First off, what sex-positivity isn’t:

Sex-positivity isn’t about how much sex you have, how many partners you have, what types of sex you have, or how often you have it. It’s not about being wild and crazy. It’s not about being a slut. It’s not about being kinky or using sex toys. It’s not about being queer. It’s not about being straight. It has nothing to do with any of that.

Sex-positivity is about having a positive relationship towards sexuality, especially your own sexuality. That means that the decisions you make about what you do support your well-being and are based on your authentic self. It also means that you take the well-being and authenticity of the people affected by your choices into account.

One tricky thing with that is that we’re each unique. Things that support my well-being may not support yours, and vice versa. So just because one person has discovered that monogamy, or BDSM, or sex toys can be part of their well-being doesn’t mean anything for anyone else. Many of us forget that, especially in the infatuation phase of a new interest, when we often praise some new sexual discovery to everyone around us.

Another tricky factor is that it’s hard to tease out the influences of the media, our families of origin, our communities, our partner(s), and other external elements. Two people can make very similar choices for very different reasons. One person might decide to do something because it’s genuinely supportive of their well-being, while someone else could do the same thing in order to please a partner, fulfill family expectations, or satisfy peer pressure.

That means that one facet of sex-positivity is self-reflection. Exploring why we do the things we do is an essential element, given how much pressure there is on each of us to comply with these outside demands. That’s a life-long process, which means that sex-positivity isn’t something that we have, it’s something that we do.

So how do you know what’s motivating someone? Well, you could ask them. Unfortunately, the majority of the writing I see around sex-positivity seems to be based on the the projections and assumptions of the writer. Instead, try asking someone what needs, goals or desires they’re trying to meet. Or whether their actions are personally fulfilling. Or how they feel about what they do. And if you’re fortunate enough to be trusted with the answer, believe that they mean what they say. There’s very little more patronizing than someone who thinks that they know better. Sex-positivity is about opening up a dialogue.

Sex-positivity is also about suspending your judgment and making room for other people to make different choices. We all judge other people (as well as ourselves). It’s part of being human, and in my experience, it’s more helpful to learn to recognize judgment than it is to try and repress it. Once we’ve recognized it, we can acknowledge it AND pay attention to the other person’s story. Our judgment may be mostly accurate, or it may not accurate at all. But it’s never the whole picture, which is especially important to remember when someone does something that wouldn’t work for you. The more certain you are that you know better than someone else, the more likely you are to be wrong.

There’s nothing in any of this about how someone has sex because sex-positivity is about why we do the things we do, rather than what the things we do happen to be. There are sex-positive people who are asexual, celibate, monogamous, polyamorous, vanilla, kinky, swingers, heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, [fill in the blank here with whatever words you like] and there are people who are any of these things who aren’t sex-positive at all.

Ultimately, the only person whose sex-positivity you can assess is your own.

I’m totally digging the hair.

‘

There are plenty of anti-porn folks out there who make lots of sweeping statements about the experiences of women in porn. Of course, they almost always ignore the experiences of men in porn and the existence of gay porn, which they justify by saying that their focus is on the experiences of women. Which is all well and good, although I’d suggest that they need to coin a new term to describe what they’re talking about since the word “porn” actually refers to a larger phenomenon than the one that they discuss.

What I find most frustrating about their discourse is that they don’t usually include the voices of women who are actually in the business. Instead, they’ll tell talk about what they think these women experience and present it as fact rather than interpretation. Or they’ll interview someone in the biz and then misrepresent what they said. (Check out Ernest Greene’s report on how this happened to Joanna Angel.)

Given how many women there are/have been in the business, I’m surprised that they can’t find a few who are willing to be interviewed. Granted, someone currently working in the biz might be unwilling to speak up since it might make it harder to find work but there are plenty of former porn folks who don’t have that concern. Whatever the motivation for not including the voices of these women in their research, it certainly makes it questionable.

On the other hand, there are the women who make porn and genuinely enjoy it. Sasha Grey, Madison Young, Lorelei Lee, Joanna Angel, to name a few of the current folks and there are plenty of folks who no longer show up in movies but enjoyed their careers. But while these women can stand up and tell us that their experiences are different from the caricature that anti-porn folks present, we don’t have any real way of knowing whether positive experiences are common or rare. Please note- I am not questioning the authenticity of these women’s stories. I’m simply wondering how many women are in this group, as compared to the number of women in porn.

What’s missing from both sides of this is any real data about the experiences of women in porn. We have anecdotes, but the plural of anecdotes is not data. This is especially important to remember because people are prone to “confirmation bias,” which is the tendency to interpret new information in ways that confirm preconceptions and avoid or ignore information that contradicts our beleifs. The best tool that we have for overcoming confirmation bias is the scientific method since it gives us ways to minimize the effects of our biases. (For a great read on confirmation bias and other pitfalls of how people process information , check out the book “Mistakes Were Made.”)

Every now and then, a grad student approaches me and asks if I have suggestions for a research project. So here’s what I’d like to see: a qualitative analysis of the experiences of women in porn. I’d suggest using Grounded Theory since it’s a well-validated method that lets the interpretation emerge from the data. It requires that the researcher make their biases explicit as a way to limit how they influence the process and allows the voices of the people being studied to drive the project.

This is an ideal topic for a dissertation and it would finally give us some real information about the experiences of women in porn. That would make it easy to follow up with some quantitative analysis to discover how many women have which sorts of experiences.

I don’t see this as likely to happen, though. It can be really difficult to study anything about sex or porn, what with the lack of academic and financial support. Plus, there are people who have built their careers on each side of this debate and it seems to me that many of them would resist any research that might question their stance. Unfortunately, what that leaves us with is propaganda masquerading as science and lies that pretend to be journalism.

“The Rocker” was a recent submission sent in by budding erotica author Saleena. GV Magazine accepts erotica and articles on a variety of topics from all writers. Interested contributors, please see our submissions information. Let’s all give support to Saleena’s first erotica short story! - Ed.

By Saleena

It’s a snowy evening; big, soft flakes coming down. A fire is in the fireplace. It’s cozy and warm. Supper is finished; my partner is working on yet another business project. I’m sitting in my Grandma’s rocker, reading a book, and feeling the comfort that sitting in a chair over a 100’s year old can bring. Touching the wooden arms periodically wondering what they have seen and heard through the years.

Enveloped in the peacefulness of the night, the rocker, and my book, I don’t hear my partner come into the living room. I look up, surprised and delighted he is no longer working. He comes over and gives me a gentle kiss and turns out the light and put the book on the floor. All we have is the glow of the fire. His mouth is warm, hungry and welcome and sensuous on my lips. Eyes locked into mine he places his hands on both sides of my hips, and pulls me to the edge of the rocker. His penetrating, captivating eyes never leaving mine, he unbuttons my jeans and in one swift movement, jeans and panties have been removed. He moves each of my legs over an arm of the rocker.

Open, ready, pulsating. Waves of sex and anticipation start through my body, I’m shaking, not from cold, but what I know will come. He reaches down and removes my shirt and bra. Eyes still together, he takes off his clothes. He is ready; I reach for his hardness, wanting to devour it with my hands and mouth. He gently places my hands on my pussy and my fingers instinctively, hungrily search for penetration, his hands on top of mine.

I am wet, thick cum is filling my pussy. He pulls out my fingers and moves them to my mouth to watch me taste the wonders of my body. He is sitting on the floor and his mouth immediately replaces my fingers and begin to nuzzle my pussy, sucking, licking; moving through my pussy steadily, aggressively, soft then hard, from my clit to my ass. Finding the areas that continue to produce cum. Cum is flowing, and he laps every ounce. I’m in ‘o land’; every sense in my body wants more. I grab his head to keep him buried. He grabs my hands, locking them together. He moves my legs onto his shoulders, lifting me ever so slightly and going deeper with his tongue.

My movement is increasing; the rocker is an unnatural constraint. I want more, I begin to cry out. He stops. My god, the motion, stops. My body is in shock. What the hell is happening? I’m moving, no, I’m not, he’s moving me. He pulls me down through the rocker, turns me over, my knees are on the floor, my head nestled into the rocker, his cock –huge, and hard, is in my pussy in seconds. We’re moving to the motion of the rocker, my back is arching, he gently pushes it down. He holds my hips while making direct, explosive contact, harder, faster, deeper. My cum is running down my legs. Harder, harder, deeper. He slaps my ass. The rocker is giving me traction to meet his pounding, stroke by stroke. He’s getting near. The explosion comes, again, and again; twice in me and the last - pouring over my ass, down through my pussy, cum mixing together. He’s shaking, I’m shaking, he folds down onto my back. Our only support is the rocker.

We melt to the floor, we know we can’t stand. We lay there, the fire warming our sex exhausted, lifeless, euphoric bodies. We glance over to look at the rocker, did it move? Did it approve? Did we bring a new use to it, or did its past, pull us into it, wanting to come alive, one more time?

It’s been a bit controversial in its homeland of Australia. Check out their site for their take on removing the taboo from vaginal health.

Thank goodness for Exhale, an after-abortion counseling hot line that creates room for everyone’s voice around their experience of abortion. Whatever your feelings after an abortion, whether it’s soon after or many years later, the counselors at Exhale are there to provide emotional support, information and resources. And it’s available to significant others (partners, family members, friends) of all genders, too. Whatever you find is coming up for you, the amazing folks at Exhale will create a space for you to let it out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I lead their training session on working with male callers, who make up about 10% of their calls. So I’ve met almost all of the counselors and I’m always impressed with their compassion, empathy, and commitment to offering a safe container for the range of experiences people have around abortion.

The staff also offers trainings for health care providers and you can print their brochure right off their website. Here’s the hot line number (see their site for contact info for their office):

Toll-free talkline (available in the U.S.): 1-866-4 EXHALE
Toll calls outside of the U.S.: 1-510-446-7977

Just yesterday I took home a piece of our store’s history, our old Plexiglas sign that talked about the Mission of what was the Cooperative of Good Vibrations.

No longer being an owner of our company, I’ve looked at it as a blessing: the business end is taken care of folks that really have an understanding of business end so that we workers can focus on keeping on with the heart of the mission: To teach accurate sex information and promote HEALTHY attitudes about sex.
What the media gives us is not healthy. They shove it in our face and then yell at us to bury our own with double standards. Controlling people with fear based idea’s and telling them that they don’t deserve the right to pleasure!

“Pleasure is our birthright” my beloved co-worker Carol Queen has said. It has become our mantra.

I would get arrested for teaching people how to use a toy to enhance the experience with their partners in other states! This also applies to teaching folks about safer sex and use of a condom so that they can be empowered to lessen their chances of contracting diseases that plague the human race.

Sometimes I wonder, did someone create some of these diseases to get rid of a population that they fear? What rights do you fear that they will take away from you? Do you think that the LGBT community is going to take you all down into a life of sin?

Right now tour buses are driving in the Castro so that tourists can look at the Gay folks as if they were attractions in a zoo. The tourists are invited into the “wilds” of San Francisco to gaze upon happy people who have accepted their desires (not unlike their own) and their choices.
Here in my hometown I am viewed by some as a rarity. I am married to a “bio-male” who is accepted and loved in this community. A fave person of mine told me the other day that she felt my husband should have an award as a honorary Lesbian. Because he polite and respects all people regardless, they have felt he deserves this. Many women have told me they love him. I go to coffee bars in town and the women ask about him, profess their love! How lucky am I?
Just as I experienced, all, if not most of our friends, are of this community. They want the same things we want: love, acceptance and the right to live their life in the manner that makes them happy. California honoured our requests to let folks who love each other get married. Now others want to take it away.

This whole business about having to be this gender and that gender gets lost on me. I am so many genders, we all start in the womb as one and then hormones take over to assert other characteristics.

At first I was not ok with my lot. I am sure many a Tomboi like myself were not ok with having to put the shirt on when secondary sex characteristics kicked in. I relate most to 2 spirit people that define themselves and choose what makes them comfortable.I just can’t define myself. Others see what they want to in you. I feel I rather get on and not bother to classify myself.

I will respect whatever you choose for your self, name , gender (or lack there of) and lifestyle, all I ask for is the same.
In that respect I chose another route for myself. While somefolks change their bodies in one way, I have changed mine in another. I don’t feel there is much difference and I stick up for their right to do so. In fact, it is a factor in many of my decisions. I don’t feel comfortable in a place that is not available to a large part of humanity that is looked over in other areas, outside of San Francisco. Lack of acceptance? I take my business elsewhere. My choice of spiritual practices are the same: my higher power/god(dess) or what ever you choose to call it looks beyond gender into the person inside as I have always done.

How hard is that and why does it threaten you for someone to be themselves? Do you really know better?

I’ve had an amazing time editing The GV Weekly over the past year or so but like all great adventures, sometimes it’s just time to move on. I’ll be heading back to the East Coast and leaving the magazine in very capable hands in my absence. Who knows, maybe I’ll still write a little something every now and then but I just wanted to let you know what a treat it has been to edit this magazine and work with all the wonderful contributing writers. I hope you’ve enjoyed our time together as much as I have.

Yrs,
Allison G.