Facials

There are a lot of sexual practices that, on top of the shame and stigma that sometimes comes from just  being sexually active, have their own specific stigma attached to them.  One of them I want to talk about in depth today: facials.

 

Why facials?

 

For whatever reason, our society has heaped extra shame onto people that enjoy facials.  It is seen as particularly dirty and degrading.  Particularly problematic to the idea of female equality.  Particularly hurtful and uncomfortable and ugly.  Particularly awkward to talk about.

I would have never thought to write about facials (which, if you didn’t know, is the act of ejaculating on a partners face), because they are something I’ve never experienced and never really desire to experience.  I tended to side with dominant culture on this one, actually.  I thought facials were pretty gross, and yeah, kind of degrading.  At least I did, until I read this article from Jezebel.

The article starts by contextualizing facials as an aesthetic in porn that derived from the AIDS crisis of the mid-80’s:

“Cum on me, not in me” was a popular sex educator slogan as far back as the late 1980s. … [In porn], if the male actor came on her face, the viewer could see two things at once: evidence of male pleasure (symbolized by the ejaculation) and the equally important sign that a woman’s reaction to that pleasure mattered.With sex now so dangerous — and HIV particularly likely to be spread through semen — facials were relatively “safe.” But in the era of AIDS, they were also compelling visual evidence that a woman wasn’t threatened by a man’s semen. In that sense facials were, almost from the start, more about women’s acceptance of men’s bodies than about women’s degradation.

I think that’s a really powerful statement, and for one reason in particular.  The women’s movement has brought us really great rhetoric and performance pieces about loving our bodies and our womanhood, as evidenced by the popularity of “The Vagina Monologues” (also linked to in that article).  But there hasn’t been the same kind of affirmation for men’s physicality, and particularly for the subject of the penis.

I know a lot of feminists will get up in arms with me about this point, because the penis has been the symbol of power and manhood and all these valued ideas for so long, but aesthetically, I think there’s just as much neurosis and discomfort with the male genitalia as with the female.  Boys grow up worrying if they’re long enough or big enough, if their guy “looks funny,” and I would imagine, there’s some discomfort with the idea of semen too.  But unlike women, who are now finding spaces to affirm the beauty of their vulvas, most people still squick and say “ewwwww” when we talk about penises and balls.

So in a way, facials are that kind of radical acceptance for men that “The Vagina Monologues” was for women: a way of saying, yes, your junk is ok.  It’s nice enough that I will allow it on my face, a place of great dignity and respect.  That same argument tends to apply to oral sex as well.

I don’t think this argument stands to invalidate the power dynamics at play with facials.  There is definitely still a sense of possession or authority that can come into play when giving or receiving a facial.  A lot of people specifically use facials as a kind of humiliation play in D/s relationships, and I think that’s legitimate too.  But the point being, facials don’t inherently HAVE to be about power.  A receptive partner can like facials without liking to be degraded, and loving relationships (kinky and otherwise) can use facials for the pleasure of both partners if they can talk about it in a way that revolves around acceptance and love of each other’s bodies.

And that’s pretty awesome.

Stay cool, queer kids.

SlutWalk DC

Saturday was the big day for DC sluts who got together to protest the victim blaming and slut shaming of present-day rape culture.  Hundreds of us met in Lafeyette Park and marched down to a stage at the Washington Monument, sporting everything from kilts to rainbow suspenders and pasties to just regular ol’ t-shirts and jeans.  Regardless of what we were wearing, we were all saying the same thing: that rape and sexual violence of any kind is completely unacceptable, and as a society, it’s high time we evolved.

If you don’t know what SlutWalk is, or want a reminder of why I think it’s such a worthwhile cause, take a look at In Defense of SlutWalk from earlier this summer.

SlutWalk DC was organized as a satellite event to benefit the DC Rape Crisis Center, an excellent organization that has been serving people of the metro area with counseling, assistance in navigating the medical and legal systems associated with rape, and offering sexual assault awareness education to the community for many years.  The turnout on behalf of the cause and the center was impressive in the spirit and strength of their message and conviction, if not in their numbers.

It astounds me that events like the Equality March and the Rally to Restore Sanity can amass hundreds of thousands of supporters, while SlutWalk DC pulled together shy of 500 people for their cause.  I could rant for a few paragraphs about how this represents a cultural insensitivity towards rape as an epidemic and startling inability to see beyond tired moral messages about promiscuity on behalf of the greater issues, but I won’t.  Why?  Because it undermines the people who did come to SlutWalk and the passion they gave for their cause.   SlutWalkers pasted posters on passing buses, danced to techno pop emitting from tiny rolling speakers, booed the ignorance and prejudice of the DC police who handle rape case reporting, and made noise on behalf of thousands of people who have lost their voices through sexual violence.

What was most poignant about SlutWalk DC, however, was the keynote speaker Andrea Bredbeck, the survivor of three violent rapes, a presenter at the UN Conference on New and Renewable Energy Sources, and now the producer of a documentary called “Living After Rape.”  Her entire speech was amazing, but her most important point was this: even those of us protesting and fighting back against rape culture must be careful where we aim our ire.  Men do not come out of their mothers’ wombs with the desire to rape- it is engendered by a society that permits the attitudes surrounding rape, the ones which tell us how much a girl is allowed to talk about or want sex, about how men should be aggressive and women passive, about which women are respectable and which ones are sluts.  And yes, this is aimed at my sister, and all my high school friends, and everyone who has ever pointed the finger at women in short skirts and red lipstick and demeaned them for what they decided they wanted.  These messages create rape culture, and thus, allow rape into existence.

And frankly, that’s what this whole blog boils down to.  That we are all people, and regardless of how we dress and who we sleep with and what gender we identify as, we all deserve the dignity and respect inherent in our humanness.  Creating those lines, those divisions and moral judgments only serves to justify the violence and dehumanization that begets and is beget by rape.   My friend George summed this up in a late-night talk recently: “all sex is good sex, as long as it is consensual and everyone is having fun.”  I think that holds up for everything SlutWalk is about.

PS: If you like this blog, consider heading over to Between My Sheets where you can nominate me and Forever the Queerest Kids for the “Sexiest Blogger of 2011″ contest.  It would mean a lot to get on the list, and all you have to do is comment on the  blog post at Between My Sheets linked above with the title and URL of this blog, and I’ll be entered.  Nominations close August 31st, so be quick about it!  Thanks for your support!

Stay cool, queer kids.

In Defense of SlutWalk

Consider this one part editorial, one part event announcement.

Some of you may have heard of SlutWalk, an event held in Toronto recently in response to the unfortunate choice of words used by a Toronto police officer, wherein he stated: “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

The event explanation elaborates: “As the city’s major protective service, the Toronto Police have perpetuated the myth and stereotype of ‘the slut’, and in doing so have failed us. With sexual assault already a significantly under-reported crime, survivors have now been given even less of a reason to go to the Police, for fear that they could be blamed. Being assaulted isn’t about what you wear; it’s not even about sex; but using a pejorative term to rationalize inexcusable behaviour creates an environment in which it’s okay to blame the victim….We are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result. Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work. No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault.”

Unfortunately, because of the event’s name, its purpose has been misrepresented and subjected to reductionist logic that pins it as a celebration of women’s right to dress like prostitutes and degrade themselves.  The articles which attack SlutWalk contribute to the acquiescent side of rape culture that perpetuates our society.  And that’s what people don’t understand- that by making “logical explanations” of why dressing like a slut is a bad idea, they are abetting a society which is tolerant of rape.

You don’t have to be a misogynist or a rapist yourself to have this effect on society.  But every time you allow yourself to fall into that logic trap, wherein we must live in accordance with the reality at hand rather than trying to change it, you allow rape culture to exist.

To put it more simply, participants of SlutWalk are not advocating that women go walking through Northeast DC or the North Side of Pittsburgh, or any number of other “bad parts of town” in 3 inch heels and short skirts.  That would be foolish.  But we ARE SAYING that we deserve to live in a world where we could.  It is entirely possible to acknowledge an unfortunate reality and simultaneously work to change it.  THAT is what SlutWalk is about: breaking the silence, refusing excuses from status quo observers, and changing people’s attitudes to create a world where the threat of sexual assault isn’t contingent on what we wear or where we go, because it shouldn’t (and one day, I believe, WON’T) exist anymore.

So if you feel like this is a worthwhile cause, come out and support one of the satellite SlutWalk events happening all over the US and Canada this year.  I’ll be at the one in DC on August 13th.  Let me know if you want to join me!

Transgender Kenya

My time in Kenya has forced me to confront a lot of things, and ironically, many of them had nothing to do with Kenya itself, nothing to do with Africa even- but with issues closer to home.  Today’s story has to do with one such incident, where I had to reconcile the misunderstandings and hurt on both sides of an acronym that I very strongly associate myself with: LGBT.

In the US, there’s been a rich history of transphobia within the LGBT community- the 1960’s women’s movement saw the exclusion of transwomen as “not woman enough” for their women-identified spaces, the 1980’s AIDS movement unearthed the ignorance that most LGB people didn’t know they had about trans health issues, and the 1990’s and 2000’s struggle for LGBT rights most often allowed the “silent T” to drop away into the background as the HRC focused on bigger ticket items like gay marriage, the Employee Non-discrimination Act (which now has a clause about transgender employees, although it didn’t for quite a while), and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

I haven’t been terribly active in trans-activism back in the states, but I never associated myself with the transphobia of the LGB community either.  I felt, having been around the Queers and Allies group and the LGBT resource center where the “silent T” has been recognized and embraced much more than in other spaces,  that the worst of transphobia was over.  I recognized, of course, the struggles that trans people faced in the medical community, in relationships with their families and the general ignorance of much of the population, but at least within the LGBT community, I believed there was a unity that had grown to re-encompass trans and intersex individuals.

Then I came to Kenya.  And I met a representative from Transgender Education and Advocacy (TEA), a non-profit in Nairobi that I wanted to get involved with during my study abroad.  Now I won’t turn this into a sob story, but I felt safe enough in our shared marginality to tell the TEA rep that I was a lesbian (a crude rendering of my sexuality, but it would do for the time), assuming that it would bring me some legitimacy in wanting to work with the group.

Instead, I was treated to an hour-long monologue about LGB discrimination of the transgender community.  The tropes were all there: that all gay people think trans people are closeted gays trying to escape their sexuality by transitioning, or that they’re just confused.  But most crucially, ze emphasized the necessity of allying with “straight” people (cis or trans), over any LGB-identified people.

I was crushed, not only because of the hurtful way ze portrayed all LGB people as ignorant and prejudice, but for my own “blindness.”  I blamed myself for my classmates, my friends, my teachers- anyone who I had ever explained anything to about trans issues, I took their “ignorance” on my shoulders.  I hated the fact that no one understood, that people hated, and I accepted the stigma that the TEA rep attached to me.

Yet I tried to prove zir wrong.  I sent zir my trans-related blog posts and the videos I’d been using to illustrate the way false dichotomies apply to misunderstanding sexuality AND gender.  But I was met with silence.

After about a month of waiting, I realized something: it wasn’t me.  I can’t be held responsible for anyone’s actions but my own, and I had clearly illustrated in every action I had taken to this point- the initial contact, going out of my way to verify my identity, to meet with TEA, the email correspondence- that I wasn’t a representative of the prejudiced aggregate that TEA had in mind.  I was just Bianca, and I had done nothing wrong.  At this point, I will admit, yes, I got a little tactless.  I sent a rather nasty email to TEA about how frustrated I was with the organization, and with the rep in particular, for making me feel like a bad person about the community I belong to, and for abusing the trust I put in zir when I came out (to date, I’ve only come out to two other Kenyans).

“… If this is how you treat the most accommodating of allies, you will never be able to expand and make your cause visible.  I approached TEA because I believed that you understood the commonalities between trans* and LGB people- not that our desires are the same, or even our legal rights, but that we both know what it’s like to be villanized by society, thought of as confused at best and sinful at worst.  We both know what it’s like to be afraid to ‘come out’ to our friends and family, to worry who knows and how that will affect our careers and our personal lives.

It is therefore INSULTING that A—-  would treat me with so little respect, and then on top of that, to ignore my emails.  Anger and isolation fixes none of your problems.  It alienates those friendly to your cause and leaves you alone and impotent.  You can write as many fiery articles and submit them to all the newspapers you want- but if you can’t appreciate and network with the allies you have, you will get nowhere.”

And I got an equally nasty email in response:

I sincerely hope you have learn’t (sic) something about how best to work with trans people. Don’t impose your ideas on them, listen to them and do what is necessary. I assume you would never want to be seen as a bad one. I mean I am not that popular with gays and lesbians because of my work in challenging their oppression against trans people – and I don’t need them to like me. You mentioned that we have been bad in getting allies; I do
spend sleepless nights wondering about that, and do know what happens after that? I fall asleep. There are allies and there fake allies. I would rather we get 2 allies than 100 fake people whose only preoccupation is undermining our autonomy and pitying us against heterosexuals.

And its not just a problem with you or those people am alluding to. I see it in most donors. They just don’t understand who transgender people are. They all assume LGBTI people are homosexuals and project on homosexuality are what they need. And some people there get neglected and marginalized. And you [are] here insulting them.

You don’t know how bad it is. The very people who talk about human rights can insult (not once) trans people knowingly. That a homosexual man can call a trans woman a sick homo male. That a pack of lesbians will be busy calling a trans woman a man stabbing her back and posing security threats against her. But, you think that’s okay and nothing needs to be done because trans people need “allies”.

Its okay since am used to that kind of hostility.

From all of this, I figured out a few things:

1. I need to do my homework about the trans/intersex situation in the US- I want to be part of the conversation there, but I don’t have the contacts or the experience to do that yet.  Being queer doesn’t automatically make me an expert on trans issues
2. But being queer also doesn’t make me the enemy.  TEA was going to hate me whether or not my blogs were good, whether or not I had experience working with trans populations.  Zir prejudice is the same blatant over-generalization that ze zirself suffers from on a daily basis.  Turning it around on me doesn’t make me a bad person, it just makes zir a hypocrite.
3. We aren’t all the way there in regards to trans issues, but we are making progress.  And I honestly believe that a strong partnership between LGB and trans/intersex people is and will continue to help.
4. Moreover, ANYONE who has a good heart- cis or trans, gay or straight, educated or honest but ignorant- and truly wants to help is a real ally, and someone worth partnering with.  Even if it means taking a few steps back from your own position and figuring out how to make that partner better, more informed, less prejudiced, more effective, it’s worth it.  Let people help you.  Real allies are the ones who love unconditionally, even if they express that love in crude ways.  If you are one of those people who feels like they need a little more information to understand and support the Trans and Intersex community, start by going over Midnight Philosophy and Gender Identity from way back at the beginning of this blog, then look here for more resources.

Anywa, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything at all on here, so here’s a quick review of some trans-related things that have happened since I up, up, up and flew away to Kenya

1. Transgender Women Featured on a Popular Nepali Magazine

   Nepal is counting its transpeople!

More than just including transgender individuals in the census statistics, Nepal has made  incredible strides in all areas of inclusiveness in an amazing 180 degree turn-around for a country that only 3 years ago still jailed people for engaging in “unnatural sex acts.”  A court case in 2007 began this momentum towards LGBT-friendly policy by proclaiming that:

“The government of Nepal should formulate new laws and amend existing laws in order to safeguard the rights of these people. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex are natural persons irrespective of their masculine and feminine gender and they have the right to exercise their rights and life an independent life in society.”

Now, equal rights are guaranteed under the constitution, same-sex marriage is legal, and Pink Mountain, a Nepalanese travel agency started by the Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights organization, is planning to hold gay wedding ceremonies on Mount Everest.

Although these new measures are definitely still met with controversy (Nepal is a heavily Hindu country, and homosexuality and transgenderism are not viewed incredibly favorably), the push for more recognition of the LGBT community is a huge step in the right direction.  Read the rest of the article to see how it relates to the tourism industry, which is fascinating.  But take it all with a grain of salt: of the 200,000 people in Nepal who identify as transgender, only 5 of them (yes, FIVE) have citizenship papers, which allow them to receive medical treatment for transitioning, as well as normal basic services like access to education and jobs.

2. A new report was released by The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force detailing the struggles of trans youth in school and home life, including bullying, hate crimes, youth suicide, and homelessness.

It’s truly terrible that this has become old news for me- that I’m no longer shocked to hear that being transgender increases the likelihood that a teen will commit suicide by 2500% (in other words, trans kids attempt suicide at a rate 25 times higher than cis-gendered teens) or that 78% of trans or genderqueer students face harassment, physical assault (35%) and sexual violence (12%) at school- to the point where  one-sixth (15%) opted to leave school.

The report is entitled “Injustice at Every Turn,” which is an apt title, and an indicator of just how ridiculously far we still have to come as a nation.  Yet despite the bad news, there are some bright spots to the report:

“ Although the survey identified major structural barriers to obtaining health care, 76% of transgender respondents have been able to receive hormone therapy, indicating a determination to endure the abuse or search out sensitive medical providers.

Over three-fourths (78%) reported feeling more comfortable at work and their performance improving after transitioning, despite reporting nearly the same rates of harassment at work as the overall sample.

Of the 26% who reported losing a job due to bias, 58% reported being currently employed and of the 19% who reported facing housing discrimination in the form of a denial of a home/apartment, 94% reported being currently housed.”

But let’s try to end on a positive note.  I’ve learned a lot through my interactions with TEA and my individual research on trans/intersex/genderqueer issues, and though I’m no expert, this I do know: it is never too late to educate yourself.  It’s never too late to add your voice to the chorus of those fighting for trans and intersex rights.  And no matter what A——- and TEA say, there is room for you in the fight, be you gay, straight, trans, cis, Democrat, Republican, or something in between.  If you are willing to speak your mind and stand up for what is right, then you’re an ally.  And to those people who suffer these terrible injustices, let us say- We’re with you.

Prostitutes vs. Sex Workers

Happy 2011 everyone!

 

I may have gotten a little preachy at my New Years Party about the problems inherent in shaming words like “slut,” “whore,” etc.   It’s an issue I’ve talked about obliquely on my blog a lot, about how everyone should be free to express their own sense of sexuality without feeling ashamed of it or having to answer to someone else’s moral standards.  But I went on a bit of rant aimed specifically at vocabulary yesterday.

See, while it’s one thing to say you support everyone’s right to express their own sexuality, it’s an awful lot harder to live it in your everyday life.  When you drive past an adult video store, you might raise an eyebrow at the cars parked in the lot and wonder if you know any of the people in there….  When you see in a girl in a miniskirt, a low-cut top, and heels walking down the street, you might look down on her for dressing that way and wonder if she’s a “hooker.”  Just like these socially-ingrained attitudes about sexual propriety, our vocabulary reflects how little we actually do accept of human sexuality.

Words like slut, cunt, whore, dick… these are all manifestations of a social attitude towards sex.  Their usage defines how much sex is ok, how low that top can sit, how much skin the girl can show, how many women a guy can have.  Whether we admit it or not, we all make judgements about people based on these behaviors, and they often aren’t pretty ones.

I won’t lie.  I was that girl in high school.  The one who looked down on all the girls having sex in 10th and 11th grade, the one who stole guys wallets to see if there were condoms inside (which was proof, of course, that they were terrible people who only thought about sex)… I was that girl who made snap judgements about you based on how short your dress was at homecoming and how much makeup you wore.

But I recognize now how wrong that was, how hurtful.  None of those choices make a person bad, immoral, disgusting.  They’re just choices, and choices that any person has the right and autonomy to make.

I have two links that I love for the way they illustrate my point in relation to people in sex work.  While I know that there are people out there who are trapped in prostitution by money issues, by drug problems, but debt or fear or any number of problems, I also know that not all of them are.  And moreover, regardless of their situation, sex workers are still people.  They still have lives and choices to make- but like the sluts and whores of high school, they are constantly being judged, being told that they aren’t good enough for something because of what they do for money.  The article, “Can Sex Workers Afford Love?” talks about this more eloquently than I ever could.

No one suggests that masseuses can’t afford to love, or acupuncturists, or therapists, and what they’re offering is intimate in nature as well, in different ways. I’m offering my skills as a Top, along with my creativity and my undivided attention. I’m offering a hand job from a girl who empathizes with wanting to get off with someone else and yet not wanting to go through the dating dance steps. I’m offering someone who will talk about sex with you, and communicate clearly and effectively, and with any luck will have rubbed some of that off on you.

Just because you cum on my hands and you pay me for it doesn’t mean I’m suddenly unable to love people.”

Sex workers are human, and that should really be more obvious than it is.  For another fantastic, if lighter take on the subject, I look to the new tumblr, “Stuff Sex Workers Eat” which in addition to being amazing fodder for my culinary adventures, is a beautiful

Mona Ramone eats angry little bear cookies. She loves to bake!

reminder of the other 23 hours in a sex worker’s day, where they eat, bake, see friends, laugh, and live colorful, social lives.

If we could see all people in this same light- with the purity of non-judgment, with the ability to remove our own squicks about sexual behavior and morals from our views on individual people, I think the world would be better off.

((So that’s your homework while I’m in Kenya, queer kids.  The girlfriend has mentioned the possibility of making a few posts while I’m away, so you might hear from her, but I’m off on an adventure.  Much love and blessings for the new year!)

 

16-year Old Sex

Through the course of my blogging, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what information I would have liked to have about sex as a teenager.  In doing so, I stumbled upon Bad Bad Girl, one of my new favorite sex bloggers, who wrote quite eloquently on the shaming and lack of information that most high school students are confronted with.  She highlights the stigma her family tried to instill in her about sex and why that hurt her as a sexual being.

“I see my mother try to influence my son… telling him that he will get his girlfriend pregnant if they have sex. That he best NOT do it. My brothers tell him that if people see he and his girlfriend kissing and such, people will thing she’s a slut. That if they have sex and people find out, guys will think she’s easy.   These are the same things they told me, 23 years ago. I remember being terrified that my mother would find out that I was sexually active, giving blow jobs to my boyfriend and the other things that friends my age were not doing yet. I was afraid she would be disappointed with me. I was scared that my brothers would thing I was a slut. My mom tried to suppress my sexuality so much that I went the other way, but always felt ashamed of it.”

I agree whole-heartedly with her point, but the question- “What information to give”- is very hard for me.  Though I’ve now found a lot of important lessons about self-acceptance, the hurt involved in sexual shaming, etc., when I was in high school, I don’t know how ready I was for any of that in high school.  I have a hard time figuring out what I was willing to hear and what would have benefited me at the time.

So let’s do an exercise… Think back to your sophomore or junior year.  What were your thoughts about sex?

It was probably something you didn’t have a whole lot of experience with- you might giggle about it or brag and make up stories or listen in awe at your more “experienced” friends, but you might not have been able to contribute much.  Maybe you weren’t thinking about it at all.  The unifying notion we had as high school students was that “the talk” with your parents was awkward and to be avoided whenever possible.  The idea of discussing sexuality with our parents was…weird.

But within that framework, I have to ask, if I wanted more information, but I wasn’t willing to get it from my parents, where was I supposed to go?  The obvious answer is the reason I’m writing this blog in the first place: the internet.  The internet was a gold mine of information, but it was also overwhelming and misleading.

 I think this is where our system really went wrong.  We, as students, put our parents in a double bind.  We had so much that we didn’t know about our sexuality that our parents often had learned and could have shared.  However, we were too ashamed of our parents’ sexuality, the same way they were ashamed of ours, to the point that neither of us were able to approach the other.

My childhood was a lot better than most in that respect.  My mom was conscientious enough to keep our communication lines open, made sure I got on the pill BEFORE I started having sex, and talked to me about the basics long before the school district got involved in my sex ed.  However, there’s other stuff I really wish I had known, but I’m still not sure I would have accepted when I was young enough to need it….  Stuff like, “Sex is really important in determining whether you’re compatible in a relationship,” “Speak up if he/she/ze is doing something that hurts you or makes you unhappy,” “Never have sex because you ‘feel like you should,’”  ”Sex doesn’t have to be just for one person, just for marriage, or how the movies portray it,”  and more than anything, “Have a sense of humor- sex never has to be perfect.”   (**And to give my mother credit, a lot of this stuff came up later -after I’d started having problems- but I didn’t really believe her, which is really evidence for my original point.)

So what are the takeaways here?

1. There’s still too much shaming of sex (inter- and intra-generationally)
2. We have a double-standard about who can have sex and who can talk about it
3. We might not know everything
4. Our parents might actually be able to tell us something about sex if we were willing to listen…
5. but society has structured our attitudes about sexuality to prevent that
6. Bianca isn’t sure she has the answer to this one…

 

Doctor, Doctor…I Got A Bad Case of Lovin’ You

Did you ever “play doctor” when you were a kid?  Ever get caught?

I love this exchange between a mother and her doctor published by Carnal Nation about young kids’ sexuality.

The door was closed.
Did you knock?
No. She’s never closed her door before.
Oh. I guess the closed door meant something to her.
They jumped when I walked in.
Well, you interrupted them.
They looked guilty.
Since your attitude was that you “caught” them, I guess they felt “caught.

The full exchange is here: http://carnalnation.com/content/58503/98/catching-your-kid-playing-doctor

The brilliant thing about this conversation is the way it puts kids behavior into a conscious context.  5 year olds know things.  They learn and understand the world based on millions of sources of input, including TV, advertising, conversation they overhear from parents (and their parents’ friends!), and through playmates.  Children do not remain blank slates forever, and parents do not selectively insert ideas and practices into their absorbent brains as they so choose.

So it’s perfectly normal that children play doctor, that they are curious about social rules that have been instilled in them without any explanation.  ”No, don’t touch Jimmy there.”  Well, why not? “Because he’s a boy, and we don’t touch little boys there.”

Face it, parents are really bad at giving explanation for these seemingly senseless social rules that they inflict on their children, so their kids are bound to utilize their own means for understanding them.  Well, if doctors can look and touch little boys there, maybe I just have to be a doctor and I’ll figure out what’s so weird about that. The game is a research method- a tool for understanding biological and social ideas that are very difficult and awkward to spell out to a small child.

Playing doctor might be sexual…and it might not be.  The curiosity of young children knows no bounds, and maybe discoveries from playing doctor lead to other “socially unsavory” games like playing “married,” yet once again, this isn’t always a bad thing.  If children are able to explore their own bodies and sexualities when they are young and in a safe place, without the shame of embarrassment or the need to hide their practices, they’ll grow into healthier functioning adults.

And that’s a pretty good prescription for a 5 yr. old, isn’t it?