MY REVISIONIST HISTORY

I broke up with the man I was seeing recently. My side of the story is: I tried and it didn't work. You'll have to ask him about his side.

The root of the issue for me was sex and my expectations. I expect to have a strong or growing emotional connection with someone I'm sleeping with and it seemed to me that he was fiercely avoiding any emotional connection. After all, for me, sex is extremely intimate and when I'm having sex, I'm very vulnerable. I am not comfortable being intimate with someone I feel uncomfortable being vulnerable around and I'm uncomfortable feeling vulnerable around someone who is trying to separate the emotional and physical aspects of sex. I don't look or act like a pornstar and I could never be a fuck buddy - and I need to know my partner likes me enough that those things aren't a concern. But that's just me. You may think differently.

As is common in many relationships/situations, what was once a small concern grew over time until I was no longer happy to see him and crying regularly after I left him. It became obvious to me that I needed to end things. Then we tried again, kind of. And nothing changed. So I ended things again.

The problem is now...after one week...my mind has begun revising history. What was terrible is no longer so bad and what was decent is now incredible. Is this a holdover from evolution? Am I forgetting and do all women forget over time so that we can maintain relationships, have sex, procreate and continue the human race?

So, now I miss him - both emotionally and sexually - and am uncomfortable with the fact that I left him. 

DO I LOOK LIKE THE PIED PIPER OF PENIS?!?!

You know what women LOVE? We go crazy for men who stalk us for blocks or say, follow us in the grocery store. I can't even tell you how many women come running up to me proclaiming their love for the men who try to smell their hair, stalk them, try to grab them without asking and gesturing what they want to do to them sexually without any invitation. Why, today I walked into the supermarket and some dirty guy walked past me and was apparently captivated. Though he was making his way out, he decided to go back in and stalk me.

What's better than speaking to a woman like she's a human being and asking her where to find the apples? Walk down all the same aisles as her, staring uncontrollably, as you try to graze her jacket and possibly her skin. I paid no attention at first because I thought I may have misunderstood.

He went down every aisle of the store to look for me. When he finally arrived at my aisle, he just watched me, shopping for nothing. Just staring at the front of the aisle. Once, it became very clear what was happening, I had had enough. I put down my groceries gently and stared right back. I looked him dead in the eye and it scared him. He was hoping I'd be too timid to look at him and hope he'd simply leave me alone. He then panicked and took off.

Real women scare these men. Do yourself a favour ladies, never be afraid to be real with any of 'em. We've been quiet for far too long. Shut that shit down and create the world you want to live in.

SEXY RUINS

In a new series of photographs, a couple fornicate in a stark white room over rumpled, soiled-sex sheets.  His hair, more salt than pepper, is receding as quickly as it is balding.  His chest, still barrel-shaped and strong, belongs to that of an aging statesman.  Lines of wear and tear atop his shoulders slowly replace the ripples and slopes of boyish muscle. 

The woman’s breasts drop heavily from her chest, emphasizing her bony, protruding rib cage. Her freckled skin grips onto the last bits of elasticity.  Well past vernal desire, their fusion is a border town of early middle-age on the vista to ruin. And yet, their gnarled bodies, furious skin to skin contact, clenched fists and incessant kissing, evoke an erotic reality that’s shockingly human. 

A little too human.

SusanSilas, a renowned photographer known most recently for her decaying birds collection, ups the ante with her latest, Love in the Ruins; Sex over 50, an ongoing collection that features her and her husband intercoursing with abandon.  Beginning in 2003, the project is Silas’ “personal diary about sex and sexuality. It is about the resilience and the decay of the aging body.”

Love in the Ruins; Sex over 50 is about a married couple —over 50!—who have sweaty, frantic sex, who are not ashamed for not looking like surgically enhanced pornstars.  The collection challenges shallow ideas of late about the time and place for sex, love, what is, and what is not sexy.  In a world over-saturated with airbrushed, pornified bodies, assaulting viewers with acrobatic positions that could break a yogi’s Om, Love in the Ruins; Sex Over 50 is disturbing because it stands in opposition against cheap hookups pantomiming gonzo sex.  Silas anchors sex within the context of love.  Old love to be exact.  The deep-space kind of love far removed and more refined that the lustful—and at times vengeful—naïve, youthful love.  Old love is scary because like the human body, it has its limits: it has a beginning and it has an end.  And this sad, despairing reality amplifies the disturbing climate of the collection as it shows two people, unbotoxed and real, desperately grappling sex by-way-of-love not in ruin, but in that short time before physical ruin. 

It makes you wonder, what’s more ruinous: hasty sex among the foolish and synthetic, or sex among the old and the wrinkly?

Love in the Ruins; Sex over 50 continues at Studio 10 (56 Bogart Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY) through April 6.

Photo by Susan Silas

REAL MEN DON'T BUY GIRLS ...... NOR BEAT THEIR WOMEN

This is campaign to raise awareness about Child Pornography.
This is important.

Here are a few facts:
-An estimated one million children are forced to work in the global sex industry every year.

-The global sex slavery market generates a $39 billion profit annually.

-Selling young girls is more profitable than trafficking drugs or weapons.

Now......i must add that I find it FUCKED UP that Sean Penn has the fucking guts to participate in a campaign about "real men" being defined as treating women with a certain degree of respect, when he is a wife beater. Didn't he beat The shit out of his ex-wife( Madonna) repeatedly, so bad so that she got hospitalized? They might as well get Chris Brown to be part of that campaign.

Here are some of their videos. Cute. But not life changing.

Back to the basics

The Universe is a funny lady. On Feb 9th I wrote that 'My Vagina Is Currently Not Accepting Applicants' and of course 2 days later the Universe was like oh really?? and sent me an extremely worthy applicant. He's amazing and I am very grateful to have him in my life but that's not the point of this piece. What I really want to address is what hasn't changed. I'm still afraid of sex, and now I'm in a position where I actually need to face those fears if I want to be able to explore that dimension with my partner.

I guess I kinda thought that once I'd be with a good man, my mind would MiB flash erase all the sexual micro-traumas I've lived and give me a fresh sex slate to carve but in reality she's been keeping tabs and every time I want to venture into the danger zone she has all her troops on guard. In a way I really appreciate that my body has my back like that cause let's be honest I've made quite a few mistakes in the past but it has been hard to navigate this frame of mind; I feel like I no longer have any sense of what I like and don't like or I can and can't do.

The positive side of this all is that I get to revisit the basics and build a solid sexual fondation for our future explorations. My favorite course right now is kissing, yup the very elementary kissing. You'd think it were a simple and boring act the way most skip over it but it is such a beautiful and elaborate sensation. I crave his lips, all my hair arouse when he nuzzles in for even the slightest peck, our breath falls in sync, we have long complexe conversations with our tongues and the shivers I feel when his lips touch mine make me wonder why we even aim for orgasm when this is clearly zenith.

I lost a lot of my sexuality in the past few years and I really didn't think I'd have an opportunity to rebuild it so soon but now that it's here I am going to enjoy every step of the way even if it is a scary journey. Truly enjoying my return to the basics.

WHY "BE A MAN" IS DANGEROUS

Protecting women and redefining women's roles in society requires redefining masculinity. Brava, Miss Representation, for this:

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IF MEN WOULD JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP

I had a classmate not long ago who was really attractive and incredibly smart and tall and had a great smile. Women would always ask me who he was and if they could meet him. But then I'd introduce them and he would open is mouth and something so horrifyingly corny would come out that vaginas all over the world would immediately dry up and close up.

This leads me to my point: If certain men would just shut the fuck up, a lot more sex would be had.

I won't get into the details of what happened last night but suffice it to say that, against all odds, I am attracted to a certain man and want nothing more than to straddle him on his couch. I have been horny and wanting him for what seems like months. But last night he said something silly that made me feel deeply disrespected and now the last thing I want to do is fuck him. Mentally, I cannot bring myself to want to have sex and yet I'm still horny - how does that happen? I'm putting myself on a diet of two-hour long workout sessions, cold showers, prayer and hope (that this combination of sexual frustration and anger goes away as quickly as it came.)

OR, he could have just shut the fuck up. 

IT'S NOT ME IT'S YOU

Lately i decided to try something new. I decided to get out of the classic female tradition of self-blaming when a relationship, or a fling, doesn't work out. 

I try to not let the devilishly feminine thought of "what did i do wrong?" " i must have fucked up for sure" hijack my brain only to drive it into "i'm not worthy of love"-crying myself to sleep bullshit.

It's a stupid  trap and is not objective for one damn second. 

So i now take the very different and way more objective way of trying to invert roles, and see how i would have reacted to my so-called "giant fuck-ups" and realized i've been ok with worse shit on his side. 

So basically, after i have very ego-less-ly tried to maybe "fix" it and it didn't work, i can honestly say that i have tried my best.

And therefor have no regrets.

Accept that i have accepted his flaws and he didn't seem to accept mine. Or maybe he just wasn't THAT into me after all... ( never take what they say as a truth longer than a few days/weeks).

So at the end, i can confidently say:

"It's not me, it's him."

And that feels so much better that the usual bullshit.

FIRST KISS.

20 strangers were asked to kiss one another for the first time. Awkward, magical, passionate and amazing.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL THE BOYS AND MEN OF THE WORLD

(BY Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Executive Director of UN Women.)

Dear Men and Boys of the World,

The unity and purpose of the people of the world played a major role in ushering in freedom for South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela, in whose cabinet I had the honor to serve. In Mandela, a force for good was unleashed, not just for South Africa but for all of humanity. He inspired those of us who worked with him, and countless millions around the world, to stand up for a just cause.When we fought against apartheid in South Africa, which the United Nations declared a crime against humanity, the whole world took a stand. All self-respecting people—leaders of nations, religious institutions, commerce and sports—crossed the line to be on the right side of history.

Now it is time to marshal the same conviction, energy and cooperation on behalf of the 3.6 billion women and girls in the world. You, the men of the 21st century, can make your mark by crossing the line united and joining women as a powerful force for gender equality. It is the right thing to do. In the words of Mandela, “for every moment we remain silent, we conspire against our women.”

This isn’t just a female cause. We have rising evidence that everyone, not just women, benefits from gender equality. Did you know that if women farmers had the same tools and fertilizer as men in agriculture, we would reduce hunger by up to 150 million people? Fortune 500 companies with the most women managers were found to deliver a 34 per cent higher return to shareholders. Discriminating against women comes at a cost to humanity and nations and denies women and girls their inalienable rights.

Yes, women are strong, bold, and brave, but men and boys also have a big role to play in ending gender inequality. It is both the right thing and the smart thing to do. It’s time to influence change in society. I know many of you desire a better world for women and girls and more than a few of you are actively working on bringing about positive changes. But there is much more to do. We need your action and your voices to be louder and to help us change some of the hardships women face.

More than 60 million girls worldwide are denied access to education. One in three women in the world is a victim of physical or sexual violence, the most humiliating and dehumanizing form of discrimination. Most of this violence happens at the hand of a partner or relative within her own home. Today two-thirds of the global illiterate population is women. If trends continue in this way, poor girls in Sub-Saharan Africa will not reach universal access to primary education until 2086.

These are your sisters, mothers, wives, partners, daughters, nieces, aunts, cousins and friends. They have hopes and beautiful dreams for themselves, their families, communities and the world. If many of their dreams were to come true, the world would be a much better place for all of humanity.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, I issue a call to men and boys and invite you to take action wherever you are and support the SHE Imperative, a new global initiative to bring women’s issues to the forefront and effectuate change through civil engagement, corporate commitment, and policy changes worldwide.

SHE has three key components: First, make sure SHE isSecure and Safe from gender-based violence. Second: Make sure SHE has her Human rights respected, including her reproductive rights. And third: Ensure that SHE has Economic Empowerment through Education, participation and leadership.

This sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet if we applied this imperative, the world would be a very different and far better place. SHE would enjoy equal opportunity, access to education and no longer be the face of poverty, and her gender will not decide her status and place in society.

I invite you to join me and the women and men of the world who have led many long struggles for the gender equality. In Africa, we have a saying that I want to leave with you: ‘If you go alone you go fast, but if we go together, we go far’. Let us go far together.

You can find more about the SHE initiative and ways to help at www.heforshe.org.

Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Executive Director of UN Women.

via TIME Magazine.

FUNKY FEMINITY

'coz there are a million ways of being feminine...and some of these very attractive ways are being funky as hell.

ONE WISH

If i had one wish, i would wish to have the ability to choose who i fall in love with. Not  the power to choose who's to be in love with me. 

CHARMING CAMPAIGN

A few days before International Women's Day, this campaign drawn by artist AleXsandro Palombo gets on the web. It asks: What Kind of Man Are You?
Yes, because it is not to be forgotten that these situations of domestic violence happen BECAUSE OF THE MEN PERPETRATING IT, not the weaknesses of women victimized by it.
A direct talk to our generation, us, the one that grew up with cartoons and still relate to it.
Strong.

DARK AS NIGHT