10 Year Old

Late last night I realized that I would’ve had a 10 year old this month. That seems insane. Partially because I can’t believe it’s been that long and partially because I can’t even begin to imagine how different my life would’ve been. One thing stays constant though: I made the right decision. Despite what some may think, I do not regret my decision and never have.

G-spot/Squirting Class Tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that I will be doing my last Chicago workshop (while I’m still living here) tomorrow night at Early to Bed. Come out and learn about the magical g-spot and female ejaculation. Last I checked there were still spots open.

5232 N. Sheridan Rd. in Chicago

7:30 PM $15/$10 students and low income

Hope to see you there!

Help a Sex Worker Out

A wonderfully nerdy lady needs your help. The brains and beauty behind Geek Girls Online has cervical cancer and needs your help. Her guy and her were having trouble making ends meet before she found out she had cancer and now it’s going to be pretty much impossible. Between the surgery and other treatment as well as not being able to make money as a sex worker for a couple months while she recovers means that they can’t support themselves or their young daughter. Any donation, no matter how small would really help them out. I just donated $20 myself. I have a lot of upcoming looming costs with my move across the country coming up in less than 7 weeks, but I could still find a little money in my budget to help her out. I hope you can too. Because after all, who else will dress up like a Harry Potter character and masturbate with a magic wand for us? Yes, that’s a picture of me at a coffee shop watching a video of the lovely Miss Athena Hollow.

Read her story and donate.

Rape-aXe

Image from CNN article

Q: You may have already seen this, but I thought you might be interested in this article on a female condom that is meant to fight rape. I wondered what your opinion on it was (would it actually help stop/prevent rape?, etc), or thought that maybe you would like to blog about it (or at least pass the link around).

I have heard of the anti-rape condom before. It actually first surfaced under a slightly different name a few years ago. Then it was called Rapex and now it’s Rape-aXe. And believe me I have a lot of feelings about it. I want to preface this though with the fact that I know nothing about South African culture or any other cultures in Africa. I cannot even pretend to begin to know what is going on over there.

That being said, I have to say that this is not treating the problem at all. It’s another case of the victims having to protect themselves by changing their behaviors instead of getting to the root of the problem. The people who need to change their behaviors are the rapists. They need to stop raping and not because they’re afraid that there might be teeth in a woman’s vagina. Instead, we need wide spread social change that creates an environment of respect for women and autonomy over their own sexuality and bodies. Rape-aXe is something that may or may not help in the short term, but it does nothing to effect the long term issues surrounding rape. I found it interesting that the creator said “Yes, my device may be a medieval, but it’s for a medieval deed that has been around for decades.” This evil deed has been around since before medieval times. In fact, it’s pretty much been around since the beginning of time, not decades but millennia. That is seriously long term and we need to think in those terms.

Let us address the short term though. One side effect I see of this toothy condom is more violence. A man who has just raped a woman and had a sharp object embedded into his penis is probably extremely likely to lash out at the woman who was wearing it. And what about a woman who is gang raped? That is going to spell out even more violence for her. The rapists will probably beat her more severely than they would have.

Also, there is more than one way to rape a person. It does not always involve penis in vagina. It could involve an ass, a mouth, and/or other insertable objects besides a penis. In fact, why not just shove a broom handle or something up there first to make sure she’s not packing a Rape-aXe?

They say that this would help with rape convictions because a medical doctor has to remove the condom. How long until there is an underground removal service? Just because only doctors can remove them now doesn’t mean that they will always be the only ones to be able to do it.

I also worry that it will hinder rape convictions if a woman isn’t wearing it. I can imagine it now. They accuse her of wanting it because she wasn’t wearing a Rape-aXe.

Also, this condom doesn’t actually prevent sexual assault. It just latches on to a rapist’s penis after the sexual assault has already begun. Will it prevent rape if rapists think that women are wearing them? Well, do the sponges with razorblades prevent anything?

However, I do not fault women for wanting to wear this to help protect themselves. It has to be better than shoving a sponge filled with razorblades into your vagina. That just sounds like a horrible idea. Although, at $2 a pop this may not be within most poor women’s means. And lets faceĀ  it, the poorer you are the more likely you are to get raped and the less likely your rapist will be convicted. But there’s a desperation there obviously because the rape rates are so extremely high in South Africa.

There just has to be a better way. We need to treat the disease, not the symptom. Women’s rights are human rights.

Porn for the (hetero) Thinking Woman

Have y’all see this new magazine Filament? It’s a women’s magazine that features intelligent articles on all kinds of topics except for diets, celebrities, fashion, and awful sex tips. AND it also has naked men! It’s like Playboy, but for women. Not like Playgirl which was really more for gay dudes. And not like Cosmo which features plenty of eye candy, but really lacks any sort of intelligence (and actual cock pictures).

It’s geared more towards hetero/bi women, but they acknowledge that. It’s difficult to please everyone. They feature solo men, male/female couples, male/male couples, and threesomes. As far as I can tell, the pictures are more erotic than pornographic in the sense that they’re not really all that explicit but then again I’m sure there are plenty of people who would disagree with that definition. I’m going to have to pick up a copy to see what it’s all about.

(via Jezebel)

Moregasm

Moregasm is Babeland’s entrance into the world of comprehensive sex guides. There are quite a few out there and some are better than others. Moregasm does some things extremely well, much better than a lot of the competition, and it does other things kind of poorly. Overall though, it is one of the better sex guides I have read.

The biggest shortfall of most sex guides is that they default to heterosexual sex and treat queer sex as if it’s this other thing that other people do, but obviously not the reader. They’ll usually include a chapter about homosexuality and bisexuality and another chapter about trans folks, but always from the point of view that they’re teaching us about a foreign concept. They couldn’t possibly be teaching anyone who actually is one of those things. That can really make LGBTQQI folks feel abnormal and like maybe something is wrong with them. And is it really a comprehensive guide if they’re cutting out a good portion of the population?

Moregasm does not make this mistake. Throughout the entire book they address the reader as if they might be open to any kind of sex. This is not surprising given the writers. They are the founders of Babeland. As someone who works in a sex shop I know exactly how to talk to a customer without making any sort of judgments about who the person would be having sex with. I make sure to include all types of bodies in my discussions unless the customer makes it clear who they intend to use the object with.

At the same time, sex shop workers are used to talking directly to a person whose gender we can usually assume from looking and talking to them. We rarely try to make assumptions about the person’s sex, only about what gender they are presenting. Because of this and many other reasons they decided to write the book from the perspective of a woman for women. It can be extremely complicated to write a book that makes absolutely no assumptions what so ever. I’d really like to see someone try to do it and come out with an amazingly fantastic inclusive book. I really would. But damn it would be difficult. So I gotta give Moregasm props for being inclusive even if they wrote the book specifically for women. At least they acknowledge that fact.

Moregasm is not only inclusive, but it’s also completely accessible. The writing is light, fun, and educational. The writers know that they know more about sex than the average reader of this book, but they don’t make you feel bad for it. They celebrate your quest for knowledge and they never once put you to sleep. The colorful explicit pictures help to make the book fun and sexy although make it much more difficult for me to read on my morning commute to work on the bus. In fact I blame those giant naked pictures for me taking so long to get through this easy to read guide. It is DIFFICULT to hide them! But you’re all good if you just plan on reading this guide in the comfort of your own home, which is probably recommended anyway.

So, what doesn’t Moregasm do well?

The thing about publishing a book is that the publisher has to approve it and that means they have to approve the look of it. This can be extremely difficult if you are trying to create an all inclusive guide to sex. This book is filled with beautiful pictures of beautiful people. There are some pictures of different types of bodies, but most of them are thin, young, white, and cis-gendered. There are a few different races sprinkled around in the book. There is one picture of a trans man pictured next to a write up about trans, genderqueer, and intersexed folks. Although, I do credit them for picturing a few more androgynous women throughout the book. There are two pictures of older people, but those are tucked in the back amongst the questions about sex when you get older. And while the models aren’t all super skinny, there isn’t one person I would categorize as fat in the whole book. There is also not a single picture of anyone who is visibly disabled. This is all important because I feel that it is necessary for everyone to see themselves in a comprehensive sex guide in order for them to feel included in the discussion and because it is important for everyone to see that people of all types are sexy and beautiful in their own ways. But like I said before, this can depend hugely on what the publisher okays.

The other thing that I didn’t really like about Moregasm is that I felt that it was constantly trying to promote Babeland. This is probably going to keep this book out of a lot of other sex shops that are just as good as Babeland is. Why would a shop owner want to sell a book that is constantly telling the reader to shop at Babeland? This is especially poorly done in the section on lube. Every single lube that the book recommends is a Babeland brand lube. There are lots of good lubes out there that aren’t made by Babeland, but they aren’t mentioned. Probably because Babeland makes more money on their lubes, especially if you have to buy them from Babeland.

So overall, this book is fun, sexy, and educational. It doesn’t do everything perfectly, but it delivers where a lot of books don’t. I definitely recommend this book to all sexualities, but would recommend other books for information on sex with disabilities, aging, and trans identities.