Pregnant Men? Well, It’s About Time!

I guess this week’s sex-and-culture news has Oprah very excited: a fella is going to have a baby. I can’t keep up with Oprah, personally, so it falls to the Yahoo home page with the news bites on it to inform me of anything inevitable she does: bitch out a shady “memoirist,” cry when girls in Africa are being mistreated (her girls, which makes her cry harder, of course; so would I, in her shoes). Yes, I know I should read her magazine, and then I’d be on top of all things Oprah (oops, I didn’t actually mean it to sound like that; I can barely top anybody)… but if I can’t find the time to blog every single day, how can I add this admittedly valuable burden to my already-challenging relationship to the time/space continuum?

Anyway. Now this. Which I assume means — in a weird way I would not have predicted, and do not exactly approve of — that transgender issues have really gone mainstream: that they have practically jumped the shark, maybe. Well, no. But it’s worth a head-shake nevertheless.

This Oprah phenom is not the first pregnant guy. One of my acquaintances did this — went off testosterone, found a donor, had a kid — some years back; I think it might have occurred in the actual 20th century, though it was pretty 21st-century even then. It was that thing we shorthanded when we said “Millennial” — like, everything is about to change! We’ll finally get our Jetsons cars, our refrigerators that talk, our Maxwell Smart wrist phones. The limits of technology, the mind, and the flesh will melt away, and as they do, the social structure will shift into the next thing, newness will rule, and everything that had seemed oppressive will find its technological fix.

We maybe didn’t think that on the way to the first African-American or female president we’d tolerate a dalliance with fascism. But I guarantee you, at least one guy out there has had his fingers crossed for years that the brave new century would give us pregnant men, and I’m sure he thinks this Oprah-fied situation doesn’t go nearly far enough.

See, back in the ’80s, when I knew him, my ex-boyfriend (who now runs a fertility clinic, because some people are truly blessed with a calling and do not just fall into some line of work because the wind changed) wanted to be the first pregnant man. He was SO serious about this. He was probably into me mainly because I had a uterus, which is ironic, given that I had and have no intention of using it for its so-called god-given purpose — indeed, I’d rather have that Galen thing happen to my uterus that they used to call hysteria, where the womb runs around the body causing trouble, than to have it stay put and cause trouble by producing another person. I do not want kids, pretty much never did, and I am perfectly happy to enjoy yours (well, a few of them, anyhow) mostly from a distance, and pet my cats, and admire my friends who choose to foster kids who otherwise would have a rougher life. I don’t want babies, but Boyfriend sure did, and one of the ways I knew I had an unusual man on my hands (after a lesbian-identified decade of mostly sticking to women) was this desire he had to be pregnant and bear a child.

Not just have kids, see. He has kids now, as a member of a queer intentional family. But he really truly wanted to be pregnant, which amazed me, since that’s not one of those Woman Things I ever experienced. He talked about it very articulately. He had a health care background, so he even had a keen sense of where an implanted embryo might be able to latch on and develop. He was quite sure that this technology would be possible one day fairly soon and fretted only that when it did develop, he might be considered too old to be the guinea pig. 

Boyfriend wasn’t trans in any of the ways we ordinarily define being trans (though I fully acknowledge that “we” in the aggregate aren’t the ones who ought primarily to be defining this — that should be the role of transfolk themselves). He was male-identified to the point of being kind of a men’s movement guy. But he deeply believed in, and desired, this profound breach of gender identity, without desiring to lose or basically change his own gender identity.

See, one of the gifts I’ve received from my transgender friends is the potential to explode gender (I realize, before y’all hit the “comment” button, that not all transpeople desire this or see it that way): most of all by the way some transgender people don’t buy into either/or male/female identities, at least not for themselves. But Boyfriend takes this social change into another realm when he desires the freedom and opportunity to do the one thing that, in our culture, absolutely defines a woman. And having known him, I wonder how alone he is in that desire: I am guessing not all that alone. It is the 21st century. It is the threshold of change. And maybe sharing that deeply gendered experience is what we as a people need to allow us to break on through to the other side of outmoded ideas about who men are and women are. Look, I’ll be the breadwinner, and honey, you have the kids. 

I know, a bunch of tenured biology professors will say smart-sounding things about biology and sociobiology, and maybe they’ll be right, but that’s the great thing about the space/time continuum, even if it flummoxes me by its demands on a day-to-day basis: it has no end. So the story they mastered to graduate with honors back in the 20th century, and get their tenure-track jobs and their Mr. Science book gigs, isn’t fully written. 

Professors, I got your biological imperative right here. I assume you would like it with lube.

The Sexies! A New Award for Sex-Positive Journalism

I know you haven’t heard from me in a while, and I suppose I owe you a “what I did on my summer vacation” post (partial report: I went to Scotland and looked out a window at a very green field filled with more sheep than I had seen since my sheep-filled childhood).

What, you didn’t know I had a sheep-filled childhood? Well, my memoir will cover all that: sheep, evangelicals, trees, the whole deal. Right now I want to talk about the present — nay, the future! I want to tell you about the most exciting new project I’ve been mixed up with in some time: the Sexies.

The Sexies are the just-announced Sex-Positive Journalism Awards. I’m one of the judges, and I look forward to reading many fabulous articles (and a few really heinous ones) and hobnobbing about them with my fellow wizards. This idea is the brainchild of Miriam Axel-Lute, a journalist who noticed how many other sorts of journalism awards there were, and also how relatively rare it still is for a mainstream journalist, especially, to have the freedom to do a really good job with a sex-related story assignment. Too many of these articles are hogtied by editors concerned about “community standards,” or are written by journalists who really exhibit their own bias and confirm those of their readers. Hence, the birth of the Sexies, which will recognize those who get it right (and there’s also a category for those who get it really, really wrong: compare and contrast, class! That one’s called the Unsexy).

This isn’t just an academic exercise. What people read in the papers, in magazines and on websites affects how they understand the world around them: look at the role US journalism has played in the politics of the US over the last six or seven years. When there’s a backstory we don’t hear, it makes the front story hard to understand; in the case of sex-related journalism, that can involve misrepresenting (or ignoring) the role of consent in a purported crime, or the presence of a sex community with its own community standards, or pandering to sex-negative opinion without showing a sex-positive slant that would change the way a reader experiences the story.

At the same time, there are journalists doing amazing work trying to help people really understand sexual issues, or remaining scrupulously fair about whose quotes they use, or doing the extra legwork to understand the context of the sex-related topic about which they’re writing. Several of those journalists will be awarded: the categories are News, Feature, and Opinion, and each of these has four divisions: daily newspaper, weekly or biweekly newspaper, online news publication, and sex-themed (or sexual orientation-themed) news publication. The first three divisions are for generalist publications rather than those which cover sex topics as a primary part of what they do. The Unsexy will not be awarded by division; contrary to the way Keith Olbermann does it, there will be only ONE worst… sex story… in the worrrrlddd!

And you can recommend your favorite articles! The Sexies are in their nomination process for the 2007 award until March 23, 2008. It’s fine for a writer to nominate her/him/hirself, or for a reader to do so. The only requirement is that the article must have been published in 2007. Nominate online at www.sexies.org/submit.php.

Who will judge these, besides yours truly? My fellow wizards are a terrific lot: Judith Levine, whose great book Harmful to Minors uncovered, among other things, just HOW bad sex education in America has become (for a good look at her importance see “What Judith Levine is Really Saying”); sex therapist Marty Klein, PhD, author of must-read e-zine Sexual Intelligence and the recently-released America’s War on Sex; Jack Hafferkamp, PhD, one of the founding editors of the late, great Libido: The Journal of Sex & Sensibility (plus he used to be a journalism professor, so he knows what writers should be doing); the one and only Dan Savage, of “Savage Love” fame; Liza Featherstone, who wrote “Sex, Lies, and Women’s Magazines” for the Columbia Journalism Review; http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=71, a contributing editor to The Nation; and last but certainly not least, Claire Cavanaugh, co-founder of Babeland (which is also a sponsor of the Sexies, along with the Center for Sex & Culture, and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom).

Perhaps you are asking yourself, “Wow, what can I do to help this fine project?” I am SO glad you asked, because Miriam already thought of that, and she cooked up this useful list: 10 Ways to Support Sex-Positive Journalism

1. Give money! The Sexies are a labor of love. But love doesn’t pay the bills. If you can give $100, $50, or $25, it will help us promote the awards, cover our expenses, and honor our winners properly. www.sexies.org/support.html.
2. Submit entries. Yes, readers as well as writers can submit. Articles have to have been published in 2007, in a general audience newspaper or news site, and meet high journalistic standards as well as our sex-positive criteria. Full guidelines, criteria, and a submission form are on our website: www.sexies.org.
3. Tell everyone you know. Blog about us, bring us up at opportune (or inopportune) times with family and friends and your local newspaper editor…
4. Make us popular. Join our LiveJournal community (sexposjawards), friend us on Myspace (www.myspace.com/sexposjournalism), post our site on Del.icio.us, Digg us.
5. Sign up for our announcement list. If you don’t do LiveJournal or Myspace, sign up for our update mailing list, sexies_upate@yahoogroups.com, to stay up to speed.
6. Link to us. Even if you don’t want to make a big fanfare, a link helps us in search-engine rankings.
7. Become a corporate sponsor—or connect us with your favorite sex-friendly business that might want to be one. E-mail info@sexies.org for more information.
8. Donate airline or Amtrak miles to get our winners to an awards ceremony. E-mail info@sexies.org if you’ve got a chunk to offer.
9. Mention us in a letter to the editor, especially our sex-positive journalism criteria and resources for journalists, both of which are on our website. If you’ve always been meaning to write in to your local paper about their sex-related coverage, good or bad, now’s a great time to do it!
10. Ask your favorite sex-positive publications, and your favorite mainstream ones as well, to cover the Sexies. We think we’re pretty unusual and would make a good story!

See? So many ways to have a hand in the improvement of journalistic discourse. Think how good you’ll feel about being part of this fabulous project — I know I am! Visit http://www.sexies.org to get more acquainted.

Valentines Day ….so so soon

I know that people have mixed feelings about Valentines Day. My friends opinions tend to range from “its a merchandising based holiday aimed at driving post Xmas sales” and ” It’s a way to make single people feel bad” to “It’s the most romantic day ever!”.
To be realistic, it IS an awesome day for Good Vibrations. When Valentines Day appears suddenly everyone starts questioning the state of their love life. They want to have more sex, better sex, chocolate sex…
For me, I think of holidays like this as reminders of what I might have been forgetting to focus on in my own life. Have I been remembering to tell my loved ones how important they are to me? Am I making enough time for intimacy, pleasure, orgasms….
Even with a life that often revolves around the business of sex, I can get wrapped up in the daily grind and totally push aside my own sexuality. I’ve decided that this year, I’m not doing Valentines Day on Valentines Day I’m going to pick a few random days and treat my partner to some extra special attention. It’s important to me that my expressions of love are seen as expressions of love, not as “its valentines day I guess I should do something sexy for you”. Sure, there will inevitably be February 14th related events. We do have reservations at an uber restaurant in Napa and I bought him a really cute card from Elephant Pharmacy, but that will not be the focus of the majority of my energy. I have much more scheming to do over the next few days. I have GV products to buy, exotic desserts to bake and sheets to launder! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Sexual Freedom

One of the things that I enjoy most about the Good Vibes culture is how diverse the company actually is. Our offices and stores are filled with people representing a variety of ethnicities, orientations, shapes, sizes, genders and political viewpoints. The one thing that we all share in common is our dedication to sex positive education. The good vibes vibe goes way beyond tolerance. People don’t “tolerate” each other here; they genuinely embrace diversity in an accepting, nonjudgmental way.

Lately, I’ve feel marginalized (and offended) by peoples closed minded attitudes quite a lot in other aspects of my life. At graduate school, I have an instructor who describes BDSM as “something rich people do out of boredom”. During a meeting of sex educators recently, I heard monogamy referred to as “boring, unexciting & something vanilla people do”. While meeting with a psychotherapist who supervises one of my therapy cases she heard me use the word “poly” to describe a client and accused me of “putting the words into her mouth” because it didn’t sound like something “a client in Marin would say”.

I feel myself being pulled in fifty different directions. To traditional groups I’m a pervert; to self proclaimed perverts I’m boring, to my lesbian friends I’m either a breeder or in denial. Why is it that people feel the need to analyze and negate the parts of me that don’t fit in with their paradigm?

The world needs to pick up more of the good vibes mentality. Sexual relationships can be exciting whether monogamous or polyamorous. Gay, bisexual and straight people can have meaningful relationships. Being proud of who you are doesn’t mean being embarrassed for people who are the opposite. The next time you start to judge someone’s life, think twice about it, don’t tolerate them, accept them as you would hope to be accepted and share some good vibes.

From feast to famine to…WTF??!

{sigh} So, officially I really do like my boyfriend but then today I was talking to a friend and I heard that my “long-time crush from a million years ago who never really returned my liking” is back from his sabaticle and will be returning to my world on… that’s right… Monday. (I thought he was back mid-December or something) Not that that means anything since I’ve certainly not heard from him during his time on the road. Just that I got an unpleasant jolt — that tingle of imminent crush-i-ness when I heard the news and that does not bode well for how well I’m going to hold up once he’s re-entered the building…

Now, let me take a moment to stress that I am emphatically NOT complaining! I’m just… a little overwhelmed/scared/uncertain about what I’m doing in all of this is all.

Add to the mix that tomorrow night I am going to a wedding between old friends which my sweet Pretty Boy will also be attending (Yup, he’s back from Ireland) and while I admit, I’ve been sort of assuming we would do some sort of something around the time of that particular event, not having heard from him all these weeks kind of made me re-think the probablility. Until fifteen seconds ago when i checked my VM and saw that I had a really very nice message from him that I could easily parlay into horizontal manueverings…

God, all of this opportunity/emotion and really, all I really want right now is more sleep.

Good Vibrations First Annual Amateur Erotic Film Competition

After a lot of planning, viewing, judging, and organizing Good Vibrations was excited to finally present its First Annual Amateur Erotic Film Competition at the Castro Theatre last night with amazing results. It was a wonderful event from start to finish filled with emerging filmmakers, industry professionals, and a huge crowd of anxiously awaiting fans. With a searchlight you could probably see from space and the always fashionable Miss Donna Sachet doing the red carpet interviews, the excitement was in the air (and probably smoldering in a few nether regions as well) as the crowds lined up down the block.

What I found so amazing was the unique perspective each film took under the “erotic” umbrella. We purposely left the focus of “what is erotic” to personal interpertation, since the whole point of an Amatuer Erotic contest was to let independent filmmakers explore their own concepts of eroticism in whatever forms they would take (provided of course that everyone involved was consenting and of legal age). We wanted people to explore and create the kind of films they thought were sexy and boy did we get an eyeful. Within the 7 films were huge contrasts both in focus such as masterbation, domination/submission, female ejaculation, swinging, etc. as well as the technical merits each film contained– using negative 16mm film, black and white, color, special effects, and so on. When we first decided to start this competition I thought that most of the submissions would be people with their handy cams, and while I’m sure those would have been fabulous as well, the production quality of the films we received just blew away my expectations. All the filmmakers should be really proud of their work, and if that wasn’t enough the cheers and applause of 1200 audience members should’t have felt too shabby either.

I’ll save my winner’s recap for another blog so the lucky fans going to see tonight’s screening at the Parkway Theater can work that anticipation up a little longer. It’s gonna be another wild night.

Now if only we could get Tim Gunn to narrate!

So, I’ve been busy working on a project for work and boy are my fingers tired. Wait, that sounded funny.

What I mean is….boy have I been having fun and learning a lot. And my fingers…well, they’ve been becoming intimate friends with a video camera and editing software. None of which I knew much about before last month. Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Let me tell you this….working with video has made me so very aware of angles and editing now. I couldn’t watch the finale of Project Runway without screaming at the genius of the editing….I mean, did you see how they made it look like Tim was telling Jeffrey that he was booted? Brilliant.

I AM taking notes.

So, now I must get back to my project….I have people to talk to and sound bites to capture and credits to roll and interviews to conduct and, and ….and…..(I’m excited, can you tell?)

And hey, does anyone have Tim Gunn’s phone number…..I think he’d be the perfect choice to host the Designer Toy episode.

oh, and ………
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Boobiethon

The Fifth Annual Blogger Boobiethon is taking place at Boobiethon.com

They’re gathering photos of bloggers breasts to raise money for the Susan B. Koman Breast Cancer fund as a part of Breast Cancer Awareness month.

The thing that I like most about this event is that breast of all sizes, shapes and genders are included. Breasts come in so many glorious different types. It can be amazing fun just clicking through all of the entries and getting a voyeuristic view of what it looks like under people’s shirts! Could that sexy guy in accounting be in there? Maybe!

As a person who blogs about sex and works for a sex positive company I couldn’t help but look through my personal stash and submit a picture for a good cause. Now you’re just going to have to wonder which one is mine!

If you’ve got a voyeuristic streak, take a few minutes and donate some money or your own boobie picture for charity. You’ll be glad you did!

part two. in some ways, though, not so much.

Love for the Bay Area that needs to come out:

Dyke March. Good Vibrations. Chapel of the Chimes. Naan N Curry. The Parkway. Folsom St. Fair. Trannyshack. The mass amounts of very attractive gay men. And the fact that I can have my girlfriend and my dog and sell dildos all day and not really stand out as being anything other than just another San Francisco dykefamilymember.

Negativity that needs to come out:

I hate you, San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic, and I will hate you forever and ever.

And onto more pressing (pushing? thrusting?) matters….

Common questions about vaginal fisting:

Isn’t it going to stretch me out and make my cooch all floppy and loose and won’t my boyfriend complain that I’m not tight enough anymore?

No. You won’t become floppy. If anything, you will become so much more aware of all the muscles down there, because most women (especially when they’re just beginning) have to consciously relax and practice and let those muscles de-tense and de-clench. The more aware you are of your muscles, the more you will know when they’re in shape and when they’re not.
***side note: There is nothing wrong with having a big ol’ vagina. Nothing. Please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Fisting will not give you a big vag, but even if it did, you would still be worthy of love, sex, respect, and orgasms. In addition, size queens such as myself will admire you and praise your, um, potential capacity. Again, moving on…

Why does it feel so (so so so) good?

Because your body is made that way. Whereas the outside of your parts (aka vulva and friends) respond to light touch and vibration and sucking and tongues and warmth, the inside (aka your vagina) responds to pressure and fullness. And what better way to experience pressure and fullness than by holding your lover’s hand inside? The opening of the vaginal canal is also rich with nerve endings that are stimulated by things like knuckles and fingers passing through. Happiness.

My lover thinks fisting sounds violent. Is it? Is it mean?

Oh no, dear one. Think about it: in order to get everything inside, a woman has to be calm (or, well, not calm, but relaxed. She can be–and hopefully is–highly charged and excited). Like I said before, she has to want you there. To want you there is the easy part; trusting you there is the hard part. The first few times I was fisted I would be so close to letting her all in, and then I’d think “What if she got stuck!? What if she pokes something!? What if she hurts me?” and I’d tighten down. And then we’d try again, and I’d freak out again. Finally, I remembered that I trusted her. She wasn’t going to hurt me.

If you have any doubts about who you’re with, perhaps fisting isn’t a game you two should play together. If you have no doubts and you trust him or her with all your heart, don’t be suprised if you cry a little bit (or a lot) afterwards. More than likely, your body isn’t used to such large guests. It can be overwhelming.

What supplies do I need?

A hand and a hole. And, for safety and sexiness, gloves and lube (and more lube, and more lube). In a discussion on the topic of fisting and lube, a coworker and I disagreed on what’s best. Know why? Because everyone’s different. “Roxy” said: “The best fisting experiences I’ve had with my partner are when I apply a base layer of Eros Power Cream on my gloved hand and then follow it up with a top layer of GV Gel. The GV Gel makes my hand slick enough to move inwards and the Power is thick enough for comfort once my fist is inside. Both lubes should be applied liberally (especially to the back of the hand) and down all sides of the wrist.” Me, I just use Slippery Stuff Gel, and lots of it.

Next time (eventually. I cannot promise it will be the next blog entry) I will cover “how to” and fancy fisting positions. Until then, check out this link and learn how skeletally skinny models are no longer the cool kids on the block.

To all who think bigger is better,
jameson.