"The important thing is that we cease treating sex as something shameful, and an aspect of life separate from all the rest. We need to make decisions about sex and evaluate them in the same framework which we use to judge worth of our other capacities, be they our intelligence, intuitions, physical stamina or prowess, or other special talents."

--Lester A. Kirkendall, Premarital Intercourse and Interpersonal Relationships (1961)

(via WYSIWYG)

This person wins today.

"I hate how the phrase 'have some self-respect' is used to shame women who are comfortable with their sex lives. 'Have some self-respect?' I do respect myself; that's why I wanna have a fucking orgasm tonight, thank you very much."

 (via come correct)

Photo

Reblogged from come correct

If you are going to be in your orgasm, be in your orgasm. Let it permeate through your body & wrap itself around you. Feel its warmth, it’s unconditional love. Don’t hide from it; surrender to it.
You may as well do it right.
 

--Ev'Yan, "You Cannot Be in Your Shame and in Your Orgasm Simultaneously"

Reblogged from Indie Art Nerd

“Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not… ” —Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear— “…when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.”

--Erykah Badu: June/July Cover Issue|Pg 1|VIBE Magazine

(via Indie Art Nerd) 

I may have coined a term on Twitter the other day.

I tried Googling it and came up with no hits, so maybe I'm the first (in spaces privileged enough to be cataloged on the internet). And now, like any good academic, I am going to define it.

sex subject (n.) a person enthusiastically engaged in the attainment of their own sexual pleasure, with or without the involvement and pleasuring of another person(s). Viewing yourself and others as sex subjects entails the recognition of sexual partners as whole persons with valid sexual desires and the right to choose whether or not to act on them at any particular time rather than just sources of sexual pleasure, as well as an awareness that your partner(s)' body and company are privileges that your partner(s) choose(s) to share with you, not rights or de-personified items to which you are entitled. Ant: sex object

(Now you have something to cite, ChoosingPancakes.)

I welcome commenters with ideas to flesh this term out a little.      

It continually amazes me how much substantitve change can occur in such a short time for teens and twenty-somethings.

So ChoosingPancakes asked me to see my OKCupid profile sometime last week. I'd told her a while ago that she could look at it, so I opened it up to send her the link and she sent me hers. I was comparing some of our answers to various questions (we're a pretty good match, heh) out of curiosity when I stumbled upon an answer to some question about sex that actually made me laugh out loud. An answer to another question which had become completely false contained the explanation "I don't to casual sex..." and I almost fell out on the floor, I was laughing so hard. I then searched my OkCupid profile for every question I had ever answered about sex so that I could throw all of it out and accurately represent myself. Today I finally got the personality-meter to say I'm ever-so-slightly sex-driven, and that made me smile.

...But it's not like those questions were from a particularly long time ago. I just made that account towards the end of last summer, as part of my breakup-recovery process. (Talked to a few guys, was reminded of my desirability by men who aren't my ex, didn't actually meet any of the guys I talked to, but felt like my mission had nonetheless been accomplished.) The oldest those questions could be is from 9 months ago.


...And yet, I'd guess that less than 30% of them were still accurate. It seems that nearly the entirety of my opinions about sex and sexual relationships has changed over the course of this academic year. Granted, the casual sex I've had this year ranged from somewhat awkward (but still pleasurable) to mind-blowing chronologically. But I actually don't think that's at the root of my changed opinions. Maybe it's less due to substantive change and more due to me no longer giving a fuck about who and how and why I fuck about self-repression for the sake of decorum or societal pressure or respectability or whatever. Maybe it's less that I stopped wanting to be a good girl and more that I realized I'd never really wanted to be overwhelmingly good in the first place, and that I didn't particularly like being perceived of in that manner. On an even more basic level, though, I think I always knew that I wanted my first time to be "special," but that after that, I was probably going to be open to a bit more adventure and sexual exploration.

I wonder how my experiences (hopefully) exploring this magical thing between hookups and relationships called "dating" might prompt changes in the responses again. I'm sure I have friends who would say this is just one more example of why you can never trust my opinions on anything because they'll change in a year. I will concede that my opinions about things change a lot, but that doesn't mean I'm fickle or that I wasn't being honest or trustworthy when we discussed my opinion the first time--it means that I am the amalgamation of my lived experiences and this funny things happen, when those grow and expand, so do I.  

The Politics of Sex Blogging

"I might seem to be a 'straight no chaser' blogger, but if you look back, you don’t see a lot of discussion on sex and dating.
That’s because every time I tried to write those posts, I was afraid someone would know too much about me. That I might be a bad girl. And bad girls are always punished, at least in the Black community. There’s very little room for a respectable Black woman to be erotic and talk openly about it. But I’d like to do that."

--B.C. Flippin aka Honoree Fanonne Jeffers aka PhyllisRemastered

"The erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough... The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos and power of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For once having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves... The function of the erotic is to encourage excellence and to give us the strength to pursue it... When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life-force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives...

The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of our deepest knowledge... Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy... Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing ourselves to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor merely the safe... We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings...but when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering, and self-negation, and with the numbness that so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within...

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the asburd."

--Audre Lord, "The Uses of the Erotic"

A couple of weeks ago in my Black Women and Popular Music Culture class, we raised the question of whether Black female musicians can manifest images of their own sexuality that don't contribute to their own objectification. That question resonated pretty deeply with me when Professor Brooks asked it in class, and it wasn't until I started reading that post on PhyllisRemastered (which is a great blog, btw, and you should all check it out) that I realized how applicable it was to Black female bloggers as well.

My less-safe-for-work posts are generally the ones that get the most attention on this blog. And though nobody really has the gall to say it to my face, I feel like a lot of the reaction I garner from people (especially the people with whom I interact on a regular or semi-regular basis) is something to the effect of I'm "doing too much". Some individuals commend me for talking about things there are unwritten rules about not mentioning (shoutouts to BD and SM who are coming to mind), but sometimes I wonder whether people think I focus too much on sex and sexuality. I think about what would result from my being Googled by my boss (do they do that even once you're employed?) or by grad schools in the future or by my father again (though the disillusionment this would engender is on him this time; I told him not to) or some other member of my family. I wonder whether I should put my website or my Twitter account on my LinkedIn profile--are they "professional"? Well, this blog is about my passions and my passions inform my scholarship and interests...yet they remain unlinked. 

Can I, as a Black woman, be open about my sexuality (in ideology and in practice) without seeming hypersexual(ized)? Am I contributing to the Jezebel stereotype by openly being a Black woman with an interest in intimacy, a preoccupation with passion, an enthusiasm for the erotic? Am I hurting myself in some social aspect by getting to know myself [and others] intimately? Am I hurting some larger "us" of Black women?

...These are the kinds of questions I could let keep me up at night. But I value my sleep. And even more than my sleep, I value myself and my right to express all that I am in my own space. A non-trivial and growing part of myself is a sexual being. I am also a social being, political being, an intellectual being, an activist being, an ever-questioning being, a poetic being, a musical being, a creative being, a womanly being, a Black being, a fun-loving being, etc. etc. etc. And I won't be limited in any the expression of any of those selfhoods by pressures for "respectability" or "not airing my dirty laundry" or any such similar bullshit. I want my whole self to be a being centered in the erotic as defined by Audre Lorde. I won't see parts of that self diminished, disfigured, or dis-empowered by so-called strategies for avoiding or delegitimizing stereotypes that are just as restrictive as the stereotypes themselves. I will not be a "lady". Nor will I be a whore. I am neither and both and a million stops along the way. I contain multitudes.              

“I don’t care how much sex anyone has, how often they do it, or who they do it with. I’m much more interested in the consent, pleasure, and well-being of the participants and the people affected by it. I respect women who are asexual, celibate, monogamous, multi-partnered, or have had more partners than they can recall. I respect women who only have sex after a commitment to monogamy and those who have sex with someone within minutes of meeting them. I respect women who have transactional sex, women who have sex for love, or for any other reason. I know that all of these categories are permeable and that many women move from one to another. And I know that any of these decisions can be made from a place of personal power, choice, and authenticity, as well as from a place of coercion, shame, and disempowerment.”

- Charlie Glickman (If You Don’t Respect Sluts, You Don’t Respect Women)

(via come correct) 

I've never quite felt as physically worshipped as I did this weekend.

I realized Saturday exactly how much I like being complemented on my body. I realize now that that sounds incredibly shallow, but *typical low self-esteem issues* I just got used to accepting it when people tell me I’m “beautiful” or “sexy” pretty recently. It still kind of floors me when people pick individual things, especially little things, to comment on.

 The guy I slept with Saturday (and want to sleep with again as soon as possible--I’m not even gonna front) started off of a good, but common foot with the body compliments—le boobies. They were “even better than [he’d] imagined them.” Sunday morning, we’d been kissing for an eternity when he pulled back all of a sudden and just sort of looked at me. He stroked my right cheek and told me he loves the mole I have there. That made me smile, which prompted him to talk about the gap between my front teeth, and that he thinks it’s beautiful. He asked me in this little teasing voice how I’d gotten it before kissing me again. (Side note: my ex had a thing for my gap too. He used to like to stick his tongue between it. I suppose it’s a cute thing about me? *shrugs*)

Later in the morning he had flipped me over and was kissing his way down my back when he paused and ran his hands up and down my backside, saying that he loves the arch where my ass rises from my lower back. And all night/morning he kept saying how “blessed” I was in the T&A departments.

This guy is a really smooth talker, if you couldn’t tell, but I still really appreciated hearing that.

He also liked more than just my body--the first thing he said upon walking into my room, as I was making excuses for the less than tidy state, was "xkcd? Could you be more perfect?"

*swoon*

And if all of that wasn't enough, let. Me. TELL. you. No one has ever come close to putting it on me like he put it on me. No one has ever made me feel the things he made me feel or say the things he made me say or enjoy the things I enjoyed with him. Everything about all three of our encounters throughout the night/morning felt so natural and right and glorious and freeing. I felt like this was supposed to be happening. I felt like almost every other sexual encounter of my life had been a waste of my time. I'd never known pleasure like this. I felt totally spent, completely satisfied. And none of the problems I usually have were present or relevant at all.

I wasn't trapped in my head. I felt as far out of my head and into my body as I've ever felt. I felt like I knew what I was doing and like I was good at it. I felt so comfortable in his arms, or with him in mine. I wasn't worried about my body (probably not unrelated to all of the aforementioned commentary). I TALKED. We had whole conversations while we were kissing, and I was so open with him. We talked about everything from my sexual orientation and the fact that his (female) ex and I want to hook up with each other to what past guys who've had the privilege of interacting with them have said about my boobs to how neither of us had ever had an experience that wonderful before.

I more than talked. I moaned. More than my usual little "Mmmm"s, the likes of which could come from eating a particularly delicious piece of food or getting a massage or whatever, I MOANED. I said his NAME, which I never thought would be something I was comfortable enough doing. I even talked a little dirty. Expletives were involved, which is also something I've never done before. I told him when I wanted him to be more or less gentle, that I wanted to be spanked, that it was okay to have his hands on my head while I was blowing him but that it was not okay to push my head lower on his dick--I would get there myself. I was assertive and confident and just...I felt so free. I felt like this is how sex is SUPPOSED to be. 

He stayed the night and we cuddled and we held each other and he very pleasantly woke me up the next morning and after kissing for a long time and telling each other how we felt like we could stay in bed doing nothing but this all day, we had a third round that was just as amazing despite our like, 3-ish hours of sleep and then kept making out til he had to go have brunch with his roommates.

I hopped in the shower and immediately began contemplating how long it was appropriate to wait before letting him know I wanted to do it again. All the time.  Legitimately every day til graduation if he was down. 

We'll see what happens.   

Questions Raised at the Black Solidarity Conference

(by myself and others)

1. What does it mean to be a Black sexual being? 
2. How are people given the opportunity to be engaged in their sexuality?
3. Do people engage in sexuality differently according to access to various resources?
4. Why are today's young people, especially young women, being so miseducated about their own bodies?
5. Why is abortion what we leap to when talking about sexuality? Why single-motherhood? Why monogamy and marriage? What narratives are being ignored when our conversation centers itself around these topics? How can we refrain from institutionalizing sexuality?  
6. What is the difference between talking about sexual practices and talking about sexuality?
7. What are the everyday ethics of Blackness that determine who can or can not be in the community?
8. What is the impact of geographic region on gender presentation?
9. How do we work against the sociohistorical pathologization of Black bodies?
10. If Black women have never really fit into the definition of womanhood presented by dominant (White) society, what are our goals in the redefining of gender roles? What does that redefinition mean for us?
11. Why can't Brothers see themselves in women the way Sisters can see themselves in men?
12. How do we disaggregate criticism from "haterism"?
13. Why is the "walk of shame" a female-specific term?
14. Why are Black communities so obsessed with "presentability"? Why is who we are not enough? What are we overcompensating for?
15. How much experimentation with gender presentation is internal, having fun, and expressing ourselves, and how much is in response to our expectations of others' reactions to our presented selves?
16. How do we get rid of the idea that to participate in Blackness, we have to debase ourselves?
17. How do we reconcile promoting cultural criticism with promoting solidarity and/or the presentation of a unified front?
18. How does harkening back to our African past influence, isolate, and/or negate the experiences of people living in Africa today or who came to America from Africa recently? 
19. What does the phrase "I see you" signify in Black communities?
20. When can we, as Black peoples, OWN our sexuality?

 Despite all the "rachetness" and the existence of Travis Porter in my personal space and the heteronormativity I had to deal with and the freshwomen crashing in my room and not letting an old person like me sleep and all the other minor annoyances, this is why I go to the Black Solidarity Conference every year. Questions like this. The conference makes me think. The things I don't like about the conference make me think even harder. 

...New Haven also has some great places to shop. I'm not gonna lie. 

Reblogged from Free Bird

The most amazing acting experience of my life.

I really don't even have words for how phenomenal an experience being in The Vagina Monologues was. Seeing it last year was...revolutionary towards my overall lifestyle and most likely played a non-trivial role in my extended deep exploring of my sexuality and sensuality. Fact: I actually went home after that performance last year, took all my clothes off, grabbed a mirror, laid down on my bed, and looked at my vagina, because I hadn't actually seen it since I was a little kid bending over in the full-length mirror in my aunt's room because I was curious. I thought it was beautiful and I understood why people have historically compared it to a flower. And a few weeks later when my ex wanted to turn on the light and look at me, really see my vagina and have a better understanding of its anatomy and the ways in which he could please me, I was a little freaked out, but I wasn't ashamed to let it happen. It wasn't the most comfortable thing ever, but I had learned to resent the idea that my body should embarrass me with people that I'm comfortable enough to be intimate with. The Vagina Monologues started that in me. I have to agree that I didn't actively think of my vagina as "something attached to me," or really think about it at all, before seeing the show last year. And as I laughed, cried, gasped, and smiled during the performance, I knew that I had to be involved this year.

So despite not being where I wanted to be thesis-wise, I auditioned. I wanted to perform "He Liked to Look at It," which is arguably my favorite of the monologues, but I got selected to perform "I Was There In The Room," which is about witnessing someone give birth. Oh, the irony. I wasn't really a fan of this monologue, because birth freaks me the fuck out beyond like, nearly anything else that involves vaginas (besides that video RC made me watch), but I recognized its power and its message. I may not have truly identified with that character the way I could see myself in some of the other monologues, but I learned her and felt her and channeled her. After every show, people came up to me, both friends and complete strangers, to tell me how powerful my voice was and how commanding a presence I held. We sold out two shows, including one for which we had to bring in extra chairs from the dining hall because we were legitimately out of seating. 

My favorite lines from my monologue:

"We forget the vagina. All of us. What else could explain our lack of awe? Our lack of reverence?"

Awe. Reverence. These are feelings I want every woman to have about her body, every person to have about hir own self. But I don't think they're things I've fully internalized about my own body and my own self, and especially not about my "down there." 

Being in the show has made me realize that I really don't have a word I feel comfortable referring to my vagina as...which translates into me actually never referring to it at all, which I think makes it easier to not think about it often (or as something that is a part of me, because what other parts of my body do I not give names to? Perhaps my nipples. I'm unsure that I ever directly refer to them either. I should work on that. Or that space behind my knee that doesn't actually have a name because who ever needs to refer to it? I don't want my vagina and my nipples to be in the same category as the useless space behind my knee.) There is a power in naming things. I don't want to sacrifice that power. But "vagina" is so...clinical and just un-sexy. I don't really like "pussy" or "cunt". Things like
"va-jay-jay" are just...no. There are other words, I'm sure, but I am positive that this disinclination towards referencing my vagina is intricately linked to my general disinclination towards talking during sex, which I know I'm not comfortable with. So maybe I need to spend more time figuring out why I don't like particular words for the vagina and discovering one I do like, because I want to be able to employ the ownership enabled by having terms for things. 

We have a student-written monologue about...basically when sex doesn't feel good. She talks about not enjoying sex with her ex-boyfriend, and she describes it as "mechanical". That word floored me the first time she used it, because I think it would be inaccurate to say that I've never been bored during sex. I have a distinct memory of being with someone, being on top and just going up and down, up and down and not being particularly into it...but it was just for a little while and then I got out of my head and more into the moment. I didn't regret the experience overall. But her monologue has made me wonder a) whether I should have, and b) if I've been having bad sex, or worse sex than I'd previously thought I've been having. I've turned down sex recently and I doubt that my experiences listening to this monologue and that fact are unrelated. She and her vagina deserve better than mechanical sex, and so do me and mine. 


We were supposed to have a transgender woman perform a monologue about what it means to be a vagina-less woman, and though she didn't actually perform with us due to unfortunate circumstances (the details of which I do not know), her story is making me think more about what it means to be a woman. (I'm also interested in whether transgendered individuals do more to fight or support gender normativity, but that's another thought train for another time.)


But even apart from the specifics of various monologues, there was something profound about being in this show, and especially about staging the show the way we did it, with the cast members "hiding" in the audience. The cast members got the audience to participate very heavily, from reading intros for various pieces to grabbing hold of a performer's breasts during an orgasm scene. The energy in that room was palpable, and it was all revolving not only around sex and sexuality, which is not terribly uncommon, but around VAGINAS. We were celebrating them, and helping to create a space in which they could be openly and comfortably celebrated was...transformative. 


Moral of this story: If you've never seen The Vagina Monologues, go buy the book. And/or find a local performance to go to next February.


To commemorate this experience, I purchased this necklace on from LipsLikeCherry's etsy store. (You can find ANYTHING on etsy.) 

Yes, that is a vulva.

The front reminds me of the rose from Beauty and the Beast.

 

Words to live by:

"...no matter how many people I’ve slept with, having sex with me is a privilege, and anyone who wants to be in bed with me but is going to make me feel uncomfortable can get the fuck out."

--my very good friend, Choosing Pancakes, in a post inspired by a post here! Yay mutual inspiration. <3

I'm still thinking about sex/sexuality

or I guess, like, myself as a sexual entity. 

Snippet from a post I just read over at Met Another Frog that got me thinking more about this: 

When you get naked with someone and sleep with them, you not only let them see your body. You’re also letting them see you at your most basic level. The part of you that you spend a lot of time trying to pretend isn’t there. We’ve been taught to separate our hedonistic sexual selves from our demure, proper, tax-paying selves, and to keep the sexy part under wraps. To borrow from the ineffable Lil John, we are all supposed to be “a lady in the street and a freak in the bed.”

So when you get intimate with someone, you’re letting that part of yourself off the leash. You’re introducing another person to a side of you that even you don’t even always see. And that’s a scary prospect. It becomes much easier if we embellish our sexual selves and mask those drives we have with a more theatrical approach. If we distance ourselves from our sex lives, then maybe we won’t be held responsible if we do something wrong...

We become the embodiment of who we think our partner wants to be with because it’s safer than being ourselves. We act out a script in our head that’s been successful in the past, or we embellish our moans and cries of pleasure because we think it’s what our partner wants to hear. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad strategy. Sex can be stressful and each new partner presents unique challenges, preferences, and learning experiences. Retreating behind a sexual persona can make it a bit easier to have confidence in yourself.

This only becomes negative, in my opinion, when our obsession with being “perfect” prohibits us from enjoying ourselves. Even though having sex with another person is a shared experience, it is still a way for us to express ourselves. Becoming a caricature can alienate us too much from what we want and need. I think this tends to fade naturally when we develop a long-term sexual relationship with a partner, and this facilitates the development of those lovely little layers of intimacy.

  

As I've mentioned before, I have streaked my eating club. Twice. I also regularly go around shirtless for varying lengths of time, usually on Thursday evenings but sometimes other days of the week too. No one is really sure how shirtlessness became a rule of Middle School Drinking Game night, but it is one we hold people steadfastly to (unless they're realllllly uncomfortable with it, because violating people isn't cool). Occasionally I will lose my bra too, for various lengths of time. This Thursday night my pants eventually came off too and I watched (really really terrible) porn with a bunch of my friends from my eating club while caressing and being caressed by a female friend (which was turning me on way more than the porn, which was legitimately horrible for reasons we don't need to get into). And I was entirely comfortable in this situation. I like these situations because they help me get comfortable with my sexual self, in the context of hanging out with a group of my closest friends whom I feel will accept all of my selves. 

The problem is, I don't think I'm that same sexual self when I'm actually in hooking up with someone. At least, not necessarily or not always. I'm always wondering what that person is thinking, or what they'll think about me if I do Thing X or don't do Thing Y. If my partner suggests a different position or that we do something else, I comply; at least, when this has happened, I have always complied. And that's not to say that I've never initiated anything or taken control, because that's entirely untrue, but...how much of my compliance is me wanting to be exposed to other things, and how much of it is wanting to please my partner, and how much of it is for my own pleasure, and how much of it is me letting myself be bent (pun very much intended) into a sexual mold that is not my sexual self? How much of it (a large part, I fear) is me being terrified of doing something wrong or not being able to do something and being judged for it? 

How do I determine who gets to see which parts of my sexual nature? Is that an intimacy I should give to people I'm only physically intimate with? What do I lose by letting people see that side of me?

How do I learn more about who that side of me IS without letting people see/participate? But how do I know that I like what I like in the act BECAUSE I like it, rather than because the person I'm with wants me to like it and I want to make that person happy? I suppose that I know that the things I recreate when I'm having private sexytime are things I know that I like. But then I also suppose that I don't necessarily have to like the same things with Person B that I like with Person A. Different personal relationships can (and maybe even should) engender different sexual relationships, right?  And I also suppose that the first time or even first couple times you get intimate with someone, you're doing more figuring out what they like and the ways in which you're compatible than you're actively expressing yourself. And I've never really been past those first few times.

It's becoming clear to me that many of my sex-related questions/concerns/thought experiments can't really be addressed until I have a longstanding sexual relationship with someone. Boo my sex life.

Contrary to what I said a few days ago,

sex is evidently NOT the one thing I really wanted for my birthday, because a somewhere-between-acquaintance-and-friend of mine came to celebrate my birthday with me, proceeded to finish the last few shots of a bottle of cake vodka straight from the bottle after he was already drunk because we'd just won two games of three-on-three beirut (which some of you may inaccurately refer to as "beer pong"), walked me home, and then asked if I wanted him to come in, and I sent him home. He's slightly taller than me, not unattractive, and I've known him since I was a freshman. But as soon as he started getting flirty last night, I started repeating a little mantra in my head: 'Do not sleep with ****.' 

The question is, why? 

1. Okay, well, he used to date a friend of mine. And before you say that that obviously hasn't stood in my way before, I mean with a good friend of mine, and it ended badly, rather than with an acquaintance who later became a friend and after a situation that ended at least somewhat harmoniously. And he had a weird interaction with the good friend of mine whom he used to date once last year after getting similarly drunk at an open bar at Quad and from what she told me was kind of harassing her. And he may have been in a relationship then, because he was dating a girl seriously enough to be sharing a car with her when I ran into him on the train like a month later. (Hmm. There may not need to be more reasons after this, but I will continue anyway.)
2. I once hooked up (though only 2 bases worth) with his current roommate, who had also been at my little birthday celebration, but left before he started getting all touchy-feely. But feelings had actually been involved in that hookup, and I wouldn't want the guy I didn't do anything with to brag to the guy I did stuff with, because though we were never anything but friends, guy-I-did-stuff-with matters to me.  Though attractive somewhere-between-friend-and-acquaintance is like, the perfect level of knowing someone to develop a buddy, which is not unappealing to me at this time, I'm just uncomfortable at the idea of becoming involved in any way with roommates, particularly roommates for whom my level-of-caring-about differs so greatly.
3. There was neither pretense of romance or lust. In the past, I have been fine with one or the other leading to sex, but just we're both drunk and we're both single is insufficient reasoning. I'm not necessarily against doing something just because it's there, but...idk. It just didn't feel right in this case (though this was heavily influenced by reasons 1 and 2). Changing the terms of a relationship is a tricky situation, and I felt no need to introduce sex into ours, I suppose. I have learned that I can be physically intimate with people I am emotionally intimate with, either in the course of romantic relationships or friendships that won't be complicated by seeing the person often, and that I can be physically intimate with someone with whom I have no emotional connection at all, but anywhere between these sections of the spectrum is dangerous territory, it seems. In retrospect, it almost seems like he felt entitled to hooking up with me because I have established a capacity for casual sex, and no one is entitled to the wonder that is me but me. Forever fact. 

Anyway, five minutes after I'd sent him home, I was opening YouPorn and preparing for a little private birthday fun with The Conqueror and wondering why I didn't let him stick around to be part of it...but when I put it like this, that wondering ceases and I'm glad I don't lose my ability to be rational and make smart decisions when I've been drinking for hours. Important life skills ftw.

Question for furthering pondering that this analysis prompts: I have firm beliefs about which practices constitute safe sex from a physical standpoint. Should I establish a similar set list of situations/things that constitute safe sex from a personal (or even emotional) standpoint? I conceptualize overall safety in more ways than just physical...thus it seems like I should conceptualize other things for which I have developed specific ways of being safe in terms of more things than just the physical too. Does that make sense? This was a situation in which I was uncomfortable hooking up, and I want to think more about other such situations. To a hypothetical better understanding of safe sex! 

NSFW: Sex is on my Mind (AND on my reading list)

My dad and my older sister kept bugging me about what I want for my birthday and I finally just told them to get me hair products so I don't have to buy them myself, but fact: I want to get laid for my birthday. No, like seriously. It's been a month and a half = too damn long.
^Statements like that are a testament to how much I've developed as a sexual creature this year. Fact: 9 months ago I was a virgin, through a combination of choice and circumstance (I didn't really care about/trust the guy I dated between high school and college enough and then there was a big giant dearth of opportunity that wasn't entirely self-imposed until last Spring). After that relationship was over in June, it came to my attention that I had already had and greatly enjoyed sex with a man who didn't love me, and as such saw no reason not to do it again, provided that we didn't try to make it into anything more than that. This lead to various sexploits already discussed in earlier posts, as well as to streaking my eating club a few times and increasing the number of people (note the gender ambiguity of that word) by 200%. I have said it before and I'll say it again: I'm on a quest for liberation. I feel like people had this image of me as this innocent good girl which maybe I technically was, but I didn't want to be. So, I am taking control of the situation and actively working to lose that image. 

R and I were talking with our friend A about the streaking society our eating club has, and I was explaining to A that I'd streaked as a part of this quest for liberation that I'm on. R asked me if I think I've found it yet. Parts of me instantly said, "Duh." But other parts that even I don't talk about very often reminded me of their existence, prompting me to say "I'm working on it." And maybe I'll be working on it for the rest of my life. 

Documented proof of the fact that I'm still working on it is the fact that I recently bought a new book:

Lidia-Anain of SexLoveJoy posted about this maybe two and a half weeks ago, and as soon as I started reading her post, I broke away to Amazon to buy the book. One of the book's first exercises is to "send your future self a message about why you're committing to this process, what you want to get out of it, and what you want your future self to remember when things start to feel hard." I'm supposed to be writing these exercises in a notebook or a Word document or something that isn't going to be shared with other people, but fuck rules I do what I want. And when I want to share with you guys, I will, because I think the things this book is going to make me think about are REALLY. FUCKING. IMPORTANT. That's why I bought it. And I mean, hey, I'm just no longer a private person, evidently. haha

And so, okay, I had some thoughts that are pretty similar to the quiet parts of me that made me acknowledge their existence and not say yes I am liberated.

1. Despite being a pretty forceful person in my everyday life, I find it difficult to be direct about what I want and what is/is not working for me in the bedroom. In fact, I rarely speak at all unless spoken to first, and this uncharacteristic quietness concerns me deeply.
2. I have no regrets about my recent sexcapades, but I am not unsurprised by this lack of regret/guilt/shame. I am equally not unsurprised by my ability to detach emotions from sex, and want to make sure that I'm okay with that on a fundamental non-reactionary level.
3. I find it difficult to get out of my head and lose myself in the actual act of sex. I highly doubt this is unrelated to either of the first two points, and lets throw some body image insecurity into that mix too. 
4. (Very strongly related to 1) I have faked an orgasm rather than actually help a partner to satisfy me fully, because it seemed easier/less demanding and I am disgusted by this every time I think about it. 
5. I've never really enjoyed cum from receiving oral sex and I'm unsure whether this is due to the partner from whom I've received it or due to some potentially deep set socialization I have to not actually want people spending that much time exploring down there. As a matter of principle I don't stop it if it's going to happen, because I don't actively dislike it (sometimes I even enjoy it fleetingly before getting bored) and intellectually I appreciate that my partner is doing it, but I can't never quite shake the feeling that I'd rather be being penetrated, and I would like to be sure that's not for bad reasons.
6. A post I discovered in a friend's blog archive has made me question the overall quality of the sex that I have had. Before you think I'm throwing shade (Twitter is keeping me up on the popular lingo, lol) on anybody, let me say that I'm positive I've never had shitty sex. I've never just been laying there wanting it to be over. I've never felt used. I've never felt like my partner wasn't interested in pleasing me. All the sex I've had, I've found pleasant and satisfying (this is not contradictory to number four: I believe sex can be satisfying even if I don't cum). But even in relationship sex, I've never felt anything like the connection I feel like she's describing. And maybe this is just because I've never had a particularly lengthy sexual relationship with anyone (if you're counting oral I don't know the exact numbers, but straight up sex, my record is four distinct occasions with the same person...not much to write home about), but reading that post makes me want more from the sex in my life.
7. I'm still working on getting comfortable just being naked around an individual outside of moments of intimacy. (A few months ago that would have been on the list, but I think I've since accomplished it. I would like to recognize it as at least a recent concern, though.) 
8. I want to make sure that the means, methods, and manifestations of my quest for liberation are actually what I want. I know that I don't currently see any problems with the way I've been living, but I still think I could benefit from sitting down and really analyzing my sex life and my sexual desires to make sure that what I'm doing is what I want to be doing and is leading me on a path towards satisfaction, not just gratification. 
9. I suppose that generally, I find it easier to talk/joke about and reference my sexuality than to actually act on it in a lot of situations. I want to learn how to be sexually courageous in ways that are more important than proving to myself that I can do certain things, like fuck someone I legitimately couldn't give two shits about. I want to develop the courage to actually hook up with a girl, rather than just tentatively and exploratorily kiss a female friend of mine during the course of Spin the Bottle when we play middle school drinking games. I want to not blush--well, do that shy smile and tilt my head down in a way that people who know me well or who are familiar with the blushing tactics of people who can't physically blush will recognize as a blush--when someone calls me pretty or beautiful or sexy or whatever. I've embraced my sexuality in forums like this blog, and when talking to my friends, but I don't know if I own it yet inside of me all the time. That needs to change. 

So I guess I want to know that the sex I'm having is good (or at least decent) sex, and I want to be satisfied by the sex that I'm having. I want to develop the voice to not be mute in the bedroom, in terms of expressing pleasure that I'm being given, dictating what I want to be done differently or what I like, and generally to be able to talk about sex WHILE I'm having it. I want to feel like I've ACCOMPLISHED things with regard to my sexuality, rather than just done things that are supposed to represent sexual growth. I want to never ever fake it again. I want to get into my body and out of my head during sex. I want to understand exactly what I am and am not comfortable with sexually, and I would like to have some sense of why. I want to act on my sexual desires more often and more fully. And I want to be physically, mentally, and emotionally safe during all of that. [And the book demands that I include this part:] I, Maya Reid, am making a promise to myself: I won't quit this process. I'm starting it for a reason, and I'll see it through to the end. Because I matter to myself. My desires matter, my pleasure matters, and my safety matters. What I really really want matters. This process is a gift to myself, and I promise to accept it.