What I learned from SlutWalk and Big Freedia

(X-posted from School For Scandal)

This was a helluva weekend- SlutWalk on Saturday, and a Big Freedia show on Sunday. For the unacquainted, Big Freedia is an incredible Transgendered "Bounce" rapper from New Orleans- a genre of music almost exclusively dedicated to shaking your ass. The mostly white, hipster crowd at the Do-Division Street Festival didn't quite know what to make of the glorious Queen Diva and her crew of rump shaking dancers, but before long, an ass-shaking dance-off was going down on stage.

So here's the thing. People- all kinds of people of all genders and colors, are on stage, doing incredibly lewd, sexy dancing- bent over, humping the stage, flashing panties and boobs as a self proclaimed "dick eater" spurs them on with a chant of "AZZ EVERYWHERE, AZZ EVERYWHERE!"

Is it sexy? Damn right. Are they showing off for attention? Of course. Are they only doing it for the attention? Maybe some of them are, but I suspect a lot of them are doing it because it FEELS GOOD.

Is it exploitation? Not really, going on stage is totally optional, anyone who wants to dance can dance and no one can tell them not to, and they dance because it's fun. Is it "Girls Gone Wild?" Not really, unless GGW had a "queer multicultural edition with occasional stretchmarks, cellulite and hairy armpits."

Nevertheless, there's a whole lot of scantily clad ass and crotches in the air. So what makes Big Freedia show different from your average hip hop video? It's the fact that the dancers are doing it for themselves. They are taking pleasure in the fact that shaking your ass does feel good, and it feels AWESOME to do it in public if you feel like you're not going to get raped/groped/harassed for doing it.

And yes, I shook my ass, and yes, I roamed around the street fair in a pink teeshirt, a pair of hot pink tights, motorcycle boots and black ruffle butt panties during and after the Big Freedia show. Because I feel awesome and sexy when I wear this kind of outfit in a place where I feel safe. I felt safe because I've got a big strong body, a confident kick ass attitude, friends by my side, and I was in a place where I knew harassment would not be tolerated. (And as soon as I left, I put my skirt back on, because I didn't feel safe outside of the confines of the event. Reality bites.)

To give an analogy: it's the difference between me kissing a girl at a gay bar vs. a straight bar. If I kiss a girl in a gay bar, nobody cares. It's a safe space to enjoy myself in this way. However, if I kiss a girl in a straight bar, all of a sudden men come out of the woodwork, wanting to take pictures, propositioning a threesome, staring, etc. The problem here is not that I enjoy kissing girls sometimes. I shouldn't stop kissing girls when I want to because it "asks for trouble." The problem is if I kiss a girl at a bar where an uneducated straight man thinks that I'm kissing a girl to entertain or titillate him (and to be fair, some girls DO but this should never be the automatic assumption), instead of doing it for my own pleasure, and assumes it's an invitation to harassment. Even if a couple of straight girls are making out with the sole intention of turning on straight dudes, it shouldn't be taken as blanket consent for creepy behavior.

My friend K. put it pretty succinctly when she said "the creepers ruin it for the gentlemen." As long as creepers are creeping, ALL straight men are going to run up against Schrodinger's Rapist.

So here's the thing.

A lot of people told me that I shouldn't dress sexy for SlutWalk. "Well, of course you can if you want to," they said. "But do you really want to enforce the notion that this is about titillation, and detracting from the anti-rape message of the rally?"

UGH, you're missing the point.

Don't get me wrong- I think everyone should wear what makes them feel comfortable, and I don't feel that dressing sexy is a requirement for SlutWalk at all. But you're just bad as that notorious Toronto policeman if you tell me "Don't dress slutty (AT FUCKING SLUTWALK!) because you'll attract the wrong kind of attention."

As a teenager, my mom discouraged me from wearing tight clothes, red lipstick, etc. because I looked old for my age and she didn't want me to attract the "wrong kind of attention." I know her heart was in the right place and she just wanted me to be safe. But it is only through questioning the idea that I must hide my beauty, my sexiness, and my spirit from others that I have found confidence and self love. If I'm gonna wear sweats, it's because I'm feeling lazy, not because I want to hide my fabulous ass (and trust me honey, nothing really succeeds in hiding my ass). As a grown woman, I'll wear a tight skirt if I damn well please. As a curvy woman, my body is OBJECTIFIED no matter what I wear. Nothing short of a burlap sack will hide my breasts, and I refuse to wear a burlap sack. I will take control of my sexuality and my appearance and wear what turns ME on. Being a woman in a sex negative society is never "safe" regardless of what you wear, but I refuse to be ruled by fear.

How often am I allowed to walk down the street in Downtown Chicago in a super short rainbow minidress and gartered fishnet stockings and feel TOTALLY SAFE AND CONFIDENT AND FREE? I am sure that some people considered what I wore to Slutwalk to be "slutty" but it was hardly playboy bunny gear, and as a fat girl, baring my thighs in public feels like an awesome fuck you to a culture that wants me to believe I am undesirable when we know it just AIN'T TRUE. I don't mind being looked at, flirted with, whatever as long as it is done in a way that is respectful and consensual. And Slutwalk gave me a glimpse of what society would be like if I could wear whatever I damn pleased without thinking "will this get me harassed if I wear it in public." And it was a DAMN GOOD feeling.



My point here, is the problem isn't shaking your booty for a crowd, or showing your thighs in public. It's the idea that doing these things means you're "asking" to be violated. So honestly, I think the MORE we create safe, inclusive spaces do these things that make us feel good (and no judgement if you don't enjoy dressing scanty and lascivious dancing- it ain't for everyone) the more we are moving away from rape culture and towards a sex positive culture where we can do what FEELS GOOD- even if it's *gasp* SEXY- without fear of shame, assault, or humiliation.

The Phone Sex Chronicles Part One: The Agency

This is part of a series of posts about working as a phone sex operator. I high recommend Christi Olson's "So You Want to be a Phone Sex Operator" as a jumping off point as well.

I started working as a phone sex operator in 2008, after I lost my nannying job (I was working as a freelance journalist and the writing money was never enough on its own) and needed extra cash. I had a couple of friends who had done it in the past, and one of them sent me a link to an agency where you had to leave a voicemail in a sexy voice and if they called you back, you were hired. I was trained by a woman with a thick Long Island accent ironically named Virginia. She told me she'd worked as a phone sex operator (PSO) for 8 months, which made me a touch incredulous. Her agency followed strict FCC guidelines- no underage, no rape/molestation/incest scenes, no drugs, no bestiality. If the customer brought up these things I was supposed to steer them away:

Client: "Have you ever fucked a horse? Horses have huge cocks!"

Me: "You know who else has a huge cock? My Black boyfriend!" (Big Black Cock, aka BBC is perhaps one of the most overplayed tropes in phone sex.)

Client: "That's great! You should really try horse cock sometime!"

As you can see, easier said than done.

I had to purchase a corded landline and headset, presumably to prevent technical difficulties with calls (I use a cell phone now with very few problems.) Finding a corded landline that can accept a headset was a chore in and of itself, but at least it was a tax writeoff.

The Agency was convenient in that I could log in any time, as long as I did a minimum of 4 hours of calls each week. (I never did). Other agencies required that you work a set graveyard shift schedule where you had to be on the lines regardless of whether not there were callers. I would dial a number in California and sit on the couch, anchored by the horrible headset and landline, and wait to hear the beep that meant a call was coming through. BEEP BEEP and then I'd hear the "tag" for the type of call- "female fantasy" was the general line, and the recorded announcer sounded Midwestern and apprehensive, almost as if she were saying "Female...fantasy?" Not as bad as the tag for the "Blue Asssian!" tag, complete with "me love you long time" accent. Two more beeps, and the customer was on the line.

By the agency's standards, I was NEVER allowed to admit I was an actress on the lines, I had to pretend I was a fun loving young girl who had won free call time as a prize for a wet teeshirt contest (hahaha BULLSHIT). I wasn't allowed to take regulars, although I did get the same callers more than once on occasion. My phone was hooked up to dozens of different lines at any given moment, so it was always a crap shoot who I'd talk to next. It was hard work shifting gears with every call- one moment I was a sassy African American woman named "Ebony" (yes I fully understand the implications of why this is horrible, and there's a great vignette about this phenomenon here), the next moment I was supposed to be a "Spicy Latina" named Eva. Yes, I felt like an asshole a lot of the time and was quickly developing multiple personality disorder.

I was paid on the average length of my calls, as system that was deliberately designed to screw the PSOs. The only was to make decent money was to maintain a call average length of 12 minutes or longer. Virginia claimed this was easy- you just had to make a lot of small talk. This is bullshit- if a client isn't in the mood for small talk, he hangs up on you. Most weeks I wound up making $10 an hour, which was horrifying when a customer whines that he's paying almost $5 an minute to the line. The reality is a lot of dudes will call and hang up if they don't like your voice/persona, which destroys your call average very quickly. The irony is they would immediately re-route the call to my line when he called again, which meant I got very adept at switching names/voices when I got instant callbacks.(Sometimes all that it took to keep this kind of repeater on the line was saying I was a brunette instead a blonde). The other problem was there was no way to build up a client base of regulars, who are usually the big moneymakers in phone sex- the repeat customers whose quirks you know in and out.

I never considered going freelance (which I now do through a PSO hosting website) at this time because I was too lazy to build my own profiles and just assumed it would be too hard to build a customer base. I still regret this- I make more in an hour as a freelancer than I did in a week as an agency girl and it is just so much better overall.

I will be brutally honest and say the agency sucked. I had my line disconnected without warning my first day when I took an adult baby call from a dude who wanted me to pretend to be his mommy and cuddle with him. Yes, the administrators would "listen in" on your calls- I guess this was part of why there was such a huge pay cut between me and the customer- they had to hire phone gestapo to make sure I toed the party line.

There was no actual sexual content to the call, but I was now in trouble with Virginia for unwittingly violating the underage and incest taboos (I don't consider adult baby roleplay to be either of these things). Virginia gave me a sharp dressing down, and the line was re-instated. The second time my line was disconnected was because I refused to get graphic on a scat call- I just assumed that this would be an FCC no-no. I was wrong- Virginia now yelled at me for not pretending to poop in some dudes mouth. The third time I was disconnected, I called Virginia and she didn't answer- she'd conveniently gone on vacation before disconnecting the line. One of the other managers informed me that I was the "lowest performing PSO" of 1,000 operators. I didn't believe this for one minute- the market had just crashed and the reality was my call volume was the lowest it had ever been, one or two calls per hour, which meant a lot of unpaid time sitting on a dead line. (So much for sex work being a recession-proof industry.) I worked for the agency for a year, and it was time to go.

After a two year break I returned to phone sex as a freelancer five months ago, partly for the extra cash, and partly because I missed the weirdness, the customers, and the stories I got out of it- stories were what make the agency worthwhile, and while I vastly prefer freelancing, I get way less batshit crazy on my private lines.

But the stories will have to wait for the next post.

Weiners and Santorum: A Yucky Day

I admit, I was one of those "delusional liberals" because I found the initial aspects of WeinerGate - which you all know is the accusations that U.S. Representative Anthony Wiener has been having sexually explicit photo and text exchanges with fans of his via various social media sites - to be super suspicious.  Here's why:

-Breitbart.  If you want to have any integrity, regardless of what side of the political fence you fall on, the default position when Breitbart breaks anything is to be skeptical.  He plays fast and loose with the truth, period.

-Weiner's reaction.  At the time his weird response to all this made it seem almost - as crazy as it may sound - that he was somehow punking Breitbart.  Because Weiner is a smart man, and a media-savvy one.  I figured that  the "bungled" response to the allegations must be part of something...smarter? 

But now it's looking a lot more like Weiner has had multiple sexual exchanges with women online, and I'm waiting to watch his press conference, which apparently has been hijacked by Breitbart himself for some reason I can't figure out whatsoever.  Can people do that?  "Oh, I just happened to be here, I'm on the podium now."  Even if he isn't lying this time, he's still a dick.

All this drama aside, I don't understand why this is a "scandal."  It's a scandal when a homophobic "family values" candidate on the right is caught betraying the values he attempts to enforce on others.   It's the hypocrisy, not the act itself.  I don't care if politicians cheat on their wives when they're not trying to impose their own hypocritical morality, period.  It has no bearing on their ability to advocate for their constituents if they are not holding themselves to a different standard than they would the people they claim to represent.

Having just listened to Weiner's press conference, I was surprised at how honest it was.  There was some of the expected lines about how he's deeply hurt his family and whatnot, but he didn't claim sex addiction or substance abuse, and said repeatedly he takes responsibilty for doing something dumb.  That alone is a pretty radical act for a congressman.

However, am I am absolutely befuddled as to why male politicans keep doing shit like this.  I am generally a subscriber to the theory that the vast majority of what we consider gender differences are the result of socialization.  I'm also a woman who really likes sex and has taken some minor risks to get the kind of sex that I want.  So I get horniness.  But I don't understand why, time after time, male politicians are able to so repeatedly risk their careers (and marriages, I guess) in pursuit of such banal sexual encounters.

Is it that it takes a certain kind of fucked-up personality to be a politician in the first place?  A sense of entitlement and an an aversion to risk-reward analysis?  A desire for validation?  All of the above?  Sometimes, a tiny, not-particularly-feminist voice in my head wonders if male sexuality and the male sex drive really is that different from women.  Is the pull for gratification is just so strong that in the moment, it's worth risking everything?

Then again, it's just as likely that the fact that male politicians keep getting caught in illicit encounters has less to do with their gender and more to do with the fact that we just have a lot more male politicians than female.  And we hold female politicians to a higher standard of scrutiny. 

As a fan of Weiner, I'm bummed that he handled this whole thing so poorly, up to this point, although finally telling the truth and refusing to resign, characterizing this as something between him and his wife and his family, is absolutely the right tack to take.  But as a fan I'm really disappointed that he was this stupid.  As a fangirl, I kinda enjoy the scandalous shots.  Even Breitbart had to admit that this skinny guy has a great body and apparently, quite a package.  The most unsexy thing about this is that he was still using an AOL account in the 2000s. 

To make today more disheartening to liberals, Rick Santorum, that frothy mix of you know the drill, announced his candidacy.  I'm gonna go have another glass of wine.


I'd like to note that I didn't use a Weiner pun, not even once.

When Sex is NOT Fun: Gin & Tears Edition

GirlAboutOaktown has had her say on the ongoing SiF meltdown. I was affected by it, but in a different way.

The first 20 minutes of episode #278 was really heavy. It was the most gripping, brutal 20 minutes of podcasting I've ever heard. It actually hurt to listen to, especially as someone who's gone through the torrent of emotions that starting an open relationship can bring. Seriously, if there's ever an open relationship/polyamory archive, this section of the podcast should have a permanent spot.

In that first 20 minutes, one hears a tremendous amount of pain in Kidder's voice. It sounds as if Jade was really trying to push his buttons. How else could she keep going on with it, aware of how much it was hurting him?

At about 20:20, though, the podcast took a dark, narcissistic turn. Up until this point, it was the hardest to listen to podcast I've ever heard, and I've listened to numerous German language podcasts. Once the mood turned, though, it was all about Kidder's rage and my sympathy dissolved. I started to wonder if he was just chumming up the waters for the sake of it. So he hasn't fucked anyone else because Jade didn't allow it. So he backed off his relationship with another member of the SiF podcast. That doesn't mean that Jade didn't let him have sex and emotional connection with someone else. She's been through a lot of the angst he was going through, but it didn't end up on Facebook.

As I said above, I went through a storm of emotions when my partner finally consummated her nearly 5 year long flirtation (and a little more) with a friend of hers. The night she called me to ask if it was okay to go ahead, I was 400 miles away. Immediately, I felt helpless, as if my world was drifting away and I was powerful to stop the changes. I pictured many ridiculous scenes, like the two of them sitting up in bed together, enjoying a post-coital cigarette after a mind-blowing fuck, talking about how it was the best thing either of them had ever done.

Then a funny thing happened. She started chatting online with me. It had been many hours since I last heard from her, but here she was. I asked her questions, and started to feel better that the same woman I loved was chatting with me now, and things were really the same.

When I woke up the next morning, I still had plenty of anxiety, so I put my mind to work to find someone to hook up with. It wasn't punitive. It was just that I wanted to remind myself that open relationships have benefits as well as difficulties. Sure, she was probably back to fucking him that morning (and she was), but that I could go have fun and it was okay.

The next time she hooked up with him, I was still anxious, but less so. The next time after that, even less so. One of the things I had realized early on that made it get better, was being able to spot the jealousy and weirdness creep in, and trying to remind myself that, while they were valid feelings, they were my own to deal with.

Kidder is free to own those feelings, but he has to learn to own them completely and honestly. She did some things that hurt him and his hurt was reasonable, but his reaction wasn't.

In his shoes, I would have been hurt by the New Orleans trip issue. He suggested that they go to New Orleans together for a little romantic getaway, since he had to travel there for work. She declined, citing money issues and needing to find a sitter. When she realized that the other guy would be nearby, she started making travel plans. That was pretty clueless on her part.

Jade also sexted the other guy about illicit office sex right after rejecting Kidder's advances in his office. This one is a bit different. While I can see how he'd feel hurt, if he looked at it honestly, he'd realize that much of what is sexy is built on fantasy. One may be really put off by the act of having anal sex, but in dirty talk, finds nothing hotter than going on about a spit-lubed double anal fuckfest. If our fantasies mirrored what we really do, they'd lose their power. Anyone who thinks I'm full of shit about this one, I defy you to be honest about whether you'd be willing to show your partner every bit of porn you've ever masturbated to.

I thought so.

To wrap this up for now, I'd like to suggest that maybe Kidder and Jade were not ready for this now, if ever. They went to a swingers' resort and did a full swap, started calling it an open relationship, and collapsed into poly drama in a record amount of time. It's like deciding to visit the zoo and then taking up bullfighting all in the same afternoon. Kidder is no sexual Hemingway. Maybe a bush league Bukowski, but only for the intoxicated rage.

The Phone Sex Chronicles: Prologue

(I wrote the beginning of this piece at an erotic memoir writing workshop taught by Susie Bright. The assignment was to write about your most recent sexual experience. This will be the first of a series of piece about working in phone sex. -GACT.)

Her name is Eriko. She’s 21 years old, Japanese American, a BD/SM switch, an amateur sex therapist, a student at UCLA or University of Chicago, depending on the location of the caller. I know Eriko like I know myself, though she is mutable, adapting to the whims of each phone John. She is the best selling character I’ve ever created, in all my years of writing. She is me, but she is not me.

I received a call to Eriko’s foot fetish line last night, $1.29 a minute, which works out to about $40 an hour after Niteflirt takes their cut. It’s more than twice than what I make hourly at my day job, and enables me to pay for luxuries like therapy and a membership at an exclusive gym. There’s always a sense of delicious anticipation after the caller hangs up, waiting for the pre-recorded Niteflirt femmebot to tell me how much I earned on the call.

There are two types of callers- men (and they usually are men) who want to talk, and men who want to cum, though these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The guy who calls the foot fetish line definitely wants to cum. Every cummer has a “key phrase” that will make them cum if you repeat it enough. The key phrase is the purest distillation of their fantasy, the rarefied erotic image that inches them closer to their orgasm every time I say it. The closer they are to coming, the more they want to hear it, over and over, until it becomes a rhythmic phone sex chant. I once spent 45 minutes on the phone with a man who wanted me to describe fucking his “big black cock” with my “big white tits," over and over. Anytime I began to deviate from the big black cock/big white tits dichotomy, I was firmly reigned back into his chiaroscuro tittyfucking fantasy. It was his key phrase, his core orgasmic image.

This foot fetish line caller doesn’t actually seem to have much interest in feet, but he certainly has a thing for whips. Having spent significant time in the BD/SM scene, I’ve always steered clear of real whips, knowing the amount of practice and skill it takes to wield a singletail without seriously injuring somebody. He says he’s married to a Korean woman, and she and her friends love to whip and humiliate him. I ask him if he likes floggers, caning, spankings or chastity belts, trying to mix up the fantasy a bit. “Just whip me til I cum, Mistress” he begs. I describe the whipping over and over, the loud crack of the leather hitting flesh, the burning red weals on his buttocks and back, my cruel laugh as I humiliate him in front of a room full of faceless Asian dominatrixes. The fantasy is getting monotonous for me, but it’s building him up to a moaning climax. And then, the auditory money shot: “This call lasted twelve minutes. Eight dollars and ninety nine cents will deposited to your account.”

I log off the line, getting ready for bed. I imagine masturbating as the niteflirt femmebot recites my payout in her electric voice, over and over, until I cum. No matter what the client wants, “$1.29 a minute” is Eriko’s key phrase.

(The photo above is of Japanese pinup girl Eriko Sato, whose name I borrowed for my phone sex character).

Sex is NOT Fun: Nor is This Super-Long Post

Kidder Kaper and Krew (this K thing is fun) found my last post and have responded!  12 comments on one post may actually be a record for us here at Sex or Television!  I was all set - a week ago - to write a scathing post detailing all the weird relationship stuff Kidder has put out there, but the most recent episode of Sex Is Fun has made me rethink this, because despite the fundamental problem that it's yet another  show entirely about Kidder and his life, actual self-awareness was demonstrated in the episode, as was genuine, heartfelt sadness that makes it very hard to continue in this vein of snark.

Fact is, my own personal issues with how Kidder runs his podcast and responds to people on the Internet aside, opening up your relationship is a fraught, terrifying thing to do.  If you have some time, and you're a personal relationship drama voyeur like me, I'd recommend listening to episodes #276 and #278 of Sex Is Fun. You'll be missing a lot of backstory, of course, some of which I'm still missing too, but it should give you a decent idea of the stuff I want to talk about.  And since I'm not going to get into the details of rehashing the history of their relationship troubles here, you'll have to listen to see how what I'm saying applies to their situation.

As I've written before, I don't subscribe to the theory, popular amongst Polaymory activists, that open relationships have to be 100% "fair" to be "good."  I am all for individuals and couples setting their boundaries and then communicating them to each other and renegotiating them.  I think that "irrational" or "unfair" boundaries are fine, provided the other partner is totally OK with abiding by them.  Where you run into a problem is when an irrational/unfair boundary conflicts with what the other partner wants.

Kidder, by his own admission, is really insecure, and has a need to "feel special."  I think right there that is a personality trait that is going to make moving forward with a seriously open relationship pretty tricky.  People with those needs, right or wrong, are often going to feel neglected even in a relatively happy long-term monogamous relationship, just because without "NRE" (poly-speak for "new relationship energy" which is a ridiculous term that normal people call "infatuation") it is human nature to fall into ruts, take your partner for granted, and so forth and so on.  When you open up your relationship to the possibility of your partner experiencing NRE with another person, that's like murder on someone who is already insecure and has a need to always feel like they are the most important person in their partner's life.

That said, I am not a huge fan of the idea that all beliefs and feelings are automatically "valid" just because someone feels them.  Having been in a relationship with someone who was seriously mentally ill and thus held completely ridiculous and inaccurate cognition as a result of his mental illness, I think it's ludicrous to say we have to honor everyone's feelings at all times.  Crazy feelings are crazy, and while we can feel sympathy to the person having the crazy feelings, it doesn't mean we have to validate the false cognition said crazy feeling is based on.

I honestly feel that in order to do any serious amount of openness seriously, both partners need to feel absolutely secure in how "special" they are to their partner without necessarily needing a huge amount of reassurance about it.  Because opening up is challenging even for the most secure people, really.  To this end, I'm not convinced that Kidder and Jade are really good candidates for having a more open relationship (apart from what they've been doing all these years that didn't challenge their relationship as much).  And it sucks for them, because they both obviously want a higher degree of openness but are unable to agree with each other's boundaries on how to handle that.  They both want an emotional and sexual relationship with other people that threatens the other person.

It's almost like the SiF people are at one end of the spectrum and the PolyWeekly folks are at the other.  The latter discusses jealousy in open relationships by refusing to deal with it or making pat remarks about how bubble baths and "taking care of yourself" is the cure to jealousy.  The SiF point of view seems to be that twinges of jealousy are to be responded with by demands on your partner and endless "processing" as opposed to any sort of introspection or willingness to try to work on and move past the insecurities that are causing said jealousy.  I will say, as someone in a committed relationship, that I am overall more sympathetic to the SiF approach because at least it is more likely to ensure the survival of the primary relationship, whereas the PolyWeekly folks are incensed by the very idea of a primary relationship, because it's not egalitarian enough.

I think there's a line in-between that isn't particularly popular and doesn't have some sort of cute catchphrase, but involves both respecting your partner's boundaries but a willingness to advocate for your wants; communicating when you're feeling insecure or upset with your partners actions but also being willing to endure feeling shitty at times and owning your own shit.

Here's an example.  The Boy and I started our path to what is now a pretty open relationship by having threesomes with other men.  None of them went terribly well, and I was frustrated after the last one and tired of the effort and the awkward sex.  I told the Boy that I'd actually be OK with him, in the future, having sex with men without me present, although we'd have to discuss the terms in more detail at another time. I also told him that I wouldn't be comfortable with him having sex with the guy we'd just finished having sex with, though.  (Hey!  Semi-irrational boundary!) 

The next day I checked the joint e-mail account the Boy and I had set up for arranging said threesomes, and saw that the Boy had e-mailed the guy we'd just had sex with about hooking up one-on-one.  I was shocked and furious.  I called him from work and demanded to know why he'd do that when I'd just brought up the possibility of him seeing other guys without me and specifically said I didn't want either one of us to have anything to do with that guy.  What did the Boy do?  He lied.  He claimed he hadn't sent that e-mail.  When he realized I had proof, he copped to it.  I was livid, sick to my stomach, threatened to break up with him, told him he'd just ruined any chance he'd had of being able to have sex outside our relationship if our relationship even survived.  At the time I felt righteously furious, now I realize I was being a little melodramatic.

This mirrors a lot of the kind of things that led to Kidder's current troubles.  He caught his wife chatting with her paramour and didn't disclose it when he asked.  My partner lied to my face about making a sex date with another person.  How did we get through this huge betrayal of trust?

We talked about it.  Not for days or weeks, but for like, a couple hours.  I realized the Boy and I had a miscommunication - he thought I'd essentially given him permission to fuck other guys, full stop, and was really excited by this new freedom. When I called him to confront him, he realized that he'd triggered all my fears and insecurities about having a cheating bisexual partner (as my ex cheated on me repeatedly with men) and panicked.  And because he didn't want to appear to be just like my ex, he lied.

Like Kidder, I wasn't mad that my partner wanted to have sex with someone else - I was upset that I'd been lied to.  And I felt like I'd granted him this gift, something that wasn't easy for me and in the very first instance he could, he fucked it up and proved himself untrustworthy.  Actually so far, I'd say based on the podcasts, that what I was feeling and what Kidder was feeling intially - why did you lie to me after I'd just granted you something awesome? - were very similar.  So dudebro, I feel ya there.

But instead of making a podcast where I got my friends to passive-aggressively rehash the wrongs my partner had done to me, I talked with the Boy and sat with my feelings, and was able to realize that his intention was not to betray me or hurt me.  And that my reaction - overreaction - to the Boy's e-mail put him in a place where he was terrified to admit to it because of my insecurities and past. It didn't take "three years" to work past, it took about a week or two before I was cool with him going off and fucking someone else.  And he did.  Crazy!

Of course, moving is easy to do when you have faith in your partner.  Despite the fact that he'd just lied blatantly to me, I still believed that on the whole the Boy was truthful with me.  What strikes me about these podcasts, particularly the latter one, is that Kidder does not believe Jade will be truthful with him.  Which is apparently borne out by the events that follow.  The question is, then, is Jade just a terrible lying liar who lies, or does Kidder's reactions - perhaps, dare I say, overreactions - to Jade's initial "disclosure glitches" help create an environment that almost guarantees she won't fully disclose to him?  That I can't say, because I am not Lorax, their relationship counselor. (Btw, guys, that's kinda fucked up, just sayin'.)

The latest podcast certainly makes it sound like Jade is a terrible lying liar.  But it's also clear that the amount of disclosure needed - full access to all chats, texts, Facebook pages, etc - is a bar that makes having an open relationship kinda tricky.  Kidder is defensive of his need to have full disclosure to be OK with the openness, but the full disclosure also gives him the ability to monitor everything obsessively and stew over real and periceved slights in a way that doesn't come across as totally healthy. I have, in theory, a "right" to know all of the Boy's activities online.  I have almost never taken advantage of that right because I don't feel a need to.  I trust him.  When I have, what I've seen has validated my trust.  I guess it's a different can of worms when what you see does the opposite.  If Jade is as untrustworthy as Kidder describes, then I don't see how they can even consider having any serious degree of openness in their relationship.  But in that case I also don't get why they even have a relationship.  Trust is important for a lot of reasons, not just because you're involving other people in your sex life.

I should note, for the sake of fairness, that I have violated the Boy's boundaries too.  I had (oral) sex with a guy without his permission, told him immediately a fterward, and to be totally fair, his reaction to it was so much more sensible than my response to his indiscretion.  This is the thing that is missing in the discussion of opening up on SiF - WHEN NEGOTIATING OPEN RELATIONSHIPS, PEOPLE WILL FUCK UP.  This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. There is absolutely no way to move forward with open relationships without a certain amount of fucking up, miscommunications, "disclosure glitches" and the like.  It's just the way this goes.  After gazillions of years lurking in Poly and Swinging boards, it seems that people run into the most trouble when they don't expect people to fuck up, and then are blindsided and really upset when it does happen, and then freak the fuck out.

What people don't seem to realize about open relationships, even if they claim to, is that it really does take a lot of internal work.  I don't mean endless discussions with your partner, but internal discussions.  I feel like someone in an open relationship should constantly be thinking about how they're creating their own cognitions, and whether those cognitions are based in reality or their own insecurities.  While it's apparent that Jade fucked up, big time, it also seems like Kidder created a self-fufilling prophecy, based in his own insecurity and fears that he isn't "special" where he was going to, from the get-go, interpet any behavior on Jade's part as proof of what he already believed.  Jade played her role perfectly, as the Boy said when we were discussing it this morning, almost as if she was pushing the buttons that would make him freak out the most.  It's the sad dance of bullshit that I think most of us in long-term relationships will somewhat identify with.  But to do openness successfully, you have to radically alter these sorts of programmed responses.  Sometimes it's more important to shut up and sit with your feelings as opposed to making demands.  Otherwise you're just going to end up in a war for control, which appears to be exactly what happened.

I mean, if either of us had demanded a partner cancel a date because we weren't feeling 100% secure and OK with it at that moment, I don't think we would have ever really opened up our relationship at all.  It takes your partner doing something that perhaps you're scared about, having it happen, and then realizing in the end that your survived and it wasn't that bad to feel cool about it next time.  Or at least, that's how it worked for us.  Our approach may not work for everyone, but we have a remarkably open relationship with few restrictions or need to monitor each other, and we both used to see ourselves as highly monogamous, insecure people.  And I've found that once you realize you can live through something you're terrified of and feel OK about it later, more and more boundaries you used to see as inviolable start to feel unnecessary.  I went from the point where I knew I'd never be OK with the Boy having sex with another woman.  Now I think it's something I could handle, although I know it would still intially cause me some distress and anxiety.

Let me make a terrible analogy: anal sex.  Although a lot of people like to claim that "if you do it right" anal sex won't hurt at all, the reality is that even with tons of foreplay, using small plugs and a ton of lube, and so forth, for most people, intially having anal sex with a penis-sized object will have some discomfort, if not "pain" exactly..  It'll feel uncomfortable and perhaps provoke some anxiety.  If you can slowly work past that, you might end up really digging it.  Or you might be able to do it, but not find it enjoyable and worth the discomfort and effort.  But if you stop at the first sign of discomfort, you're never gonna get that dildo up your butt, period.  Of course, you also have to have trust that your partner isn't going to shove that thing up there before you're ready. 

Or to sum up all this tl;dr: open relationships are not for control freaks and although it's trite, trust is paramount, but so is the willingness to forgive, a genuine desire to move forward, and actively try to give your partner the space to be trustworthy. It's a real leap of faith. The Boy has his own, somewhat different take on this (one that's a lot harsher on Jade, actually), so I'll try to get him to weigh in.  I still have a butt-load of opinions about how Kidder handled this stuff, particularly on his public Facebook, but I wanted to use this post as a way to maybe take some lessons from this volcano of drama that people could use to think about what kind of philosophical and practical approach they take to openness, not to tear Kidder a new one.  But I still might!  Anything can happen at Sex or Television!  I hope some of the people who came here via Kidder's Facebook page will stick around, because we talk a lot about open relationships and non-traditional sexuality in general here.  And I write posts that are way, way, way too long.

When Sex is NOT Fun: A Haterate Mini-series

So much for that promise to update the blog more regularly, huh?  Let's just say that uprooting your entire life and moving around the country is a bit more daunting than one might imagine. But no time for excuses, because I've got some hate to share with y'all.  But because of my tendancy to get long-winded, I'm gonna break it down into a couple of posts.

In the world of sex-positive blogging and podcasting, the "Sex is Fun" podcast is one of the best-known.  It's also a podcast that I should like, because in theory it's a group of diverse, knowledgeable "sex educators" (more on that later) talking about sex, open relationships, toys, health, and all that important stuff, with an inclusive, queer-friendly take on things.  On the surface, it sounds great.  And certainly it has been, and there have been many episodes I've enjoyed.

The problem is that the creator and main host of the podcast, a guy who goes by the disturbingly awful moniker "Kidder Kaper" is a creepy, douchey narcissist.  And I'm only being half-insulting here.  In a particularly apt display of self-awareness, Kidder does in fact identify himself frequently as a narcissist.  Which is good.  Because he is.  The problem is he's quite proud of this, and is happy, lately, to let the podcast revolve around him.

But I don't want this to be all entire petty haterade, so let's give credit where credit is due.  Kidder is a straight married white guy in his late 30's, who is pretty knowledgeable about sex.  He's a big proponent of anal pleasure for men, which is rare and cool enough to be worth noting.  Even more surprising is that lately he's become something of a proponent for greater acceptance of male bisexuality - in the swinging scene, in porn, just in general.  Good for him.  Have I said enough nice things about him yet?

Kidder describes himself as a "sex educator" although as far as I can tell, he defines "education" as being a sex podcaster who has written a sex manual.  He has no academic credentials or certifications to back up this title. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when it comes to something as serious as educating about sex, I think the resume should be a little more padded.  He apparently got into the business by writing sex games.  Seriously.  The whole "Sex is Fun" podcast is tied in directly with a line of sex games.

Luckily there are co-hosts, including "Gay Rick" who is an actual HIV/AIDS educator, and LauraRad who also has an actual professional background in sex education and is one of the more thoughtful members of the team. "Coochie" is the sound engineer but also chimes in, as does "Lorax" who handles the web aspect of things and also is Kidder's bff/a girl he wants to fuck.

The problem with the podcast can really be boiled down to Kidder, who has a habit of making himself the focus of everything.  Even when interviewing sex-positive superstars like Tristian Taramino, he still manages to turn the focus back on the important part: Kidder.  He's made entire episodes that are simply anecdotes about parties - not sex parties, mind you, just normal parties.  Oh, he's also a douche on the forums.  Let me share some of Kidder's wisdom with you.

On homebirthing:
"Who really cares if people choose to give birth at home? There are too many people on the planet anyway. I guess as long as they don't want society to pay for their oxygen deprived (special in a bad way) children, I say go for it. I really don't care if they have the proper training OR they just have a doula."

On dudes threatened by their partner's masturbation:
"Whenever a partner is jealous, regardless of why, it is usually a good idea to identify what you are doing to make them feel unspecial. If they feel as though your masturbation is leaving them high and dry, it seems reasonable for you to prove to them that it doesn't, in-fact you could even show them how much better your sex is because you masturbate."   
Or their partner might just be a dick who can't deal with women getting off without them.

On Kidder the Caveman:
"I've found that fighting who I am is only moderately successful and destroys all that which makes me, me. A long time ago, the tribe needed my kind, to stay awake, keep the fire burning and protect us all from predators that attacked in the night. Even more important than our nocturnal sentinel abilities was our imagination, that was given free range range free in the wee hours of the night. So as important as dreams are, they pale in comparison to ideas."
This might seem unfair out of context.  But it made no sense in context either.

On boycotting a sex resort for not allowing queer men:
"Boycotting them now isn't boycotting Desire at all. It is boycotting us. Continue as you wish but know that if we fail to get a good showing, you are hurting us and our goal to make them realize that we are a force to be reckoned with...So do what you will, but know that we're the ones holding the bill at the end of the day when this trip fails."

On charges the podcast focuses on him too much:
"It would be incredibly stupid to call the show the "Kidder Caper Show" especially because my name is Kidder Kaper you illiterate twat. I will always rant about religion and I will say whatever the FUCK I wish about tattoos whenever the FUCK I feel like saying it. "Tats are dumb!" See I just did it again."
He really dislikes tattos and body  piercings I guess? But I'm glad he clarified the spelling of his fake last name.

On pussies:
"Laura Rad and Gay Rick are significantly better educators than I am, especially if the students are big pussies. (If you got offended by the word "pussies" in the last sentence, you are definitely in the "pussy camp") Me, I'm better at dealing with big boys and girls that can take the truth without a bunch of sugar to help make the truth more tasty."

On his wife's sexual shortcomings:
"She also has trouble giving me head for very long without experiencing jaw pain and is quite selfish when it comes to letting me play with her ass. The things that she offers me for putting up with these minor annoyances are FUCKING IMMEASURABLE, so much that I feel like a complete douchebag for even contemplating complaining that I don't get to pump ball juice her in the ass as often as I may like."
Despite the supposedly romantic spirit of this quote, calling his wife "selfish" because he can't fuck her ass all the time is a dick move.  Also: ball juice?

On "Pedal-Stools":
"I think it is a terrible loss to the American consciousness that we raise people on pedal-stools that have done absolutely nothing to deserve even a mention in the freaking classifieds, while others who are actually doing amazing things for humanity are rarely getting any mention in the popular press."
I'm just being petty now, but I cannot get over "pedal-stools."

Hopefully these hilarious quotes from the master of sex education (in the same way that I, by having a blog about sex and thinking about sex, am also a "sex educator")  have given you some insight into the irritating showboat that is Kidder Kaper (thank god I know how to spell that!)  This is really just a set up for part 2: When Kidder, open relationship expert, finds himself deeply threatened by the dreaded "full swap" and uses his podcast to bully his wife.  Or we can just call it an educational series in how not to do open relationships.  Because I'm an educator!

Slutwalk Chicago DIY Poster Contest: Yr Doing It Wrong

(This article also appears on School for Scandal)

So, I'm pretty stoked about SlutWalk Chicago.

For the uninitiated, Slutwalk is an international feminist movement that began in Toronto, that promotes dissolution of "Rape Culture" by emphasizing that men should be taught NOT TO RAPE instead of all the emphasis on teaching women how to "protect themselves from rapists" with advice ranging from don't wear a ponytail, don't go out alone at night, and most horrifying "don't dress like a slut," the comment that sparked the movement in the first place.
This sort of mindset teaches women to view themselves as "victims waiting to happen" (reminds me of that horrible "potentially pregnant" fracas a few years ago.) I think that self defense education for women is important, but so is anti-rape education for EVERYONE.

All around awesome chick Diamanda Galas once said something along the lines of "Women need to stop thinking like prey and starting thinking like predators," and I think that's what SlutWalk is all about. Driving home the point that even if you're walking down the street in a G string and lucite heels, it doesn't mean you "deserve" to be raped. Nobody should be blamed for their sexual assault. Our culture needs to shift in a way that rape is never considered ok, and that there is more support and less victim blaming and stigmatization of survivors.

The following is a list of things that SlutWalk aren't about (to my understanding):

1. Reclaiming "slut" as a positive label or celebrating "slut pride"

2. Dressing/acting "slutty" in public Girls Gone Wild style (participants are encouraged to wear whatever they feel comfortable in, whether that's a mini skirt or sweatpants)

3. Speaking out against labeling women as sluts. (Well, this one is a gray area because of #1. I think this movement is very anti-slut shaming but not necessarily dismissive of positive sluthood and general sex positivity. But people are still wildly divided on whether or not being called slut is a good thing, and I don't think SlutWalk is intended as a debate on the validity of the slut label.)

None of the above are necessarily bad things and possibly incidental to this event, but I don't think they should be the emphasized in promoting this event. I think a lot of people misunderstand the purpose of this event because "slut" is such a loaded word. That's why I'm a little perturbed by the results of the SlutWalk DIY Poster Contest.

I feel bad picking apart the entries, because to be fair, I DIDN'T enter a design. And it's unfair for me to criticize the works of people who did, because they took the time and effort and put themselves out there, but I do feel like I need to speak out when images seem inappropriate/problematic to the aims of a movement I am a part of. I realize this is my subjective opinion, and if you want to argue WHY you think these posters are great, be my guest as long as you are willing keep dialogue open and respectful.

I will not be reposting images here, but you can click here to see them. I like the idea of a DIY poster contest instead of hiring an ad firm, but I am sad to say that I feel like the majority of these posters miss the point of SlutWalk entirely, and some are just flat out creepy to me.

Of the ten submissions, six feature sexualized images of women's bodies where you cannot see her face. With one exception, they are pictures of extremely thin "conventionally attractive" white women. Four are of women with their lingerie-clad asses in sexually available positions, two ONLY show the ass and no other part of the woman, with catchy taglines like "I think you're sexy but I don't want to rape you," and "Slut Yeah Fuck Yeah." I might be ok with pictures of a sexy REAL people where you could see faces as well as bodies, but these pictures appear to be lifted from mainstream advertising/pornography and I suspect that other people might find them alienating/triggering as well.

I am saying all this as sex positive feminist who loves porn, lingerie, and copious fucking. I don't currently identify as a slut, but I have in the past. I probably will wear something sexy to Slut Walk, because I enjoy dressing up. All this said, these posters leave a bad taste in my mouth. This imagery might make *some* sense if the event was actually focused on "slut pride" instead of rape prevention, but instead I see a feminist movement getting the American Apparel treatment, and it bugs me.

The other side of the coin is a poster that says "Don't call me a slut/other perjorative implying promiscuity" (which flies in the face of the women who do self-identify as sluts, and I don't believe SlutWalk strives to takes a hard stance either way.) Another poster features yet another headless woman in a demure, girlish powder blue dress clutching daisies (it's objectification of a different flavor) with the catchphrase: "Virgin or Slut? Love Who You Are." I understand the positive message that the slogan is trying to convey, but it falls down the Madonna/Whore rabbit hole all over again. Many of us fall outside of that limited dichotomy altogether.

This is about the only poster that I feel accurately represents SlutWalk, so it got my vote. I confess I am let down by the way entrants chose to interpret the meaning of SlutWalk (especially since the movement has been so distorted by the media already) and I hope the winning entry will accurately reflect a movement of women who don't necessarily wish to be labeled in black and white as hyper-sexualized "sluts" or sex-negative "prudes", but complex human beings committed to creating a culture without rape.

Queer Enough

(X-posted from School For Scandal)

I am queer. I am a “biological” woman who likes to fuck men.

I am genderqueer. I have a vagina and like to wear dresses.

Confused? I will try to explain, though most of the time it’s easier not to.

Invisible queerness. Invisible transgender. Passing privileges- but exactly who and what am I passing as? People tend to assume I am a lesbian by my short hair and swagger. They looked at me like I’m a dirty tissue when I say, no, I mostly sleep with men. Soiled in their eyes. Un-queered. So much for queer as an inclusive “umbrella” term.

I’ve had sex with women, and I probably will again. But it’s not lesbians that identify with, as much as I love them as friends. It’s gay men. Gay men, I understand like none other. They understand me. And I can’t help but be attracted to them, even if I don’t act on my desires. Instead, I find the men, who, like me, are queer but like to sleep with women. Men who prefer anal sex and fisting to straight intercourse, men who wear eyeliner and skirts, men who sit down to pee because they don’t give a damn about being perceived as being “manly enough.” Men who have been called “faggot” their whole lives for refusing to conform, when ironically, they love women.

And we exist, queerly heterosexual, guy dykes and girl fags in love.

I am a femme androgyne, a fagette, masculine in short hair and muscles, feminine in lipstick and heels. I am man and woman as one, and I refuse to pick a side. I love having big breasts and rocking a 10” strap on at the same time.

My man- self is a femme faggot. Johnny Weir ice dancing to Lady Gaga in roses and sequins. Oscar Wilde, a sissy genius in lavender silk with a poison pen.

My woman- self is a lusty warrior. Grace Jones in a James Bond film, power-lifting a full-grown man over her head in haute couture and heels. French novelist, burlesque dancer and body builder Colette, dressed in a 19^th century men’s suit.

I am queer. I am genderqueer. I am femme.

And if you can’t wrap your brain around that, well, I wasn’t planning on sleeping with you anyway.

We're Back! And We're All About Hating!

I know this blog has been all fits and starts, and just as we were getting readership, we'd up and stop posting.  For months.  Or half a year.  Sorry!  A lot has happened - as in your two founders are now living in an entirely different country and it's very confusing and weird and we have been to some degree concerned about our anonymity due to some very real mitigating factors that made us wonder if we should even continue this, our beloved blog.

But it's like, I logged in and one of the people I'd most love to be an Internet nemesis with, Joreth, had gone and responded to stuff I posted back in April!  Don't I feel fancy!  And also, Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed and you can bet we have some feelings about that.  Also: Marriage!  Has it ruined any remnants of queer cred and/or a sex life we once had?  Probably but you'll have to stay tuned to find out!  Plus: Republicans are trying to oppress women!  And being stuck as I am in a hotel room in a strange country, I have been engaging with the feminist blogosphere once again, which means new hatreds!

IN A NUTSHELL:  SHIT.  IT WILL BE WRITTEN.