Tonight we fuck with ceramics.

Thanks for sending along this awesome vibrator, Battery Bliss!

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This post, Look What Came in the Mail!, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, July 29, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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— Researchers Rachel H. Farr and Charlotte H. Patterson, of the University of Virginia, and Stephen L. Forssell of George Washington University, writing in Applied Developmental Science and arguing their research doesn’t simply conclude gays make great parents, but that any policy prohibiting it is utter nonsense [via; PDF]

–via Queerty

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This post, “It appears that more children could potentially benefit from having permanent homes with capable parents if lesbian and gay adults were allowed to adopt in the U.S. and elsewhere.”, originally appeared on aag on Wednesday, July 28, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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You know. As one does.

I learned that he was working on paperwork to refinance his house. “Interest rates have dropped so much that I’m going to save a ton of money.” Interesting, I thought, but my sex-addled brain permitted no further rumination on the topic until a few weeks later when the notice that property taxes were due arrived in the mail.

Goodness, I thought, reading the numbers which have swelled every year since I purchased the house. It certainly would be nice to save some money on this whole “shelter” thing! And then the naked-refinancing conversation popped back into my mind. Maybe I should look into that, I thought, and now, just days after filling out an online application, I am well on the way to becoming the owner of a shiny-new mortgage, one which will save me over $100 each and every month.

This is awesome.

I just have one issue, one itty-bitty little issue.

What’s the appropriate thank-you gift for awesome after-sex financial advice?

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This post, After-Sex Financial Advice, originally appeared on aag on Wednesday, July 28, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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As an unmarried woman with few compunctions against dropping trou as the spirit moves, I hide my light beneath the proverbial bushel when faced with married folk, especially married folk to whom I once was fiercely attracted. So I’ve watched this man going about his Christian, Republican, I-vote-the-Bible-no-matter-what way from a distance, never commenting on his Glenn Beck-inspired posts or his photos from the family trip to the Creationist Museum — a trip which, by the way, handily extinguished any residual attraction I might have felt for him.

But when this friend wound up home-bound for weeks following emergency surgery, I politely requested his address so that we could send him a card. That he gave; we also exchanged phone numbers and the promise that if he was in need of so much as a jug of milk he would call on the Mom Taxi to run him past the store. In good time I mailed off the card with a small surprise tucked inside: a gift certificate from a restaurant close to his house. Given my economic circumstances (read: tolerable, but hardly lavish), this would have purchased a sufficient but humble meal for his family, and given that “putting food on the table while sick” is one of my least favorite tasks, I hoped it would be well-received by his household.

It was. Imagine my surprise to come home to a message that rambled on so long that it finally was cut off by the machine. In it he thanked me again and again for the card and gift, explaining that it was the only one he’d received thus far during his illness. The only one, I wondered? How could that be? But the message was still running; he invited my family to visit him one day soon. “If you and your husband are up for it,” he gushed, “we could even hang out some night and play cards!”

And now I’m left wondering if it can possibly be true that ours was the only gift; also, would the invitation to his house have been so generously extended if he’d known of my divorced, leftist, agnostic, polyamorous ways?

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This post, Short a Hand, originally appeared on aag on Tuesday, July 27, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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It was a beautiful evening in June when we walked NYC’s High Line with Figleaf of Real Adult Sex discussing our ideas for a new sexuality conference.  Diva and I had been mulling it  over ourselves for a while, motivated and inspired by Amber Rhea’s Sex 2.0 and the Sex in America panel at NYC’s Open Center.  We knew we were close but had not quite nailed down what our concept would be and how to combine these two amazing events.  When Figleaf suggested what was missing was relationships, all the pieces came together.  After all sexuality and feminism don’t exist in a vacuum but amid a myriad of relationships.  And so, Tied Up Events is  now happy to announce MOMENTUM: Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism and Relationships Through New Media, a conference taking place on April 1st to April 3rd, 2011 in Washington, DC.

MOMENTUM explores how the phenomenal growth of online communication has given rise to an amazing amount of sharing, learning and experimenting with different expressions of sexuality, relationships and feminism. MOMENTUM provides a safe place to listen, discuss and learn about the ways the web has impacted our sexuality without the fear of reprisal or shaming. It is a space for acceptance and appreciation of diversity, including for those in the LGBTQ, sex-work, BDSM and non-monogamous communities.

During MOMENTUM we will discuss ways to bridge the baffling dichotomies our culture creates around sexuality. While on one hand we have unprecedented sexual freedom, on the other we continue to police sexuality with a frightening vigor. Abortion laws, restrictions on gay marriage, abstinence programs, medicalization of sex, fear of pornography and prosecutions for teenage sexting are examples of one side of the spectrum. The discomfort that strives to make us keep our sexuality hidden conflicts with the use of sex — especially the female body — to sell everything from food to cars to “performance enhancing” products.

Each participant will leave the conference with new perspectives, new connections, and a plan to carry the MOMENTUM forward into 2011 and beyond.

We’re now calling for presenters to submit their ideas for sessions at MOMENTUM.  Please explore the official site, MomentumCon.com, where you’ll find all you need to know, including how to submit a proposal for a session, how to register to attend, and how to take advantage of early bird pricing.

Fascinations has generously agreed to be the primary corporate sponsor of MOMENTUM and we want to thank them very much for their support of this event.

If you think the site absolutely rocks as much as we do, that’s only because of the help, guidance and technical know-how of Dangerous Lilly and the website design skills of AAG.  We’re indebted to you both.*

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*Aw shucks! –aag

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This post, MOMENTUM, originally appeared on aag on Monday, July 26, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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My son raced away from his instructor and spent the time at a row of some half-dozen jets designed to shoot water head-high to the grade-school set. At first he was content merely to run through them, but once an instructor showed him how, by blocking one of the jets with his foot, he could make the rest rush ultra-high, he did nothing else. If one blocked jet created a four-foot tower, he pondered, how high would three blocked jets go? He enlisted a friend when the span of his own feet fell short and the two created a geyser that loomed as high as a dinosaur and no doubt just as thrilling.

He was, in short, in heaven.

In contrast, his sister hardly budged from the side of her teacher, a seventeen-year-old slaving in the pool before commencing her senior year come September. My child idolizes her; she chatters incessantly about her hair and assortment of swimsuits when we’re not at the pool and hurries to sit next to her as soon as we are. This young woman wobbles on the very precipice of adulthood, one moment speaking to me clinically about my child’s progress, the next tugging on the top of her suit and flipping her hair as another swim instructor, a young man, saunters by.

These two teach next to each other in the pool, and while lessons themselves are carried out with the nothing but professionalism, the few moments between lessons allow for a just an inch of hijinx. Then the two surreptitiously splash at each other and whisper quietly. There is much gazing into eyes.

It is very sweet.

I watch, all but invisible due to age, from beneath a huge umbrella. I watch because I can so clearly remember being seventeen and enveloped in love and lust. I watch because I can’t remember being so effortlessly beautiful — though photographic evidence says I was.

And I watch because my child watches. She grins right along with her teacher as they splash the boy, and if he splashes back she gets wet too. “Do it this way,” the teacher demonstrated during the one class I spent with them in the water, and I watched my little girl’s eyes shine as she got a response from the young man. She beamed and laughed and I could so clearly picture her assuming the teacher’s place in just a decade.

“It’s a class in swimming and flirting all at once!” I said to the teacher, and she agreed that it certainly seemed so.

Two classes for the price of one? I’m happy with that bargain.

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This post, Extra Value Swim Lessons, originally appeared on aag on Monday, July 26, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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I had the opportunity to talk with a young person name Tien, who recently experienced sexual abuse by a family member. Read a portion of our conversation:

AAG: How are you dealing with the emotions? Do you find yourself angry? Hurt? Missing whatever good parts of the relationship you had?

Tien: My emotions are random right know. Sometimes I am fine, then the next day I am depressed. When people found out about the relationship I was angry at myself because he was someone I thought I was in love with and I did not want him to get in trouble. I do not feel hurt, just confused since he is someone who should protect me but instead hurt me. I do not miss the good parts of the relationship, the good parts were essentially the talks we had together and when we went out to restaurants.

AAG: How do you relate to your cousin now? Do you still have to see him at family functions? How have his parents and/or siblings received the news of his abuse?

Tien: Right now if I saw him again I would probably slap him and tell him how he hurt me. I am in the process of writing a letter to him stating just that. I would not be seeing him at family functions for a very long time, since not only did my mom report him, she pressed charges. From what he told me the last time I talked to him, his parents hate him.

Read the rest of the piece here.

And as always, if you can part with five or ten dollars to support sex-ed, I know it would be very much appreciated.

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This post, Building Bridges on Scarleteen, originally appeared on aag on Friday, July 23, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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When men talk they don’t ask each other questions; they have instead a free flow of opinions, comments, facts, stories, insults etc. Many of us men are bilingual: we can do woman-talk, we can ask the expected questions. But many are not.

Regardless of whether this guy is or is not fluent in woman-talk – and whether he can be taught – it sounds like you are not fluent in man-talk either… –read the rest here

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We do not live in covens of women and come out, Jane Goodall-style, to study these strange and incomprehensible beings known as “men”. You do not have to explain them to us. We have talked to plenty of men who are perfectly capable of communication. --Elodie said it here

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This post, On “Male” and “Female” Modes of Conversation, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, July 22, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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“Both of you,” the General said to Messner and Gen, “Go lie down. We’ll discuss this.” He used his gun to point to the floor, someplace not too close by.

Messner did not try to resume negotiations. “I don’t lie down,” he said, but his voice was tired enough that one might have thought he would have liked to. “I wait outside. I’ll come back again in one hour.” With that he gave a courteous nod to Gen and simply opened the door and let himself out. Gen wondered if he might do the same, explain that he would be waiting outside. But Gen knew he was not Messner. There was no putting one’s finger on it exactly, but it was as if there would be no point in shooting Messner. He seemed like someone who had been shot every day of his life and had simply had enough of it.

–Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

After the second appointment, I feel as though I’ve been shot every day of my life, and I have simply had enough of it.

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This post, Someone Who Had Been Shot Every Day of His Life, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, July 22, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Mark Twain

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This post, Keep Away, originally appeared on aag on Wednesday, July 21, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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