Rabbit Write

Getting a Sex Education: Behind the Scenes of the Man Project

2010-07-24 – 15:24

Grant Stoddard is the much loved underdog of the sex-writing world. His “I Did it For Science” column at Nerve gave us a hands-on account of his personal exploits, which saw him tackle everything from dressing up like a baby to doing a sample Real Doll at the factory.

A few must reads:

Experiment: To attend and participate in an Orgy

Experiment: To have a threesome with a woman and another man

Experiment: To literally have sex with Myself

Experiment: To have sex with a Real Doll

He’s since published a memoir, Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert. Paramount Vantage bought the motion picture rights and Stoddard signed a deal with 20th Century Fox Television. For The Man Project, he opens up about doing it for science and how he got his sex education.
Do you think it’s harder for men to write about their sexual experiences than it is for women?

We think there’s something gross about reading about a straight guy and his sexual experiences. The whole premise of “I Did it For Science” was that I was the least likely person for the job. I started interning at Nerve when they gave me the sex-writing job as a joke. I was vastly inexperienced. It was kind of like I was being forced to do it, but I think that made it palatable for readers to hear about a man’s sex life.

Who’d ever suspect that a guy who’d make a mold of his penis and fuck himself with it was inexperienced?

All of a sudden, I was dressing up like a baby, convincing a masseuse to give me a “happy ending,” getting fucked in the ass by a friend. I was like: “I wanna deal with normal sexual stuff, the stuff I am supposed to be doing with my youth!”

As a guy, what have you learned from exploring the vast rainbow of sexual experiences?

Women are given great sexual latitude to do a number of different things—bondage, kinks, even lots of different vanilla sex. Men are really sort of reduced to just wanting to fuck something, and that’s it. There’s a huge downside with what’s expected of you, and how you’re expected to behave in the bedroom. It’s very limiting.

It’s a double standard we hear about over and over.

There is also the double standard of consent. If you go on a date, and the girl doesn’t want to have sex with you it’s accepted. But if a guy is offered sex and he declines, it raises eyebrows. This happened to me once, and then it was all these questions: What’s wrong with him? Is he gay? The idea that I just simply wasn’t in the mood [wasn’t allowed.]

What about the male-female double standard regarding bisexuality?

Oh, yes, “You know, I wanna suck a dick. I don’t want to conform to a lifestyle or necessarily move to Chelsea. I just want to suck a big one.” If women [want to eat pussy], it’s cool, but for guys it’s, “Oh, so you’re gay?”

Maybe homophobia hasn’t gone away, but now it’s a personal thing? Like, “That’s okay for you, but NO, I am not gay!”

It’s very strange. My friends who are supposedly liberal and comfortable sexually cringe when it’s implied that they would be implicated in any [form of] gay sex.

What is your relationship to masculinity like?

Tenuous. I’ve lived in Manhattan for most of my adult life (although, he was born in England). [Masculinity is] not highly regarded as it would be elsewhere. I’ve definitely benefited from the fact that it’s not in vogue. I was actually playing with the idea of writing a book about how “un-masculine” I am. I just bought an apartment and I don’t know how to do anything. I’m looking at these ugly light fixtures now, and I have no idea how to change that. I’m gonna need some sort of tools. I have no tools. I have no hair on my chest.

Is there something you feel needs to be addressed about male sexuality, or changed?

I’m not exactly sure how you would go about instituting it, but the way that men use language. They talk about banging girls, finger banging or fucking. It’s something mechanical that sort of gets done. I hope for them it’s actually a little more complex than that, a little more considered. But anything other than some sort of Anglo-Saxon terms for what you do to a woman as a man is viewed as somehow weird, or creepy, or it makes you a sensualist.

Do you think that stems from our cultural insistence that men not use “flowery” language? We tend to view men as just thinking with their dicks.

To some extent, we do. I would agree with the sentiment that men are sexually oriented. What I disagree with is that it only manifests itself in one way. Sexually, we are forced into a box and not allowed to express ourselves in many more ways than society allows.

Growing up, where did you learn about sex?

My friend showed me this hardcore French pornography. I was nine years old. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was shocked. [He] was just like, “Yeah, everyone does that. Your mom and dad did last night!” Later, a friend found an illegal porn dealer—[it was] like crack. We’d meet him in the parking lot of a Home Depot. I’d spend my allowance—or morally support my friend if he spent his allowance—buying porn.

That’s a common thread: learning about sex through porn and friends, rather than in any sort of formalized sex education.

In Sex Ed, we had a gym teacher putting rubbers on bananas and stretching out dental dams. I couldn’t keep a straight face. I was so excited, I got thrown out. I got a report card with an annotation I had to sign saying I was too immature to be in a Sex Ed class.

You’ve come a long way, from getting thrown out of Sex Ed to writing a book about your sex life.

I feel like in writing about sex, I got to become myself. I’m glad that I did all this stuff. My penis: bringing good to the world.

By Rabbit White | Posted in Feature, Interview | Comments (1)

How Babies end up in Trashcans or Trying to Fit In

2010-07-23 – 08:19

Freshman year, we went on a field trip. We filed from the school bus with it’s soggy-sandwich smell into the county jail, which smelled like Mr. Clean. The only thing I remember was the guy on the news. The one who had killed a baby, smashing it against a wall. He was in a holding cell, waiting to be transferred. I pressed to the glass and saw his face. He looked poor. His face looked like anyone’s face.

That was the year of the ten commandments. Adults and churchy teens rallied. They tacked the commandments in the high-school. There for a week, then gone. Our small town made national news. Our town with it’s newspaper that printed who was arrested that week and for what. With it’s proud Wal-Mart and Baptists, cemeteries with rows of stones and yards in rows with rotting trash.

The things that mattered seem foreign now, and yet completely the same. In junior high, my mom still cut my bangs, straight across my forehead, drunkenly crooked. This was accepted in gradeschool but now there was the embarrassing prayer, an LED sign’s infinite scrolling: please let me be popular…Then freshman year, with highlighted hair and new jeans, maybe I could.

Kelsey never went through those phases. She was tan with huge teeth, hair like cornfields. Kelsey had been my best childhood friend. Her best friend now, was Chelsea. Chelsea was hot. She wore tight clothes, her ribcage visible, perfect moons of cleavage.

Kelsey and Chelsea were trying to fit in too, but not in the same way. I was trying to fit in with the other 7th graders. Trying to be asked to dances, to get Tommy Girl perfume for my birthday. They were sneaking out with college guys, having sex with drug dealers. Kelsey showed me a letter from one of her boyfriends, he was in prison, and so hot, she said. I mostly didn’t understand, but I got the underlined parts, the ones about wanting to have sex again.

Freshman year, I had algebra with Chelsea. She would take algebra all four years of highschool, never passing it. She stared through the wall during class, eyes glassy with blue contacts. Or she turned around and talked to me.

One day, gray and boring, she was going to tell me something, a secret. No one knew, and I swore-to-god. Kelsey, Chelsea said, was pregnant. She wasn’t sure whose it was. Every other week, I’d bring it up. “Still pregnant” she said, all of us hoping it would just go away.

In speech class we had to give a speech on abortion. I wrote against it. I found points on-line and re-wrote them on little note-cards. Only one student gave a pro-choice speech. A senior, a popular girl in an Abercrombie and Fitch shirt. She explained that if she were to get pregnant, she would get an abortion. It was her right, and this thing inside her shouldn’t be valued over her. Another senior, a boy who was popular in a churchy way gave a pro-life speech. He passed out pink plastic fetuses. Abortion-sized babies that fit in the palm of your hand.

That Spring, Kelsey and Chelsea asked me to hang out. It was happening! I got ready, choosing orange spaghetti straps with Mudd jeans. Kelsey had been at my house 15 minutes when her Dad called. She was yelling then crying. Kelsey stood in the doorway of my bedroom, hiccuping. Her face was red and loose. She was wearing a pale pink tank top from American Eagle that said “vintage motel” with pink rhinestones. She heaved, her belly moving up and down. It was hard and round, a globe. She was 6 months pregnant.

Kelsey’s dad, the lawyer, got a package in the mail. It was from the boyfriend Kelsey had in junior high, the one in prison. He was going to blackmail Kelsey’s parents. In the package were polaroids of her naked, them having sex. There were more.

It was later when Kelsey would be riding in the car with her mom. “Kelsey….when is the last time you had your period?” She asked. Kelsey responded , “I don’t know, Mom.” They yelled at each other a little. “Kelsey, I think that you are pregnant” the Mother said finally. It was their secret. They would stay overnight, out of State. I felt crushing relief when Chelsea told me.

This is how we breed. At the time I realized as much about it, as I did about how it started. Kelsey is only a month older than me, the popular senior 3 years, the local jail celebrity, 4. Kelsey’s aborted baby’s father, 5. I give in, emerged feral from childhood. I need them, all of these huddled people, walking backwards. “Please tell me I am doing this right.”

Some weeks are about rising above, and others rumination, uncertainty. I’m here, running my tongue over it again, a shape I know.

By Rabbit White | Posted in Feature | Comments (3)

How do you Know your Gender? Behind the Scenes of the Man Project

2010-07-16 – 09:13

Known as “the man with a pussy,” Buck Angel has become a cultural icon. He’s a successful porn star—who’s addressed audiences at Yale University. Angel does the talk-show circuit, but when he took Howard Stern up on a dare to ride the Simian Sex Machine, the joke was squarely on Stern.

Angel is redefining gender and educating us all on the fluidity of sexuality and gender identity politics—and it’s not about what’s between your legs. Angel is 100 percent guy. He identifies as a man, and has thought long and hard about what that means. Everyone’s journey is unique, but his is more unique than most. Here are some excerpts from The Man Project. What he’s learned about gender, and what that means for all of us, may surprise you.

RW: When I pitched this piece to you, I mentioned that the majority of sex writers seem to be women. Why is this?

BA: I don’t think a lot of men care. I don’t think exploring sexuality is an important issue for them. If you think about it the world has been dominated by men. It still is dominated by men. Men don’t have to prove anything, but women do.
Women have to say” look my sexuality is this.”

RW: There’s data that suggests trans people (female to male) report a different inner sexual experience after the transition; from a biological side they want to “top” more. The way they view sex has changed.

BA: I’m doing a feature film on that specific topic: transmen and their partners and how the hormones have affected their sexuality. I believe 100 percent that the hormones are that powerful. Every guy I’ve interviewed has had the same experiences. Sometimes their sexuality changed. Where before they were just into women, now they are into women and men. Or now they’re just into men and identify as gay. Their sexual drive has changed. Their turn-ons and turn-offs have changed. That’s just hormones in your body and how that can literally change the way your mind thinks about sex.

RW: How did you experience the transition?

BA: I think and act, interact totally different from how I did when I was female and had little testosterone in my body. Even though I was a very masculine female. But I was much more sensitive, I cried easier. I looked at things differently my sexuality. My sex drive was intense for a woman. But I would say it is much more intense for me now. And the way I view things sexually has changed

RW: How so?

BA: Little things turn me on. I notice myself looking at her tits through her shirt and getting totally turned on by that for no reason. That would have never happened to me before the hormones. Sometimes I just think, I don’t know dirty thoughts. I wonder how that woman’s underwear smells after she’s been on that bicycle seat for an hour. I would have never done that before and that’s from testosterone.

RW: So I know that before you transitioned, you considered yourself a dyke. Coming from that community, what do you think of genderqueer as an identity, which seems to see gender as something that floats on a spectrum.

BA: Yeah, that is out there. The problem that I have is that I think a lot of people are changing for the wrong reason meaning female to male transsexuals. Feeling masculine doesn’t make you a man.

RW: I’ve often wondered if some aspects of the genderqueer politics (rejecting the notion of two genders) could be seen as disrespectful to transpeople.

BA: My gender was a life or death situation for me. The fact that people are molding or unmolding their gender so easily takes away from the fact that it is a life threatening situation for us. If I am fighting to get out of this body because I believe I’m male what does that mean? That means gender exists. At the same time, I tell people instead of looking at someone as a gender, look at them as a person. People are so obsessed with gender. And with sexuality: are you gay are you straight are you bi. I think people are attracted to people.

RW: I am curious how you experienced your inherent maleness.

BA: I’m a man. I do believe that is inherent. Though you have certain aspects of yourself that are more masculine or feminine. I believe that I’ve always had a more masculine part. And I was pushed back from exploring that. Very masculine women are not accepted in society. The dykes and the hard core ones get pushed the hardest. People don’t like to see very masculine women or they don’t want to see very feminine men.

RW: Part of what we’re skating around is that it’s hard to define. So many parts of us are fluid. We all have masculine parts, but then there’s the part that makes you “you.” And there’s biology there. There’s psychology there…

BA: When someone asks me the question what does it mean to be a man, it’s really difficult to answer.

RW: As a philosophical question, I can’t answer what it means to be a woman.

BA: It’s a very weird question because it means something different for everyone. For me, it means my physical body is now in tune to my inner being. Now I can look at myself in the mirror, now I can take my clothes off, now I can interact with people and feel like they’re looking at me. To me, that’s what it means to be a man—that my outer body resembles a genetic male body.

RW: What have you learned about masculinity, living as a woman?

BA: To be honest with you, the best thing to happen to me as a man was to live as a woman. I wouldn’t have said that before, but now I feel it was a blessing in disguise: to have experienced life from a woman’s eyes in society. Now I am a much more sensitive man. I’m not embarrassed to talk about things that turn me on or that might be a little weird. I don’t think a lot of straight men feel comfortable talking about their sexuality—not so much their sexuality, but what turns them on and how they feel. I think there is a misconception of men. They are more emotional than society lets them be.

Why do you think transsexual male-to-female porn is the number two in the industry? Number one is gay. Who is the consumer of transsexual women’s porn? Straight men. It’s a way for them to suck cock or get fucked. They don’t have the tools or the freedom socially to say, “Hey, I’d like to suck a cock a little once in a while, and that’s okay.”

By Rabbit White | Posted in Interview | Comments (7)

Falling in Friendship: The Intensity of Girl Friends

2010-07-15 – 13:28

It was exciting and awkward, spending the night with a friend for the first time. The smell of the house, the routines, the furniture. They were new worlds.

The next morning when Lila and I were awake, we stayed in bed, talking, rolling to change positions every so often. We made up jokes to write in notes and studied each other’s limbs. “Look at our hip-bones. They do the same weird thing when we lay this way.”

I still know her by memory. The constellation of teeny freckles, the lines stressed on her skinny stomach and her many looks: hair blonde and wavy, then dyed straight and black.

Monday at school, I wrote her a note. “Hey girl, Whats up? Not much here, just chillin” they used to begin. Later, “Dear Lila” in curling cursive, dotted with stars.

We hung out in graveyards. We snuck out to drink in boy’s cars, and made fun of them from the backseat , Lila would lie when they’d ask questions. Sometimes with a cigarette dangling , sometimes lighting bowls–a practice new and foreign in it’s customs.

Lila was 14 and I was 15. She was fearless. She had a depth I felt enveloped by. That I fell into, thirsty.

It was October and Lila’s mom, Benna, wanted to go water skiing. We sat in the back of the boat, the mucky river spraying, the breeze in our hair. Lila helped Benna from falling as she slid on the skis. When we got back to the car, all of the beer had been drunk and Lila’s parents had gotten louder. They were yelling in slurs.

“Could you not, in front of her,” Benna nodded toward me. “Oh she knows all about this. Everyone knows her parents drink. Everyone knows about her uncle, that he’s a drug addict” Lila’s dad slurred.

When I looked at Lila she was crying, I cried too reaching for her hand. I don’t remember how, but we decided to jump out of the car. Lila pulled open the door handle and we flew out, dropped onto the side of the highway.

It was an hour from home. We walked into a package store and called a boy who said he couldn’t get us. We found a park and Benna was there, mascara under her eyes. I think she jumped out too.

I didn’t know how to tell Lila I belonged to her, but somehow I think she knew. I was going to save her.

We weren’t like the rest of the girls. We bonded over rock songs, we gleaned our parent’s records and later stole punk CD’s. We cut the crotch out of fishnets to wear as tops. It was becoming confusing…whose body, whose ideas were whose.

At lunch we walked to her Grandma Bitsy’s who made us plates of spaghetti. After, we hung out in the small, musty bathroom until it was time to go back. One day when Lila was peeing there were red gashes all over her thighs. White bandages hung on the puffy lines. “I did it in the bath-tub.” She said.

There were things I wanted to say, but we were no longer saying anything. Lila’s eyes glazed when we were together. I read her diary. She wrote about her family, that she was depressed, annoyed with me, with my new boyfriend. One day she called me to say she’d been out with her old best friend. They’d gotten drunk and made out.

I was jealous. I knew that when we spooned or bathed in swim-suits that it was flirty, that it made me feel warm. But she had crossed that line with someone else, the blurred thing that maybe made it a relationship.

There was a break-up. It rippled through me, stones skipping on my heart. I ripped out diary entries. I wrote her poems. When months passed and I felt broken, I chastised myself. I must have been in love with her.

I went away to college and met girls who I felt excited about. Girls I wanted to fall right into. But I was guarded. I assumed they’d hurt me, or that I would fall in love, that on my end it was sexual. I fell anyway, hitting old wounds, trying over and over to get it right.

I was in love with Lila, in the most innocent way, as a friend. This is okay. When we’d see each other again, it lacked spark. Maybe it’s because friendships don’t last forever, yet we are obsessed with dual lifetime bonds. And this can’t happen, or shouldn’t happen as people change and grow.

But in any relationship you can’t put your own happiness or completion on one person, on anyone besides yourself. And lack of communication, of honesty is slowly poisonous. I couldn’t save Lila. But I hope that she knows, in the same small town, driving under the same stars that she can save herself.

By Rabbit White | Posted in Feature | Comments (10)

The Divorce Pill: Birth Control Effects Your Doctor Doesn’t Know

2010-07-14 – 08:33

When Karen decided to go off the pill, her relationship wasn’t going well. She had a husband whose depression hung heavy, dampening the air. Karen began noticing a putrid smell, emanating from her husband. “I couldn’t stand to be close to him because he smelled so bad, it wasn’t what we call body odor, it smelled like a soured clothes…so naturally that is what I thought it was.”

But after digging through his laundry, she had a dizzying realization… the smell suffocating her space was her husband.

Karen could no longer muster a simple attraction. Warmth began to dissipate. A divorce ensued. Later, stumbling across research about pheromones and birth control, it clicked.

In Clause Wedekind’s study, women were given t-shirts that had been worn by men. They were asked to smell the shirts to report attraction. They found women were attracted to men with a different MHC level than their own, and repulsed by one too similar. The theory is this delicate difference of pheromones makes the healthiest offspring.

But, oddly women taking oral contraceptives lost this sense of attraction. Not only could she no longer sniff out her best match, she became actively attracted to men with a similar MHC level, closer to her own genes.

When Karen let a male friend vent about a recent break-up, it sounded familiar. “Had she recently gone off the pill?” She asked. When the answer was yes– she was convinced. “That is when I started calling it the divorce pill” Karen says.

Studies on MHC have gained popularity thanks to authors like Jena Pincott of, Do Gentleman Really Prefer Blondes “There is more interest in whether or not birth control is the right thing if you are in your twenties or thirties and haven’t found the right guy yet” Pincott says. She also states she is pro-birth control and doesn’t give specific advice on the pill, “I think what women need to bear in mind when hearing these studies is that effects are statistically significant, but they are generalities.”

But it wasn’t just Wedekind’s study that perked women’s senses. Pincott brings up the “famous lap-dance study” which found that strippers not on birth control made more than those who were on the pill–which suppresses ovulation. Further, Pincott points out “men tipped women who were ovulating significantly more than they did the same women when they weren’t. It might be behavioral, the way we look or smell.”

Or it could be the beauty-phenomenon of ovulation. “During ovulation we think we are prettier and independent observers find that we do look more attractive; our faces more symmetrical, lips plumper” Pincott says. This was explained by a study where men rated photos of women with and without make-up. The men consistently rated the women with make-up as more beautiful, except when the women were ovulating. Then the men rated them as the same.

But if you were to ask your OB-GYN about this you’d probably be met with a blank stare. Dr. Duana Welch, a social-psychology professor and blogger explains “Medical doctors are looking only at your physiology, not your psychology.” She advises that women be an advocate for themselves when considering birth control.

I spoke to several medical doctors and none were familiar with the research. Dr. Vanessa Cullins, VP for Planned Parenthoood said in a phone interview: “Ovulation is only important is if you want to become pregnant, in fact not ovulating protects you against ovarian cancer.” On the other end of the speculum, Beth Battaglino-Cahill the executive VP for the National Women’s Health Resource Center finds some value in ovulation: “It is important to know your own cycle.”

Welch and Pincott assert that ovulation has it’s benefits “I do not take an anti-pill stance, but I think birth control changes women psychologically.” She warns, women who have an MHC similar to their partner’s have a very high affair rate, as was found by a study from The University of New Mexico. “ We tend to focus on the more physical changes such as weight gain, but it makes us prefer men who match a genetic profile more like that of our father or brother.”

But nixing birth control is clearly not smart advice. Paranoid singles could sign up for GenePartner or ScientificMatch which pair couples by genetic compatibility. Or take Dr. Welch’s advice, make the date and when you say hello“lean in close and slowly inhale.” As of now, there are only two doctor recommended non-hormonal choices: A non-hormonal IUD or condoms.

The take-away for Dr. Mark Hathaway of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals is more uneasy. “The fact that we divide birth control into hormonal and non hormonal is not helpful, we should help women find methods that are best for them.”

The advent of the pill and hormonal birth control was revolutionary, without a doubt one of the greatest things to happen in the last century. Our birth control options are still evolving and unfortunately, we don’t have a male birth control pill to rely on the guys. We also can’t rely on them to smell our MHC’s. They can’t. The ability to smell your soul-mate is purely a female phenomenon.

By Rabbit White | Posted in Feature | Comments (20)

Boys on the Side: The Ones I Have Led on

2010-07-09 – 09:55

There’s got to be a moment when it switches on. But in that moment, I assume it’s great conversation, or I don’t assume anything, basking in the electricity of my own voice, the mirrored image of my lashes batting.

On this night, I felt it, a current prickled beneath my skin. It was after dinner at a friend’s house. Adam and I were sitting across from each other, knees bumping, talking too loud. He complimented me and I shared overly intimate of details of my life. The figure of my husband, Ned and other guests on the couch washed away.

Adam snapped a finger. “I know who you remind me of… Julie Greene!” He stood, smiling for a second, then wincing taken a-back. “Oh man. That girl.”

That girl. Leading him on. Sleeping in his bed, leaving the pillow-case smelling like cigarettes and hairspray and flowers. A reminder that she was untouchable. That he worshiped her.

I was a Julie Greene. This was the magnet. I realized in that moment Adam was someone I could easily dip into lukewarm, familiar waters with, there to admire my own reflection as I pulled him in deeper. And I didn’t want that to happen.

Male attention lulls me. I’m not sure when it started. As a child, I fell in love often but I was barely able to look boys in the eye, playing footsie under the desk. I didn’t get my first kiss or boyfriend until age 14. But I wonder if I am addicted to it, to being wanted. “You made me fall in love with you” was how the ex put it.

We were in high-school. I was a senior, he was a sophomore. My real boyfriend was older, a college drop out working as a convenience store clerk. He had an apartment where I’d go to eat bowls of cereal and lay around. When I went home at night, it was the sophomore I called, pulling the covers over my face. “Tell me more about what you think of me.”

Eventually, we’d start having sex. Our relationship was a pull of intimacy and icy detachment, not allowing him the title of “girlfriend”. We’d get into violent fights then he’d go out and drink, taking mouthfuls of blue and white pills. He totaled four cars while we were together.

I had a lot of answers for how he was wrong. I was victim to his rage and abuse. I never said I wanted a relationship with him.

Recently, an old friend-or-flame floated into my life. Rolf. I once took him on a long train ride to visit my parents. We drank mini-bottles of red wine, patches of gold and turquoise blurring past. We slurred about poetry, the books we would write together. There had been many times he confessed his love, in letters or poems, or loudly, a little too drunk and unable to hold it back. Seeing him standing in my childhood kitchen, smelling like bonfire and pot-smoke, I felt safe.

That night, we slept side by side. At 7 a.m. my mom stomped down the stairs and asked “did you two have sex?” “No!” we flipped over.

I kept him around and thought “maybe someday”. When asked, I acted repulsed by the idea. I thought of how we slept, sexless, our bodies hot and packed into his twin-bed. When I would feel his hand, heavy and warm on my back, I’d wriggle. “I hate those giant hands! I wish they would just fall right off his wrist. They will never have me.”

When Ned met him, he was confused: “I mean he is a lot like me. He is smart, a critical thinker. He’s creative and interesting. He is bi and attractive. Why weren’t you into him?”

I had a few pale answers. I was into him, but not. But why I wasn’t with him didn’t matter. What mattered was whether I could trip down the same path. The difference was now, I knew it was a part of me that felt dizzy and ready to fall. I could separate this part from myself, see it.

It’s hard to face your own narcissism, your darkness and faults. When I see Rolf now, a part of me understands the safety of having someone to fall on, to bring validation, to soften the fear of being alone. In our exquisite-anti-relationship, we each held responsibility. But, I inflicted pain upon him, and I got something out of his emotional bruising. In mine and Ned’s dining room, I touch his arm tenderly. I think, “I don’t want to hurt you”. I realize that old patterns, even when faced, are hard to see clearly. But in trying, I am more free, able to appreciate and care for myself, Rolf and all of the boys.

photography by Gordon Ball

By Rabbit White | Posted in Best Of Rabbit Write, Feature | Comments (8)

When Sex-Blogging gets you Fired

2010-07-08 – 08:31

The night before it happened there was a storm. The St. Louis sky bruised dark, knocking out trees and windows. A sex blogger, known online as The Beautiful Kind was caught in the web of it, debris cracking her windshield.

The following Monday, she would go back to work and smile, trying to shake it off. She’d pin her long hair in a bun, put on her usual long skirt and glasses and level the dry scream in her throat to the warm “good morning!”

She got in to stillness. The boss tapped her. She needed to be seen in private immediately. “I was told to google you…It took me seconds to find your website. You know this means we are letting you go. How could you put that stuff out there? What were you thinking? I feel like I am talking to a 14-year-old. We are done”

“She didn’t even want to be in the same room as me. She just wanted me gone” The Beautiful Kind (TBK) says over video chat. I tell TBK that losing a job is always a self-esteem jab, but to lose it because of your sexuality must cut deeper. “I mean the slut shaming is what’s really bothering me. I’m running around painting people’s houses, pet sitting and figure modeling and doing all of those jobs because I’m a slut, so I don’t deserve to have a job.”

The Internet has forever changed sex. Anyone can now engage anonymously (or non-anonymously) in every kink, chat, turn-on or hook-up imaginable. We each have the opportunity to talk openly in endless spaces about our sexual curiosities, fears and beliefs.

“Now we have all of this information on the kinks and fetishes that are out there. I feel like it’s a runaway train that society’s not keeping up with.” says TBK.

TBK and the site that got her fired–which doesn’t reveal her “real” name or face– is proof that culture is not keeping up. Proof that sex remains repressed, taboo.

Being a sex-blogger contains a bit of activism, privacy is something to be weighed for the “greater good” of helping shatter sexual repression. TBK knew this too. “I think anything you put online becomes public knowledge. I’ve made that choice and I’m giving people ammunition everyday and not just employers but also my ex partners, my partner’s ex partners.”

It’s not just sex-writers weighing risks. Take, the Craigslist experiment. A guy set up an extreme Craigslist ad, acting as a submissive woman looking for a dominant man. After he was flooded with replies that included photos, phone numbers and real names, he posted all of this information to a website, with the idea that these careless people deserve to be exposed. It could be seen as a lesson in online safety, but it also couldn’t happen in a place where sex was not repressed.

“I think that I think everyone has fetishes and kinks, stuff things that turn them on that they’re not even aware of. So putting it out there, I hope, is helping people move on to realizing their own kinks and fetishes.”

When I tell TBK about the Craigslist experiment, she asks “Have you heard of expose a hoe? It’s a site where they track down escorts and johns to out them.” Apparently Carnal Nation ran an article about this and got a lot of heat for giving it more publicity. “People have been trying to keep it under wraps to protect sex workers” she explains.

But the problem of sexual safety for bloggers might be solved in one of two ways. Perhaps people who run social networking sites will actually lock down privacy, finding effective ways to separate our sexual, social and professional selves. If “Quit Facebook Day” showed anything, it is that we care about this.

Or, perhaps our generation will begin to effectively erase those old sexual stigmas. Just as employers are beginning to expect a social persona online, willing to dismiss keg-party photos, maybe we’ll become adjacently comfortable with sexuality in an online persona.

Really, it seems we will have to. There are so many facets of a human personality, and this is reflected in the avatar of ourselves. Projecting just one part of our personality feels pale . The Internet brings a level of honesty about who we are.

TBK agrees. “If we evolve and realize that people have value even if they like something stuck up their butt or whatever… I would just be so happy.”

photography by Gordon Ball

By Rabbit White | Posted in Feature | Comments (3)

Rabbit on Kink on Tap

2010-07-02 – 10:12

Last week I was a guest on the fabulous KinkOnTap podcast. Which bills itself as “a more thoughtful, heartier, smarter approach to sexuality, society, culture, feminism, and queer activism.” To which I say “cheers.”

Check out the show to hear me talk about why I write about male sexuality, how the swinger scene is bi-phobic, circumcision, foreskin restoration and lots more.

The show was fun, and the only regret I had was not adding more of my thoughts on male circumcision before we moved onto female genital mutilation. When these two issues get get pitted against each other, I think we often forget that male circumcision is also horrifying and a pressing issue. Not to mention one that is close to home, that we can do something about.

As I said on Twitter : “I don’t want anyone to feel bad about their penis, circumcised or not but there is nothing wrong with learning & grieving your damage…I think most guys don’t lament the lack of a foreskin, because they don’t know what having one actually does for them, or changes.”

That might bring up more questions than it answers, but let’s save them for the next time I’m a guest!

By Rabbit White | Posted in Blurb | Comments (5)

Marriage & Last Names, or That Time I Legally Changed Mine

2010-07-02 – 09:55

In grade-school, as summer vacation came to a close, my body felt sun-sick and lazy. Ready for change. I wondered what everyone was like now. New clothes, haircut, lingo. Who would I be this year? I lived in the kind of town where front yards were gaps of grass between mud-streaked toys and random toilets or bathtubs. There were kids who came back without new school supplies and kids who came back as someone else entirely, correcting the new teacher with their new name.

Usually it was a new last name, or what was assumed to have once been a middle name. In fifth grade, a skinny, gummy-mouthed girl just changed the pronunciation of her name. “I’m not Tabitha anymore. I’m Tab-EYE-tha now.”

When I am at a cocktail party or networking event, a drink in one hand the other outstretched in handshake, I say my full name: Rachel Rabbit White. It brings the same sort of reaction I imagine Tab-eye-tha would. After an awkward moment of processing, people want to know what kind of parents I had. “No, my parents didn’t name me. I did, I changed my name legally.”

I changed my name, like the tradition goes, when I got married. But instead of taking Ned’s name or creating an unfortunate meld of our parents last names, we made a new one. White. Pure. Clean slate. New beginning.

It’s been estimated that about 90% of married women take their husband’s name. That’s actually more women than in the feminist-laced 70′ and 80′s. According to a study by Harvard professor Claudia Goldin, the number of college-educated women in their 30s keeping their name has dropped from 23 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2000. Like many gendered traditions kept alive, there’s an urge to shrug it off as: “feminism is about choice”. But the sour taste left is palpable.

Keeping your maiden name was once more than a feminist stance, it was a movement. In 1850 a suffragette in Massachusetts named Lucy Stone decided to keep her name when she married Henry Blackwell. Not without reason, Lucy Stone is is clearly a cut and a half above the homely Lucy Blackwell.

In 1921 the Lucy Stone League was founded by women devoting themselves to the “preservation of women’s names.” And they are still going with a website, that pronounces in a goofy font: “Until naming practices are equal, women will not be considered equal to men in the U.S. In fact, the measure of naming should be used as an index of the real freedom of women and girls in our society. The primary effect of the Lucy Stone League is to encourage women to keep their birth names…”

Where the Lucy Stone arguments fall, winded after a minute on the soapbox, is in the value on the family name as though it is more meaningful, as tie to something personal, uniquely you. While we share things like genetics, history and Christmases with our families, they are random. Placing blind importance on family doesn’t hold up in the modern world, where you create your life, your family and often your name. On a more obvious note, family names are just as sexist, denoting the same old world ownership to the patriarch.

The tradition of women taking their fathers and husbands names goes back, unsurprisingly, to the bible. A google search yields that the main reasons are: to protect wealth and family, acknowledge god’s presence in the marriage and to signify a new life direction. When one found a new life purpose, this was announced by a change of name.

One of the things I love about subverting traditions and gender roles it’s that you can choose which traditions you find charming and which you want to reject. When I changed my name, it was changing with the interior, making my name something I felt comfortable in. It was a new life direction.

As I sat in those grade-school classrooms, in hot Septembers without air conditioning, I felt a tinge of jealousy and wonder in these kids. Where did they find the courage to stand up and say, call me _________ now.

With the Internet, we can all casually change our names. Choosing the name that feels right is for everyone, not just writers or budding starlets. Before I changed my name legally I was already Rabbit White online. So when Ned became Edmund X White, it was a secret feminist maneuver, him taking my real name, really.

By Rabbit White | Posted in Feature | Comments (10)

Exploring Sex Toys for Men

2010-07-01 – 09:39

Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:24 — 1.5MB)

txt:

I don’t think we really allow men to really explore their sexuality. When they do they are seen as “icky” to an extent, in turn male sex toys are seen as “icky.” I wonder if guys themselves afraid of sex toys. A majority of men’s sex toys are made to stimulate the prostate, anal toys. In our culture it seems exploring anal stimulation sparks homophobia. I think the new homophobia is a more personally directed fear. As LGBTQ becomes mainstream, so does the awareness that gay-bashing is not okay. So instead of “you are a fag” it becomes, “Well its okay for you, but I’M not gay.” It becomes this paranoia about your own sexuality.

But beyond guys being scared, are we scared of guys that use sex toys? It’s a weird double standard. There is such a friendly attitude toward vibrators but with male masturbation-sleeves it’s a resounding “ewww”. The only legitimate “ew” issue with sleeves is clean-up but you can buy ones that are easier to clean. Fleshlights are easy to clean, there are sleeves you can boil. So that argument really doesn’t stand up for me.

With sleeves it sometimes seems like we are seeing the toy as a disembodied vagina and that is what makes it weird or gross. And I don’t think that we think of dildos this way, so I’ve got to wonder why. I think maybe it’s because we objectify women. We put value on a woman’s body, on her looks. In porn, all we see are disembodied penises, we don’t care about ogling the whole man or putting him on a pedestal. A dildo is a toy.

I think “sleeves are icky” is a result of the male version of the madonna/whore dichotomy. Either you are a good, nice guy or you are mechanical, you want a hole to fuck. And guys who use sleeves get painted with the “hole to fuck” stereotype.

A new study came out about vibrator use and men by Michael Reese and Debra Herbenik. This was a follow-up to their study last year which found that 45% of men reported having used a vibrator. This time they studied gay and bi men and dug into how they use vibrators and when. The vast majority was anal use. Most of guys agreed that vibrators increased arousal, pleasure, and orgasm, but they didn’t strongly agree with these statements.

A post on About.com noted that last part was interesting Because, according to the author so often people talk about sex toys as this life altering experience that will solve all of your problems and that’s really not what it is.

It’s hard to justify the price of sex toys. How many times do you really use it? But I think it should be looked at as entertainment. As an experience. Not this sex-life changing thing. And it’s an experience that I think men, like everyone, should be able to freely explore.

By Rabbit White | Posted in Podcast | Comments (7)