Sometimes I Want to Be Held By A Man, Naked, Without Having Sex – IS THAT OKAY?

 

Apparently not.

If you are a human, then you’ve heard about the Aziz Ansari debacle. You know, the incident in which “woke bae” Ansari pushed and pushed and pushed his date to have sex even though she was clearly not into it.

Many women are uniting in solidarity over their own similar experiences. However, just as many are condemning “Grace,” Ansari’s date. She went to his apartment, she got undressed, what did she expect? Why didn’t she just leave??

Even the New York Times published an opinion piece by Bari Weiss in which she says, “I am a proud feminist, and this is what I thought while reading the article: If you are hanging out naked with a man, it’s safe to assume he is going to try to have sex with you.”

For most of my life, I bought into that same line of reasoning. If I get naked with a man, then of course he’s going to try to have sex with me. Furthermore, I’m obligated, or else things can get ugly.

I believed this so resolutely, that for 20 years, I didn’t recognize that I had been raped in college. I remembered it as “the night this guy had sex with me when I didn’t want him to.”

For the record, I said no. I was at a party at his fraternity, and I went upstairs to his room with him to get high. I liked him; I wanted to kiss him. But that was all. I said “no.” I tried to fight him off; I did everything but scream “HELP! RAPE!” because  I was 18 and afraid and embarrassed. I didn’t want to create a scene with hundreds of people downstairs to overhear it.

Later, I shared the experience with only one person, who responded with, “well what did you expect?” and then I buried it.
Only in the last decade have I been able to understand that I was raped.

 

 

I’m extremely single. By that I mean, I’m a self-sustaining ecosystem. I’m fiercely independent. I’ve created a life the way I want it, and I dread the idea of having to make constant compromises. Relationships are hard, and if introducing a partner into my life is going to create drama and pain, I’d rather be alone.

The upside to marriage and relationships is the intimacy.

I miss intimacy.

I miss being held when things are not going right in my life. I like a man to wrap his arms around me and hold me, and stroke my back. I like the feeling of skin on skin.

I’m a highly sexual person, and I like kinky sex as much as the next wanton woman. Sometimes, though, I just want to lie next to someone who will hold me.

This never happens.

 

You see, if I lie next to a man, naked, he will (most likely) become aroused. And he will assume we’re having sex, because what did I expect?

This is the clarion call reverberating all over the Internet regarding Grace. She got naked, so of course he tried to have sex with her. Over and over, even though she asked him to chill out, even though she was not responding physically to him, even though she was visibly uncomfortable and said many things to indicate she wasn’t into it. She didn’t scream “NO” and storm out of there, so she deserved what she got, right?

Wrong.

Maybe she wanted to connect with him on an intimate level; kiss, hold him, touch – but not be treated like a blow-up sex doll. Maybe she found him funny and adorable, and was hoping to have some intimate contact that didn’t involve him sticking his claw fingers down her throat like they were reenacting some seedy Pornhub video.

I know that sex is a biological need, and that men are programmed to be hunters and conquerors. I wrote that story.

Eating is also a biological need. Does that mean I get to act like a savage, and grab food off of your plate when you are clearly not into sharing?

Women are socialized from an early age that we are responsible for men’s sexual excitement, and if they get aroused, we’d better do something about it. Men are culturally programmed to believe that the endgame is sex – even if a woman seems lukewarm about it. To keep pushing until she gives in.

When my mother died/kid was in the hospital/furnace blew up/ I wanted to be held. In each of those instances, I knew men I could have visited. But there is no way they would have been open to just holding me without sex.

And until I have a boyfriend or a husband, I will not be entitled to lay next to a man, skin on skin, and simply be held. If we should kiss, or stroke one another’s bodies, he is going to expect sex. And if he’s an inept lover who watches a lot of porn, he’s going to do crude things that women don’t really enjoy. Picture this scenario:

Me: *lies in his bed, wanting comfort because my mother just died*

Him: *fishhooks my mouth*

 

There are so many social situations that require careful monitoring of the other person’s reaction. We teach our kids to follow social cues, so they know if they’ve crossed a line or invaded someone’s personal space.

Why is this not the case in sex? Of all personal interactions, this is one in which careful monitoring of the other person’s reaction should be imperative.

The Ansari incident is unfortunate, because he was simply doing what he thinks is normal dating behavior. But it started a necessary conversation, and hopefully we can eventually dismantle this ridiculous cultural programming of expected sex.

By the way, I work two jobs to support my family. If you take me out for a nice dinner and pay, you’d better be prepared to pay my mortgage and utility bill. I’m a struggling single mom. Don’t be a tease.

 

Are there any women who HAVEN’T had sex when they didn’t want to? 
What is with the “claw fingers in the mouth” move? 
Talk to me. I’m listening. 

 

Join me on Facebook, so I can have friends without leaving the house. And it gets pretty interesting over there…

All About That Bass: Your Kids Are Having Anal Sex, and Teen Vogue Was Right On For Educating Them

I get it. I do. Just last year, your cherubic daughter was pleading for you to take her to American Girl. Who wants to think about her getting ass fucked by the basketball team?

But she is.

Maybe not your daughter – but her best friend. And maybe not the whole basketball team. Maybe just the point guards.

The fact is, our teens are having anal sex. Teen Vogue’s “A Guide to Anal Sex” isn’t encouraging them to experiment with it. They just are, because horny teenage bodies are a wonderland.

The article, a nonjudgmental guide to safe anal sex, fills in a much-needed gap for teens, particularly LGBTQ teens, whose questions typically go unanswered by sex education. Generation Z, kids born after 2000, are more connected to available information than any other generation – but googling “anal” and “sex” is going to give them less useful information and more of a magical mystery tour through Porn Hub.

All over the Internet, Teen Vogue’s tutorial on browning the sausage is being vilified as indoctrination into the seamy world of deviant sex; a permission slip for Caligulan behavior.

Elizabeth Johnson, “The Activist Mommy,” launched a national campaign to boycott Teen Vogue. To date, more than 11 million people have viewed a video of Johnston burning a copy of Teen Vogue in her backyard.

I love a bat-shit crazy, over-the-top Christian rant but since the article was an online exclusive, her backyard theatrics are as moronic as they are deplorable. Johnston is a home schooling mother of TEN KIDS.

What she’s really pissed off about is that if this tutorial had been published two decades earlier, she wouldn’t have used her vagina as a clown car.

In fact, in a recent psychological profiling of Johnston which I made up, a team of doctors concluded that Johnston could “really use a dick up her ass.”

Johnston has gained notoriety, and a massive following, for her hate-speech ridden rants against feminists and the LGBTQ community. She has nearly a quarter of a million Facebook followers and her anti-Teen Vogue campaign, which is now calling for the boycott of all products of Teen Vogue and Conde Nast sponsors, is gaining traction daily.

But this Wicked Witch of the Right is not just another sanctimommy.

She is Anne Coulter on steroids, and her Teen Vogue hate rant is a symbol of everything that we need to be frightened about in our country today.

I’ve worked with teens for 15 years. Yes, they’re having anal sex. Young gay males and trans teens experiment with anal sex regularly.  Heterosexual teen anal sex has become much more prevalent in recent years.

The plethora of available porn, and teenage natural curiosity and desire to emulate what they see, might partly account for this.  Some studies attribute the rise of anal sex among teens as a way for them to remain “technical virgins.”

Of course, there’s also the rise of everything Booty-related in pop culture.

By the time Kim K broke the Internet with her resplendent greazy a$$, popular musical artists had been touting the butt as the newest wave of sexual preference.

To name just two, female rappers Lil Kim and Nikki Minaj have proclaimed their love of receiving analingus in their lyrics, with Kim claiming, “He be looking kinda fruity, but he still could lick the booty,” and Minaj rapping in her hit song Anaconda, about a man who “[tosses] salad like his name Romaine.”

Much of the backlash against Teen Vogue stems from the belief that the magazine targets 12-17 year olds. To be clear, I am not in favor of 12 year olds having ANY kind of sex. Tweens are not emotionally ready to handle sexual intimacy.

Moreover, the average American tween, who is prone to stunts like riding a flaming couch through the neighbor’s backyard, cannot be counted on to practice safe sex.

Does Teen Vogue actually target tweens? No. Editor Elaine Welteroth describes the magazines “sweet spot” as age 18-24. I looked over Teen Vogue’s latest offerings. It featured a story on the best beauty buys at Nordstrom’s anniversary sale. The very first item is $92 Chanel lip gloss.

What 12-year-old is this being marketed to? The only tween who can afford $92 lip gloss is Baron Trump.

Indeed, the publication has undergone a radical shift in focus with its new team of editors. When it published the editorial that shook the world, a scorched earth denouncement of Trump, it firmly established itself as the woke voice of the resistance.

Teen Vogue is no longer a magazine for 6^th graders who want to read about Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers. If you don’t feel comfortable exposing your 12-year-old to graphic details about sex then utilize parental controls on the computer.

While you’re at it, cancel the family night viewing of Game of Thrones.

This wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal if the article was about penis-in-vagina sex. That variety of sex has a longstanding cultural stamp of approval. Despite booty popularity, our society still has negative attitudes about anal sex that are rooted in homophobia.

And anal sex is probably one of the more stigmatized sex acts, because of our negative feelings about that part of our body. How often have you heard people discuss that the anus is only designed for one way traffic? Until you’ve had a discussion with someone responsible for designing our bodies, or seen the blueprints, that’s a value judgement, not a statement based in sound science or current medical data.

The bottom line (pun intended) is that we need to protect our kids. NOT from information. From harm. Sex ed has been shown to help prevent and reduce the risks of sexually transmitted infections, HIV and adolescent pregnancy.

Conservative activist moms are nothing new. In the 90’s it was music (remember Tipper Gore?). In the 2000’s it was video games. But this frenzied backlash against Teen Vogue is part of a larger, more frightening climate of oppression and ignorance that has found its poster boy in America’s Orange Overlord.

Chances are, it’s going to get much, much worse before it gets better.

Do you openly talk to your kids about sex? What do you think about Teen Vogue?
Who the fuck spends $92 on lip gloss?
Talk to me. I’m listening. 

Come hang out with me on Facebook and Instagram so I can have friends without leaving the house.

White Girl In a Black World

I grew up white in a black world, and my childhood was rife with turmoil.

I was an outcast, taunted and beat up. I was vilified because I dared to love the black boy upstairs. By the time I was 11, white people called me “nigger lover” and black people ostracized me.

I belonged nowhere.

We were together for years – until that one day in junior high school, white boys chased us down deserted train tracks. My screams for help echoed sharply off the metal rails, as they beat on his arms with a crow bar. Until one broke.

We were never together again.

We have kept track of each other our whole lives. The scar tissue around our hearts preserves a wary distance between us.

Still, I dream of being reunited with him someday.

 

The great love of my life before I got married was a dark brown man I spent many years with.

He was undeniably gorgeous. Far better looking than I was or will ever be. One evening, on an overcrowded D train, a young black woman screamed at me for daring to be with this beautiful man, ugly fucking white bitch that I was.

Trapped in that subway car, I had no escape. He tried to subdue her, but she only screamed louder, said uglier things. I folded into myself, rendered mute by her attack. I was ashamed of my skin color. Again.

I stared down, hot tears dripping into my lap.

We broke up soon after that.

 

My childhood in a black NYC housing project has left me with a paradoxical mix of emotions and loyalties.

Although I grew up fearful of being persecuted because of my white skin, I also developed a fierce allegiance towards African-Americans, an allegiance that informs how I live my life today.

I loathe racism.

When I drive into Newark for my community service project, and people remark, “I wouldn’t even park my car there,” I SEETHE.  They are not saying that based on statistical data on street crime in Newark, which may even indicate that car jackings happen frequently there.

They just mean, “Newark is full of black people.”

 

I was sexually assaulted twice in my life. Once at a college frat party, and once in a seedy New York shooting gallery. My personal mythology tells me that heroes and villains come in ALL colors; that an Ivy League white boy is just as likely to rape me as a black drug dealer, and you will NEVER convince me otherwise.

 

My painful memories are valid. But I have not spent my entire adulthood fearful that I will die for the color of my skin.

I have had several skirmishes with police over the years, more than I care to think about. Yet, I never had to worry THAT I MIGHT NOT MAKE IT HOME ALIVE.

 

Recent events have left me completely paralyzed in my ability to write anything.

This is not writer’s block. I have lost my belief in the power of the written word.

I’m plagued by the thought that not just my work, but all creative expression, is in vain when the world suffers such tragedy.

What do my stories even matter, in the face of these larger, horrific events?

 

I am an inner city project girl at heart. I have the fear, rage, defiance and survival instincts of a project girl, and always will.

And yet, I am undeniably WHITE. To even suggest that I understand what it means to live life in black skin is offensive. I was able to shed my project girl past.

And I am alive, largely due to the color of my skin, whereas most of the people I grew up with are dead today.

 

For weeks I have walked around uneasily, with a cold knot of fear in my stomach.

Everyone is ranting on, and no one is listening. People are quoting statistics as if it matters whether one, or one million, dead bodies lie on slabs.

The Civil War was caused by racism. And I know it’s going to happen again. Right here, on American soil, we will be a nation divided, and make no mistake about it –

There will be blood.

 

I’M SO ANGRY listening to self-aggrandizing politicians drone on about change.

I AM TIRED OF THEIR WORDS.

I want to don army fatigues, dash into the fray like a warrior, and physically put my body in between black men and bullets; between policeman and bullets.

But I am a coward, just as I was 35 years ago, when I stopped loving the black boy upstairs.

 

 

 

The music of my childhood was 70’s R&B. I have loved and lived with dark skinned men. My first true love was black. My first best friend was black. The first house parties I attended were all black.

Black culture feels like home to me.

I’m going to get CRUCIFIED for saying that, because of my white privilege. How DARE I appreciate the positive aspects of a culture without suffering from oppression? If I talk about my love for rap music, dark-skinned men, soul food, cornrow braids – I’m appropriating a culture.

The world has become so divisive on the issue of race, I’m afraid of expressing my love of black culture. I feel shame, again, because of my white skin.

I am not entitled to love Black America because I am not willing to die for her.

Yet try as I might to deconstruct this, to make it more politically palatable, I cannot. I cannot stop loving black culture anymore than I can stop loving my son. It’s embedded in me on a cellular level.

No matter how angry it makes you, you can’t take that from me.

 

And so now I am finally AWAKE. And I will fight.

My weapons will be to speak out against anyone who says something racist and ignorant. I will forbid adults to spew their racist rhetoric in front of my child, ever.

I will speak out on social media, instead of hiding in desperate avoidance.

And I am moving my family out of this white washed, homogenous suburban neighborhood. I will raise my child in a culturally diverse neighborhood, because he deserves better than this.

 

 

I wrote this despite my overarching belief that right now, creative expression is useless.

I wrote this because until I did, I could write nothing else.

I wrote this because although I am afraid, I must do SOMETHING. And this is all I have.

I wrote this because I KNOW that fear is built into the racist society in which we live, and used to control ALL of us.

I wrote this because although I may not be racist, I enable racism EVERY DAY by participating in a racist society. 

I wrote this because maybe, MAYBE, someone else who has been asleep will awaken now, like I finally have.

I wrote this because despite all my fear, inaction and shame,

there is a speck of hope

for the possibility of change.

 

Click below if you’d like to hear my spoken word piece, “White Girl.”

 

Talk to me.
We all need desperately to start talking, and I’m REALLY listening. 

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