menstruation

Sharing the Sexy #15

Kate Sloan

• Here’s a tirade in favor of menstrual sex. Can’t say I’m on board with the penis-shaming therein, but she makes some good points.

• While we’re on the topic… This slam poet loves him some period sex!

• Porn star Madison Young taught a hands-on female ejaculation workshop. I love this part: When a female audience member came up to her after class and explained that she’d never had an orgasm, Young responded, “Hold on, I’ve got an extra 10 minutes — get on up there!”

• S. Bear Bergman writes about teaching a two-year-old to respect consent.

• What can self-proclaimed “Nice Guys” teach us about “the very real problem of male sexual entitlement”?

• Interesting fetish of the week: sexualized tampon use. Edward Cullen, anyone?

5 Products Your Vagina Needs to Know About

Kate Sloan

I’ve had two cases of BV and countless UTIs in the past couple years, and as a result, I fret a lot about my vagina these days. There’s nothing actively hazardous about it; it just seems to be prone to problems. In a way, it reminds me of a child who’s particularly nerdy and sensitive, who makes you want to protect him from the bullies at school. Except in this case, the “bullies” are infections.

Because I love you, dear reader, and I care about your vaginal health (or that of the female-bodied folks in your life), here are some items that make my vagina’s life a whole lot easier.

DivaWash. Manufactured by the same people who make the DivaCup, DivaWash is a pH-balanced, all-natural, super gentle cleanser. It’s meant for “face, body, and the DivaCup,” but since one of those things is designed to go inside my vag, I figured the wash itself is vulva-safe. And it is. I’ve been using it as my exclusive vulva-cleansing product for years now (except for this one time when I was on vacation and had to use regular soap, which resulted in a scorching case of BV). It’s soooo gentle and has only the tiniest hint of natural fragrance, so it’s not irritating or drying at all. Of course, the best way to clean a vulva is with plain water, but if you like a leeeetle bit more oomph, DivaWash is the way to go.

D-Mannose. I used to get a urinary tract infection about once a month, seemingly brought on by sex. For those of you who have never had a UTI, trust, it’s miserable. And it can spread to your bladder and then to your kidneys (yes, this happened to me – it’s not fun, don’t do it!). Then someone told me about D-Mannose. It’s a tasteless, odourless powder which you stir into a glass of water and drink up. It makes the insides of your bladder and urinary tract all slippery so the bacteria can’t hang on. Every time I feel a UTI-like twinge of pain, I have some D-Mannose, and the discomfort melts away within hours. It’s a miracle product!

Menstrual cups. Obvi. But please be aware that there are options other than the ones you’ve probably heard of (DivaCup, SoftCups, and maybe the Keeper). I spent a lot of time in the LiveJournal community for cup users when my DivaCup started to fail me, and I found out that not everyone can or should use the same kind of cup. Vaginas come in many different shapes and sizes and the cup selection reflects that! After much experimentation, my cup of choice these days is a large Yuuki. It’s big and firm, never leaks, never feels uncomfortable to me, and basically I want to marry it. What’s your goldilocks cup?

Extra virgin coconut oil. This stuff is flawless. You can use it on your face, hair, body, and – yes! – your vulva. I like it as a lube for my glass and steel toys, and it also works wonderfully as a post-shave moisturizer. (Even better if you can convince your lover to massage it into your skin!)

Plain yogurt. Some people put it in their vagina. I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to do that yet. But, if you’re ever on antibiotics for anything, and you’re even slightly prone to yeast infections, you should get on a daily regimen of eating plain yogurt with active bacterial cultures in it, at least for the duration of your treatment. It’ll keep your vag full of happy bacteria that fights off the bad guys and prevents the Cottage Cheese Discharge of Doom. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I wish you the best of vaginal health, always. ♥

Wanking on the Rag: A Squeamish Masturbator’s Guide

Kate Sloan

I love to masturbate. Um, of course I do, I write about sex toys. But I mean, beyond just doing it for the physical pleasure of it, I also enjoy it mentally and emotionally: it’s a way for me to recharge, to unwind, to be good to myself.

So it sucks that there’s one week every month where masturbating is more mess than it’s worth. Or is it?

Here are some of my top tips for jerking off when you’re bleeding. Some of them are overlaps from my post on menstrual sex, but solo sex is worth honoring, too!

1. Choose a nonporous toy. If your collection includes toys made of jelly, TPR, CyberSkin, etc. (shame!), skip them for the time being. You can always use a condom over them, which you should be doing all the time anyway, but it would be best to just bite the bullet and upgrade to a toy you can use safely during your period.

Many of my toys have been subjected to menstrual blood, including my all-white Ella and my beloved Pure Wand. Nonporous toys should wash totally clean with a little soap and water, and the non-mechanical, waterproof ones can be boiled to sanitize. I do have one jelly toy left over from my ignorant days, which I never use anymore – but if I did, I’d leave it alone during my period. Bloody bacteria growing in toy pores = gross!

2. Buy yourself a blood towel. It should ideally be dark-colored and large. Hell, buy two, especially if you’re a squirter. Every time you masturbate or have sex during your period, lay out the towel underneath you so you can have at it without worrying about a mess.

If you’ve got the cash, why not spring for a red Liberator Throe? I can’t think of a better way to honor your divine reproductive essence while keeping your sheets clean! (On a related note, if anyone would like to buy/send me a Throe, please get in touch…!)

3. Investigate alternative menstrual products. Jade and Pearl make sea sponges which you can stuff up your vag at moon-time. They make it possible to be penetrated without mess, whether by a partner or by your own fingers or toys.

I also have a wide variety of menstrual cups which I use for everyday period wear. Depending on the cup, I may be able to penetrate myself shallowly or not at all while wearing one, but they’re great if you just want to masturbate clitorally.

4. Stay away from your cervix. Some folks get very sensitive while they’re bleeding, especially in the cervix area. If this is true for you, try a toy that’s squishier, shorter, or focuses on your G-spot rather than the far reaches of your vagina.

If you really crave a good pounding, maybe take an ibuprofen half an hour before attempting it, and avoid hard materials like glass and steel. Flexible silicone will be your best bet during this time.

5. Think of orgasms as painkillers. Sometimes, when I’m on my period, I feel miserable and achy and have no desire to jerk off. My cramps get so bad that I just want to lie on the couch and watch bad TV. But then I remind myself that I’ll feel better if I force myself to have an orgasm – and guess what? I always do.

It doesn’t have to be a big production. If you’re feeling too sore or lazy for penetration, don’t bother with it. Just grab your favorite clit toy and get off in a way that’s comfortingly familiar to you. You may not feel terribly enthused at first, but power through it if you can: there’s a good chance your cramps will ease up if you can make yourself come.

Jerking off can be a very healing and affirming thing to do during your period, a time when we’re most likely to have complicated relationships with our genitalia. Stop worrying about the mess and just be good to yourself!

5 Books That Have Shaped My Sexuality

Kate Sloan

I don’t read as many books as I’d like to. This is partially due to the fact that I spend zillions of hours a day on the internet, reading blogs and articles and other web resources. Still, though, I owe a lot to the books that I’ve read on sexuality, and I wanted to profile some of them today.

1. Butch Is a Noun (S. Bear Bergman)

Bear is perhaps my all-time favorite queer author. At the time that he wrote Butch is a Noun, he still identified as a butch and used gender-neutral pronouns (he’s since started identifying as a trans man and uses male pronouns now, from what I’ve seen). Bear visited my high school at one point and read aloud from Butch at one of the first Queer-Straight Alliance meetings I ever attended, and I was immediately enthralled. His writing is richly descriptive and often hilarious. This book helped me refine my ideas and fantasies about what I, as a queer femme, am looking for in a partner: a chivalrous, old-fashioned gentleman (though not necessarily male-bodied or male-identifying), who is nonetheless well-versed in new and progressive ideas about gender and sex.

2. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships (Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá)

The “polyamory bible” used to be The Ethical Slut, but ever since Sex at Dawn came along, it’s pretty much reigned supreme in poly circles. It presents countless fascinating arguments for the idea that monogamy doesn’t come naturally to humans, using plenty of evolutionary psychology and bonobo research to prove its central point. This one is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in delving into consensual non-monogamy or have already made that plunge.

3. The Vagina Monologues (Eve Ensler)

In a world that shames, commodifies, and minimizes vaginas, it’s unspeakably refreshing that a play like this could get so popular and be talked about so often in the public eye. This piece is a must-read if you, like so many of us, suffer from vagina shame, or just don’t think about your lady-parts all that often (although, if you’re reading this blog, I doubt that’s an issue of yours). I also encourage men to read this, if just to gain some perspective on the pussy.

4. O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm (Jonathan Margolis)

I’ve never heard another person talk about this book. It’s just not very well-known, which is a shame, because it’s brilliant and quite possibly my favorite book on the topic of sex. Margolis, with a surprisingly balanced and empathetic attitude for a straight cis guy, leads us through the history of the human orgasm. Of particular interest is his in-depth description of the Victorian era’s stuffy attitudes about sex, which hid all the suppressed, lascivious shit that was going on under the surface. His main hypothesis is that testosterone has been the most influential hormone in our history, and he may well be right.

5. Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation (Elissa Stein and Susan Kim)

As you might expect from a book about menstruation written by two women, this book has a serious feminist bent and leans heavily toward anti-establishment. Stein and Kim write about the male fear of menstrual blood, the various products that have been invented to make it disappear (often at the risk of women’s health), and alternatives to these sometimes crippling “solutions.” Definitely a book for the hippie-mama within, but still a great read if you’re tired of the world telling you to stuff a “dry wad of fuckin’ cotton”* up your vag every month.

*This is a quote from The Vagina Monologues about tampons. Yet another reason to read it.

Menstrual Sex: It’s About Bloody Time!

Kate Sloan

I think the only time I’ve ever used the word “squicky” in real life was while telling my friend how my new boyfriend felt about menstrual sex. “It’s just weird for me, I guess,” I said, “because [my ex-girlfriend] was so okay with going down on me during that time of the month, and [the new boyf] is soooo not.”

It’s true – this was a tough adjustment for me. My ex had a vagina too, so she understood that menstruation isn’t such a big deal – but it wasn’t just that; she was a messy, reckless person in many ways, the type of girl to slather herself in paint and make breast prints on big pieces of watercolor paper. I think she was more inclined to “ride the crimson wave” because sexuality didn’t scare her, not even a little, not even the weird parts. My new boyfriend wasn’t like that, and his apprehension made me feel shitty about my lady-bits.

But then I rubbed off on him. Me and my relentless sex-positivity and vagina-lovin’. He must have absorbed some of my feminist unabashedness, because soon enough, his blood-related worries dissolved.

Here are some things that changed his mind, and that might change yours or your lover’s mind about period sex too:

1. Menstrual cups. Embarrassingly, I have a cup collection – two DivaCups, a Yuuki, a Lunette, and a Meluna. I just like to have a variety of color and size options – the average woman will only need one cup.

These things are great for a multitude of reasons that don’t have to do with sex – better for the environment, for the body, for the wallet (if you don’t collect them like me) – but they make sex easier too. While it is possible to have intercourse with a reusable cup in place, I don’t recommend it – I use them to facilitate oral sex instead. They keep the blood inside, so as not to freak out a partner, but they don’t dry up natural juices the way a tampon would if used in the same way. Worry-free cunnilingus, yum!

2. Menstrual sponges. I have some by Jade and Pearl – they are fairly cheap and easy to use. Truth be told, I am not a fan of sponges for everyday menstrual use – they’re not much better than tampons when it comes to body-safety and drying me out, and I find that they leak when I sneeze or laugh too hard. But! They work very well for period sex. (I’ve never used Softcups, but I hear they work just as well for this purpose.)

When inserted, sea sponges feel remarkably similar to the surrounding vaginal walls – soft, textured, and, uh, spongy. So you can tuck one up by your cervix and it’s very likely that neither you nor your partner will even be able to tell you’re on the rag. Just one word of warning: don’t go trying to pry out the sponge immediately after sex to empty it – during arousal, the cervix pulls up and back, taking any surrounding objects with it, so give it a few minutes or you might start panicking about not being able to get the damn sponge out.

3. Thick, dark towels. Really, these should be a part of everyone’s sex arsenal; if you don’t need towels at least once in a while, you’re doing it wrong, if I may say so. At the moment, I just use knockoff pashminas I don’t care about, but in the future, I’d like to upgrade to a Liberator Throe, a sex blanket that can absorb anything you squirt at it.

4. Mental preparedness. Yeah, menstruating vaginas taste a bit like iron. That taste doesn’t mean you’re getting blood in your mouth (necessarily), it just means you’re licking a healthy, normal vulva, so don’t fret.

Not everyone has to be okay with every sex act. I’m definitely not going to judge anyone who really feels that menstrual sex is not for them. But I want people to feel more equipped to have it if they want to… especially since orgasms are such a wonderful cure for cramps!