Antichoice, bible-thumping, sex-only-okay-for straight-marrieds-and-only-for-procreation trolls are really funny when they suggest Plato or Socrates as a suitable defense for their agenda and as in alignment with them when it comes to sexuality. Especially when they were serious.

Know what’s even funnier than that?

When it’s that day you need to tidy up the toys. So you go to head downstairs, your hands so overfull with dildos that you drop them and — bOINg! BOing! boING! — they all go down the stairs.

It’s peppy penises! A prancing phallus! A jouncing Johnson! Springing Schongs! Ding dong!

It’s almost as funny when after the Great Dildo Circus of 2008 is over (wah!), after you’ve gathered them all back up and are going to the dishwasher, tears still on your cheeks from amusing yourself so, you look up to see your neighbor crossing the lane, stopping dead in her tracks and looking at you as if…well, as if you were a woman laughing and crying all by herself loading an armload of dildos into the dishwaher.

Almost, but not quite.

P.S. The San Francisco trip was very brief, but very nice. Having lots of time with Robert & Carol is always a treat, I was able to spend time with Melissa twice (and I do not know what it is about us, but we have the coolest thing that happens when both our brains are in the same space), met a lot of very lovely people, had a productive meeting, and spent a ridiculous amount of money on too many cups of impossible-to-resist Blue Bottle coffee, which was — unfortunately for my wallet — stumbling distance from Robert and Carol’s pad.

Honestly, I have had a lot of good coffee in my life, have even trained people to make it as a gig way back when, but I do think I can say I have never had better. And they do vegan mochas with gorgeous shaved dark chocolate which you get a thick mouthful of at the end of the cup. Heaven.

I thought the reception on Friday was a good time and the presentation/discussion Sunday went well. I wish, for the latter, that I hadn’t had to abbreviate answers to VERY big questions due to time, since it made me feel like I was almost diminishing some issues I thought were big’uns, but one does what one can.

posted in Heather Corinna, Auntie Heather's Helpful Hints, sex/life, simple joys, the god squad | permalink | comments (4) »

To provide some needed levity and lightness following the last entry, Mark and I found ourselves in the great conundrum last night of not having a simple name for the sort of sex we wound up having at the end of an extended at-home date last night.

You’ve got your makeup sex and your breakup sex, but what’s it called when you have the-reasons-we-both-were-reluctant-to-have-sex-even-though-we-both-wanted-to-because-we-were-worried-about-resolving-issues-the-wrong-way-no-longer-matter-because-we-both-resolved-them-and-suprisingly-bridged-gaps-we-didn’t-even-know-we-had-and-sweet-jesus-do-I-freaking-love-you-baby sex?

Because that’s kinda unwieldly, I think.

It really was an entirely unplanned, unexpected and remarkable date here last night. Initially, I was just happy to be able to have Mark come home to someone other than a complete invalid and not have to play nursemaid to me for another night. Not that he complained at all: if there were an award for being the best Tender of the Incoherent Sickie, he’d win, hands down. While I was particularly thankful for the care and patience, and I have over time discovered he may be the one person, ever, who I can feel okay about allowing to care for me when ill (my usual tactic is to tell whomever to leave the soup at the damn door and get the freaking hell away from me: yeah, I’m a wonderful patient), I still want that care to be limited, for everyone’s sake.

As it turned out, we had this date that was kind of like the best dates you had in college or your first apartment, where you sit on the floor with takeaway for dinner and a bottle of hooch, shared favorite music playing (Over the Rhine albums, in this case), and you just share and share and share as the night turns into morning, talking without there ever being any pauses or silences, learning new things about the other person throughout, waxing existential at times — Isn’t beauty beautiful in the first place because it is relative, momentary, and un-ownable? Or, why is it that you had these similar experiences to me, and yet, we processed and internalized them completely differently? — to the silly, but seemingly important at the time — Where the heck has that highfalutin, flimflam, lollygaggin’, fuddy-duddy, ol’timey slang of yore gone, and why can’t we have it back? — becoming a bit more vulnerable than before just because it feels so right at others. And this when it all started with talking about some tricky, uncomfortable stuff, with me already feeling a bit emotionally drained from the day: quite unexpected and heartily welcomed, to say the least, especially in a year when both of our creative work lives are full-throttle, and time together is at a real premium.

Times like these, I’m reminded of the profound closeness that I experience between us, how exceptional it is in my life experience, and how very dearly I treasure it.

Plus, the whatever-the-heck-you-call-it kind of sex, which resulted in one of those brain ’splody orgasms where you can’t remember what you even call yourself, let alone anything else, was a particularly fine finish to the evening, as was us waking up today crushing particularly hard on the other a fine start to a new day.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (2) »

A brief break (and thank christ, it really does look like tomorrow I’ll get that day off after all, though given my workday today started out with shared orgasms before either of us were even fully awake this morning, I can’t complain overmuch), to highlight a couple more Scarleteen fundrasing bloggy bits out and about I’ve enjoyed reading, and am grateful for:

Peter has some cool reflections here, Zingerella shares some sound sex ed memories here, and I know I linked to Sarah Monette’s entry yesterday, but I like it so much I’m doing it again. Here’s Hanne’s awesome offer to sweeten the deal, Seska’s reflections on her sex ed experiences, Candy on hers, and AGA blogger and longtime Scarleteen user Emily here.

On a related note, this letter from the Religious Institute makes me very, very happy. A favorite passage?

Faith communities must recognize, however, that many adolescents will become involved in sexual relationships during their teenage years. Adolescent intimate relationships, like those of adults, should be based on shared personal values, and should be consensual, non-exploitative and non-coercive, honest, mutually pleasurable, and protected against unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. All persons, including adolescents, have the right and responsibility to lead lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure.

Preach it.

(I likely won’t find all the blog entries people are doing in the logs, so if anyone blogging wants to bring my attention to what they’ve done, by all means, shoot me an email. And if you haven’t blogged yet, and support what we do, please do! Everybody’s bit helps, and besides, it’s always cool and needed to talk and read about sex ed. This is dialogue we need culturally, no matter what.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, sex/life | permalink | comments (0) »

When I was a teenager, having sex wasn’t really part of my rebellion.

Having GOOD sex was.

Now, I know that I’m kind of not supposed to even say this stuff out loud, especially within earshot of anyone under 18…or 21 or 29 or whatever this week’s proper age for sexual activity issued forth from our oh-so-moral government is per being an unrepentant tramp. Don’t suppose age matters here: it’s pretty clear there’s not any age or station at which it’s acceptable per the Bushies to be a woman who enjoys sex on her own terms and happily has plenty of it.

I know that admissions like that sometimes have the effect of diminishing my credibility in the eyes of some as a young adult sex educator. As I understand it, if you had really great sex as a teen (or a grown woman, or a lesbian or a gay man or anyone not over 50, heterosexual and married), and worse still, lots of it, you somehow lose (or never had) the ability to think critically and soundly, to have any sort of objectivity whatsoever, and thus, would obviously advise every teenager you meet to go do exactly what you did, covering them with your icky, infectious slut-bugs. You are one dangerous, contagious harlot from whom all good children who would become good adults should keep their distance.

To perhaps the surprise of exactly no one, if you were one of the ten people who held off on sex until you married at the now-average age of 27, or had really lousy teenage sex with catastrophic results, that gives you extra credibility if you’re the kind of sex educator that is telling them to stay the heck away from sex and their sexuality at all costs.

But I wasn’t ashamed of it then, and I work hard to keep any other teenager from being ashamed, so I’m certainly not going to be ashamed of it now.

Being sexually active in my teens wasn’t about pissing my parents off, or gaining social status, or meeting some sort of status quo (especially considering that while I wasn’t out for a few years, my partners were not simply male, and this was the early-mid-eighties, before anyone gave you points for macking down with other girls, to say the least). The sex I was having wasn’t merely two-minute intercourse, I wasn’t in partnerships where my body or self was dismissed or treated like a receptacle, I wasn’t feeling ashamed of how I or my genitals looked, being coerced into one-sided sex I didn’t want, or only wanted the emotional or social benefits of, and figuring that getting little to nothing physically out of sex was worth the other benefits it might have offered, or that the sex would eventually net me care from partners I wasn’t already getting.

Instead, I was almost always having sex that made me feel really good, where I had lots of good orgasms, where I could laugh with my partners at our fumbling when we fumbled, where my morning-afters left a perpetual grin on my face, rather than the look-away-I’m-hideous grimace of ashamed regret. I did a darn good job in choosing sexual partners who were kind, caring people that earnestly liked me — and vice-versa — and who had mutual pleasure and care in mind.

Mind, it was the 80’s, and I also did plenty of things that I wouldn’t encourage other teens to do, both sexually and in conjunction with sex, but in many ways, I feel I have positive sexual experiences to thank for not only getting me through the awfulness of much of my teen years, but for setting me up to continue to have great sex throughout my life, and to feel really good about my sexuality and the self it’s a part of.

Due to the negative parts of how I came of age in the house I was living in, due to the sexual abuses and harassment I dealt with, due to simply being a smart, sensitive gal who engaged in cultural analysis in her head a lot I got the message loud and clear that I was sexualized like nobody’s business, but that that sexuality wasn’t supposed to be something I owned. It was supposed to be something used against me (and I was just supposed to take it like a girl), or used to gender, commodify, devalue or objectify me. Thankfully, I also got a few opposing messages that all of that was completely screwed up, and thankfully, the context of my life as a whole equipped me with the tools to know how messed up those attitudes and cultural edicts were.

I didn’t have sex — with guys, with girls, with myself — to make anyone else mad or uncomfortable, or to follow somesome’s orders that I should. I had sex to claim and reclaim my own body and sexuality, to remind myself of all the good stuff about it, including that sex was supposed to make me feel good and be something I wanted and initiated. I had sex to find out what sex was, the ways I liked it, what part it played in my life and my identity. I had sex because I was a poor kid with a lot of pans in the fire and it’s a totally affordable vacation where you can fit in an awful lot of relaxation and de-stressing in very limited periods of time. I had sex because I wanted to have sex and I liked having sex. I had sex because it felt great, it was one hell of an adventure, and I discovered ways to be assertive in the rest of my life though the sex I was having. I had sex because in the romances and friendships in which I had it, it felt right, it increased intimacy, and it was one of many ways to get to know someone else and myself better.

In a word, I had sex for all of the reasons people have sex. Fancy that.

I know a big turning point for me in my sexual development, odd as it may sound, was the assault that happened at 12. Despite having to live in silence about it, despite it not being managed at all well, or even acknowledged as the hardcore trauma it was, despite having to work all of it out only in my own head until many years later when I found some support, I knew full well that it, and another abuse a year before, was NOT sex. I’m not even sure how I knew that, but I did.

I’m down with being a statistic: is it likely that some of why I had sex at an earlier age than many was because of abuse? Yes, I think it was. On the other hand, while there were also a whole lot of other reasons I did as well, even when we’re talking about the parts of my motivation to do so that likely came from abuse. And for those aspects that were motivated by abuse, it wasn’t primarily about my thinking my only use or was sexual, or about reenacting my abuse.

It was about rebelling against it: if I was going to be having any kind of sex with someone else, and they with me, it was going to be about pleasure, it was going to be about freedom in my body and theirs, it was going to be about joy and communion and natural curiosity, it was going to be something we liked doing on all levels; something which was emotionally, intellectually and physically satisfying for me and whomever else was involved.

And it was.

The older I get, the more aware I become that I had really good sex as a teen and young adult. In fact, now having spent many years talking with and listening to teens about their sex lives — even when their only partner is themselves — I know that by comparison, I had astonishingly good sex. Perhaps even more depressingly, I know from also doing work with adults that I had better sex as a teen than a lot of people have as full-fledged adults.

Mind, even with my burdens and my traumas, I grew up in a different time and place and environment than a lot of teens today.

I was primarily urban. My community was diverse, and no one viewpoint about anything (or looked any one way), including about sexuality, was dominant. No teacher or guest speaker in my school ever came in to tell me that I would die if I had sex, or become an unsavory, unsticky piece of tape who couldn’t properly bond to other people because I was having sex. I had a level of confidence, reslience and self-assurance that resulted in any of my peers calling me a dyke or a whore or a slut (which didn’t often happen) being told to get stuffed, and my not taking any such jibes to heart.

I left one home early on (and spent the last year barely there no matter what it took to avoid it), and had a measure of autonomy and responsibility to manage a lot of teens even then didn’t, and now still often don’t. I had jobs from an early age, I made many of my own clothes, I fed myself, I got myself around the city on my own on public transportation, I paid for much of my own basic care, including some of my schooling, and in general, the frivolities of my teenage life were balanced out by an awful lot of responsbility, so sex wasn’t the first place I needed to be accountable and in the driver’s seat.

I knew where the sexual health clinics were, and I used them vigilantly, and with community support in using them. I very rarely took risks in terms of protecting myself from pregnancy and infection, and no one was trying to scare me away from those protections. Because I spent much of my youth in the hospital my mother worked in, very comfortable around doctors and nurses, I was always fine with asking my sexual healthcare providers questions, and I had the benefit of knowing the right language to ask them in — and a comfort with that language — so I could net real answers. There was sound sexuality information on bookshelves at both my mother and father’s apartments, in my school libraries, in my public libraries.

I had one parent who was 100% fine with the fact that I wasn’t heterosexual, who was wonderful to any girlfriends I brought home, and who never gave me any idea there was anything wrong (or even unusual), at all, with being queer. That same parent also sent really strong messages about my claiming ownership and responsibility for my sexual choices autonomously. I was never the girl who’d have to ask a partner if they had a condom or birth control, and be at anyone else’s mercy as to what they’d try and get me to go without using. I was the girl who simply pulled whatever it was out of my purse, handed it over, gave no indication to the recipient whatsoever that sex without was optional, and in meeting any resistance to being safe, tended to merely shrug and voice that no sex was going to happen then, and that was cool with me.

I also had no illusions about the fact that sexual violence and abuse was widespread, and that bad things absolutely could happen to me, and — having a more cynical view in many respects than many my age — with my luck, probably would, especially if I didn’t walk in every door already standing up for myself. I had a defiance and an anger about a lot of my life that was a very real gift in this regard, as it was — and still is — in many others.

I also had some measure of comprehensive sex education growing up.

Given, it wasn’t exactly queer-inclusive, but it sure wasn’t queer-negative, either. It didn’t quite tell me how to enjoy myself during sex and didn’t address any of my abuse, but it also didn’t tell me sex would kill me on first contact, even if I protected myself, that I needed to get married to have it, that birth control (safer sex wasn’t an issue yet: thank heaven for having a parent working in AIDS care before most of the world even knew AIDS existed so I knew about that) being effective was just a myth or that if I did become or was sexually active, I was the human equivalent of an overused kleenex. The cultural sentiment was such that I could even ask a teacher I respected for help or advice, and that adult could give me support and information without fear of losing their job.

* * *
Imagine, if you will, how things might have been for me in different circumstances. In say, the circumstances of many teens today.

It would have been very easy for me, and far more typical, for instance, to have developed a profound sexual shame and low self-esteem that would have been easy for others to exploit given some of the abuses I lived through, had I only heard opinions and information which enabled or encouraged those results. It would have been very typical for a girl like me, survivor at an early age, who grew up with one strong set of very negative messages about my terrible, awful growing-into-womanhood body, to not be so resilient and defiant, especially with the pervasive messages of the media, the Girls Gone Wild commercials, the capitalizing upon teenage sexuality while at the same time denying it outright, the en masse weight loss mania, the commodification of girl-girl relationships, the endless hard-sell of heterosexism and that one right man as the answer to everything. Even if I hadn’t have been a survivor, all this crap would have had a profoundly negative impact on me.

With the continued suppression of, and resistance to, a lot of feminist politics and the cultural revisitations of the ideal woman-as-eunuch, or woman-as-property, imagine how much more difficult it would have been for me to assert myself when it came to my sexuality: both in simply honoring its totally healthy, normal desires and in negotiating sex with partners. Imagine how doggone ashamed I might have been with myself, even for the sex I was only having WITH myself. Imagine what I might have thought of the men and the women I had sex with. Imagine how I might have felt as a sexual abuse survivor. Imagine how on earth I could have managed to be that girl holding out the condom and holding her own.

Being a low-income teen, had I not had — as a majority of teens right now do not — access to affordable, accessible and nonjudgmental sexual health services, I’d have had a lot of questions that went unanswered that very much needed answering. I may well have gone without the birth control and safer sex I needed, the annual screens and exams, and I may not have had access to medically accurate sex information at all. No sense in pussyfooting around: if I had been even half as sexually active as I was then just without that one thing, chances are quite excellent I’d have been long dead by now.

Once I switched over to my arts high school, I was in a completely GLB-friendly environment, to the degree that I’d call it GLB-celebratory: had I stayed in public high school, had all my immediate community been wary of queerness at best, and homophobic at worse, things would not have gone so well for me. Had I not had some good role models around me, some awesomely strong, outspoken women and some fantastic old queens, that made clear that my sex, gender, orientation or desires didn’t make me inferior, sullied or shameful, I would not only have been a very different person then, I would be a very different person now, someone who loved and accepted herself and everyone around her a whole lot less.

In a less diverse environment, without a wide spectrum of beliefs and attitudes available to me, try and figure out how I could have really found out what I really thought and felt about my sexuality and my sexual life, explored freely enough to find out what identity was authentic to me, and what it was I really wanted for myself, to fulfill my needs, not just the needs and wants of others. Had I not had at least one family member where I could be completely honest about my sexuality and sexual life, who supported my choices and helped me learn to make them responsibly AND had I been reared in an environment where other support wasn’t anywhere to be found, where would I have turned to to find it? (P.S. This is also a good wonder to have if you’re wondering how it is so many younger teen girls get hooked into iffy relationships with older men, because guess who has NO problem endorsing and supporting their sexual maturation?) When I did just plain screw up, how might I have dealt with it and learned from my errors if there wasn’t at least one person who I knew loved me who could also tell me that it was okay to screw up sometimes?

What if I had not been reared with my inquisitive spirit nurtured? Without it being a given that I was not only allowed to, but encouraged to, ask questions about anything and everything, including my own body, any aspect of sex, sexual politics and mores? Had I instead been raised with much of that purposefully stifled, unless what I thought fit someone’s agenda, who might I have become?

Hell, how might I have been able to have the focus, confidence, energy and time to devote to all my awesome achievements of my teen and young adult years that had nothing to do with sex if I’d been a teenager today, just trying to navigate my way through the jungle of sexuality?

* * *
See, all of the things I had going for me are things that many teens right now do not now have. Plenty of them have exactly none of these things.

My challenges aside, let’s take a real look at all of those benefits I had, and bear in mind that even with them, I was still left wanting when it came to sex education and to sexuality support. If I still felt I needed more, if I could have benefitted from better, then you’ve got to ask yourself how on earth we or anyone else expects a lot of teens and young adults right now to come out healthy and whole with how little support so many of them have to be healthy and whole, sexually and otherwise.

I seriously don’t want Scarleteen and my work to be the only thing out there for them, and thankfully, it isn’t, even though sex education like this remains in serious danger of extinction. There are parents out there who rock it with sexuality support, information, and providing great environments for their kids when it comes to sex. There are other organizations which support and distribute sound, comprehensive sex ed. There are schools bucking the system, and there are communities stepping up to the plate. Not enough of them, if you ask me, but they are out there.

But I like to think that over the years, myself, the volunteers and the users have figured out a way to provide something that is quite unique and very sorely needed: something bigger, even, than just a good sex ed class or one supportive person. Basic, accurate sexuality, sex and sexual health information is critical. But so is a positive, wide, diverse and shameless context for it.

I think it’s vital to have an environment for sex education which feels comfortable, personable and also respectful; which answers questions but also asks them, making clear that sexuality isn’t simple and that its influence on us as individuals, in our relationships and in our communities and culture is vast. I think it’s essential to have sex education which dares youth to take very real ownership of their sexuality, as individuals and as a collective — perhaps in a way we don’t even know to exist yet in our world — and busts its ass to give them the tools and support to do so.

When I did the acknowledgments for the book — which, suffice it to say, went on for an age, like everything out of my mouth tends to — the very last sentence is this: “To that girl I once was, here’s that book you wanted. Sorry it took me so long.”

In many ways, this can also be said for Scarleteen.

I didn’t really mean to make something for who I was: in many ways, there is plenty at Scarleteen I did have, and which would have been superfluous for me. On the other hand, there’s plenty there I really could have used, such as opportunities to process my sexual abuse and what it meant to me to be a survivor, or having other peers around in different places to talk to who were queer, without worry of my conversations about those issues quickly finding their way through the gossip mill of my immediate queer community. Gender was also a real issue for me: it wasn’t until college, and many years of trying to fit a very femme mold that just wasn’t me, that it was ever strongly suggested to me that gender was about choice, not biology or what ideals were pushed on me. That’s one I’m still working my way through, and feel I have wasted an awful lot of time struggling with, that I could have used to a much better end. Had someone let me know earlier on that I had more choices than ingenue or femme fatale, it would have been pretty life-altering.

During the times when I had trouble rectifying my enjoyment of sex with the occasional feeling that that’s all I would be seen as sometimes, having someone to talk to about changing some of my choices or the way I made them, and about how to analyze the real root of those feelings would have been a real gift. As one of the only teens I knew as sexually active as I, having others around who were more expert, who could talk me through a pregnancy scare, scenarios when I wasn’t sure what I wanted my boundaries to be, some of my conflicting feelings about my female body or my queerness? This would have been seriously nice. Having someone with some distance from me, who I didn’t have to worry about disappointing, to call me on my shit when I did do things sexually that were just plain stupid, or put too much stock in my sexual life or identity also would have been a real bonus. And I’ll tell you right now, that as the primary sexual advisor to most of my friends, they sure would have benefitted if I had had a source like Scarleteen to send them to, especially on those days when I was so damn sure I knew all there was to know, and on the days when they believed me.

If a teenager like I was could have found these benefits in this and more, it should be painfully obvious that a majority of teenagers today need it more than ever: especially if they’re going to be having any sort of sex (and most are), and all the more if we have any care about the sex they’re having actually being any good, in every way it can — and should — be for everyone, at any age.

(Super-duper thanks to everyone who has blogged today for Scarleteen, to those donating, and in advance for those whose entries are forthcoming: not only is it a great big help to us, but now that things have started winding down for me this week, I’ve really been enjoying reading some of what’s out there.)

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, activism, soapbox, body/mind, sex/life | permalink | comments (1) »

I’ve recently been unable to put down The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler. (It’s a tough month for my bedside table, which has had to bear the physical and emotional weight of that book, as well as bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions, Jackson Katz’s The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, and Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature.)

Even though every single first-person story in it makes my heart hang heavy, even though if I read it at night, I have to fight off the urge to allow myself to cry myself to sleep. It’s important. So important.

I was just mentioning today to one of the amazing young women at the All Girl Army, blogging for choice today, that while it is, absolutely, positively vital to talk about backalley abortions, to talk about what abortion was like before Roe vs. Wade (and what it still is like in areas where abortion is illegal or inaccessible), it’s equally important to talk about what choice as a whole was like and still IS like, even with the help of Roe and other supports. I think many often forget or simply don’t know the combined impact Roe vs. Wade,Title X and other feminist initiatives had when it came to reproductive choice no matter the choice a woman made. More accurately, no matter what a woman did or what was done TO her when she became pregnant before she had any sort of choice.

Before (and in some cases, still well into) the mid-seventies, we all too often forget that most women simply didn’t have any real choice. We all too often forget that decisions like Roe vs. Wade protect us because of the choices many of us still don’t have, and the world we live in which still threatens or refuses us all or some of those choices.

No choice for a safe, legal abortion.
If a woman was able to access abortion and got very lucky (or was simply very privileged), then she could contact, get to, and pay for a private — albeit illegal –abortion, done in sanitary conditions, by a doctor or nurse, under great secrecy. Those women were few and far between, to say the least. And even those women, in the “luckiest” conditions, often had to go back home, do all their grieving alone, suffer any side effects in secrecy and silence, and if they became ill due to the abortion, often did not or could not seek out care.

As for the rest who wanted or needed abortions, but who didn’t have the connections or the means for a safer illegal abortion, I think by now most of us — especially those who read women like me — have a pretty good idea as to what backalley abortions or self-attempted abortions were like. The tools of these abortions were knitting needles, coathangers, scissors, sticks; bleach, whiskey, turpentine or gunpowder douches. Women who got backalley abortions were often blindfolded so as not to be able to identify their abortionist, driven to remote areas, passed person to person. Many women who died from illegal, unsafe abortions slowly bled to death, in terrible physical and emotional pain, utterly alone: many were silently, slowly and painfully dying or becoming seriously ill while going to school, working their jobs, or sitting at the dinner tables with their families. That’s pre-Roe abortion history about as condensed as it gets, friends: that’s the light summary.

No matter the type of abortion, before Roe, as many as 1.2 million illegally induced abortions occurred annually in the United States and as many as 5,000 to 10,000 women died every single year following illegal abortions. Nearly four times as many women of color died as white women. That figure doesn’t account for injuries, physical as well as psychological, both of which were vast. No matter the type of abortion or the type of woman, nearly ALL of those women still suffered alone. They did not have support groups for abortion, nor any cultural sentiment which allowed them to feel any grief (rather than guilt), they did not have sound (if any) aftercare, they did not have any context to talk about their feelings or experiences, they often did not even have the allowance to say, out loud, to anyone, that they had an abortion or had been pregnant.

No choice to safely abort, but also no choice to parent, or no choice not to.
For those who either did not want to or simply could not access any means of abortion… Just in the few decades before Roe, around one and a half million women were sent away to maternity homes and tricked, coerced or outright forced into giving their babies up for adoption.

Some of these homes were okay enough places to stay (however much a place can be “okay” which robs you of a child you gave birth to and wanted), but some were not a far cry from — nearly identical to — the Magdalene Launderies. Women staying in them were hidden and isolated from everyone but the other women in the homes, shunned by their families (and sometimes the men who got them pregnant in the first place) and often during the rare times they could leave the home, they would be easily identified and harassed in the streets: insults and/or vegetables hurled, the works.

Like women who aborted during this time — and in my eyes, this is all the more painful — these women had to leave the homes after giving birth and pretend they had never been pregnant, that they were never mothers. Some of them would have contact with their infants for months in the home before having them ripped away from them. Women with postpartum depression had zero support. Women whose whole lives had been shattered were totally unacknowledged. Open adoptions arrangements (however flawed they can sometimes be) were not available: the rights of birth mothers were preciscely nil. If and when they were at all visible, these women were often disdained by their families and communities. But for the most part, they were and are often still, invisible mothers, invisible women. Too, we have plenty of history of mothers giving birth and being forced to give up their children to other women in their families: married sisters or aunts, even their own mothers, after which the mother of the child would be forced to spend her life pretending that she was sibling or cousin to her own child.

Of course, we also have the myriad women who did not want to remain pregnant and parent, but who found themselves forced into parenting, and often, unwanted marriages as well. For whom having to get married, bear a child and parent was ordered as punishment for being wayward (for as well all know, much like HIV is Gods punishment for being a deviant — even if you get it as the straightest, most vanilla person there is — pregnancy and parenting is Gods punishment to women for not keeping themselves chaste).

My mother was one of those women. Abused, lambasted, shamed by her family and told she had no other option but this to even attempt to redeem herself in their eyes, that of God and those of the whole world. (As one of “those” children, let me tell you from a child’s perspective how much fun it wasn’t to grow up looked at by a strict Irish Catholic family as the accidental, half-blood-Dego bastard child who carries the shame of her mother in every pore of her being: to be told, quite incessantly, that you were an accident, a punishment, an extension of sin. Or to reach an age where you’re well aware that your mother is working double and sometimes triple shifts, and you’re all barely scraping by, all because of you, a fact which the family who PUT her in that position reminds you of frequently.) This is some of what happens when choice is thought to stop at sex alone, if choice was even an issue WITH sex, especially when you consider how very many of these women were raised with the mutually-exclusive notion that they were both supposed to police men AND somehow also defer to them.

There are vast and varied tales of these scenarios. For women of color, while there were a scant few homes that catered exclusively to them, they just plain weren’t white enough for the maternity homes, so however horrendous an option that was, even that one wasn’t available; both per finances and connections (as well as due to racism from providers) private, safer illegal abortions weren’t optional, either. For the most part, women of color were those whose choices were the most terrifying sort of backalley abortions or forced parenting, ready or not, wanting or not. Bear in mind, too, given rates of incest, how many women were forced to parent the children of their fathers, brothers, uncles, and how many children grew up in these scenarios.

So, we then also had millions of “fallen” women forced to be mothers, often without the means for prenatal care for themselves or their babies, often pushed into greater poverty than they already lived with, often pushed into marriages that were unwanted, unhealthy or abusive.

And no choice to become pregnant or not.
I feel like what also often gets lost in abortion and choice debates is any address of how much sexual responsibility is and always has been put, disproportionately, on women. This is particularly of import for the youngest women, who obviously, I have great personal concern with. Teen women are incessantly blamed for not properly policing their male partners: especially when those male partners are same-age, but even when those partners are full-fledged adults, even sometimes when they are far older and predatory. Abstinence-based sex education makes this girl-blaming a critical part of their curriculum. Last I checked (which was very recently) at least 25% of the youngest teen women report that their first sexual experiences were coerced. The greatest rates of rape are — and generally always have been — to women under 18. And in many cases, as with sexual crimes so much of the time, these young women are held partially or even entirely responsible for being victimized. Bear in mind that many of these young women are reared with the same-old antiquated ideas about whose fault it is when they’re coerced into sex (theirs), or become pregnant (theirs), and pushed into one choice or another that they wouldn’t choose if they really had all the options available to them — including access to EC, thank you very much — and told that the person fully responsible for living with whatever “choice” they get is, guess who, them.

Let’s also remember that around 32,000 pregnancies as a result of rape occur every year just in the United States right now: I do not know what the rates were in the decades before Roe. Assuming the rates were at least the same or similar, though they were probably higher, that’s at least 32,000 women a year — more than die from breast cancer every year; only about half that many people die from drunk driving accidents annually, so where’s our PSA and OUR special fundraising wristband, right? — with NO choice as to whether or not they became pregnant, and no choice as to what to do about it. That’s tens of thousands of women every year with NO real reproductive choices whatsoever, and yet, often held responsible, in part if not in full.

Even when we’re not talking about rape or strong coercion, let’s not pussyfoot: women have intercourse they do not want to have ALL the time, every day. Out of feelings of obligation, out of a need to keep the peace, out of a need to feel, or assure a partner is feeling, “normal” per heteroseixst or gendernormative dictates and ideals, out of a need to keep a partner around so that they and/or their children have some means of survival and shelter.

Often, these same women cave when it comes to birth control due to a partner’s urging — it’s okay, you don’t have to use the condoms tonight, or okay, you’re so sure withdrawal works and you’ve worn me down arguing, or okay, you want to have intercourse RIGHT THIS MINUTE so I won’t go put the cervical cap on, or okay, I ran out of pills because the pharmacist didn’t have any this week, but we can do this anyway. Often, these women become pregnant, and these scenarios do not constitute full choice, no matter what spin you put on it.

Mothers STILL tell daughters that it is their duty to acquiesce to their husbands with all things sexual, and to service their “male needs,” whatever those may be. I have users at Scarleteen who have been reared with these attitudes with some regularity, and they are incredibly difficult to unlearn, especially when they continue to be surrounded by them in their communities and closest relationships.

Access to birth control, too, we often forget, was still incredibly limited pre Roe, and is a major factor in choice issues. When the pill came into circulation in the 60’s, half the states in the US only provided it for married women. Well before then, the Comstock laws made access to other birth control methods illegal. Before 1960, the vast majority of citizens had only condoms — which, without the male partners support, were useless — and withdrawal, which we know to be about as close to useless as it gets, and which also relies on male cooperation. And yet, when pregnancy occurred, it was often still thought to be the woman’s fault: her fault if she couldn’t “control” her male partner’s sexual advances, her fault if her male partner refused to use a birth control method, or she couldn’t access one that worked for her. This is history that is insanely pertinent right now, as things like the Global Gag Rule, Title X cuts (my clinic here sadly is shutting down this month), limiting access to EC and attacks on choice persist. The same people and forces who seek to limit or remove access to safe legal abortion, and thusly regress all the choices we have, are most often the same people seeking to limit access to contraception or contraception education, especially to those most at risk and with the least agency: the youngest women, the poorest women, the most marginalized women. Access to birth control is STILL a serious issue and a serious problem in this regard: the increased access we see has not by any means fully extended itself — or anything close — to the women who need it the most, and for whom even with legal abortion, even with changes in adoption, even with better welfare and treatment of single mothers, have far more limited choices than women with greater privilege.

Let’s not forget…
That tied up into all of this is also access to reliable, accurate and unbiased information about birth control, reproduction and sexuality as a whole. That’s not just a women’s issue, by any means, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that while lack of that information does everyone harm, men and women alike, it ultimately harms women the most. Everyone is harmed by sexual shame, by a lack of understanding of their own bodies and health — and that of sexual partners — by purposeful misinformation about sexuality and sexual and reproductive health. NOT everyone will become pregnant because of it, get cervical cancer because of it, wind up in rape or coercion scenarios because they don’t know the warning signs or are told to disregard them, or be unable to make a sound reproductive choice when pregnancy occurs that is best for them. (And that’s not even touching on issues of intercourse or other sex under obligation, sound counsel, prevention and address of sexual abuse, understanding of how women’s sexuality even works, the whole bag.) These things will happen to women, who even just by sheer biology, whether we’re talking about pregnancy or cervical cells, bear the greatest burdens when it comes to sex and the opposite sex.

In a culture/community/relationship or under a system which does not support an equality of full reproductive autonomy and agency, it is a given that sexuality and reproductive information will follow suit, and either protest that full autonomy or undermine it, and often quite intentionally.

Choice isn’t just about abortion.
Reproductive choice is an octopus of an issue. It’s not only an issue of sex and gender, but also one that strongly involves race and class.

Real reproductive choice includes a woman’s inarguable right to abort, parent or give a child up for adoption 100% informed, willing and able, as well as support for any and all of those choices, the choice to prevent pregnancy with safe, easily accessible and affordable birth control, the choice to have sex at all, and, by extension, the ability to obtain reproductive healthcare and sound information on reproduction and sexuality and most of all, to be held to sexual responsibility which is fair, sexual mores which are realistic, inclusive and not laden with sexism, and to live in an overarching environment which honors and safeguards a woman’s right to real and complete ownership and care of her own body and everything within it.

What you see here is about as abbreviated a take on these issues as it gets. However thick this text, it’s a serious condensation of this issue. What Roe vs. Wade did and does, what all the additional laws, policies and initiatives which support its principle do, is far, far greater than allowing access to merely abortion. We allow anyone to take Roe and everything related to it away — we even give an inch when it comes to this — we aren’t just removing access to abortion: we are removing a critical element of the whole of reproductive choice. Roe is foundational in many, many respects (when you really start to look at how much was built off of it, or arose because of it, it’s truly dizzying). You remove that row of bricks at the bottom of a building, you remove the stability and integrity of the building entire, and it will crumble in time. This is an absolute given, not theory or hyperbole.

This is the case whether you have never had an abortion or never intend to have one. This is the case whether you have had or do have the agency to make whatever choices you want, and may even still with regressions to choice policies, be it due to your sex, color or class. This is the case no matter which of those women above your mother was, or even if she was none of those women at all: this is the case no matter how it is you’re rearing your daughters. No matter how affected or unaffected you think you’ll be if that building built on Roe ever crumbles, you and your sisters will be buried alive in it, most likely just as we were before.

And as far as I’m concerned, if there’s even just one woman in the world who doesn’t have ALL of these choices, all of these aspects of choice? Then there’s no woman in the world who’s really got’em. Considering that even with Roe, even with policies that support choice there are still myriad women without them, both globally and right here at home, the fact that anyone still needs to defend or explain the importance of and need for Roe, today or any other day, to anyone at all, boggles the bloody mind.

Blog for Choice: Lots of people are doing it today, however. I’d encourage you to do so, or to avail yourself of their words, and by all means, as ever, to do all you can to work for choice in every way you can.

posted in Heather Corinna, reproductive rights, activism, feminism, sex/life, Blog for Choice | permalink | comments (0) »

Every now and then, when Mark and I settle into bed with the idea of having sex… something completely different happens. Like, in the Monty Python way. On crack.

Often, it’s when he’s anxious about things — right now, he’s getting ready to direct his first paying freelance gig — or overtired or a little loopy or I’m not entirely in it yet myself. Now and then, I see it coming. Sometimes, like last night, I don’t.

There we are, all naked or half-naked, in or around bed, we’ve got sex on the brain or as a plan, and then it’s like — POW! Boy mysteriously and immediately regresses to half his age and has this sort of spaztastic “Gadzooks! Cowabunga! AIE! It’s a naked GIRL — right next to ME!”

This reaction is generally demonstrated with what I can only describe as interpretive dance. Last night, it began with a strange sort of Robert Crumb-esque cling to my lower body and sheet-spelunking and evolved into what I could only presume was Mark’s best impression of a jellyfish: arms flailing, wiggling on the bed like a lunatic nonstop, the making of squiggly-face. Usually then, too, as was the case last night, some series of one-liners or funny face-making comes into play, and it all only gets worse the more I laugh.

(At some point too, I always feel I should check in with Mark to be sure he absolutely didn’t want to have sex, because there comes a degree of silly which, while I quite enjoy it, goes past the point of no return when it comes to my getting turned on. I usually try and ask this when either in my head or outta my lips issues the first “Oy gavalt, we’re going to go HERE.”)

These episodes always, always end in some ginormous gigglefest where neither one of us can stop laughing and breathing becomes a serious issue.

Oddly enough, it ends up serving the same purposes sex does, just via a different route: it’s pretty darn intimate to make a total arse of yourself naked in front of someone else, and to have someone else feel free enough to do that with you. If you’re all stressed out, pent up, all that laughing is one helluva release. You get your ednorphins, you get your dopamine. And quite in spite of myself, I have to admit, it’s fun as all hell and always an unexpected surprise. Sure, you have your moment where you’re all “Oh damn, that orgasm I was looking forward to so isn’t happening.” On the other hand, there’s always another day, and while it’s pretty doable to plan to have sex, it’s nigh unto impossible to plan to be an all-out naked goofball. I mean, you can’t exactly say, “Hey sugar, you wanna get silly tomorrow night?” I mean, we all have our things we can do to get in the mood to have sex, especially when we’re with a partner we know and who knows us well, but there’s a pretty specific space you have to be in and can’t make happen to be a giant freaky spaz.

That said? Um. I’d like to cash in my raincheck for that orgasm now, please.

posted in Heather Corinna, Mr. Price, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (5) »

(This one’s for Andrea, who asked. Slight swerve form the ongoing topic, but only barely.)

Why I Stopped Putting All (or most) of My Efforts into Erotica and Decided the Revolution Didn’t Hinge on That, Groovy as That Would Have Been. (I really wanted to work “On My Summer Vacation” into that, but alas, it just wouldn’t happen.)

So, Scarlet Letters has just been sitting for a really long time now. (And I haven’t been able to actually touch it or have it forward elsewhere in part because it was important it stayed as-is during the ACLU/COPA case.) I’ve okayed a couple of reprints on some of my photographic and written erotica, but per the written, I haven’t done anything new or particularly wanted to. With the photography…well, I’ll get to that.

I also haven’t done the constant networking I used to do with other women working in erotica and pornography, in part because there are fewer of them (when we’re really talking women-owned, women-centered, women-directed) than ever. And yes, I know that some younger women think there’s a surge of it online these days, but I assure you, it ain’t nuthin’ compared to what we had going around 2000/2001.

I’ve declined, over the past couple of years, a lot of offers for features/joint projects in the arenas of porn and erotica. I’ve even gotten to the point with features on my photography where if the approach is, at all, to have me presented as a pinup or a babe, it’s just not workable for me.

In a word, I’m outta much of this arena, or, what is generally defined as this arena. How it’s defined and how limited I feel that is an entry or twelve for another day.

Now. There are first some secondary reasons for this.

• Some of the why of this is simply that Scarleteen just took the heck off (ST gets a minimum of twenty times the traffic anything else I ever did did, even during the best years), and because I’m an activist at heart, so when a need expresses itself very loud and clear, that’s where I’m going to go. And that one shouted out way louder than any “needs” anyone ever had for women-centered erotica/porn.

• Another part of why is that set a standard at SL that we would not publish crap. That even if it meant skipping deadlines, or publishing less, that what we did publish needed to be exceptional, original, and of real quality. And as the years went on, we found that we just kept using the same artists and writers again and again because (and any erotica publisher or editor worth their salt, and being honest, will tell you this) the vast majority of what we got in was mediocre at best, and the Worst Shit You Ever Read/Saw at worst. And it gets really, really depressing (or, at a minimum, bloody boring) seeing what even the smarter, more creative eschelons of the populace define as sexy or erotic.

(It’s amazing, really, how sex can make everyone so stupid. Even really good authors and artists sometimes, who rock any other subject, can suddenly turn into the worst hacks on the planet when they tackle sex in their art.)

• USC 2257 didn’t help. While I often prefer suggestion to explicit work, our editorial policy had always been to really look at things artistically, and judge them on that merit, so that included all kinds of work. A big, big deal to me when it came to working in women’s sexuality is, was and has always been that privacy for women is a huge issue. So, the last thing on earth I would do is cooperate in compromising the privacy of female subjects in any photographic work.

• It also stopped paying even its own meager bills. After the first year or so, for a good, what, four years? Something like that… we did pretty well with CPM banner ad contracts for Scarlet. Between 2000 and 2002, for a woman-owned and run business that did not compromise itself in any way, or get into bed with anyone it didn’t want to 100%, I did pretty darn well. Again, at the time, there were enough other people and companies with the same aims, so while finding harmonious adverts wasn’t easy — bear in mind that woman-centered and focused means that 99.9% of the types of ads available to sexuality publications were big fat nos to us, because we didn’t want to have misogyny or male-directed sexuality on the site — but I worked it well enough for a while there. Then there were less of us. Then the bottom dropped out of the web, period. Then there were less still. Then, just not enough to have it be workable at all.

• We could probably have paid more bills — obviously — if both the publication and myself as its editor were willing to play something close to the more acceptable part when it comes to marketing sexuality. If I/we had been willing to talk like porn stars, to have less personal privacy, to hold the poses, always wear the heels and lipstick, “oh baby” somebody, set politics aside, care less about quality and more about quantity, and get seriously into bed with the male-run or driven affiliates and publications. But I wasn’t, and we weren’t. For me, I’d always said when I started doing work in sexual media that if it didn’t feel true to me, I wasn’t going to do it. If it conflicted with my personal/political ethics, I wasn’t going to do it. And if I just plain did not feel 100% okay about something, I wasn’t going to do it. And in time, part of what has happened is that it was that or let Scarlet and most of erotica period sit on the shelf until we could figure out a different way. Those pressures got greater, while at the same time, I began to feel like in some respects, I needed to be more cautious about what I/we were cavalier about, even considering that I was rarely calavier about anything. At this point, even with my own site here, I’ve since accepted that to do what I want to do with writing and art, I have to have zero reliance on the small funds it generates anymore, and NOT try to have it make more money, because pretty much anything that would guarantee better subscription sales would also guarantee lesser creativity and authenticity, and it’s just not worth it for a few hundred extra bucks a month.

I’ve also since worked on accepting that the comfort and security of any one “camp” is a luxury which someone who aspires to be a truthful revolutionary cannot afford.

You just can’t be authentic or nurture authenticity and autonomy in your life and your work when you always have to check in with someone else’s agenda — even if it’s the same as, or similar to, yours. I need room to be critical of any given media or issue, in whatever ways I feel critical and want to express that, and I don’t have enough room if I have to worry about betraying one camp or another.

Which is part of why it’s sitting. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m still thinking about it. I think I know a good way it can go at this point, but I want to do it right, so I’m taking my time.

Those, believe it or not, are but the smaller issues. Here’s the big one, and it’s no happy ending.

Ultimately, this is the conclusion I’ve reached, which of course seems way more obvious in hindsight, as most things do.

Women can’t possibly reclaim pornography — which is an expression of sexuality — before we’ve reclaimed sexuality, period.

That is a logical given. And we have NOT, in my mind, “come a long way, baby.” We’re a long, long way off.

(Before you go there, I don’t think porn/erotica of any type cannot make the same kinds of strides TOWARDS women reclaiming/owning our sexuality the way something can like, say, Hanne’s upcoming book on the cultural history of virginity, the cessation of rape or getting EC freely and easily available to everyone. Entertainment of any type is obviously powerful in many ways, but unless it accomplished aims like that through it as a channel, it’s power — however far its reach may be, and however much it enthralls — is far more limited. Most of what is produced as sexual entertainment, as compared to even mediocre films in every other genre, is what Olson Twins films are to Thirteen.)

While I think we can absolutely take steps, and while I think that some of us can get decently far with this individually (especially women who can have the most distance/respite from the usurpers of their sexuality, individual and collective), I’m afraid I think that at this point, most of what we can do is to provide band-aids until we’re just plain not living under patriarchy anymore. Not just in sex: full-stop.

(While I’m going off like a rocket and probably pissing people off anyway, I may as well say that I’m of the mind right now that anyone who thinks we’re even close to reclaiming or discovering our sexuality is either naive — as I was — delusional, or pretty self-absorbed. The assumption or assertion that a given women’s sexual behaviour must be 100% authentic to her just because she’s female — which oddly, usually also comes from people who will talk a bluew streak about how men are sexually conditioned, something I guess somehow women are immune to? — is as intellectually anorexic as the assumption or assertion that any choice any of us women make is feminist because we’re female.)

That isn’t so say that band-aids aren’t a good or needed thing. Much in the same way that Affirmative Action is a band-aid until (oh, salty optimism abounds) people aren’t racist anymore, I absolutely think all the reclaiming and rediscovering (and in the case of women’s sexuality, so much of it isn’t re-anything so much as trying to really find it for the first time) one can do is a Very Good Thing, and is really, really important. By all means, I think that we and women before us working in this arena have actually made some incredible strides that I wouldn’t ever dream of dismissing or discounting: even if it’s just individually rather than collectively. But even when those strides are made, they still often can’t benefit a great many women — a majority of women — because there isn’t an allowance made for them in their/our lives and world.

I mean, even if we reduce things to a lowest common denominator – okay? — it’s only so useful to know where your clitoris is and what it does if a) you weren’t reared with and/or aren’t still surrounded with a culture, community or relationships that shame the hell out of you (or cut your clit off, or stone you, or rape you) for touching it and/or b) partners who will be all that interested in it beyond figuring it might be a good way to get you to say yes to the sex they want if they pay a minimum of attention to it.

(Some time back, there was this new miracle cream — right here in the states where apparently everyone knows all about the clitoris now and thinks it’s the shit — that came out for women designed to increase arousal, right? It apparently had these totally amazing ingredients that would just drive every woman wild and make her a wailing walrus of love. The instructions explained that for the cream to work, it had to be, I kid you not, “rubbed on the clitoris for ten to twenty minutes.” I don’t think I need to expand on that one, do I?)

Maybe in my case some of it is that focusing primarily on YA sex education feels like I can accomplish this better, since most of my “students” aren’t set in their socio-sexual conditioning or attitudes yet, and if so, certainly not as solidly as people older than them are, just because of the passing of time spent under seige. That makes me feel kind of lousy sometimes, like I abandoned women of my generation or older, but I’m often pragmatic in my activism: above all else, I just want it to be effective.

I got tired of watching people come into this genre anew saying they had the best of intentions, asking for my help, getting it much of the time, and then either jumping ship when it didn’t make them oodles of dough, or selling myself and other women out to net the cash. I got tired of seeing male-owned orgs give their sites a female face or front and saying they were women-run or about women because some male pornographers/venture capitalists figured out that they could benefit off of the backs of women this shiny, new way, while the guys were setting the direction and making the big cash. I got tired of listening to men and women alike talk trash about women in porn or sex work, and either treat them like commodities or speak on their behalf — discussing negatives OR positives about the experiences they haven’t actually had themselves — without invite to do so. I got tired of listening to women outright bullshit about doing things for other women in their porn/erotica when it was so freaking obvious that that was not their concern: it was just popular to say, got you more approval from women, and made it easier to sleep at night.

I am still so goddamn tired of reading comments from men at women’s sites/blogs who work in sex and ID as feminist where the men cannot shut the hell up about what GREAT feminists they are, ever telling a woman who is questioning her feminism or choices not to…

…because their feminism does not challenge these men at all, it benefits them, and only for that reason.

Note to Guys Masquerading as Pro-Feminist Men: it is NOT feminist or pro-feminist to aim to silence the thoughts in a woman’s head. Just sayin.’

I got tired of some of us working so effing hard for so damn little and getting shit from all sides for it. I’ve talked about this before, but it is seriously draining to have porn-people and male culture demonize you because you’re apparently in bed with radical feminists, while radical feminists won’t quit with how in bed you are with the guys. Hell, in high school and college, when everyone accused me of being in bed with absolutely everyone, at least they they were right AND I got to get very well-laid all the time. I got tired of people trying to manipulate me into doing something for their ventures — work they’d sometimes, without informing me, put in a context that was totally abhorrent to me — by playing on how I “owed” something to women, because they knew I actually gave a shit, when they really just wanted to use my name (something which a few people seriously overestimated the power of, big time) to make some cash or feel important.

I got tired of noticing that when I really pushed the envelope, and really did what I felt was challenging, original and outside-the-box (as it were) work when it came to photography, people sometimes got angry with me, and when I did light and fun or…well, let’s be honest, work that was fluff or just fell short of what I’d hoped, people loved it. If I’m really reclaiming — and people really want that — and I’m really expressing my sexuality as a multi-dimensional whole, then when work I do didn’t/doesn’t meet someone’s ideas of what they want to see or are comfortable seeing that should NOT be a conflict. And if — as this has happened — I decide to shoot a series in the shower where I am processing a rape flashback, or share actual sex I am having with the actual latex barriers I use to avoid chlamydia of the throat, or shoot subjects I think are beautiful who don’t fit a certain body ideal, or the sex I have with a girlfriend doesn’t look or sound like girl-on-girl porn people should NOT be sending me angry or whiny letters or cancelling subscriptions if, in fact, they support reclaiming and earnestly exploring women’s sexuality, because ladies and germs, stuff like this is part of that gig.

I got really tired of seeing what I was told was reclaiming which looked so incredibly similar to how men have presented sexuality or women’s sexuality (hate to say it and sound like a straight-girl basher, but when I did see what seemed like successful reclaiming, it nearly always came from dykes. You know, the kind who learned to have sex with each other from each other, rather than from porn).

I’m not immune from that either: some of the reason I shoot and publish a bit less than I used to is that I found even for myself that reclaiming is a lot of work. If I didn’t put a good deal of thought into it, if I rushed it out, if I didn’t try really hard to see/think/feel differently (or make a point of questioning what seemed different on first glance/imagine), if I couldn’t view my own work really critically, I discovered on second glance that even what I thought was my reclaiming sometimes looked quite alarmingly, frustratingly, like rehash. And this even coming from me, who’s done her dyke-time, who seriously could give two shits what men think of her, her body or her sexuality, and who had all kinds of diverse sexual conditioning and counterculture and blah blah blah. You get it.

(I also got tired of feeling so damn bitter all of the time and feeling so alone in it. If you’ve gotten this far into this entry, you may also have some idea of how tired I was of the way I was making some of my friends and colleagues feel when I went on about this stuff.)

Point is, women reclaiming sexuality under patriarchy is exactly akin to people of color reclaiming their culture and identity under white supremacy: you are incredibly limited, at best, in what you can do, and that really is just that.

Not a very hopeful sentiment, I know. And it’s some of why I feel like a real asshole sometimes, and let me tell you why.

I HAD some older feminists almost telling me this almost verbatim when I started working in that arena. I’m stubborn, sure, but generally I really am very good at listening to a wealth of perspectives, and to respecting those of people who have done longer time on this earth than I have. I was never one of those folks who thought that if every woman could have a really good orgasm, the whole world and all of culture would change: I can be daft sometimes, but I’m not THAT daft. But for whatever reason, I really, really, truly thought that not only could we forge some really important cultural changes by getting our sexual expression out there, by all sisters-doin-it-for-themselves-ness when it came to sexual media, I just for the life of me could not wrap my head around the fact that a LOT of other things needed to happen first before we could not only forge those changes, but before we could even do the kind of work that could possibly create them.

Lemme tell you something: eight years of sex advice letters en masse, mostly from hetero women, and sometimes from men, will teach you a thing or two about what state of affairs we’re really in when it comes to this.

I think some of the rift created between myself and some other feminist women years back had to do with two misunderstandings: one theirs, one mine.

• Theirs was that I did not think every other aspect of women’s equality and work for that equality was important (and that some of them just didn’t really get what I was trying to do, or didn’t think my efforts were especially valuable). I did, I always have: it’s just that I earnestly thought — and given the caveats above, still think to a degree — that women’s sexual equality and identity was ALSO important, and that I could do the most effective work there, and make real strides doing that.

• Mine was that I thought I/we could do a lot more in that arena than I now think we can, and also that what some of them were trying to tell me — that I couldn’t hear — was that making changes in those other areas of equity was ALSO work for sexual autonomy and ownership; that it’s a lot more likely for larger, more tangible, basic changes to create improvements in women’s sexuality and the room all of sexuality makes for it than the other way around.

I think that is most likely correct. (And, of course, that hardly means you can’t still have your orgasms while you’re doing that other work.)

None of this is to say I plan to stop the work that I’m doing right now and have been for the last few years. I think that everything I do right now is important, and I’m feeling very good about the new projects — like the AGA — which I’ve added to the roster in the last year. I think my direction right now is a bit more sound and well-rounded than it was at other times. But that also means that I have to be careful about easy distractions and careful about not undoing my own work with other work.

It means that all of the work I do in sexuality, women’s sexuality and feminism is a lot harder than I’d like, hurts my brain and heart a lot more, and demands a LOT more of me. It means that I have to come at this stuff from both angles: I have to find ways to work on the sexuality aspects while also still working on the bigger context our sexuality lives within. I have to remind myself incessantly that if any of this seems like a no-brainer, it’s probably just me being lazy or wanting to take the easy way out.

But, more challenging as that is, it feels better to me. It feels more right, it feels more productive, it feels more truthful.

That’s probably more than you wanted to know, Andrea, and others of you who have asked over the last year or so, and likely way more than anyone who didn’t ask me about it wanted to know, but there it is: ashamedly, that’s the short version. Would that it were the streamlined one. Per usual, when there aren’t easy answers, there are rarely easy explanations, either.

P.S. For the Greek/Latin scholars out there, or other words of wordsmiths, I still need a word to replace pornography to better describe what I aim for in visual work: I need a word for sex and women, and I need a word which describes not visual entertainment or the intent to create arousal, but visual art/exploration of sexuality and women.

posted in Heather Corinna, soapbox, feminism, sex/life, pornography | permalink | comments (25) »

I really don’t know if it gets any better than a solid hour of morning snuggles with your sweetheart, especially when you’re just awake enough to really appreciate them.

There’s something about slightly-more-than-barely-awake snugglefests, when you’re both naked and warm, when it’s so easy to just melt into the other person because your limbs are still all relaxed and heavy.

For two insanely creative people, Mr. Price and myself are awfully utilitarian in our naming of snuggle/sleep poses. There’s Position A (head-in-underarm), Position B (spooning, which for us, more often than not, is him behind me, because of the…erm, rather opportune places it provides certain convex and concave appendages), Position C (which if I recall right is face-to-face scissoring) and Position D (which is how we often fall asleep, side by side, holding hands). I’m always a bit fuzzy on C and D because we tend to revert to A and B.

We lucked out in the snuggle department. Sparing Mark being a handful of inches taller than I am, we’re basically the same size and we fit more nicely together than almost anyone else I’ve been with. (And I have to say that one advantage — silly as it sounds — to having a male partner versus a female one is that while with any couple, you always have that one extra arm, you at least don’t have two sets of breasts that can sometimes make very tight snuggling a little more tricky, especially when both sets are substantial.) But more importantly, we’re both insanely demonstrative snugglers together.

In my long slew of casual and serious partnerships in my life, somehow, more often than not, I always managed to wind up with people who were less demonstrative than I. Sometimes this was a bummer, other times it wasn’t: my claustrophobia has often been profound with many people, especially considering that for all the bodies I’ve put mine next to, I’d guestimate that I’ve only felt 100% close and trusting of a small handful of them. And I confess that in many (maybe even most, I’m on my first cup of coffee and not inclined right now to try very hard to count back) of my intimate encounters, I’m that jerk who wanted everyone to get up right away all abruptly in the morning and get back to their own lives and their own skin, if sleeping overnight was even something I made an option. Having a cup of coffee and talking was usually okay: endless snuggles? Not so much. More sex? Maybe. After all, morning sex is the serious good stuff.

If I could only pick one time of day to have sex, it’d be in the morning. Of course, if I could pick only one time of day to do anything, it’d be in the morning. I’m one of those annoying morning people, as we all know by now.

I have real objections to these strange divisions made with physical intimacy: as in, this is sex, this is snuggling, or the ever heterosexist (and sexist, really, if you think about it) this is sex, this is “foreplay.” The morning snuggles are strongly intimate: sometimes far more so than when one or both parties are chasing the orgasm dragon, and you’ve got to think a little more, rather than just melt in, be a pack animal, and babble the sweet nothings as you please. It’s hardly asexual: I’m turned on throughout, and when it manifests itself as genital sex, I don’t decline, and I usually come in three minutes flat.

But it’s not a highway, it’s an old, misty, quirky side road. You’re delighted to take the long way, stop here and there, enjoy the drive, and sometimes you enjoy it so much that even if you had a particular destination, it’s become unimportant. Maybe you’ll get there, maybe you won’t: just enjoying the drive is the real order of the day.

I’m really glad it’s not just me in this partnership who can’t figure out why 99% of the time, this is all still so easy for us, still so exciting, still so freaking fantastic after all this time. I’m glad it’s not just me who can’t figure how things that have been big problems in nearly all our other relationships don’t even rear their ugly heads in this one: even the fact that I am cohabitating with someone and not panicking about it 24/7 is nothing short of miraculous.

And I’m really glad it’s not just me who could while a whole morning away just wrapped up in warm skin and blankets, whispers and grins, because I always have loved those side roads best.

* * *
P.S. I keep seeing about 2G in errors on my site logs since the switch to wordpress. Doing the math, I’m wondering if some users aren’t having an issue with the navigation bar loading? Can you tell me if you’re missing things on the page, or getting errors? Cheers.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, my fine romance, sex/life | permalink | comments (5) »