TresSugar

Dear Poll: Does His Sexual Past Matter to You?

DearSugar — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:00:00 -0800

Last week Virginal Virginia wrote in about being heartbroken by the number of women her new boyfriend has slept with. You all offered up some great advice, but it got me thinking - how well do we all really know our partner's sexual history? It's definitely not a question high on my priority list, but tell me, does it matter how many sexual partners your significant other has had?

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Hump Day: Sex Makes Her Uncomfortable

TresSugar — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:23 -0800

Welcome to Hump Day, TrèsSugar's sex advice column. If you have questions about sex, send them to TrèsSugar, and our friend Dr. Charlie Glickman from Good Vibrations will offer his sound advice!

Today's Question:
I'm 24 and in my first relationship. I really like the guy, we've been going out for six months, but I get nervous whenever he slips his hand under my underwear. He gets the hint and stops. I don't mind him doing other things (we haven't slept together yet), but I wish I wasn't such a prude. I don't know what he expects and I worry that he will be grossed out, as I only shave/wax the bikini line but not the whole thing. What if he thinks it is ugly? I also don't know what I should expect; he knows I'm a virgin, but I don't know how to speak to him about why I get uncomfortable, and I don't know how to overcome it! I also have a few stretch marks and worry that he will be grossed out by them. Please help?

To read Dr. Glickman's response, read more.

Thank you for sharing this challenging situation. I know that it can be scary to talk about things like this, but these are all really common thoughts.

One of the things that can help when you’re on the edge of your comfort zone is to take it very slowly. It’ll probably help to tell your guy about your discomfort, even if you can’t tell him why it’s there. You could simply say "I have a lot of discomfort around sex." You also might want to do a little solo exploration. It takes the pressure off because there aren’t any partner expectations. Check out the wonderful book Becoming Orgasmic. If you’re looking for tips or ideas for techniques, Tickle Your Fancy is full of suggestions. Once you know a bit more about what you like or dislike, you and your boyfriend might be able to find something that you both like to do.

It’s worth mentioning that vulvas come in all different shapes. (The vulva is the external female anatomy. The vagina is the inside part.) There’s a long history of negative attitudes towards the vulva, but each one is unique and beautiful in its own way. A lot of women have the idea that there’s something wrong with their vulvas because they don’t look like what we see in porn or because they have hair, and I think that’s unfortunate. I strongly recommend getting to know your parts and Scarleteen has a great site about that. It’s geared towards teens, but there's lots of amazing info about sex, bodies, and pleasure.

Another option would be to explore some of these concerns with a therapist. When you have an itch on your back, you need someone else to scratch it. Therapists help us by reaching the spots we can’t reach on our own. Lastly, depending on where you are, you could join a body-image support group. While they tend not to focus on sexuality, they can be an incredibly helpful way to work through our concerns about our bodies and how we (or other people) feel about them.

Working through these challenges isn’t always easy, but it can be very rewarding. Whatever route you choose, I hope you find the pleasure and joy that you deserve.

Relationship Protocol: When Is the Right Time to Bring Up Sexual History?

DearSugar — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:00 -0700

There are many amazing moments in the beginning of a new relationship, but there is an equal number of awkward and mildly terrifying moments, too. Learning about his sexual history and giving him yours, including your number of sexual partners and any STI exposure risks, can be very revealing.

Though often there is shame if you feel inexperienced or guilt if you feel too experienced, sharing this information is important for the emotional growth in your relationship and for your sexual health. But it's difficult to decide when this conversation should take place - certainly not on the first date, but hopefully before the first sexual encounter. So ladies, when is the right time to bring up your sexual history?

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Infamous Reform School For Girls Closes Its Doors

TresSugar — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:00:00 -0700

The idea of a reform school for girls seems to come straight out of a B-movie from the '50s, complete with stock characters like the naïve innocent, the hardened mean girl with a heart of gold who ends up plotting a way for them both to escape, and an evil warden who gets in their way. It's hard to believe that such a place could still exist.

Until August of this year, the notorious Beloit reform school for girls in Beloit, KS did exist, and the school, founded in the 1890s, only recently shut down because the state could no longer afford to house the remaining 21 girls to the tune of $200,000 a year.

Although the school's founders had good intentions, Beloit's dark history includes the severe mistreatment of girls, many of who were running away from physically and sexually abusive homes. In effect, the abused were shipped off to be further abused. How bad did it get? In the '30s, a superintendent who was influenced by Nazi eugenics practices had 62 of her charges involuntarily sterilized. To read more about the history of Beloit and how it evolved, read more

Beloit was founded and in part funded by the suffragist and pro-Prohibition group The Women's Christian Temperance Union in the 1890s. Sometimes, the girls there were practically "indentured" by farm families in this rural town in order to earn the food they ate. (This was all before the state took over.)

At the time, according to Russell Jennings, commissioner of the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority, girls "were really viewed in our society much more as property." They didn't even have to run away to be deemed "incorrigible" or "wayward." They only had to be, as he put it, "a pain in the neck."

In a file from a girl housed (incarcerated?) at Beloit in the '30s, her offenses were that she "associated with Mexican men" and "became intoxicated at dances." Another woman was sent to the reform school for "being immoral (with father)."

A federal law passed in the mid-1970s ended the practice of sending girls to reform school when their offenses, if they'd been committed by adults, would not be considered crimes. But their incarceration continued in Kansas until 1983. Now, troubled teenage girls are sent to community centers where they can get the help that they need.

In spite of its history, for some who stayed there, Beloit was a haven from abuse at home. "I will always believe that because of Beloit and the staff, I am where I am today," said a 50-year-old who is happily married with three children and counsels survivors of sexual abuse. "They saved the lives of unwanted children."

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E-Health Records Raise Privacy Concerns About Sexual Health

TresSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

In February, the US government mandated that doctors and healthcare providers create an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for every American by 2014. This new system, which healthcare providers and government officials can access when authorized, promises to make health care more efficient and less expensive. But there's a growing concern that the adoption of a central, online system could compromise patient privacy.

Some people worry that private information, such as someone's sexual health history, could get in the hands of the wrong people if health information becomes too centralized. One congressman, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, was recently asked specifically if information about STDs and abortion would be included in a person's record. He said that patients would be able to opt out of including such personal information in the electronic file.

Life is always easier when you swap out a paper-intensive system for searchable, sortable electronic databases. But when it comes to health records, there are risks to consider. Would you choose not to include sensitive information about your sexual health in your official e-file?

You Asked: My Ex Lied to Me About His Sexual History

DearSugar — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:00:00 -0700

Dear Sugar,

I was with my ex-boyfriend for 11 months, and we had sex after six. I was a virgin at the time and didn't feel ready to have sex yet. He had told me that he was also a virgin, and we had numerous talks about how I believed premarital sex was wrong; his view was that if it was with the right person for the right reasons, it couldn't be wrong. In the end, we had sex, and over time I became comfortable with the idea of it and my views on premarital sex changed.

Eventually we broke up because I could sense he wasn't right for me - I caught him telling white lies a lot, and he was constantly sharing the more intimate details of our relationship with his friends. After a few months had passed, we decided to try being friends again. Everything was going great, until he informed me that he had lied when he said he was a virgin. Even though it's been months since our breakup, it still hurts to hear that; I feel betrayed and used.

Apparently he felt guilty about lying to me and wanted to come clean. Now he's asking for forgiveness, and I don't know what to do. I've never felt more disrespected and stupid. How do I deal with this?

- Lied to Lila

To see DearSugar's answer, read more.

Dear Lied to Lila,

I don't blame you for feeling betrayed! He lied to you in order to take advantage of something that you were obviously unsure about, and in my book, there's absolutely no excuse for that. While I tend to be a big believer in the notion that nothing is unforgivable, this particular lie and admission don't say much about his character. If you need to forgive him in order to process this, then I think you should, but forgiveness aside, I'd be wary when considering him your friend.

While I can't say whether or not your ex has changed in the few months since you've broken up, my best bet is that he hasn't. And even if he has made some changes, admitting that he lied to you before doesn't suddenly make lying in the first place OK. I think you need to tell him what you told me- that what he did was wrong, and you feel betrayed and used. In the meantime, remind yourself that you can't control others' actions. It's upsetting that he lied to you, but try to avoid looking back on your time together as a mistake; rather, consider it a personal learning experience.

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Anita Hill on the History of Female Supreme Court Justices

TresSugar — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"For me the critical question is not whether the Supreme Court should have seats set aside for women; the one so often asked. Nearly 30 years after Justice O’Connor’s appointment, the question we confront as a country is whether we can let go of the presumption that these lofty positions belong to men. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it, 'Women belong in all places where decisions are being made . . . It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.'"

- Anita Hill reflecting on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings today and on the scant history of women on the Supreme Court. Now a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University, Hill is best known as a former colleague of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Hill testified under oath during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings that her supervisor Thomas had sexually harassed her while they worked together.

Smart B*tches, Trashy Books Defend the Romance Novel

TresSugar — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 02:00:00 -0700

Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have helped romance readers discern the good smut from the bad for years with their blog Smart B*tches, Trashy Books. And now with their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, they offer a guide through the heady world of the $5.99 novel and defend it with wit and intelligence. First they told us who really reads these things, and today we ask why romance novels deserve respect and what they tell us about society, and Candy and Sarah make the genre sound like the college course we all missed out on!

What do romance novels tell us about women, relationships, and society? Why do they deserve more respect?

Sarah: Romances are a billion dollar industry of women writers working to produce narrative fiction for an audience largely comprised of women. No, nothing feminist or subversive about that at all. The industry and the genre are long overdue for critical attention, especially because the whole of the genre's history parallel major shifts in the social and political status of women in the US. Romance novels represent an anthropological history of women through fictional narrative, exploring professional status, sexual agency, self-empowerment, self-actualization, and achievement of autonomy. I think that's the part that surprises new readers the most - the heroine always wins. To see Candy's answer, read more.

Candy: I think more than any other genre, romance novels are about finding emotional stability at the family level and nurturing hope. It's part of why they're so appealing, and why they've been selling like gangbusters in this economic downturn. But I really hesitate to make any kind of generalization about the overall message of romance, because the authors are every bit as diverse as the readers, and consequently, the books run the cultural gamut, from espousing fundamental Christianity to displaying a deep suspicion of religion, from endorsing authority to urging the readers to question it, from displaying a deep-seated (and oftentimes largely unconscious) homophobia to centering around gay love stories.

Romance novels deserve more respect because they're the whipping boys for no goddamn reason that I can see other than a societal fear of and disdain for squishy emotions. They're no better and no worse than any other genre out there, but there's this incredibly strong stigma attached. In many ways, I think my desire to see romance stop being the Rodney Dangerfield of publishing has more to do with my desire for the deeply-buried societal disdain for femininity to go away and stop wrecking our sh*t already. Romance authors are still, by and large, seen as a "damn mob of scribbling women," though they're a much bigger mob now than poor Hawthorne could've dreamt of in his philosophy.

I don't necessarily agree with Sarah - that romances as a billion-dollar industry written by and for women are feminist and subversive - because a lot of what's out there is conservative. I hesitate to say that a lot of them reinforce or are supportive of the dominant paradigm and of patriarchy, because honestly, that's the cultural medium we inhabit, and it's difficult, if not outright impossible, to step out of it completely while we're still in it. Patriarchy stll informs the fabric of our experiences, and that includes the fiction we read and write.
Ultimately, market forces are shaped by society at large, which means that the romance market as a whole tends only to be as feminist or subversive as the society as a whole. That's not to say that there aren't many wonderfully subversive feminist romances, because there are. I'm just not convinced the genre as a whole is. Romance authors are still, by and large, seen as a "damn mob of scribbling women," though they're a much bigger mob now than poor Hawthorne could've dreamt of in his philosophy.

China's Sex Theme Park - Vulgar or Valuable?

TresSugar — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:00:00 -0700

China's Love Land had big dreams. The sex theme park was going to offer sex technique workshops, safe-sex seminars, a museum on the history of sex, and some giant genitalia for good measure.

The owners hoped to further the spread of good sex, while stopping the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Unfortunately, the topic of sex is extremely taboo in China, so the larger-than-life naked bodies were far too much for Chinese officials to handle. Today, officials ordered the "vulgar, ill-minded and misleading" park to be demolished, before it even had a chance to open.

While Love Land would have been China's first sex theme park, exhibits exploring the cultural significance of human sexuality are not new. For example, New York's Museum of Sex offers exhibitions, lecture series, and other events on all things sex.

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Pull-Out Method: Better Than Nothing or as Good as Condoms?

TresSugar — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:00:00 -0700

About as good as condoms says a new study by the Guttmacher Institute. Of course, it's only true if pregnancy is the only thing you're trying to prevent. Condoms are still better than just about everything if you're looking to avoid STD/STIs.

The study found that the failure rate of condoms if used perfectly is 2 percent, but the actual failure rate is 17 percent. For the pull-out method, the same rates are 4 and 18 percent, respectively. So the realistic risk of getting pregnant is only 1 percent higher when using the pull out over condoms.

Overall, not great news, considering the threat of pregnancy has always been the best reason to ask a man to wear a condom without negotiating awkward sexual history talks too early. But what if you're responsible? Tests are done. Relationship is committed. And consequences? As prepared as you'll ever be. Would you regularly use the pull-out method? Or, do you?

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