IU Sexploration – Fall 2013 (Part One)

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Each year, the Kinsey Institute partners with various student organizations and health services to provide students (and the greater community) with a series of events that celebrate knowledge of sexuality & gender. Different from years past, Indiana University’s 6th annual Sexploration was spread out over two months, making it much easier to attend.  (I still couldn’t go to everything, but I was so close.) While I’m awaiting next year, here’s a recap of my Sexploration 2013 experience.

10/1- Dr. Helen Fisher: Lust, Romance, Attachment: The Drive to Love & Who We Choose

Fisher is an anthropologist who studies love and attraction. She has written several books, including Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. She also works closely with Match.com to develop questionnaires that utilize science for finding romantic compatibility.

Fisher has derived 4 styles of human thought/behavior from compounds present in all of us: dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, & estrogen/oxytocin. Forming these groups from common traits, she has observed attraction trends. (Ex: The estrogen/oxytocin group, “negotiators,” are described as intuitive and empathetic. They are generally attracted to “directors” from the testosterone group, who are ambitious and competitive.)

She also distinguishes between 3 separate drives: lust/libido, romantic attraction, and attachment. This reminded me a lot of Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love, but Fisher did not use these drives to gauge the strength of a relationship. Instead, she states that while they can occur within a single pairing, a relationship may also be formed on only one or two drives. Individuals may have separate partners to meet separate needs. And a relationship can evolve in any order. (What starts as “friends with benefits” may lead to an exclusive relationship and vice versa.)

Although her recent work on personality traits kept my attention, I am much more intrigued by her older research on love from an evolutionary perspective — which unfortunately wasn’t the focus of this lecture. However, if you want to find out what style you might be, Chemistry.com offers a free questionnaire. And if you would like to learn more about Fisher’s work in general, she has done some excellent TED talks.

10/10- Barbara Nitke: American Ecstasy: A Photographic Look Behind the Scenes of the Golden Age of Porn

Nitke began her artistic career on porn sets in the early 1980s, taking promotional photos. In between scenes, she began to focus on the reality of adult film instead of what the promo materials idealized, taking photos of stars in un-airconditioned rooms (which interfered with sound quality) or moments of boredom. She later worked for mail-order fetish companies, where many previously mainstream porn stars transferred during the AIDS epidemic. This work led to her involvement with the Eulenspiegel Society where she met real-life couples to photograph more intimately.

As a fan of Nitke’s work, I was very excited for this event. She talked about her career while showing beautiful photographs from her new book American Ecstasy, her first book Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism, and other unpublished collections. When she showed her work on body suspensions, there was an audible gasp from the audience and I could feel the discomfort around me. Without missing a beat, Nitke provided a very positive and candid explanation of endorphins and the experience of pleasurable pain within a trusting environment/relationship.

Perhaps what I most appreciate about Nitke and her work is how open she is to different behaviors and ideas. She is a respectful observer, motivated by genuine curiosity, who explores sexuality through her camera. If you are interested in Nitke’s erotic photography, she offers substantial previews on her website.

10/14- Sex Ed: A Real Conversation About Sexual Hookups in College

Dr. Justin R. Garcia and Dr. Kristen Jozkowski led a very rewarding discussion on hookups. With the help of the application PollEv, the audience could even anonymously interact. Despite the fact that 65-85% of college students are “hooking up,” it quickly became clear that the term is very ambiguous. Some define it with intercourse, while others argue that kissing or touching warrants the same title. The only consistent factor is the context; lack of romantic commitment. (Although some do wonder if hookups are becoming the new first date.)

For sex positive individuals, the problem is not casual sex. The problem is a lack of communication about both pleasure and consent. In a hookup, individuals (especially women) are more uncomfortable communicating what they desire and what they find pleasurable. A gender gap also divides what people are comfortable doing in a hookup, with women being somewhat less comfortable with all activities compared to males. (Men, however, are reported as disproportionately uncomfortable giving oral sex.) When comfort levels are down, so are reports of sexual satisfaction.

More important is the issue of consent. Men and women interpret expressions of consent differently. While women use and expect verbal consent, men often use and rely on non-verbal cues such as body language. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where one person, expecting to be explicitly asked for their consent before having intercourse, continues along what the other person interprets as the “all clear.” Add in alcohol and this miscommunication gets much more pronounced, possibly attributing to the high rates of sexual assault on college campuses.

So how do we fix this? A simple answer is for women to speak up, and for men to verbally ask for consent. But this isn’t so easy for a lot of people. In our society, women are still not supposed to enjoy sex or demand their own pleasure. A persistent fear of “ruining the mood” by asking questions also exists. We need to assure ourselves and others that sex should be a pleasurable experience for all involved, and that everyone has equal rights within a sexual encounter. 

If you’re interested in more of the current research about hooking up, Jozkowski wrote a wonderful supplementary article about consent at Kinsey Confidential, The NY Times recently reported on the lack of female pleasure in particular, and ScienceDaily shared some of the reasons behind hookup behavior.

I review the documentary ‘How to Survive a Plague’ & Dr. Kand McQueen’s discussion on gender in Part Two.

The Sessions [review]

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My boss recently asked if I’d seen The Sessions. He apologized almost immediately, stating that perhaps talking about it was inappropriate…but he thought it might connect with my “academic interests”. Color me intrigued.

The Sessions (2012), based on journalist and poet Mark O’Brien’s quest to experience physical intimacy, stars John Hawkes (O’Brien), Helen Hunt (sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene), and William H. Macy.

O’Brien, who contracted polio at age 6, could experience the sensation of touch but could not move from the neck down. He spent much of his life inside an iron lung because his condition made breathing difficult. As a virgin in his mid-thirties, he was inspired to seek out a sex surrogate after interviewing other individuals with disabilities about their sex lives.

What is a “sex surrogate?”

A sex surrogate is an individual who may become physically involved with clients to help them work through difficulties surrounding sexual activities. A sex surrogate is not a prostitute nor a sex therapist. 

Hunt’s character mentions that, unlike a prostitute, sex surrogates do not want your continued business. They concentrate on overcoming a specific sexual problem — emotional (body image issues) or physical (premature ejaculation). Their methods can include direct sexual contact, but not necessarily. Their goal is to help clients acquire the skills to establish healthy sexual relationships, not provide sexual pleasure. Trained in areas such as sex education & sexology, sex surrogates are legally certified and only meet clients through therapists.

Sex therapists, much like other therapists, are licensed professionals who tackle emotional difficulties through discussion — never sexual contact — but who are educated on the specifics of human sexuality. 

Review

The Sessions brings disability & sex out into the open. In his article “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate1,” O’Brien writes

Why do rehabilitation hospitals teach disabled people how to sew wallets and cook from a wheelchair but not deal with a person’s damaged self-image? Why don’t these hospitals teach disabled people how to love and be loved through sex, or how to love our unusual bodies?

23 years later, reading reviews that call this movie “disgusting,” I realized that our society is much more at ease imagining people with disabilities as asexual. But O’Brien makes it obvious that he is not excluded from the natural desires for (or the right to experience) romance, love, and sexual intimacy.

The Sessions is also refreshingly sex positive. Part of what O’Brien has to overcome is a negative, shameful view of sexuality from his upbringing. The encouragement he receives from those close to him is very inspiring. His friends & assistants are comfortable engaging in frank discussions about sex, and even his priest offers support instead of disapproval. Everyone involved treats sex as natural & enjoyable.

Unfortunately, it was because I was so impressed with these progressive themes that I was surprised by some details that were not exactly sex literate. First of all, protection is never mentioned. No condoms on the nightstand, no diaphragm in her purse, not even a discussion between the characters.

Secondly, some unrealistic expectations concerning intercourse were perpetuated. Without mentioning that it rarely happens, one of the sessions focused on simultaneous orgasm. Cohen-Greene is also portrayed as reaching orgasm through intercourse alone, which only 1/4 of women regularly experience. (If she was providing clitoral stimulation, it was largely ignored.) Sexual ideals like these cause many people (especially women) to worry that their bodies or sex lives are abnormal. For a movie that embraced sexual differences, this felt out of place.

Lastly, I didn’t know how to interpret the strange love triangle between O’Brien, Cohen-Greene, and her husband. The original article does not mention this, and I worry that it insinuates that sex surrogates cannot have satisfying marriages because they have outside sex partners. I liked that she got to know O’Brien as a person, but does attachment to a client cheapen the profession?

TL;DR?

Try to look past the occasional lack of sexual realism and relish the sex positivity that is so rarely expressed in the media. The Sessions made me laugh, warmed my heart, and opened my eyes even more to a very important struggle that many people with disabilities must face, but no one ever talks about. I highly recommend it to everyone.

4stars

1. O’Brien, Mark. (1990). On seeing a sex surrogate. The Sun, issue 174. Reprinted online at: http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/174/on_seeing_a_sex_surrogate

Erogenous Zones: Different Strokes for Different Folks?

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Perhaps this sounds familiar…

You’re with a new partner & things are getting steamy. But your moaning is halted by wet, squishy noises (of the non-sexy variety) as you wonder why his/her tongue is inside your ear. Or maybe you once lightly touched the back of a partner’s knee expecting a sexy shiver. Instead you got accidentally kicked because they found it insufferably ticklish.

Somewhere, at some point in time, most people have heard about erogenous zones: those wonderful little areas on your body that just seem to burst with erotic potential when touched.

Countless magazine and web articles generalize our unique sexual experiences and boast certain spots as the “best” or “most surprising.” And though a “one size fits all” approach is rarely, if ever, a good idea,  some scientific backing to their method does exist. A recent study by Turnbull, Lovett, Chaldecott, and Lucas has reported surprising similarities across differences in age, race, and even sex.1 (A man’s penis is not his only erogenous zone, folks!)

Let’s start with what we know.

Erogenous zones come in two types: specific & nonspecific. Specific erogenous zones are those that are located on hairless skin that has lots of nerve endings close to the surface. These areas are perhaps what we think of as the most universal & obviously sexual, including the lips, penis, and clitoris. On the other hand, nonspecific erogenous zones have a normal concentration of nerves and can occur anywhere. Nonspecific erogenous zones probably vary a bit more between individuals. However, Turnbull et al. found that a majority of people receive greater stimulation from some areas (neck, thighs, ears) than others (hands, wrists, feet). And there are certain spots (elbow, nose, kneecap) that generally aren’t considered very sexual at all.

We still must keep in mind that just as not everyone agrees on the most delicious food, we can’t expect everyone to agree on the most sexually stimulating spot either. Although you can generalize and say “well, most people like chocolate” you might also know at least one person who much prefers broccoli.

So where does that leave you when you’re trying to navigate a partner’s body? Is there any one tip that can be applied to everyone?

Communication. 

Some people fear that by asking questions, they will seem sexually inexperienced or it will “ruin the mood,” but what it really does is show concern for someone else’s pleasure. I’ll dedicate another post to the various ways of approaching these sorts of delicate conversations, but for now, don’t be afraid to ask your partner which areas of their body they enjoy having touched and how they like to be touched there. (The “how” can make a huge difference. The same person might prefer soft kisses to one spot, a firm caress to another, and light pain somewhere else.) A discussion like this is also the perfect time to find out if there are any spots that your partner hates having touched, so that you know what’s off limits.

It may be that you or your partner aren’t sure where your own unique erogenous zones are. If this is the case, you can suggest that the two of you explore each other’s bodies together. Then you can take that “one size fits all” article, snip out the parts that are off limits, and mentally make note of some interesting ways to explore the places that both of you have agreed upon.

The awesome thing about this advice? It’s not just for new couples! I’m still finding new tricks that work on my partner of 3+ years. Spending time simply touching each other, with no further expectations, can be very pleasurable. Plus, sometimes an individual’s erogenous zones may change. For example, a common side effect of some hormonal contraceptives is breast tenderness. This change in a woman’s body may turn her nipples into centers discomfort instead of pleasure. The most important thing is that you both feel safe and comfortable enough to let the other know if a touch is amazing, upsetting, or anywhere in between.

And if one of you still ends up getting kicked, at least you’ll be able to laugh about it together instead of suffering in embarrassment alone.

1. Turnbull OH, et al., Reports of intimate touch: Erogenous zones and somatosensory cortical organization, Cortex (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2013.07.010

From Purity to Pleasure: My Struggle to Embrace Sexuality

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Looking back, I can practically pinpoint the moment when what I was taught about sex would either a) need a major overhaul or b) become disastrous. I was home from college, naked and fooling around with my high school sweetheart, begging him to have sex with me. I was literally begging despite the fact that we didn’t have any protection and we had both promised years before to wait until we got married. Once the fog of lust had cleared from my mind, and I got over the pain & embarrassment of having my advances (thankfully) denied, what remained was fear. At that moment, I was terribly afraid of my own sexual desire and I was too ashamed to share that fear with anyone.

I grew up in a rural area, attended a public school that was governed by conservative politics, and went to church every Sunday with my mom. I never remember having a sex talk with either her or my dad. And what I recall of my “sexual education” mostly consists of scare tactics about STIs in 7th grade Home Economics. Somehow, without ever having a real discussion about sex, the expectation was still clear: I should not have sex until I get married. Looking back, there was always something that bothered me about the black & white thinking that I was raised with.

If I’m supposed to be ashamed and afraid of sex now, how do I magically overcome those emotions on my wedding night? Will I be able to find a guy who also wants to wait? Should I expect him to? Are we still abstinent if we have oral sex? What about if we touch each other’s genitals? Where is the line that transforms me from virgin to whore? 

Even though I was curious about these things, it was simply easier at the time to ignore the grey areas that nobody else mentioned. I bought and wore a purity ring for the next 7 years of my life, but I never had a serious discussion with my boyfriends (or myself) about what was sexually acceptable and what was not—besides the fact that intercourse was obviously off the table. When we’d become more sexually intimate than we had before, my reaction (after the initial pleasure) was often one of guilt, shame, and tears. I would insist that we needed to “back off,” but it never failed that I’d find myself right back in that pit of self-shaming again and again.

As I entered my 20s I defined my brand of abstinence as simply not engaging in vaginal or anal intercourse, but my devotion to the entire idea was waning. If I only had sex with the man that I knew I was going to marry, would it really matter if we waited until our wedding night? That would hardly make me a “whore” when compared to many other individuals. …But did the fact that I had intense sexual desire mean that I was no longer a “good girl” either? This unclear (and unhealthy) view of sexuality led to the previously mentioned irresponsible and immature begging, as well as several arguments that helped put an end to my relationship.

When I think back on that moment, I cringe at the thought of how badly my ignorance could have affected my life. But I also know that the problem wasn’t that I wanted sex—that was natural. The problem was that I wasn’t educated. I wasn’t educated on how to keep my body safe, how to create a self-image that was independent of my sexual activity, or how to confidently (and respectfully) communicate my desires to my partner.

So how did I go from that confused & naive virgin to the woman I am now, passionate about helping others break down the walls of their sexual repression?! I removed my purity ring as a symbol of removing all past influences and I finally took control of my own sexuality. I started educating myself by reading everything I could get my hands on: sexual anatomy/response, reproduction, contraception, various sexual desires & activities, etc. I was exposed to different views on sex, most importantly those of the sex positive movement. I also entered into a loving relationship that continues to provide me with a safe space for (s)exploration. Slowly and with much continuing effort, I have been able to redefine my beliefs so that my pleasure is no longer something to be feared or ashamed of, but something to own and enjoy.