Sex is a practice.

So let me tell you what I mean. We live in a world that presents sex as something that we can do perfectly. If only we read the right tips in the magazines at the supermarket checkout, if only we discover the perfect position to drive someone wild, if only we find the right clothing/hair/body spray, we can have perfect sex. Perfect sex is, unsurprisingly, also what we see in a lot of porn. Body parts get erect or wet without any hassles, there’s never any discomfort, people switch from one position to another easily (and without any mobility issues like stiff knees), and there’s always an orgasm (at least for any men involved).

But in the real world, sex is a lot messier than that, no pun intended. Not everyone  always has an orgasm, bodies don’t always do what we want them to, there are stains on the sheets, physical discomfort that limits what we can do, emotional concerns that show up at inconvenient moments, and, quite simply, it’s not always what we want it to be. Sex is never perfect in the real world.

I’ve never believed in the adage “practice makes perfect” because I don’t believe it’s possible for anything we do to be perfect. When we strive for an unattainable perfection, we often miss out on the joys of the moment. Our inner critic comes out to tell us all of the ways in which we’ve failed, and we forget to celebrate. When we let go of the ideal of “perfect sex,” we can dismiss the inner critic and enjoy.

So when I talk about sex as a practice, I’m thinking of it in the same terms as band practice, a martial arts practice, or a yoga practice. It’s something that we engage in, to expand our skills, to learn as much from as possible, and to enjoy. When we approach sex as a practice, it’s with an acknowledgment that we’re never perfect and that we can enjoy the experience of discovery. In essence, the distance between where we are and “perfection” becomes a source of opportunity for learning and joy, rather than a reason to judge or shame ourselves.

Approaching sex as a practice means that we need to make time for it. If you stop practicing the piano, your skills get rusty. If you stop practicing sex, the same thing happens. Musical greats still practice every day- that’s how they achieve such a high level of ability. Making sex a practice means coming to it with the intention of developing our skills. And not just the technical skills of giving an amazing blow job, but also the skills of connecting with another person (whether a long-time partner or someone new), the skills of working with and managing erotic energy, the skills of communicating and talking about what you want, the skills of navigating a relationship, among others. Nobody is born knowing how to do any of these, so if we want to have a high degree of skill and ease, we need to practice.

Thinking of sex as a practice requires us to come to it with fresh eyes. Our capabilities, interests, and desires shift from moment to moment and over time. So each time we engage with our practice, instead of trying to repeat our past performance, we need to ask ourselves “where am I in this moment?” Our internal compass becomes the tool for navigation, rather than an external guideline that may not always be relevant.

Making sex a practice also means making room for mistakes. We all make mistakes, and when we make perfection our goal, there’s little room for the inevitable errors that are part of life. When sex is a practice, mistakes become an opportunity. That doesn’t make them any less scary or unpleasant, but at least we can stop shaming ourselves for having made an error. Instead, we can learn to acknowledge what we’ve done, apologize, make amends, and learn from the experience. It’s a cliché that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making mistakes, but that doesn’t make it less true. When we allow sex to be a practice, we can give ourselves permission to make mistakes and learn from them, as painful as that sometimes is.

Approaching sex as a practice requires us to be brave in the face of the unknown. It asks us to make room for the possibility that things might not work the way we expect or want them to. And I understand why that can often be scary. Making sex a practice requires us to be brave enough to face our fears, and almost everyone has fears when it comes to sex.

A teacher once said to me that we don’t need to be perfect. All we need to do is move towards our joy and deal with whatever comes up. I think that captures the essence of making sex a practice.

In response to this piece, BDSM video veteran Mz Berlin blogged about why she thinks that Smith’s conflation of BDSM and torture is ridiculous. Here’s her take on it:

Wow. Crazy busy. The beat goes on and on and on.

My head has been in overdrive pondering the ongoing drama in San Francisco about the comparison of bondage porn with real torture. It has my mind spinning and I feel a little sick.

Melissa Farley, a woman I’ve never met and have only heard referenced twice, in articles focusing on a community that I don’t live in. My only connection to her subject matter is working at a company that she hates because of her own neo-feminist crazy ideology.  So, why is it getting to me? She is not ripping the porno down from the shelves in West Hollywood. She is not asking me, personally, to leave my kinky life in order to stop being a victim.

It is one of her many wacky conclusions that really gets to me.  And I’m having a very emotional reaction to it. It truly bothers me. It’s the conclusion that bdsm porn is in any way related to real life torture. Torture, as in it’s conventional sense. (Go ahead and pull up the Wikipedia page. I’ll wait.)

While Miss Farley has tons of education on me, and has probably interacted with far more sex workers than I have, and might even have good intentions with her comparisons and book burnings, I fundamentally disagree with her based on personal experience. I have worked as a bdsm porn model and I have also been subjected to torture, under the standard definition, while under arrest overseas.  My experience was short, intense,  and life-changing. I’m not going to go into the particulars of what happened, but the experiences are totally different.

I am quite certain of that.

I have journals, photos and paperwork chronicling how I was feeling and what was happening to me the entire time I was having my non consensual experience, and obviously other people were aware of and responding to the situation so I know that happened. There’s also a matter of public record. I (and You with your magical internet powers!) have my journal, interviews and pictures chronicling my bdsm adventures. I can track how a particular shoot made me feel, and can tell you the effect it had on me emotionally and physically.  The comparison of the two makes me sick. My nausea comes from the fact that torture is totally, completely, under any definition a non consensual act.

I don’t understand why Melissa Farley, and, by default, Matt Smith feel that it’s fair to compare the same act committed under completely different circumstances. Having to saw your hand off because it’s in a bear trap and a mountain lion is coming up the hill at a mighty quick pace and giving a kidney to your sister are a lot alike. They’re both major surgery.  They are both dangerous. They both result in the loss of a body part. It’s the context that brings it together. It’s circumstance.

So, there’s my rant and rationale. I’ve tried to keep it short. It’s personal. It’s professional. It’s a gray area as far as that goes. I don’t normally discuss personal stuff. I’ve touched on the non consensual experience in a few different forums as I processed what consent meant to me.  It’s at the core of how I compartmentalize the experience and it really (in the parlance of our time) pisses me off when someone puts the two together without thought. Not necessarily without thinking of me, obviously, but the circumstances surrounding each activity. And the charge that one word can have. And, unfortunately, what the difference between edgy porno/art film and a war crime is.

Let’s take a look at this. Someone who has personal experience with both actual torture and BDSM speaks up and makes it clear that they are not the same thing. Futher, she has records of her personal reflections on her BDSM shoots, which chronicle how she felt about them. Her words, her thoughts, and her experiences all demonstrate that the consent woven BDSM makes it completely different from torture, which is (by definition) non-consensual.

So what did Smith do? He interviewed her for a follow up piece, during which Mz Berlin specifically told him that she didn’t want him to use her real name because of her concern over the possible consequences. But Smith did a little digging and found her legal name, which he published. When Mz Berlin found out about it, she protested it and the piece was edited, but the damage was done. She’s lost custody of her child.

While I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on inside Smith’s head, it doesn’t seem unlikely to me that he wanted to retaliate against Mz Berlin. She spoke up and made it very clear that he doesn’t understand BDSM at all. And then he took steps which could be reasonably assumed to have negative consequences. You do the math.

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason that Smith doesn’t understand the difference between consensual BDSM and torture is that he doesn’t understand boundaries. Mz Berlin set a very clear limit when she asked him to only use her work name. Smith chose to ignore it, despite having agreed to it. To me, that demonstrates that Smith doesn’t get what boundaries mean and how to respect them. Here’s a hint: when someone sets a limit and you agree to abide by it, do so. It’s not all that hard to understand.

When you agree to a boundary that someone sets during sex and then ignore it, that’s called sexual assault. What it is called when it happens in journalism?

Now, I agree with him in as much as I would like the ads for Enzyte and such to go away. But not because they’re indecent. I want them to go away because they perpetuate the idea that sex = intercourse, which requires a large, hard penis. (doesn’t it?) I want them to go away because they play off of men’s insecurities, they limit our notion of what sex is, and they use coy euphemisms. I think that euphemisms reinforce the habit we have of not talking about “down there” and when we talk about “those parts” instead of penises, vulvas, vaginas (or even cocks and pussies), we reify sex-negativity by sending the message that those are the “organs which shall not be named.” In essence, euphemisms recreate and transmit shame and there’s enough sexual shame in the world without adding to it.

But indecent? Well, only if you’re so ashamed of sex that you can’t tell a child that “ED is a medical condition that some men have and this medication helps with that.” Check it out- an age-appropriate (at least for some ages) way to talk about Viagra without mentioning penises or using euphemisms at all. Now, is that so difficult? Well, Jim Moran thinks so and he seems to want to be protected from having to deal with it. And he’s sure that everyone else needs to be protected, too.

Unrealistic Images

One of the critiques that I hear about porn is that it doesn’t provide realistic models for sex or relationships. And that’s absolutely true. You almost never see people in porn using lube, warming up before having sex (especially anal sex), or asking for something different. Porn sex is pretty formulaic, with activities and positions chosen more for the convenience of the camera than for the pleasure of the participants. People in porn jump right to the chase, usually without any romance, and you rarely see any affection.

At the same time, nothing on TV or movies is ever realistic. Ask a doctor sometime if medical dramas portray medicine accurately. Ask a lawyer if their job looks like what you see on Law & Order. And I don’t think that anyone thinks that Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom even remotely resembles what archeologists actually do. So why don’t people complain about unrealistic images in these other genres?

I think that the main reason is that, in real life, we have lots of personal experience that shows us that TV isn’t ever realistic. After all, we all know that real life rarely poses challenges that can be solved in an hour. Real life doesn’t come with a killer soundtrack and a montage to get us through the hard work. But in real life, most of us haven’t ever watched people have sex, which means that we don’t have more accurate images of what sex looks like to provide a contrast to what we see in porn.

Learning to have sex from watching porn is about as effective as learning to drive from watching car chase movies. And unfortunately, that’s what our sex education system forces people to do. Rather than helping people learn how to make authentic sexual choices, communicate with a partner, set boundaries or identify their needs, desires, and goals, we withhold information and then shame them for making mistakes. Is it any wonder that people are trying to learn how to have sex from porn?

Porn isn’t any more of a fantasy than a romantic comedy or an action movie is. But until we give people more accurate ideas about sex, there’s no way to balance it out. And to critique porn for doing something that every other genre of entertainment does seems a bit silly to me. After all, there’s no reason to have higher expectations for porn than we do for action movies.

I know that there are plenty of other ways in which some porn is really problematic. There’s a lot of porn that features humiliation of the women involved. (I’ve seen a lot less humiliation in gay porn.) And that really disturbs me. And there’s an increasing amount of humiliation in the media generally. Unscripted TV (formerly called “reality shows” until they realized that it’s not realistic) often includes the humiliation of the participants, especially if it’s a contest show and people’s work is being judged. The issue of sex & shame is a big one and there isn’t much clarity around it. I’m going to write about that another time, but I wanted to make sure that it didn’t get left out.

Unrealistic Bodies

People in porn tend to look pretty similar. Pubic hair, blemishes on the body, and cellulite are mostly absent. Men in porn have large penises that get instantly erect and ejaculate only after having “enough” sex, and the guys are muscular and (if they’re white) tanned. Women in porn are generally young & skinny, they’re always ready for pounding sex and they’re flexible enough to get into those unlikely positions. (This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of the ways that porn presents unrealistic images of bodies.)

I’d love to see a wider range of bodies in porn. I’d love to see people of more races, ages, sizes, and such. I think it’d be a great thing to have positive representations of the diversity of bodies. And I’ll expect to see that about a week after I see it on the cover of the magazines at the checkout stand. Please note- I am not at all apologizing for the general homogeneity of bodies in porn. I’m simply pointing out that the porn industry is influenced by society’s general trend of unrealistic body expectations.

Of course, porn influences that trend too. I don’t have an answer for this one and I don’t think anyone else does. However, I will point out that there’s some porn that shows (for example) larger women. In some ways, there’s actually more body diversity in porn than at the checkout stand. I still think it sucks that the porn industry is almost entirely clueless when it comes to body image, and all of the other ways that people are shamed for their bodies. But if enough people are willing to spend their cash on people of size, there’s someone willing to make a porn movie with them. It’s a minuscule thing, but it’s worth noting. (Click on the image to see a few movies that feature larger women.)

It Comes Down to Money

Porn is one of the few industries that’s totally unregulated. Other than the requirements around keeping minors out of it and away from it, the primary (and generally only) influence on the producers of porn is customer demand. Makers who try something new or innovative decide whether they can continue creating it based on whether people buy it. Even though the internet and improving technology have made it possible for more people to try making porn, it still costs a fair amount of money to produce and unless there’s an immediate payoff, few people can keep going

There are a few people who are trying to make something different. Tony Comstock is making some really great movies, as are the folks at Erocktavision and Pink’n’White. If you like what they’re making, tell your friends. Help support them and they’ll be able to keep doing it.

Porn Has Lots of Other Problems

I’m not apologizing for porn. I think that there are a lot of ways that the industry and the products it produces are problematic. And I also think that one step towards addressing them is to get some clarity around what’s going on.

The thing is, we almost never ask why people who engage in “normal” sex do the things they do, while simultaneously ignoring or forgetting that what we think of as normal is partially defined by culture. There was a time when oral sex was considered abnormal, but these days, not so much.

Also, there’s often an assumption that if “those people” examined their desires more, they would stop doing those nasty things they do. One implication of that is the idea that “those people” haven’t asked themselves why they do what they do. And that’s simply not true.

In my experience, many, many folks who engage in sexual practices that are outside the range of what mainstream society considers acceptable have spent a lot of time thinking about why they like kinky sex, open relationships, or whatever. In part, that’s because they don’t have the privilege of receiving validation for their sexualities, there aren’t role models for them, and because they’ve often been shamed for their desires. Maybe there will come a time when those things don’t happen, but for the moment, you can trust that most people whose sexualities fall outside the norm spend a lot of time trying to figure out why.

I think that it’s also important to also honor the fact that some people will examine their desires and come to very different conclusions than you might. To draw a parallel, I have absolutely no interest in watching sports. And at the same time, I can accept and honor the fact that other people look at a football/baseball/soccer/basketball game and get really into it. Similarly, some people explore BDSM or anal sex and decide that it’s not for them. Other people try it and discover that it suits them just fine, and maybe better than anything else. The simple fact that you don’t feel drawn to something doesn’t mean that someone else’s desire for it is because you’re more thoughtful, enlightened, or intelligent than them.

There can be a real value in exploring where your desires and fantasies come from. Sometimes, the value is that you learn something important about yourself. Sometimes, you discover ways to heal old injuries, whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual (or a combination thereof). And sometimes, you find new ways to make sex even hotter because the more you know about why something turns you on, the more you can make it happen. But sometimes, we can get so caught up in examining and justifying our desires that we forget to have sex! And that just seems silly.

I think that there’s a certain amount of arrogance implicit in the assumption that “those people” haven’t examined their sexual desires enough. I think it’s fine to ask someone if they have, provided that you’re genuinely interested in engaging in a dialogue with them. But just because someone does something you don’t, or does something in a different way, that doesn’t mean that you know better than them. That’s plain, old arrogance and I’ve never seen any good come from it.

We all have triggers, by which I mean that we all have emotional reactions that are disproportionate to the situation that we are currently in. It’s quite common for us to have these responses because of events that happened to us in the past that the current circumstances resonate with. One of the functions of our emotions is to let us know when those resonances happen so that we can learn from our experiences. But sometimes, those emotions are difficult or painful. Sometimes, they may have little to do with the present. And when that happens, we can have a reaction that’s out of proportion to whatever is going on in the moment.

As far as I can tell, there are three ways we can deal with this. First, we can avoid situations that trigger those reactions. I see this a lot when it comes to sex- we may avoid certain activities, or people, or such. This can sometimes be an effective way to get some space and let the reaction settle down, which can help us come to some sort of resolution. Second, we can explore our reactions, discover what messages they have to offer, and work to meet whatever needs they have. Sometimes that’s fairly easy to do and sometimes, that’s the work of a lifetime. When neither of those options is available, the only thing left is to try to control whatever it is that pushes those buttons in order to protect ourselves.

In our current society, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid triggering situations. The newspapers, magazines, TV shows, websites, blogs and articles are full of stories about sex. It might be the latest scandal, or information about your health, or an article about a porn star, or gay marriage, or a pro-domme, or any other topic. Then there’s all the blogs by people who share incredibly detailed information about their sexual practices, relationships, philosophies, and experiences. That’s a lot of directions that a trigger might come from. And don’t forget the people in your life, who may be doing or talking about sex that you find triggering. For that matter, sometimes we get triggered by someone being out of the closet, even when they’re not actually having sex.

So where does this connect with sex-positivity? I think that one of the characteristics of sex-positivity is expanding one’s ability to manage those triggers without trying to control people who aren’t actually causing any harm. See, there’s a loop that I see and it goes something like this (in an incredibly oversimplified way):

we all have triggers around sex –> if we can’t resolve them and we can’t get away from the trigger, we try to control sex to create a sense of safety –> this creates more triggers in other people, as well as in ourselves

And round and round we go. Each time, we reinforce the loop and make it that much harder to stop. these self-reinforcing loops exist within individuals, among pairs and families, in communities, and in the larger culture.

So how do we get out of this pattern? Well, for one thing, we need to stop trying to break the loop at its strongest point. I had a therapist once who pointed out that when people get trapped in these sorts of loops, we often try to break them at the strongest point. Instead, it’s much more effective to break the loop at the weakest point because that stops the cycle.

In this case, the weakest part of the loop is how we deal with our triggers. We can’t change the fact that some things trigger us. And we can’t change the fact that trying to control sex just sets up more triggers. The only place we can bring any change to this is in how we respond to our triggers.

That’s where I see the connection between sex-positivity and triggers. Being able to evaluate the situation and determine whether someone is actually causing harm (to themselves or others) can only happen if I can avoid spinning out into my triggers. Being able to respond to the person, rather than what I project onto them can only happen if I’m not stuck in the loop. And true equality will only exist when we can stop trying to control people. Yes, we can set boundaries. Yes, we can create limits that serve us. But that’s really only going to work when we can set aside our triggers and deal with what actually is, rather than what we think or feel is happening.

If you’re interested in exploring some tools for that, I highly recommend Pema Chödrön’s books and audio cd’s. “Getting Unstuck” is especially helpful. A good therapist is another option. So is meditation, journaling, critical self-reflection, and anything else that helps you stay present and grounded. But that’s a topic for another post.

Just to be clear- the article isn’t specifically about sex. The researchers surveyed people on their level of happiness and looked at the happiness level of people in their family and social networks to see what relationships existed. They put it together in a graphical format (link to the right), as well as applying statistical models to analyze it. In the graphical representation, “each node is coloured [sic] according to the person’s happiness on a spectrum from blue (unhappy) to yellow (happy).”

One of the things that I found really interesting is that each person’s happiness is affected by people up to three degrees of separation away- the happiness of your friend’s friend’s friend has an effect on you. Of course, the closer the relationship, the bigger the effect but the fact that people that far away have a significant influence on our level of happiness is something to think about.

So how does this come back to sex? I’ve seen over and over how it’s a lot easier to have a happy sex life when you’ve got a social network full of people who also have happy sex lives. My grandmother said that you should spend time with people who are like the person you want to be. She wasn’t talking about sex, but I think it applies here, too. One of the ways that we can move towards sexual well-being is to be around people who value it, who consider it worth working for. Fortunately, even if you don’t have such a community around you, you can find it online.

I think that this idea also highlights how important it can be to talk about the things that make us happy, including our sex lives (when it does, that is). Happiness can spread from person to person and even when we don’t see the effects, it can still be there. In US society, we tend to not talk about having good sex. I wonder what the world would be like if more people could tell their friends “I had the most amazing sex last night!” While there would certainly be some envy sometimes, it might help us to value sexual happiness.

It’s even more complex when we’re talking about sex. There can be any number of reasons for any of our actions and fantasies, and different people can have wildly different reasons for doing the same thing. If you don’t believe me, check out Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies by Michael Bader. He’s a therapist who has learned to ask his clients what it is about their fantasies that they find so compelling. Rather than assuming that everyone who shares a fantasy of being tied up, or being watched during sex, or having sex with multiple partners has the same reasons for it, Bader shows that we will get better information if we ask why someone finds something arousing.

Here’s an example. It’s fairly well-known that being “taken” by an anonymous stranger is a fantasy that many women have. I’ve read all sorts of explanations for it, from psychoanalytic clinicians who think that it has something to do with unresolved Oedipal conflicts to radical feminists who say that it’s because women are trained to be sexually available to men. But what these folks often have in common is that they rarely or never actually ask women who have these fantasies what they mean to them.

Bader writes about two women with this fantasy. One of them finds it powerful because she’s a very sexual person and has taken a lot of hassle for it from men who felt threatened. In her fantasy, when she’s “taken” by a man, it allows her to let go and not try to protect her fantasy partner from her sexuality. Her fantasy makes it safe for her to be sexually powerful with a partner who is equally powerful, despite the superficial impression that it’s about being powerless. On the other hand, another woman with a similar fantasy was told all her life that “good girls” don’t ask for sex. So for her, being taken means that she can be sexual without having to ask for it. In her fantasy, she’s having sex with someone who does exactly what she wants without having to ask for it.

In both cases, the fantasy helps create a sense of safety for these women and there are some clear similarities in terms of what’s going on for them. But there are also huge differences and most people who talk about sex seem to forget that. I think that the same thing applies in pretty much every aspect of sex. When I read or hear someone saying that “people who do X” are doing it for one reason or another, it’s rare that they’ve ever asked the people who they’re talking about to tell them what motivates them. And it’s even more rare that they ask with compassion and without judgment.

So now, when I read or hear someone talking about why people engage in whatever sexual behaviors in one-dimensional and overly simplistic ways, I know that either they don’t know what they’re talking about or they’re projecting their own internal landscape onto someone else, and it’s often both.  While that doesn’t always make it easier to stomach, it reminds me that they don’t know as much as they seem to want me to think.

Bader makes some really fascinating observations about sexuality and if you want to get a peek at what makes people tick, it’s a good read.

I don’t know how often I’ve heard people talk about the gender spectrum. And I think that this model has a lot of value. It makes space for gender fluidity and recognizes that people aren’t either/or, male/female. That’s pretty powerful.

On the other hand, the image of a spectrum creates a zero-sum situation. Whether people mean for it to  or not, this model encourages the idea that male and female are in some way in opposition to each other since the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. Sure, people can shift where they are on the line, but that means that gaining one requires losing the other.

As an alternative, the author proposes putting male and female on an x-y axis. If you look at gender this way, you realize that you can have attributes that are very male AND have others that are very female. The concepts of male & female are no longer in opposition to each other since they’re on two different axes. You can gain attributes of maleness without losing the female attributes that you have.

I should clarify that there are some attributes of behavior and personality that women generally score higher on than men, and vice versa. For example, women score higher on the ability to recognize the emotions behind a facial expression and men score higher on the ability to see how an object moves through space (like a thrown ball). These are issues of statistics- men are, in general, taller than women, even though there are plenty of women who are taller than most men. And I’m definitely not judging any specific characteristic, simply because it tends to have a gender-based distribution.

Certainly, many people are clustered at the “mostly or entirely male” and “mostly or entirely female” sections of the grid. And lots of other people are somewhere in the middle. And even with that, one person might be in the “sort of male and sort of female” while someone else could be “really male and really female” section. They’re both in the middle somewhere, but in very different ways. I think that’s an even more powerful model of gender than the spectrum.

If you’re at all interested in issues of gender or sexual diversity, check the book out. It’s not perfect, but there’s lots of good food for thought.

“I just don’t get why someone has sex like that?”

“Why do you do that? That’s gross!”

Have you ever heard someone something like this? I definitely have. Whether it’s about spanking & bondage, anal sex, role play, casual sex, or, yes, intercourse, there’s often a little laugh. But the laughter is usually a way to deal with the discomfort, rather than finding genuine humor.

The thing is, everything that you like about sex, someone else finds really unappealing. Even something that is quite common like kissing. I can promise you that someone out there finds it incredibly unarousing or disgusting. And that’s OK. Because here’s the secret- you don’t have to get it.

You don’t have to get why some people cross-dress. You don’t have to get why some people like bondage. You don’t have to get why some people enjoy intercourse. You don’t have to get it.

I think that the world would be a better place if we each aimed for accepting that other people like to do things that we don’t. Here’s a non-sexual example. I really don’t care about sports unless I’m playing them. I don’t watch them on TV. Conversations about them put me to sleep. I simply don’t care and to be honest, I don’t get it. And yet I manage to have great friendships with people who love to watch sports. It’s not that hard- when they tell me that they had a fun time at a baseball game, I say something like “Cool. I’m glad you had fun.” And then we talk about something else.

So why is it often so much harder to do that about sex? What if we could just accept that tastes vary and that’s ok. In fact, think how boring the world would be if we all did things the same way?

One of the common responses to “tastes vary” is something along the lines of “what about sexual assault/risky behavior/sex that causes harm?” There’s a big difference between accepting sexual diversity and not having boundaries. Almost all sexual practices can be done within the container of consent and risk management. Sexual diversity is about what you like to do. Consent and self-care is about how you do it. Don’t get them confused. And don’t try to use one to cover up discomfort over the other.

One great way to learn to accept sexual diversity is to recognize that when you have a reaction, that’s at least partly your personal reaction and not 100% about the other person. Rather than saying “that’s gross,” try saying something like “I find that challenging.” Or even “I find that disgusting.” When you acknowledge that your reaction starts within yourself, it often becomes less potent and you actually gain power over it. It’s not the other person “making” you feel that way at all. It’s your reaction to their behavior and you don’t need to blame someone else for it.

So yeah, when you have one of those moments (and we all do), just remember- you don’t have to get it.