So, I have multiple drafts going of Adulting with Dildo topics like Canada, and Cowpoke, and then the bomb shell of Roe v. Wade drops and I feel like it’s all irrelevant right now… so instead I’ll write about me, sex education and leaning in. Hope this doesn’t end up sounding trite…
In the beginning there was my mother. She was a very conservative woman. She voted Republican from her first vote until the day she died. She thought if a woman got an abortion she should be sterilized. I remember her actually saying this and it must have been when Roe v. Wade passed. She’d already had uterine cancer and suffered a total hysterectomy— not her choice. I don’t pretend to understand her reasoning. I was pretty young. In January of 1973 I was all of 8. I thought she was being incredibly unreasonable. For a woman who believed sex education began at age two, she wasn’t very compassionate. Not when it came to this— but she had a lot to unpack and I would hope in the 6 years she survived following Roe, she softened her stance.
When I was in eighth grade, I had the worst science teacher. He was so uninspiring, so negligent in actually teaching that all the kids moaned about him. Why was I stuck with this guy? And then the announcement came: we were going to have a segment on sex in his class…. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. To participate in the learning experience, we had to have signed slips from our parents. My mother’s cancer had returned, she was bedridden living off lemon drops (the only thing she could stomach with the chemo) and I just didn’t want to hear this man talk about sex so I asked my parents to allow me to sit it out. I think I was the only child kept out of sex education in my class. I got to spend that class in the library—it was pretty wonderful. I told Bill Taverner (the Executive Director of The Center for sex Education) this tale when Tantus sponsored and I attended my first Sex Ed Conference (a Conference put together by The Center for Sex Education). He said it was probably the smartest thing I could have done, exit stage right.
It was at that Sex Ed Conference that I was presented with ways to engage in controversial arguments such as the right to an abortion (the right to choose). There where ten helpful suggestions for having these difficult conversations, but the one that stuck with me was “meet people where they are”. Unless you can stand toe to toe and find common ground your words will fall on deaf ears.
Loretta Ross called it “Calling In” at Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit a few years later when she talked about collecting Clansmen’s white robes.
I’d actually always done this; I’d just never thought about the strategy before.
In 2001 I remember being sought out by one of the owners of a woman’s lingerie shop in Ohio. She came into my booth at the International Lingerie Show and thanked me. She had asked me the show previous why she should be carrying butt toys in her store (I believe it was The Garden in Columbus, but these were the early days). I had taken a Tantus plug in hand and told her how they work: That once safely in place you tense your muscles around a plug resisting like you’d do in a Pilates class against the springs (only it was so much earlier than either of us had heard of Pilates). That the muscle bands supporting your pelvic floor go around your sphincter and your vulva so they are all interwoven. That when you experience an orgasm with tense muscles the orgasm is bigger, more powerful. And lastly, that people who practice anal sex are going to do it regardless because it feels good— so offer them something safe to play with, not a mag light (which I had read was one of the most common things ERs found in patients’ asses). She’d bought my line of plugs and beads, and her customers must have responded favorably. What she told me though was so perfect and memorable- she said “you totally normalized anal sex.”
Normalizing.
I have normalized dildos and vibrators to a Mormon Bishops and had them ask if I’d give a talk to the congregation… my LDS sister would have killed me. I have normalized making sex toys to people most of my adult life (it’s just like making a widget, only different). I have been a model of normalizing what is “edgy”.
At 57, older than my mother ever got, I am pretty certain I could soften my mom’s view and have her understand how very important the human rights we’ve experienced due to Roe v. Wade for the last 50 years actually is. Being a parent is never easy but even less so when you didn’t want to be a parent in the first place. I was a wanted child; I can’t imagine the pain of not being wanted.
Really what it boils down to is that I have exercised the right to choose. And had I not, Tantus wouldn’t have been. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on the right to choose, but I hope to be able to sit across from one another and discuss it, understanding their side and them understanding mine.
If Loretta Ross can talk KKK men out of their hooded robes… there is still hope we can talk about this.
I will meet you where you live. Please meet me where I do.
OK now back to something fun.
* Letterpress poster, a Rabbinical saying by Tender-Heart Press