HPV: “We don’t know.”

The human papilloma virus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection, and there is a lot of information and misinformation about it floating around.  Recently, I had an illuminating discussion with a gynecologist who claimed to be up on the latest research, and her basic answer to a pile of interesting questions was, “we don’t know”.  This seems a little ridiculous, given that the CDC claims that “at least 50% of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives”.

Non-Consensual Consent?

I recently saw the documentary Graphic Sexual Horror, and am still mulling it over.  The movie is a documentary covering the now defunct insex.com, an early and notorious internet bondage site that ran from 1997 to 2005.  The site exclusively featured female submission, with stills, videos, and live feeds, and had something like 35000 members at the height of its popularity.   The movie has extensive interviews with the creator of insex.com, Brent Scott (known as “pd”), as well as with some of the former models,  members, and staff.

At first, insex.com seems like a bondage paradise.  Cheery models are interviewed, explaining how much fun (in a super intense way) that they had, and how it was a great way to make easy money.  Scenes of the shooting are shown, during which models are extensively queried as to their health and comfort between shoots (to ensure that the during-shoot distress that they are displaying is only an act for the camera).

As the documentary progresses, however, a more disturbing picture emerges. 

Happy Pride!

Last weekend was the 39th annual celebration and parade for San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride.  The celebration is enormous and overwhelming; despite my best efforts I only managed to participate in a small fraction of activities.  My week started out with a night out for drinks with several other queer grrls, followed a couple of days later by watching Bi Request at the Frameline Film Festival with a lover.  This year’s Bi Request, a collection of shorts either by or about bisexuals, was especially good.  Friday night I spent at the Queer Playground play party at the Citadel, where Grin sutured a lovely decoration on to me that he had created himself, shown in the picture above.

Saturday I spent picnicing and marching with friends and lovers at the annual Dyke March, went to dinner, and then made it to another play party.

Sunday I somehow managed to get up and march in the Pride parade as a Contingent Monitor with both the Bay Area Bisexual Network and the Polyamory contingents; again, I was with friends, lovers, and community.  Although I did not march with the leather contingent, I supported them in spirit, by wearing Grin’s decoration from Friday night to Sunday night.  Afterwards, I wandered around around the Pride celebrations with a friend visiting from out of town, met up with more of my community at the Faerie Village, dropped by the Citadel for their post-pride social party and then made it to one more wind down party where a lover of mine and I pretty much collapsed in exhaustion.

In what city other than San Francisco is all this possible?  I count my blessings daily.

Jealousy Management

I recently attended a workshop entitled “Making Friends with Jealousy” being taught by Dossie Easton at Poly Living West.  As usual, Dossie led an excellent workshop; even though a lot of the ground she was covering was material I already knew, it’s always good to get a new perspective on it, and to reexamine it in light of one’s current life situation.

One of the really cool things she mentioned, however, was related to the technique of taking a “timeout” before jumping into a confrontation with a partner.  Let’s say you hit a sudden landmine in your relationship (either due to jealousy or some other triggering event), and at least one of you is ready to explode with grief, anger, panic, or another strong emotion.  Instead of attacking, you each go and spend at least fifteen minutes on your own, doing whatever works to calm you down.  Exactly what is best differs from person to person; she mentioned activities varying from dancing out the feeling to sitting calmly working on a crossword puzzle.

Pain: She’s Gotta Have It

Sometimes I have a strong craving to be hurt, to receive pain.  It’s not an endorphin high I’m seeking, instead it’s an actual desire to feel an extreme sensation.  I am lucky to have sadistic lovers in my life, but what to do when they’re out of town or otherwise occupied?

Learning to Love the Singletail

For those who do not know, the singletail is a particular type of whip, but at the same time the one we think of most often when people use the word “whip”. A singletail is the kind of whip Catwoman and Indiana Jones carry. In the BDSM world, anything with flexible tails is classified as a whip, including floggers, cat-o-nines, and so on. This leads to a lot of confusion: if someone says “I brought my bag full of whips”, you have no idea if they are referring to a bag full of floggers or singletails or both. So for the rest of this essay, I will just call it the singletail, and those of you unfamiliar with the term should substitute “whip” in your heads. (For those of you who want to know the precise instrument I am discussing, it is the signal whip from this Wikipedia page.)

The singletail has a oddly mythical status in the kink community, probably borrowed from its exotic depiction in movies and popular culture. Singletails are considered edge play at some dungeons and can make it onto the list of banned activities. Tops approach the singletail as an art to be learned, more so than other toys, which they tend to be willing to just pick up and hit people with. Some singetail instructors recommend six months or more of practice before attempting to use a singletail on a person, and want you to be able to perform delicate aiming tasks.

Things I Didn’t Know About Pee

Piss play has never much interested me. Urine doesn’t disgust me, which would potentially provide a fertile ground for exploration, but it also doesn’t attract me in any way, so I paid little attention to this whole area of the kink universe for a very long time. Then one day I met a sexy dom who explained, with a gleam in his eye, just how he liked to pee on his submissives to mark them as his property… and suddenly I could see the attraction. So when I saw that Boymeat was offering a class on Watersports at IMSL, I jumped at the opportunity.

“Waiter, pardon me…”

“… but I think there’s some food in my ass.”

Last week, I happened to attend a class at IMSL taught by cru, entitled “Up Yours, Asshole”.

As we entered the room, we noticed a table laid out with quite a variety of items.  The first few, including a couple of pre-carved pieces of ginger, a carrot stick, and an english cucumber, looked not at all unreasonable, and in fact almost boring.   The banana, on the other hand, was a little more puzzling, and left me wondering whether it would be peeled or left intact.  But it was the serrano chili pepper, an artichoke, and a kielbasa sausage so curved as to nearly have its ends meet, that piqued my curiosity and kept me glued to my seat for the entire class… except when I went up to the front for a better view.

Figging for Fun?

Last week, I was figged. Figging, oddly enough, does not involve figs.  Instead, it describes the action of taking ginger and inserting it into an ass (or possibly a vagina).  It is supposed to cause a burning sensation, and if you believe the, er, literature, to also cause an increase in what are euphemistically referred to as “sexual desires”.