Eight Things I'm Thinking about this Weekend
Barbie, space sex, and more!
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One: That scene in the Barbie movie where Barbie comes back and Ken has taken over everything and all the Barbies are wearing these short skirts and uncomfortable clothes and catering to all the men’s needs. While I think we have made progress on this front over the past fifty years (more women are out in the workforce, taking leadership positions, etc.), I think that this scene does reflect a truth in today’s world: women participate in the patriarchy. We are a part of upholding it. We provide more cognitive and emotional labor. We cook and clean and take care of the kids more than our male counterparts, even if we’re working too.
This affects our sex lives too: we dress up in skimpy clothes and give men blow jobs and prioritize their pleasure over our own. We often don’t stand up for ourselves in hookups when men don’t reciprocate the time and attention we give to their bodies. For women who have sex with men, we make penis-in-vagina sex the thing we crave most, even though it doesn’t give the majority of us the stimulation we need in order to come. We agree to things we don’t really want to be doing.
I think what the Barbie movie glosses over though is how difficult it is to change those things. I wish we could just kidnap each other and recite America Ferrara’s iconic monologue and help each other snap out of it.
But it’s really difficult to deprogram oneself.
When thinking about this, I was reminded a lot of the work of Melissa Febos. In one of her essays (and in the longer version of it in her book Girlhood), she talks about women’s experiences with empty consent and why we give it, saying, “I see two powerful imperatives that collaborate to encourage empty consent: the need to protect our bodies from the violent retaliation of men and the need to protect the same men from the consequences of their own behavior, usually by displacing the responsibility onto ourselves.”
For women, standing up for ourselves comes with risk, and we all know it — which is why it’s so difficult to do.
Two: The fact that while it’s still underfunded (like much of sex research), scientists are starting to advocate for the need to study having sex in space. Also, apparently in all the time that we’ve spent in space, no one has had sex yet.
This seemed a bit odd to me, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether anyone had ever masturbated in space. There’s a guy who has spent 437 days in space…and many others have spent over 200 days. Did they not get horny? I can imagine not having partner sex for a year, but I don’t think I could go that long and not at least come by myself.
And after doing some research…it’s apparently a bit hush-hush, but yes, some of them have indeed masturbated.
Three: I love the co-living place I’m at, but something I’ve realized over the time that I’ve been travelling is the way that I tend to repress pieces of myself when I’m not in the safety and comfort of California and my communities there.
Even the open-minded community of digital nomads, there’s still a piece of me that fears that if I talk about being queer, straight women won’t want to be friends with me. There’s a piece of me that also fears that I’ll be left out of the other group situations if people find out about various pieces of my identity — that I’m exploring being non-binary, that I’m a sexuality educator, that I’m non-monogamous, that (and the list continues).
As I’ve been processing this subtle self-repression, this quote I saw on Instagram really resonated. I’m trying to be gentle with these pieces of me…and also, not let it put myself back in the closet or stop me from continuing to explore how to be my authentic self.
Four: Taking the "Which Barbie are you?" quiz was a surprisingly good chance to analyze myself. My first result was “Weird Barbie”. I have to admit, I didn’t fully want to be “Weird Barbie”, so I changed some of my answers, and I ended up getting “President Barbie”…and then I changed some answers again and was back to Weird Barbie. I feel like there aspects of both of these archetypes that ring true for my personality…but I think the truly telling thing about this experience was that my first reaction was that I didn’t want to be “Weird Barbie”.
I liked Weird Barbie in the film…but I didn’t want to be her. Which I think is sometimes how I feel about myself…I like that I’ve been trying to be more of my authentic self, but I still try to fit myself into more normative boxes out of fear of disconnection, of not being loved or accepted — hence number three in this list.
Five: AR Sutherland’s poem that we shared in the last newsletter of thecuriousclit and what they said about how confusing it can be when we, as queer identified folks, find the male gaze in movies hot.
Six: Some sex educators and sex toy & sex film companies have been posting on social media about it being “Anal August”. A lot of these have been quite fun, with some good tips, but there was one post that I keep thinking about. It featured interviews with porn performers about their experiences with, and recommendations for, anal sex. I enjoyed seeing the clip…until one of the women talked about how she liked experiencing just a little bit of pain.
Even as I reminded myself that it was her experience, and we all are entitled to get turned on by different things, it felt distressing to hear this message being released to the world.
I know that anal sex can be a very pleasurable thing for people, and that my response to this part of the clip comes from my past experiences with receiving anal sex, but I guess what I want to say is:
Don’t ever feel like you need to have anal sex with your partner. If they want to do it, but you don’t, it’s okay to say no. You’re not a prude if you don’t want to try it, or if you do try it, and you decide that you never want to do it again. You don’t need to “just relax”. You don’t owe your partner anal sex (or any kind of sex for that matter). If you’re experiencing pain, that is a message from your body that something needs to be addressed - whether that means you need to add more lube, take more time to get “warmed-up”, or even stop.
Anal sex can be extremely pleasurable for people, but it also comes with some risks. The anus does not self-lubricate, and the anal walls are thinner and more prone to tears. This means that anal sex has the highest risk for STIs — and it also carries risk for causing other health complications (like anal fissures).
Whether you are the one giving or receiving anal sex, I think it’s important to take some time to do your research before having it. I like this online guide, but I also recommend reading The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women by Tristian Taormino. The name is quite gendered, but it’s a great book for people who have been socialized as women and/or who have sex with people who have been socialized as women.
Seven: I’m so excited to release the conversations I had this summer with my friends TL Amor, and Brandi Hearn…they’ll be coming out over the next few weeks, and they’re both super special <3
Eight: This past month has been pretty intense in terms of making steps towards having the types of sex that I want to be having. This means saying no to sexual opportunities where my body is not giving me a wholehearted yes and it also means this: