Musings

Do I Want Kids? Part 2: Birth & Bodies

Kate Sloan

I’ve had the nightmare dozens of times: I’m in a fluorescently-lit room at the hospital, legs in stirrups, and everyone is yelling at me. Doctors, nurses, my assumed co-parent (though, better get a paternity test, girl, ’cause let’s hope your baby isn’t faceless and amorphic like this dude is). They all want me to PUSH, but what they don’t understand is that I am trying! My muscles barely obey me, and I slump and cry and try to do what I am told. And then, inevitably, I wake up – before I even get to see my baby.

What this recurrent dream shows me is that I’m terrified of giving birth. I think it’s hard not to feel this way if you have a vagina and a uterus, and maybe even if you don’t. The process is depicted in the media as one of the most physically painful experiences you’ll ever endure: I’ve seen soon-to-be-mothers in movies and TV shows screaming at their husbands, weeping in agony, praying for relief from gods they barely believe in. The pain scares me, yes, but in almost equal measure, I’m scared of who that pain could make me become.

There’s also the horror stories you hear about birth’s effect on the body. Parts can rip and swell and puncture and pop. You can pass out, bleed out, or shit yourself on the birthing bed. Having been relatively healthy for most of my life, I haven’t seen my body stretched to its extremes – and I’m not sure I want to. Why can cis fathers confirm their biological parenthood with a simple home paternity test while I have to endure hours of body- and soul-transforming labor to be eligible for mine?

It doesn’t help that my mom has told me all my life about how painful it was to give birth to me, since her epidural didn’t kick in quite right. But then, she does also say that giving birth to my little brother was comparatively painless, so maybe medical advances will be such by the time I’m pushin’ out a baby that I won’t have to break my brain with pain.

On the plus side, I am well accustomed to processing pain. Being a submissive masochist, I’ve written articles and done interviews on cognitive strategies for dealing with pain, and I struggle with chronic pain on a regular basis – so I’m better equipped than the average person for handling an excruciating situation.

I’ve also long been curious about vaginal fisting as a potential birth training activity during pregnancy, ever since I heard it discussed on some sex podcast long ago. Equivalent to the perineal massage recommended by many obstetricians, but a whole lot more intense, fisting could be a worthwhile practice for helping vaginal muscles learn to relax, stretch, and open up. Assuming the person fisting me would also be present at the birth (which may not be a fair assumption, what with my polyamorous sluttiness, but let’s pretend), they could even use similar communication strategies on The Big Day as they used in our fist-heavy “practice sessions” to guide me through the sensations. I am a big advocate for the idea that practicing difficult tasks makes them easier, and since you can’t exactly practice giving birth before it actually happens, fisting might be the next best thing.

The birth process seems less scary when I think of it that way: as an intense series of sensations, a rigorous task I’m putting my body through, not unlike a kink scene or a sexual feat. And if it seems weird to you to compare “the miracle of life” to a sex act, I would invite you to read Your Child’s Right to Sex, watch Orgasmic Birth, and remember that babies mostly occur because of sex!

Speaking of orgasmic birth… I am definitely the type of person to bring a Magic Wand vibrator to the hospital on that fateful day, assuming I had enough presence of mind to remember it at the time. (Let’s face it, that might be a job for my dutiful co-parent, whoever they may be.) Hey, if huge things are gonna be moving through my vagina, I want some clitoral vibrations to at least soften the blow! Sex educator Susie Bright famously used her wand to lessen discomfort during the birth of her first child. “I had no thought of climaxing,” she wrote in a 2006 blog post, “but the pleasure of the rhythm on my clit was like sweet icing on top of the deep, thick contractions in my womb.”

So, do I want to give birth? Part of me remains aghast at the thought. But another, bigger part of me is curious – curious how my pain tolerance would hold up, curious about what those “deep, thick contractions” feel like, curious about the extent to which pleasure can mitigate that level of pain. Pregnancy and birth are two magical things my body can (presumably) do that I haven’t yet experienced, and I’m always curious about bodily states I have yet to achieve. Maybe one day I’ll be swearing and sweating in a delivery room, cursing the day I ever claimed to want this – but if common accounts of the post-birth experience are true, the memory of that pain will soon melt away in favor of oxytocin bliss, endorphin nirvana, and the joy of meeting the new little person I’ve just brought into the world.

 

Thanks to TestMeDNA for sponsoring this series! Browse their website for answers to big questions like “What does a paternity test cost?” and “What the hell is a buccal swab?”

Why is Having a Sugar Daddy So Hot?

Kate Sloan

Regular readers of this site will recall that I am a former sugar baby. A handsome, charming man paid me in bimonthly instalments for the pleasure of my sparkling company. (That makes it sound more wholesome than it was. There was also phone sex. And devious sexting.)

I had a lot of Thoughts ‘n’ Feelings at the time about money fetishism, “financial domination,” sugar dating, and how it all fits together. I think a lot of sugar babies who seek their daddies on sites like Happymatches probably just think of these interactions as jobs of a sort – and they’re not wrong to do so; sugar dating is often considered a form of sex work. But seeing as I’m a kink nerd, I found myself delving deeper into the psychology of these transactions, seeking to understand why I felt a thrill of titillation whenever a beefy sum landed in my bank account after a late-night telephone tryst.

After thinking about it a lot, here are some of the factors I’ve come to identify in sugar dating’s hotness quotient…

When you have money, you can relax.

Emily Nagoski writes in her book Come As You Are about how stress puts a damper on sexual arousal. Not only are you mentally distracted when you’re stressed out – you’re actually physiologically less able to get turned on.

Nagoski differentiates between the sexual “brakes” and their counterpart, the sexual “accelerator.” If you’re a naturally libidinous person, having the pressure taken off your brakes can kick your accelerator into high gear. So, if stressing about money has been a regular part of your life and then suddenly isn’t anymore, it could affect your sexual desire levels in positive and surprising ways. That’s certainly what happened to me!

With more money also came more free time – some of which I spent on activities that made me feel beautiful, pampered, and sensually stimulated, like taking myself out for fancy meals, lying around getting high, and – yes – masturbating. All of this can kickstart your libido if it’s been stagnant!

Money is power.

This is the thinking upon which all “findom” play is predicated. In the typical dynamic, a male submissive showers a female dominant in cash, because the cash is the metaphor they have both chosen for their consensual power exchange.

Of course, money’s not just a metaphor: it makes you powerful in the real world, too. And for many people, feeling powerful – capable, strong, unfuckwithable – can boost their sex drive.

Interestingly, I was a submissive in my dynamic, as is relatively common in sugar relationships. My sugar daddy found power in his ability to take care of me by handling my expenses and treating me to things I wanted. But there is lots of power to be found in submission, when it’s something you want and have chosen. When someone else puts me in this role I love so much, I feel respected, seen, and understood – and those are definitely powerful feelings.

Payment is evidence of your desirability.

It’s not the only evidence, certainly. But it’s pretty hard to deny that someone finds you attractive if they are literally paying you for the privilege of spending time with you.

Despite knowing on a logical level that many people think I’m cute, I often find it difficult to believe. I have to look for evidence, cognitive-behavioral therapy-style, that I am indeed hot – and even then, I rarely quite believe it. The exchange of money was almost like a shortcut to understanding my own hotness, though. It just seemed so concrete and real to me; there was no way for me to rationalize it away. Clearly this man wanted me; otherwise he would not have gone to the trouble of seeking me out and lavishing cash on me.

With money, you can make yourself look – and feel – hotter.

Last but not least, when you’re cashed up, you can do things like get waxed, get your hair done, buy makeup, and update your wardrobe. These things may seem small, but they can affect your sexual self-confidence and thereby your libido.

In a perfect world, we would all be able to conjure confidence from within ourselves, without having to rely on external factors or extrinsic validation – but until that perfect world comes into being, I’ll take the opportunity to look hot on someone else’s dime if they’re offering. Why the hell not?

 

Have you ever been in a sugar-dating dynamic? Did you find it hot? What appealed to you about it?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

You’re Someone’s Favorite Flavor

Kate Sloan
Eating cinnamon/coconut gelato in Malta

While I’m a strong proponent of the fact that we’re all different and have unique perspectives and experiences, the subjectivity of attraction has always been hard for me to wrap my mind around. I’ve told countless friends and readers who felt unattractive, “There are people out there who would be so into you; you just have to find them!” but it’s often been tough for me to believe that about myself.

On free adult dating sites and apps, it can seem like we’re being reduced to how we look – and this can be discouraging for those of us who feel like our appearance is subpar in some way. I’ve thought of myself for so long as someone whose Tinder bio you have to read to truly understand my charm. This self-perception was so ingrained, I didn’t even believe my partner when he recently told me he thought I was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, the first time he laid eyes on me.

So it seemed like a good time to revisit a lesson I often impart on friends and readers when they just can’t comprehend or accept their own attractiveness. I call it “the ice cream metaphor,” and it goes like this:

Imagine you go out for ice cream with a friend. “I’m gonna get my favorite flavor,” they announce excitedly, rubbing their hands together.

“What flavor is that?” you ask.

And then they name a flavor you find absolutely vile. Cotton candy, butter pecan, rum raisin, whatever it may be… A flavor you can’t imagine anyone eats, let alone enjoys.

But you look at their big grin, and the spring in their step as they march up to the counter at the ice cream parlor, and the expression of total bliss on their face when their tongue first touches their treat. And you realize then that while you don’t agree with them that it’s a good flavor, you believe them when they say it’s their favorite.

This is how attraction works, too. You don’t have to agree with everyone who thinks you’re hot. In fact, when they compliment you, you may feel a full-body reaction of doubt and dismissal, because what you see when you look in the mirror certainly doesn’t register as “hot” to you. But you should still do your best to say “Thank you” and to believe what they’re saying. Their perceptions and tastes are different from yours. This happens in every area where humans can have preferences, from ice cream to music to, yes, people. Suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to accept that you are hot to somebody, even if you’re not hot to you.

You may be a flavor you personally wouldn’t eat if there was no other ice cream left on earth, but there are people who could lick you all day long and still want more. Know what I’m sayin’?

You’re someone’s favorite flavor. Don’t forget it.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Things I Learned From Working in Sex Toy Retail

Kate Sloan
One time I worked on Halloween…

Though it’s been a year and a half since the last time I set foot behind a sex-shop sales counter, I still remember my sex toy retail days as some of my fondest. It was a job quite unlike any other in my employment history, and I say that as someone who had already been working in sex media for years at that point. Nowhere else do you get so up-close-and-personal with everyday people – not just the clued-in, sex-positive crowd – trying to expand their sexual horizons. It may be just another shitty retail job, but it’s also a magical and unparalleled experience!

Here are five big things I learned in my stints as a sex toy saleslady…

1. People are – still – really nervous and insecure about sex. People who sell sex toys wholesale or online get to see some of this, perhaps in the forms of email, Instagram DMs, and the like – but it’s working in a physical shop that really exposes you to customers’ fears and neuroses. I watched middle-aged moms pace the vibrator aisle biting their nails; I helped men pick out toys meant to compensate for the boners they feared they’d never get back; I showed giggling teenagers how to operate their first-ever vibes. It was always my mission to try to impart a sense of casual confidence around sex via my speech and behavior – which sometimes involved putting on a poker face – because what else is a sex shop employee really for?

2. There are soooo many weird sex toys out there. And I am using the word “weird” in the most affectionate way, I promise. The shops I worked at bought through sex toy wholesale suppliers, and sometimes just loaded up their orders with whatever looked interesting or sellable – which sometimes meant our sales floor would be stocked with giant fist dildos, glow-in-the-dark enemas, and vibrators that doubled as jewelry. You see a lot of strange shit as a sex toy reviewer, but I saw even more strange shit at sex shops, and it delighted me.

3. I like work that’s variable and challenging. Previous office jobs (not to mention, monogamous relationships…) had taught me that monotony saps the life force from my soul. Work that engages you is a privilege, and I’m so grateful I’ve been able to find it in so many forms. Working at a sex shop may get boring on occasion – for example, when you’re putting price tags on dozens of lingerie sets, or mopping the lube aisle after yet another spill – but the one-on-one interactions with customers were totally unpredictable from day to day. I could talk to a brassy grandmother buying her 8th Magic Wand, a meek teenager coming in for a harness and dildo, and a fast-talking sex worker picking up some lube before her next rendezvous, all in the same day. Amazing!

4. Even sex toys can get boring after a while. Look, I said the people were interesting; not all the toys were! I bet people who work in the lube production, wholesale sex toys, and sex toy marketing world also find this to be true: after a while, almost nothing can shock you anymore. Customers giggled daily at the giant arm-length dildos we carried, or the horse-tail butt plugs, but I was so blasé that I was just like, “Yeah? And?” This is why it’s funny to me when people worry that they’re going to freak out a sex shop employee with their “out-there” request… If they’ve been working there for a while, they’ve probably seen it all.

5. A little empathy goes a long way. I don’t mean this in a super-salesy way – “establish commonality with the customer so they’ll be likelier to drop some cash!” – but an empathetic approach to sex toy sales really does help. People want to feel listened to, understood, and normalized – and as a sex shop employee, I think you encounter more opportunities to do this type of emotional service than almost any other kind of retail worker. I never took that responsibility lightly.

Have you ever worked at a sex shop? What did the experience teach you?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Questions to Ask Your New Kink Partner

Kate Sloan

A vanilla friend once asked me, when I gushed about how well my new dommy beau’s kinks fit with mine, “Isn’t that the point of identifying as dominant or submissive? So you can easily find someone who’s compatible with you?”

Ha. Easily? That’s a laugh. While I am indeed a submissive – and a damn good one, if I may say so – that doesn’t mean I automatically jive with every dominant who crosses my path. Even setting aside more basic factors like attraction and harmonious personalities, we might not work well together kinks-wise because there are so many different ways to be dominant or to be submissive. If I want to be nurtured but you want to degrade me until I cry, maybe we’re not gonna work out. If you get off on heavy sadism and my pain tolerance is only so-so, we might have to part ways. If the names and words that light your fire are ones that squick me out, maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.

While there’s no foolproof and thorough way (in my view) to assess compatibility quickly, there are certainly ways you can help speed it along. With that in mind, here are 5 questions you can ask your new beau (and answer yourself, too) to figure out whether your approaches to kink could work well together – for an evening, a fling, or maybe even for the long haul.

1. What kinds of feelings do you like getting from kink?

When you’re in the midst of a kink scene, do you like feeling adored, appreciated, accomplished? Or do you prefer to feel overwhelmed, overpowered, and owned? How about degraded, dejected, or dismissed? (More great feelings words on Bex’s Yes/No/Maybe list.)

Knowing this about a potential (or current) kink partner can help shape your scenes. I’ll take a very different approach when submitting to a dom who appreciates quiet obedience, for example, versus a dom who likes a little bratty resistance. Likewise, if a dom thinks I want to feel used and put down, they’re not going to be able to give me the type of scene I actually tend to want, which involves me being cherished and coddled. Figure out your desired feelings first, and then you can start to figure out everything else.

2. What does it look like when you’re enjoying yourself? What about when you’re not?

As a sub, I giggle when I’m enjoying myself – but I know other subs whose mid-scene giggles might mean they’re uncomfortable and don’t know how to say so. I know people whose stony silence might mean they hate what’s happening, and people who only go silent when things are feeling really good. I know people who kick and scream when they’re taken past their pain limits, and people for whom that’s just a sign that the scene is going swimmingly. It’s important to know how your particular play partner responds to both good and bad stimuli, so you know when to slow your roll and when to hit the accelerator. Of course, you shouldn’t rely only on these cues – it’s still important to have (and heed) a safeword, and perhaps a green/yellow/red check-in system or something similar – but they’re crucial to know, nonetheless.

That doesn’t only hold true for subs and bottoms, either. Doms and tops also have “tells” for when they’re enjoying a scene and when they’re decidedly not. A bonus of articulating these signs to a partner is that you get clearer on them yourself. I never used to notice, for example, that my ankles would cross together protectively when I was nearing a pain limit, until a partner asked me to list and explain some of my nonverbal signals. Being more aware of your own body and responses is always useful!

3. Has anyone ever safeworded with you before? What happened?

This is one of my favorite screening questions for new doms, because it shows me quickly how they handle consent in scenes and to what extent they respect their partners. A bad or dangerous dom will tend to get defensive when asked this question – “Of course no one has ever needed to safeword with me!” – while a good dom who’s been around the block will likely have at least a few stories to share. (I’m sure you could learn a lot about a sub by asking them this question, too.)

Pay attention to how they talk about the person who safeworded (affectionately? dismissively?) and what they claim to have done after the safeword was said (hopefully they tried to give the person what they needed, instead of reprimanding them or abandoning them). Notice, too, what their general attitude on safewording seems to be. If they view it as a wimpy cop-out that should best be avoided, rather than a vital communication tool in any encounter, maybe you should steer clear.

4. What are some edges you’re interested in pushing?

These malleable edges are also known as “soft limits”: things you aren’t interested in doing, with most people or in most circumstances, but that you might be open to if the right situation and partner came along for that particular thing.

For example, I don’t want to feel like some douchey bro’s blowjob machine, but with a compassionate dom who I trusted and loved to please, having my mouth used in an objectifying or degrading way could be fun. Maybe your partner’s been curious about knife play for ages but has never had a chance to try it out. Maybe they’re a dom who’s curious about subbing, or vice-versa. Whatever it is, you don’t have to push that edge immediately or at all, but it’s good to at least know about it, so you can perhaps start to work toward it together.

5. What kind(s) of aftercare do you need?

If someone is new to kink – or hasn’t done it in a while – they may not know the answer to this. But they probably have at least some idea. Common elements of aftercare are cuddles, compliments, and snacks – but of course, these don’t work for everyone.

I get nervous doing scenes with new partners who I haven’t discussed aftercare with yet. While most kinksters seem to know intuitively that aftercare is important, it’s hard for me to relax and have fun if I don’t know that I’ll be properly taken care of when I’m too subspacey to articulately advocate for myself. So it’s best to have this conversation before it becomes relevant, so both of you know you’ll be able to get what you need.

What questions do you like to ask new kink partners before playing?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all words and opinions are my own.