Femme-Domme Bitch

I write about sex a lot. Probably because I think about sex a lot. It's a privilege afforded to my generation in this part of the world. As women we have gained more rights to our bodies than ever before. Hell, there is more mainstream advertising now telling us to take care of our cunt's health than I believe has ever existed publicly (I seem to remember seeing a bus ad recently reminding me it's time to get a PAP smear). Several women in my family hit sexual maturity in the 1970s at the height of the sexual revolution before the terror of AIDS and at the inception of widely available birth control. I grew up hearing stories of what it could mean to be sexually free.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the world of feminism was embroiled in the 'sex wars' and it wasn't as sexy as it sounds. In fact, it got pretty ugly at times. On one side, radical feminists were arguing that all penetrative sex should be viewed as rape and that heterosexual sex was a form of patriarchal control. On the other side, sex positive feminists were arguing that sexual freedom for women was an integral part of true freedom and as women have suffered centuries of sexual repression being sexually free to do whatever the fuck (or whoever the fuck) you wanted was part of breaking free of the old sexually-repressed patriarchal control of female bodies. Of course, there were others arguing different variations of different middle grounds on the subject but those two poles were very prominent.

Coming out of the second wave of feminism, radical feminism rejected a lot of forms of sexuality as abusive, patriarchal, or woman-hating. During the sex wars, there was not a lot of acceptance for different forms of sexuality or genders, such as transgendered bodies or alternative sexualities like S&M. Now we get to the type of sex I really want to talk about, S&M; long rejected by not only mainstream moralist culture who saw it as taboo, disgusting, and perverted (which by the way is what makes it fun) but also by alternative movements like radical feminism that saw it as recreating patriarchal control in the bedroom and unequal power dynamics in sex.

I, personally, think the radical feminists got that one wrong.

I'm gonna tell you a little story. When I was 19, I was in a open-relationship with a 32 year old man who was gleefully opening my eyes to all the sexual possibilities in the world like it was his full-time job. I had grown up in a very small town with very few sexual options (most of the guys I knew I had gone to school with since kindergarden so sleeping with them was just too weird and my bisexuality was still locked in the closet with the broom and dustpan).  All though I had a grasp on the fact that I was a very sexual person and had spent plenty of time reading sex manuals and sex advice columns, watching sex education TV, listening to late night sex talk shows, reading erotica, looking at porn, fantasizing,etc; I had very little real world practice at that point. This lovely man brought me into the world of sexuality (I think we tried every position possible, my 19 year old body was more flexible back then), open relationships, and my personal favorite S&M. He also gave me my first orgasm... .... *sigh* .... wait... what was I talking about?

Oh yeah.

Not only did he bring S&M (also known as kink or  BDSM [which is a catch-all term for bondage, domination, submission, sadism, masochism, etc]) into the private world of the bedroom, but he introduced me to the lifestyle of kink in dark clubs, sexy dance floors, underground spaces and private parties. I fell in love at first sight with that sexy, latex coated, corseted, shiny black, leather pants, nipple pierced, hand-cuffed, tied up, gagged world of notoriously taboo sex. The moment I stepped into that world, I came to the shocking realization that this, THIS, is what my life had been missing. It donned on me that my earliest sexual fantasies had involved domination, submission, bondage and pain. At the ripe age of 8 I had fallen madly in love with Zorro on TV because he was dashing and more importantly wore black leather, a mask and carried a big whip. My knock-off Barbie dolls (we were poor) spent most of their time naked, tied up and in peril. I walked into my first kink club at the tender age of 19 and I knew right then and there that I was home.

I also found feminism and political action that very same summer when I took my first women's studies' course at university. Again, I found something that I had been missing and felt like I had come home. At that point, the sex wars had been fought and women's studies was opening it self up to alternative sexualities. Over the course of my undergraduate career Critical Studies in Sexuality, sociology courses focusing on gender, sex and queerness, and queer studies became part of my educational curriculum. I even wrote papers on BDSM for different classes that were openly accepted.  I created a lecture about the history of corseting and presented it wearing a tight-laced corset in thigh high boots. I was even asked to teach a safe-sex BDSM workshop for the campus womyn's student organization. The feminism I became a part of was a sexual feminism. We were working toward openness in sex and the breaking down of barriers to alternative forms of sex. I may have been a feminist but I was a feminist in a black vinyl tight-laced corset, six inch stilettos, fishnet stockings, and carrying a bullwhip.

I was a femme-domme bitch and I apologized to no one. As a matter of fact, I am still a femme-domme bitch and I still apologize to no one. I think radical feminism got that one wrong. Sex can be more than shame and repression. I mean, there is always complication involved in sex, especially kinky sex and we are always trans-versing the lines of 'is this playing into patriarchal notions?', 'am I reinforcing patriarchal control' but sex can also just be fun. Maybe if we lived in a world without all the bullshit of unequal power relations and sexual violence, people could look at BDSM and realize it's just people having safe, sane consensual kinky fun times (at least that's the way it's supposed to be). Sex is always gonna be messy and complicated but does that mean I should give up on my desires and what I feel I truly want. I say no. As long as I am actively always analyzing and thinking about the complexities of the world, I feel perfectly comfortable tying someone up, smacking their ass until it's glowing red and still calling myself a feminist.

Wikipedia actually has a very well researched entry on BDSM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM

Some great movies about kink:
Secretary
Preaching to the Perverted

Vancouver Club Nights:
Noir Fetish Ball
Sin City Fetish Night

Websites:
http://eroticvancouver.com/
fetlife.com

Photo Credit: Pin-up Perfection Photography

Queer Bitch

The French author Marguerite Duras said "Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire." To add my own personal spin on that sentiment, heterosexuality is boring. The idea of attaching myself to one strictly defined socially normative sexuality for the rest of my life bores the fuck outta me. I have no urge to be heterosexual. I have no urge to be normal.

I have never felt straight. Even as a kid when my sexuality was first developing I didn't feel straight. My earliest sexual fantasies involved bondage. I had a crush on the little girl who lived up the street who was my age and I peeked at her changing one night when we had a sleep over. We played Truth or Dare and dared each other to pull our panties down and dance around. I had crushes on boys at school. I practiced masturbation with no real understanding of what sex really was but I knew what felt good.

In high school I fell in love with girls. That kind of swooning, budding love you can only have as a teenager. I buried those feeling terrified of what it meant. I wasn't sure what it meant, but I knew it meant something bad. It was something shameful that I would get in trouble for if I disclosed to anyone. So I told nobody of my sexual desires for other girls and focused on getting a boyfriend. Of course, I picked the only guy with long hair in town who was a bit of a hippy and laughably a 'rebel' in our tiny town. He wasn't exactly James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause but he had a tattoo and his own car so that made him more alternative and exciting than most the guys I went to school with. He, of course, broke my teenage heart as soon as he possibly could.

I fell in love with my best friend, a beautiful young woman with bad teeth and a whole bunch of problems. She was one of the first girls I felt like I could touch. Like it wasn't taboo for me to lie with my legs in her lap. We never kissed or confessed love but it meant something to me. She, of course, was still in love with her ex-boyfriend whom I promptly lost my virginity too (he was the first guy I met who wore nail polish and a black trench coat; it was the late 90s, that was totally hot, and that's all he needed to get in my pants). She was also dating a violent, fuckhead of a new boyfriend with the intelligence of a turnip and really good abs. I didn't like him and wanted her for myself.

During my teenage years my grandmother expressed deep concern that I might be a lesbian. Not for any moral disapproval reasons or religious reasons but because the only lesbians she knew had lived troubled, difficult lives and she was worried I might also live a troubled, difficult life. She was worried that I liked too many boyish pursuits, dressed too boyishly, like heavy metal music and liked action movies too much. All easy indicators of a possibly troubled sexuality.  She sat me down and told me lesbianism was a tough, unhappy life.

 My great aunt told me about the young woman she lived with in a relationship when she was herself a young woman. When my great grandmother found out she disowned my aunt. My great aunt only discussed the horrible difficulties of being in a relationship with a woman and later married a man with whom she had her children and has only had relationships with men that I know of since I was old enough to understand that kind of thing. I didn't have the greatest models for same sex relationships. Actually... thinking about it I didn't have the greatest models of opposite sex relationships either. Most of the heterosexual relationships I saw going on around me were violent, passive-aggressive, unhappy, argumentative, volatile, or kind of boring.

As I've aged I've come to realize my sexuality is whatever I want it to be. What it is NOT is static, dualistic, binary, or etched in stone. I've kissed girls. I've had sex with a woman. I've had plenty of sex with men. I've fallen in love with men and women. Most of the men I've had sex with have been bisexual or cross-dressing or gender queer or effeminate or had relationships with men and women or wore makeup sometimes or wore skirts on occasion or engaged in BDSM, etc etc. I've kissed people who were trans. I've kissed drag queens and drag kings. I've kissed gay men. I've checked out a hot lady's ass as she's walked by and done the same to a hot dude. I've engaged in a lot of BDSM. I've role-played gender switching. I have never closed the doors of love to only one gender of properly acting gendered individuals. My doors are a little more wide open than that. I may have sex with more men than women but that's not to say I would shut the door in the face of the right woman if she was to come along. That limits sex. That limits love. And that just sadly limits your life in such a profound way.

I don't hate straight people. And if you feel straight that's fine. Be straight if you are straight. Just don't force yourself into the box because you feel you have to. But examine your heterosexual privilege, question the world where 'normal' is equated with 'heterosexual', do not judge people who live their lives differently, and don't be a heterosexual bigot. Don't force your heterosexuality on to others. Let people live the way that makes sense to them.

I'm queer. I am out about it. I am not straight and I am happily not normal.

Fat Sex: A Fat Girl Gets Dirty

Like most women, my weight has fluctuated over the course of my life but I would say I have never really been skinny. I was thinnest in my last year of high school and first year of university which, as I've written about, was the result of some very unhealthy crash dieting leading to disordered eating. Mostly I've been fat. Sometimes thinner, sometimes heavier. This is normal as your hormones, activity levels, stress-levels, etc change over the course of your life. I'm a fat girl and I have always been a fat girl. I've always felt fat even when I was thinner. No one has ever accused me of being stick thin or scrawny or boney. I'm a plush, squishy, round, soft, big hipped, big butt, big breasted kinda woman. And contrary to popular belief about fat people, I am sexy.

In my mid-twenties I was a fairly practiced slut. I enjoyed my sexuality and I flaunted it. I saw, and still see, no shame in liking sex and pursuing it when I want it. At the time, I read all sorts of feminist manifestos about reclaiming female sexuality, several sex guides, and was a member of what I would describe as a sexual underground. I remember one of my very thin, very pretty model-esque friends saying to me in a slightly shocked voice how amazed she was at my sexual success and the amount of men that hit on me on a regular basis. I spent most of my twenties in a dark dance club, music venue or bar of some sort, and one of the major reasons anyone goes to those places is to get laid. Admittedly I spent that time in what can only be described as alternative spaces; goth dance clubs, industrial nights, punk bars, metal shows, S&M clubs, etc. so there was already a culture of the outsider present. I dressed sexy. Very sexy. I lived in painful but deliciously sexy stilettos. I coveted Victorian steel boned corsets and practiced serious tight lacing (lacing a corset as tight as possible to achieve an hour glass waist) which meant my already ample cleavage looked ridiculously huge piling up to my chin. Everything was low cut and tight. When I took up burlesque I started to dress in slinky pin-up fashions.

I was fairly successful as a fat slut but I live in a fat hating city. It's true, I live in Vancouver, BC and this place doesn't like fat people. It's a city of yoga nuts, vegan hippies, yuppy mommies with money and expensive memberships at exclusive gyms, health spas, and health freaks. These are all very thin people on the whole. Buying plus-size clothing in this city is nearly impossible. Apparently companies think there are no fat people here. Even clothing companies like H&M and Forever 21, companies that both have plus-size lines, don't sell those lines in their stores here.  I guess they assume there are just no fat people here to buy the clothing. A walk down Granville street, the club district, on a weekend will give you an endless parade of very thin young women dressed in very short skirts with fake tans and lots of blonde hair. I have nothing against these women. I have a firm belief in the power of the short skirt even though I don't think fake tans look very nice, but hey, do whatever makes you feel sexy.  I doubt these women like my ghost pale skin, so hey whatever. I may have been successful in my fat slut ways, but I was never hit on with the kind of frequency that my thin friends were. My fatness did stop a lot of men from hitting on me, either because they didn't like fat chicks or because they felt like they might be ridiculed for fucking a fat woman.

Nonetheless, I got laid fairly regularly and my partners were attractive (to me), energetic and vital. We set the sheets on fire, I'll tell you that for nothing. Just because I'm fat doesn't mean I don't know how to fuck. I've developed exceptional blow job skills and I can fuck like an animal when I want to. I'm sure there's been times when I've felt a little self-conscious getting naked in front of someone new, taking off my foundation garments that were holding my fat into a particular shape, but I've always found generally once I get going I can set that stuff aside and just let the joyfulness of sex happen.  I've been adventurous in my sexuality. I've fucked in public, carefully concealed on the edges of park trails, in the bushes outside my university's library, in public gardens, in many different club bathrooms around the city, and once on a dark, deserted pier in the middle of the night. I had fun with sexuality. I explored S&M (and still do, I plan to write a whole entry about that), I explored my bisexuality, made-out with cross-dressing men on dance floors, made out with strange girls, played with toys, practiced my masturbation, had multiple partners at one time, had multiple orgasms, fucked in every room in the house, had one night stands, fucked strangers, and always made sure to practice safe sex.

I've always thought of myself as fat and sexy. I feel sexy when I put my make-up on, do my hair, slip on my heals, get dressed in a fun outfit and head out the door for a night of dancing. I feel fearless and uninhibited on a dance floor. Something about moving to music just brings out the sexy in me. Which would explain why burlesque dancing appealed to me and I never felt self-conscious about getting naked in front of an audience. I'm not having as much sex at this point in my life but that has very little to do with me being fat. It does have to do with dealing with my health issues and deciding to take a break from the emotional roller coaster of my last few relationships. I'm just not going out looking for sex right now. I am confident if I was looking for it, that it's out there somewhere. And the bit of sex I have been having is still often mind-blowing and I feel no need to hold myself back because I'm fat.

My aunt was fat and sexy in the 70s during the sexual revolution. She had amazing stories of sexual conquests and I listened to them all with rapt attention when I was a teenager.  She helped form me into a sexually independent woman. I'm pretty sure she fucked her way through most of the men in the city she lived in and I remembered her telling me "deary, men generally don't care if you're fat as long as your cheery". She was telling me if you have a good attitude, fuck what people think of you and fuck whomever you want to.

Now, the slut lifestyle isn't for everyone. Maybe you don't want to pick up a different person every night and that's fine. However, please don't shame those who do like being a slut. It's their choice. Even if you prefer a monogamous life, that doesn't mean you can't explore your sexuality and your own sexual power. It doesn't mean you can't explore your own body and your lover's body with rabid enthusiasm even if you are a fat chick or a fat guy. Just because you are fat, doesn't mean you can't have great sex and be sexy. It's a real shame that we live in a culture that presents fat people as unsexy and unsexual. We're meant to be non-sexual blobs that no one would ever want to fuck. Fuck that noise.

When you do practice your slut escapades, be sure to be safe. And yes that means practice safe sex but also be careful about who you go home with. A young married couple, who were always out at the same clubs I was, that I am very good friends with used to make me introduce whatever person I had picked up that night to them before I left with said person.  They would quiz my sexual conquest on their name, rank and serial number before we were allowed to leave and make sure my sexual partner for the night knew that I had friends that knew who I left with and expected to hear from me the next day. They also always demanded that my pick up agree to make me breakfast the next morning and I got a lot of free breakfasts that way. It would be nice to say go out there and get drunk and fuck whomever you want to and not worry about anything but that is not the truth of female lives at this point. You do need to exercise a little caution but don't let that hold you back. Just be smart.

I'm fat and sexy. I am very unapologetic about being fat and sexy. If someone thinks I'm not sexy because I'm fat, I say they can go fuck themselves. We all have different things we are attracted to and think are sexy. You don't have to be an asshole if you are not attracted to someone. Maybe you aren't attracted to women with brown hair. You won't be an asshole to every brown hair girl you meet (at least I hope not). But for some reason people who aren't attracted to fat people feel the need to be absolute cunts to fat people. My main point that I hammer at again and again in this blog, and I'm going to keep saying until people get the fucking point, is DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE!  I'm not mean to people I'm not attracted to, I expect the same courtesy, thanks. Otherwise, you can kiss my fat, sexy ass.

Photo credit: Rodney Gitzel

Trans* Day of Remembrance

This evening I attended a Trans* Day of Remembrance (TDOR) event. For those of you who don't know Trans* stands for Transgendered, Transsexual, Transgressive, Cross-dressing, Gender Queer, Gender Variant, Gender Fluid, Transvestite, and basically any formation of Gender Non-conformity to the binary of male/female in modern society. Trans* in all its forms makes up all the wonderful variance that can exist in between the culturally and socially defined poles of male and female. We live in a world that sees only male or female as 'right' or 'natural' but the truth is there is a lot more variation in the world than that, in animal species and in our own species. A lot of people confuse biological sex with gender. Biological sex is merely the genitalia and chromosomes you are born with that make you male or female (and there is much variation in this as well beyond just male/female but I will get into the debate about intersexed individuals at another time). Gender is the cultural and social roles that reinforce particular binary categories of man and woman. We are told from childhood how to act like a boy or a girl to match up with the genitalia we were born with in each of our cultures and those who step outside of those roles are often brutally and violently put back in their place or killed.

Dr. Milton Diamond articulated this idea best when he said, "Biology loves variation. Biology loves differences. Society hates it."

From the TDOR website:

"The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved."

Today we remembered 265 deaths in the last year due to suicide of a trans-person or murder based on transphobia. This number is mostly like under-representational of the actual number of deaths as most gender-based hate crimes go unreported. Transfolk suffer some of the highest rates of murder and violent assault in the world. I was honored to be part of this event. I have several Trans* friends and friends with Trans* partners. I want more than anything for them to be safe in the world and accepted as equal members of our society. I was lucky enough to be raised in a non-religious open household where I was never taught to hate or fear queer or gender-variant people. Even as a child I never understood why anyone cared who slept with who, if someone wanted to change or alter their gender, or live a gender-variant lifestyle. As I grew up in a very small, rural town I have a feeling my viewpoint wasn't the norm. Maybe I developed this attitude because I am a sexual 'deviant' myself and never felt comfortable shoved into the role of heterosexual. I've always lived by the code 'Live and Let Live'. If you are not hurting anybody you should live your life the way that makes sense to you, makes you happy, and feels right without fear of reprisal or violence.

Gender Dysphoria is still listed in the American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a mental health disorder. This means those Transfolk who want to access hormones or surgery in North America must first be diagnosed as having a mental health disorder. There are several hoops they must jump through to get a ruling of GD and eventually be okayed for therapy or surgery. This usually takes several years. Transfolk are often denied health care or basic care because they don't fit the mold of the gender binary. Simply filling out a form can cause havoc if the only choices are male/female boxes and this does not reflect the care needs of the Trans* individual. These kinds of basic inequities lead to a culture of hate and fear around Trans*, a culture of denying care, of denying that Transfolk exist, a society with many different religions that preach hate against gender variance, and some governments that have the death penalty in place for those charged with being Trans*. We live in a scary, fucked up, bigoted world and the only way we can change it is to address our own prejudices and make an effort to change ourselves and to change the world around us.

As I was born a biological woman and identify as a woman, I can't really speak to the experience of being Trans* but I can express the love I have for the Transfolk in my life and my genuine hope that the violence and hatred stops. I can pledge to do what I can to educate and advocate for my Trans* brethren, to attempt to stop the violence and to support anyone who is Trans*.  I will be your friend and ally and stand by your side. I will stand up for you. And I will speak out against violence and hate in all its forms.

There are several great documentaries and books about the experiences of Transfolk (this is just a smackering of books and documentaries I've read/seen; there's lots more out there!):

Books:

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
Transgender History by Susan Stryker (I've worked with Susan at my university and she is amazing!)
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States by Joanne Meyerowitz

Documentaries:

She's a Boy I Knew (2007)
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Paris is Burning (1990)
Southern Comfort (2001)

Further list of great LGBTQ documentaries:
http://www.listal.com/list/glbt-documentaries

Nobody Gave Me an Owner's Manual for My Vagina

I've been thinking a lot about vaginas this week. I suspect anyone who owns one actually thinks and worries about it quiet a bit. I also suspect those who don't own one think about them a lot too. Maybe I'm thinking about vaginas because I'm going in for clinical treatments again and that means I have a lot of nurses and doctors poking around down there. Maybe it's because I'm reading feminist manifestos again. Maybe it's because my uterine lining is shedding, I'm bleeding like someone shived me and it hurts like a sonuvabitch. Which ever the impetus for this train of thought is, I've been thinking about muffs, vags, minges, lady bits, pussies, cunts, twats, caverns, holes, carpets, mounds, vulvas, etc etc and now I'm gonna write about them.

Personally, I enjoy the word vag as an euphemism for the vagina. Something about the short punchy single syllable works for me. It's also the acronym for the Vancouver Art Gallery and every time I call that institution the VAG it makes me giggle. Everyone has their favorite pet name for their furry friend and I've always found it comes down to personal choice on that one. Admittedly I find vag doesn't work in the throws of passion for some reason and resort to the classic 'pussy' in that case. For some reason, asking someone to 'lick my vag' doesn't seem to work as nicely as 'lick my pussy'. Inga Muscio makes a strong argument for the reinstatement and reclaiming of the word cunt in her manifesto "Cunt: A Declaration of Independence", a book I suggest everyone read at least once even if you don't agree with everything she has to say (I'm still pretty skeptical about her 'natural' abortion techniques and her use of the rhythm method but that's just me).

It always surprises me that in this day and age when women are supposed to be more sexually free, and spend more time grooming our pubes and actually exploring our vags that most women still don't have much of an idea about it's workings. Many women still don't go get their pap smears like they should, or they don't understand the mechanics of STIs (sexually transmitted infections) or they haven't talked to their doctor about vaginal health. Even with Dan Savage writing raunchy stuff in the back of your newspaper, and the Vagina Monologues spreading stories of the muff wars across the country, there still seems to be some confusion for women on how to use and operate your cavern of love.

My mother gave me a very brief menstruation and safe sex talk when I was 11 or 12. I mean really brief. Like ten minutes brief. I think mostly she was hoping I wouldn't discover how to use my vag for sex so I didn't end up pregnant at 16 like she did. What did come out of our discussion was I was expected to go through great efforts to hide the fact that I had a period since I lived in a small house mostly full of men (my father and two brothers plus my mother and me) with only one bathroom and for some reason the workings of the female body needed to be concealed. That was all fine and dandy until the day our new puppy discovered the bathroom garbage can (where I had carefully wrapped up my used pads in little toilet paper packages and hid them at the bottom of the can) and joyfully pulled out each pad, chewed them up and spread them like confetti all over the house.

Although my mother didn't tell me a whole lot about my vagina, I went out and did lots and lots of research about it on my own. I wanted to make sure I knew how it worked and how to keep it healthy. When I was a teenager (before the internet really took off) that meant reading books, attending sex talks put on at school (some helpful, some very awkward and completely not helpful), secretly listening to a late night sex talk show on the radio and watching instructional education shows about sex that came on late at night on cable TV. I shall share some of my vaginal wisdom that I have gleaned over the years with you now and give you a bit of crash course in vaginal health but I highly recommend getting out there and finding out about your vag health (both women who were born with a vag or my transgendered friends who later had one installed). I mean with the internet it is super easy now but just be sure to cross reference, fact check to make sure you are not getting false info and when in doubt check with your doctor. I don't claim to be a medical professional or some vaginal sage with all the answers but I have done my fair share of sexual health research.

Vaginas are a bit of a paradox. They are tough enough to deal with the rigors, stretching and tearing of child birth (yup, that's right, your pussy tears during child birth) but at the same time they are delicate and can easily have their delicate balance upset. The vulva is a mucous membrane like the inside of your nose or your mouth and that membrane actually has a very delicate ph balance and pro-biotic environment. Any fluctuation in that balance is what leads to over growths of yeast, bacterial vaginosis, and urinary tract infections. You should NOT use any soap of any kind, perfume, powders, or other scented products on your vag. All of these things upset that ph balance I was talking about. Some women can't even use bubble baths. Your vag really, REALLY does not need to be scented. Pussy is supposed to smell and taste like pussy not a midnight summer's breeze or flowers or fruit or anything else. Pussy is pussy flavored! For some reason there is still an entire industry based on making pussy smell like something else and it's just not good for you. I accidentally bought a box of menstruation pads that were scented and they smelled so disgusting, and made me smell so disgusting, that I threw them out while screaming 'why the hell do they make scented pads?!'  You should only rinse your vag with warm water to clean it and if you are experiencing a yeast infection a little warm salt water is okay (salt kills yeast).

Your vag needs a slightly acidic environment to prevent the over growth of yeast and to stay healthy. You need to maintain a balance of pro-biotic organisms in your love cavern so eating active biotic yogurt is always good (good for your digestive track too) and you can smear a little of the plain, no sugar kind of yogurt on the old vag when you're getting a yeast infection too. Garlic is also good for controlling yeast so eat lots of garlicy pasta. To avoid UTIs (urinary tract infections) drink a glass of water before and after sex and be sure to pee right after coitus. Sex tends to push the e-coli bacteria responsible for UTIs into your urinary tract and making sure to pee after sex helps flush that out. Cranberries and blueberries have a compound in them that keeps the e-coli from sticking to your urinary tract walls so a glass of either juice (real not concentrated or watered down with other juices) helps prevent and treat UTIs.

And just a few other factoids: never use oil of any kind with condoms, it breaks down the latex. Women are just as susceptible to HIV as gay men (it is not just a gay male disease!) so protect yourself. If you find you get a rash from condoms you might be allergic to latex so try non-latex condoms (there's a lot more of them on the market now and they are effective). If you find you tear during sex (most women do tear a little bit, it's normal) you need to use more water-based lube. The more lube the better. Never let someone else make decisions about your vag. Your vagina is your responsibility and you need to keep it healthy. Go for regular paps to screen for cancer (this is also the time that your doctor can check up on your overall vaginal health).

I was going to write about orgasms as part of this post but I think I'll save that for a whole post of it's own. I hope this helps you to start thinking about your cave of wonders and some of the health decisions you should be making around it. And if you don't happen to have a vagina and your read this I hope it will help you understand what vagina owners go through and help you support the vagina owners you love. Happy muff loving everyone!

Pubic Hair or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Muff

So this week I've been reading Caitlin Moran's "How to Be a Woman". I wandered into Chapters after a clinical treatment at the hospital while I waited the hour before I could pee (part of the treatment) and there the book was sitting on the table marked "Best of 2012". Normally I only buy books at Chapters that are in the discount section as I prefer to buy my books from second hand shops but this book caught my eye. I decided to pay full price for it (something I rarely do because frankly my ass is poor, going to university for 13 straight years will do that) as it looked funny and I always enjoy a good feminist manifesto. I'm half way through it and I'm enjoying the read although I didn't agree with a lot of what she wrote in her "FAT" chapter but that's the point of feminism for me. You can disagree about things and still talk about it with each other.

However, I really enjoyed her chapter on body hair, specifically pubic hair and our present cultural obsession with female pubic hair (or the lack of it). She suggests that having a nice hairy muff might even be a political action. It got me thinking about pubes and all the ridiculous amount of thought us women put into them. Women are no longer meant to have a "dark tangle of pubic hair" between their legs. We are meant to be bald between our legs, smooth as eggs, not a stray hair out of place that might find it's errant way between someone's teeth as they go down on you.

So in the midst of my contemplation of fuzzy muffs, I decided to post a provocative Facebook status as I have many funny, thoughtful friends I was sure would chime in with some good comments. And they didn't disappoint. I posted the status "[t]he day all the men in the world start letting strangers pour hot wax on their balls and then rip all the hair out by the roots is the day I will 'consider' a Brazilian" and my astute friends (male and female) jumped on it. Over the course of the night/morning we had a 60 message thread going. We trans-versed  the topics of waxing, lasers on your balls, anal bleaching, pornography, cultural norms, gendered binaries, and Justin Timberlake all in one thread!

One part of the conversation I'm going to repost here because I think we got some good discussion going (apologies to the friend I'm reposting but this is already on my FB for everyone and their dog to read so it's going here too):


Friend of the male persuasion:  All the men? I mean, a number of guys get cleaned up down there. Why do all the guys have to do something that not all the girls do?

Me:  *sigh* Don't argue with my hairy bush. It was just being funny.

Friend: You have terrified the Ghost of Freud with that comment.

Me:  If your hairy bush can't have a good chuckle from time to time, what's the point of this crazy, mixed up life.

Friend: Are you kidding? My hairy bush -- and attendant junky bits -- are the punchline of 100% of my jokes.

Me (the next morning after realizing I owed him a better answer to the original question):  Now that I've had some sleep I can further address your earlier comment. I was using a provocative blanket statement here to be funny and risque to start a string of interesting observations from funny people. However, I do believe there is a concern with our obsession with making grown women look like little girls in our culture. Waxing all the pubic hair away started as a trend in pornography for one simple fact, it made it easier to film penetration scenes. Unfortunately the easy access to pornography in our culture at the moment has led us to use pornography as the yard stick for all things sexual and sexually related. Thus women are now expected to have no pubic hair, are expected to have anal sex as part of their sexual repertoire, expected to deep throat, etc etc. As much fun as pornography is (I love watching people have sex) it is not real and it is not a real representation of sex. It is a very narrow view of one type of heterosexual, frequently white, sex for pay that removes some of the joy, spontaneity, variety, and love from the sex act.

Now getting back to waxing all the hair away, I have had several lovers over the years (and I've had several other women repeat this same story to me about their experiences with male lovers) make me feel guilty, dirty, unsexy, unattractive, or undesirable because I didn't have a Brazilian or shave all the hair off my vag (I trim and buzz cut some of the area but I prefer to keep a nice Welcome mat, personally). They wouldn't go down on me even though I was expected to go down on them because of my hair choice. I believe women should have some hair to signify that they are a woman and not a child. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't shave/wax it all off if you want to. Personal choice always plays into it and you should do whatever you want with your pubic hair. It's your body. It's just when it becomes a forced cultural standard and you are made to feel unsexy or unwanted if you make a different choice then that really sucks. I know my original statement was rather provocative and you should never generalize but it got the balls rolling on some interesting comments and some funny stuff came up so hey... why not? And I'm still gonna grow a nice furry bush to keep me warm for the winter.

Friend:  It's like if someone had watched "Transformers" and then expected cars to turn into robots. "Um, you know that's not real, right?"

Me: Exactly! And I'm not just saying this is bad for just women but also for men. It really limits the types of interactions we think we can have in the real world and really narrows us to one definition of sexuality and gender norms. I, for one, really don't believe in an enforced set of gendered normatives or a static definition of sexuality. I believe sexuality and gender are fluid, transforming and always changing but unfortunately in our present society we are stuck in binaries that aren't realistic and can be horribly limiting and mainstream culture (pornography, Hollywood, fashion, etc) really enforce those ideas which end up informing and playing out in the real world.


Now I'm not saying everyone has to be furry in order to be a 'real feminist'. I don't think there's any such thing as a 'real feminist'. No identity category is static. Sometimes I shave my legs and underarms and sometimes I don't bother because I plain old don't feel like it. Sometimes my muff is super furry, sometimes I shave the sides (I always keep a welcome mat, I find that an esthetically pleasing pubic hair formation), sometimes I have a buzz cut but I never wax and I never get rid of all the hair. I have ridiculously sensitive skin and getting wax anywhere near me results in oozing, bleeding, red welts and incredibly unsexy rashes. I'm not going to put myself through that because of a culturally prescribed beauty myth. I love my vag, it should be happy and healthy and I'm not going to put it through that kind of pain.

When I was young, comments made to me by my lovers about my pubic hair (suggesting I was undesirable because I had it even though they still fucked me) really got to me. It made me feel ugly, like my muff was disgusting and who would want to lick it, and it made me feel like I didn't deserve oral sex even though clitoral stimulation is the only thing that makes me orgasm (like most women). I still didn't shave all my pubes off because it made me itchy and broken out but I felt horrible that I didn't do it and I spent a serious amount of time looking for the magical hair removal system that would not hurt and not make my skin freak out. As I have aged and gotten more bitchy (I consider this a good thing), I've decided men who dislike my pubic hair can frankly go fuck themselves. It's like men who fuck fat girls but then talk trash to their buddies about fat chicks. Seriously, go fuck yourself in the ass. 

You know what, I've licked myself some hairy muff and it was lovely.  Like a lovely little warm nest hiding a jewel. Just as lovely as a hairless vag would be I'm sure. I'm not saying you can't shave/wax it all off if you want to, just don't do it because you feel you have to or because someone is pressuring you to and especially don't do it to fit some imaginary cultural norm. I think variety is the spice of life. If we all look the same when we take our pants off, things are gonna get mighty boring. I'm thinking of getting some stencils and shaving designs into my pubes for a fun in the pants surprise for the next person I fuck. Mass media makes us believe we all need to look the same and fit this imaginary norm, but fuck that, sex is fun because people come in different shapes, and sizes, and textures, and colours, and gender variations, and sexualities, and levels of hairiness. Now go pick the hairs out of your teeth and get out there and love your muff!

My Life of Disordered Eating

So today I got up at 7:30am and by 8:00am (okay 8:15, so I was a little late! I was having one of those mornings) I was heading out the door and on my way to class. I raced straight from the bus to class and didn't have time to stop. My class ended at 12:30pm and I had to meet with a student I tutor right afterwards for an hour and than make the hour commute home and stop for supplies as the local grocery store. I didn't get home until close to 4pm. Between the time 7:30am when I woke up to 4pm when I got home I didn't eat anything. And I mean I didn't eat anything at all, all day except for a couple of glasses of water. I forgot to eat today and this isn't the first time I've done that by far.

And the reason I can go an entire day without eating: I have an active eating disorder. I've gotten so used to shutting my hunger signals off that I can ignore them and actually totally forget to eat because my body will no longer send my brain the proper signals saying 'you should eat!' Frequently this means I remember to eat when I suddenly start feeling very sick and it suddenly dawns on me I forgot to eat today.

This is not healthy. I one hundred percent do not condone this type of eating regime or weight lose method (I don't condone any weight loss method). Not eating is not a healthy way to live. It's hard on your body and hard on your digestive system. But it's also a really hard cycle to break. It's easy for me to forget to eat because my body just doesn't send me the proper signals anymore. Any doctor or nutritionist will tell you the healthy way to eat is several small meals over the course of the day so you are constantly feeding your immune system and metabolism. I don't forget to eat these days because I'm trying to lose weight but it's part of the fallout of a diet regime from my youth that I'm going to tell you about.

I willfully and purposely developed an eating disorder when I was a teenager. I went on my first diet when I was 13 which was the same diet my mother was on (the trend at the time being low fat diets, low carb diets weren't fashionable until I was in my 20s). Coming from a family of fat women, my mother transferred a lot of her body hate and weight issues onto me and we dieted together in an effort to fit some imaginary model of the perfect thin woman (just a little side note here: I love my mother and we have a great relationship but we both grew up in a fat hating world in a family of fat women and that lead to generational transmission of body identity issues so I don't judge my mother for any of her actions so I ask that you don't either). By the time I was 16 we had discovered diet pills and fat blocker pills and my grandmother, mother and I were all taking them. My mother and I stepped it up a notch and started using starvation diets as a way to lose weight.

I had the goal that I really wanted to be thin for high school graduation. I didn't want to be tortured anymore at school for being fat and I wanted to be thin in my prom dress. I thought nobody would love me if I was fat and I really wanted someone to love me. I over-exercised, stopped eating, greatly reduced my calorie/fat intake when I did eat, took handfuls of diet pills and watched the number on my scale like it was the only thing that mattered in my life. I did get thin for my grad and everyone congratulated me but even at my thinnest I would have still be considered over-weight by some and by the BMI. It took extreme and unhealthy measures for me to get that thin and most people would have said I was doing something healthy (I wasn't). Nothing I was doing at that time was healthy. I was putting my body through undo stress and trauma to just get thin.

My starvation/diet pill regime had some immediate health impacts at the time. I was always tired and falling asleep in class because I was depriving my body of the calories it needed to create energy (this impacted my school performance of course). I lived on caffeine to stay awake and alert which is not good for you at a young age. Caffeine can effect how you absorb calcium and other nutrients (which I was depriving myself of anyways) which can effect your bone development. I hurt my back trying to lift more than I should of when I was over-exercising. 17 is very young to start having back problems.

Now at 31, I live with the fallout of that eating disorder and I'm gonna tell you about that fallout because people rarely talk about the bad consequences of dieting and eating disorders except in extreme cases like bulimia and anorexia. I was never bulimic or anorexic but I made serious impacts on my life long health. I decided I would never diet again in my early 20s but that doesn't mean I haven't had a long battle with my weight and disordered eating. I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome this summer but have probably had it since my early 20s. My gastroenterologist told me that my disordered eating is directly linked with the tummy problems I'm having now. My body doesn't process food like it should because I basically wrecked my stomach by not eating at an early age and made it sensitive to everything. I can't eat now without some sort of tummy distress like acid reflux or stomach cramps. My hunger signals don't work like they should and I can get really sick when I forget to eat. I have to take medication everyday to avoid getting an ulcer. My teeth have bad acid wear on them from the acid reflux sending acid up my esophagus and into my mouth. Rapid weight loss at a young age like I had could lead to bone and joint problems as you deprive your growing body the nutrients it needs to develop when you are young. I suffer from low levels of calcium and vitamin D (my doctor said they are alarming low and it probably took years and years to get that low) which affects my mood, health and energy levels. I still don't have the best relationship with food and am constantly trying to have a better one. I now have to avoid certain foods because they trigger my acid reflux or my IBS or my interstitial cystitis and that sucks.

The media goes on and on about how being fat makes you unhealthy. I call bullshit to that! Dieting makes you unhealthy and creates bad relationships with your food that can lead to health problems. None of my health problems are related to me being fat but they are related to the things I did to try not to be fat. I would probably be a healthier person now if I had never gone on a diet when I was young. I would probably still be fat but I wouldn't have created situations where my body would respond by getting sick because I wasn't treating it very well. These are the real consequences of dieting. 95% of the people who diet gain that weight back within a year even if they stay on their diet. Dieting is not healthy especially extreme dieting. I had to take extreme, unhealthy measures to get skinny. Just take a minute to think about that. That means my body didn't want to be skinny and it was trying to tell me something. It was trying to tell me skinny is not my natural healthy state and I had to make myself sick to get thin.

So here's some tips for young women, men and otherwise out there. Don't diet (especially don't crash diet or extreme diet). It doesn't lead to anything healthy and it may lead to life long health problems. Don't step on a scale. It just feeds into bad body feelings and makes you obsessed with an arbitrary number that really has no real value in the world. Do exercise that's fun and because you like it. Don't do things just because you are trying to lose weight and make yourself miserable doing it. That just creates a bad relationship between you, your body and exercise. Eat if you want to. Yes, as North Americans we eat waaaayyyy too much sugar and processed foods but that doesn't mean there isn't lots of real and good food out there to eat that we should be eating. As soon as you start monitoring and limiting your food you start to create a bad relationship with it that will haunt you for your entire life.

I don't claim to have all the answers. I still struggle with my relationship with food and still starve myself sometimes (it's usually unintentional but it's still not a healthy way to live). I still eat junk food. I still worry about what I'm eating. I still live with health problems. But this is my story and hopefully it will help you understand a bit about what it's like to have disordered eating and what the consequences can be to your health and life.

This is me in high school when I was extreme dieting.

This is me at the weight I am now all dressed up sexy to go to Pride (by the way I won the title of East Van High Fashion in competition because of this outfit).