Sex and Health- All the Sex and sexual health issues that confront us

Much has changed in my life over the last few years. One change is that I've become very active with Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance. Another is that I've become even more active with my union. This latter change has created a problem for Sex In The Public Square: I have very little time to maintain this site. Fortunately, the former change provides the solution: I will now be blogging at Woodhull's web site. You will find my blog featured on the home page at http://woodhullalliance.org and it will have its own page at http://www.woodhullalliance.org/category/sex-in-the-public-square/.

I'm excited by the move. I'll be joining folks like first amendment attorney Larry Walters, sexual freedom and education scholar-advocate Marty Klein, and the folks at AVN in providing commentary for Woodhull. 

This site will remain here as an archive. Comments will be turned off and new content will not appear. Please join us over at Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance and be part of a bigger conversation!

Two stories about gender and children caught my eye, over the last couple days. They are not at all connected to each other, but the more I thought about them, the more I realized that they illustrate very different responses to gender inequality, and that those different responses say a lot, potentially, about the structure and culture of gender in two different societies: Canada and India.

The first story was making the rounds a few days ago on Yahoo! News. It tells the story of the Witterick-Stocker family, of Toronto, who have decided not to share the sex of their 4 month old baby Storm with anyone other than immediate family and the midwives who assisted with the delivery. 

The second is a story I read in the New York Times yesterday morning, and it tells of increased rates of sex-selective abortions among well-off, well-educated women in India. Specifically, it reports on a study recently published in The Lancet, documenting the spread of sex-selective abortion practices across India over the past 20 years. The study placed particular focus on the decisions made about second children when the first child was a girl.

What a world apart, both literally and figuratively. 

In one society there is gender inequality but yet enough freedom that a family might decide to challenge the social structuring of gender by refusing to label their child. Theoretically this frees the child to take full advantage of those equalities that do exist and might remove some of the barriers to equality that remain. Storm's parents explain their choice in relation to this very freedom, according to Zachary Roth's Yahoo! article:

Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher in an alternative school.

In the other society, gender is so powerful in the structuring of inequality that parents use it to choose whether or not a child should exist. Girls are understood to be liabilities where boys are understood to be assets. Parents with means will apparently tolerate one girl, but not a second. Education and wealth are associated with better access to health services so a family wanting to limit its liabilities and maximize its assets use the illegal practice of sex-selective abortion to end pregnancies where the fetus is categorized as female. The impact is dramatic, demographically. According to Jim Yardley's New York Times article:

The 2011 Indian census found 914 girls for every 1,000 boys among children 6 six or younger, the lowest ratio of girls since the country gained independence in 1947. The new study estimated that 4 million to 12 million selective abortions of girls have occurred in India in the past three decades.

We should see both stories in terms of social structure and inequality, and not purely in terms of individual choices. Storm's parents are making an individual choice, but they are doing so in a way that directly challenges the structure of the society they live in, and they are doing so because they dislike the constraints those structures impose.  Any given pair of well-off parents in India are also making choices in reaction to the constraints of social structure, and are doing so in a way that reinforces the structural constraint they are individually trying to avoid. 

Parents should be free to choose whether or not to have a child. Children should be free to decide how to identify themselves. But our individual choices are not always as individual as we think, and often they have collective unintended consequences when we add them all up. And some of those consequences are much likely than others to move a society in the direction of justice and freedom for all.  

From page A18 of the May 24 edition of the New York Times

What do you think? This Bloomingdales ad for Rag & Bone Jeans ($165.00) and silk Equipment top ($178.00) contains the tag line "MEET YOUR NEW MUST-HAVE" and depicts an Asian model staring into the camera with her lips parted. It accompanies an article with the headline "In Oakland, Redefining Sex Trade Workers as Abuse Victims" which, among many things, criticizes the 'exoticization' of Asian women in the US. 

The article can be found online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24oakland.html

Ten is the number of bodies that have been found on Long Island's southern beaches since December. The first four, all found between December 11 abd 13, were confirmed to be the remains of women who had had some experience in sex work. The next was found on March 29. Three more were found on April 4, and two were found today. The identities of those most recently found have not been determined, and police have not made a definitive statement about whether all of the murders are connected.

So far, none has turned out to be Shannon Gilbert, the search for whom turned up these other victims.

I suspect they will turn out to be related, victims of a serial killer who targets women who, among all of the other things that they do in their lives, also exchange sex for money. 

SWOP-NYC has responded with a statement that rightly reminds us that the dangers of sex work are the dangers of stigmatization and isolation, and not particular to the exchange of sex for something else of value. 

I just spent three days at my statewide union's Representative Assembly where health and safety was one of the key concerns. There was a singificant focus on framing issues in human rights terms. There was a lot of talk about the dignity of all humans, and the dignity of all labor. I was even impressed that when the issue of trafficking and children came up, the focus was on slave labor in the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast, and not a lurid focus on sex trafficking. 

But I don't think my union would stand up publicly for sex workers. Not yet.

I spent a couple of hours on Saturday at a huge labor rally in Times Square. I am sure there were people attending that rally who, in addition to all the other things they do, have also exchanged sex for money. But I did not see any sex worker advocacy signs in the block where I was standing. 

We still separate sex from the rest of work, from the rest of pleasure, and essentially from most of everyday life. 

The longer we relegate sex to the dark corners of our political and social discourse, the longer we will continue to find bodies hidden in the reeds of our beaches, long undiscovered because they were marginalized from the start. 

Sexual freedom, including the consensual exchange of sex for other things of value, must come to be seen a fundamental human right. Sex is a valuable thing. The right to physical autonomy and the right to sexual pleasure and the right to earn a decent living all intersect in the phenomenon of sex work.

Stand up publicly for your own right, and the right of others, to safely determine the conditions of each sexual exchange we make. 

Photo is by Karl Monaghan (Red_Tzar on Flickr) and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

Are you a union member, or a friend or family member of a union member? If so, please come out. Please identify yourself that way in conversations. Please stand up for unions and for the basic worker rights that they protect. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2010, only 11.9 percent of workers in the US were represented by unions, and that number is only as high as it is because about a third of public sector workers are union members. 

What does this have to do with sexuality? First of all, without unions there can be no economic justice in a capitalist society, and without economic justice, sexual freedom is impossible in any meaningful way. To fully realize our sexual freedom we need basic economic security. 

Second, there is a lot to be learned from the coming out campaigns of the LGBT movement. When we are visible we reveal ourselves, making ourselves vulnerable, but we also become three dimensional human beings to those who have previously seen us as one-dimensional stereotypes.

Third, there is something similar about taking a part of your life, a part of yourself, a part that you perhaps take for granted, and making it a part of your identity. I am not just a professor, I am a union member. I am not just a clerk, I am a union member. I am not just a groundskeeper, I am a union member. Union membership is something we often see as part of the background of our lives, and we need to bring it into the foreground. Again, LGBT activism gives us a model for doing this. 

In tough economic times it is easy for people to villify or demonize a small group of people who are represented in the press as greedy, lazy, and selfish. Especially if you don't have any reason to suspect that real live union members are any different from that representation.

But that's not who we are, and it seems to me that the only way for unions to turn the tide that is undermining them now is if we each come out of the union closet and identify ourselves to our friends and neighbors so they see us as the hard-working, community-minded, caring and dedicated people that we are.

Harvey Milk is represented in the biopic Milk as saying "They vote for us two to one if they know they know one of us." (It's also worth recalling that Milk worked with union leaders and had strong labor backing of his campaigns, and that progressive labor unions and LGBT political unions often work in concert with each other.)

When nonunion workers are facing layoffs and pay cuts and the media tells them its all the fault of unions, it's easy to see how they'd vote to undercut the power of workers who are depicted as leeches feeding off an increasingly anemic public. But if they knew that we were their neighbors, their kid's friend's parents, the people they always nod to at the supermarket, it might be different. If we talk to them about the ways that unions protect not just their members but the basic rights of all workers, they might feel differently. What if, instead of hiding our union membership out of fear of being criticized or attacked, we talk to them about the struggles of all employees and encourage them to seek the strength of unions to protect themselves rather than to tear down the organizations that helped bouy their own raises and benefits just by virtue of comparison? 

This week is a week of We Are One events spreading solidarity, raising consciousness, and making demands for economic justice. Take a moment this week to identify yourself in relation to that effort. If you are a union member, or a friend or lover or kin to one, take a moment to tell someone else about that. Tell a story that helps counter the negative impression of union members in the press. Take a risk. We can't rebuild the labor movement from inside the closet. 

I'm a union member, and a union leader, and I'm proud of my role in protecting rights for all workers. How about you? 

I haven't talked about this project very much on my About.com site, but today I'm excited and nervous to let you know that my new book is available for sale.

I wrote What Makes a Baby for the four-year-old son of one of my closest friends. He and his partner were about to have a second child and their son started asking questions about his mom's pregnancy. My friend is Trans and so he isn't biologically related to his son. They wanted a book that would allow them to share their families story without devaluing a parent who didn't also contribute genetic material to the baby making process.

I quickly realized that this book really works for everyone. When you open up a story to make it inclusive you don't just bring people in who are usually pushed out, but you make room for those people who often are in the center to be more of who they are, share more of themselves. In decades passed the conventional wisdom was that you shouldn't share with your young child the story of how they came to be, especially if that story didn't involve intercourse in a heterosexual marriage. Adoption, sperm and egg donation, surrogacy, were all topics to be kept quiet and feel some shame about.

Many of us still do feel some shame or embarrassment about this, but more and more of us are being open about it as one way of resisting the shame, and transforming something oppressive into something that can be empowering. Mental health professionals are part of this, now regularly counseling parents to be open with even very young kids about how they came to be in their family, making it something that isn't strange or secretive, but something to be proud of and to celebrate.

After two years, dozens of re-writes, a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, the book is being released today from Seven Stories Press.

It's geared to children ages 3 and up, and describes the basics of reproduction, gestation, and birth in a fun and engaging way. It doesn't give all the answers. Instead it creates a space for parents to tell their children as much or as little as they want.

If you want to know more about it, you can check out our book trailer (featuring kids explaining just why the book is needed) and you can find it at your independent bookstore or your favorite online bookshop.

I also wrote a free Reader's Guide for parents which can be downloaded directly from the book's website. It includes general suggestions for talking with young children about sexuality, plus a page by page guide to using the book.

Thus ends the gratuitous self-promotion. I will now return to my more comfortable place of self-deprecation.

Read More: The Atlantic: A Truly Inclusive Way to Answer the Question 'Where Do Babies Come From?'

I got my first job at a sex shop in 1987. At the time I don't know if there was such a thing as flavored, water based lubricant. What we did have was a product called Emotion Lotion. Emotion Lotion (we never called it "EL" for short, but now I wish we had) came in a shapely clear plastic bottle with a white flip top. It was thick, sickly sweet, and branded itself as the original warming lotion. Put a little on your skin, rub it in, and blow on it, and the lotion would feel as if it is warming up.

This was not something I'd recommend anyone put in their body, and while tests had never been done, I was pretty sure that the high sugar content and sticky consistency during use would have been harmful to condoms.

Still, there was something sort of throw-back groovy about the product. Legend had it that the manufacturer began by making large batches of it in a bathtub in their home. It was always fun to watch people's reaction when they would pick up the sample and try it out on their wrist (less fun to watch the reactions of customers who would complain of burning...I learned to warn people after that).

Once Astroglide made a splash as the first lubricant designed for pleasure, the lube market blossomed and along with it the sub-category of flavored lubes has grown. I worked for over 20 years in sex shops and have heard customers opinions about the taste of hundreds of different flavored lubes. And to this day I still would never say to someone that brand X has the best taste or brand Y is the worst. Taste is taste, and for every hundred people who swear that one kind of lube is horrible tasting and should be banned, there will be a few who love it, and can't get enough.

Evaluating the flavor and taste of flavored lubes is a thankless job, and so I have avoided it for a while. But a few weeks ago an About.com reader asked if I would share with them a few recommendations, and in the interests of steering them away from Emotion Lotion and it's many step-children, I wrote the article below.

A Short Guide to Flavored Lube

Growing up in the 70s I heard bad things about virgins from all sides. My friends were desperate to shed their virginity. They were excited to get to try out sex (after years of practicing on their own). But the desperation came as much from the sense that, like nerd or loser, virgin was a label you didn't want to stick.

I didn't feel that kind of pressure at home, but I was raised to understand that sexuality was something wonderful, something to be explored, and in contrast to the messages my parents received growing up in the 50s, sex was something that you probably should try out before settling down.

I wasn't convinced that I was even human so the idea of being a young virgin didn't bother me. Something in the culture let me know that it was okay to wait a little while, but if wait too long you might miss the boat entirely. Being an adult virgin was a problem.

Now that I'm older I realize that being an adult virgin isn't a problem. The idea that it is something that's clearly defined, diagnosable, something that someone else says about you, that's the problem.

When it comes to sexual identities it can be so easy to forget that these terms are labels. They are meant to help describe or define some aspect of our experience. For some people the label adult virgin works. And that's great.

But if it doesn't, it's time to peel back the label and remember that sexual experience is more what you've done, with who, how often. Sexual experience is first and foremost an experience.

Read More : Understanding Adults Virgins

A few weeks ago an issue of New York Magazine featured a story about men who were quitting masturbation and finding solidarity and guidance on a Reddit forum called "NoFap". The piece was a mess of misinformation and confusion. It referenced to faddish research ("Your Brain on Porn") and conflated sexuality, desire, gender identity, and gender roles. All of this made it a pretty accurate reflection of many mens understanding of their own sexuality, and a good reminder of why things rarely get better for cisgender men.

As long as it doesn't involve coercion, everyone should get to choose how they want to be sexual, including whether or not they want to masturbate. But the idea that not masturbating makes you a better man is a sad, old chestnut that only looks new because of the technological platform and shiny stock rubber chicken images that accompany our current public discussion of it.

We're half way through National Masturbation Month and it seemed like a good time to review some of the most common questions I get asked on the site about masturbation, which perhaps tellingly almost always come from men.

Questions About Masturbation

• How Much Masturbation Is Too Much Masturbation?
• What Is Chronic Masturbation?
• What's Normal Masturbation?
• What Can I Do If My Boyfriend Likes Masturbation More than Me?

It was back in 1995 when a group of political sex shops came together to do what they always did best: combine consciousness raising with politics with pleasure. National Masturbation Month (NMM), and the month's main event the Masturbate-a-Thon were inspired in part as a response to the firing of Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders for daring to suggest that masturbation might be something that should be mentioned in school based sex education.

The month was also a tongue-in-cheek response to the kind of Hallmark holidays that other industries create. Despite being the most commonly practiced sexual activity, and one that in most cases carries the lowest risk of any negative consequences, masturbation remains a second class sexual citizen. Who better to be out and proud about masturbation than those businesses that profit (financially, emotionally, and spiritually) from it each and every day.

Since 1999 the Center for Sex & Culture, under the leadership of Carol Queen and Robert Morgan Lawrence have kept the self-love fires burning, organizing events and a live Masturbate-a-Thon each year. This year they are celebrating NMM's 18th birthday by combining the Masturbate-a-Thon with the Jack-and-Jill-Off. As in previous years it is a live event you can participate in (if you're in the Bay area) or you can participate on your own by downloading a pledge form from their website.

I'll be celebrating this month by featuring articles about the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the ins and outs, of masturbation. Apparently I'll also be celebrating by dragging out every cheesy double entendre I can think of.

I hope you can find a more fun (possibly equally groan inducing) way to celebrate this month!

Read More: Paul Krassner on National Masturbation Month