the motivation to ask for what you want | Emily Nagoski :: sex nerd ::

Dr. Emily Nagoski got stuck: "In this case the Q is, 'I want to try X. How do I ask my partner for that?' But the A? I’m stuck." Thankfully, from her transparent learning come great teaching opportunities:

I could lecture endlessly about communication skills, self-esteem and self-acceptance, the value of honesty, the importance–indeed the art–of hearing "no" without taking it personally.

But in the end, the answer to, “How do I ask my partner to…?” is “You just suck it up and ask.”

For people like Emily (and, after practice, me) the benefit of asking is so self-evident that not asking seems crazy: "I think my frustration and helplessness with this question comes from my own history of having to beg partners please to just fucking tell me what they need, what they want…. Ask for what you want, I could say, because NOT asking for what you want is dishonest, selfish, and emotionally destructive." Amen!

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Google and Verizon Near Deal on Web Pay Tiers – NYTimes.com

When big companies and government agencies have "secret meetings," their spokespeople always say the interests of the consumer is at heart. But consumer advocate groups rightfully point out that such closed-door decision-making leaves too many stakeholders—like you and me—out of the discussions. That's what's been happening between Google and Verizon for 10 months, as they near a deal that could spell disaster for net neutrality, the sacred Internet tenet that demands all content on the network be delivered to the end-user with equal reliability. In other words: no favoritism, no censorship.

"The fate of the Internet is too large a matter to be decided by negotiations involving two companies," Gigi B. Sohn, founder of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, said. While business analysts say the deal "could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users," Edward Wyatt reports, I'm far more concerned about the foothold such policies give to legislating sexual content—like us.

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Update: Friend of the show Nikolas points us to Google’s PR team who deny a deal is near approval. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “I want to make sure that everybody understands what we mean about it. What we mean is that if you have one data type, like video, you don’t discriminate against one person’s video in favor of another. It’s OK to discriminate across different types…. There is general agreement with Verizon and Google on this issue. The issues of wireless versus wireline get very messy…and that’s really an FCC issue not a Google issue.”

Studied – Why Don’t Teenagers Talk to Parents About Sex – NYTimes.com

Friend of the show Dr. Karen Rayne brought this article to us. She says:

A recent study has come out … chronicling how much teenagers talk to their parents and what information they are most prone to share. … The coverage of this research is interesting in itself. It takes a straightforward study and twists it and applies in ways that the study was never meant to be used. The Times article begins: "Few things are more alarming to the modern hyperparent than a silent teenager. And for good reason: The quiet ones usually have something to hide." This kind of rampant assumption and generalization is common in conversations about sex and teenagers. But there is plenty of interesting tidbits to talk about in the actual study, including this: "Yet oddly, at least to those of us over 18, teenagers are more likely to hide the content of their romantic instant messages than their sexual activity."

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