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?