CHAPTER 8

IT’S COMPLICATED

NOW THAT YOU’RE LEARNING TO MASTER THE BASICS OF sexual communication, it’s time to talk about sex itself—or rather, common sexual situations that can, well, make things a little more complicated. As you’ll find, as long as you have access to accurate information; stay in touch with your needs, desires, and boundaries; remember your risk assessment tools; and use direct communication, you’ll be able to manage whatever challenges come your way on the road to what you really really want.

But before we get messy, check in: How are you doing with your daily writing? Are you still practicing weekly body love? The more complicated that things get, the more important it is to use these simple rituals to stay grounded.

ARE THERE RULES?

When it comes to pursuing and enjoying sexual relationships, nearly everyone will tell you that you’ve got to play a good game. Trouble is, no one can agree on the rules. Don’t call him; let him call you. Never have sex before the third date. Laugh at all her jokes, even if you don’t really think they’re funny. There are so many rules that you never ever know if your rules match the rules of the person you’re trying to play “the game” with. It’s entirely possible that you don’t even agree on what the prize is if you win. Which is why you should play only by rules that make sense to you, whether or not your prospective partner agrees.

In other words: Don’t play games because you think you have to, or you’re expected to, or no one will want you otherwise. It’s bunk. In all likelihood, the object of your affection is trying to figure out what rules you’re playing by so they can play by them, too, causing the two of you to circle each other in an endless loop of second-guessing. What’s worse, even if you do manage to attract someone’s attention by playing what you’ve convinced yourself is the right game, you won’t know if that person is actually attracted to you, because you won’t be acting from an authentic place.

(It’s worth also saying that you shouldn’t play games in order to manipulate or control your partner, either. We’ll be talking more about that in chapter 9.)

You want to play flirty, coy games because they’re fun for you? Have at it. You want to be a bold seductress or play hard to get because that dynamic turns you on? Go for it. But make sure you’re acting on behalf of yourself, in pursuit of what you really really want. In all things, be real. Even if you’re playing games.

Dive In: Make a list of sexual rules that make sense to you. They can be specific and directive (“No oral sex for people who won’t reciprocate”), general guidelines (“Whatever I do is okay, as long as I feel safe”), or more creative (“When all else fails, I ask myself: What Would Cleopatra Do?”). Have fun!

THE BLOWJOB PARADOX

Riddle me this: Why are women who give blowjobs often treated as though they’re doing something demeaning, while men receiving those blowjobs are seen as doing something awesome? For that matter, why do we have the same attitude toward women who are on the receiving end of anal sex, or who “tea bag” (put a guy’s balls in their mouth)? And why are those same activities—receiving anal sex and performing oral sex (especially on other men) considered “feminine” and demeaning when men do them? This, my friends, is the “blowjob paradox.”

Time and again, our culture treats the traditionally “female” role as one to avoid. You can even see it in our curse words: Why is being a cocksucker a bad thing? Why is someone who’s been taken advantage of said to have been “fucked over”? And someone who’s had a bad situation forced on them told they’ve had to “take it up the ass”? What about when guys bully other guys for being weak or timid by calling them “pussies”? And, by the same token, say someone has “balls” if they’re assertive and strong? It all stems from the idea that women should neither enthusiastically enjoy sex nor be assertive about our desire, so if we’ve agreed to do anything more creative than “lie back and think of England,” we’ve obviously been forced to do it in order to please a man.

There’s nothing inherently demeaning about a blowjob (or any other sexual activity, for that matter). As long as both partners are enthusiastically consenting, why would one person be degraded and the other elevated? Besides, blowjobs aren’t even necessarily submissive—it’s all in how you and your partner approach them. As Gray puts it, “In my mind, if I’m doing something to someone that’s making their toes curl, I consider myself the person in power. I am the person doing things. I’m the active agent.”

Blowjobs (and other “coded female” sex acts) are only demeaning if you or your partner experiences them as such. If you feel like you have no choice but to give your partner a blowjob, even though you don’t want to? That’s degrading. But it has nothing to do with cocksucking itself, and everything to do with the way your partner is treating you.

Dive In: Make a list of sex acts that you’ve seen treated as demeaning or degrading. Now pick one you enjoy, or think you would enjoy. Spend five minutes writing about that sex act. What do you like about it? How does (or would) it make you feel? Don’t hold back: Be as elaborately specific as you can, and as enthusiastic as you want to be. When you feel you’ve run out of things to say, complete this sentence: There’s one more thing I want to say about this, and it’s:___________.

BAD KISSING (AND OTHER MISFORTUNES)

So. You’re on a date, or hanging out with the object of your affection. Maybe it’s been an hour, maybe it’s been a week, maybe it’s been a year, but for however long, you’ve known. You’ve just known you want to kiss this person. And then the moment finally arrives, and you lean in, and the music in your mind swells, and your lips touch and . . .

Ick. Too slobbery, too dry, funny tasting, bad breath, too tense, too aggressive, too flaccid—whatever the problem, a bad kiss is like an off-season tomato—it can be worse than no kiss at all.

The really tricky thing about a bad kiss is what happens next. Since you’ve gotten this far in the book, it probably won’t surprise you at this point that the answer is “it depends.” More specifically, it depends on three things:

1. How invested are you in this person?

The more invested you are in developing a sexual or romantic relationship with the Bad Kisser, the more motivated you’ll be to somehow get past the bad kissing.

2. How likely are you to be able to improve the situation?

Age and experience are two factors when it comes to an individual’s willingness to improve their smoochability. But you also have to consider their personality and temperament. Are they curious by nature? Do they like to try new things? How much of their ego is invested in being “good” at sexual or romantic things? Also, consider your relationship. Do you already trust each other? Are you someone from whom this person can take careful criticism?

3. How bad is the kissing, really?

Is it just a slightly disappointing kiss, perhaps paling in comparison with one from a champion kisser you’ve locked lips with before? Or is it a big problem, the kind that makes your body tense up and all your circuits sound the alarm?

 

Whatever your answers are to those three questions, you’ve got three options for action:

1. Suck it up.

Maybe you’re madly in love with this person already and the problem isn’t all that bad. Or maybe it is that bad but your desire to be with them trumps whatever the problem is. Sometimes the person of your dreams may have a subpar pucker. There are worse things that could happen.

2. Try to change it.

So, you don’t want to bail on the person, but the problem is bad enough that you don’t want to live with it, either. Like any criticism, it will go down better with a spoonful of sugar. I like to use the “shit sandwich” method, which involves wedging whatever challenging feedback you need to convey between two slices of positive affirmation. In this case, that might sound something like this: “I really love being close to you. But I’ve noticed, when we kiss? You kind of tense up your lips. Do you think you could try to relax them more, so that I can really feel how soft and delicious they are?”

See what I did there? Nothing makes difficult news go down more easily than compliments. Just make sure to pick some that you mean—nothing makes difficult news go down worse than false sentiment.

Another thing to note about what I did in that example is that I got very specific. I didn’t say, “You kiss kinda funny.” I didn’t even say, “Can you just chill out more?” I was very specific both about what was going wrong for me and about how I hoped it could go differently. This gives your partner something concrete to work with, and it also helps them avoid feeling like they’re just terrible at kissing in general.

A lot of mistakes people make in the kissing department may be related to performance anxiety. Ideally, sexual interactions should be more like playful explorations and improvisational communication than like some kind of judged Olympic competition, but the reality is that your partner may have absorbed messages to the contrary.

Which is a great point to keep in mind if your partner takes your feedback badly. If this happens, reassure your partner that kissing preferences are totally subjective! You’re not saying they are bad at kissing, you’re just saying that you would like kissing even better if they considered trying it a new way.

If that doesn’t work, you may have to backpedal, or you might have to sit down and really hash things out. Be empathetic—nobody wants to hear they don’t make you weak in the knees—but don’t forget that it’s important to speak up for your needs in a sexual relationship, as long as you do so in a spirit of respect and collaboration. If you approach it that way, and if your partner takes the same approach, this is a mere bump in the road, even if it feels a little rocky at the time. And if your partner can’t deal with the fact that they aren’t utterly perfect, perhaps they’re not the best partner for you after all.

3. That brings us to your third option: Leave.

If you’re not that invested in this partner, or if kissing is really that bad, it’s totally legitimate to move on. Chemistry is important. If you kiss someone and it doesn’t make you want to kiss them more? Maybe you shouldn’t be kissing that person. It doesn’t mean they’re not a good person, or that you don’t find them attractive. It simply means something’s not aligned sexually between you.

Pushing yourself to be attracted to someone can lead to a situation where you’re in an emotionally committed relationship but your desire has died out or dwindled. And that’s a much harder problem to deal with than coming to terms with the fact that a person you thought you might have a spark with isn’t making you spark enough.

Of course, if you’re calling something off because the kissing isn’t right, the kind thing to do is not to say this explicitly. Try saying something more general but still true—again, using a shit sandwich. For example: “I just wanted to say that I’ve been having a great time getting to know you, but I’m just not feeling the chemistry I’m looking for. I’m disappointed, actually, because you’re such an excellent person otherwise.” At which point you could even share a couple examples of things you like about the person.

You’ve probably realized that all of this kissing-compatibility advice isn’t limited just to kissing. Sexual desire is a complex and personal thing. Much like a fingerprint, it’s hard to imagine two people wanting the exact same things the exact same ways at all times, sexually speaking. Negotiating the difference between what you want and what your partner wants is a healthy and crucial thing to do. The key is being able to communicate about it. And the kissing principles are good ones to guide you, whatever the issue.

Dive In: Get out your timeline and add some sexual situations you’ve been in where the compatibility just wasn’t where you wanted it to be. Now pick one that you still have feelings about, and write about it in your journal: How did you handle it? How did the other person handle it? How did your approach work or not work? Would you do anything differently if you had it to do over? If so, write an alternate story in which you do it the way you wish you could have. Write it as though it really happened that way. How does that change things?

WHEN YOU AND YOUR BODY DISAGREE

This is a tough one, largely because it’s hard to talk about our bodies’ being separate from ourselves. Because they’re not really, are they? Anything that happens to our bodies happens to us, and it’s a scientific fact that how we’re feeling emotionally can affect our physical health. We’re pretty connected to our bodies, and yet sometimes our bodies can feel pretty alien. And that’s confusing, to say the least.

The most extreme example of this is how some people’s bodies respond to sexual violence. Both men and women can, if being sexually assaulted, show signs of arousal. In most women, that means that your vagina may lubricate, your nipples may harden—some people even have an orgasm.

Does their physical response mean they’re consenting to sex? Of course not. There are many theories about why this happens, a popular one being that the body is protecting itself, as a lubricated vagina is less likely to tear or otherwise be physically hurt when something is inserted into it. Whatever the reason, your body may feel turned on when the rest of you doesn’t. That doesn’t mean you’re consenting to anything, much less enthusiastic about it. Real enthusiastic consent happens only when your body and mind are in agreement.

This body-self disconnect can happen in reverse, too. Have you ever liked—even adored—someone so much but weren’t attracted to them, despite how much you wished you would be? Or do you ever find yourself physically attracted to someone you would never want to trust with your emotional safety? That’s your body being out of sync in a different way. There’s nothing wrong with you if this happens, but it is important to avoid trying to convince yourself that you’re attracted to someone just because you think they’re terrific otherwise, or because you’d like to avoid hurting their feelings by rejecting them.

Sometimes your body will just go one way when the rest of you goes another. That can be kind of confusing, but it’s perfectly normal. Because while your body is a part of who you are, it’s not all of you. You get to decide what to do if this split occurs: have a hot fling with someone you want no ongoing emotional relationship with? Invest in a friendship and hope attraction follows? Walk on by, because you want all or nothing? They’re all valid decisions.

On the other hand, if you find that you regularly part ways with your body—say, you hardly ever find yourself physically attracted to someone you actually like as a person, and vice versa—that may be a sign that something larger is amiss, especially if it bothers you. It might signify an attraction to people who treat you badly, which can be a sign that, deep down, that’s how you believe you should be treated, or that’s how you’re used to being treated, so it feels comfortable. It can also be a sign that you’re afraid of being close to someone in a romantic relationship—that physical intimacy combined with emotional intimacy is too intense for you. If that’s the case, you may have some generalized fears to work through from previous emotional injuries. Therapy or counseling can be very useful for addressing these issues, if you have access to it.

Dive In: Write down a few times when your body and the rest of you went different ways. Then pick one and write about it a little, with your dominant hand writing for your body and your nondominant hand writing for the rest of you. Let each of them explain what they wanted in the situation, and why. Let them argue with each other if they want to. Then see if they can come to an agreement about anything related to the situation.

KINKS/BDSM

You’ve probably heard the word “kinky” before. You may or may not know the term “BDSM.” Depending on whom you ask, it stands for some variation of the terms “bondage,” “discipline,” “domination,” “submission,” “sadism,” and “masochism.”

If you feel confused or ashamed because you get turned on by things (or even just the fantasies of things) that you “shouldn’t” be turned on by, the first thing I can tell you is that you’re far from alone. You’d be surprised how many people have “nontraditional” desires. These include wanting to do any of the following: have power over someone, surrender power, be tied up (bondage) or do the tying, have sex in public places (like a dressing room or a train), receive or administer pain (consensually, of course!), verbally degrade your partner or be degraded . . . the list goes on, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you feel like a freak because you want something “weird,” you are not alone. There are many people out there who want the same thing.

One of the most challenging parts of being kinky is that our desires may not match up with our ideals. For example, like most women, you believe that we should be treated with respect by our lovers. And yet you may also, in the privacy of your sexual space, want your lover to do some things that may seem very disrespectful. Like call you a dirty little slut, for example. Or tie you to the bed. Or spank you. Or maybe you want to do these things to others.

Renee, thirty-one, encountered this tension when she met a man who liked to take the reins:

I found his dominance to be quite a turn-on. This confused me a great deal, because I am a strong feminist and exercise power in my daily life better than just about anybody I know. Yet this opportunity to relinquish control intrigued me, and soon this man and I began writing out fantasies to each other in which he dominated me. It was the writing itself that helped me come to terms with this fantasy, sometimes involving ropes, blindfolds, or, in one he wrote, even scissors. What I eventually realized is that creating scenarios in which I surrender my power can be among my most powerful acts. I also figured out a line in my head, which is that while power turns me on, abuse of power does not. In order to surrender in this way, I must be met with love.

The conflict between philosophy and desire can feel charged—and perhaps more so if you’re a survivor of sexual violence and your fantasies run violent. If this tension is troubling you, it may be time for a reframe. Try thinking of sex as a playspace for adults. Time to explore worlds that aren’t real, and perhaps help us process the world around us. Remember when you were a kid on the playground and you’d create entire imaginary worlds and assign each other roles to play? When I was growing up, sometimes we’d take on roles from TV and movies, or make up wild imaginary worlds, or act out variations on themes from the real world, like playing “house” or “office.” Ultimately, we were stepping out of our own reality to see the world from a different perspective—to simultaneously expand and escape our world by breaking its rules.

Sex can be like that, and kinky sex especially—a place to experiment with power, sensation, characters, and experiences that aren’t possible in the rest of your life. Maybe you find it hard to relinquish control most of the time, and sex play affords you the chance to experience helplessness. Or the opposite could be true—it could give you the chance to finally be as in control of everything as you always wished you could be.

Additionally, some survivors of violence find it cathartic to play out “scenes” similar to how they were violated, but in a safe space, with someone they trust, and with the option of calling a stop to the action at any time. That option is not a negligible detail here—psychologically, exploring an old dynamic safely and with new power can be pretty healing. Even if you’ve never been sexually violated, your sex life can be a safe space to explore what can be dangerous or terrifying in real life.

Of course, the key word in that last sentence is “safe.” When you’re playing with power and/or pain, it’s crucial to be able to tell whom you can trust. Responsible kinksters—just like all responsible lovers—are the ones who are interested in your desires, patient with your questions, invested in your safety, and respectful of your boundaries. These folks often rely on a simple motto to guide them: All of their activities should be “safe, sane, and consensual.” By now, you’re probably on your way to developing your own definitions of these words, and tools with which to ensure you and your partners are abiding by them, which is great. To those definitions and tools I’ll add one more that’s kink-specific: the safeword.

The basic idea of a safeword is this: It’s a word you or your partner can use to withdraw consent if you’ve negotiated a scene in which “no” no longer means no. (People sometimes do this in order to play with the dynamics of helplessness and control.) If you’re playing this way, it’s important to have another word—a word unlikely to come up accidentally—that will let the partner in control know that the partner who’s submitting wants to stop. You can use a random, easy-to-remember word that you agree on in advance (like “tofu” or “bubbles” or whatever you like), or you can use the green/yellow/red model, where if you’re fully enthusiastic about what’s happening and your partner checks in, you say “green”; if you’re starting to reach your limit but don’t want the action to stop yet, you can let your partner know by saying “yellow”; and if you want to stop you say “red.”

And safewords are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what kinksters have developed to help encourage folks to engage in direct sexual communication. Says Heidi,

As I’ve gotten more involved in the S&M scene, I’ve realized that there’s no real room for hiding your voice in this community. Because it’s like, no, you need to figure out what you want and how far you want to go. You have to negotiate terms beforehand, which isn’t something I’m used to. I tend to be like, “Oh, whatever you want.” And that just doesn’t work here. It’s really helping me improve communication with potential partners.

In other words: Whether or not your own desires run kinky, there are many ways we can learn from the BDSM community about how best to get what we really really want.

Dive In: There’s a big difference between knowing hypothetically that lots of people are kinky in one way or another and actually connecting with people who practice in a healthy way. Even if you’re not kinky yourself, there’s a lot you can learn from folks who know how to explicitly negotiate pleasure and safety. This week, get more familiar with what’s out there and who’s doing it. Spend at least thirty minutes exploring one or more of the following resources:

• A Kink 101 collection: www.wyrrw.com/kink101

• Clarisse Thorn’s Greatest Hits: www.wyrrw.com/clarissethorn

• Carnival of Kinky Feminists: www.wyrrw.com/kinkcarnival

• Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns, by Philip Miller and Molly Devon

• The New Topping Book and/or The New Bottoming Book, both by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton

• FetLife.com¹

FANTASY VS. REALITY

Of course, sometimes a fantasy is just that: a flight of the imagination. It can be hard to tell which of your fantasies you want to make real and which are better left as masturbation fodder. There’s no great way to tell without trying. But you don’t have to jump in with both feet, either. If you want to explore bringing a fantasy into your sex life, try talking about it with your partner while you’re being sexual. See how you feel—does imagining it together make the experience hotter, or does it make you freeze up or back off? If it gets your blood flowing, try a next, interim step. For example, if you fantasize about tying someone up, see how it feels just to hold them down or loop a scarf loosely around their wrists—something you can back away from quickly if it winds up feeling bad. (Ensure your partner’s enthusiastic consent before trying this, of course!) If it feels good and you’re both still into it, you can go on upping the ante until you’re playing out your fantasy, or until you or a partner hits a comfort threshold.

Rachel, age twenty, learned about diving in too fast when she tried out a fantasy of hers: sex while high. “I had heard it increased sensation and was generally fun, so I brought it up with my girlfriend,” she remembers.

It was something she had also wanted to try. We ate pot brownies, cuddled, and got to business. I had apparently eaten way too much of the brownie, because I periodically forgot who my girlfriend was and what was happening. I kept thinking she might be the man who sexually assaulted me. We stopped, and luckily I didn’t have a full-blown panic attack, but it’s not something I’ve ever wanted to try again.

It’s also important to consider whose fantasies you’re bringing to life. This question goes all the way back to chapters 1 and 3, in which you considered the many influences that have shaped how you think about sexuality and started to adjust them so that they sounded more like you and less like other people’s agendas for you. Hopefully you’ve got that balance much closer to where you want it to be by now, but when it comes to fantasy, it’s good to check in. Because the virgin/slut dichotomy is so ingrained in our culture, women with whom the “innocent” label doesn’t resonate may believe that the only other valid option for expressing their sexuality is to be as “wild,” sexually speaking, as possible. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing wrong with being sexually wild, as long as you’re doing it on your own terms and taking on only the risks you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to be “up for anything” in order to be loved, or to find a satisfying sex partner. Your satisfaction depends on your developing a specific, authentic sexual identity and finding partners that want you where you are, as opposed to expecting you to fit some kind of porn-fueled fantasy of what a sexual woman should be like. Yet another reason to take it one step at a time when exploring fantasies—you may find out along the way that they don’t belong to you in the first place.

You may also find that some fantasies feel great when you’re enacting them, but not so good afterward. It’s hard to know when or why this will happen. For some, playing with fantasy dynamics that would be toxic if they were “real” can be liberating and satisfying, and for others, these same play dynamics (say, having your lover say humiliating things to you) may feel hot at the time but can wind up reinforcing the damaging beliefs you have about yourself that you’re trying to shed. If you find this to be true, it’s important to include that in your risk assessment when considering whether and how to play with that dynamic again.

Dive In: Write a list of five sexual fantasies that you’ve never tried in reality. Circle the one that turns you on the most when you think about it and the one that scares you the most. (They may be the same one, or different ones.) Now pick one of the ones you’ve circled, and write out a plan for trying it with a partner. What would your first step be? If that feels good, what would be the second step? How would you know if you and your partner each wanted to try more, and how would you know when you’d had enough? What are the risks in trying out your fantasy, and how can they be managed or minimized? What are the potential rewards?

DISCLOSING

Do you ever struggle with sharing information with your partner in terms of your sex life? Maybe it’s admitting to a fantasy. Or telling them you have an STD. Maybe it’s disclosing a trauma history, or your insecurity about being less experienced than your partner expects, or more experienced. Perhaps you’re a sex worker, or used to be one. Maybe you’re transgender. Maybe you have a mental or physical situation that’s not readily apparent but will affect the way you have sex. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

If this is the case, and you worry that your partner will respond poorly to your disclosure, these questions can be useful and clarifying:

• What are the risks to me if I bring this up? How likely are those risks to happen? Are there ways to reduce those risks?

• What are the risks to me if I don’t bring this up before we have sex? How likely are those risks to happen? Are there ways to reduce those risks without telling my partner about this?

• What are the risks to my partner if I don’t bring this up before we have sex? How likely are those risks to happen? Are there ways to reduce those risks without telling my partner about this?

• What are the benefits to me if I bring this up before we have sex? What about during? What about after or later? What are the benefits to me if I never bring it up?

Sound familiar? You’re basically doing a risk analysis, just as you would for any other risky situation. And don’t forget what you already know about risk: Every sexual scenario carries some. The question is, which risks seem like the right ones for you? And how can you minimize them?

In a practical sense, I encourage you to be honest with your partner when it seems possible. Lying is usually wrong, and hiding things can be exhausting. Disclosure gives you the opportunity to learn things about your partner. Do you want to be with someone who responds badly when you’ve shared something personal and important? On the other hand, if your partner responds well, it can build trust and intimacy between you, which can make sex better and strengthen your connection—whether it’s a long-term affair or a fleeting hookup.

How and when to disclose depends on how urgent and risky the matter is. Unfortunately, those two often go hand in hand. One thing I’ve had to disclose for a long time is that I’m a survivor of sexual assault. At first, when I was just starting to have sex again after the assault, it was extremely important to me to tell partners about it before we did anything sexual. I felt fragile and volatile; I wanted to start reclaiming my body and sexuality, but I never knew when some small moment or gesture would trigger trauma memories. But at the same time, it was terrifying to tell partners so soon, because how they reacted mattered a lot to me. Today, eighteen years later, it’s both less risky and less urgent for me to share.

Dive In: Write a list of any things about you that you’d prefer your sex partners to know but that are sometimes challenging for you to disclose. Then do a risk assessment on each of them, using the questions above. Be as detailed as you can be. Once you’ve completed that, write out what you think is the best time and approach to disclose to your partners. Then write a backup plan: If you don’t achieve your ideal, for any reason, what’s the next-best approach?

UNWANTED PAIN

For some of us, the obstacles to satisfying sex are more physical. Some people experience mild to intense pain when anything is inserted into their vagina. If you’ve tried vaginal penetration more than once and it just consistently hurts, you may be suffering from one of several very real medical conditions, including vulvodynia or vaginismus. If you suspect this might be the case for you, the first thing you should remember is that vaginal penetration isn’t the only way to have sex! Experiment with other ways to please yourself and your lover. In the meantime, seek out medical help, because there are treatments available that can reduce or eliminate your pain. You may have to be persistent—not all doctors are familiar with these conditions or know how to treat them. For a listing of doctors that women have found helpful, as well as other resources, information, and support, I encourage you to check out www.wyrrw.com/vulvodynia or the book Healing Sexual Pain, by Deborah Coady, MD, and Nancy Fish, MPH.

The other common cause of unwanted physical pain during sex is anal sex. If you’re the “enveloping” or “receiving” partner during anal sex and it hurts, one of several things may be amiss:

1. You’re not using enough lube. There’s no such thing as too much lube when it comes to anal sex! But be sure to use a water- or silicone-based lube if you’re using a condom—oil-based lube will break down the latex and make it useless as a safer-sex barrier.

2. You may not be relaxed enough, and/or you may be going too fast. If you’re enthusiastic about trying anal sex but you find that it hurts, you may need to take it a little slower. Start with one finger, just in the anal opening. Go slowly and gradually, and make sure the penetrating partner backs off any time there’s pain. (If your partner won’t do that, they may not be a good partner to have anal sex with.) Take your time.

3. You may be under pressure. Check in with yourself: Is this something you really want for yourself? Or is this solely your partner’s agenda? A good partner won’t push you into doing anything you don’t want to do and certainly won’t encourage you to keep doing anything that causes unwanted pain.

4. You may have a hemorrhoid (a swollen vein in the anal area) or a tear in the anal lining. If you suspect this is the case—especially if there’s blood—go see your doctor. These are very treatable conditions, as long as you don’t exacerbate them with the friction of anal sex.

If you want to learn more about how to have pleasurable and painless anal sex, check out Tristan Taormino’s The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women.

Dive In: If you’re experiencing unwanted pain during sex—even a kind of pain not described here—please use the resources above to get help (including Scarleteen’s Find-a-Doc service: www.wyrrw.com/scarleteenfindadoc), and keep trying new things until the pain stops. Everyone deserves a sex life free of unwanted pain.

IF YOU’VE BEEN VIOLATED

If someone violates your sexual boundaries, it can feel unspeakably awful. It can also be incredibly confusing if it’s someone you trusted enough to have been voluntarily intimate with them. There are entire books about how to recover from sexual violence, including Ellen Bass’s The Courage to Heal and Staci Haines’s Healing Sex, but I want to mention a few things here:

 

It’s not your fault. Not if you were wearing something sexy, or were drunk, or were walking alone by yourself at night. Not if you were flirting with someone, or making out with them, or naked, or fooling around. Nothing you do can ever make sexual violence your fault. If someone ignores your protests, or even doesn’t care enough to notice that you’ve stopped enjoying or participating in whatever is happening, it’s their fault. Always.

 

Tell someone. Seriously. Long before you were assaulted, you were taught that girls and women who get assaulted should feel shame. And that shame may discourage you from telling anyone what happened. But you have done nothing to be ashamed of. The person who violated your body should be ashamed, not you. Don’t let that misplaced shame keep you from getting the support you need or the justice you deserve.

If you’re sexually assaulted by someone you know or your attacker doesn’t fit the stereotype of a “real” rapist—a brutal, violent stranger who tackles you from behind—you may also feel that it somehow “doesn’t count” or isn’t important enough to warrant anyone’s concern. Many survivors of sexual violence do this to themselves, in part due to myths about how rape really happens (as we discussed in chapter 3, most of the time it’s perpetrated by someone you know, not the stranger jumping out of the bushes we’ve been taught to fear), and in part as a way to keep us from holding perpetrators accountable. But every sexual violation is one too many, and every survivor is important. So please: Tell someone. Silence doesn’t negate that it happened. Keeping quiet won’t make you suffer any less, but it may make you suffer more, because you’ll be suffering alone. I have heard so many heartbreaking stories of women who don’t tell anyone for years, and their accrued pain is overwhelming.

Pick someone you think is likely to give you the support and unconditional acceptance that you need. If you don’t know whom to call, a good place to start is RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), which runs a U.S. phone hotline at (800) 656-HOPE and an access-from-anywhere web hotline at www.rainn.org.

 

You deserve justice. Depending on where you live and what was done to you, you have legal rights to file criminal charges and to sue for compensation for your pain and suffering. Learning more about your legal options doesn’t lock you into action; it just gives you more choice and more control in the aftermath of an experience that may well have left you feeling helpless and without options. So do yourself a favor and find out what your legal options are. In the United States, start by visiting the Victim Rights Law Center website: www.victimrights.org, or call them directly at (617) 399-6720.

Dive In: Right now, whether or not you’ve ever experienced a sexual violation, go check out the websites of RAINN (www.rain.org) and the Victim Rights Law Center (www.victimrights.org). Learn about what they do, their philosophy, and the resources available on their websites. Spend at least fifteen minutes on each site. That way, if you ever find you need their services, you’ll know where to turn.

SAFECALLS

If you’re going out to meet someone you don’t know very well and you think you might go somewhere private with them, I highly recommend setting up a “safecall.” A safecall is a communication safety net you can build for yourself when you’re not sure if the person you’re going to be alone with is safe. It works like this:

1. Tell a friend what you’re doing and whom you’re doing it with. Be as specific as possible—full names, contact info, address of where you’ll be if you have it.

2. Arrange a particular time to check in with your friend by phone. Be sure to agree on who’s calling whom, so there’s no confusion.

3. Decide whether or not you need a code. A phone call can go any number of ways. You certainly should say, “If I don’t answer, and you don’t hear from me, I’m in trouble.” But you may also want to arrange a code in case you do pick up and want to tell your friend that you’re in trouble without alerting the person you’re with that you’re asking for help. Make it a specific word or phrase that will sound innocuous: “Things are super great” or “Did you remember to feed the cat?” This is especially important, depending on how you handle the next bit:

4. Decide whether or not you’re going to tell your date you have a safecall. I like to let a date know, before I go back to their place, that I’ve set up a safecall. Just like the STD testing conversation from the last chapter, not only does this serve the practical purpose of letting a potential assailant know that they’re unlikely to get away without consequences, but it also provides you with insight into their character, based on their reaction. Do they mock you? Are they defensive? Or are they accepting and understanding, saying some version of “Good for you; that’s great you’re taking care of yourself”? If I get a bad response to letting my date know about the safecall, I can bail before I even get to their house. And if I get a supportive response (as I do most of the time), it adds to my ability to trust this person, which can make the night go even better.

5. Agree on what should happen if you sound the alarm. If you don’t pick up or call in at the arranged time, or if you give the code for “please send help,” what do you want your friend to do? Contacting the authorities is the most popular option, but not all neighborhoods have equally responsive, upstanding enforcement officers. So use your judgment based on what you know of your local law enforcement department. Other options may include having friends come get you. In extreme cases, of course, that may put your friends in harm’s way. There’s no perfect answer here, but it’s in your and your friends’ best interests to pick your preferred one long before it becomes necessary.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. So, say you’re going home with someone you just met at a party. You might say to your friend, “I’m going home with so-and-so. Here’s their name and the address where we’re going. Will you call me in an hour to check in?” Or you might say, “I’m going to meet someone I’ve met online. We’re meeting at this bar but might go back to their place afterward. I’ll text you with the address if I do that. If I don’t call you by eleven, please call me.”

Ideally, talk with your friends about safecalls in advance, so if you need to arrange for one on the spot, you’ll know both what the code is and what you want your friend to do if you need help.

Dive In: If you think you might ever want or need to use a safecall, reach out to a friend this week and ask them if they’ll be your safecall partner. Talk through all the questions above, and when you’ve agreed on a plan that works for both of you, write it up and email it to them, and ask them to write back acknowledging that they’ve gotten it and agree to it, so that you’ll both have it on hand for future reference. Maybe even put it on a little piece of paper in your wallet, with your friend’s number, in case you can’t access your own phone. (If you’ve got a smartphone, there may even be an app that facilitates safecalls, like the Date Tracker Alert app for iPhone. You just input the time, location, and other details of your date into the app, along with a time by which you have to check in with the app. If you don’t check in by that time, it sends out an alert to your designated emergency contacts.)

If you don’t think you’ll ever need or want a safecall for yourself, reach out to a friend who might want one of their own, and offer to be their safecall partner. Follow all the steps above.

Go Deeper:

1. Try a different kind of safeword. The sexual safewords we discussed in this chapter serve as an efficient emergency brake for when you need to stop the action in bed. But they work just as well outside the bedroom, especially if you tend to get emotionally triggered to the point where it becomes difficult to explain to your partner when you need some special support or attention. If that’s you, try arranging a separate safeword with your partner. Just pick a word that you can both remember and agree on (as with sexual safewords, it’s best if you pick something that won’t likely come up in conversation, like “rutabaga” or “platypus”), and agree on what it means if you say it. (Maybe it means you need a ten-minute time-out from whatever conversation you’re having at the time, or maybe it means you need your partner, if possible, to drop everything else and turn all their attention to just holding you. You decide.) These next exercises are designed to give your body a voice and to start a conversation between your physical, emotional, spiritual, and rational “selves.” Of course, they are all one. I’m separating them out here because our culture has separated them out.

2. Write a letter of protest from your body to your brain. Does she like sitting in that chair all day tapping on a keyboard? I thought not! Wouldn’t she be a great erotic dancer, given the chance (maybe even just solo in your bedroom in front of the mirror)? Why do you never let her play? Why all these darn rules about what she can ingest, how she should look and behave? All this judgment about the size of her tits and the shape of her bum? Why can’t she have sex with that barista at Starbucks? For Goddess’s sake—how do you think that makes her feel . . . ?

She has a list of demands. (Write the list out.)

End your letter with a one-sentence take-home message from your body to your self. Commit to meeting at least one item on your body’s list of demands.

3. Draw a wellness wheel (see below).²

For one week, keep a record of how much and how long you operate in each slice of the pie. It might be hard to separate them out—for instance, a social activity (like taking a long walk or hike with friends) might also be intellectual, physical, and emotional.

At the end of the week, you might want to make some commitments—to get out more, go for a daily walk, or get back into yoga. And yes. This has everything to do with sex.