…and nearly just as soon as I’m back, I’m off again.
Thanks to the National Sexuality Resource Center and SFSU, I’m heading to San Francisco tomorrow for a few days to accept my Champions of Sexual Literacy award, do a couple events including telling my (beyond undramatic) coming out story on stage and giving a talk at the Center for Sex and Culture on YA sexuality and sex education issues. As an extra bonus, I’ll be fitting in two photo sessions, one with a longtime reader and another with Melissa, catching up with Carol and Robert, who are two of my favorite people in the entire universe, and hopefully also getting a chance to see Anne and Cathy, because it’s been too long, dining at the Millennium, which is basically where vegans go to die when we have been VERY good, and my editor and I will finally get to have all those glasses of wine together that we wanted so badly throughout the process of producing the book.
Of course, I had the best of intentions in the days between coming back from Victoria and leaving for SF when it came to getting a ton of things done. Very, very few of those things are done. My primary interest while back home was staring at the wall, eating, and taking several hot baths.
But this is it, for the most part: after the San Fran trip, I won’t have to do any traveling for a while. The weekend after next, my sweetie was a total peach and arranged for a weekend away for us — and with the dog, no less! — in Port Townsend for us here.
The Victoria trip was fantastic. Sarah is the absolute best, even though I think we both needed ice for our jaws after yapping for three days solid. The events were both very packed and very awesome. And on the ferry home, as it turns out, I found myself seated next to an older couple, and in no time at all, we discovered that we had quite the thing in common: she was a member of the Planned Parenthood board in Long Island, and I do what I do. So, pencil in three more hours of breakneck gabbery.
I’ve made it no secret here that I’m not a fan of public speaking. Really, a big part of the reason why after many juvenile and adolescent years of hardcore musical training, I pretty much ditched it as something I was going to do as work, full-time, was because while I loved (and still do) making music, I never liked performing. It was never awful, but it wasn’t something I enjoyed, either. For a long time that was the same story with the public speaking, until a handful of years ago I became downright phobic about it, for no real rhyme or reason. The mere thought of it would make me nauseated and clammy, and in the actual doing, my voice would never stop shaking, my knees would feel like they were going to fall out from under me, and I was having to keep myself from puking or wetting my pants the whole time. The only thing I looked forward to with it was the talk being over.
It got so bad that a few years ago, I was invited to be featured in this amazingly high-profile feminist conference, and while I was so honored, and so badly wanted to do it, I ended up declining because I was relatively certain I’d just never come out of my hotel room to give the talk. Mind, it didn’t help that I was told half the university and organization REALLY wanted me to talk there and half REALLY did not, but still, my issue, and a really serious case of disappointment-in-self.
However tired I am, and however much I just want to sit in front of my fireplace for several months without leaving, one huge benefit of doing all these book events over the last six months has been that I feel okay about public speaking again. I mean, I’d still rather NOT be doing it, but once the first few minutes are over, I’m okay, and it’s no longer terrifying. That’s a pretty serious boon.
I am still nervous enough that I get babbly.
REALLY babbly.
I’ve come to the conclusion that since everyone listening always looks mighty entertained and very alert, that must be okay, but I still feel like a bit of a dolt about my mouth running five feet ahead of the rest of me most of the time, and seeming to have limited control of what comes out of my big yap. Am I an educator and an activist, or am I a clown? Dunno, but at least no one ever looks bored.
While I was in Victoria, Sarah and I filmed a segment for a documentary that is centered around a male photographer who does vulva photographs in the interest of improving female body image. While I’m not exactly the most excited ever about most projects that are male-led in order to help save us women from our own crappy self-image, the guy’s heart certainly seems to be in the right place, and the photo work is pretty decent.
We watched the current edit of the documentary before going to film, and both were commenting — in good spirits, but still — on some of the level of batty of some of the female experts on there. Betty (Dodson) is always batty, and in such a lovely way, but still, yanno… batty. There was some other woman whose batty was far less charming, and just plain kooky and counterproductive in my view, going on about how you could tell what the inside of a woman’s vagina was like by the appearance of her external vulva.
(Umm, yeah. She didn’t suggest that she made a habit or even an occasional practice of actually putting her hands into women’s vaginas for these theories, personally or professionally, but I was so wishing I had met her in person so I could drop my pants, ask her to take a look and make her prediction, then ask her to lube up, go on in there and find out if there was any truth in her vagina…psychicry? Psychicness? I don’t know what the term is for the act of being a psychic: whatever it is, that word. I also had a moment of feeling incredibly glad I wasn’t dating women at the moment, because I would SO have wanted to make a game out of this and see if I might become a vulva psychic myself. For all I know, that gig just might not leave me broke like this one does. Imagine how many parties you could book! It’s totally better than some guy pulling rabbits out of hats.)
So, we go to film, and one void we noticed in the edit we saw was that there was a lot of talk about poor body image coming from porn. That’s valid, and I certainly think it can be an issue, but if you start and stop there, I think you miss a LOT of other important issues and a big part of the picture. Women suffered with poor body image, and especially poor genital body image, well before mass-produced porn — and with the wide availability of amateur porn, and self-made porn, while I think porn can play a big hand in problems with sexual self-image, sexual gender roles, and with overall body image, I’m not so sure that it’s the right place to pin poor genital image for women on, since if they’re looking at more of the DIY or amateur stuff, most of those performers have not had labiaplasties. Many with breast implants, to be sure, nearly all very femme, and the endless lack of body hair, but to my understanding, labiaplasties? Not so much.
Anyway, we’re gabbing about this, together on screen, and discussing the fact that because the male genitals are so externally visible, that men have the benefit of being able to just walk into a group shower or locker room and see a wide array of penises. Without having a same-sex lover, or other opportunities to see real genitalia that require a lot more intimacy and another person’s permission, men often get to see a pretty wide range of penises and testicles. Because most of the female genitals are hidden, women don’t have that opportunity. Very few women who don’t have same-sex partners or become gynecologists and obstetricians will ever have ANY opportunity to see what a vulva besides theirs looks like in-person, and that lack of genital visibility (and scent, and taste, the works) is one very practical, and really, unfixable, reason why so many women have no idea if their vulvas are “normal,” and what the range of female genital appearance really is.
I’m a talker-with-hands. If my hands aren’t flying wildly everywhere, my mouth is probably shut. So, in discussing this, we both — unaware the other was about to do this — pantomimed what one must do to get a good look at a vulva by making a movement with our hands and fingers in front of our faces, as if we were doing the world’s smallest inverted breaststroke.
It was at that moment that it became quite undeniable that we, too, are those batty ladies.
That’s okay. I mean, I know I am already destined for extreme batty-old-ladyhood. I’m looking forward to it, and I may as well practice now and get good at it so that I can be an Olympic bat later. And when the subject is sex, if you can make people laugh, you can help people feel a lot more comfortable about everything, so it tends to be a help to be weird and goofy. It also makes me feel much better about my spaztastic mouth and my flying hands when I do public talks: if everyone else who does this kind of work for a while eventually becomes pretty loony, it therefore may well just be a job requirement.
See how that amazing logic works? I have just turned my lack of cool eloquence and controlled, professional speaking into a marker of acheivement! Go rationalizing, go!
And with that, I’m off to pack and prepare to go be batty for a few days, with the hope that at the very least, I can pony up and not be a complete loon while accepting my award. Doubtful, sure, but a girl can dream.
posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, women, sexuality, events, travel exhuasts me |
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