The Ass-F*** Conspiracy

Like my last articles about facials, anal sex is one of those acts that people have a hard time believing the receptive partner actually enjoys.  It’s also loaded down with tons of cultural baggage about cleanliness and morality that make it seem “just wrong.”

I talk a lot about cultural messages and societal shaming, which is tricky sometimes because they are influences which are often hard capture in distinct moments.  Usually stigma and shaming have more of a vague feeling to them than a distinct, explicit statement that you can quote and reference.  However, I have one very distinct memory from middle school that I can use to illustrate how our society talks about anal sex.

I remember I was sitting through a media analysis lecture in 8^th grade.  It was part of a get-ready-for-high-school event where parents and community members came and talked to us about all the pressures we were suddenly going to experience in high school, as if they hadn’t already happened to us…   Anyway, the woman in charge of the lecture was showing a slide show to get us to understand how the media distorts images of women to make our idea of beauty totally unrealistic.  At one point, she shows a picture of Britney Spears soaping up a classic car with her butt towards the camera.  The woman leading the lecture told us very clearly that Britney was referencing a very perverted kind of sex.

At first, I think I was confused.  What exactly qualified as perverted sex, and what made this random mother from suburbia the arbiter of that distinction?  Why were we even talking about this, when the previous slide had been about how a picture of Angelina Jolie had the body parts of 3 different women thrown together to create the illusion of perfection?  When I realized she was talking about anal sex, I was pretty pissed off—one because that was not what this woman was supposed to be talking about, and two, because of the totally biased and unnecessary rendering of anal sex as bad.

((I swear to god, I should have known I’d be a sex blogger then and there))

I was light-years away from trying anal sex that day in my 8^th grade classroom.  Like facials, I thought anal sex was kind of gross, and I didn’t really want to deal with it, so I tried to ignore those messages of sexual inequality, and you know, focus on stuff that was relevant to an 8^th grader.

But now, especially, I feel that baggage as a woman in a relationship that is interested in exploring anal.  For so long, anal sex has been a joke for me; I would tell friends how it made me dizzy the first time I tried it, and it was terrible even though I “did everything right.”  Of course, I was 17, and doing everything right mostly meant using lots of lube and going slow.  That’s pretty much all the advice I’d ever gotten about the subject.   Even so, the only reason I tried anal in the first place was because my boyfriend at the time had been very excited about the idea, and I wanted to be open-minded and adventurous.  I only felt comfortable with anal in the context of another’s desire, not my own.

And now that I have to take ownership of my own interest in anal sex, it’s awkward.  Because I took all that cultural baggage and stigma about

…And make sure to use bacon lube

anal into my own relationship.  I brought the bad jokes, the discomfort masked by laughter, and the coded silences that kept me from even admitting my interest in anal to myself for quite a while.

So that’s something that I’m trying to work on, personally.  Just getting comfortable talking about anal sex is a big first step.  The next, of course, is educating myself on how to do it properly.  Like I said before, when I was 17, the only thing anyone ever told me about anal was “go slow and use lots of lube.”  Yet there’s so much more to it, and for those of you who are interested in educating yourselves, or even just for the morbidly curious…

For your edification, I present a Craigslist classic: “The Ass Fuck Conspiracy.”

It’s not even possible to pull out a good quote from this piece; you’ll just have to read it in its entirety, but sometimes good advice can come from an unlikely a source as Craigslist.

There’s a lot of work still to be done in getting anal sex out from its super-stigmatized corner, but here’s hoping that a little personal work on all our parts will help it along the way.

Stay cool, queer kids.

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.

Coming Out Day!

Geeze guys, why didn’t someone remind me?  It’s National Coming Out Day!

While this event is usually a celebration of open acknowledgement of sexuality and sexual orientation, I’d like to broaden the scope a bit and let you all think about the different ways one can come out.  The idea of coming out actually reminds me a little bit of (I know this will sound cheesy, but…)m High School Musical.  I know, I know, bear with me here.  So you remember the scene in the cafeteria where the one basketball kid tells his friends how he likes to bake, and then a nerd tells her friends that she loves doing hip-hop and suddenly everyone breaks out into that song “Stick to the Status Quo?”

Well, that’s how it goes with a lot of things.  We are children of societal expectation, and there are a lot of non-normative things that require “coming out.”  That can be anything from loving to knit to being gay or trans, to loving BDSM and kink.  There are a million practices and identities that society points fingers at, claiming that they are wrong or at the very least, not normal.

Which is why I love this article  by Asher Bauer and this video by Brown U. alum Marty about coming out  (which, of course, encompasses coming out to yourself) as kinky

http://vimeo.com/9310463

http://carnalnation.com/content/58326/1067/kink-coming-out-story?utm_source=CarnalNation&utm_campaign=232b2b8fe5-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

Marty, the courageous soul, came out on his Law School Applications as polyamorous, queer, and kinky, sparking an interesting conversation with his dad and society in general about which spaces allow us to be open about who we really are.

I hope you take a look and comment on both, but in honor of Coming Out Day, I’d really like to hear from you all about your coming out stories (or if you are an ally, about a friend who has come out to you).  Please share the love!

Kinsey

Hey queer kids,

A reader suggested the movie Kinsey for your viewing pleasure.  You can check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppZwSABxeYE

And while the movie is quite good, it made me realize that I hadn’t really talked about Kinsey and his work at all.  So, here’s a primer:

Alfred Kinsey is known as the father of human sexuality and Indiana University, where he worked, now has a whole institute devoted to the study of sex and sexuality because of him, called the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. But Kinsey himself is best known for two things: first and foremost, his pioneering study of Human Sexuality in the Adult Male (and subsequently, a volume on the Adult Female), and secondly, his theoretical construct, now known as “The Kinsey Scale.”

The 2004 movie Kinsey focuses on the former: Kinsey and his team of researches took off across the country to interview all varieties of people- from prison inmates to public school teachers- about their habits regarding intercourse, masturbation, arousal, and sexual orientation.  The questions he asked at each interview span well over 3 pages and each case study would trace that person’s entire sexual history.  His studies found that, contrary to popular wisdom of the time, many more people of 1950’s America were engaging in premarital sex, masturbating, having sex across generation gaps, and committing adultery.  Obviously, it caused a huge uproar at the time of publication, although we may think of it as simple common sense at this point in history.

What I find more interesting was his theory about degrees of sexual behavior, known as the Kinsey Scale.  It runs from 0-6 with 0 being “exclusively heterosexual” and 6 being “exclusively homosexual,” with all others falling somewhere in between.  Of course, these demarcations can be divided infinitely, so that a 72 year old lesbian who once slept with a man in her 20’s could be a Kinsey 5.94, or a bisexual man who sleeps almost equally with men and women could be 3.2.  The interesting thing about the Kinsey Scale is the strong division in what it tries to assign value to: sexual behavior, but never sexual orientation. Kinsey understood that behavior and orientation sometimes do not align, and that in many cases, the way we understand sexuality can never be accurately represented by a simple point on a spectrum.  For example, I consider myself bi-romantic (I have fallen in love with men and women), but homosexual (I only enjoy sex with women)- what in the world kind of number could I assign to that?  On the other hand, sexual behavior is easier to diagram- I’ve had sex with 2 men and one woman, so I fall around a Kinsey 2, depending on how you factor in length of the relationships.  This, of course, gets very sticky when you consider people who are trans, genderqueer, two-spirited, or any other gender identity which doesn’t fit within our dichotomized idea of gender.  Sadly, that wasn’t where Kinsey focused his research energy.

POINT BEING- everyone should give Kinsey a hand for helping to deconstruct the societal taboos and misassumptions which plagued the 1950s and we should all try to emulate his openness by considering the way we are all, in our own way, abnormal sexually.  Yay!

LGBT High

LGBT in High School

We were all there at one point- whether you graduated in 1979 or 2009, high school has always been an environment fraught with risks for LGBT teens.  Peer pressure and teenage hormones have been blamed for everything from drug addiction to drunk driving, but they additionally confound our sense of identity as we mature into sexual adults.  What a combination to deal with at 16, eh?

You know the motif: homophobic remarks roam high school hallways uninhibited.  Pressures to know the right people and say the right things are paramount.  And a misplaced piece of gossip, fictitious or not, can make you the object of adoration or shame in an instant.

Now this is not an admonition against coming out in high school- that would be awful, hypocritical advice on my part.  But it is an acknowledgement of certain principles immutable by the drift of time.  Teenagers talk.  They don’t check facts, but spread information like wildfire.  So perhaps this is a recommendation for caution and discretion.

When you come out in high school, news can spread fast, so it is of utmost important that you have made peace within yourself concerning your sexuality.  Because even if you only plan on telling one person, you must be prepared to deal with the possibility that others, those less understanding than your good friends, will find out and bring the issue up.  And even in the most accepting of circles, you will meet with implicit societal animosity (this goes for the outside world as well!).  Do not allow yourself to be guilted.  Love yourself.

It’s totally possible to reconcile all of these things.  The average age for coming out in 2009 was 16, and over 80% of LGBT people in generation Y (born between 1980 and the turn of the century) have or will come out by the end of high school.  Peers and faculty are becoming more understanding and more resources are available every day.

If you are considering coming out in high school, I highly suggest, regardless of how accepting your social group, that you join a Gay-Straight Alliance if one exists at your school.  At their most defunct, GSA’s area group of likeminded, tolerant, allied students meeting to socialize.  At their best, GSA’s are a safe space for LGBT people and allies to seek support, expand their knowledge, and enact social change in their school environment.  The GSA at my old high school carried out an incredible campaign to abolish a discriminatory policy which required students bringing same-sex partners to dances to get a parental consent form signed.  This social activism, in addition to their participation in GLSEN’s Day of Silence (http://www.dayofsilence.org/index.cfm) and Transgender Day of Remembrance (http://www.transgenderdor.org/?page_id=4) made them a powerful voice in the school environment.

But more than that, GSA’s are a place for discussion (which you all know I’m so fond of…) and support.  I will tell you this-without a doubt, there will be times when your friends do not understand the things you think, feel, or experience in relation to your sexuality.  GSA is a wonderful environment for deconstructing and coming to peace with your own situation.

As John Donne said in his Meditation 17, “No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent.”  In high school, this is especially true.  My best advice is to have confidence in yourself and to seek out people and organizations which validate and reinforce this confidence.

A Treatise for the Open and Honest Discussion of Sex

Whether you are gay, straight, bi, queer, or anything around and in between, sex has been a subject discussed either in the forbidding whispers and giggles or the clinical dryness of the health classroom.  And that’s a shame.  Because neither forum offers a comprehensive understanding of the physical, psychological, and emotional aspects of sex.

For LGBT teens, it’s even worse.  Our assumptively hetero-normative society American society not only totally dis-empowers and vilifies our personal attractions, but refuses to talk openly about the versions of sex that they do find appropriate.  I remember in 8^th grade, I attended a school-sponsored overnight aimed at getting girls ready for High School with lectures and workshops on sex, drugs, body image, and media distortion.  One of the workshops featured an analysis of advertisements, including one of Britney Spears leaning over a soapy car, talking up some brand of Chevrolet or motor oil.  Point being, the instructor happened to mention that this ad was not only talking about [insert inane commercial product here], but also advertising a perverse form of sex aka anal.  Even at 13 this pissed me off.  Who is she to decide what kind of sex is perverse or not?  And yet we encounter this all the time- from protesters holding up signs that condemn sodomy to parents who tell their children that their effeminate classmates are “not normal” and do nothing to stop the teasing they encounter.

So with all of these silent, strictly codified rules making us second-guess our emotions and attractions, what do we as ambitious, hormonal, insatiably curious teenagers do?  Well, first of all, we do everything and then deny it.  But more importantly, we create online communities, blogs, confessions into cyberspace detailing all the things society tells us we’ve “done wrong.”

25 Things About My Sexuality is one of the more brilliant blog concepts I’ve seen: it offers online submission forms for anyone that desires to submit often lengthy and detailed “confessions” about their early sexual experiences, partners, and fantasies.

I put confession in quotes because of the completely artificial societal construct that makes 25 Things writers “guilty.”  There is nothing these bloggers have done that an open mind couldn’t fix.  Or better yet, an open dialogue.

FORRRRR EXAMPLE: Today’s post was from a woman who had grown up in a Catholic family where her parents were not very affectionate towards each other in public, nor did they ever talk about sex or masturbation.  She writes: “My parents didn’t talk much about homos at home, but all I remember hearing from them was that they were somehow weird and that it was not desirable to be one. We didn’t talk about masturbation either, I only remember one time when they told me that sex is something a man and a woman do together because they love each other. For a long time I thought masturbation was only for perverts, and I didn’t really try it at all until I was about 15.”

Now, understandably, in Catholic households, masturbation is sometimes considered unnatural and wrong, but this same stigma exists in thousands of non-religious homes too, because the taboos of sex and self-love have completely overtaken society.

This blogger writes further: “A recent post really made me think about how a lot of the people who write here think they’re weird and not normal, but really there are LOTS and LOTS of people out there struggling with very similar stuff.”  So if we acknowledge that there are many people in the world feeling just as guilty and awkward about perfectly normal things, what’s a society to do?!?

Bianca’s prescription is two-fold.

1. Parents, teachers, mentors, peers- freakin’ TALK.  I know it’s embarrassing and awkward to bring up sex and sexuality, especially across generational gaps, but it’s so important.  Open discussions about what we feel as sexual beings will help smash negative stereotypes and stigma, as well as passing on positive attitudes for children who will grow up respecting people of all orientations and practices.
   1. Sidenote: Unitarian Universalist Churches have started a wonderful sex ed program that addresses these issues brilliantly. I attended one of the classes for a panel on LGBT issues this past year and found the kids very mature and comfortable with themselves.  The program features everything from safe sex practices to masturbation techniques to discussions on homosexuality and gender non-conformity.  I highly suggest that anyone who has this course available to them use it!
   2. Other teens- stop judging.  The terms whore, slut, cougar, perv, fag, cougar, etc. do not belong in our societal vocabulary.  Everyone is entitled to their own variety of sexual practice and you have no right to make arbitrary distinctions about the quantity or quality of their partners, the content of their encounters, or their personal feelings and fantasies.  If you have negative personal opinions about a certain practice, consider if they are grounded in safety or health concerns.  If not, consider re-evaluating.  Whatever makes a person happy is fine, as long as it goes without hurting another person.  Your recriminations only perpetuates a sexual elitism- and one day, the shoe may be on the other foot.

If the concept of sexual privilege in society strikes your fancy, mediate on Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” from the book Thinking Sex.  http://interalia.org.pl/pozycje/1194044411-533/1.gif

Also, another example of a good “Confession blog” is Queer Secrets.  It’s styled after PostSecret (also a personal favorite, but with exclusively queer material).  WARNING: it is very depressing, as it focuses on people who are forced to remain closeted.