[Hmm. I haven’t gotten much work done, or all my homework, let alone my correspondence, let alone replies to comments. But for whatever reason (maybe that two-page paper I started writing around two in the morning) posts are flying out. Including a very rare second HNT post. Oh well, sometimes it’s sunshine, other times you need an umbrella. —fl]

Quick question: I’m not sure if you’ve thought about it much, but have you ever considered how most activities that require a lot of body strength don’t usually involve standing or working in the poses and postures we most often associate with bodybuilding?

Well, it being Half-nekkid Thursday and all I was struck this morning about the difference in some of the poses we associate with manly or womanly sexiness and… it occurred to me… that an awful lot of the cliché poses we associate with sex would actually be terrible positions to be in during actual sex.

At this point I ought to make clear that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t noticed that most HNT participants — the ones who are clearly feeling sexual in their photos — are in positions that do make sexual sense. So while I’m pointing fingers I’m generally pointing them at the light/cheesecake/advertising and heavy industrial porn industry and at the subset of “amateurs” who emulate them. In other words, if you’re an HNT participant, not you. :-)

You probably know what positions I’m talking about, right? The classic porn pose, one that drives a lot of people crazy, moralists and immoralists alike, is the woman naked in high heels who’s squatting so low her knees are around her ears and she has to lean back to support herself with her hands behind her back. Cliché as the dickens, and certainly sexualized beyond mere gynecology (gynecologists are almost never need that much space to work) but… not at all practical for any kind of sex at all.

Not even for a nice, unreconstructed patriarchal man! She’s too low and leaned back for a blowjob, to well-braced to push over and violate, way, way too low to easily caress, and more strenuously acrobatic than classically vulnerable. Yet over and over we see that and countless other poses in men and women that again are unquestionably sexualized but not sexy in any practical sense of “hey, let’s have sex like this!”

Now I happen to think this is probably another one of those things like “O-face” where, mostly through unfamiliarity and insufficient time to develop affection for it, people decide real orgasmic faces are just too goofy and so they make all those weird-assed romanto/porno grimaces of agony and ecstasy and outrage that, in turn, make us feel even more self-conscious about our authentically orgasmic faces. Well, same with real sexual poses and positions.

Well, for the most part I think we probably look a little awkward, bracing our legs, pressing our pelvises up or out or down or in effectively but not very gracefully, to give ourselves and our partners the best contact with our (hidden from view if we’re doing it right) genitals, and often-asymmetrically leaning here or there in ways that feel wonderful but look (if we weren’t too self-conscious to let others look) awkward as pre-teen cousins forced to dance together at a relative’s wedding. But (rather pointedly unlike being forced to dance at someone else’s wedding) oh my does what we really actually do feel nice. Even if it doesn’t look as nice as the made-up stuff people do for photographs.

Anyway, without dismissing or decrying porn (or advertising, or Hollywood, or romance-novel covers) I suddenly feel very comfortable pointing out that the create a very unfortunate impression of what we generally experience as very fortunate experiences, and likewise our attempts to create fortunate impressions we, like porn stars, Hollywood talent, and cover models, may end up with unfortunate experiences. Just something to notice next time you’re thumbing, or browsing through photos.

Anyway….

Let’s just say that were we ever to do more together than drink coffee and shake hands you might find me taking you by the hand, or shoulders, or by the hips, or thighs, or even hair and moving you to our mutual best advantage I can guarantee that even if for some reason there was a camera or audience in attendance we’d still be arranging ourselves for feeling, rather than necessarily looking, our best.

Once again, Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

So I’ve mentioned several times that I’m in school full time Winter quarter, and you’ve probably guessed that’s why posting and, especially, comment replies have been so light. My apologies. I may not recover completely till mid-March when the quarter ends. Still, since it’s a combined women’s studies, sex education and interpersonal-communications theory class it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, and one that ought to reflect well in future posts. (Once I’m out from under my other avalanche of homework and classwork.)

Case in point: One of the homework assignments is a two-page paper on self-examinations for cancer. This morning I woke up way too early (after a way too late evening adventure) to conduct and document a self-exam for testicular cancer.

Now breast cancer gets a lot of attention, not least because for so long it was, um, overlooked since it was a disease that mainly affected women. (Interesting and creepy point: While only around 2% of breast cancers occur in men — yes men get breast cancer too — all the early studies, models, and treatments of breast cancer were developed using… male patients!) And while the women in our class will be writing their own papers on breast self-examination the odds are that since most of them are college age they’re more likely just establishing baselines for themselves. For most breast cancer, if they get it, will be decades in their futures. The good news, though, is that thanks to some really excellent and much-needed outreach, there’s a lot of good information encouraging women of all ages to regularly screen themselves for cancer.

Not so for college-age men though! When the professor asked for a show of hands of those of us who’d gotten instructions in testicular self-examination from their doctors only one man (not me) had. Our professor covered her eyes with her hand and expressed, um, exasperation. Because, it turns out, testicular cancer is the number one cancer in men ages 15-35. It’s also pretty easily detected and, if detected, pretty easily and successfully treatable. If not, though, it’s also one of the biggest cancer killers of young men.

So this morning I woke up early, got out of my warm bed, stumbled downstairs, and didn’t realize till I had the coffee half made that it was still barely 2:00 in the morning. Nevertheless my body was warm from my warm bed, which meant my testicles were warm, which meant my scrotum (mmm, sexy term “scrotum,” eh?) was also soft and warm and dangly and loose. Perfect for a testicular examination. Which I performed diligently, if somewhat gingerly. (Multiple surgeries for vasectomy, a reversal, and then another vasectomy can make you a little tender.)

About halfway through the exam, thanks in part to the cool air and in part to what must have been a too-light, too-tickly touch all the muscles in my scrotum (that word again) tightened, giving my testicles a little elevator ride. Now when the tiny muscles in women’s nipples and areola tighten due to chill or tactile sensation we usually call them “perky.” I’m not sure we have a similar word for what happens to scrotums but it’s probably not “perky,” even though they crinkle up the same way nipples do, and for almost all the same reasons.

Anyway, before I could complete my self-examination I had to warm my testicles back up again and I did that by warming my hands on the radiators and then gently cupping and rolling them in the warm palms of my hand. And while that was all very well and good I have to say it would have been nice if someone else had been there who wanted to help. For purely educational reasons of course! :-)

But I digress. I wanted to mention this little bit of homework for a couple of reasons but here’s the big one: young men need to do this! I’ve had one close friend who caught it in time and he went on to father a lovely child with is partner. Others aren’t so lucky. I don’t know if very many young men read my blog at all (greetings if you do) but I know a number of my readers have children in the at-risk age group. We all already know to warn our daughters, and even not to feel uncomfortable about bringing it up. If you or someone you love is a man in that age group, even if you’re a little uncomfortable bringing it up, you can save them quite a bit more discomfort (or worse) if you do mention it to them.

Here are a couple of good links selected at semi-random from a Google search:

Teens Health
The Testicular Cancer Resource Center
MenWeb

And here’s a thumbnail overview (I almost said “nutshell!” Doh!) of how to do it:

The testicular self exam is best performed after a warm bath or shower.
(Heat relaxes the scrotum, making it easier to spot anything abnormal)

The TCRC recommends following these steps every month (keep in mind that the point is not to find something wrong, it is to learn what everything feels like so that you will know if something changes):

Stand in front of a mirror. Check for any swelling on the scrotal skin.

Examine each testicle with both hands. Place the index and middle fingers under the testicle with the thumbs placed on top. Roll the testicle gently between the thumbs and fingers — you shouldn’t feel any pain when doing the exam. Don’t be alarmed if one testicle seems slightly larger than the other, that’s normal.

Find the epididymis, the soft, tubelike structure behind the testicle that collects and carries sperm. If you are familiar with this structure, you won’t mistake it for a suspicious lump. Cancerous lumps usually are found on the sides of the testicle but can also show up on the front. Lumps on the epididymis are not cancerous.

If you find a lump on your testicle, see a doctor, preferably a urologist, right away. The abnormality may not be cancer, it may just be an infection. But if it is testicular cancer, it will spread if it is not stopped by treatment. Waiting and hoping will not fix anything. Please note that free floating lumps in the scrotum that are not attached in any way to a testicle are not testicular cancer. When in doubt, get it checked out – if only for peace of mind!

Source: The Testicular Cancer Resource Center

Oh, by the way, my self-exam turned out just fine. A few little bumps and a few more scars but nothing to worry about. I might add that even though one is not in the high-risk group one is generally still at some risk. Self-exams, and of course medical exams, are never a bad idea.

When I was a teenager hitch-hiking all over America — being a wandering wastrel as my friends and I called it — it was pretty common to wind up sleeping on someone’s floor, in an abandoned barn, a church or school basement, even sometimes under the archetypical bridge abutment. But that was a long, long time ago.

Yesterday afternoon my family and I, plus a friend, rode up to the local ski hill for lessons. The pass had been closed that morning for avalanche control but it re-opened in plenty of time and the highway reports and webcams looked great so off we went.

There’s been tons and tons of snow up there this week — looked like maybe eight feet of new since the last time we’d been. And for such a coastal environment it was surprisingly dry and fluffy.
Photo by Flickr user wsdot.
Used under a Creative Commons license.Not what you’d call powder exactly, but definitely something you could sink to your waist into if you got off track… and heavy enough to pretty much stop you if you weren’t… way more experienced with that stuff than I am anyway. (I do live in the Northwest after all.)

Anyway, with all that recent snow, plus the recently avalanched pass, plus the several-inches-an-hour it was snowing when we got to the hill I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that none of the ski instructors had showed up. They know what they’re doing. Nor should I have been so surprised to learn moments after getting there that another avalanche, a real whopper this time, had buried the interstate under at least ten feet of snow and debris. The roads had seemed fine on the drive up and we didn’t find out it had closed until hours later.

Anyway, around 7:00 we learned about the snow slide from a tersely worded note on a whiteboard in the area “service center” that said “I-90 closed both directions till morning.” I put scare quotes around “service center” because the nice vaguely Austrian-sounding teenager at the desk had no idea WTF except “T’ere iss an inn, vould you like t’er naaambarr?” Sweet kid but clearly not in the loop. (For the record by then there was no room at the inn.)

Photo by Flickr user Hamed Saber.
Used under a Creative Commons license.Anyway, a few hours later the state patrol began escorting groups of stranded cars back down on the wrong side of the interstate (an eerie experience — ordinarily who gets to look at the backs of exit signs?), at 20 miles an hour, through driving snow.

Anyway, I bring this up in the same serious-but-light-hearted spirit as my previous posts comparing society’s different attitudes towards the pain, discipline, hardware, and mentality of BDSM on the one hand and snow sports on the other.

The point here being that we think it odd that kinky people into humiliation or dungeon play would voluntarily put themselves in a position where they’d have to sleep in odd clothes, in uncomfortable circumstances, on a cold hard floor. All I can say is hey, at least kinksters have better sense than to bring their children with them! :-)

Photo by Flickr user Cool Librarian.
Used under a Creative Commons license.We eventually made it home safe and sound. Past the avalanche the police escort directed us back across the median through a cut in the snowbanks and we were on our merry, if still reduced-speed way home.

Now that all the stranded vehicles are down the pass remains closed and may remain closed till noon.

I’m glad we made it home, but snow-lifestyle kinkster I am, I’ll know better next time: bring sleeping bags, toothbrushes, my laptop, a couple of Starbucks DoubleShots, and enough books and stuff to keep the kids comfortable on the ski-lodge floor till morning… when we can go skiing again till they reopen the highway. (What, you thought we’d learn some different lesson? :-))

So my current daily photo series has had a snow-related motif. Today’s HNT is far more prosaiac. Last Monday we had a snow-day here in town. The kids were already off for a one-day “change of semester” break but I missed a day of classes. I made up for lost time doing homework. (Notice my posts and comment replies are slow to non-existent? Homework for my classes, while wonderful and perfectly appropriate to this blog, are part of the reason.) Anyway, at one point my children and other kids from the neighborhood called me out to see their various handiworks in the snow so I grabbed my camera and headed out.

It’s been a while since I delivered newspapers in snow like this (I did it only because I knew someday I’d want to brag about it) I seem to be hardy enough that in a pinch (at this point it would have to be a big pinch) I could still do it. Anyway, on my way back into the house I thought I might document my half-nekkid toes for posterity. And this week’s HNT photo.

I seem also to have documented the raggled fringes of the old gardening pants I wear on snowy days, and to also have documented that it’s not easy to assume a dashingly half-nekkid stance while bent over upside down with a camera. :-)

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

is not my avocation of choice. Unfortunately, like so many adults who are sans health insurance, I find myself posing these questions to my “new internist,” Dr. Kochanie (me), when the Hydra of symptoms raises a new head:

What do you think?
Is this serious?
Should we go to the emergency room?
Or maybe I should just go see a “real” doctor?

Fortunately, both Dr. Kochanie and I are naked when these consultations take place, so I do not have to contend with the power inequality that typically results when one person is clothed and the other is naked. Which is why Dr. Kochanie did not even flinch when I said, “go see a real doctor.”

For those kind readers whose comments here have gone unanswered, for the blog posts I have drafted and not finished, for the comments I have not left at the posts of the blogs I frequent: I apologize, and I hope to catch up in the next few days.

What can I say except that the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak and affordable healthcare remains elusive?

So I’ve got a question about cocks and sexual sensitivity.

One of the limitations of heterosexuality or, of course, homosexuality, is that however experienced one might be with the responsiveness of different individuals of one’s preferred gender one is necessarily going to have more limited experience with whichever gender isn’t the one you prefer. That means an opposite-side data point of one if you’re straight, or none if not.

In my case I’ve got pretty much a data point of me and for the question I’ve got that’s not enough so I’m going to ask those of you with more sexual experience with cocks other than mine.

So!

Pretty much every sex education book introduces the penis as functionally blah-blah this, and la-la that (usually without mentioning that whatever else it’s good for one of its functions is caressing one’s partner.) After the functional formalities there’s mention that the “head, or ‘glans’” has the most nerve endings and is most sensitive to touch.

So…

I gotta admit that the head, “or glans,” of my cock has the most nerve endings and is most sensitive to the touch. I also, however, gotta admit that all those sensitive nerve endings aren’t really very erotically sensitive. They’re extraordinarily good at, say, helping me locate just the right part of a partners vulva without me having to look, of being able to tell… quite a lot really… about how she’s feeling about penetration: how wet she is, how warm she is, how engorged and open her lips are, where the verge of her vagina is, and whether I should try to enter her at all or if I should first dip shallowly and slowly for lubrication or whether she’d be into me deepening my strokes. It’s even good (and, it seems to me, almost exactly the right shape) for telling when it’s touching her cervix so that, if I know she’s enjoying it (which some partners do) I can continue or if she doesn’t care for it at all (which some partners really don’t) then I can steer clear.

What all those sensitive nerve endings are not good for, however, is…

...pretty much anything to do with arousal or orgasm!

Anybody else have experience with that, either as a cock owner or as partners with cock owners?

Now that doesn’t mean my glans never feels erotic sensation, but if it does at all it only does so way, way, way far into extended arousal and even then it feels good only with the lightest sensations and tons of lubrication.

Instead what’s most sensitive to erotic touch for me is the skin an inch or two below the glans, the wrinkly, oak-y, tattered remnants of my foreskin, especially along the sides and underside (underside when if I’m standing up, anyway.) The surface there is instantly and erogenously sensitive to warmth, moisture, and touch. The lightest contact from tongue, or labia, or a slickened finger feels marvelous there, and somewhere below the surface, close to the slippery-hard core, especially near the spongy ridge along the bottom, there are deeper nerve endings that respond very nicely to firmer pressure from tongue or the roof of the mouth, from thumb or fingers, and from the slippery/hard corrugations right over the G-spot just inside and under the pubic bone.

Oh, where was I?

Oh yeah, textbooks and sex manuals. They tend to go on about nerve endings in the glans (as they do about the glans of the clitoris, by the way) as if raw numbers told the whole story. At least if you asked me but I could be mistaken so I’m instead asking you.

Debauchette talks about life in France where, evidently, only prostitutes walk alone and where, evidently, men actively punish women who walk in public alone for not being prostitutes… by grabbing their breasts and groins, fondling their asses, and otherwise sexually humiliating them. Preferably when their hands are full, as with bags of groceries.

As for the tit-grab problem, nothing really works, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s an irritant, it’s something that comes with the cross-cultural territory, and it’s not a life-threatening situation. But I remember one good friend who decided to leave Lyon after she was hassled by two kids, around age nine or ten, who caught her while her arms were full of packages. They grabbed at her breasts with both hands in some kind juvenile tag team, and it did her in. She broke down in the street, and by the time she got home, she decided she was leaving for good. A few of us tried to talk her out of it, we stressed that it’s just kids, it’s just stupidity and nonsense. They don’t know how to deal with women, they’re curious and they’re socially awkward and they’re probably not being told by their parents to keep their grubby hands to themselves when they see boobies. “But they think we’re whores,” she said. “And they’re just kids.”

Read about it here.

I have to admit that my first response isn’t exactly admiration the manliness of such behavior as it seems more cowardly and disempowered than, um, gallant. And I’m reminded further that whomever capital-p Patriarchy is supposed to benefit it most certainly isn’t the empty-lived Lads (or their French equivalents) who dare practice their “privilege” only on the defenseless. Which, in turn, I’m sure, only makes it easier for men to later get dates.

I dunno. Leaving aside whether it’s ethical, moral, just, or even fair, organizing a social order that’s designed to protect one segment of society (women) from… the segment that’s enforcing the social order (men) in order to protect one segment (women) just isn’t at all efficient! One could organize a society in almost any other fashion and produce greater individual and overall happiness.

Any gallant justification along the lines of “hey, at least we don’t practice Female Genital Mutilation” isn’t sufficient.

Not that we here in North America should get too comfortable on our “at least we don’t grocery shoppers by the tits when we outnumber them” laurels. Louise Livesey of The F-Word Blog says

According to a story in the Jan 18th edition [of New Scientist] female scientists are less likely to be published if the peer reviewers know they are female.

Read the quote in context here.

If that seems too subtle there’s still that chanting business at Giants Stadium and other venues to contend with.

Point being, though, that all such behavior, from slashing off girl’s clitorises as insurance against women’s libidos overwhelming men’s, to gender-role-enforcing man-handling assaults in France and Giants Stadium, to men-benefiting name-based affirmative action in the North American academic press, there’s nothing there that — when discussed objectively — suggests men are in any way actually better than women. In fact, not to adopt the language of social conservatives, anti-feminists, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, quite the opposite: such preferential treatment reveals not exercises based on a belief in men’s strength, dignity, or superiority but betrayals of a belief in men’s weakness, insecurity, and desperate need of mollycoddling of our “self-esteem.” (Scare-quotes for the word self-esteem courtesy of Instapundit.)

Holly of The Pervocracy says

I’ve often heard people talk about slutty women having loose pussies. I’ve never heard anyone suggest this would happen to a girl who had sex a whole bunch of times with one guy.

Read this and other startling insights about size here.

Doesn’t make sense to me either, or, I might add, to any anatomist, physiologist, or sex clinician. But then unlike the anti-(female)-promiscuity crowd I don’t confuse pussies with duct tape adhesive either.

And while I’m at it Holly also said this

Jon’s looking for a “real” girlfriend. Apparently I don’t count, because I was too upfront about wanting sex, thus making me not appear to be a “quality” woman. He actually used that word.

...

And I notice that he thinks he’s quality because he’s got a good education and a successful job, even though, shit, he gave it up on the first date! Why doesn’t doing that invalidate him as a person?

She said this here.

And this is just another one of those areas where only women seem to have to worry about letting others lick their lollypops.

To the minimal extent possible I’ll just point out that men get off the hook not because anti-feminists think they’re superior but because anti-feminists see men as irredeemably depraved and can thus be only appeased but never truly domesticated. Which, when you think about it, is little solace for anyone.

Photo by Flickr user Queen Roly. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Because it’s so much fun to lick, and kiss, and slurp, and nuzzle outside the designated areas.
Because I always want to use more than my lips and tongue
Because I enjoying blurring the line between when it begins
Because I like to blur the lines between when it ends
Because one word, even such a large, fancy Latin one, isn’t enough for all it can be

There are whole worlds of cunnilingus
And only one word?
One word for when you kneel over me
Fists in my hair
Holding me still as
You rock and
Surge and
Grind into my mouth?

One word for when I catch you off balance
Catch your ankles in my large, strong hands
Turn you and press you in mid-tumble
So your knees nearly span your breasts
So you helplessly blossom open under my tongue?

One word for when you pull me towards you
And, resisting you
But not one last temptation
I slip instead down for a quick taste
Before answering your playful pull
With a lid-fluttered push?

One word for maddened howls
As I circle all that is not conventional,
The cups where tendons of your thighs join
The ought-to-be-ticklish hollows beside your mons
The rude flirtations with your perineum and ass
The broad, flat-tongued laps of enlarged halves of you
But never, no never closer
To your ridge-swollen inner lips
To your straining clit under it’s sensation-starved and angry hood?

One word for inarticulate hisses and sighs
As, play concluded,
I find my way to the spot you love best
I find the stroke you love best
I find the pressure you love best
I find the rhythm you love best
And spot you
And stroke you
And press you
And rhyme you
With nothing to distract you
But my lips and tongue

One word, for all the mischief
In the smile you get when,
My head pillowed on your open thigh, and
Your head pillowed on mine,
You mouth me deep
And I forget
And then, remembering,
And wetly swirling,
I smile that you forget?

One word for all that?

One word for any of that?

Well, let’s pretend
Cunnilingus is enough

Rachel Kramer Bussel, writing at The Huffington Post says

Sex is a topic that people are always interested in, and always will be, yet instead of addressing it in a straightforward way, all too many media outlets choose to try to make sex “sexier” rather than giving readers enough credit to think logically and critically about the topic.

Read the column the way she wrote it.

Boy did she say a mouth full! Sex is already pretty interesting so why feel obliged to tart it up with words like “outrageoous” or “daring” or “shocking?” Because, c’mon, past age eighteen, anyway, the only thing actually shocking about sex isn’t what people do but, at best, who you discover has been doing it. For instance the only person who should be surprised that your parents had, and still have, sex is you and even if you’re a media publisher that’s little tidbit of news isn’t going to shock many other people.

Two personal gripes: Magazine covers that promise “10 Sex Secrets.” Cosmopolitan alone (let alone Esquire or even Reader’s Digest) has offered between 15 and 50 such “secrets” on every cover of all roughly 516 issues since the Gurly-Brown era began in 1965, and, sorry, there just ain’t 12,900 secret things about sex. There just aren’t! Multiply that by all the other magazines, newspapers, websites, and cable programs that followed that lead and… there just aren’t any possible secrets that don’t, again, involve not what people do but who’s doing it together. And that’s obviously not what the blurbs intend when they say “10 Sex Secrets Revealed.” My other big gripe is that weird mechanical, disbelieving scowls of “outrageousness” that porn stars throw, usually over their shoulders, when they’re doing stuff that — frantic pace and lack of credible foreplay notwithstanding — is pretty much exactly the same thing their parents, or neighbors, or sometimes parents and neighbors have been doing for generations.

Anyway, by all means let’s do keep talking about sex, but let’s encourage our friends in the media and in porn to quit acting as if a) they just discovered it for us and b) they’re not sure we’re going to like it c) any more than they do unless d) they hype the crap out of it.