there’s a little monitor in your brain that keeps track of how quickly or slowly you are moving toward a goal. When you’re moving at a pace that this monitor feels is appropriate, you are content. When you are moving at a slightly-tool-slow rate, you are motivated. If you’re going much too slow, you get frustrated and eventually angry. And if you’re making no progress although you’re putting in a lot of effort, you collapse into grief.

Here’s the graph:


Now: consider that idea in the context of sex. If you have a little monitor that notices how quickly you’re moving toward orgasm and that little monitor has a high standard for speed, then you’ll end up frustrated and ultimately defeated.

If, on the other hand, your goal is not orgasm but pleasure, and you’re experiencing pleasure, you’ll be happy!

Make sense? Think about it slowly; it’s a complex idea.

This concept of “fast enough” is one of the problems with mainstream media’s portrayal of sexuality: there is no standard amount of time it’s “supposed” to take, so there is no such thing as “too long,” as far as your physiology is concerned. There are only your (and your partner’s) expectations, and your expectations are too often shaped by the media, whose message is shaped by the single largest advertiser in America.

And who is that? Why, the pharmaceutical industry.

And they are HAPPY to prey on your need for a sense of “normal.”

Other bad sources of expectations: other people’s experience and your partner’s expectations. Good source of expectations: your own experience.

But better yet, as I said in my last post, drop expectations and live inside the moment; stay blissfully satisfied with where you are and you will find yourself moving to delightful new places.

drunk lesbian hook ups

I’m looking for insight from ya’ll.

In my job, I’m actually what’s known in the health education biz as “a generalist,” meaning I’m all things too all people, equal parts sex educator, alcohol educator, sleep, stress, mental health, physical activity educator… everything. It’s an important job that I take very seriously and do, if I may say so myself, extremely well. I certainly try hard, at any rate.

The sex stuff is my favorite part of course, and handily it intersects with just about all the other things, rather in the way that salt brings out the flavor of other foods, or the way alcohol gives the tongue access to flavors insoluble in water or fat. Understanding the role of sex in the other health issues is the sugar that makes the medicine palatable to students.

Lately I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about alcohol – a serious health issue among college students, not least for its impact on sexual decision-making. Nationally, something like 16% of college women report having unprotected sex as a result of their own drinking.

Having chatted about that number with some students and other folks, one of the things I’m learning is how entrenched, indeed how FUNDAMENTAL is the role of alcohol in the hook up culture of the gay and lesbian community. You get drunk, you hook up. You may get drunk without hooking up, but you don’t hook up without getting drunk.

Now, wearing my alcohol educator hat, I think, “Well that’s fine, all I need is to motivate people not to drink to blackout, which is reasonably easy, since most people would rather not blackout if they can help it.”

But wearing my sex nerd hat, I think, “What? Why? What?!”

This one student I talked to (who may or may not read the blog – if you do, hi and thanks!) helped me understand. See, I had previously assumed that people were drinking a lot because they felt guilty about the sex, ashamed of their bodies, or otherwise somehow NEGATIVE about the pursuit of a sexual connection. The non-straight community is at increased risk for a wide variety of health issues, including mood and anxiety problems, self-harm and suicidality, tobacco use, dangerous drinking, etc etc, and the typical story is that people abuse substances in order to manage negative affect. They’re drinking, I thought, to turn down the volume on the bad feelings.

But no, it turns out it’s not that. It’s just… the culture. It’s just how you do things. It’s accepted as normal – long term relationships even start that way. Personally I can’t imagine having the FIRST sex I have with someone happen when we’re both shitfaced drunk, but apparently it’s more or less the norm in this particular culture.

And there’s certainly the question of whether it’s more the case in the gay community than in the straight community, where random hookups, at least among college students, are culturally normal.

So look, obviously I haven’t talked to every gay or lesbian person in America and obviously I haven’t read ALL the research on the subject, but this is a compelling empirical question as well as an important health issue:

IS it the case that in the LGBQ community, drunken hooking up a big trend?

If it is, WHY is it?

What are the benefits?

How is drunken hooking up in the gay community different from or the same as drunken hooking up in the straight community?

What are the costs or risks, both at the individual and cultural levels? Should it be changed?

If so, how?

I’m really asking, because I’m finding it difficult to get inside the experience of having sex with a new person while wasted; I’m sure it makes sense to many of the people who do it, I just can’t see it and I’m not even sure what’s blocking my view.

Tell me everything you can think of. Send your friends this blog post and ask them to comment. I need all the insight I can get.

a destination, not a journey.

This is related to the dance post.

I’ve always had a hard time with the saying, “Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

It’s the kind of thing people said to me a lot when I was in early- and mid-adolescence, because I was (and am) an intense, high-energy person who moves at a fast pace. “Slow down, Emily, life’s a journey not a destination. Enjoy the ride!”

Fuck you, I thought, I get motion sick and I wouldn’t be bothering with trying to get somewhere if it weren’t somewhere I thought was BETTER THAN RIGHT HERE.

What I wish someone had told me was, “Life’s a destination, not a journey, and you’re ALREADY HERE.” Which really is just a restatement of the same thing, but it opens up the question, “Then why do I feel like I’m in such a hurry?”

The reason I feel like I’m in such a hurry is because of how attractive all that stuff out there in the future looks to me. And a little bit, sometimes, because of how crappy where I am is.

What has this to do with sex?

Orgasm.

I have three Top Tips about sex, and the second one is:

It’s not about orgasm.

The reason this is a Top Tip is because a lot of people get Very Wrapped Up in orgasm. They see it as a destination. It’s not, not really; it’s just one of the places you can be. But where you CAN be isn’t anything like as important as WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW.

The arousal you have right now, the sensations you have right now, the partner you have right now, the body you have right now. Here you are.

I think people would have better sex if they didn’t conceptualize it as traveling along a path toward orgasm but as simply BEING right here and now.

Indeed, I think this is why sensate focus works so well as sex therapy: it takes away the option of orgasm and demands that you pay attention to the sensations you’re experiencing right now. This inevitably brings to the surface all your historical psychodrama, but with sex stripped down to its essence, it becomes easier to notice what part of your experience is about the here and now and what part is just the historic noise in your head.

I know that arousal can feel like a drive, that sexually appetitive stimuli draw you toward them. But I do promise you that the experiencing of WANTING SOMETHING TERRIBLY (e.g., orgasm) is, in itself, an intense, beautiful, erotic experience.

Give it a try. Arousal is a destination, not a journey toward or away from anything in particular. It’s a state of being that constantly changes as your environment changes. It’s where you are right now. And nothing bad will happen if you stay exactly in this place for a good, long while.

So sit still. You’re already where you need to be, even if where you are is wanting to be somewhere else. If you see what I mean.

my first sex educator

My very first mentor in sex education passed away this week.

My training as a peer health educator, 15 years ago, set the stage for my present career. I got a MS in Counseling because Annie had a MS in Counseling.

Here’s just one example of why Annie became a model for me:

Way back, early in my training as a sexuality peer educator, I was sitting on the floor in a room in the student center, talking with the other sex peer educators about periods, the menstrual cycle.

What factors influence the menstrual cycle, Annie asked us. Being a painfully ignorant 18 year old, I raised my hand and said, “Isn’t there something about the phases of the moon?”

Unsurprisingly, everyone laughed.

Not Annie. She said, “There are centuries of mythology and artwork devoted to the idea of the moon as a feminine power…” and she went on to talk about how cultures have constructed meaning around the phases of the moon and the phases of the menstrual cycle. And of course she clarified that in fact the moon was not a factor influencing the menstrual cycle.

Not only did she help me not to feel like a moron, she shared a richer contextual understanding of reproductive biology than I had ever witnessed, she role modeled a level of sex positivity and unconditional respect that inspires me still, and she fixed my ignorance while making me feel that my ignorance was a gift to the entire group.

I have lots of stories like that – and there are lots of people like me, whose lives were shaped by Annie’s generous spirit, her kindness, her commitment to promoting healthy, joyful sexuality.

I’m going to Delaware for the memorial service – my second memorial service this year. If there are any blog readers who also went to U of D and also were touched by Annie, I hope you’ll let me know.

confidence

I have had a totally INTENSE past few days. On Thursday I did a talk on positive sexuality that resulted in a half dozen women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, discussing places to find women-friendly porn and erotica. Totally great.

And I gave about 15 seconds of advice about fellatio (“Don’t neglect the scrotum as an option – not all men like it, but some men REALLY like it, so give it a try.”), which resulted in the question, “Where can I find more about that, about… you know?”

(Why, my little Fellatio Guide.)

The thing for me: how do you get to your 40s, 50s, and 60s without knowing to try the scrotum? Who can’t go to a bookstore and look in the sexuality section – and especially now, who can’t just google “feminist fellatio” or whatever? How can it be that there are women in America who don’t know that good, women-friendly, sex-positive information is readily accessible? How do you get to middle age without knowing where to go to get it? What would be missing to prevent that?

I think most of what would be missing is confidence. Confidence to try new things without worrying about “getting it wrong,” as though it’s possible to get anything “wrong.” Confidence that looking like a porn star is not required to give head like one. BETTER than one.

Which makes me cry, how do you teach confidence!? How do you learn it?

I talked to someone else on Saturday, an old friend who has broken through a whole lot of psychological noise to get to brand new a level of openness and creativity and pleasure in her sexuality. How did she do it? I asked, and she said she just… decided she’d had enough of worrying about whether or not she could please a man, whether or not she was adequate. She just let it go, the decades of negative messages.

Crikey! Talk about power!

I suppose it’s a readiness for change thing: when life has prepared you to change, you will. Before then… you’ll stay stuck. But I suppose folks who read the blog are ready. Folks who find and read the fellatio guide are ready. Which means that I never see the people who aren’t ready.

And I forget how far many people have to travel before they get to healthy joyful sexuality. I forget how revolutionary it is to suggest that your body belongs to you and no one else, that you’re allowed to do ANYTHING you want in bed, and that your own enjoyment of pleasure – your own and your partners – is the one and only measure of success?

How do we get them ready?

break your hymen – sincerely this time

To my utter astonishment, my tongue-in-cheek post about how to break a hymen without a penis has become one of the most read on the blog, due to people actually SEARCHING THE INTERNET for the phrase “how to break a hymen.”

And I feel terribly guilty that there are all these women out there who want to break their hymens and the advice they get from me is slightly facetious.

I still don’t know why people are so worried about it, but clearly they are, so here’s the ACTUAL advice:

Option 1: Have a medical professional do it. If your hymen is imperforate, microperforate, or septate, definitely take this option. If you don’t know whether or not your hymen is any of these things, get a medical professional to check. If you’re thinking, “But I don’t have access to a medical professional” or “I don’t want to talk to my doctor about this,” then there’s something else wrong that’s more important than your hymen.

Option 2: Have intercourse. It’s how women have been breaking their hymens for ages. There will probably be a little bit of pain and a little bit of blood, but it’s totally no big deal, from a physiological/medical perspective. If your partner doesn’t have a biological penis, use a non-biological one.

Option 3: Break it yourself. Which means you need to know both how to manage the pain and how to successfully break it.

To minimize pain, use either (or both) a numbing agent (you can use oral numbing agents they sell at the drugstore for canker sores and stuff) or a counter-irritant. A counter-irritant is some intense stimulation elsewhere that more or less distracts your central nervous system from the sensation happening at your vagina. The best counter-irritants will be sensations to the other highly sensitive parts of your body, like your face, feet, and hands. Deep touch sensations – pressure, massage, vibration – will be most effective. So, for example, hold a Hitachi Magic Wand between your feet.

Drinking a couple of glasses of wine – more than one glass, but LESS THAN A BOTTLE – can also help. Do not, whatever you do, exceed 4 drinks, and no more than 2 or 3 in a single hour. Don’t be stupid about alcohol.

And to break the hymen, you mostly need girth. Gradually increasing the girth of the thing you penetrate with will make things easier; contrary to popular belief, pulling off a band-aid slowly results in less pain than ripping it off all at once, so don’t try to put a mango in there all at once.

Another thing to remember is that the hymen is just one of several potential sources of pain with penetration – indeed it’s just about the least common source of pain. The most common source of pain is friction. LUBRICATION is absolutely, positively, unambiguously CRUCIAL. DO NOT attempt to penetrate your vagina without LOTS of lubrication. If you really can’t get lube anywhere else, some oil from the kitchen will do.

Another potential source of pain is muscle tension. Yes there is a vaginal sphincter muscle, and you must relax it in order to penetrate the vagina. You can find it by stopping yourself mid-stream while you pee – it’s the same muscle (different sphincter. don’t worry about the details.)

And finally, pull out a little mirror and LOOK at your vagina and your hymen before you start any of this. LOOK at it. See where it is, what it’s made of. Think patiently and non-judgmentally about your feelings about what you see. It’s a part of your body, just like your elbow and your toes. Be as kind and gentle with it as you would with, say, clipping an infant’s toenails. Be nice to your body.

I can’t even begin to write about the psychological noise that must be happening inside a person’s head if they’re searching the internet for information on how to break their hymen. What advise can I give for that?

Take a deep breath. Relax. Pay attention to your body and its sensations. Pay attention to your feelings about your body, and know that you are allowed – indeed, you are WELCOME – to love all the parts of you. Okee dokee?

Kissing

What is an arousing kissing technique?

Just one arousing kissing technique?

To begin with, remember that the perception of sensation is context dependent, so that a sensation that’s sexy in one context will be annoying or even painful in another. What qualifies as a sexy context varies from individual to individual and couple to couple, but in general they involve trust, respect, a fair degree of privacy, a lack of stress, depression, and anxiety, plus a sense that your partner desires you.

So step 1: create a sexy context, whatever that means for you and your partner.

Step 2: Soft and slow.

No, slower than that, and softer than that. Just barely touch your lips to whatever part of your partner you’re kissing; kiss them more with your breath than with your lips.

Then bite that part. Not too gently.

Travel to a nearby spot and repeat, incorporating judicious use of tongue (wet skin + breath = good) as desired.

The focused attention required is, in and of itself, good technique. What you do matters less than that you are paying attention to your partner and enjoying shared sensations.

Whatever you do, do not wipe your tongue like a paintbrush over your partner’s gums, inner cheeks, or the roof of their mouth. Your tongue goes between their lips in pursuit of their teeth or their tongue and for nothing else.

And don’t, for the love of mike, press your open mouth into theirs so that both of you bash you lips against your teeth. Pressure does not equal passion.

And finally, don’t CHEW on your partner’s lips. Nip and suck, absolutely. But gnawing on your partner like a dog on a bunny just does not cut it, friends.