I hate to say this but some things in life are just more interesting than sex. I arrived in New York City yesterday afternoon — fresh from a long-ago upbringing Southern Appalachia and more recently via rain-washed, sun-blessed Seattle — and I’m just in love with this barkingly (and irrelevantly) dirty, wide-open, light, airy, and non-incomprehensibly human city. OMG! It’s beautiful at almost every scale.

I’m staying in a cute little hotel near Bleeker and Hudson streets in Greenwich Village. Just walking out the door is a “cultural experience” — another word for “what did you expect, aliens?” that politely wallpapers over 10,000 stereotypes and expectations derived from people who experience that which is only new as “other.”

As I walk around I keep having these breakthroughs, about which I won’t bore you but that are as nourishing as rich broth.

I would like to point out two things I saw on an afternoon outing (not the morning one where I walked, cheerfully but absolutely lost, for almost two hours before literally turning around and seeing my hotel.)

The Magnolia Bakery

The Magnolia Bakery, around the corner. Line out the door. And down the street. A harassed-looking woman in an apron letting people in in ones and twos, explaining that it’s busy and people have to wait their turn. Heavenly aromas wafting out of a vent window on the side, redolent of butter and vanilla and seven-minute frosting. When I asked someone at the back of the line what the deal was he said “the cupcakes.” I said “everybody?” His friend said “yes.” I said “well they do smell awfully nice.” And she added “...and the bakery was on ‘Sex and the City.’”

And yet, just one block away from these mainly young, pretty single-looking “Sex in the City” watchers there was also

The Bleeker Street Playground

The Bleeker Street Playground is full of the healthy byproducts of real-live sex in the city — almost certainly this city — and (even less remarked on) the goodness-you-still-around, no-less-lovely-than-before parents in the playground, parents who were having real adult sex in the city at roughly the same time actresses and actors with roles like “Cary” and “Samantha” and “Big” (I think it was “Big?”) were only pretending to do so.

But here’s the thing. I’m not scolding when I say things like this. I think it’s wonderful that all this, a location for a show, a Mecca for fans, and a playground for what’s real, coexist so naturally here.

(Loved the bookshop across the street by the way.)

Oh, and lest you think it’s all philosophizing and ruminating, I’m temporarily breaking my photo-posting fast

In a post about rediscovering dating with non-escorts, John of Confessions of a New York ‘John’

Yes, perv girl [his new partner — fl] suggested going into the bedroom! Being the perv that I am, how could I say “no” without ruining my well earned reputation.

See the quote in context here.

You know what I’m going to say, right?

Hint: I’ve said repeatedly I believe Andrea Dworkin is the most important figure in progressive sexuality since at least Masters and Johnson.

Ok, so every now and then I come back to this shaving topic and the (perhaps waning?) controversy about women who shave or wax their pubic hair. Two particular things have triggered a post this time.

First let’s get the trivial reason out of the way: on the way out of town I picked up one of those rediculous new 5-bladed razors, a Fusion from Gillette. What can I say? It was on sale for next to nothing, and I figured gimick or no gimick it sure is cheap, right? OMG! It’s a totally different experience! (Note to Gillette: end me a check for saying this! cricket… cricket… Oh well, never mind.) Anyway, I’d been on a retreat with my family and hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. Usually that means it’s gonna hurt when I shave, especially under my chin, no matter how much I soften the whiskers before hand. With the new razor, though, I scarcely felt a thing. The big deal, I think, is that there are finally enough blades that no one blade winds up digging into your skin. Instead they just slide over your skin, cutting only hair, and the whole thing is over before you know it. Anyway, the point is they’re great. Figleaf says go for it if you’ve never tried it. (Clue: Having shaved in a pinch with razors allegedly pitched for women — the ones with the big paddle-like bumpers around them like the Venus thingies have — I think they’re just trying to rip you off. They’re more expensive and I really don’t see how they’d work any better.)

The other, considerably more interesting and important reason, is that I’ve been meeting all these wonderfully friendly, genuinely interesting sex bloggers on my trip and I got into a great conversation about shaving with one of them. In particular we talked about different sorts of hairstyles. (In particular I told her about the five-bladed razor I just got.)

One thing that occurred to me after our conversation was how particular people can be about exactly how they want their partners to be shaved. Something I’d forgotten about was the different styles and how they appeal to different people. And you know some people can be really, extremely biased about it.

And the names of some of the styles are kind of odd. I mean, yeah, there’s the “landing strip” and the “charlie chaplin” but there’s also the “john walters,” the “au naturel,” and the “tea-time!” Anyway, it’s totally obvious from this site why men can be so casual about asking their partners to shave or trim. [Note: Based on a good point from Veronica in comments I updated the preceeding link. —fl]

As someone who’s cared passionately about safe, effective, accessible, affordable contraception since the 1960s (when I was very young) I’m pretty happy the FDA has finally approved Plan B.

For what it’s worth, though, I didn’t much care for the (no-doubt FDA-scripted) remark that the decision “put an end to a three-year-old controversy.” And end?

Yes, semantically Over The Counter drugs properly need to be behind the counter before they can be handed over it, but as long as the regs say it must be behind the counter and available only from on-duty pharmacists then I don’t think anything has been brought “to an end.”

And never mind that pharmacists who object for daft, pointless reasons won’t have to carry it.

And never mind that the pharmacist restriction means it can’t be sold in non-pharmacies like grocery and convenience stores.

And never mind that it’s not going to be available to teens.

And really never mind the “money shot” quote I kept hearing on NPR from some red-winger woman claiming the decision had been politicized by “abortion activists” who were “sacrificing women’s health on the alter of abortion.”

That said, it’s still a big, important milestone. There’s just still a lot more to be done.

(By the way I think this is proof that the Reds are worried about November and they’re backpedalling on the really egregious stuff like this in order to obsure the fact that they’re further to the right than Osama bin Laden on women’s issues.)

[Note. Originally posted as a comment on Being Amber Rhea. Hat tip to Amber. —fl]

Well, you go on vactation and next thing you know the higher ups get into a billing dispute that leaves your datacenter cut off for some fraction of the afternoon. I think my blog is back up.

I’ll be back later this evening (Eastern Time) to post a bit more.

Oh, oh, one frustrating tidbit — something about the car I’m driving, and the generally poorly maintained roads out here are combining to give me that weird highway erection syndrome any time I go over maybe 50 miles an hour. So as long as I’m driving it’s just one lacivious thought after another. It goes away again whenever I stop.

But I’m going back on the road again in about two minutes and I’ll be driving at speed for hours.

Chances are, then, that I’ll have a pretty much non-stop (solo) erection for hours as well.

Sorry about that.

[Posting earlier than usual but then I’m not used to Eastern time. —fl]

The big secret to making direct prints on t-shirts with real stinging nettles is to not mind the sting.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

So how good are you at active foreplay with men?

We’ve been told since, oh, the early 1960s anyway, that women need lots of foreplay. And that, by and large, men aren’t very good at it.

But really, considering some of your wonderful comments about men and stimulating our nipples, particularly about how many of you were the first to turn your partners on that way, I just started wondering whether we’re putting that much emphasis on foreplay for men.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon notes that more and more women are taking sex-improvement classes but that it might not be so hot.

Broadsheet reports should be good news—that people are taking it upon themselves to learn sexual skills so they can be better in bed. Too bad the only people who apparently have any need whatsoever to gain skills to please their partners in bed are women who fuck men. You see, the only classes that are available for being a better lover are more specifically about catering to male pleasure, your own be damned. You can take courses in stripteases, pole dancing and fellatio.

The most distressing thing about this story is that it’s yet another example of the slight-of-hand in most discourse where “female sexuality” isn’t so much itself as it is pleasuring men. How to make your man more aroused and make him come harder—your man, not yourself—is wrapped in the language of empowerment for women.

Read her words in context here.

Hmm. I’d have said that most of the sex-instruction books that have come out since at least “Sex and the Single Man” and certainly since Masters & Johnson have tended to stress that men are to be measured by their ability to “provide” women with pleasure, specifically orgasms. (I’d say they actually emphasize orgasms to the point of fetish compared to other ways one can enjoy sex.) And at least since the 60’s guys have been told that foreplay is the key to seduction, with a strong emphasis on overcoming comely reticence with sensory overload. (No, I’m not sure what’s wrong with just asking.)

Industrial porn could care less about foreplay, of course, but that’s an issue only to the (perhaps unfortunate) extent people confuse porn with instruction.

Anyway, it seems like there’s been far less emphasis put on women as anything but passive recipients and/or receptacles of all this male (and generally male-initiated) activity.

(Aside: Just look at the language in one of the sources Amanda cites: “Still, many women’s goals, [Dr. Ted McIlvenna, founder and president of the San Francisco-based Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality] says, seem to be focused mainly on providing services to men. When interviewing female teens, McIlvenna says most of them wanted to know ‘how to be a better lay.’” I mean sheesh! Could any other word capture the passivity intended for women in sex more thoroughly than the word “lay?” I mean really! Lay? But I digress…)

With all that in mind then, I guess whether these classes are a good idea depends a lot on your perspective: If you think (or fear) that women’s only role is as receptacle, and that learning to be active only makes you an active receptacle then yup, the classes are a bad idea. If you think (or fear) that they’re just designed to make women feel more inadequate (which could be tied into the preceding item) then yup, the classes are just one more component in an inadequacy industry that starts with cosmetics and fashion and ends (well, till this came along) at stripper-cize and pole-aerobics classes.

On the other hand there’s a possibility (and I am not saying this with any snark — it really is only a possibility) that people could be using the classes in the belief (however accurate) that by doing so they could move into what’s traditionally been an extremely male-dominated area: active rather than receptive foreplay.

So anyway, what’s your take on foreplay for men instead of the more traditional idea of foreplay from men?