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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Bering in Mind: Oedipus Complex 2.0: Like it or not, parents shape their children’s sexual preferences

It's an old trope that women grow up anticipating and fearing the point when they will become exactly like their mothers. But do heterosexual women grow up fearing that they will one day marry a man exactly like their father? Jesse Berring writes fascinatingly about the truths of how early experiences shape later sexuality, and comes to the shocking conclusion that incest-avoidant habits are socially ingrained, not biologically, and that the same set of experiences that lead us to find our siblings sexually disgusting lead us to seek out people of a similar genetic phenotype to ourselves; hence those blond-on-blond families we sometimes encounter. It's not always true, of course, and most interesting of all, there is virtually no way to predict whether you'll seek out somebody just like you, or look for someone as different as can be.

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Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution? – Newsweek

Do you feel that? It's the wind of change, and it's blowing your way. Prop 8 is going-going-gone, and while its supporters don't tend to say much we agree with, we'll grant them that perhaps it does herald the arrival of a more accepting, open time for American relationships. Newsweek gives credence to this theory with this article about polyamory, which stresses the communication poly relationships rely so heavily upon, and says that having polyamorous parents isn't necessarily harmful to children, so long as they have a stable home. In fact, with extra, loving people around to help with homework and provide rides, having a poly family might not be such a bad thing! The article speaks with Allena Gabosch, director of Seattle's Center for Sex Positive Culture, and draws heavily on the life and experiences of Terisa Greenan, creator of "Family," an online video series that deals with both the joys and the complications of living polyamorously.

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