See below for info and please feel free to share this widely.

Update: the interviews will be in-person, so the researcher is looking SF Bay Area folks.

I am recruiting participants for an exciting study about the ways in which lesbian/queer mothers of color teach their children about sexuality. I would sincerely appreciate your sharing the following information about this study with your friends, family and colleagues who may fit the below criteria.

WHO: I am seeking women of color who engage in sexual and/or romantic relationships with other women and have at least one child between the ages of 9 and 16. The interview will take approximately two hours and as a token of appreciation participants will be given a $25 gift card to Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE STUDY: With respect to the sensitive nature of this study I hope to convey the importance this study has for the LGBT and parenting community.

My study is called “Maternal Communication About Sexuality: Lesbian/Queer Women of Color” and will explore how mothers think about sexuality and their experiences conveying sexuality to their children. My hope is that learning from current parents may provide others with ways to create a safe and inclusive environment for children to explore their own sexuality. This study has important meaning for clinicians and parents and can provide input on how to communicate sexuality to children, as well as aid lesbian/queer parents in preparing their children for the “coming-out” process to friends and peers. Participation in this study may provide parents with the opportunity to explore, discuss and reflect upon how they communicate with their child about sexuality as it relates to their own culture and sexual identity.

Please be assured that any person who participates in this study will not be identified in my study, nor will their affiliation with you or any particular organization. This study is under the supervision of Dr. Harriet Curtis-Boles and has been reviewed and received clearance through the Alliant International University Institutional Review Board. As part of my dissertation in pursuit of my doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology, this study will contribute to the research on parent-child dialogue surrounding sexuality and support parents in their engagement with their child’s psychosexual development.

If you have any questions about this study or are interested in participating, please contact me at (415) 812-4790; mkatz1@alliant.edu. I appreciate your time and support.

Sincerely,
Madeleine Katz

We’re also taking things in a different direction this week with our blog tour. We’ll be showing up at some of our favorite websites. Look for posts and reviews by Greta Christina, Adriana Ravenlust, Clitical.com, Sex City Radio, BoyCulture.com, and Sexational. I’m excited to see what these amazing folks have to say about the book!

If you haven’t had a chance to pick up your copy of The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure, or if you have someone you’d like to send one to, we’re doing a giveaway. If you’re the lucky winner, you’ll get one sent right to your door. Simply login below and click as many of the entry options as you want. You can enter by following us on Facebook or Twitter, tweeting about the contest, or naming your favorite prostate toy. A winner will be picked on May 29 and will be notified by email. Good luck and have fun!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For many years, medical professionals have pressured parents of children with intersex conditions to consent to surgery to try to “fix” them. Not only do the surgeries not do what the doctors promise, they often lead to other difficulties, such as reduced sexual sensation, sexual dysfunction, scarring and chronic pain, and the assigned sex might not be how that person’s gender identity develops. Plus, there’s often a lot of fear, silence, secrecy, and shame around it.

Advocates for Informed Choice has been working to give parents and families the information they need to be able to make their decisions without being pressured by medical staff. Now, they’ve partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center, and pro bono counsel for the private law firms of Janet, Jenner & Suggs and Steptoe & Johnson LLP to file a lawsuit against the South Carolina Department of Social Services, Greenville Hospital System, Medical University of South Carolina and individual employees for performing an irreversible and medically unnecessary surgery on an infant in the state’s care.

The child, M.C., was born with an intersex condition that resulted in sexual organs that could not be easily labeled as male or female. While they didn’t know what gender identity would eventually develop for M.C., the defendants performed surgery and removed his healthy phallus in order to make him a girl. At eight years old, M.C. has identified as a boy and shows signs of developing a male gender identity. Many of these surgeries are forced on children and their families without being medically necessary. It makes much more sense to assign a gender at birth, while also making room for the child to develop their ow gender identity and make their own decisions about their bodies.

According to the AIC press release:

The lawsuit charges that the defendants’ actions violated the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution by subjecting M.C. to “a medically unnecessary surgery that altered M.C.’s body and permanently limits M.C.’s ability to procreate without notice or a hearing to determine whether the procedure was in M.C.’s best interest.”

The lawsuit also charges that the doctors committed medical malpractice by failing to obtain adequate informed consent before proceeding. The defendants told M.C.’s guardians to allow the sex assignment surgery but did not include information concerning the significant risks of the surgery or the alternative of not having surgery at all. Most important, they did not notify them the surgery itself was medically unnecessary.

It’s unfortunate that it takes something like this to change the medical system that has been harming so many people. But attitudes about gender and reinforcing the gender binary are slow to adapt to more current understandings of how bodies and gender work. I hope that this lawsuit will bring some much-needed attention to this issue and help people see that adults’ anxiety about gender differences doesn’t need to be imposed on the bodies of children.

If you can, please support Advocates for Informed Choice by helping them to get the word out. Share this post, let folks know about what they do, follow them on Twitter and Facebook, and donate what you can. These are great folks doing amazing work and they need our help to make it happen.

I once read a story about an 80-year-old judo master who had been studying martial arts ever since he was a child. He said that when he was younger, he could have less-than-perfect form and make up for it with strength and flexibility, but now that he was old, his form had to be in perfect alignment. When we act in alignment with our goals and intentions, we’re more efficient because we don’t waste as much energy and time. We don’t create as much friction, so we can move from A to B with more grace and speed. That’s a lesson we can apply to any part of our lives, especially our sex lives and our pursuit of pleasure.

A lot of people hear phrases like “the pursuit of pleasure” and assume that it means wallowing in sensual experiences at the cost of one’s health and well-being, but that’s not what I mean by it. In her book The Pleasure Zone, sex therapist Stella Resnick identifies eight kinds of pleasure:

• Primal pleasure and surrender
• Pain relief
• Elemental pleasures such as play, laughter, and movement
• Mental pleasures
• Emotional pleasures
• Sensual pleasures
• Sexual pleasures
• Spiritual pleasures

For me, the pursuit of pleasure means acting in ways that expand my ability to experience all of these. I don’t want to focus so much on one that I decrease my capacity for another, such as when someone gets so hooked on the pleasure of drugs that they don’t see the physical and emotional damage they’re causing. Efficient hedonism means looking at all of my actions and how they affect me and the people around me. Without that context, it can easily slide into wallowing in unhealthy patterns.

So why do I think this matters? Because I enjoy pleasure and I want to experience as much of it as I can during my short time in this world. When it ends, I want to look back on my life and be glad that I had an amazing time. I want to wring every delicious drop of delight out of it and drink it all. I see a lot of people spinning their wheels or using up all of their energy in friction, which creates heat, but not much else. I don’t want to do that, and that means being as efficient as I can be.

There are lots of ways to do that. Being open and honest about my intentions, desires, and what I can offer is probably the biggest piece. While it’s not a guarantee against friction and drama, at least it lets me point out that I said exactly what I was offering. I find that it invites a prospective partner to do the same, which gives us room to see if we have overlap in what we’re looking for. It also makes space for us to each say yes or no, make a counteroffer, ask questions, and look for some flexibility in what we’re seeking. A deep commitment to honesty and clear communication is essential to the pursuit of efficient hedonism.

Another piece is making sure that everyone is taken care of and everything is cleaned up. A dinner party isn’t over until all the dishes are washed and put away, and a sexual experience isn’t finished until everyone involved feels complete with it. I always drop an email or a text the next day, just to say that I had a fun time and check that my partner(s) did, too. That gives the other person room to let me know if there’s anything that they need to touch base about. If something has come up for them, I make time for a conversation so we can work it out. I’d much rather do that than have unfinished business, and anyway, it makes the odds of another date with that person go way up. Being efficient means looking for possible rough spots, and then doing what I can to smooth them out.

Efficient hedonism also means being willing to follow the pleasure and let go of whatever expectations I had at the start. If my goal is to have a specific kind of sexual interaction, it’s easy to get so attached to that idea of what’ll happen that I forget to enjoy the moment. When my goal is to co-create an amazing experience, I can adjust to the needs of the moment and have a great time. Resisting reality is both pointless and incredibly inefficient. Desire is fine. Attachment to the outcome of desire gets in the way. Letting go of it takes practice, and one reward is getting to have more fun.

I’ve had plenty of experiences during which I was surprised at how much fun something new or unexpected was, so I’m willing to try almost anything twice. Anytime we try something new, there’s going to be a learning curve, so working with that process is a big part of efficient hedonism. That might mean geeking out and figuring out how to do it again. It might mean deciding that a particular activity isn’t my thing. But whatever the response for a particular situation, efficient hedonism rides the learning curve, rather than resisting it.

There’s also quite a bit of planning that goes into it. I need to manage my blood sugar, so I’ll bring a snacky bar and take a break when I need to. Or we can pause long enough to grab dinner before heading back to bed. When I was younger, I would frequently ignore my body’s needs in order to have sex, which led to a lot of post-sex blood sugar crashes and fights. (I get cranky when I get hungry.) A little preparation avoids that and lets me have fun for much longer.

Other kinds of planning include having plenty of safer sex supplies. I have a “go kit” for quickies, and another for more extended dates and threesomes, so if something comes together at the last minute, I don’t have to pull my gear together. Condoms, gloves, lube, and a few hypoallergenic wipes- it’s not difficult to put something together and it’s always better to have safer sex supplies and not need them all than to need them and run out. Of course, I have toy bags that I can pack for whatever might be on the agenda, and the lube and condoms get restocked when I’m cleaning up after a date. That makes prep for the next time faster.

Lastly, efficient hedonism means listening to my body and recognizing when it’s time to stop. The best time to leave the table is when you’re still a little hungry, and the same thing applies to sex. Overdoing it once in a while is fine, but as a regular diet, it’s much less satisfying than having just enough. Being efficient means knowing when it’s time to stop, when it’s time to take a step back, and when I need a vacation.

Ultimately, these are the things that work for me, so you might decide that you need something different to make your hedonism more efficient. Whatever that might be, take a look at how you can make it part of your sex life. The less energy you have to put into dealing with friction, the more ease you’ll find in your relationships. As I tell a lot of the people I coach, the short-term investment of work and time pays off pretty quickly. And with a little practice, you might earn your black belt in sex, too.

Looking around at the other passengers, I saw that many of them were reading, talking with a companion, or typing on phones or computers. Few of them were looking at their screens, although most of them had left them turned on. The airline’s constant stream of advertising slipped around them like water around a rock in a stream.

I’m not convinced that none of it gets absorbed. I can sometimes see how memes ripple through our brains, getting passed along as we try to manipulate each other and influence how other people will act. I see how some techniques are more effective than others. I see some of the ways in which individuals, families, groups, and communities are shaped and directed by many of these messages, and how they maintain some of the patterns that diminish us, or that encourage us to act in ways that hurt ourselves and others.

These memes gather into trickles, and streams, and rivers of thought and feeling that we all swim through. I know that there are many currents that I’m unaware of, and that I understand only a fraction of the currents I can see and feel. I acknowledge that I’m also in the water, and that I absorb some of it, as well.

One way I respond to this is that I don’t have a TV show, movie, or news report going unless I’m giving it my attention. It helps me keep from being overstimulated, which goes a long way towards keeping my stress level down. On the flip side, it does mean that I’m sensitive to it.

I dislike going to bars and restaurants that have screens on, especially multiple screens. If I can see the screen anywhere in my field of vision, I have a hard time not looking, which makes it less likely that I can give my attention to whoever I’m with. When there are multiple screens, I end up scanning them over and over. After I while, I start to feel nausea, like a mild case of motion sickness.

I don’t know if I could build up resistance to that response and be able to ignore the media in ways that it looks like many other people do. I have a strong suspicion that instead, I’d end up numbing myself out in order to tolerate something that I find unpleasant. Numbing out in any part of our bodies, hearts, and minds can often lead to numbing out during sex.

One reason I cultivate mindfulness is that it has made sex a whole lot better for me. I’m able to notice and feel things that used to be too subtle for me. Giving my attention to the subtle things makes it easier to create a strong container for a sexual experience and for a relationship. And that allows us to dive deeper, to create more heat, and to build more passion. The more resilient the furnace, the bigger the fire it can hold. It’s often the small things that make that work, and being able to see and respond to them makes a big difference. That’s only one way in which mindfulness can bear fruit. But as someone who’s dedicated to efficient hedonism and to creating as much room for safety, connection, and pleasure as possible, it sure is good motivation.

So coming back to the way in which so many people simply tune out the incessant moving images in their worlds, I have to wonder how many of them are tolerating something unpleasant without noticing how it affects them? How many people are simply so used to it that they aren’t even aware of it anymore? And how much might their lives improve if they turned off the screens and learned how to give their attention to the here and now?

I don’t think that there’s any real way to answer that question, and ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is what you do about it. Here’s a suggestion: when you aren’t using them, turn off the TV and sleep the computer (or turn the monitor off, or use a blank screen as a screen saver). You can also cover the TV with some fabric, if you find it catching your attention, even when it’s turned off. Try it for a week and notice what happens. Try it for a month and see if it affects your relationships. Try it for a year and discover how much better it makes your sex life. It’s not like there’s anything to lose, and there’s a lot to gain.

Specifically, asking people I don’t know well for things has been a difficult thing for me. It’s been coming up since I’ve been on tour for The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure because I’ve asked a few people I didn’t know all that well if I could stay at their places when I was in town. I’ve needed to keep this tour on a tight budget and not paying for hotels has made a big difference. Plus, it’s more fun to stay with awesome people, to see a side of their cities that I wouldn’t have if I’d been on my own, and to get to know them and their families better. But it’s definitely an edge for me.

Asking for what I want and need has been one of my challenges ever since I was a kid, for several different reasons. Changing my relationship to that has been a slow process, mostly because I had a lot of anticipatory shame around it. Anticipatory shame is when you expect or anticipate being rejected or shamed for something, so you hold back from doing it. It can have a deep impact on any of our relationships, especially because even acknowledging it or talking about it can trigger it. So I used to have a lot of fear around asking for help or for favors if I thought it might be inconvenient for the other person or if I wasn’t really sure they’d say yes.

I’d been looking for ways to change that for a while, and having some success, when I attended a workshop with Thorn Coyle. She compared giving and receiving to pouring water out of a pitcher or filling it up. A lot of people pour and pour their energy out without asking anyone to return the favor. And she pointed out that when we do that, we refuse them the opportunity to give back. When we we do that, we take away their ability to experience the joys of giving. It really struck me when Thorn said that when we can receive, we give people the chance to have pleasure of giving. After all, I enjoy giving people things they enjoy, so why was I refusing others the opportunity to do that with me?

That took quite a while to really sink in for me because of all of the anticipatory shame I had around asking. But there were three things that helped me change that.

First, I had to learn to receive verbal appreciation. I stopped spinning my wheels when a friend got fed up with my deflecting her compliments and told me that when I did something great, she would repeat her compliment until I said “thank you,” rather than minimizing it or changing the subject. The first time out, it took a few tries before I could even get the words out, and even then, I was bright red from embarrassment and couldn’t look her in the eye. Two definite signs of shame.

The second is that my partner started helping me learn to receive gifts and acts of service without expecting that there would be strings attached. That was a difficult one for me because part of me insisted that I needed to keep score in order to make sure that we were even. Until I learned that she truly enjoys doing things for me, and understood that my resistance to that had felt like a rejection to her, I didn’t see that by trying to avoid my anticipatory shames, I was creating more disconnection in our relationship. Allowing myself to receive was scary because it felt so vulnerable. Fear of shame is one of the things that keeps us from stepping into vulnerability. And the only way to build a relationship is to make room for vulnerability. It took a lot to trust both my partner and myself, and to learn to accept what she offered.

The third big piece for me has been learning how to ask without having an attachment to the answer. One tool that made that easier was figuring out how to integrate consent into my request. While that’s certainly a great skill to use around sex, that’s not the only place it can be useful. I like to start with an “if” statement before I state my request. For example:

If you’re in the mood, I’d like to go get some dinner.
If you’re up for it, I’d enjoy kissing you.
If you’ll be around and it’s not a hassle, may I stay at your house?

Making it clear that the other person’s consent is the foundation of my statement or request gives them the room and the permission to say yes or no, to make a counteroffer, or to ask for more information. And having the tools to ask for things so that the other person has that freedom helps me feel more comfortable because I can trust that they won’t say yes and silently resent me for asking. It’s amazing how much that helps me lean into those edges.

Even so, I’ve noticed how scary it’s been for me to ask folks if I can stay with them if I don’t know them really well. I can much more easily trust my close friends to tell me what their availability is, and anyway, I know they enjoy my company. It’s when I ask the people I don’t know as well that this really comes up. And the more I explore my discomfort around it and ask, the more amazing experiences I’ve had. I’ve deepened some of my connections from acquaintances into solid friendships. I’ve seen a different side of some folks whom I’d only ever seen at conferences or big events. And I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.

It’s been an interesting thing. I had to learn how to receive before I could learn how to ask. In a way, that makes sense, but it’s certainly ironic. I was fortunate to have a friend and a partner who saw what I needed and could help me grow into it. And as a sex educator, I have to wonder how often my colleagues and I are going about it backwards. We often tell people that sex works best when you can ask for what you want, and that’s absolutely true. But I can’t help but think that we sometimes forget that not only are there a lot of reasons for people to have difficulty asking, there are also a lot of reasons people have difficulty opening up to receiving, to trusting another person’s offerings, to allowing ourselves the freedom to accept them. And until we have developed some capacity for that, how in the world can we expect ourselves to ask for what we want?

It takes practice to be able to receive with grace and with gratitude. Learning how to do that and building shame resilience has given me some wonderful opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I’d held myself back. If you find it challenging, try and see if there are ways to explore your edges around it. The rewards will be well worth it.

The short answer is that feeling and expressing emotions is in direct conflict with the performance of masculinity, but I think there’s more to it than that. In particular, we need to look at the gendered ways in which adults and peers teach boys and men that to not have feelings, and to bottle them up when they do happen.

A lot of women make excuses for the inability or unwillingness of their boyfriends/husbands/male partners to talk about their emotions. When these women have children, it really shouldn’t be a surprise when they aren’t able to teach their sons the emotional skills to talk about their feelings. How can you teach someone to do something when you don’t know what it would look like? Plus, there’s a good chance of reenacting the same patterns with children that we have with our partners or that we saw growing up. At the risk of making an overgeneralization, women who coddle men around their feelings often do the same with their sons. It’s a chicken and egg sort of situation, and the cycle is passed from generation to generation.

Meanwhile, the men in these scenarios aren’t teaching emotional skills to their sons, either. Having feelings is outside the Act Like a Man Box, so simply having them can trigger shame, anger, sadness, and grief. That adds an additional intensity to the emotions that are already present and that, by definition, these guys are unable to experience without distress. Withdrawal or lashing out in anger are what people often do in those moments, regardless of their gender. However, given the violence that often erupts when men face these challenges, it’s no wonder that men get coddled. Whatever the details of a given relationship pattern, many men aren’t giving their sons the skills they need.

Of course, not all families are made up of one male parent and one female parent. Couples of other gender combinations and families with other structures often have different ways of teaching their children about these sorts of things, although that’s certainly not always the case. And it does seem to be true that more parents are offering their sons better ways of dealing with emotions than in previous generations.

Even if a boy’s parents do model and teach him how to tap into his emotional intelligence, peers (especially other boys) often make it hard to keep practicing them. They can shame and mock boys who are “too sensitive” or who cry when they feel sad. They can force him to “man up” and hide what he feels. They can bully him into forcing himself into the Act Like a Man Box. And when he starts dating and exploring relationships, they can make it harder for him to navigate the emotional ups and downs that happen by not giving him opportunities for support. The parents I know who are teaching their sons relationship and emotional skills have usually laid a solid foundation that reduces any negative effects from peers. But even so, there are often a few years when their teens are especially challenging because they’re trying to balance how much their parents influence them and how much effect other teens have.

So given this overly simplistic description of these dynamics, what do we do about it?

Men, whether we’re parents or not, need to step up and learn how to make room for our feelings, how to talk about them, and how to manage them. In short, we need to develop emotional intelligence. Not only does that help us create happier relationships and avoid resentment (which is the biggest relationship killer), it gives us much more power in our lives. Instead of running and hiding from our feelings, we can listen to them and work with them. We can take responsibility for them, and for how we respond to them. That lets us live our lives without fearing our emotions because we know that we can ride them instead of letting the wave crash down on us.

That’s not an easy path. Like learning a language or how to swim, it’s a lot easier to get the knack of it if you start when you’re young. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In fact, it’s a lot less difficult than you think because each little success builds room for the next one. Even if it takes a few years, it’s worth it. Whether you do the work or not, you’ll be older in a few years anyway (if you’re lucky). So wouldn’t it be better to be able to look back and see how much you’ve grown, rather than being stuck in the same place? I think that what direction we’re facing and how much we work to move forward are often more important that where we are.

At the same time, the women in our lives need to stop coddling us. They need to make room for our learning curves, for our explorations and mistakes, and for our not fitting into their expectations about who we are. In her book Daring Greatly, Brene Brown observes that while women tend to feel shame for being imperfect, men tend to feel shame for being weak. We often absorb that shame from women just as much as from other men. The fact that these lessons usually play out differently with women than they do with men doesn’t change how women reinforce the Act Like A Man Box. That means that women need to lean into their discomfort around men’s feelings and not try to rescue us from them.

As part of this work, men need opportunities to practice and develop emotional intelligence with people other than our partners. A lot of guys rely on their partners to be the translators of their feelings. Instead, we can integrate emotional management and negotiation into all of our relationships, both because it helps us create better friendships and connections, and because practicing with many different people helps us learn a wider variety of skills. The more tools we have, the less likely we are to see every problem as a nail.

Since I don’t have children, I don’t feel qualified to describe how parents can foster emotional intelligence in their sons. That seems like something best discussed by someone who’s done it. Talking with other parents who are working on it can also be really helpful, and there are more books and online resources on these topics than ever before. What I can say, however, is that something needs to change in this cycle. Boys who are shamed for their feelings grow up to be boyfriends/husbands who get coddled and fathers who can’t help their own sons to do things differently. They can also become the men who use anger to try to keep the feelings at bay. Not only doesn’t that work, it can easily become the violence that wounds and scars everyone it touches. If you want things to change, then take a look at how you keep the cycle going and seek new ways to deal with it.

Besides, having some skill at working with emotions and big feelings will make your own life better. The more you can build emotional resilience and the greater your capacity to experience your inner world, the more stable your friendships and relationships become. And the more you can express what’s going on for you and honor what other people feel, the better you’ll be at overcoming conflict and finding solutions that genuinely work for everyone.

My yoga teacher likes to say that the pain with yoga is better than the pain without yoga. I think that applies here, too. The pain of healing past wounds and developing new skills is much better than the pain that arises from being stuck, from lashing out, or from running from your feelings. It might not seem like it right now, but trust me- it is. And the benefits are well worth it.

This isn’t the first time that a Sex Week has been called into question and it won’t be the last. I have to say that I’m intrigued by how much the news reports are focusing on the participation of Sinclair Sexsmith, especially their description of her as a “lesbian bondage expert.” Of course, Sinclair is a lesbian bondage expert and I think that’s awesome. And it’s also clear that it’s meant to create a moral panic about the event since there won’t be any discussion of lesbian bondage at Sex Week.

I’ll admit that I’m a bit envious that they aren’t pitching me as a sodomy expert, what with my book on prostate play and all. You just can’t buy this kind of publicity. In fact, when campusreform.org posted about my appearance at Brown University’s Sex Week last week, several other conservative sites picked it up and traffic to the book’s website quadrupled for that day. Not only that, but the average pageviews increased as well, so it’s pretty clear that this kind of publicity can have a lot of benefit for those of us trying to get sex-positive messages out into the world, even though it’s unpleasant to see the haters getting so much attention.

At the same time, it’s usually the loudest people who are perceived as representative of the public opinion, so I’m not surprised that funding got yanked, even though the students are pretty calm about the event:

“We’re grown-ups!” said sophomore Trenesheia Davis, who said she’s “very interested” in a lot of the programming scheduled for the weeklong event in April.

Does it bother Davis that her student fees support Sex Week? No, she said. After all, student fees go to support the athletic programs, which don’t interest all students, she said.

Junior Max Rippe said it’s a good use of student fees “if it’s about promoting a healthy sexual environment, especially if there’s an element of tolerance involved” — even if not all sessions are ones he’d personally attend.

Take a look at the event schedule and you’ll see that the student organizers have done a phenomenal job of planning a wide range of speakers so they can offer something to almost everyone. There are discussions of sexual assault and how to end it, what the Bible says about sexuality, how to write about sex (whether it’s for a partner or to get published as a writer), talking with a doctor about sex, sex & the law, and my presentations on masculinity & sexuality and sex-positivity. There’s much, much more about how to make good decisions and share them with a potential partner than anything else, which is fantastic since those are skills that more college students need. But then, so does everyone else.

University Sex Weeks are important because they help bridge the gap between the sex education that’s appropriate for teens and the sex education that adults need, just as college students are navigating their way from one stage to another. Even when young people get comprehensive sex ed, and not just abstinence-only propaganda, most people have a lot of questions and need support as they find their paths. When administrators and legislators get in the way of that, they reinforce the silence, shame, secrecy, and ignorance that keep people locked into unhappy sex lives and unhealthy relationships.

Please support the U of T Sex Week and donate to their Indiegogo campaign. The students deserve better than they’re getting and every dollar helps!

How do you deal with turning down a woman you’re not interested in sex with?

At first, this might seem like the answer is obvious. Just say no, right? But there’s a lot more to it than that and it’s worth looking at.

“I’m a guy. Of course I want sex.”

There are lots of interconnected reasons that men often have difficulty saying no to sex. The performance of masculinity requires men to always be interested in sex, and to be willing and able to go at any time. And while much has been said about how this reinforces the scoring model of sex, in which having sex counts for more than the pleasure of any of the participants, there’s not as much discussion of what that does to men’s ability to consent.

I’ve always said that if you can’t say no, then you can’t say yes. Usually, this comes up around women’s agency and the many ways in which girls and women are taught that they don’t get to control their bodies or their choices. And it also happens every time someone assumes that men are always (or should always) want to have sex. It happens every time someone shames a man for not being in the mood or being too tired or not having an erection. And it happens every time someone’s masculinity is questioned because he says he doesn’t want or isn’t in the mood for sex.

What this often leads to is men not knowing how to even say that we don’t want to have sex in that moment, with that partner, or at all. We don’t get opportunities to practice it or to find the words that feel right. We don’t get the chance to figure what we honestly want because there’s no reason to when the answer is always supposed to be yes. And we don’t get the chance to see how hard it can be to turn someone down and deal with their reactions to rejection.

I know that there are a lot of forces that keep these patterns in place. Women who ask men out or proposition them are often slut-shamed. And the idea that men take the lead and women follow is tenacious. But so far, most of the discussion I’ve seen around these issues focuses on women’s experiences, for a variety of reasons. We won’t come up with alternatives until we can encompass the entire puzzle.

Dealing With Rejection

A corollary to this is that while most men have had the experience of propositioning a possible sexual partner and being turned down, far fewer women have. I can think of more than one occasion when I turned someone down and she was genuinely shocked because she assumed that I’d jump at the chance to have sex. Fortunately, I’ve never had anyone freak out about it, and I’ve heard stories of it happening.

In the conversation this fellow and I had, it came out that he feels a lot of anxiety around turning a woman’s advances down because of the reaction that he expects her to have. Rejection isn’t an easy thing, in part because it triggers some of the same portions of the brain as physical pain. It often takes a lot of fortitude and shame resilience to be turned down and not sink into a shame spiral. So we often coddle others and “play nice” in an attempt to minimize their feelings of shame.

That seems like a reasonable strategy- if I can keep you from feeling rejected, then I can protect myself from your reaction. Unfortunately, that can make us give mixed messages (“not right now”) or hide our real feelings (“ok, I guess”) or freeze in a moment of not knowing what to say. This last one is especially troubling in a world that continues to believe that a lack of no means yes. And contrary to what many people seem to think, a lot of men fall into these traps, too.

This is one of those situations in which I think a sharp knife cuts best. Sometimes, we just need to say it quickly and cleanly, trusting that the other person will have the resilience to not sink into shame. And even if they do, we need to have the strength to not topple over with them. Instead, we need to stay firmly on our own feet, which can sometimes allow us to offer a helping hand. But if we get pulled over with them, then nobody is in a position to help.

One thing I find useful is to remember that I am not responsible for anyone else’s feelings. My actions might trigger feelings for you, and that doesn’t mean that I made you feel that way. When we say things like “you made me feel like this,” we give up all of our power to that other person. When we say “you did that and now I feel this way,” we take responsibility for ourselves and, ultimately, claim a greater power over the situation. Conversely, I’ve practiced not saying things like “I made this person feel that way.” Instead, I focus on my actions and allow them the room to have their own responses. This is important because it helps me to not coddle someone else’s feelings of shame if I set a boundary or turn down an offer (whether the offer is for dinner, help with a project, or sex).

In my experience, and from talking with other queer men, this is often different when guys approach guys. One reason for that is that there aren’t the same entrenched patterns of gendered imbalances at play. Another is that queer men often have more experience with navigating these sorts of things in public, non-queer spaces, so we’re more used to minimizing any negative responses in order to remain unnoticed. And while some queer men can be jerks about it, most of us have been on both sides of this interaction, so we have more practice at being graceful about it. Or at least, more direct.

Pay Attention To Your Body

One of the unfortunate patterns that a lot of men get stuck in is not noticing what’s going on with our bodies. We often try to convince ourselves to have sex when we don’t really want to. And that’s made much easier when we use erection medications to force a physical response when our hearts aren’t really in it.

I once spoke with a man who wanted to know if a cock ring would fix his erection problems. When I asked him about his situation, it turned out that he had lost his job, his house was in foreclosure, and he and his wife were considering divorce. He hoped that sex would bring them closer together, rather than working on their relationship and stress management and allowing the sex to flow from that. And he had no idea that adrenaline makes erections less likely. Your body doesn’t care if the stress is from being stuck in traffic, fighting with your partner, or worrying about money- the physical response is going to be the same.

Similar situations can arise when we’re tired from a long day at work, dealing with health issues, or we simply want to take a break from putting our energy out. (This is one reason I like to say that pegging can help save the world. Women who have tried it have a much better understanding of how much effort and energy men often put into intercourse.) And when we try to force it, we dissociate from our bodies and our emotions, which isn’t really good for sexual pleasure.

Unfortunately, boys and men are usually taught to push through and force ourselves to perform, whether that means on the football field or in the bedroom. Learning to tune into our bodies and pay attention to what they’re telling us takes time and practice. And if our partners don’t see the difficulties in that, it’s even harder to do.

But in the end, it’s worth learning to pay attention to what our bodies are telling us. Tuning into that can help us ask for what we genuinely want, to set limits that we need, and to say yes, no, maybe, or anything else we might want to.

Putting It Into Words

I’m entirely serious when I say that turning someone down takes practice. There are lots of different ways to respond to any sexual offer and the best way to do it is to use words that feel right to you. One great way to figure it out is to try it in advance. You can experiment with different phrases or words to see which ones fit best. Here are a few suggestions. None of these will work in all settings or all relationships, so you’ll need to adapt them to your circumstances.

• I’m not feeling sexual right now.
• I’m not available. Thanks for asking.
• I like you and enjoy spending time with you. I’m not available for sex.
• I really value our friendship and I think that sex would change it. I don’t want to do that.
• Thank you for the sweet offer. I’m not up for sex, and I really appreciate your asking.
• No, thank you.

Pick one or two of these and say them out loud sometime when you’re alone. Make any changes to the exact phrasing that you need to in order to make it fit.

If the person who asks you is someone you want to maintain a connection with, it might be a good idea to follow up by continuing the conversation in order to maintain the “interpersonal bridge.” Rejection can lead to shame, so expressing your thanks for the offer and spending some time with them are two great ways to do that. (In Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, these would be (Words of Appreciation and Quality Time).

Safewords

One of the most powerful tools for communication that I know comes from the BDSM world. Safewords are usually described as ways to role play resisting your partner without losing the ability to make it clear where your boundaries are. If you like playing pirate and cabin boy, you might enjoy being able to beg the captain to stop without really meaning it. But there’s another really good reason to use safewords.

We start using the word “no” at a fairly young age, as any parent of a two-year-old can tell you. So by the time we’ve grown up, we’ve usually had a whole range of experiences with it and all sorts of other meanings get attached to it. That can make “no” hard to say, and that can make it hard to hear, especially during sex when the excitement is high and the hormones are moving through our bodies and brains. Safewords are a great way to sidestep that because we don’t have the same history with them. So if you find yourself already having sex and you realize that you want to stop, a safeword can make it easier to make that happen.

There are lots of different safewords that people use. Some folks like “red” for stop everything and “yellow” for “I need to pause/check in/deal with something.” Personally, I don’t use yellow since a yellow light often means “speed up to get through before it changes.” So I like “pink” because it’s not quite so red as red. Apparently, I’m not alone in that- I was talking with two folks about this and their safewords were fuchsia and magenta. Other safewords that some people use are time out, mercy, and please. Whatever your safeword, remember that it’s there to help you, so don’t forget about it. It’s a powerful tool.

 In The End

When it comes down to it, we all need to be able to say no when we need to, and we all need to be able to hear it. If you’re a guy and you’ve never tried it, I suggest you think about why that is and whether there were times when you had sex that you didn’t really want to, simply because you didn’t think you could or should turn it down. I know I have, and I felt pretty crappy afterward. If we want to have the kinds of sex that make us smile when we look back on it, we need to be able to make it a choice rather than our default response. It might not be an easy skill to learn, and the payoff is that we get to have much better sex, healthier relationships, and more respect for and from our partners. And that is well worth the effort it takes to say two little letters.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on rejection. Not unavailability being mistaken for rejection, but actual rejection. While you can obviously chalk up some rejection to unavailability, there are often times when it’s clear availability is not the issue.

I’m a man who is sexually attracted to women. Generally, in my encounters with women, I find I’m quick to find friendship and trust- things I value. I like talking to people and truly enjoy the company of women as friends. But when it comes to dating or trying to date women, I feel like people see through me, and that I may as well be a eunuch. That all of my social grace just kind of evaporates, and I start with nothing.

I find myself very poorly equipped to deal with rejection. I begin feeling extremely undesirable and it’s not a good sign that I intensify my workout routine after a rejection. Although I do enjoy exercise for its own sake, I must admit to overdoing it on these occasions. More than anything though, I feel overwhelmingly embarrassed by my attempts, and then feel embarrassed by my embarrassment.

From what you’re describing, it sounds like you’re expecting to see rejection, whether it’s there or not. And that makes me wonder- how would you know that someone was interested in you?

I ask because it’s clear that you enjoy connecting with and building friendships with women, and that things change when you want that to include a sexual/romantic aspect. Unfortunately, one of the challenges of rejection is that when we expect it, we often miss the signs that someone is actually interested. Not only that, but rejection is one of the shame emotions and when we’re stuck in it, it tends to make us less able to reach out and build connection.

Rejection is a particularly difficult feeling, in part because it triggers some of the same neural pathways as physical pain. It’s a double whammy because it makes it harder to take a chance and be vulnerable, while also making it difficult to trust or even see that the other person is interested. That quickly becomes a self reinforcing pattern.

I was recently at a party and watching a friend chat with someone he thought was attractive. From the outside, she seemed interested in him, but like you, he has a pattern of convincing himself otherwise and he really couldn’t see her signals. It’s not that he can’t recognize them in general, since he could watch other people have a flirty conversation and see the chemistry. But when it’s directed at him, he expects to be shot down and he misses the signs. So one question you might consider is: how would you know that a woman was interested in you? What would that look like? How would you know it was happening?

You might also think about what specifically triggers your feeling invisible or like a eunuch. What shifts you from someone who enjoys women’s company to someone who loses social skills? Are there any patterns to that? Does it happen more in certain circumstances or situations? Is there a difference between walking up to someone at a party versus a group conversation over dinner? Is there room for you to play to your strengths? For example, my voice is fairly soft, so I connect with people more easily when we can have a conversation rather than at a noisy event or club. Are there ways for you to do something similar?

Another option is to take a workshop on flirting. I’m not talking about the pick-up artist stuff, which I find generally rooted in manipulation of women and is often focused on scoring rather than creating pleasure or intimacy. Instead, there are some great classes that can help you see the signals you might be missing and connect with women more easily. Contrary to common belief, reading non-verbal cues and responding to them are skills that we need to learn and there’s nothing wrong with getting some tips.

I also highly recommend Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly. While she doesn’t address sexual or romantic relationships, her insights around how shame works are really amazing and she has a lot to offer. I especially like her framework for shame resilience, which is part of learning to deal with rejection without sinking into a shame spiral. Learning to recognize the beginning of a shame reaction can make it easier to deal with before you slide down the slippery slope (as I know all too well).

Another possibility is to work with a therapist. Shame is all about disconnection, so working with someone can help you learn to both feel the emotion and maintain the connection with another person. And that is a big part of building shame resilience. Trust me- a good therapist can be awesome.

Regarding your tendency to exercise after one of these experiences, that’s pretty common. I’m not aware of any research on it, but I can think of a few possible reasons. Doing something physical can often alleviate difficult feelings. Since you mention doing a more intense workout, I’m wondering if you’re getting an endorphin rush, which can often counteract feelings of shame. And since exercise and physical performance is often associated with masculinity, some men will do a heavier workout during emotional stress in order to feel more masculine.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s worth looking at whether your exercise is distracting you from what you’re feeling. In my experience, the only way through shame is to make room for the feelings, rather than either avoiding them or wallowing in them. If your workouts are helping you avoid them, they won’t get any better. If they’re giving you some space to calm down before coming back to how you feel, they can be really helpful. You’re the only one who can decide whether your exercise is an avoidance or taking a time out, so it’s worth thinking about that.

And for what it’s worth, feeling shame for feeling shame is pretty common. Not pleasant, but common. When I get stuck in that, I try to give myself the same care and compassion that I’d give a friend who was having a shame reaction. It’s part of being human and although we don’t have to like it, we do need to find ways of living with it. So I invite you to be gentle with yourself in those moments, rather then beating yourself up over it or thinking that there’s something wrong with you.

I wish I could offer a magic trick for overcoming shame and feelings of rejection. But I can tell you that it is possible to find new ways to move through these experiences. It’s not a quick process, but it can definitely happen. And the rewards are well worth it.