I had a conversation recently with someone who is into S&M about pain and pleasure. Not being a big pain fan, I struggle to understand the role of pain in people's sexual lives. I have heard the same things over and over again from SM folks.

"It's not really about the pain, it's about sensation."
"The pleasure and the pain are all the same."
"It's a spiritual experience for me."
"The orgasms are really intense."

Trying to wrap my mind around this concept has been challenging, as I am not willing to experience a lot of this stuff directly to see what they mean. But just a short while ago, I ran into someone who helped me get it just a little more.

"Well, if you put pleasure on a scale like this," she said, using a blackboard, "and you placed pleasure here, at the bottom," she began drawing a neat, diagonal line upward on a blackboard. "As the line goes up, we get more and more pleasure, you see? And eventually..." she reached the top of the board, "the pleasure would be so intense that it would become pain."

By George I think I've got it! There have been times when my pleasure has been intense enough to be felt as pain. I could go there.

She then repeated the process for pain, explaining that pain becomes pleasure at some point, as well, though it doesn't have to be extreme pain, it's more of an attitude toward pain. I was so glad to have met her. This perspective really opened my eyes to understanding SM a little better.

I also think I understand, at least intellectually, how the pain/pleasure continuum could be felt as a spiritual experience. I simply have to take it out of the sexual realm to do it. I  have long discussed our attitude toward pain in this society as being unhelpful. Pain may not be fun (unless you're a masochist), but it is not "bad". It simply is.

And I recognize that pain is part of my experience. I notice that the less I try to pathologically avoid pain, and the more I accept it as part of life, the easier most pain is to bear. In fact, some pain becomes unlike pain at all. Certain types of grief, for instance, are not as hard for me as they once were. Losses are always difficult, but pure grief can actually be beautiful, if I give it room enough. Pure anger (without attempts to control or manipulate) be can painful or uncomfortable, but is also powerful when expressed responsibly. In this way I think I have begun to understand some of where SM practitioners are coming from.

But I'll leave it to them to explain it to me.

We had an enlightening panel of lesbians speak in class today. Three women, all fairly young, all from the black community. They had great things to say, but the thing that stuck with me was that one woman talked about categories within the lesbian community, and she claimed there were 24 of them.

She classified herself as a STEM. A STEM was a word she made up, from combining two terms, Stud and Femme. In the black lesbian community (at least in Oakland), the term for a "butch" lesbian is a "stud." This particular woman said that she saw herself as a STEM because she looked very feminine, but was aggressive in seeking other women out for dates, and also sexually.

Another woman categorized herself as "aggressive femme" for the same reason. They then said there were soft butches, who they described as women who look more masculine, but have feminine behaviors.

I don't know where they had heard about the 24 categories of lesbian (or was it 27?), I think on a black lesbian website. But it was quite the interesting conversation, because it made me muse about why someone felt it necessary to scrutinize gender expression to such a huge extent that they created 24 classifications. And really, at that point, is classification even meaningful? 24 types? Why not just get to know somebody? Have a freakin' conversation, for God's sake. Or our sake. Hell, for anybody's sake.

It wasn't my reaction to the panel. I was very impressed with them. They were all smart, articulate and beautiful. But I would like to find the website with the anal- retentive Amazon who sat around for months or years mentally (and genderly) masturbating to the 24th extent.

San Francisco Pride Parade

I marched in SF Pride today, and all I have to say is WOW. And Oh...my...God. Nothing like marching 9 blocks in front of half a million people to put life in its proper perspective.

What an exhilarating experience. Such an enormous turnout for such a unique event. I saw history being made as new brides with their brides and grooms with their grooms came out in full gay glory. Wedding veils dyed the color of rainbows, drag queens in bridesmaid gowns, floats to commemorate the new law and the launch into a new era for human rights. All I can think is, what a cool time to be alive!

In addition to new brides and grooms, I saw bare asses sticking out of leather chaps everywhere, the sailor outfits of the city's Gay Men's Chorus, the fanciful garb of the Radical Fairies (with a fair amount of pot smoke for good measure), a whole float full of Charo impersonators (including one 5 year old and one 1 year old Charo...cute as all get out). I saw nude men walking completely carefree and unhindered on Hyde Street, McAllister Street, Beale Street. I saw people of every gender dressing like people of every gender, both for Pride and because they always do. Topless women. Women and men being flogged in public in "Leather Alley", a play space for people involved in Bondage/Discipline/Sadism/Masochism (BDSM). Obama Pride booths. Gay adoption agencies. Gay travel agencies. Rights for sex workers booths.

We walked around the festival until we were exhausted. Though "walking" doesn't quite describe it...it's more like being herded by the sheer mass of the crowd. Moo.

And yet all of this doesn't get at the coolest thing about Pride in San Francisco. It's the freedom to be yourself, no matter what your sex, gender, kink or orientation. As Citibank says...that's priceless.

Trans March

This is where I've always wanted to be--
in San Francisco, with those who push on the definitions of things,
unravel them recklessly just to know
what it means
and how it feels
to be at our most fully human.

How much difference can we forgive?
How much diversity can we stand?
How much variety can we allow?--
til in the end we are broken open weeping with the joy of it,
Wounded and healed in the same instant.

And all that is left is the love.
Not our love.
But the love.

The love that is witness to the scars on a new man's chest,
the smile on a gay man's lover,
two feminine hands entwined at the bar.

The woman within the man and the man within the woman.

The tears within the Pride.

~Roz, 6/27/08
Pride Week, SF

Erotic asphyxiation, according to Jay Wiseman, is “the application of suffocation or strangulation to a clinically significant degree for the erotic enjoyment of at least one of the participants.” Mr. Wiseman is the author of “SM 101: a Realistic Introduction,” which is now on it's second edition and has sold over 80,000 copies.

Jay Wiseman is a good example of how a regular looking, likable guy can be into some seriously edgy stuff. He quite literally wrote the book on S&M, but even he won't mess with breath play.

Usually, Jay said, when there is a risk in SM, there is a precaution to mitigate that risk. “To reduce the possibility of bad outcome A, use Precaution B,” he likes to say. But there's a problem. For erotic asphyxiation, there is no Precaution B.

And Jay ought to know. He had 2 years of medical school, and was an emergency medical technician with training in advanced cardiac life support. He's also a lawyer, and now he's an expert witness in cases involving erotic asphyxiation. It may be safe to say that he is the top expert in the nation on this particular sexual phenomenon.

Why is breath play so dangerous? Well apparently, most of the time when people die from the practice, it is from cardiac arrest, not from deprivation of oxygen to the brain. And cardiac arrest can happen almost instantly after cutting off someone's air supply for a number of reasons, none of which are predictable at this point in time.

Many people who die from erotic asphyxiation do so alone. “Scarfing” is one word for the practice of cutting off the breath while masturbating. But some die with a partner, and these partners can often incur criminal charges, including murder. Even people who have engaged in breath play many times without incident cannot predict with certainty, or anything close to it, that they will not die the next time around.

Wiseman lists five behaviors where he thinks the risks outweigh the possible benefits. They are: breath play, gun play (Russian Roulette and the like), chest punching (which can stop your heart instantly), and ball kicking (some otherwise healthy people have heart attacks from a reaction of the vagal nerve to the sudden, severe pain). He also mentions that the number one cause of emergency room visits for SM practitioners is highly restricted bondage with poor or no supervision. Some people literally get stuck for days in bondage that can cut off air supply or blood supply, sometimes leaving them permanently injured.

Some folks who are into asphyxiation have bitched about the idea that they might want to think before they choke. Even members of my class were unclear how to be sex-positive while possibly warning people about this behavior.

I see no conflict at all. Being sex-positive does not mean being stupid. And sex isn't the only thing I'm positive about. Human life, for instance. I kinda like it.

For more information see Jay's website at www.jaywiseman.com.

OK, I want to acknowledge right off the bat that this subject may freak some people out. First of all, we like to equate motherhood with apple pie, not sexuality. And certainly not orgasm. But this is an unnatural split. Women of all ages are sexual beings. And sexuality is what creates childbirth. Apparently, some women have orgasms while in the process of labor. How can this happen?

Physiologically, it's actually more intuitive than one would think. Contractions of the uterus during childbirth are similar to those that happen during orgasm. Also, the pressure on the birth canal and the G Spot in and of themselves can cause pleasure or orgasm. In addition, the hormone oxytocin, which is released during orgasm, plays a crucial role in the birth process. It helps to ease the pain of labor, and is critical in the mother feeling bonded to the baby after birth.

What I find most interesting is that this pleasure vs. pain concept is not simply something that happens spontaneously. Perhaps as a logical extension of the natural birth movement, a growing number of women are now re-imagining childbirth as an ecstatic event, rather than merely painful, marathonic ordeal. Women are in discussion about seeing contractions as intensity rather than pain. And some women are ultimately able to transform labor into an amazing, soul expanding event where they can experience ecstasy along with the pain.

In class we watched the most amazing birth movie I have ever seen. It made me cry, and impacted me for hours afterward. It was a 15-minute film called Birth Day, made by a midwife who had her home-birth filmed. It was a beautiful event that included the participation of her whole family.

This was not your average “Miracle of Life” movie. This woman took a walk with her family on the morning she went into labor. The camera shows she and her husband walking over green fields in Mexico where she lives, and through a stream. They went back home later, and she had 3 helpings of rice and beans. This is unheard of in a hospital birth, where they don't allow you to eat, in case you need a C-section. Of course the problem here is that birth is a marathon event, requiring all of a woman's strength and energy. Imagine trying to do that with no fuel? No wonder so many women in hospital births are completely exhausted and unable to push at the end, when they need it the most. So it is that the preparations for a C-section can often create the need for one.

Watching this woman's labor was a revelation. She walked around the house with her husband, who walked backward while holding her hands. Her eyes were unfocused, internal. She described the contractions as worse when she was walking away from her husband, but when she was walking toward him “It was like the sun was trying to burst out of my belly. I felt swollen with our love.”

Here children were a part of the process, as well. Her eight year old son was encouraging her at the end, saying, “Comon Mom! You can do it!” And when the baby came out, the whole family was present. The littlest boy was saying, “It's our baby! It's our baby!” Their interactions were so intensely intimate and loving, I found myself streaming tears. When I looked around me, many of my classmates were crying as well.

I was not only intensely moved by the film, I was also saddened at how far from a natural process we have let birth become.

(for more information on ecstatic/orgasmic birth, contact Dr. Danielle Harel)

I've been a in a class called Advanced Practical Skills workshop, which explores how to put the theories of Sexology into practice, whether it be clinical practice or education.

The last part of class was a role play. We were asked to think of professional situations where we needed help, and students suggested different scenarios for role plays. Maggie Rubenstein, a pioneer in the bisexual movement, Sexologist, and an amazing woman, led the role plays. I brought up the idea of dual relationships as a possible problem.

Dual relationships is a specific issue in ethics in any kind of professional counseling. The idea behind it is that a clinician should, in general, try to avoid having dual relationships of any kind with a client. A client, for instance, should not also be your barber, your hairdresser, your cousin's wife, or, for that matter, your lover. Your clinical relationship should come first, lest problems of money or emotional entanglements of other types interfere with the counseling.

This philosophy is, of course, very important, and yet has many practical drawbacks. In small towns, for instance, a counselor cannot necessarily avoid dual relationships. A client may be the only barber in town, or the only bank manager in town, or the town librarian. When everybody knows everybody, it's much more difficult to keep the clinical relationship completely and totally free of any other type of interaction.

This philosophy of professional distance in order to preserve the clinical efficacy of a counseling relationship is also one reason why ethics committees everywhere recommend that clinicians do not reveal personal things about themselves. And herein lies my issue with Sexology and professional distance.

Sexual communication is the issue I am most passionate about right now. It may seem a simple topic (though not easy), and yet it is key to just about everything. Communication, I have told my students over and over again, IS the relationship. It's not just that communication makes for good relationships, it actually IS the relationship itself. So sexual communication, too, IS the sexual relationship. Not being able to talk about sex in an open, honest way basically guarantees problems at some point (or many points).

Here's the problem: the easiest way for me to model this to my clients and students is to talk openly about sex. No, I don't need necessarily to go into graphic detail, and no, I don't have to say what I have done vs. what I simply have knowledge of. BUT. As a Sexologist, I find it more and more difficult to draw a line between what is appropriate to withhold because it would interfere with my counseling or my teaching, and what I am withholding simply because the culture is one of shame and I am kowtowing to that particular social norm.

When I was on the air in Hartford, and had a radio show that was about love and sex, I openly talked about sex with the other host. We created sexual topics, shared our personal experiences, and it was amazing how it opened people up. We had calls from people who have never called a radio show before, emails from people who were grateful for the information and eager for more, calls from people who told us that they sat in their cars in the driveway to hear more of what we were saying even though they were home and tired and wanted to go to bed.

The culture is eager for sex-positive discussion. And I have found that creating sex-positive discussion sometimes calls for giving information that is clearly (or inferentially) revelatory about myself.

So what's a therapist to do?

I am proud of my clinical skills. I am proud of my clinical accomplishments. But I am, first and foremost, an educator. I cannot stay silent in support of a social more that I don't think is healthy anymore. I suppose I will simply have to keep speaking up. I will say what I want to say. And let the chips fall where they may.

I'm back in San Francisco. It's sunny and 80 degrees, which never happens here. Which is why I am making this entry short.

I'm going to start my Sexological Blog up again now that I'm at school for another 3 weeks. I'll be writing about what I am learning and my reactions to it.

Right now I have been thinking about the concept of consent, and what it really means. I'm formulating an idea that there are several different levels of consent. After all, the more awareness you have, the more deeply you can consent to something. And the more your consent means.

For instance, for many years the age of consent has been debated. The reason for this seems obvious: children have undeveloped judgment, and therefore, limited knowledge of what they are consenting to.

But I am curious about the opposite. Do adults, then, gain a potential for greater and greater ability to consent? Or, to put it another way, can we reach deeper and deeper levels of consent as we reach deeper and deeper levels of awareness? As we become more aware of both the possible consequences and the possible benefits of our actions, do our choices become more meaningful?

Would it be more meaningful for me, for instance, at age 41, to say yes to someone I know would break my heart, knowing that the experience would still be rich, and deep, and worth every moment? Is it potentially easier for someone who is older or more experienced to consent, knowing that they have lived through the pain of heartbreak or failure and survived? Even thrived?

Of course, I say potentially for a reason. Age does not automatically bring wisdom and open-heartedness. Many people will live to my age and well beyond, but will not take painful experiences as growth opportunities. Instead, they will avoid the pain.

However, being the optimist that I am, I  believe most  of us are bigger than that. Most of us reach beyond our pain and see the experiences of life as the payoff, not the price, of living.

As for me, I have adopted a philosophy of saying yes more often than saying no to many things in my life. Having spent all of my childhood and most of my young adult life in the world of No, I find this way of living infinitely more satisfying.

I watched the pilot episode of Swingtown last night. The show aired on CBS last week, but we watched it online, which was fun because we got to pause it whenever we wanted to comment to each other about what we thought.

I liked the show for a lot of reasons. GO CBS for creating something original! In addition, the subject matter is controversial. We read the posts on CBS's website about it and I found myself laughing a lot. Several people were "outraged" and "disgusted", and one woman claimed she was going to get the show taken off the air because "I have young children."

Replies to her were identical to my own, internal ones: Lady, what are your "young" kids doing up at 10 o'clock at night? One guy was right on the money when he asked her if she had ever launched a protest against a soap opera, where people regularly lie, cheat and murder. And this all happens on daytime TV. It appears that cheating is more acceptable to watch than swinging, where all parties are consenting and there is no deception involved. Interesting!

I am also amused by the fact that people have such a fit over what is, in the end, a story. Some people were offended by the drugs shown. Well, it was the 70's. To ignore the drugs done (and the consequences of that) is to show a very incomplete picture of the period. VERY incomplete.

I am excited that CBS has created a show that depicts an alternative lifestyle. But I'm cynical. I have a hard time believing that they will remain open-minded in their depiction of this sexual expression. If they are true to network form, they will punish these characters for their evil ways through plot twists as a way to appease anxious viewers who can't handle such a dramatic challenge to the mainstream thinking about relationships.

Only time will tell.

I am reading "Watching Sex," a book about why men view pornography, and what they get out of it.

In the past, many feminists have written about pornography as a horrible thing that causes men to objectify women, which could then lead to a slippery slope, ending with the abuse of women. I never bought this argument, because I could see that it wasn’t that simple. It certainly didn’t square with my experience of pornography. Most of the men that I knew viewed some type of adult material, and most of them were nice guys who treated women just fine. (Not to mention the fact that many women enjoy pornography as well).

The more I read about these ideas, and the more I research, the more I find some very poor research that claims pornography causes objectification of women, and the more I find good research that finds that porn has no effect on male aggression toward women.

One study that has been used to "prove" that porn causes men to see women as "things" is one called "Treating women as sexual objects: Look to the (gender schematic) male who has viewed pornography." (McKenzie, M. et al Personality Soc. Psych. Bul. 1990 16: 296-308.) They showed some men an adult movie, then had them interviewed by a woman. Surprise! These men were "significantly more sexually motivated" than the men who didn’t watch porn. They also noticed more about the interviewer's appearance. This study has been quoted to give evidence that porn causes men to treat women as objects. But it seemed to me simply to show that porn may make men hornier right afterward.

Uh. Yeah.

Another study had men view violent porn, non-violent erotic porn, and neutral stimuli. They even had a female researcher provoke them. They were then allowed to give her an electric shock or respond to her verbally. Even after being provoked, no aggression or anti-female attitudes were in evidence.

I am still reading about this. I have a lot more to do. I am creating a presentation called "The Pros and Cons of Pornography" to present at colleges. But so far, it seems to me that many of these "feminist" researchers are wrong.