On Abstinence Vows: An Art Plate9/29/2015 The Story Behind “Embrace Pleasure”9/23/2015 Is sex dirty? Is enjoying sex a bad thing? Is it only okay if you always do it with the same person? Or if you’ve made a forever commitment with them?
Why do we have so many restrictions on our sexual enjoyment? What are we afraid might happen if we embrace sexual pleasure? Come write a letter to your teenage self saying everything you wish you knew about sex (and bodies, relationships, gender, etc.) as a teenager. Then we’ll have an open mic where you can read your letter (if you want to).
Date: Sunday, September 20, 2015 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM Location: The Democracy Center in Cambridge Cost: Sliding scale $3-$25 Click here to buy your ticket! :) After we have some time to write our letters, anyone who wants to share their letter is welcome to read it aloud, open mic style (you can also ask someone to read your letter for you, if you want). We will provide pens and paper, but you’re welcome to bring a laptop if you’d like to type your letter. Letter Submissions We would love it if you want to submit your letter to The Sex Letters Project blog! Then other people can read your letter, maybe identify with what you said, and possibly even learn something from it. Submissions can be anonymous or credited, it’s up to you. If you choose to write your letter by hand, we are happy to type it up for you to submit it to the blog. If you’d rather not submit your letter, that’s totally cool too. :) Admission Admission to this event is on a sliding scale from $3 to $25. You are welcome to pay whatever you’d like in that range. Admission includes a copy of our zine, Sex Letters Volume One. There will be snacks! (The more you pay for admission, the better the snacks will be ;) All are welcome. Feel free to invite people! Safer Space Pleasure Pie strives to create safer spaces. We will share what that means to each of us and come up with some guidelines during this event, but for now you can check out these safer space guidelines by a local co-op, The Fort, to get a sense of what this can look like. Accessibility This will be in the Library room in The Democracy Center. It is private and cozy. Unfortunately, the building isn’t wheelchair accessible. Please let us know if stairs are a hindrance to you. You can reach us at thepleasurepie@gmail.com. Summer Tour Recap!8/21/2015 This August I traveled to Maryland and Virginia to be a part of two sexuality conferences, Amorous Revolt and the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit. It was awesome to meet so many people who are passionate about creating a more sexually accepting culture! My friends at The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health let me use some of their table space for Pleasure Pie zines, and I am eternally grateful! It was a great opportunity to put my work out there in a community of enthusiastic, supportive sex geeks. Also, I put up the Thoughtful Penis Series on the wall behind the table, because why not? Photo from the CSPH Instagram. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take any photos at Amorous Revolt, and I haven’t seen any posted on the internet yet. But I’ll post some if I find any!
Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our Sex Positive Summer Tour fundraiser for making this all possible!!! Local sex-positive mastermind Kit Stubbs, Ph.D., is in the process of launching [drumroll please…] The Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity! The Effing Foundation aims to foster sex-positive artists, activists, educators, and entrepreneurs, and celebrate diverse expressions of human sexuality.
[Full disclosure: Kit and I are friends and we sometimes collaborate on sex-positive projects.] I sat down with Kit to ask them some questions about their plans for the new nonprofit, how they navigate being a sex-positive activist, and what brought them to sex-positivity in the first place. One survivor’s reflections:
Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to live in a body that wasn’t repeatedly touched, fondled, and/or used without my consent. My relationship to my body has been shaped by all these experiences of people touching me against my will, since I was a kid. When I was raped at age 23, it felt weirdly unsurprising and familiar because I had experienced so much non-consensual sexual touching in my life already. I decided to make a map of my body that shows where people have touched me against my will. Why do I want to share this with the world? 1. To say, “Hey! This is what sexual assault looks like (or can look like). Recognize it! Acknowledge it!” 2. To share what has happened to me as a part of my own healing process. 3. To bring attention to the complex, confusing, and deeply internalized ways that non-consensual touching can affect a person. I am trying to reclaim my body as my own – to unlearn all of the experiences that have taught me that my body exists for other people’s whims, and to proclaim that I am the ruler of my body – the only person who gets to decide what I do with it. I have bodily autonomy and I will not give it up! By Christina Bartson
During a recent Sunday brunch with my crew, my girlfriend was retelling her night’s sexscapades and blurted out a now infamous line her guy dropped right before things got hot-and-heavy. They’re making out, and he comes up for air, takes her by the shoulders and says completely seriously, “Ok, wanna make a game plan?” He wanted to make a game plan for sex. We’ve laughed over this a thousand times, and frequently reference it in conversation because it’s funny, sure, but it’s also an ingenious sex-positive concept. A game plan for sex—both parties are collaborating to make decisions together, both people have equal power, both are consenting verbally. It warrants communication, and most importantly, a game plan means a thorough warm up. I’m talking about foreplay—a critical time for partners to turn up the heat and set some game rules. Anyways, you know you play better when you’re properly limbered up. Foreplay gives partners a chance to build trust. In the words of a good friend, foreplay is our time to, “physically and emotionally feel each other out.” You’re establishing your level of comfort, and guiding each other around your bodies the way you feel secure and respected. You learn each other’s style of communicating—how your partner responds and invites. You discover what makes them arch their back and bite their lip, respectfully exploring the wonders of their body. During foreplay, you can show your partner that they can rely on you to respect and honor their limits and preferences. Trust increases pleasure. Our bodies can sense when we are feeling unsafe. Our muscles are tense when we feel anxious, and when our bodies are not relaxed, they’re not ready for sex. Foreplay serves an important purpose in sex in preparing our bodies, warming us up not just emotionally, but bodily, too. This is important for everyone, but especially for people with vaginas. When bodies with vaginas become aroused, the muscles pull the uterus up and it makes more room in the vagina. This is called vaginal tenting and it creates more space to make penetration more comfortable and satisfying. Foreplay also helps boost natural lubrication—an ingredient that can make sex more enjoyable for all parties involved. Communicating for consent and pleasure How do you know when you’re partner is feeling ready to rumble? Talking about it, of course. A common misconception is that talking during sex ruins the moment. Well, this is a ridiculous myth largely constructed by Hollywood—those flawless choreographed sex scenes where the individuals in the shot don’t need to communicate because they both already read the screenplay. In real-life sex, however, communication is necessary, and it makes it better, too. Personally speaking, hearing someone care for your body and emotional well-being is very sexy. Asking for what you want is empowering, and in return, inquiring about what feels good for your partner shows reciprocated attention to their experience. For best results, try: How are you? Does this feel good? Is this okay? What do you want? These questions enhance sex, prolong it, and extend it (pardon the pun). Also, they’re a crucial step in foreplay and should be continued throughout. Keep asking, and never assume that one “yes” covers it all. Being attentive to your partner puts you fully in the moment and this makes your experience more fulfilling, too. Foreplay, or More-play?* Foreplay is about more than just hands on body parts—it’s the ways we communicate and establishing consent every step of the way in a creative, sensitive, and sexy manner. It’s the hushed talking at the corner in the party or the whisper in an ear on the walk home. It’s the firm hand-holding when you walk across an icy sidewalk, and the “Hey, watch your step, it’s slippery.” It’s the eye contact. It’s being present. It’s showing you’ve got the hots playfully, openly, and respectfully. However, foreplay should not be reduced to just pre-gaming. Yes, it serves as a warm up, but it can be a main event, too. Why not try thinking of foreplay as sex? Perhaps we need to rethink our definition of sex. Sex is not just a means to an end. It’s everything leading up to the finale, too. We shouldn’t limit sex to homeruns, or scoring. This language ignores and forgets foreplay, and how the process can be equally as enjoyable and important as the end of the game. Foreplay dedicates time to having those crucial conversations between partners that help sex and sexy feelings come from empowered places, not embarrassed or uneasy places. Next time you’re about to get it on, follow the wise words of the game-plan-guy and revel in the fervent functions of foreplay. Limber up, players. *Cheesy pun courtesy of Nicole Mazzeo. One survivor’s thoughts after a rape. Names have been changed.
Dear James, I’m writing you to share my feelings about our interactions in the past couple of weeks. Some of your actions have been hurtful to me, and I thought that maybe if I put my thoughts into writing, you might be able to see where I’m coming from. When you came up to me for the first time in the market, I assumed that your interest in me was based on my body, including my whiteness. That was fine with me – my body is a part of who I am and I enjoy when people enjoy it. I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and I was totally cool with enjoying each other’s bodies, as long as I felt safe and my boundaries were respected. I had a lot of fun cuddling with you. I was really missing touching someone and being touched. You were very sexy and it felt good. But I was clear about the fact that I wasn’t comfortable with kissing you or doing anything more than cuddling. I told you that crossing that line could ruin my relationship with my boyfriend, and how sad that would make me. I wasn’t sure whether or not you enjoyed cuddling without having sex, and I didn’t want us to be doing something that was only fun for me, so I asked you. You said you liked it. I was excited to go to the bar with you, and I had a good time there. Your friends were nice and I had fun talking to them. I accidentally got drunk (I know it’s weird, but I’m sensitive to alcohol and two drinks is a lot for me) to the point where my eyes kept closing and I felt like I needed to lean against something to stay upright. I assume you noticed how drunk I was, because I’m not subtle. I also told you, “I’m really drunk; I’m trying to slow down.” This was around the time that we went to the jungle gym and you kept trying to kiss me. I kept avoiding you, but I still liked being close to you, so I didn’t move away completely. Eventually, I was too slow and you caught my lips with yours. I didn’t kiss you back at first. I think I was making it pretty clear that I didn’t want to kiss you, by telling you and avoiding your kisses. At your house, I repeatedly moved your hand away from my vagina while we were kissing and cuddling. At some point you started fingering me and I said, “No, no, stop, please don’t, let’s not do this, no” etc. until you stopped. I think you could see that I was upset by this, because when I tried to sleep on the couch, you asked me if I was okay. You eventually convinced me to come back to bed by promising over and over again that you wouldn’t go inside me again. I trusted you when you said this. Then you insisted that I let you rub your penis on my vagina. I told you that I wasn’t comfortable with that. I don’t understand why you didn’t care about whether or not I was comfortable with the things you wanted to do with my body. You promised again that you wouldn’t go inside me. Eventually I let you rub yourself on me because I wanted you to fall asleep so I could be alone, since the situation was making me uncomfortable. Your rubbed your penis against me for a little bit, and then started fucking me. Again I said, “No, no, I don’t want this, stop, let’s not do this, please stop” etc. You didn’t stop until you came. I know that you didn’t use violence against me, you didn’t force me to go to your house, you didn’t hold me down. But you did completely disregard the fact that I didn’t want to have sex with you. You ignored me when I said no. If you have sex with someone when they say no, that is rape. It can be traumatic even if it isn’t violent. I’m asking you to please be considerate of what a woman wants when you want to have sex with her. If she doesn’t want to, please stop there. Sex should be pleasurable for everyone involved. I feel violated and disrespected by the way you treated me. I am only writing you to ask you to think about the way that you treated me, and whether or not that is how you want to treat women in the future. I am not interested in contacting the police or anything like that. I don’t trust the criminal justice system and I think it often makes people worse off. I’m leaving for the US tonight and you’ll never see me again. If there is anything you want to say to me, you can contact me at [email address]. With hope, Megan Emma started her internship at Pleasure Pie only a little over week ago and has already done so much.
Emma helps to keep Pleasure Pie connected to you by:
My favorite things about working with Emma so far:
-Nicole Mazzeo, Pleasure Pie founder and director *** Q&A with Emma! Emma Glassman-Hughes: Hi everybody! I’m Emma, the new Pleasure Pie intern, and I’m very eager to introduce myself to this community. As a way for you to get to know me, as well as my place in the world of sex positivity, I’m going to answer some questions for you. Nicole Mazzeo: So Emma, why is sex positivity important to you? EGH: Though I’m an Atheist by mentality and a Jew by heritage and sense of humor, my family still celebrates Christmas for the hell of it. My gift this year from my dad, fully embracing my burgeoning feminist pride, was a book called The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lapore, which highlights one of America’s most beloved superheroes, while masterfully weaving in the comic’s shining feminist subplot. Though I’m not yet finished with all 300+ pages, I was struck by the introduction of the wife of William Marston, Wonder Woman’s creator, named Sadie Elizabeth Holloway. She was supposedly very independent and an avid reader of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, a feminist of her time who is described in the book as “the symbol of female love.” Holloway was deeply inspired by Sappho, this feminist symbol, and it is speculated that Wonder Woman is inspired by Holloway. Thus, by my calculations, Wonder Woman is, by association, a superhero whose true super power is the power of female love. To me, this proved very important. I had never thought of my love—my sex, my friendship, my passion—as a power before. So I suppose I would say that sex positivity is important to me because it helps me see the power in owning my sexuality, and it reminds me that sex is more than something that society simply expects for me to give; my sex is my autonomy. I’ve always had trouble embracing my own sexuality to its fullest potential—learning to effectively communicate with partners, let go of self-consciousness, and separate myself from sexual shame are just a few of the things I have had to work toward. And, while that struggle is far from won, my continued learning about sex positivity has helped unwrap the happier, healthier, and more self-aware woman that was hiding under layers of limiting societal pressures. The power behind female love is a more extraordinary phenomenon than we are taught to believe in school (my third-of-a-year-long high school sex [read: abstinence] education was, needless to say, a letdown), and I am thankful for sex positivity and for Wonder Woman for showing this to me. NM: What’s your take on intersectional activism? EGH: As a feminist, one of the most interesting things about keeping up with media coverage in times of nationally heightened racial tensions (such as the recent uproar about how police brutality disproportionately affects black victims) is hearing black activists talk about black men the same way that feminists talk about women. I hear so many of the same buzzwords, like “victim-blaming,” and it becomes difficult for me to see a separation between the two issues. Racial injustice and gender injustice are inextricably tied, and you simply cannot have true feminism without an anti-racism component. It is also important that sex positivity in particular embraces intersectionality (I hope this is a word because I like it) and specifically tackles racial injustices because the sexuality of people of color has historically been controlled, commodified, and exploited in this country. Though racism is often at the forefront of my thinking due to its growing coverage on different forms of media, people who face other kinds of oppression also need feminist advocates. Because I grew up in Southern California, an area with some of the country’s largest homeless populations, as well as a very close proximity to the Mexican border, I began thinking about class and immigration issues at a young age. Disadvantages in people’s lives can lead to unhealthy views of sex, which contributes to the anemic and destructive overarching sex culture in our country. People of every background deserve to be knowledgeable about sex, to love their bodies, and to know how to give and ask for consent. People of every background deserve to feel safe and free from sexual violence. People of every background deserve to know how to make themselves happy. Eradicating the oppression of all people is the real business of feminism, empowering those who have historically been silenced will lead us all to a better future. Intersectional activism, to me, is the only activism worth pursuing because it unites diverse voices in order to more effectively create change. NM: What do you want to accomplish by doing this internship? EGH: Not only am I a fabulous Pleasure Pie intern, but I am also a fabulous college student and young woman with a lot on my mind. As much as I would love for these things to not belong in the same sentence or even the same blog post, as a female student, I am constantly reminded of rape culture. Need I even mention the obscene statistic that approximately 1 in 5 female college students will be sexually assaulted before she graduates? People of all sorts and genders (yes, this includes men *gasp*) suffer in a society that refuses to promote healthy sexuality and instead fosters sexual violence. I would love to live in a world where people can come into their own sexualities free from fear, judgment, entitlement, and shame. This sexual utopia can be achieved, I am convinced, if we improve the conversations that we are having about sex, and if we embrace a healthier and more informative sex education curriculum that covers all kinds of varying sexualities, gender identities, and contraceptive choices, which is a lot of what sex positivity is about. As a sex positive intern, I would love to learn new ways to make this topic more accessible for a variety of people with different backgrounds, to help eradicate rape culture, to work to improve sex education in schools, and to do my best to create a more accepting and all-inclusive sex culture through productive and forward-thinking conversation. Working for Pleasure Pie is my way of entering this conversation with purpose, and, of course, a wealth of nifty zines to guide me through it. Two days ago, I moved into a previously uninhabited apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yesterday, when I took my first shower in the apartment, I stepped into the shower to find a millipede trying, and failing, to climb up the shower wall. While I’ve come far with my long-time bug phobias, millipedes are one of the few critters that can still make me scream, cry, and rethink my living situation. So I cried through my first shower (after the millipede had been removed) and insisted that my partner Eric stay in the bathroom until I was done, just in case. Today, I bravely ventured into the shower on my own (with the help of a newly installed shower drain with little holes that a millipede should never be able to fit through) while Eric went to a nearby cafe. But there was one thing giving me courage today (other than the new drain): I was going to be washing with a beautiful, detailed, life size vulva soap. My friend Callie makes these soaps in her studio in Boston from casts of real people’s vaginas (you can read about her concept and process here). Anyone who looks through my Etsy favorites will know that I have been aching for realistic vagina paraphernalia for a long time. So of course I was thrilled when Callie offered to let me try out one of her soaps. Since I could use all the bathing encouragement I could get today, I decided it would be a good time to open up my new vulva soap and take it for a spin. I tore off the biodegradable (did I mention Callie’s big on caring for the environment?) cellophane and held the soap in my hands, running my fingers over its life-like bumps and wrinkles before nervously stepping one foot – and then the other – into the running shower. I put the soap on a little ledge in the shower while anxiously watching for any millipedes that might heroically fight their way through the too-small drain holes to join me. After a moment of resting on the narrow ledge, the soap fell to the shower floor with a thud. I heard Eric’s knowing laugh in the other room as he gathered his things to head to the cafe. I laughed at the fact that he knew exactly what had just happened. My tenseness started to subside. I began washing my furry armpits, which I lathered up using the flat back of the vulva soap, in order to preserve maximum lifelike texture for when I got to my own vulva. The soap made a pleasantly thick bubbly lather that I enjoyed massaging into my skin. I washed the usual areas in this fashion until it was the moment I had been waiting for – vulva time. I stood upright and rubbed the soap – vulva side up – along my vulva, front to back. The vulva-on-vulva action was erotic. The curves of its labia and the slipperiness of the soap felt good on my clitoris and labia. I got a little carried away, rubbing past the point of just bathing. Thanks to the vulva soap’s sex appeal, my vagina has never been so clean. My 4 Favorite Things About the Vulva Soap: 1. It sends the message that vaginas (and genitals in general) aren’t gross. It says it’s okay to look at genitals, touch them, and even enjoy them. Demystifying genitals can help to make us all a little (or a lot) more comfortable with our bodies (and our partners’ bodies). Vulva soap sparks a conversation about genitals, which is an opportunity for people to ask questions, bring up concerns, and reflect on things they’re uncomfortable with relating to their genitals, or genitals in general. If we see things that look like our own genitals being presented as normal and okay, it sends the message that our genitals are normal and okay. I would love to see someone make soaps from penises, testicles, trans people’s genitals, and intersex genitals. I would love to see all different sizes, shapes, colors, and variations so we can all find something that we can relate to and recognize as ours. (Note: Callie’s vulva soaps come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.) 2. It’s a good way to see what other people’s vaginas might look like – in 3D! I don’t see many people’s vaginas up close (I can’t even see most of mine without using a mirror), and I would like to have a better idea of what vaginas actually look like. Through my work as a sexual health educator, I routinely describe vaginas and how they work to teenagers and adults. I also make illustrations of vaginas. I could do both of these things better if I had a better understanding of what exactly vaginas look like, and how they vary. 3. It’s sexy. It can double as a sex toy – just don’t put it inside the vagina or use it for a long time at once (getting soap inside the vagina can mess up its pH level and cause infection). But you can still enjoy it as a sexy, wet thing to use as a prop for fantasizing and to briefly stroke the outer vulva with. 4. It’s good soap even after it stops looking like a vulva. It’s made with shea butter and lavender oil, and is free of animal products, detergent, SLS, and paraben. It also feels and smells great. 11 Fun Ideas for Using the Vulva Soap:
1. Put it in your bathroom as a hand soap when you have guests over. 2. Masturbate with it for a couple of minutes while you’re in the shower. Then rinse off and continue the sexy time elsewhere (or continue with your fingers in the shower). 3. Invite a partner to shower with you and surprise them by rubbing the vulva soap all over them, spending a little extra time on their genitals. 4. Give it as a birthday gift to a feminist or nudist friend or partner. 5. Give it as a birthday gift to a conservative friend or relative. 6. Make a body positive gift basket with this zine, this cross stitch, and this T-shirt, and give it in a gift swap or to a loved one. 8. Attach it to a wreath and display it on your front door. 9. Mail it to an anti-choice or anti-feminist politician or religious leader in your community. 10. For artists: Use it as a prop in a video, photo shoot, or play. 11. For educators: Use it in a sex ed or health class to supplement any less life-like vagina models you use. The vulva soap was everything I wanted it to be and more. I had so much fun with it that I forgot about the millipede threat altogether and immensely enjoyed the shower that I had been dreading. Vulva Soap Giveaway Do you want to try the vulva soap out for yourself? You’re in luck because Callie gave me an extra one to give away for free! Click here to enter the giveaway! [A note on word choice: I use the word “vagina” to refer to the whole genital area of anyone with a vagina. Technically “vagina” only means the vaginal opening/cavity. “Vulva” means the whole genital area. However, most people I know commonly use the word “vagina” when talking about the vulva, and many might not know what “vulva” means. I prefer to use the word “vagina” or use them both interchangeably because I’d rather have people know what I’m talking about than use the “right” word.] Ode to the Underboob11/16/2014 As a teenager, I was really confused about the concept of a “tease.” I heard some of my male peers say, more or less, that teases were the worst and they hated them. I weeded out from their comments that the basic definition of a tease was a girl who fooled around with a guy, but didn’t have sex with him. Wait, did that mean I was a tease? I would often have long, steamy make out sessions with whichever lucky guy was my boyfriend at any given moment (wink), and these make out sessions would never turn into sex. It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t want to have sex with these guys, it was that they never initiated sex (and at the time I felt that, as a female, it wasn’t my place to initiate it). When I heard my guy friends lamenting the existence of “teases,” I started to worry that all this making out with no sex might make guys hate me (my worst nightmare as a boy-crazy teenage girl*). To add to my confusion, the things I heard about sex weren’t lining up with what was happening in my own sexual experiences. Here’s a brief sampling of the messages about sex I received from the media, adults, and peers (with commentary):
If guys only care about sex, and don’t value relationships or foreplay, why weren’t my boyfriends trying to have sex with me**? They all seemed to be in less of a rush to get to sex than I was, and I was (according to what I had noticed people expected of me as a female) the one who was supposed to be in charge of withholding sex until an appropriate time. But wait, doesn’t withholding sex make me a tease? And doesn’t having sex as soon as a guy wants to make me a slut? So many conflicting messages! Let me set some things straight. Guys care about more than just sex. To my surprise, the guys I dated appeared to have feelings about sex other than Must Have Sex ASAP — feelings that probably included wanting to feel ready, caring about not making me uncomfortable, wanting to live up to their religious beliefs and family’s standards (which sometimes told them to wait until marriage), being nervous about how to initiate sex, how to know what I wanted, and how to have good sex, and even (get this!) enjoying our lengthy make out sessions. And those were just their feelings about sex. They also had all sorts of other feelings about all sorts of other things, unrelated to sex. They were at times sentimental, shy, creative, caring, romantic, anxious, etc. They wrote songs, loved their pets, tried to help me through my issues, cared about school, cared about our relationship — all the cares and concerns any multifaceted person might have. These guys, while their brains might have been flooded with hormones and they might have been thinking about sex much of the time, also had real thoughts, feelings, and priorities other than “Must deflower girlfriend NOW.” Guys don’t always want sex. I know what you’re thinking: “But every sitcom I’ve ever watched has told me otherwise!” These sitcoms are exaggerating. While many men want to have sex frequently, many others prefer occasional sex or no sex at all. Even the men who crave sex frequently have plenty of moments when they’re, say, stressed about work, on the phone with their mom, or really into a good movie. I’ve tried to initiate sex in these moments. It was through being rejected that I learned that these moments of preferring not to have sex exist. Girls and women sometimes do want sex. Why else would lesbians have sex? This also applies to straight and bi+ girls and women, many of whom want to have sex more often than their male partners do. It is perfectly okay for a person of any gender to want to have sex very frequently, or never at all. Which brings me to my next point… Not wanting to have sex is always okay. While our culture teaches that sex is dirty and secret, it is also widely believed that a lack of desire for sex (especially in the context of a committed relationship) means that something’s wrong, either with the individual or with the relationship. This is often not the case! Many people’s sex drives naturally fluctuate. Many others prefer never to have sex. This doesn’t mean that they don’t experience love, intimacy, joy, satisfaction, relaxation, or any other emotion. Gender roles and rape culture Our culture teaches guys that they’re supposed to keep pushing to get as far as they can in any sexual encounter. We also teach girls and women that they’re supposed to say no a certain number of times before “giving in” to sex, because being hesitant makes you less “slutty.” Because of these teachings, when a girl/woman says no to sex with a guy:
And what happens when a guy is sexually assaulted? People’s responses tend to line up with the dominant cultural teachings about guys and sex:
What about when a woman is sexually assaulted by another woman? Again, cultural understandings of gender tend to add to this problem. Many people don’t take it as seriously as sexual assault perpetrated by a male because we’ve been taught that women don’t have the same capacity for violence and aggression as men do. This leads to many survivors not getting the support they need to address the emotional effects of the assault. As a culture, our dominant messages about sex should include that:
The psychological effects of gender roles The simplistic and often unrealistic messages our society teaches about what to expect from girls/women and guys/men have clearly caused me a lot of unnecessary confusion, but the negative effects of this misinformation don’t end there. For instance, a rigid view of gender roles tends to go along with lower self esteem and prevents people from expressing themselves fully. Many people feel stuck expressing their gender in a way that fits with their gender role in order to gain approval from a partner, or from society in gen(d)eral. This leads to less sexual satisfaction in relationships and more sexual repression. Transgender people and gender roles While rejecting gender roles can be hard for anyone, it may be especially difficult for many transgender people who, already marginalized for their gender identity, are more likely to face harsh discrimination and even violence for challenging cultural norms. Though many trans people adhere to gender roles in their relationships, buying into the idea of gender roles tends to go along with higher levels of internalized transphobia. It isn’t uncommon for a trans person to feel afraid of talking with their partner about their trans identity, or to prefer sex in the dark so their bodies are less visible to their partners. If we, as a society, had a more fluid understanding of gender, less common gender expressions wouldn’t be seen as such a problem.
On “teases”
I wasn’t a “tease” for having dozens of make out sessions that didn’t end in sex. Why?
The whole concept of a tease is unhelpful and often inaccurate. It’s tied to the male pushing, female withholding model of sexual progression, which can be harmful in heterosexual encounters and fails to acknowledge same sex encounters. The idea of a tease wouldn’t be so prevalent in a world where sexual activity is thought of as something people engage in and move forward with together for their mutual enjoyment. *Not all teenage girls are boy-crazy, but I was. **Shout out to all my teenage boyfriends, now in your mid 20s: Thanks for not getting me pregnant, xoxo. This article was written by Nicole Mazzeo for Fabulously Feminist Magazine. Don’t Tell Me-ow to Dress11/9/2014 It was great to hear from other feminists at Boston’s Emerging Feminist Scholar and Activist Expo. As usual, my favorite part was seeing the awesome crafts people make on the spot (there was a zine making workshop!). Lucky for you, the maker of my favorite creation allowed me to take a photo of her piece to share on this blog. Check it out! And here’s the collage that I made: Enjoy!
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