12.30.2014

Transgendered Youth, Ya'll - Let's Get Educated



Okay, again today, I am straying from the basic gist of this blog; things such as ladygasms, masturbation, Orgasm Equality, the movie Science Sex and the Ladies (Wanna See it!!!), or indie movies in general. Instead I'm going to write about the T in LGBT.

I heard the news today of a 17 year old transgendered child who possibly committed suicide by walking in front of a truck at 2:30 in the morning. The kid, born Joshua Alcorn, left a suicide note on her Tumbler. You can read it HERE.

I'm a straight cis-gendered person who has always been supportive of LGBT activism and being bi or gay made sense to me. I just have to think how my feelings emerged about the opposite sex and think it's just that but with the same sex or both sexes. It's not hard to get, but honestly, I didn't know much about trans people. I actually didn't know any personally, and I don't think the whole thing would have made much sense to me if I sat and thought about, but I didn't ever really think much about it because I didn't really have to. Being trans is hard to comprehend though, I think. I mean, I can't tell you what is it in me that makes me feel like I'm a girl. I have never questioned it. It just is and has always been, so it's hard to imagine what part of someone feels wrong when they don't feel the same gender as the sex they were born with. Plus, I think I maybe had this feeling like being transgendered wouldn't be a "thing" if our culture didn't have such strong gender barriers. Like if a boy wanted to hang with girls and do girl things, he could - no biggie.

I have had to think about it more recently though. I have an acquaintance who came out as trans, so I started reading about it and talking about it. What I've learned is that I still don't know what it is that makes a transgendered person feel different than their cis-gendered peers, but I know it is real, and deep, and it is with a person for pretty much as long as they can remember. Even if they don't come out until they are 65, or if they didn't have words to describe what they felt, or if as kids they tried to act upon their feelings or not, trans people begin feeling it when they are very young - 3 or 4 - the same time everyone of us begins to identify our gender. I also learned that it's not about just doing stuff or wearing stuff the other gender does. It's more about being part of that other gender - feeling like that gender accepts you as your in-group. There is a MtoF trans MMA fighter. She fights in the octagon - it's not exactly culturally a "girl" thing to do, but that's not what matters. It's that she is a girl. Anyway, my point is I don't need to completely understand it to know that it is incredibly important to the very nature of a person. And that brings me to the other part.

Suicide rates are way too high among transgendered people. The T in LGTB is still decades behind the other letters when it comes to cultural acceptance and knowledge. Plus, given that it is about gender and not sexual orientation, trans people can be trans little kids, which is something that doesn't affect the other letters quite so much. This complicates things, but it also means, with thoughtful, brave parents and health care providers, pre-pubescent trans kids can move smoothly into the adult form they need to become. Trans boys can grow into women and trans girls can grow into men. I know it seems crazy to think that a child can know what they are so clearly at 11 or 12, I know that using medical intervention seems too permanent at such a young age. I know that it's not common practice yet in the medical community, but I think it should be. The acquaintance of mine that came out was actually an 11 year old, and I've been thinking and talking about it a lot with the parents, the loving brave parent of this smart brave child - and although I was skeptical at first about this type of thing, I see now how amazing this therapy is for a trans child. It is so fantastic that this opportunity exists now, and that children are beginning to come out now instead of carrying that heavy burden for way too many years, and that parents are listening and helping now. I see such a bright future for trans people, and I hope that this kind of suicide ceases to exist in the years to come.

Please, please watch this TED talk from a very thoughtful endocrinologist - even if you don't know anyone personally going through this. I think our whole society needs to be more informed about this so we can support and understand where all the courageous trans kids and their parents (that you will hopefully be seeing more of in the news) are coming from.


12.26.2014

Christmas Hodgepodge



It's the day after Christmas, and I had to work all day, and so I thought I'd just put up a hodgepodge of things that don't really have to do with ladies or orgasms or anything because that will be easy and fun. These things may or may not be interesting.

1. As you might remember, I was on a business trip in Brazil recently, and they had this awesome buffet for breakfast at the hotel. Let me just say that Brazil folks are into juice, and I think I'm on board. They have all this fresh ass fruit down there, and they just grind it up - no water, not sugar. From my observations of other customers during my restaurant outings, I would say juice is more popular than soda. That not official, but I can say that there were about 12 different kinds of these juices at this hotel buffet, and I tried most of them. Watermelon juice? Yes, that is mighty fine - yes indeed.


There were also all these cakes at the breakfast buffet. I would say like about 15 or 20. There were lots of chocolatey type ones, and some fruity ones, and they were all fabulous. The first one i had was carrot cake with chocolate, and the carrot cake didn't have all that nut and raisin bullshit in it. It was just like an orangey homogeneous cake with chocolate on top, and I had the same thing later that day when someone brought one of these cakes to work. It's a popular cake in ol' Brazil, and rightly so.

My kind of carrot cake - with chocolate

There were also lots of other things at the buffet, but I mostly focused on those things. Please enjoy some pictures of my breakfasts. I took pictures of them, every day because I was sending the pick and the Portugese translation of all the items back home - I now easily have the words juice (suco) and cake (bolo0 and I'm pretty good with my fruit names.

Lemon cake with fruit, juice, and a Brazilian favorite - cheese bread (that's the ball thing)

Milk cake with chocolate and pineapple  - also that's the watermelon juice
coconut cake - don't particularly like coconut, but loved this cake. The plate looks like a f'd up smiley face with a big hat.

2. This is a Christmassy picture of my cat Ramona. She enjoys naps under the Christmas tree, batting at silver garland, sitting on wrapping paper, and hiding from Christmas visitors who are under the age of 18. She dislikes most food and for the other cats to look at her.



3. I was staying with my sister overnight on Christmas Eve to help ol' St. Nick get the presents down the chimney and to see all the kids on Christmas morning, and long story short, I left a message for one of the kids as Santa with a disguised voice, and it was like a Christmas nightmare. It was all things creepy, and although it was meant to be a scare tactic, it was unnecessarily terrifying. I may have eternally scarred a child. As you can imagine, it was also the hilarious highlight of our Christmas season. Merry Christmas!


12.21.2014

Randome Hite Report #11



Ola! (I'm trying to learn some Portuguese because I'll be travelling to Brazil for work from time to time - Ola means hello. As you can see, I'm pretty much fluent). Today you get more RANDOM HITE REPORT! As you may or may not know, this is where I take one random page, and one page only, out of this super important book from the 70's, and transcribe it for you here on the blog. This book is women answering detailed questions about their sex lives, masturbation practices, orgasms, and all that good stuff. It's incredibly interesting and insightful - and every woman should read it because it's just as relevant and revolutionary as it was when it came out in the mid 70's. Here ya go..



 The following is from the section "Types of Masturbation" under the subsection "Type 1A" which describes the style reported by the vast majority of women, and "basically it means lying on your back and stimulating your clitoral area with your hand (or a vibrator)."


Pg. 83 The Hite Report Dell. 1976.


and use 'dirty words' and by the way, I have just turned myself on by writing this."
    "Oddly enough, even though I'm right handed in most things, I always masturbate with my left hand. I lie on my right side and use my left hand from underneath me, the second and third fingers stroking my clitoris up and down the shaft.Usually, I use a little vaseline to lubricate it. With my right hand, I gently press down on my lower abdomen. sometimes I cross my left leg over my right leg and press down as I feel the orgasm is coming. I move about a bit-sort of wriggling. I would like to use a vibrator, but I haven't had the chance yet."
    "Sometimes I dress in erotic outfits and view myself in the mirror. Usually I smoke a cigarette and put on make-up. If there is time, I lubricate my breasts and genitals with oil or cream. I prefer looking in the mirror rather than directly at myself. Usually I begin playing with my breasts, rubbing my thighs together, then concentrating on orgasm, using the fingers on my right hand in a circular motion on my clitoris. I start with my legs apart, but enjoy having them together during orgasm, squeezing the muscles. At that point, I can't move very much."
    "I use only one hand and mainly run up and down. Does anyone answer these questions so frankly? I feel a little wanton, but I feel you must be true or else, why try to understand yourself? My legs are apart and I touch only my clitoris."
    "I just start right in rubbing my clitoris. I used to touch my breast and stomach, but it seemed redundant. Now I just rub my clitoris, and generally admire the qualities of me!"
    "I masturbate by manipulating my clitoris in a side to side massaging maneuver, starting gently and increasing in intensity of pressure. I use my finger (one hand). The motion is slightly circular combined with side to side, mainly. The other hand is manipulating the nipple of the left breast (the larger and more sensitive one). Legs are apart. I don't move much, in terms of body movement, until orgasm, when there is a raising of the buttock..."

12.15.2014

Science of Orgasm Video



I kept seeing this Science of the Orgasm video on Facebook, and I finally checked it out. I put it off because I thought it was really long, but it was actually only 2 minutes and 45 seconds, so I probably should have just watched it when I first saw it.

If you want my assessment of this video, and I can only assume you do because you're reading my blog, then fine, I'll give it to you. It's okay, ya know. In general it's not like way off base or anything, but it's also a little too sure in statements it shouldn't be be, and it's also kinda skipping over some stuff I think is important for people to know. Granted, most people get little to no education about the physical qualities of orgasm in our school system, so anything is probably good. I seriously didn't learn about what arousal and orgasm actually does in my body until I was in my 20's and researching for what would become Science, Sex and the Ladies, so I'm not going to knock this.

Here's what I think should be pointed out about this video though:

1 When it says that blood starts to flow to the genitals, it doesn't also point out what that means for ladies. We all know what it means for dudes, but I don't think many people know that the increased blood flow is what makes lubrication begin seeping from the vaginal walls, or that as much blood pools down there for women as it does for men. I just think that knowing a simple thing like that could change an outlook a bit.

2 It describes male orgasm as 3-10 seconds followed by a refractory period, and it describes female orgasm as 20 plus minutes with no refraction period, and it doesn't even hint that there might be variation. In actuality, the best study on this topic (Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Response from the late 60's), observed male orgasm basically as described, but it described female orgasm in 3 different ways.
A. just like the male type was described
B. multiple orgasms, each lasting a few seconds and needing continued clitoral stimulation for a number of second between each consecutive little orgasm. This last 2, 3 or sometimes a bit more orgasms, and all the little orgasms and stimulation in between could last a few minutes-ish at most.
C. Status Orgasmus...maybe quick multiple orgasms, maybe one long continuous orgasm that would last 20 seconds to a minute, but they found it to be rare.

So I think the ladygasm description on this video was a bit misleading because it was kinda a mix of the last 2 types and it ignored the possibility of the 3rd type. Plus, and it's not common at all, but men can also be multi-orgasmic, seemingly as long as he can manage to not ejaculate along with his orgasm. There was a man in this study who was recorded doing this.

3 This video says that during orgasm, relaxation of the hippocampus and the amygdala "in women further reduces emotion, producing a trance-like state, while in men it dampens aggressiveness." Really, we're sure of that? All women with the trance-like state when we come and all men with the low aggression when they nus? Really? So, there's a deep well of successfully replicated, peer reviewed studies proving pretty certainly that these badly defined and complicated states of being such as "trance state" "reduced emotion" or "dampened aggression" are specifically what's happening to people during orgasm and that it is split straight down the middle this way for men vs. women? I would bet a lot of money that this isn't the case. And if it is, I'd like more info about this because there are a lot of studies out there about what certain hormones or physical events "do" to people emotionally and behaviorally, and they often contradict each other. It's just that I'm awfully sensitive to "sciency" stuff spouting off in concrete ways about complicated, nuanced shit they don't really understand or care to explain fully. That way of speaking about information is irresponsible at best. I'm a bit of a stickler in that regard, so I just wanted to point out this we-will-unabashedly-speak-concretely-about-a-complicated-subtle-topic-even-though-it's-way-overreaching situation that was happening there.

Okay, that's it. Check out the video.

12.11.2014

International Day of Female Orgasm in Brazil



I'm still pretty much not able to write the blog posts I want to write for the moment, so I just googled the words "Brazil" and "orgasm" not knowing what would happen...but assuming it would be weird and pornographic. Why did I google those two words for blogging inspirations? Well, I'm leaving tomorrow for a business trip to Brazil (which I'm pretty excited about - I've never been there before), and this blog has a lot to do with orgasms.

Now, I don't know if Google just knows my tendencies, or if this is just what happened to be the first link in the search, but it was a 2012 International Business Times article by Connor Adams Sheets about International Day of Female Orgasm in Brazil. That's right up my alley, man!




Apparently Día Internacional del Orgasmo Femenino is held on August 8th, and it seems the day arose because a politician wanted to pay his wife back for a lot of orgasm-less screwing, or something like that. The article I read cites this other article -which to me doesn't seem to be written by a native English speaker, and is kinda random- but anyway, it tells the story of this brave and beautiful politician
"The international day of orgasm is held every year on the initiative of the Councillor of the Brazilian people in Esperantina, Arimateio Dantas, who decided to compensate his wife for some sexual debts ... [and] proposed a day dedicated to stimulate sexual pleasure in its maximum expression,"
If this Arimateio Dantes does exist, and if he really did initiate a day to atone for past one-sided sexing, then by god, I respect this man. The first step in Orgasm Equality is admitting the ladies of the world are having too much non-orgasmic sex, and that isn't always an easy feat for anyone - particularly a man.

So to you, Mr. Arimateio Dantes, I give you a full 5 vulva SSL Review rating! You deserve it, Sir! (Some people have said rating things in vulvas is maybe not very classy, but I like it)

(!)(!)(!)(!)(!)

12.07.2014

Cats!



I have a hundred different posts I really, really want to hunker down and write, but I'm entangled in all sorts of life stuff that don't involve writing about ladygasms for the undetermined number of people who might be reading this blog, so I feel I'm falling way behind. I want to keep up my pace of 2 to 3 posts a week though, and that means I need to write one today - but I don't have time to write any of the ones I really want to write. So I'm just going to write about my cats.

This is way off course for an SSL blog post - which almost always involves some insight into orgasm or masturbation; maybe cultural understanding of it, writings on it, media depictions of it, you know, all that stuff.  My cats, as far as I know, aren't orgasming much and don't plan to anytime in the near future. They are pretty asexual ladycats as far as I can tell, so I realize they are not a great SSL blog topic. Even if we consider that I sometimes write about indie movies or indie movie-making, my cats still aren't really important to that topic either. However, I will try to quickly relate each of my cats to the subjects of this blog. So enjoy, because this is what is happening now.

Cat background - All 3 of my cats are females and they are all around 5 years old. We got them all at different times though when they just sorta showed up at our house. We have a fantasy that they are all actually sisters from the same litter and just happen to get to us at different times. They might actually be. I can only assume they're related somehow. I mean a cat probably has about 300 first cousins. Charlie believes that this old ass motel that was torn down across the street from us shortly before our first cat arrived was deeply cat infested and that they all originated from there. In the end it's still a mystery. They all have a distaste for indie movies and TV in general.



Ramona
Only one we found as a kitten.
Movie significance: She was found in the engine of an actor's car parked in our driveway. She was from Chicago and staying here on one of the last days of shooting for Science, Sex and the Ladies. It's possible Ramona is a Chicago cat. Also, she's got a bit part in the movie - a reshoot we did at the house. (If you can tell me the scene, I'll give you a prize).
Crew type: She's an edit cat. She got here just in time to be sitting next to the computer for almost all the editing of SSL.
Sexuality/orgasm/masturbation significance: She's very inexperienced and naive.  Her gonads were ripped from her as a young girl, and I assume that besides her litter mates, she didn't even see other members of her species until Tina arrived 2 years later. She's like a pampered, sexless, beauty that's been locked in a castle her whole life.


Tina
She looked like Christina Ricci when we found her, but she's put on some weight and doesn't so much anymore.
Movie significance: Her meow is over the ending title of Science, Sex and the Ladies.
Crew type: She's a production cat. She got here just in time to be involved in several re-shoots and little video bits we did to advertise our Kickstarter for the movie. She likes to smell the equipment.
Sexuality/orgasm/masturbation significance: She might be the only cat to have engaged in the sex. She wasn't spayed when we found her, and her nipples are so long, I thought she might have had babies, but I've since learned that some cats just have long nipples. Knowing that cat dicks are barbed and quite painful for lady cats when pulling out, I understand why she seemed so interested in living indoors.



Eds
I named her Edgar while she was still outside. When we found out she was a girl, we shortened it to Eds.
Movie significance: Before Eds moved in, she showed up one day with about 3 inches of her tail hanging by a thread, and then a few days later she showed up and it was gone. She also had so many worms...so many worms. That has nothing to do with the movie, but it was something weird and gross that happened while we were working on post production.
Crew type: Eds is a watcher cat. She got here about when the post production was finishing up, and we had to watch it a lot for mistakes and for score discussions and for making deeper cuts. Seriously, you can't imagine how many times you have to watch your own movie, carefully from beginning to end, before it's done. anyway, Eds is our only cat who sits on the couch and watched TV with us. She would do it for 1000 hours in a row if she could.
Sexuality/orgasm/masturbation significance: Eds was spayed when we found her, but she was an experienced outside cat, killing birds out of the air and maybe waging war with the groundhogs that lived under our shed. She's probably been around the block once or twice. She very much likes to watch....from a close proximity. It must be soothing because it puts her to sleep.

12.03.2014

Random Hite Report #10




Hello! Today you get more RANDOM HITE REPORT! As you may or may not know, this is where I take one random page, and one page only, out of this super important book from the 70's, and transcribe it for you here on the blog. This book is women answering detailed questions about their sex lives, masturbation practices, orgasms, and all that good stuff. It's incredibly interesting and insightful - and every woman should read it because it's just as relevant and revolutionary as it was when it came out in the mid 70's. Here ya go..



 The following is from the section "Women Who Orgasm During Intercourse: How Do They Do It?"


Pg. 280 The Hite Report Dell. 1976.
3. Touching of pubic bones together during intercourse.   Getting clitoral stimulation by the man's pubic bone hitting against the woman's with each thrust was another method used by some women. In most of the examples, the man was doing the moving. Positions included the man on top, or one or both sitting up; the woman's leg positions included everything from together to apart to up or bent up and back. The thrusting makes it hard to keep the stimulation on just the right spot, so it is important to have freedom of movement for yourself.
    "I prefer having the man on top, but I move a lot because I am finicky about the timing anf thrusting that's going on. It requires a lot of squirming around to get certain places that are pleasurable. Also, if I keep my legs together, my grasp regulated the pressure as I like it."
    "Usually I recieve clitoral stimulation by pressing my mons area against the pubic area of my partner in a rhythmic fashion. It is difficult for me to come in a standing or rear entry position, because the vital pubic bone to pubic bone stimulation is missing. When he is on the top. I usually grab my partner's buttocks with my hands and guide him in his movements, if he isn't already doing what I want."
    "We have intercourse with him on top, bodies arched slightly so that my clitoral area is exposed and receiving stimulation by the natural thrusts of our bodies together."
    "During intercourse, I am on bottom. I am scooted down so that his penis is more at a right angle to his body. The energy required to resist his weight, and to move my hips seems to concentrate in the clitoral area of my pelvis. At this point, I lift my feet to concentrate the energy more."
    "There is one position with me underneath with my legs up over my partner's shoulders that I can come in with no arousal. It blows my mind."
    "I like not too deep penetration, long and smooth....