And you know what everyone wants to know?

“Why do couples stop having sex?”

And of course the answer is, “For lots of different reasons.” Like, one or both of them is plain old exhausted by some combination of work, kids, and impending nuclear holocaust. Or one of them is very sick, or recovering from being very sick, in ways that change their relationship with their bodies as sexual places to live – cancers of the reproductive tracts are classic example.

The most common answer, though, is that sex just drops off the radar, in the face of all the other shit that needs to happen day to day. It becomes unimportant or undesirable. Life, with its stress and aggravations, hits the brakes. Always remember: It’s rare to struggle with sex because there’s not enough sexually relevant stimulation in your life; if you’re struggling, it’s because there’s too much stuff hitting your brakes. Sex shrivels up when the accumulated frustrations of life and relationship keep the brakes on.

Because the answers vary so much, I think “Why do couples stop having sex?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Why do couples have sex?”

And the answer, according to the research, is that they prioritize sex. Couples who sustain great sex lives aren’t necessarily the couples who still can’t wait to stuff their tongues down each other’s throats; they’re the ones who decide it matters for their relationship that they stop doing all the other things they could be doing – kids and family and work and friends and entertainment and community and householding and even sleep – and spend time playing together with their sexual bodies. Considering how much else we have to do, it’s frankly astonishing that any pair of people in the modern, post-industrial West has any sex at all.

So what does it take to prioritize sex?

It doesn’t take lingerie or porn or sex toys or role play or all the other fun paraphernalia available to us, to activate the accelerator. It takes a serious commitment to getting rid of all the crap that’s hitting the brakes. That crap is usually some combination of these three factors:

Stress. I’ve written lots about this. The ultimate answer is, you can’t “tell yourself” not to be stressed. You have to do something with your body to complete the stress response cycle. Physical activity, creative self-expression, laughter, affection, sleep, these things all work. But “relaxing” is not a decision; you have to do something with your body.

Relationship factors. Early in a relationship, there’s nothing but hot and sexy love firing in your emotional brain, so it’s easy to experience pleasure. But over the years, a lot of gunk builds up in the emotional pipes of the relationships – resentments, small and large, frustrations and sadness about all the times you wanted to and your partner didn’t, or all the times you wished you wanted to when your partner asked – and so when you get in bed, you’re not just getting in bed with your wonderful partner, you’re getting in bed with all those years of accumulated gunk. Solution? Clean out the pipes. Which can be hard work, if you don’t have the skills. The two most evidence-based ways to get those skills are John Gottman’s work (see Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work) and Sue Johnson’s work (see Hold Me Tight.)

They’re Think They Have to Be Horny First. I’ve written at length about this here and on Medium because it’s such an important subject, but the short version is: pleasure is the measure of sexual wellbeing. You don’t have to crave sex before you start having; you have to be willing, as Ian Kerner puts it, to try some intimate contact. If the willingness to experiment is there, that’s all it takes to take the first step into sexual pleasure.

People are often surprised at how much of Come As You Are isn’t about sex. It’s because most of the reasons people struggle with their sexuality aren’t about sex, they’re about stress, relationships, body image, past trauma, or judgment and shame about how sex works versus how they think it’s “supposed” to work.

So there you have it. If sex has disappeared from your relationship, the sex itself isn’t always the problem (though occasionally it is). Usually it’s because people are waiting to be horny, and they’re never getting horny because of all the stuff hitting their brakes.

So figure out what’s hitting your (and your partner’s) brakes. And get rid of that stuff. And sexual pleasure will flow naturally into the space you create for it.

And the answer was, No. Women: Not quite people. Maybe almost people. But not quite. Not enough.

Also brown and black people. Almost people, maybe, but not quite.

And that has made the last few months pretty rough, because a lot of people I know are women, or not white, and some of them are even women who are not white. Some of them are Jews or Muslims.  Some of them are poor, or have been poor, or love people who are poor. And all of those people are not quite people, it turns out.

Except of course we are. Non-men and non-Christians and non-whites and non-affluents. All of us are people. Even people who aren’t American are people, and there’s just no vote that can change that.

So I’ve been trying to figure out what my job is, in a world where the vast majority of people aren’t quite people, according to the government.

And I’ve decided that my job is: more of the same.

So, two things, my people:

1. I’m writing a second book. The working title is BURNOUT. It’s about… burnout. Specifically, that feeling where you’re exhausted and overwhelmed by how much you’re doing, but you simultaneously feel like you’re not doing enough. Usually, a book about women’s sexuality would be followed by a book about men’s sexuality, or a book about relationships. But a huge number of people told me that the most important information in COME AS YOU ARE – a book about sex science – had nothing to do with sex, really. The most important information was the stuff about The Feels. Emotion. Stress. Completing the cycle. So I’m writing a book about stress.

I’m co-writing it with my sister, who is a choral conductor. (You’d be surprised how much choral conducting has in common with sex education; basically, we both have the job of being fully, authentically present, in order to inspire other people to do the same.)

The result is that I’m spending less time thinking about sex, specifically, and more time thinking about wellbeing, generally. Since this is a sex blog, I haven’t been writing here – I’ve been posting stuff on Medium instead, so if you’re like, “I WANT TO READ MORE EMILY,” go there.

2. Though most of the speaking events I’m doing are private – either colleges or professional trainings – there are some public events and I would sincerely love to meet you there.

• Partners in Sex Education, outside Boston – March 25, 2017 (conference registration close to full, register soon!)
• Women’s Therapy Centre Institute, New York City – Apr 14, 2017 (open to all!)
• New England Chapter – Romance Writers of America, outside Boston – April 7-8, 2017 (there’s a free, no-registration-needed signing, where I’ll have CAYA and both novels PLUS if you mention the blog I’ll give you a fun little gift! There’s also a reading, where I’ll read a bit of brand new, never-before-seen romance fiction I’ve been working on. Friday night!)

  Romance Writers of America, Orlando – July 26-29, 2017 (you have to register for the conference. I’ll be there with my sister, doing our first public presentation of the content of the new book!)
• Esalen Institute – Aug 4-6, 2017 (This one will be life-changing for everybody, me included.)

I’ve found that getting out and talking to other people who are interested in women’s sexual pleasure and autonomy, who are interested in creating a world where everyone has access to sexual, reproductive, and intimate justice, and who believe that sex can be a force for good, even in a world where it is so often weaponized, is maybe the best thing for my soul. I think you might find it’s good for you, too.

So, join me! I’m out to make the world a better place for women’s sexual pleasure and autonomy, because these are the most dangerous, subversive things you can have, in a world where women are supposed to be property, vessels, or objects.

And the evidence so far is that about a very strong third, or maybe as much as 45% of the American electorate is saying, “Yes. Yes that seems fine.” Or at least, “It doesn’t matter as much as WHICH EMAIL SERVER SOMEONE USES.”

Which is actually pretty encouraging, from my point of view. When faced with the question, right up front like that, the majority of adults in my nation feel a gut-level, “… Ew, no.”

The more stories we hear from women about their (alleged) experiences of groping, harassment, abuse, and assault at the tiny, creepy hands of the Republican nominee, the clearer the picture becomes: For decades, women transitioning into the roles opened to them by second wave feminism experienced and somehow navigated their way through sexual harassment from the (more powerful) men with whom they were working. It was disgusting to the women, and a source of intense distress, but they felt helpless to do anything and at some level they accepted that that’s just what it’s like to be a woman in America. And is HAS been what it’s like to be a woman in America.

Look, this is the foundational belief of patriarchy, that women’s bodies are in the public domain, except possibly if their bodies are privately owned by their father or their husband.  Never are women’s bodies simply their own, to live inside safely, without comment or touching.

The result?

Well. At a party a year or so ago, a bunch of women sat around talking about the strategies we use to prevent men from approaching us, like wearing a wedding band even if we weren’t married (doesn’t always work), wearing headphones or talking/pretending to talk on the phone (ditto), working (ditto), and more. There is literally no certain way to prevent men from coming up to us and trying to get laid.

The necessity for these prevention strategies isn’t even really because of the men; it’s because we women have been socialized to be “nice.” If a man approaches us when we want to be left alone, social rules dictate that we’re not allowed simply to say, “I’m not interested in talking to you; please go away.” If we say that, we’re the bitch and he’s within his rights to tell us so, and then tell everyone else in the bar. No, if he approaches us, we are socially obligated to offer him bare minimum politeness – a distracted smile and a quick withdrawal of eye contact – and hope that he’ll take the hint.

He won’t take the hint, because he has been gender socialized to take our reluctant acquiescence as encouragement to pursue us further. So he pushes further and we withdraw more, until ultimately we look at our watch, pretend to have an appointment, and apologize for having to leave.

All women want, in these situations, is to withdraw without escalating the situation. Get away, without making him feel so bad that he judges us.

God forbid we make a scene or call it out, because – as we’ve seen in the way women have been treated when they come forward – we know that we will receive the blame for it, not him.

America, though, is changing.

Ever so gradually, Americans are coming to acknowledge that it’s an unfair double standard to say that kind of thing about women’s bodies. We’re able to say, “If a person, anyone, said, ‘I can just grab him by the dick and he doesn’t stop me, because I’m famous,’ that wouldn’t be remotely acceptable.”

Because gradually, we’re being forced to acknowledge that the body of a woman is the body of a human, a person, someone capable, possibly, of being the leader of the free world.

Which is it, America? Are women’s bodies objects in the public domain, for men to do with as they like? Or are they that person’s own possession, and the physical embodiment of their personhood, which is valuable in its own right?

Which is it, America?

So I cringed a LOT when I realized I was going to write a blog post being critical about the newest video, on the relationship between BMI and health. It’s based on a giant new meta-analysis. Here is the research paper itself and here is the video:

So.

Look at the main overall graph of the relationship between mortality and BMI:

from Global BMI, 2016. The red arrow is pointing to the 22.5-25 BMI range. The bigger the square is, the more individuals are represented in that group. The longer the lines are, the more variability there is within the group. The scale at the bottom is 15 (at the axis), 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 45)

Notice that a BMI between 30-35 (the 7th square – remember 30 = “obese” according to the CDC) is lower risk than BMI under 18 (the first square).

Notice that a BMI between 25-30 (the 5th square – “overweight” according to the CDC) is lower risk than a BMI under 20 (the second square – within the “healthy” range).

And… that part in the video where Aaron sort of shrugs through a mention that there are differences for men and women? Here’s the graph of that “I guess I should mention…” dismissal:

WTF! High (and low) BMI is clearly much higher risk for men than for women! CLEARLY MUCH HIGHER.

And yet who gets more shit, not just from the media and from their cultural overall, but also from their doctors, about their weight?

Women (pdf).  Twice as much as men.

Hence the student who was a competitive figure skater in high school – read: professional athlete – with body fat so low that she was skipping periods, yet her doctor told her she was “overweight,” because her BMI was high from all that professional-athlete muscle mass. Hence my own doctor who walked in, eyes on my chart, for our first (and only) appointment and told me I needed to lose 15 pounds. He had never even looked at me, much less at my blood sugar, blood pressure, resting heart rate, or any other actual measure of my health, and the first thing he said to me was that I was too fat.

Think thin priviledge isn’t real? Ask Elna Baker:

Stigma against fat people only causes more negative health consequences, not least because doctors’ implicit bias against fat people (as well as people of color and sexual minorities) reduces quality of care – really, fatphobia among medical providers is both common, surprisingly persistent, and unambiguously problematic – but empathy-building (PDF) and exposure to counter-stereotypes can reduce that bias. As is often true with implicit bias, doctors are not aware of their bias. Also male doctors are more likely than female doctors to have implicit bias against fat people.

Aaron: your video isn’t helping with this – and it could have.

You could have said, “Look! It’s actually WORSE to have a really low BMI than to have a somewhat high BMI! You can’t assume someone’s health status based on their weight!”

Or, “Look! This matters so much more for men than for women, and yet who gets more crap for it? Women! How unfair is that?”

Or, “Look! The range of ‘healthy weights’ isn’t where the government says it is! They say 18.5-24.9, but actually the population is better off 20-30!”

I wish you had said any of those other things, all of which are equally (if not more) supported by the meta-analysis, but which offer far more insight into the relationship of this piece of science to the cultural context that receives it. And I’m surprised that someone whose work is usually so good at integrating the evidence with the cultural context of that evidence – including corporate influence on government recommendations – would  instead offer such a shallow, unhelpful analysis.

So for everybody else,  let me just reiterate that the cultural thin ideal is a tool of patriarchal, capitalist oppression.

When you go to the doctor and they ask you to step on the scale, feel free to say, “I’d rather not.” That’s what I do.

And if they suggest “losing weight” as a strategy for treating whatever is wrong with you, feel free to say, “What behaviors are you recommending?” If you want to be snarky, you can say, “Should I have my arm removed… or my leg? Both of those would reduce my BMI.”

BMI is stupid. Exercise is good for you. Food should look something like it did when it was alive. Stigma is toxic and our food infrastructure is FUBAR. Okay.

And you, dear blog readers, said, “Write that. You should write that.”

And darn it all, I did.

And it turned out, writing it was good for my soul, and I have continued to write because of that. Even if I never publish another romance novel after How Not to Let Go (sequel to HNTF), I will continue to write fiction, because it is good for me. And I’m grateful to you, blog readers, for being like, “Money where your mouth is,” and talking me into trying.

To say thanks, here’s chapter 1 of How Not to Fall:

Chapter 1

My lips are dry and my heart is racing and he’s not even here yet.

This guy. He’s the postdoctoral fellow in my psychophysiology lab. Tall. Blond. English. A rock climber, for crying out loud. And he graduated from Cambridge University’s MB/PhD program when he was only twenty-three. Translation for civilians: he’s a fucking genius.

The man is a dreamboat. We’re all kind of crazy for him, all us undergrads in the lab – even Margaret, and she’s a lesbian. And I’m the craziest of us all. In fact, this is how crazy I’ve gotten: I’ve asked him to meet me for coffee.

The coffee isn’t crazy. We’ve had coffee before, he and I, to talk through papers or data or research projects. And the dry lips and racing heart are nothing new either – pretty much every time I see him (or, in this case, fail to see him), I feel this way.

But… I may have slightly led him to believe I’m struggling with some data, and that’s why I want to talk with him. (The data are fine. My senior thesis is practically done, and it has gone more smoothly than I ever expected.) In fact, what I’m going to tell him is – and see, I’ve got it all scripted in my head, so I don’t screw it up – “Charles: you know this is my last semester in college, and then I’m leaving for grad school. I think you and I have A Thing and so I would like to engage in a physical relationship with you before I leave Indiana. What do you say?”

This is as straightforward as it gets, right? I for one would love it if people approached me this unambiguously.

As I sit waiting for him, I consider including in my proposal a list of attributes I think make me a highly promising sex partner – the way you would in a cover letter for a job. Those attributes are, in descending order:

1. My brain. An asset for every other complex task I’ve undertaken, and I see no reason why it won’t come in handy for this one.
2. My athleticism. I don’t know exactly how this will help me either, but I’m sure I’ve heard the phrase “athletic sex,” and I’m sure I would like to try some.
3. My enthusiasm. I feel confident it’s better to have sex with someone who’s really, really glad to be there with you, than with someone who isn’t.

And possibly also (4), my unblinking willingness to look like an idiot in public.

Am I a beauty queen? I am not. My nose has a great deal of character. My hair has some interesting ideas about its place in the world. My body is built more along the lines of a wristwatch than an hourglass – flat yet bendy. It works for me—I am my body’s biggest fangirl—but I recognize where it falls short of the culturally constructed ideal – specifically, right around the place where my breasts aren’t.

Still, having talked this through with Margaret, my labmate and roommate, we’ve concluded I should lead with my strengths.

I’ve just told you a slight lie. I said “we” concluded I should lead with my strengths. In fact, the conversation went more like this:

ME: I’m going to do it for real. I’m going to ask Charles to have sex with me.

MARGARET: laughs uproariously.

ME: completely straight face.

MARGARET: abruptly stops laughing. You’re serious?

ME: As a hemorrhage. (NB: I didn’t really say this. It’s the kind of thing I imagine myself saying. I think I actually said something pithy, like, “Yes.” Also, don’t be fooled into thinking I actually know how to spell hemorrhage. That baby is all spell check.)

MARGARET: But why not just ask him on a date?

ME: I don’t have time to date! I’m only here for three more months, and I’ve got a thesis to write!

MARGARET: staring mutely, in stunned disbelief. And… when are you going to do this?

ME: Right before spring break. I figure if it doesn’t go well, we can avoid each other for two weeks and then come back and pretend it never happened.

MARGARET: Dude. What are you going to say?

ME: Dude, I have no fucking clue. (NB: This is word for word what I said.)

We tried googling “how to ask a guy if he’d like to have sex with you,” but we found little of value. There was a lot of “how to tell if he likes you,” but I already know he likes me – he just thinks of me as his duckling. Professor Smith is the Poppa Duck, Charles is the Momma Duck, and all of us undergrads are the ducklings, quacking and waddling our way through the lab, with somewhere between a third and a half a clue what we’re doing.

I did not attempt a search for “how to convince your academic Momma Duck that you’re not a duckling after all—you’re a sexytimes lady who wants sexytimes with him.

Margaret’s conclusion, having thought it through, was that I should not say anything.

“I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “It’ll be awkward.”

“I’d rather be awkward than never try,” I said. “I really think he and I have A Thing.”

And she said, “But maybe trying will actually make it less likely to happen, you know?”

I didn’t know. I don’t know. All I know how to do is try and keep on trying until I succeed, and then I usually try some more until I get good at whatever it is. That’s how it works, isn’t it?

So here I am, complete with dry lips, racing heart, and a coffee going cold in front of me. Because I decided it’s fine, either way. It’s no big deal. If he says no, he says no.  We finish the semester, we go our separate ways; no harm, no foul. It won’t change anything. Whatever happens today, I’ll still graduate in May, wrap up my dance classes, go the World Congress on Psychophysiology conference, and then go home to New York City to accept free food and lodging from my parents for one blissful month.

And then I’m off to Boston, to begin what can only be described as the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program.

(I know, right? I kind of impress me too.)

And nothing Charles might say or do will change any of that.

I just want to pause for a minute and say, for the record, I applied to the Harvard program basically as a joke. Like, doesn’t everyone apply to Harvard? Isn’t that just what you do? I applied for undergrad and didn’t get in, but last year I was looking at graduate programs and I thought, Do it. It’s not like you have to take a whole separate MCAT; it’s just one extra program to apply to, one extra essay to write. And the program is a-fucking-mazing, which is why everyone applies. But nobody gets in. You get rejected by Harvard, you go wherever you’re accepted, it’s fine.

Besides which, I spent my entire life expecting to go to Columbia University for med school – apart from a few lost years when I thought I’d be a dancer, but let’s not talk about that. My parents both got their medical degrees at Columbia. They met there. They fell in love there. I’m a Columbia baby. It was my destiny. Until I got the letter from Harvard.

It’s an embarrassment of riches, I know, and I am genuinely appreciative of all the opportunities I’ve had. It goes to show how little I have to lose right now. The day the letter came, I sat on my bed, surrounded by my various acceptance letters, and did the only thing I know to do under these circumstances: I Skyped my parents.

I pressed my palm into my forehead and told them, “It’s Columbia… or Harvard. I don’t know.”

My dad was like, “You gotta make the choice that’s right for you, Anniebellie.” (My name is Annabelle. Dad calls me Anniebellie sometimes. He’s been doing it since I was born. I have no expectation that he’ll ever stop, no matter how often I roll my eyes at him.)

And Mom was like, “Go with your gut, girl.”

In other words, they were no help. So I went for a run through Bryan Park, and when I got back to the apartment, all sweaty and panting, I Skyped them again.

“It’s Harvard,” I told them. And then for no apparent reason, I burst into tears.

My dad sighed and said, “We’re so proud of you. But you know what?” And he stopped for a second and sniffed. “We’d be proud of you if you lived in the basement apartment and worked at Starbucks for the rest of your life, because who you are is what matters, and you are a kind, beautiful person, Anniebee. You deserve it.”

This next part is embarrassing, but I want you to understand my state of mind. All I could say in that moment was, “Daddy,” as I sobbed in the direction of my laptop.

And my mom said, “Oh, eHug, honey. Hugs on electrons.” Which is the kind of thing she says. She’s maybe a little awkward.

So I laughed through my sobs and said, “I love you too, Mom.”

Right? I’m lucky. I’ll need to grow up eventually, I know; one day when I have a tough decision to make, I’ll have to call someone other than my parents. But you know what? That day isn’t here yet, and I’m not in a hurry.

Anyway, that was last week. And now here I am, still in undergrad, still at Indiana University. And even though, just at the moment, the idea of living in my parents’ basement and working at Starbucks is sounding pretty attractive, I know that in actual fact there are no consequences of rejection I can’t cope with. I’ve been rejected plenty, and accepted plenty too, and I’ll be fine.

And oh fuck. There he is.

Romance novel. Bam.
Available today from:
amazon
barnes & noble
Indie Bound
iBooks
Google Play

IMPORTANT PS: Lots and lots of sex, plus a cliffhanger ending. Feel free to wait until December, when the sequel comes out, if a cliffhanger will make you bananapants.

He is a good man, and his is the father of two young boys. So he wanted to know what to teach his sons, so that they would never do this to someone – intentionally (as is overwhelmingly the case – perpetrators don’t fail to get consent because they don’t know about consent; they fail to get consent because they don’t care about consent) or unintentionally.

Shortly after this, another friend of mine – a good man, father of a son and a daughter – posted on Facebook, “When I look at all the shit in the world, one thought overwhelms me: we have forgotten to attend to the psychology of boys.” Other friends of mine – a father of a son and a daughter, a father of a son, another father of two sons – agreed instantly, and the comment thread was filled with book suggestions, anecdotes, and overwhelming agreement. Overwhelming agreement – and this is on FACEBOOK, people – but no concrete, specific, straightforward strategies for creating change.

I believe in concrete, specific, straightforward strategies. And I believe there is one, in this case. And I believe that people who say, “There are no simple answers to things like this,” are lost in the woods. Sometimes there are simple answers – though they might be difficult. Simple answers are never The Whole Solution to any problem. But they’re solutions you can use TODAY and every day, to begin creating a world where it is not possible for acts of hate-fueled violence to happen.

Here is what I told my friend, the father of two boys (old enough now to speak their gender identity, and happy in the identity of “boy”) who helped that survivor:

People get to choose. She gets to choose. You get to choose. He gets to choose. They get to choose. Everyone gets to choose.

Want to touch that girl’s hair? She gets to choose how she gets touched.

Two men kissing in public? They get to choose how they touch and get touched.

Want to masturbate in the shower? You get to choose how you get touched.

Hoping your date will give you a blowjob? They gets to choose how they touch and get touched.

There will be times when you want to touch someone and you ask and they say “YES PLEASE!!” And that’s fun – you both got to choose when you touch and got touched.

There will be times when you want to touch someone and so you ask, but they say, “Nah.” And that’s frustrating – but you both get to choose how you touch and got touched, and that is much better than if just one person gets to choose.

Like, imagine how it would feel if someone wanted to touch you in a particular way and you said, “Nah,” and they touched you that way anyway. That would suck, right?

People’s bodies belong to them. People get to choose how they touch and get touched.

Everyone gets to choose.

I know there are all kinds of “But! But! But!” situations that you might want to dissect, to explain why it can’t possibly be that simple –  because gender socialization; because sexual entitlement; because survivorship changes the dynamic – but if you return to the principle, you can’t go far wrong. The answer to your “But, Emily!” question is, “Everyone gets to choose how they touch and get touched.”

Sure, it’s difficult sometimes, especially like when one person wants one thing and another person wants something else. But those difficult times are why we spend to much time reinforcing the basic principle:

People get to choose – everyone gets to choose – how they touch and get touched.

When it’s difficult, you go back to that idea.

I’m not saying that teaching this one sentence – over and over again, every day, in words and action – is going to end all violence and sex- and gender-based oppression.

Except I might be saying that. I might be imagining a world where everyone follows that one simple idea – everyone gets to choose how they touch and get touched – and it’s a world where I don’ t have to worry about anyone groping me at a dance club, or anyone pushing your daughter for sex at the end of a date, or anyone telling your son he’s a loser if he doesn’t want a handjob [EDIT: or, as noted by Carmen Amicitiae, “anyone telling your son, he’s a loser, if he wants a handjob from someone, but doesn’t get one.”

Everyone gets to choose. Everyone’s body belongs to them, and everyone gets to choose.

She says to take full care of your hurts. Take full care, and then if it still hurts, she says, tell yourself, “Interesting if true, but so what?”

Here’s why:

If you shift focus away from pain, it begins to mediate pain. If you shift focus away from concentrating on the pain that you feel in your body, it begins to literally mediate the pain neurologically; it doesn’t meant that it goes away entirely, it means that the focus has shifted and the pain becomes in background instead of screaming in foreground. And that applies to chronic pain in particular – it doesn’t apply to pain that’s from some kind of big accident of some sort and screaming in the middle of the roadway. This is for the kind of pain that is chronic.

She goes on to describe the bone pain she has experienced since she broke her leg when she was a child; and she describes all the things she does to manage her pain – tai chi and soaking and using a cane and, when absolutely necessary, pain killers.

“The majority of the time, if I do all I can that is gentle in intervening, I say, “Interesting if true, but so what?” and I go on with life, I find that that scream is all the way down to a murmur most of the time.” … Full health means, given the condition that the body is in right now […], taking full care. It doesn’t mean being able to jump up and down and leapfrog and turn cartwheels all the time. Full health means that I am still standing and that I am still dancing, and that the dancing is the point, not the pain.

I worry that this will sound dismissive of that pain, when it is, in fact, the deepest way I can imagine of honoring the ways we all walk around every day with these wounds. Notice that the first step is: Take full care.

Do you have a painful wound? Okay. Have you done all the things you can to manage that painful wound and help it heal? Have you sought information and guidance about helpful strategies? Have you built a brace of love and compassion to hold the wound as it heals? Have you enlisted loved ones to help you maintain that brace of love and compassion? Are you practicing, every day, the art of keeping your wound protected from the people who would, as Estés puts it, “steal your hope”?

Are there things you could, in principle, do to manage your pain, but you can’t because of practical realities? Okay. You’ve done all you can. And gradually, practical realities may change. Or they may not. So keep your eyes open… and still, each day, take full care.

Healing hurts. If you break your leg it hurts, and it continues to hurt until it is healed. Putting a cast on it does not, in itself, heal the leg; it only creates an environment of holding that allows the leg to heal gradually. You would never say, “I’m taking full care! Why does my leg still hurt?” It still hurts because it’s healing. That’s normal. Taking full care does not mean you will be free of pain. Taking full care means you’ve done all you can to promote healing… and now you can turn your attention to another sensation, another domain of your life, another activity.

Take full care.

And when it is the kind of injury that may never heal, when you are simply living with pain indefinitely…. still, take full care. Every day.

And once you have taken full care, simply allow the hurt to exist in the background, and turn your attention toward the dancing that you can do.

And if reading this makes you go, “BUT EMILY MY PAIN!” I say, “Have you taken full care? If not… take full care. Enlist loved ones to help you take full care. Take all the care that you pragmatically can. And then once you have taken full care… your pain is interesting but not the point. The dancing is the point, even if you’re doing it in wheelchair or a bed.

It was a lot harder to read than I expected – which is to say, it was really, really important.

The book ends on the note of “what we need to do to change the mess.” More than anything else, as I telegraphed in my last post, is talk to girls (and boys) about pleasure.

The author writes of talking with a mom like herself – progressive and feminist – about talking to her daughter about mastubration and orgasm, to which the mom replies, as so many adult caregivers would, “They don’t want to hear about that from *us*!”

So common a response… and yet, as a non-parent, all I could think was: On what other subject do parents accept that, if their kid doesn’t want to hear it, they won’t try say it? Especially, on what other subject on which so much of a person’s health, wellbeing, happiness, or even their SURVIVAL might depend?

Orenstein goes on to cite survey data that shows that the majority of teens report WANTING to hear more about sex. So it’s factually inaccurate to say that kids, overall, don’t want to hear it. But even if an adult caregiver is reading this and thinking, “Well maybe most kids do, but MY kid doesn’t!” consider how you feel about talking to them about wearing a bicycle helmet, drinking alcohol, walking alone at night, driving a car… on what subject DO teenagers want to hear from their parents? They don’t want to hear you say, “WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!” Are you therefore not going to say it to them?

I believe that when adult caregivers say, “My kid doesn’t want to hear about sex from me!” what they’re actually feeling is, “Neither I nor my kid feels comfortable in that conversation.”

And fair enough. Adult caregivers, like the overwhelming majority of everyone else alive on Earth, have been exposed to their own bullshit culture of guilt, shame, disgust, and silence around sex.

So, adult caregivers, this is all the advice I can muster for you:

Reckon with your stuff.

Reckon, especially, with your own sexuality. Do the work of repairing the damage done to you by decades of cultural shaming, lies, moralizing, violence, coercion, guilt, ignorance, and fear. It’s part of your job as a person responsible for bringing up a new human into the adult world, that you try, as far as you can, not to do to your kid the same damage that was done to you.

Make the world a little better by making your OWN sex life less poisoned by the toxic culture. (How? May I recommend a certain book on the subject of women’s sexual pleasure, as a useful place a to start?)

When you help make the world less toxic for you, you’re helping to make it less toxic for the younger people whose development and happiness has been handed to you. It’s okay – it’s normal, almost inevitable – to feel ambivalent about “promoting” sexual wellbeing in a young person by talking openly and compassionately and honestly about sex. How could you avoid feeling ambivalent about their sexual wellbeing, if you can’t even avoid feeling ambivalent about your OWN sexual wellbeing?

But for the sake of your your person, as well as for your own sake… Reckon with your stuff.

I know it can be scary. I know it’s like the boxes in the attic that have sat there, unpacked and untouched by anything but spiders and mice for decades. But there’s treasure in there. It’s worth it. Don’t leave it for the mice to nibble, so that all you pass on to your kid is a dilapidated box. For you. For your kid. Reckon with your stuff.

And.

The interview makes clear to me something someone who has already read it told me:

“Girls & Sex is a deep dive into the problem. Come As You Are is the solution.”

The interview – and the book – comes to the conclusion that the problems girls face in the midst of porn culture, rape culture, patriarchy, and all the rest of it, can be counteracted effectively if we… wait for it…

talk to girls about sexual pleasure.

Now the fear people may experience instantaneously in response to this idea is, “If we promote the idea that ‘sex feels good,’ girls will have MORE of it, which will only increase their risk,” and to this I say: Nope.

Why do girls have sex? According to Orenstein’s reporting (and Deb Tolman’s almost 15 years ago – amazingly little seems to have changed since her Dilemma’s of Desire was published), middle class American girls have sex because they are trying to do what they believe they are supposed to do, obeying the rules of their culture, performing their feminine role, in order to meet their partner’s expectations, or because porn and the rest of their culture has taught them that sex is about WHAT YOU DO, not about how it feels inside your body.

They are NOT having sex because it feels good – pleasure doesn’t enter the conversation.

And this phenomenon is NOT limited to young women and girls. I routinely get emails from folks telling me that reading CAYA showed them that they were having sex based on what they believed they were supposed to be doing, or based on the goal of meeting their parnter’s needs and expectations, without much reference to what the sex actually felt like. That’s what I’ve started saying, over and over,

“pleasure is the measure.”

Pleasure is the measure of sexual wellbeing – not what you do, where or how often or with whom you do it, but whether or not you ENJOY what you do.

As I always say, pleasure is not simple.
So. Read Girls & Sex. I’m definitely going to. And then, if you’re left with the question, “How do I start untangling the knots in the ways the teen and tween girls around me are learning about sex?” read Come As You Are.

And while you do that, I’ll get to work trying to figure out how to make the science in CAYA accessible to teenagers, who aren’t so interested in reading about the rat nucleus accumbens, as the adults in my target audience.

Let me say first that I think I GET why this triggers so much fear in Dan Savage – indeed, why it prompts him to tell his massive readership that they, too, should “be very, very afraid.” He has been part of a culturally CRUCIAL push to de-“should”-ize sex, to let sex be in a person’s life whatever it wants to be. It’s all too easy to read this article and feel like it’s a recapitulation of centuries of “Here Is How Sex *Should* Work” cisheteropatriarchy hegemonic bullshit.

But let’s do a reality check: What did the USA Today article report as Kinsey’s top priorities?

Relationships, trauma, transgender issues, and medical interventions’ effect on sexual functioning.

Since Dan doesn’t mention those other three priorities, I’m going to assume that all sounds okay to him. So what does Carter say?

“I think human sexuality must be viewed in the context of relationships,” she said. “Just working on sexual behavior to me is not sufficient. We need to understand how sex affects sex and how relationships affect sex.”

And if we slow down and take a deep breath… *in*… *out*… and we think about it for a second, it’ll strike us that if we’re having sex with another person, regardless of what KIND of relationship we have with that person, we definitely have SOME kind of relationship with them. “I had sex with that person,” is a relationship.

Nowhere does Carter say, “It should happen in pair bonds,” or “We have an agenda of promoting pair bonding in humans,” or anything similar.

But even if Carter said she only wants to study specifically the sex people have in long-term relationships – which she didn’t say, but for all I know that’s her plan (but for all I know, it’s not her plan!) – it is just true that most of the sex most people have happens within the context of some kind of longer term relationship, and it’s important to her that the work of Kinsey be of relevance to many people’s lives – “unequivocally important.” And it’s hard to argue with that – but it doesn’t mean that any other kind of sex is not valid or important or completely, perfectly, 100% healthy and normal.

Again, I get why this is so scary for Dan Savage – I mean, turning a penis to the wall? Could there be a clearer metaphor for shame? Having worked at Kinsey, I found it sort of sweet that Dr. Carter would bother; when you walk in the door at Kinsey, you’re met by a 6′ tall carved wood fertility god, with a 3′ tall erection. (That’s about a meter, for those who think in metric.) But if you don’t know that – dare I say, if you don’t know the larger CONTEXT in which she said it – it could easily sound upsettingly sex negative.

This was a tricky one for me, when I was a fledgling sex educator, determined to be as “sex positive” as possible. At that point, my “sex positive” and “without shame” looked a lot like “in your face” and “I dare you.” It took me a long time to get to a point where I could honor the reality that the world is still full of people who are afraid and awkward and ashamed, and THOSE PEOPLE ARE ALSO WELCOME. I became less in-your-face, more you-do-you. I learned to meet people where they are, rather than pushing them to be where I am.

And where did I learn this lesson of patience and gentleness?

The Kinsey Institute.

Kinsey is not an organization dedicated to pushing everyone to be in one place around sex. It is a place dedicated to creating space for EVERYONE’S sexuality.

Anyway. Dan Savage has been wrong about things in the past – judgmental about things – and has had both the intellectual rigor and (equally important) the personal grace, to listen to people who disagree with him and, when the arguments are compelling, change his mind.

And he isn’t the only one. It’s less clear to me why Alice Dreger’s first reaction was so knee-jerk critical. I would have expected that she – as a philosopher of science who was trained at Indiana University; as the author of a really compelling book about how political sensitivities, often on the LEFT, have interfered with sex research; and as an intellectual who has learned to interact with the mainstream media – would Get both how the media representation of Sue Carter would differ from what was actually in her head, and how crucial it would be to investigate further before concluding that something is how it appears in a USA Today article.

But Dreger, too, is super-duper smart and has had her mind changed.

So you guys: Alice. Dan. Go talk to Sue Carter – email Jenny Bass (she’s my old boss – tell her I said hi) and see if you can use your positions of influence to snag interviews.