October 2019 Media Recommendations

October 31st, 2019

I don’t have very many media recommendations because I finished up a bunch of books for review that I have previously mentioned. I was also working on hobby reading before my Kindle Unlimited subscription expired. Sadly, I started a handful of podcasts that just didn’t do it for me.

Read

Although it’s not entirely related to sex, Emily Nagoski’s newest book, Burnout, expands on upon ideas that Nagoski first introduced in her book about female desire, Come As You Are. I recommend that book more than any other, and it pretty much changed my life. Burnout is aimed specifically at women and offers concrete suggestions to deal with stress and the burnout is can cause.

Another non-sex read is The Fellowship of the Ring, which I enjoyed for the first time as an audiobook. The narration by Rob Inglis was top-notch, and I am actually going to sign up for the free trial of Audible to finish the other two titles.

Watch

In this episode of Sexplanations, Dr. Doe tests various methods of cleaning sex toys. It’s obviously sponsored, but I want to see more content like this.

Listen

There were a couple of good episodes of Sluts and Scholars, but I especially liked the interview with Dr. Ari Tuckman who recently wrote a book about ADHD and sex/relationships. Their conversation with Cameron Glover about people of color in sex ed was also good.

Nicoletta from S&S was on Sex Out Loud. She discussed her work as a therapist and dealing with nonoffending pedophiles.

Tristan also did a great interview with physician’s assistant Kerin Berger about LGBTQ health and STIs.

After I catch up, I hope to get back to more sex-oriented media. If you have any suggestions or want me to check something out, let me know in the comments!

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Categories: media recommendations

Why I Didn’t Mention My Bisexuality On Coming Out Day

October 26th, 2019

As I write this, pronouns day has just passed, and coming out day, so I’ve seen a lot of posts by my LGBTQ+ friends over the past week. And while I took the time to express my pronouns in solidary with my trans and NB friends on my personal Facebook yesterday, I didn’t say anything on coming out day.

I could have, though. I could have let everyone know in no uncertain terms that I am bisexual. After all, it’s something I’ve been pondering a lot for the year and some change as I really, finally, become comfortable with my sexual orientation, and I’ve mentioned it plenty on my socials here. It’s not like I haven’t said anything alluding to my attraction including women to those people in my life and on my friend’s lists. I’ve shared photos, used words pregnant with meaning, frame my profile picture in bisexual lighting, mentioned that I have a sex blog, and even periodically share posts from this blog to my vanilla Facebook; although, it’s usually about science or a piece about how SESTA/FOSTA endangers call girls despite its supposed intent to help people rather than something about me personally.

But in 2019, I’m a little less open about my sexuality. I once openly listed myself as bisexual on Myspace many years ago, a fact than sent my former mother-in-law into a tizzy. But I no longer do. That fact, just like my phone number, is set so no one else can see it on Facebook. The reasons are myriad, complex, and not always things of which I am proud.

There are other elements at play, too. The thrill of secrecy, of doing things taboo, has always elevated sex for me. I know it shouldn’t be a competition, but having attractions and kinks that are outside the norm made me feel special. Being attracted to women fulfilled that, in some way, for me.

When I was a teenager and first realized my attraction to women, it centered around specific women.  I wasn’t worried about my inexperience because I was married not too far after, and while I felt generally more attracted to women during my marriage, I was attracted to my husband most of all, so it didn’t really matter.

In some ways, it was nice to hide behind that facade of straight privilege, and because I expected my marriage to last forever (ha!), it meant that I would never have to come out and would have to avoid any potential negatives that doing so would lead so. I type this now, and it just makes me feel awful. There are people who cannot hide behind that privilege, and it’s entirely unfair to do so myself.

For a while after my divorce, it seemed a non-issue. I began dating and sleeping with people who just happened to be men. In hindsight, my bisexuality probably just took a bit of a hetero swing now that I was able to experiment in ways that I hadn’t been able to when I was married. But part of me wondered if any attraction to women was just something of a phase, and my inexperience seemed to loom largely overhead as if in affirmation of this.

This lasted for several years and during that time, I dated, slept with, and fell for multiple men. It’s been a few years that I haven’t been particularly interested in any individual, which makes it the longest stretch of my life that I haven’t been in love. In short, I’ve almost always found myself in love for my entire adult life, even if that love was unrequited. It’s been an interesting change, and one that I think provided me the opportunity to consider my sexuality when it wasn’t attached to a specific person.

Over the last couple of years, my attraction to women has resurfaced and, at times, seemed to dominate. Occasionally, I would simply find myself so undeniably attracted to specific women — Gillian Anderson in the Fall, Carmen Esposito in her standup, women in bars. And sometimes I’d find myself with that self-conscious but giddy smile that I have when I find myself really attracted to people.

Thanks in part to my involvement in this community, a community that is diverse and sex-positive, I’ve come to appreciate that a person’s sexuality doesn’t have to be equal or even constant to “count” for a label such as bisexuality. Making room for this flexibility enables me to better understand and accept myself. Yet this community seems populated with people who are so much more sure about their identities and with so much more experience than I have. Comparison and imposter symptom seem to be magnetically attracted.

Even as I was becoming more comfortable with my attraction, I found myself distanced from the queer community. It still felt like a group of which I was not apart. I still felt as though there was a group of people  who were “them.” And not in a bad way. In fact, I wanted to feel more like I was part of this group than I did. So many people have formative memories of their sexuality, but it was never like that for me. I simply realized I was open to more than just men.

As it turns out, it can be difficult to feel queer enough when you’re bisexual because heteronormative culture still applies. It’s just that queer culture also applies. I often feel that it would be easier for me to feel part of the queer community if I could reject the entire heteronormative narrative, but some of it still applies. Even though I’ve rejected gender roles and sexual scripts and a bunch of other rubbish that goes along with straight culture, I’m still attracted to men.

I’ve heard jokes about bisexual culture but nothing that rings true or stands out to me. Some days I don’t feel so much like I fall under the queer umbrella as much as I feel like hetero… plus. And it’s so incredibly difficult to shed the filter and thoughts that have been ingrained in me by society, especially because I find women generally more attractive even if I am not sexually attracted to them. I almost have to remind myself that I like women, too, and I am attracted to very few men, to begin with. I don’t need to be equally attracted to men and women or even experience attraction to them in the same way. There has been so much self-doubt when it comes to claiming a label and joining a community because of this.

But even as I became comfortable with accepting that there’s no right way (TM) to be bi and that may “their” community is my community and there can be safety and support in that, it’s still not something that I necessarily want to come out about and not necessarily because of the subject. Coming out in any way simply seems too confrontational, and while it might seem otherwise, I have always shied away from confrontation. I only like to be in the limelight in limited circumstances. Directing attention to myself in that way makes me uncomfortable.

So, I don’t directly remind people of something they may already know, may have forgotten, may not care about, anyway. Instead, it feels easier to leave bread crumbs in the way of the things I say, the links I share, and the communities and causes I associated wit and to allow people to assume. There may come a time that I have to be more explicit, but part of me hopes that people will just take the hint and accept about me what I’ve taken nearly two decades to accept myself.

And maybe one day I will want to shout it from the rooftops.

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Categories: personal

Good Sexual Citizenship

October 25th, 2019

Good Sexual Citizenship: How to Create a (Sexually) Safer World
$17.95 from Amazon

Although I do not generally list the chapters in every book review that I write, I think it’s important to so to explain how Good Sexual Citizenship strives to create a “sexually safer world.”

  1. The Bases for Our Biases
  2. Standing Up for Sex
  3. Consent – (I Promise) It’s Not That Complicated
  4. Little Kids, Big Questions
  5. The Teen Sex Situation
  6. Getting to Good Sexual Citizenship

Whu do I list these? Because I consistently struggled to understand the overall structure that the author, Ellen Friedrichs, was aiming for. I am not sure if it’s the examples the author uses to introduce each chapter that makes them feel so disjointed rather than work in congress, but it’s so distracting. I don’t want to be stuck on the author’s organizational choices over her words, especially when I agree with what she has to say.

This begins with the first chapter, which delves into sexism. Honestly? I understand why discussing sex (and gender) and sexism is a sensical place to start when it comes to discussing the issue of a safer sexual world, but others may not. Some people may be on the word but haven’t fully formed their thoughts on the subject. It seems a bit presumptuous to me that the reader should have to already know this. At the very least, it could be overwhelming to the reader. There is room to make the argument and it may be necessary to do so that we cannot start a book without first examining gender. Perhaps the author things the entire first chapter accomplishes this, but it would not hurt for the point to be more explicitly, either in the introduction or at the start of the chapter itself.

As Friedrich moves into a history of sex culture and education (and the lack thereof), she paints the bigger picture of how we got to where we are. including casual sex and hookup culture, and what’s wrong with that if you want to build a sex-positive society. I suspect this is where many people would expect the book to begin. From there, it makes more sense to move onto the topic of consent, which includes discussion of how it plays out in college hookups and established relationships as well as how we define sexual assault, in the next chapter. Framing consent as a simple but essential solution to sexual assault is so important. The questions Ellen asks readers to consider about consent at the end of the chapter are especially poignant.

But the segue to teaching children about sex is almost nonexistent. It would be so easy to explain that if we teach children about sexuality and consent from a young age, providing them with age-appropriate information so that we can impress upon them the importance of consent. The chapter that follows, on teenaged sexuality, is the clearest transition in the book.

Her final chapter does reiterate why we are where we are as a society and ties together how all the misinformation or simply lack of education has contributed to that in a way that makes the preceding chapters make more sense. I just wish there was more of a common thread throughout the pages.

With that said, each chapter in this book relies on research, which is referenced throughout the book and listed in the notes, to make points that I do often agree with. And as readers move through those chapters, there are asides that help to challenge the unhealthy, harmful, and sex-negative messages we may have absorbed from living in a society that has created such a dangerous culture around sex. Each chapter also ends with a worksheet containing questions to gauge the reader’s knowledge, opinion, and comfort with the topics discussed in the chapter that encourage the reader to consider the topics on a personal level and rethink the ways they navigate sexuality.

As Ellen Friedrich makes her points and educates the reader to dispels myths, she makes sure to include LGBTQ+ members and to point out how sexism and these ideas about sex hurt men as well. However, she’s careful to point out how these limited narratives depict sex and gender at the same and a binary and how sexism against women has allowed the current sexual culture to proliferate.

The author also takes the time to point out the actions people can actually take not just to change their own minds but to impact sexuality in society from their interactions with other people on a daily basis to how they vote. Good Sexual Citizenship doesn’t just describe a problem without offering solutions. It didn’t leave me feeling hopeless as it very well could have. At points, the advice might have been a little superficial, but the reader is given enough information that they can seek out other resources, which they will have to do on their own because aside from references used, Friedrich doesn’t list any resources that her readers may want to read in addition to her book.

One thing that I found was interesting was that Friedrichs initially uses a couple of footnotes to define terminology with which the reader may not be familiar. I mean literally two in the introduction, and then she never does this again in the book. It’s confusing. But there were also places where I thought that those definitions would be incredibly useful to a reader who has maybe never heard a term before or isn’t quite sure what it means. “Slut-shaming” is a good example; yet, the author quickly seemed to forget about using definitions or decided that the only two terms that would benefit from them were in the beginning of the book.

Although there are many points with which I agree in Good Sexual Citizenship, and I’d like to see them made more often and vocally, I still felt that the book lacked an overall narrative to help the reader progress from one chapter or point to the next. Although I could draw some conclusions because the content was familiar to me, this might not be the case for others. The reader shouldn’t have to make assumptions or have a ton of prior knowledge to understand the overall argument made by a book. That’s the point of the book.

I wonder if the imperfection of Good Sexual Citizenship would leave others frustrated or cause them to set it aside, perhaps before they even pick it up, rather than just leaving them confused like I was. However, I still recommend this book, perhaps just as a starting point. And it’s not only that there are some weak points in Good Sexual Citizenships, it’s just that no one book or source can provide all the information we need to truly become good sexual citizens. As long as the reader understands this and that the onus is on each of us to create a sexually healthy world after reading the last page, I think this book will ultimately be helpful.

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Categories: Books, Reviews

Science of Sex: Vaginal Bacterial Transplants

October 1st, 2019

vaginal microbiota transplantation

According to recent estimates, our bodies consist of as much — or even more — bacteria than they do our own cells. While the exact numbers can vary, and researchers may occasionally disagree, bacteria help us function. Without the bacteria in our bodies, our bodies don’t work correctly. However, a bacterial imbalance or introduction of the wrong type of bacteria can lead to problems, namely, infections.

When it comes to sexual health, many people think of sexually transmitted infections. However, these are typically caused by viruses. Bacterial infections include bacterial vaginosis (BV) and infections of the cervix. These infections have traditionally been treated by antibiotics; however, this can lead to antibiotic resistance, which is an increasing concern especially given how frequently these infections reoccur. Furthermore, antibiotics can contribute to yeast infections.

Researchers are considering a new treatment option: vaginal bacterial transfers or vaginal microbiota transplantation. This would transfer the bacteria from a healthy vagina to a vaginal that has a bacterial imbalance. This procedure is not yet in practice and may never come to be. However, researchers are studying what would need to happen to make it a reality.

First, the ideal donor would have just a few bacteria. Specifically, there would not be a lot of Lactobacillus, which is what causes BV. People would need to be screened to see if they are a good match first via questionnaire. Then, swabs would take vaginal bacterial samples. Samples were tested for HPV and HIV before researchers moved on to bacterial analysis. It’s proposed that donors abstain from sex for 30 days before providing a donation, which can be self-collected.

This screening is important because samples could contain bacteria that would do more harm than good. For example, you might have read about two cases earlier this year where patients who underwent experimental fecal transplants, which has been undergoing experimentation as a possible treatment for rectal issues such as C. difficile infections, died. They received material from a donor that was tainted with E Coli. The specific train was antibiotic-resistant. Furthermore, the patients both had weakened immune systems.

With proper screening, this could be avoided. Since bacterial transplants of any form are still in their infancy — the fecal transplant hasn’t received FDA approval yet — now’s the time to eliminate the risk for when these procedures eventually become approved and used on patients.

A similar procedure known as vaginal seeding occurred when doctors would take samples of a birth parent’s vaginal bacteria and apply it to a newborn infant who was born through cesarian section. This practice started because it was believed that vaginal delivery transfers bacteria that can boost an infant’s immune system. While one study initially found limited success from the practice, a more recent study suggests that there is little evidence that vaginal seeding provides microbial benefits to infants and that health difference between vaginal and cesarian-born babies may be due to the antibiotics administered to the parent during birth.

Thus far, results from fecal transplants have been more promising, and vaginal microbiota transplantation may prove the same. However, it’s incredibly early in the game to make that assessment.

Further Reading

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Categories: Science of Sex

Image © MisterUnlucky; used with permission.