Category Archives: Safer Sex

Picking Your Third

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My latest DA post is live: “How to Pick Your Third for a Threesome“

Read on for my intro:

“You and your partner are ready to dive into some sexual explorations and want to invite another person into your bedroom. Who should you pick?

When J and I invite people into our bedroom, we do so based off some broad principles (which we have talked about before inviting others into our bedroom, and in some cases, figured out together after a disappointing experience).

1. Are we both attracted to the person?

Even if we are going to have an MFM in which J and the other man are not sexually into one another, it’s still important that J be intellectually and mentally connected to the other man.

Determining if we both dig someone else’s vibe, physically and energetically, is an important first step.”

Do you have certain criteria for inviting someone into your bedroom for a threesome?

Double Vaginal Penetration

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Occasionally I like to write posts based on search terms that have directed readers to my site. This and the next post are based on said search terms.

Double Vaginal Penetration (aka DVP)

It sounds like a move-made-for-porn (and who knows, maybe it was). Who would want that? Why? How do you even do that?

As someone who has engaged in DVP a few times, I have some advice and insight to offer, although my perspective is limited.

1. Double penetration does not necessarily equal double cocks. J and I first started flirting with this idea by using both his cock and another dildo inside of me. It is tricky to maneuver (and not the same as having two live cocks), but you can experience a similar amount of fullness, stretching, and pleasure from it. I’ve found this to feel best with J on top of me and then sliding a dildo inside underneath his cock.

2. The vagina can stretch remarkably large- hello! Babies get birthed out of that thing. Of course your vagina can stretch large enough to accommodate more than one cock at a time. But…

3. Like preparing for fisting or inserting any large object, it’s important to warm up slowly and well. Make sure to use plenty of lube, and that you are doing what you usually do to be turned on optimally (dirty talk, oral sex, fingering, porn, etc.). If something doesn’t feel right, stop. If something hurts, stop. Know your own anatomy and pay attention to the signals you receive from your body. I know that for me, I have a number of smaller folds of skin that can get irritated quickly by too much friction of too much of something inside of me- it’s important to slow down, add more lube, and communicate.

4. Feel comfortable with your partner(s). Not just for safer sex purposed, but for ensuring your ability to stop the activity if it starts to feel uncomfortable in any way. Especially with safer sex considerations, it’s important that everyone feels comfortable being so close all at once.

5. It’s hot. If you already know you enjoy MFM group sex, then this is a really amazing position addition. My go-to positioning is to ride one person and have the other enter from behind like in doggy style. I generally slide onto the one cock, and let the person behind enter. From there, it just takes some experimentation with coordinating movements. I’ve found that everyone has a pleasurable time of it.

Have you ever done DVP? Do you have any other suggestions for how to have DVP happily, safely, and pleasurably?

Recent Reads & Views

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I hafta throw it out there (with everyone and their mother) that the strangers making out video is outrageously delightful. I also love that there are two same-sex pairs in the mix. Watching the transformation from awkward to blissed and happy is awesome. (Thanks Jezebel for womping down the mood- it is an ad for clothes. Oh well.)

Feminism is having a wardrobe malfunction: I want the whole damn pie, thank you very much!

Hot Sex…with 35 People: practice safer sex folks! Get tested, use barriers, talk to you partners :) Also, how cool are these commercials? Sexy, arty- a lot like Xart, no?

The Duke student and porn star pieces. This woman is fucking fantastic. All the power and love to her. Slut-shaming and patriarchy and sex work-negative culture has barraged her, and while that sucks, I am also so proud of this person for finding the courage to speak publicly about her experiences.

-I’m The Duke University Freshman Porn Star And For The First Time I’m Telling The Story In My Words

-I’m Finally Revealing My Name and Face As the Duke Porn Star

I am also making my way through my first book on BDD (Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder)- it’s like a whole huge part of myself is articulated and written down. I’ve been reading it, feeling hopeful and then depressed and then relieved and then more depressed. But overall, it’s been so helpful to know that what I’ve been dealing with for the majority of my life is a thing that I haven’t been making up.

Anything good on your phone/tablet/computer/nightstand recently?

Another Pap?

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I had a physical about a week ago and a pap smear, something that I hadn’t had since about 18-20 months ago (which didn’t seem to be a problem because last time I had one, my NP informed me that “they” were only recommending women get one every three years). I didn’t have any worries or concerns, but I felt like maybe I should just get one since a complete annual is completely covered through Obamacare (thanks Obama! No sarcastic eye roll here! for reals)

My STI results came back negative, but they want to do another pap in about 6 months. I’m freaking out a little bit- mostly, I think, because the bartender at my strip club recently found out that she has stage 3 cervical cancer (the last stage before it could progress to something more full-blown and requiring chemotherapy). She has been on my mind and so when I heard that my doctor wanted to see me again in 6 months, I had been primed for “scary.” The nurse that I talked to didn’t call my results “abnormal,” but that there was some inflammation that my doctor wanted to check on again.

This page from the CDC (and the following chart from the page) have helped calm my fears a bit:

Screen shot 2014-03-01 at 9.10.26 PM

 

I feel lucky to live in the United States and to have access to some preventative care and to have insurance. I am grateful I feel comfortable talking to health providers and trusting that I can get the care I need.

Have you ever had a scare related to your sexual or reproductive health? What helped you get through it?

Unprotected Sex with Multiple Partners

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From my experience and what little data is out there, the ethically nonmonogamous population experiences fewer STIs than the monogamous/unethically nonmonogamous population. Talking about who you are getting sexy with and how you protect yourself are key to staying healthy and seeking care when necessary. When people are consenting to nonmonogamy, this necessitates transparent communication around safer sex practices (birth control used, and ways of circumventing STI transmission, including barrier methods, proper cleaning of toys and hygiene, and regular STI testing). Knowing the safer sex practices of your partners also allows you to give a fully informed “yes” to engaging in a sexual relationship with your partners.

What happens when you have unprotected sex with multiple partners? Is it stupid? Or irresponsible to yourself and others?

People enjoy unprotected sex for a number reasons, which may include the sensation, psychological feeling of closeness and intimacy, or eroticism from having intermingled fluids. It may signal a level of trust within the relationship. For some, it may signal primacy for a relationship. Unprotected sex may also be called condom-free sex or fluid-bonded sex.

An important consideration is the varying levels of risk associated with different types of protected and unprotected sex. I have linked to this chart before, but it was a while ago, so I thought it would be fine to link to it again; I really like it! : STD Risks Chart. I also really like this website: So They Can Know

While I have been impressed and inspired with the level of communication and knowledge within my open community surrounding STIs, birth control, and protected/unprotected sex, it always surprises me (well, not anymore really) that male condoms are always used for vaginal intercourse, but rarely are dental dams or male condoms discussed as options for oral sex. It’s true that eating pussy is relatively low-risk, and I do think a number of people in my community have calculated the risks and decided that getting tested and talking about STI results, doing visual inspections, and using male condoms for vaginal intercourse are enough safety measures for them (that’s pretty much J and I’s routine).

For me, unprotected sex makes sex an intimate act, even when it’s with a new female partner who I may not be as emotionally intimate with. With nothing separating our bodies and fluids, it automatically makes me feel psychologically and emotionally closer to that person.

I was taking a wellness quiz yesterday, and when I answered that I had had unprotected sex with multiple partners in the past six months, it put my answer in a red box with a warning that this was HIGH RISK. I felt my heart rate rise a bit! It’s true that having unprotected sex with multiple partners puts me at a higher risk of contracting STIs than if I had unprotected sex with only one person (even counting female partners). I also think that it’s worthwhile to think about my true risk of contracting an STI, based on my history and record, and other safer sex practices.

How do you feel about having unprotected sex with multiple partners? How do you mitigate risk from being sexually nonmonogamous?

Underdogs & Misfits

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I recently finished Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. And, saw “Dallas Buyers Club” (if someone fits the bill as an underdog or misfit, it’s Ron Woodruff, imo). I love, love, loved that movie.

I felt so comforted reading and watching these stories, likely because I have been feeling like an underdog/misfit myself. I have felt like an outsider many times in my life (a huge motivation for going to Berkeley for college), but never so much as right now. I also really appreciated Gladwell’s reframing of what it means to be the little person (in his traditional style). It’s not about being weaker or smaller or having less resources and then miraculously overcoming a situation: there are advantages to things we normally see as disadvantages, disadvantages to things we normally see as advantages, some level of difficulty that actually leaves us stronger in the end, and limits to the big person’s power (power has its limits). There are so many ways in which the underdog actually has the advantages in a tricky situation, and may actually yield more power than the “powerful” person.

One of the parts I liked the most from Gladwell’s book is about the Big Five theory of personality, and how innovators tend to be not only open to new ideas and conscientious and persistent, but also tend to be pretty darn disagreeable. (You can take a free test here; it measures openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. I’m relatively to pretty high on all of them according to this test). Being disagreeable, according to Gladwell, isn’t just about being rude or selfish- it’s about bucking social norms and expectations in favor of pursuing ideas and values outside the box or norm. In this way, I would think of myself as pretty disagreeable. Not that it’s always comfortable for me to be disagreeable in this sense, but I think I have become more that way. (In the way that agreeableness is traditionally discussed-unselfish, helpful, etc-, I am pretty agreeable.)

“The reasonable man [woman! person!] adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ~George Bernard Shaw

Vasectomy: Done

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We drove across the river today, much earlier than either of us is normally up and functioning. I dropped him off in front of a tall building while I parked the car.

I raced to get to the tenth floor so I could make sure to be with him during the procedure.

The most painful part was the injection of local anesthetic. He also had low pressure beforehand, and so he got pretty faint feeling during the procedure. I kept my hand on his head or shoulder, and from where I was sitting could see the cheery, older doctor work. The doctor made small talk, talking to J about law school, talking to me about public health and social work.

And then it was over. (Like yesterday: Eight, ten minutes, tops? Married? Vas deferens cut and skin sewn back up? Big things can happen so fast).

And now J is at home with a bag of frozen blueberries on his groin. Soreness has set in, but it shouldn’t be that bad for too long.

We’ll continue to define “family” in new ways in the years to come, and this was just one more definitive step toward our dynamic view of family.

It will also ensure J is able to more fully relax with other partners (all of the women at my house last week agreed that it sounds terrifying to be a man with only two options of birth control- have y’all seen this, though? Pretty cool!). Having control over one’s body and one’s ability to reproduce seems so important in fully engaging with one’s sexuality.

I’m proud of you honey!

Hotwifing & Cuckolding- The Matriarch Reigns Supreme

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My next blog post went live on MultipleMatch: Hotwifing & Cuckolding- The Matriarch Reigns Supreme.

I loved writing this one. Check it out! :D

Here’s an excerpt:

“I get ready for our night out. My black leather collar with rhinestones is the centerpiece of my outfit. He comes up behind me, pressing himself into my ass. “I’m fucking him tonight, and I’m so excited for you to fuck me afterwards,” I whisper to him. He moans excitedly, anxious for the action to begin.

Hotwifing is a less-well known subculture within nonmonogamy, although the number of those who ascribe to the lifestyle seems to be great. David Ley’s Insatiable Wives offers some empirical support for the size of the community, and the array of relationships within it.

A “hotwife” refers to a woman in a partnered couple who has sexual encounters with other men. The dynamic usually looks like this: The husband/primary male partner is highly turned on by his wife’s/female partner’s sexual escapades, and derives pleasure and arousal from her exercising her sexual autonomy and from the image/thought/knowledge of another man having sex with her.

I am a hotwife. I revel in finding other sexy men who will get in bed with me. It turns both my primary partner and I on- it is probably our top turn-on as a couple. We both become insanely aroused thinking about another man’s cock in my pussy, and even though I always use condoms with other male partners, our top fantasy is about me having condom-free sex with other men.“

HUMP! 2013

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My life is complete! For now! Because we have now been to HUMP! 2013! :D

Here is/was the line-up (the festival is in Portland next weekend):

hump lineup 2013

My favorites/points of interest/etc.:

-I voted The Legend of Gabe Harding as Best Humor (J voted this way as well). I love that it featured male porn stars’ performance issues remedied via a male fluffer. Other favorite “humor” pieces included Mouthpiece, Japanese Catholic Lesbian School Girls in Love, and Raiders of the Lost Arse.

-I voted His as Best Kink. It was fucking spectacular. One, I absolutely adore “Crave You” (Adventure Club remix, obvs); the movement in the piece was beautifully synchronized with the song. Two, rope = sexy. Three, the D/S component to the relationship was represented gorgeously. I can’t say enough lovey things about this one. It gave me shivers. Second runner-up for Best Kink was Fun With Fire. Both J and I enjoyed this one because it showed the real interactions between the couple, including shock, laughter, hesitance, trust, and comfort. It was also pretty great. J voted for Fun With Fire as Best Kink.

-For Best Sex, I voted Sex House. I loved the raunchy, sweaty, drug-filled atmosphere and the desirous, hot sex between the two lesbian couples. Surprising to J and our sexy friends, I also loved Daddy’s Dolls. I thought the lead person was hot as fuck, and the sensuality radiating between her (using female pronouns because I don’t know what is most appropriate) and the other person was super hot for me to watch. I almost voted Ouroboros as Best Sex, but then decided to vote it as Best in Show; J did vote Ouroboros for Best Sex.

-Best in Show: Ouroboros. It was such a well-done piece. After showing the sex scene between two gay men, the film rewinds scene by scene, back to the hallway and the club and the drinking and the dancing and finally back to a scene of one of the men laying down to masturbate to porn featuring him and the man we see him with at the beginning of the film (a little confusing to relate via text, but it was breathtaking).

[Consider the definition of Ouroboros, in case you weren't aware (from Wikipedia):

"The Ouroboros or Uroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The Ouroboros often symbolize self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished."

Love it!]

J voted for Raiders of the Lost Arse as Best in Show- he thought it was really clever because of all of the movie and copyright references it made.

Other pieces that are so noteworthy but just didn’t make it into my voting:

-Fuck: Also phenomenal. Slam poetry about fucking narrates over gorgeous images of Black women in the nude. I loved the representation of women of color and the representation of fat women. And, the slam poetry itself was powerful.

-Art Primo: I loved the sensual and slow nature of this one. It reminded me of ArtPorn- the stylized nature reminded me of boudoir photos.

-Inspired Surreality: Yay! We totes know these rockin’, smokin’ porn stars! Well done, you two! Super sexy.

This year’s bonus props were bowling balls, butt plugs, and Hillary Clinton, so there were quite a few pieces with those props. Other common themes: come shots (soooo many come shots this year). And there were two pieces that featured instruments (Mouthpiece and Beethoven’s Stiff). There was also quite a bit of both gay and lesbian sex. And, I was impressed and happy to see the number of pieces that showed condom use.

Yay HUMP! We even got Dan Savage as our MC and I EVEN bought myself a HUMP! shirt. Because I am cool like that ;)

Porn & Condoms

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Apparently I am a little late to this scene, but Tristan Taormino has added a new twist to her condoms-in-porn stance. You can read her full piece here and the CNN coverage about it here. (yeah, they were published in late September. I don’t know how I just found out about this!)

Taormino was deeply against Measure B, proposed in LA county this past year, mandating condom use on porn sets. A big reason she cited was the fact that the use of condoms while shooting porn can create major internal wear and tear for female-bodied people, actually increasing their susceptibility to contracting STIs. Another was that condoms don’t protect against all STIs. Some people develop latex allergies. She also thinks that the government involvement in porn is about politics and not about sex worker rights, health, and safety.

However, her commitment to porn actor health and safety, and her own personal story (her father died of AIDS in the mid-90s), has caused her to change her professional standards. While before she allowed actors to freely choose to shoot scenes with condoms or without, now she will be requiring condom use in her porn productions. 

I definitely encourage you to read the piece on her site (the first link) and read on to hear from porn actors about their preferences for shooting with condoms or not and why. It was fascinating and enlightening for me to read about, and there are a variety of views represented. One major theme from many people was that they would prefer condom use be normalized.

I would tend to agree with Taormino- that the fight over condom-use regulation is about politics and not the actual safety of sex workers. I think porn actors should truly have the choice to use condoms or not; they shouldn’t have to worry about marketability, profit, or branding in making the choice to have sex with a barrier. Safer sex shouldn’t be dependent on a company’s profit margins. 

My logical brain wants condom-use in porn to be normalized. Actors deserve to practice safer sex, just like anyone else. My lustful brain fantasizes about condom-free sex and probably would be a bit more turned on watching condom-free sex. But this also relatively moot, since I don’t watch porn. I opt for erotica that simply describes condom-free sex :-P

Regardless, I am glad that Taormino is as brave, ethical, and reflective as she is: it takes guts to have complex motivations and reasoning behind professional decisions, to own personal experiences that inform them, and to publicly acknowledge when your professional stance changes.