Transformation and Sex Ed

The classroom lights have been turned off. My classmates have already left the building. Sex ed ended about half an hour ago. After going to get some food, I have slipped back into the building and headed for the computer lab. I feel a need to capture the energy of my experience and to share it before I go home to a dirty house, a dog begging to be walked, and the final exam that I need to complete and email to the teacher. This has been a week of transformation, not just for myself, but also for most of my classmates. We had 13 people in the class (two dropped early due to conflicts in their schedules). A local sex therapist was the instructor. She's everything I want in a teacher. Mature, on target, gentle, challenging, and ready for anything.

Let me back up just a moment and explain where I am coming from. After four marriages, three divorces and one committing suicide, I am in a committed relationship of six years with Cameron. I made a decision when I began this grad program to be openly gay and to use my presence to discomfort and challenge the heterosexual future therapists. I try hard not to offend, but I do not remain in the closet. There are a few therapists in the program, however, that make me uncomfortable enough not to have taken this class last summer when they would be there. That means I took the class with people I barely know.

My classmates ranged from twenty-something and just finished the undergrad to sixty-two and getting a new career. I was the oldest woman. I thought I was the only lesbian. The class really heightened my anxiety. Hearing about heterosexuality over and over again as we discuss erection disfunction, heterosexual couples issues, etc sometimes felt overbearing (it was, in fact balanced for the needs of our clients). We covered such topics as fetishes, BDSM, polyamoury, transgender, gay and lesbian issues. We read, we discussed, we watched videos. The instructor brought sexual aids, lube, and handouts. We role played, challenged, questioned.

Yesterday Cameron was invited to discuss what it's like to be caught in the middle of the gender continium. She made herself vulnerable to share with my class her challenges. She challenged their heteronormative assumptions. In the end, the class did a lot of soul searching and thinking. Then today SammieJoe came to talk to us. She's MTF. She's not flamboyant, or obvious, nor does she wear short skirts or too much makeup. She's also beautiful, feminine, and comfortable in her skin. She also arrived on her motorcycle wearing her pink helmet! And again my classmates rose to the challenge, asking questions, seeking to understand.

SammieJoe scared me to death. For a few hours I had to process the reality of Cameron's conundrum. I admitted to my future therapist friends in the breakroom the scariness of the something that can roll over a loved one's life, demanding transition, regardless of everything else. Today Cameron says she doesn't need to transition. But I know from listening to others that beneath the surface, the thinking can process and eventually come up with a different conclusion. And I know that no matter how much Cameron and I love each other, transition is ultimately her decision. Indeed, it has to be her decision. And while she would of course weigh the value of our relationship, she cannot ever choose me over something so profound. Nor would I want her to.

Once I named my fear today, I felt much better. And I realized how deeply my classmates lives have been touched by Cameron and SammieJoe. Several didn't even know what it means to be transgendered before this week. Others had simply never put a face to it. Our 62 year old future therapist said that he was doing a lot of soul searching because, despite what his baptist church might say, he believes in looking after his client' wellfare, and cannot see how SammieJoe could be wrong. I sit here in awe of the growth I saw in the class. The instructor praised us, saying we were one of the best classes she's ever taught. I don't doubt it. And I'm privileged to have been some small part.

Oh, I almost forgot the best part. We had to do the book report (see previous gripe about Barnes and Noble). A young woman stood up after me and said "When I went looking in my part of the store at Barnes and Noble, I couldn't find my books either." I looked up, suprised. Then she said, "I'm gay. I was going to talk about Lebian Couples, too. But since you've already done my book, let me tell ya'll about another." This beautiful, brave lesbian stood up in class to say she was gay. I am in awe. What tremendous courage -- she'll be in classes with everyone for the next two years. And she found the courage to claim her identity today.

Sex Ed Class and Discrimination

I am taking a required sex education class the first week of August. The teacher, in an attempt to desensitize us, gave us an assignment. We were to go to a book store, such as Barnes and Nobles, and select ten sex self-help books. We are to choose one to read, and the other nine needed to be listed on a bibliography with book descriptions before class starts.

Being a rabid lesbian in a room of heterosexuals, I believe it is my sacred duty as a daughter of the Goddess in a fertility religion to educate my peers. So I headed for the gay/lesbian section. I could not find it! I finally asked at the desk, and found out that gay/lesbian books had been reduced to two bottom shelves in the "Cultural Studies" section. I am not a cultural study.

I was outraged that there were only two lesbian and two gay books that fit the requirements of the assignment (The other books you see in the pile on the floor pictured were interesting things found in other parts of the store on other subjects. I was, after all, an English major many years ago). The rest of the two shelves were either histories of the gay/lesbian movement or they were erotica, neither of which were useful for the assignment. I only saw one book, other Helen Boyd’s book My Husband Betty, on transgenders.

Next I headed to the self-help section. It was completely, as expected, exclusionary. Apparently only heterosexuals need self-help given the six shelves of books and the section label! Nice to know that Barnes and Nobles has such confidence in our ability to have sex. On the other hand, the more book titles I went through, the more angry I became.

Warning: The rest of this rant is X rated. Buy your ticket for the TMI bus before continuing. And the opinions expressed her violate my feminist union card.

Side explanation: This is completely politically incorrect, and a deep secret of my feminist lesbian soul. I love porn; not so much the pictures, but the cheesy movies where everybody has a great time engaging in incredibly intimate sexual play. I even like heterosexual porn, although I am way more focused on the women than the men. Unfortunately, most so called lesbian porn is performed by straight girls, and they don’t tighten straps enough, or seem to understand the nervelessness of simply engaging in their own pleasure without a man intruding at some point. Nevertheless, I get an erotic kick out of porn, so I assumed I would likewise have fun looking through the pictures in self-help books. For some reason, gay male porn seems to be a lot more convincing.

Unfortunately, when I saw the heterosexual self-help books, illustrated or photographed, I unexpectedly train wrecked. I mistakenly assumed that my secret porn fetish would allow me to enjoy looking through the books. I was wrong. (I only found one I would refer my clients to with a clear conscious. The rest would be intimidating, or I didn't like the illustrations/photography, or something.)

I finally come to the conclusion that movie porn invites the viewer to participate, if only visually. The so-called actors often break the frame by looking directly into the camera to heighten the sense of immediacy. Movies seem to presuppose that having someone watch is part of the experience. Regardless of my orientation, I am invited to participate; not so with heterosexually oriented self-books. They feel entirely exclusionary. The books are written only to the heterosexual experience, from a heterosexual point of view that assumes my lesbian experience to be invalid.

Suddenly I was confronted with exactly how far from the mainstream I world I have gotten, and the contempt with which I am ignored. The books dealt with exclusivity between the man and woman, presumably married (last time I looked, Cameron and I can't married in SC!) and pointedly leave me out of the picture. They also seemed to focus heavily on pleasing and pleasuring the man. I got the sense that the woman's pleasure didn't come from her own enjoyment of sex, but pleasure from her partner's enjoyment of sex. Shesh. The more I read the books and viewed the pictures, the more irate I became. And the more my gender bending wife panicked on the other end of the phone! I think she wondered if I would castrate her when I got home on general principle.

Despite my grumpiness with the heterosexual books, I was almost equally disgusted with that I found in the gay/lesbian section. The first Barnes and Nobles, which had the two lonely books for lesbian self-help, only had The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us by Felice Newman (editor of On Our Backs) and On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex edited by Diana Cage. Both are good; but both are slanted by their own poltical/social views.

Let me explain. While both books are explicit, fun and edgy, they also can be incredibly intimidating. For the young, savy lesbian who is totally comfortable with her orientation and likes living in an exploratory world of night clubs, parties, and dating, these can be fabulous books full of information, insight, and encouragement. If I had read either during my own middle-aged coming out, I might have fled screaming into the night. Not because I hadn't done as much or more in my young, heterosexual world, but because if that's what is expected by the hot dyke sitting next to me, I'm out of here. (When Cameron realized how nervous I was about stepping outside my comfort zone the first time we were together sexually, she slowed way the hell down and let me catch up! Cameron likes reminding me that I was a rowdy girl, just out of my heterosexual comfort zone.)

Furthermore, both books were written by magazine editors, which introduces a very slanted view. One is the editor of Curve, an upscale magazine with interviews of such people as Melissa Etheridge. It is not porn. It talks about sex, but is not graphic (like Maxim). They do not write "How to Please Your Woman" articles, although the Fairy Butch advice column will talk about dildos and sex. The other magazine is the lesbian equivalent to Hustler, with graphic photos and instructions on how to safely engage in some of the edgiest sexual behaviors safely. Each magazine has its own agenda and political views, and the editor's views are very clearly shown in their book. What a sharp contrast to the heterosexual self-help books with Ph.D. behind their names!

If this little assignment is any indication of how the class will go for me, then my classmates are going to be rather unhappy with with the outspoken lesbian with an agenda. I bet not a one of them has considered the struggle of gays or lesbians, let alone a gender bender outside the binary box. I consider it my sacred duty, as the daughter and priestess of the Goddess, to knock them from their comfort zones. In the mean time, I going back to Barnes and Nobles to complain. The smaller store didn't even a section header for me. I want it back! Meanwhile I'm talking about being subversive and rebellious in class while my wife is trying to remind me that I may have to take other classes with these students. Do I look like I care? Hrumph.

On the bright side, I've been thoroughly desensitized. I read everything, as I grumbled on the IM to Cameron, surrounded by people, including the innocent with children. I was careful not to let the pictures show. But since I had to plug up the lap top, the only seat available landed me in the middle of four men and a woman who kept sneaking glances at my stack of books (which included great stuff for gay gals such as my favorites, Is It a Date or Just Coffee by Mo Brownsey, The New Lesbian Sex Book by Wendy Caster, and Lesbian Couples: A Guide to Creating Healthy Relationships by D. Merilee Clunis, PhD and G. Dorsey Green, PhD which is not specifically a sexual self-help book, but so amazing my straight friends need to read it to. The gay sex books garnered the most sideways glances, and included The Joy of Gay Sex by Dr. Charles Silverstein and Felice Picano, Gay Sex Secrets Revealed by Jonathan Bass, and The Gay Man's Karma Sutra by Terry Sanderson. I never blushed once.)