Entries Tagged 'Sex and Culture' ↓

By now you all know that I am a swinger, but this week I would like to talk about love. Sometimes the idea of swinging makes people wonder if it is possible to have a committed relationship and still be a swinger. I can honestly answer yes to this. Actually it is a lot easier to separate love from sex than you might think. The hard part is to figure out when you are in love, and what love means to you.

There has been a lot of talk about gay marriage lately, and I really don’t think I can stay quiet on the issue anymore. As a bisexual, I see no difference between marrying a woman or a man. The key is love - when you find the person you love, don’t let anyone stop you from loving him or her. Love is too hard to find these days; if you are lucky enough to find it, don’t let anyone take it away from you.

I know that for a lot of us it is hard to talk about sexual preference because of the negative response we might get or have gotten in the past. With all the negative publicity out there about any relationship that is not one man and one woman, it’s hard to feel like you can be honest. The truth is that if you are happy and not hurting anyone, then why does it matter who you are married to?

Most of my family knows about my relationship, and some are more okay with it than others, but they all accept me for me. If someone has a problem with me, then they have to deal with it. My relationship is not by any means normal or conventional, but it makes me happy. Love is not restricted, and it shouldn’t be. Is it fair that this country does not allow gay marriage? NO. But does it really matter? Do you really need a piece of paper to tell you who you can love? I don’t think so. The government can not tell us who to love or how to do it. Money doesn’t create happiness and a piece of paper does not create love. Who cares if other people are okay with your love life? It’s YOUR love life.

So to whoever reads this, I ask you to do one thing. When you are done reading this go find your partner and kiss them. Don’t worry about where you are or if other people will be offended. Find your love, take your moment and stay there for as long as you can. Life is fleeting and we have all spent too long worrying about other people. Enjoy what you have right now, just be happy; if other people can’t be happy for you, that’s their issue.

Savannah is a twenty-something student and guest blogger. She lives in Pennsylvania.

Image courtesy of swister used under Creative Commons.

It’s easy to mock all things vanilla – Vanilla Ice, vanilla lattes, vanilla sex – but vanilla just isn’t all that bad. I love me some vanilla sex (and “Ice Ice Baby” is one of my favorite karaoke songs).

In the sex blogging world, it sometimes feels like there’s a universal condescension of vanilla sex. It’s as if the BDSM crew got together with the swingers and polys and LGBTQs on the playground to snigger at all the straight white married couples having missionary sex beyond their white picket fences.

As far as I can discern, the term “vanilla” is used to describe a person or couple who is not part of an alternative sexual community (also bad term, btw). Sure, it carries the connotation of plain and boring, but operating within the confines of “conventional sexual behavior” can be a lot of things beyond dull.

The human sexual experience is too complex to be categorized in either/or’s; sex is not only boring or kinky. Consider, as an example, that in between the “vanilla” couple who has quiet missionary sex once a week and the D/s couple that heads to the dugeon exists a whole hell of a lot of people that fanasize and experiment with power in sex that never have to identify as anything – they just do what they do. There are degrees.

Even just getting it on in the boring ol’ missionary position can yield so many different experiences – it can be tender or rough, urgent or slow, angry or loving.

Perhaps I am sensitive about this because, by the above definition, I would have to own the vanilla term, and I’m just not happy with its connotation. I’m married, and have a mostly hetero, mostly monogamous relationship.

But there’s a lot of room to play in “mostly.”

We checked out the swinger scene, and it wasn’t for us, but we’re still open to hooking up with other people. We like a good spanking sesh every now and again, but there are times when if he even thought about spanking me he’d get punched in the face for ruining my gentle lovemaking experience. And he’d probably like that, too.

So I’d at least consider my sex life vanilla with a cherry on top. And maybe some chocolate sauce or whatever.

Yes, there is a such thing as boring sex. Just please don’t assume that all your vanilla friends are boring in the bedroom – or on the dining room table you’re eating at.

Image courtesy of ShellyS used under Creative Commons.

Tara Riley is a guest blogger on Whoopie School. She lives in Pennsylvania.

I’ve known my best friend and closest confidant for 18 years now. We met in kindergarten and I’ve watched her grow into a remarkable young woman. The surprise: she’s a lesbian. I totally understand what could drive any open-minded woman into a relationship with another woman; personally, I’ve been through the ringer with the men I’ve dated. But I’m just not built that way. While Marie’s sometimes mockingly expresses disappointment, I know she accepts me just the way I am. I only wish the same for her, but sadly we have a long way to go before my best friend finds true acceptance in our society.

Many people wonder and ask how I can be so close with a lesbian without sexuality being a factor. The truth is simple: it just isn’t. I’ve also been asked if Marie has ever hit on me; and no, she has never hit on me. She knows I’m straight, so to her that would just be a waste of time. Honestly, I just don’t understand how so many people can be so closed-minded about other people’s sexual orientation. It just doesn’t make sense.

Some of my own family are the worst offenders, and even believe that federal law should say that marriage should be between a man and a woman. But really, why do they care so much? How does it negatively affect their lives? I think of Marie in those moments, being denied the right to marry someone, an act that so many other people take for granted. It’s not as if the gay community is trying to undermine straight marriages; they just want the same legal rights and protections afforded to other couples who love each other. Unfortunately, gay people are  looked down upon just for being who they are.

Perhaps we all could be more tolerant and respectful of those around us. I want that for Marie.  Love is love, and more weddings only means one thing: more cake.

Image courtesy of hyberbolic pants used under Creative Commons.

It’s Monday night, the first one in a long time when I don’t have an episode of Heroes to watch. I’m not too upset about this. Like a sex partner who stopped trying and isn’t that satisfying anymore, Heroes just didn’t deliver the excitement and pleasure it once did. While it’s hard to let even a bad lover go, you often find that you’re better off on your own than you were settling for less.

There was a time when Heroes really turned me on. I waited in anticipation for every episode during season 1, and each one left me breathless and excited, even before the sex dreams of Peter Petrelli started. In season 2, I hung in there, confused but still eager, like the lover amusing her partner while he “experiments” with new tricks. By season 3, I was just bored with the lack of enjoyment that Heroes brought me. And the end of this season (season 3.5?), well, it was too little too late to make up for how much it had let me down.

The mistakes the series made are ones that we can all learn from, even when it comes to our sex lives. Think about it – have you or someone you know wasted the glorious potential of sex by going down boring, meandering, or unnecessarily complicated paths? Heroes may have jumped the shark, but your sex life does not have to – avoid these Heroes pitfalls:

• Don’t peak too early. Heroes never really developed into anything special, despite all the promise and potential of season 1. Don’t be like the hot high school football player that never delivers more than jackhammer sex because he relies too much on his looks. You can always learn and grow sexually, especially if you are open-minded and receptive to feedback from partners.

• Don’t lose focus. Heroes was perfectly set up to explore the archetypal battle of good and evil, with Peter leading the good guys and Sylar becoming the ever more powerful bad guy. But then Hiro ended up in ancient Japan, some chick who could make electricity took center stage, and Mr. Petrelli came back from the dead, and  and it lost all focus. People let this happen to their sex lives, too, by losing focus on pleasure and intimacy, and getting distracted by artificial concerns about appearance, number of lovers, etc.

• Don’t waste your time with minor characters. I am the last person to make moral judgments about who sleeps with who, but if the person you’re taking home for the rest of the night or the rest of your life doesn’t have an amazing ability or memorable personality, they aren’t worth your time. Just look at all the mediocre characters Heroes introduced (too bland to remember), which only meant lost time with the amazing stars of the show we’d all fallen for.

• Don’t hide your badass side. Future Hiro, wearing a black coat, ponytail, and samurai sword, is badass. Unfortunately, the show never actualized this version of Hiro in real time, so we never got to see Hiro’s darker side. Don’t wait to bust out your inner badass. If you’ve got a dark, sexy side that no one gets to see, just throw on your best leather outfit and let your freaky side out.

• Don’t try to be normal. This is more a classic superhero plot point than it is a flaw with Heroes, but many of the main characters, including Claire and Nathan, longed to be rid of their abilities and be normal, which led to some problems for everyone. The lesson is that you have to be okay with who you are; trying to fit in and be normal at best makes you boring, and at worst leads to a police state complete with internment camps for deviants (just ask Danko).

• Don’t lose your powers. Both Hiro and Peter lost their powers because of a crappy resurrection of Peter’s dad, who came back, added nothing to the show, then promptly died off. We all dated those people who we thought were going to be important and that we’d learn from, only to have them disappear and mean very little to our lives. Don’t let those insignificant people take away part of who you are. You’ll need those powers when the right person comes along.

• Don’t assume you’ll have another season. Clearly, the writers of Heroes thought they were going to have more time to develop their story. I mean, they went through a whole season with Hiro and Peter having no abilities? WTF? Ugh. If you’ve got some good moves or good ideas in the bedroom, don’t save them for later. You may not have another chance to wow a lover.

I will miss Heroes if it is not renewed, not because it was amazing, but because I wanted it to have another chance to correct its mistakes. But unlike this show, you have a chance to avoid or fix those mistakes now – before you fade off onto the D-list of shitty sex partners.

Holly recently wrote about a common complaint among many of the couples we talk to: boredom in the bedroom. In her post, she postulates that perhaps they are not truly bored, but instead they have been mislead by the media, manipulated by mainstream porn, and rick rolled by “reality” TV. I, on the other hand, think that is total shite (like they say in England) - people are bored with their sex lives because they have boring sex lives.

While the images on television may not portray the everyday sex lives of people, that doesn’t mean that they do not tap into or represent something sexual within us. So if seeing sex on the screen makes you dissatisfied with your sex life, it probably means your sex life is boring.

As an analogy, let’s take basketball. The NBA represents the very best of the very best, taking the top .03% (numbers vary depending on source, but you get the idea) of the athlete pool and in no way portrays the everyday pickup games of people. However, I watch the NBA, during which the media saturates me with images of “what basketball should look like.”

So if it’s actually the media commercializing only a very select non-representative group of elite athletes, does that mean that I am not actually horrible at basketball, and that it’s just my self-image that i have to work on? NO, clearly not. I suck at basketball because I suck at basketball. Watching the NBA only reinforces that fact.

Secondly, many of these people turn out to be bored in comparison to previous sexual experiences they have had. By comparing their current sex lives to past sexual experiences, a person decides which was better or worse, more fun or less, exciting or boring.

Just as I don’t believe that video games cause gun violence and Marilyn Manson doesn’t drive people to suicide, TV doesn’t make you bored with your sex life. Your boring sex life does.