Author: Charlie Glickman

When Good Intentions meet Bad Behaviour

I recently posted Learning to Ask on Fetlife (one of the most widely-used social networking sites for the S&M scene), and it quickly received a lot of comments. Many of the folks who responded shared that they face a lot of challenges with asking for what they want, or that it took them plenty of practice to figure out how to do it. It seems really relevant to me that so many people who engage in kink struggle with asking, given the importance it has for managing physical, emotional, and sexual safety. Of course, it’s an valuable skill in any erotic context, but it’s even more important when you’re playing on the edges.

There’s a lot that could be said about the comments the post received (and if you’re on Fetlife, you can read them here) but there’s one that I received over email that caught my attention.

How do turn my history of confusion over “bad behavior combined with good intent” into a skill for identifying and dealing with people who don’t know that they have bad behavior?

There are a few different threads to untangle here, but here’s my take on it.

Bringing our actions and intentions into alignment is one of those never-ending practices. No matter how well I, you, or anyone else can do it, there’s are going to be times when there’s a gap between them. Given that, we need to know how to respond when that gap is brought to our attention.

When someone tells me that my actions and intentions aren’t in alignment, or if they tell me that I’ve done something that caused them pain and/or difficulty, I try to make the first thing out of my mouth “thank you for telling me.” I know that it can be a really difficult thing to call someone out and I find that thanking them for it helps me keep from going into a defensive reaction. I might not agree with what they say, or there might be a misunderstanding, or they might be 100% right. It doesn’t matter- I thank them for telling me.

So one thing I would ask you about the hypothetical person X with good intentions and bad behavior is: how do they respond when you bring such things to their attention. Do they take it seriously? Do they try to hear what you’re saying? Do they brush it off or deny your truth? Do they tell you that you’re crazy or wrong? Or do they ask questions to try to understand your perspective?

If they are able to receive your words, what do they do? Are they able to apologize? Do they understand how to make amends? Can they talk with you about what they can do to bring their actions into alignment with their intentions? Can they commit to a plan? And are they open to receiving feedback in order to continue improving?

If they can do all of that, then they are backing up their good intentions and that’s a good thing. But if they can’t or won’t, then I don’t think their intentions are good enough. I don’t usually use phrases like “good enough,” but I think it’s fitting here because their intentions aren’t enough to motivate positive changes.

Of course, it’s not easy to be called out. It can bring up a lot of shame, which is one reason I say that if you want to understand relationships, you need to understand shame. Building shame resilience makes it less difficult to receive feedback. Being able to say “I’m having a shame reaction,” rather than falling into a shame spiral, isn’t easy. Shame spirals often compel us to attack the person who calls us out, act like they’re wrong or crazy as a way of dodging responsibility, silence them as a way of avoiding the difficult feelings, or jump to apologize so we don’t have to hear them tell us what we did wrong. Someone can have good intentions that get overwhelmed by a shame reaction. And unfortunately, the abusers and the predators often use tactics that look very similar to genuine defense reactions because they work. One key difference is that abusers and predators will often use silence, secrecy, and isolation to protect themselves.

Some other questions that I think worth considering are: how do you respond when those situations happen? And what do you do to take care of yourself and your needs, to address the situation, and to move forward? If it’s an ongoing pattern in your life, it might be worth looking at what you do in those situations. Reflecting on that might provide useful information about these dynamics so you can change how you respond to them.

Along those lines, are there patterns in how these situations play out? For example, do you find yourself in similar situations over and over, whether with the same person or with different people? Is there a cycle happening here? And if there is, where is there room to break the cycle?

This seems really important to me because there are a lot of people who excuse bad behavior by saying that the person who did it didn’t realize that they were doing it. It’s a way of avoiding the hard task of calling them out and dealing with the consequences that can have for our relationships and our communities. It keeps us trapped in unchanging cycles of abuse, and it needs to change.

Something that helped me shift my thinking around it was having someone point out to me that malice isn’t required for abuse to happen. Sure, some people are certainly malicious. And many others are acting out of pain, or habit, or training, or lack of positive role models, or a history of trauma and abuse. They might be trying to protect themselves from situations that feel scary or threatening to them. They might be acting in response to being triggered. All of that can be real without changing the fact that their actions are abusive. Once I realized that, I stopped making excuses for people who seemed to be reacting to their pain. My strategies for responding to them might be different than what I would do in response to malice, but I don’t let it keep me from speaking up anymore.

Because here’s what it all boils down to. If someone is causing problems and genuinely doesn’t realize it, then telling them about it is the only way they can change. If they genuinely have good intentions, then as hard as it can be, they will want to know so they can adjust accordingly. In that case, there’s no reason to not tell them. And if their intentions aren’t good, then telling them and seeing how they respond lets you know that. In those situations, you don’t need to excuse their behavior because they don’t actually mean well. Either way, it’s a net gain for you. And depending on the details, it might be a net gain for the people around you and your community.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Visit his webpage to read more of his pieces here.

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November 4, 2015
Luck Favours the Prepared: Why You Should Read the Ultimate Guide to Sex Over Fifty

There’s an old saying that “luck favors the prepared.” It means that if you want to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities of that random chance offers, it helps to have things set up in advance. That kept coming to mind when I read The Ultimate Guide to Sex After Fifty: How to Maintain – or Regain – a Spicy, Satisfying Sex Life, by Joan Price.

As a sex & relationship coach, I’ve worked with a lot of clients who were struggling to figure out how to make sex work as they got older. Some of them were facing medical issues that affected pleasure or mobility. Some of them were getting back out into the dating world after divorce or death of a partner. Some of them simply wanted to find new ways to experience pleasure, whether on their own or with someone else. But one common question they all had was: “where do I go to get information about my situation?”

I’ve always been happy to point them to Joan’s other books because they were full of useful tips and suggestions. But Joan isn’t the sort of person to sit still. The Ultimate Guide to Sex After Fifty offers even more info and resources than her previous guides, and she delves into some topics that nobody else has been willing to explore.

I especially liked her section on dating and relationships. She talks about some common experiences for people who have never been partnered, those who are divorced, and those who have become widowed. Never having faced some of the issues she describes, I’d never really thought about how they would affect sex and dating. I also enjoyed reading the quotes from folks who had decided that while they wanted sex and companionship, they didn’t want to create another partnership with anyone. Seniors having friends-with-benefits is a logical answer to that, and this is the first book I’ve seen that talks about how to make that work.

That was one of the places where that saying came to mind. If you know that FWBs are a possibility, it becomes a lot easier to consider that option if the time comes. And if you know about some of the other relationship concerns that older folks often face, you’ll be more able to deal with them when you get there. And that’s the thing- if you’re lucky, the question of sex for seniors will be relevant to your life, sooner or later. The more you know now, the less challenging it’ll be.

That’s why I think everyone should read The Ultimate Guide to Sex After Fifty. If you’re already over fifty, it’s a no brainer. There’s a whole lot of info that you can use. But if you aren’t yet, I hope you will be someday. And while most younger folks don’t spend a lot of time thinking about older people having sex, I think that you’re better off if you do. If you spend the first fifty years of your life ignoring the fact that older folks have sex, or worse, if you make it into a joke or a target of mockery, you’re setting yourself up for a really rough time when you get to that age. You’ll have to overcome all that habit and belief that you can’t be sexual, and that’s going to make things even more difficult when you’re trying to deal with how the challenges of getting older affect your sex life.

So if you want to get lucky when you reach that point, your best bet is to start preparing now. Change your attitudes about older people and sex, and pick up a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Sex After Fifty: How to Maintain – or Regain – a Spicy, Satisfying Sex Life. You’ll be glad you did, and a lot sooner than you think.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Visit his webpage to read more of his pieces here.

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November 1, 2015
Help! My Boyfriend keeps Groping me!
Here’s a question that showed up in my in box that I think will resonate with many of you:

I have been dating my boyfriend for six months. I like him a lot. He likes to touch my breasts a lot, including when we’re not having sex or during foreplay — just casually, because he enjoys it — he says he just really likes my breasts. Some of the time I’m OK with it, but a lot of the time it feels distracting, like he’s sexualizing neutral situations or invading my space. He even did it one time when I was upset about something and he’d been comforting me. I have told him it makes me feel kind of manhandled and objectified, and I called him out particularly sharply during that incident in which I was upset. He has seemed apologetic but hasn’t quite stopped with the casual breast-touching. I don’t know quite where and how to draw a line with him. I feel kind of ambivalent about it — on one hand, I guess I could just change my attitude about it and go with the flow, but on the other hand, it often annoys me. Am I just interpreting it the wrong way? Should I insist on a no-breast-touching-except-for-sex policy, or ask him to ask me each time he wants to do it, or perhaps declare a temporary moratorium? What would you think might make sense and actually work? I want to communicate clearly, have him understand what this is like for me, and maintain our closeness and trust while coming to some sort of middle ground that makes us both feel good. I’ve taken to attempting ersatz retaliation by squeezing his crotch or nipple occasionally in protest (lightly), which gets the message across but doesn’t make me feel too good about myself, and mostly just makes him laugh. He’s really a good guy and in general works to be a GGG partner for me, I just think he doesn’t get what this is like for me.

I think there are a few different ways you could approach this, depending on what feels most comfortable to you. The first thing, though, is that I don’t think you need to try to change your attitude about it and just “go with the flow.” Your discomfort is valid and you get to have whatever boundaries you want for how and when he touches you.

While it might seem like ersatz retaliation would work, I’m not surprised that it didn’t. Given that men don’t generally experience the same level of unwanted touch, sexual attention, or sexual intrusion that women face, he’s not likely to feel the same way when you do it. So that makes it not really effective for getting your point across.

One of the challenges in dealing with this kind of thing is that it’s easy to slip into the trap of trying to figure out why he does this as a way of strategizing how to respond. The difficulty is that doing that can actually make it harder for you to set your boundaries. While his motivations are a part of this puzzle, they don’t have to keep you from maintaining your bodily autonomy. They’re something for him to figure out so he can change his behaviors, and no matter what they are, you get to have your limits.

So here’s a framework for you to tell him what you need in a way that might be easier for him to hear:

1) Name the behavior. Start with something like, “When you touch my breasts during non-sexual interactions without asking…” Focusing on the action frames the next part and keeps attention on what he’s doing, rather than why.

2) Describe what meaning you associate with it. Some possibilities might be:
- It seems like you’re sexualizing me when I’m not feeling sexual.
- It seems like you don’t care about my boundaries.
- It looks like you’re not interested in whether I want you to do it or not.
The goal in this part is to talk about what his actions mean to you. We’ll get to how they feel in the next part, so try to keep this piece about what you think they mean.

3) Now, you’re ready to talk about how it makes you feel:
- Because of that, I feel really invaded.
- That makes me feel angry about it.
- I feel upset about it.
The reason this works is that when you explain what you think something means, it becomes much easier for him to understand how you feel. It’s also a lot less likely that he’ll get defensive about this, which will help him absorb what you’re saying. (This is based on the book Taking the War Out of Our Words, which I highly recommend.) Of course, you need to tailor this to your specific situation, but the general format is what happened, what it means to you, and how you feel about it. Put it all together, and you might say:
At this point, I’m guessing that he’ll have a response, and the two of you can talk about it. My hope is that he’ll apologize, and there are some important steps to that process, too. It’s essential that he really try to understand how you feel and commit to changing his behavior as part of that. So then, the question becomes: what changes do you want to ask for?

I think it’s totally fair for you to tell him that you want him to ask you about touching your breasts in non-sexual situations. If he has to stop and use his words, it’ll give him an opportunity to explore what he’s doing and why. It will also demonstrate to you that he values your autonomy and that he understands where your boundaries are. When it comes to things like this, I think that the way to find the middle ground is for him to learn how to invite sexual energy into the situation (here’s my favorite way to do that) rather than assuming it’s ok.

One thing- you might also want to consider how you’ll deal with his learning curves around this. Whatever it is that’s prompting him, he’s probably developed some habitual patterns, and those might take some time for him to successfully change. You could, for example, simply take his hand off of your breast. Or you could take his hand away and tell him, “This is that thing we talked about.” If he’s genuinely trying to modify what he does, that will likely be enough. If he gets pushy or insistent, or if he doesn’t seem to be trying to change, that’s another conversation you’ll need to have with him.

I hope that helps!

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Visit his webpage to read more of his pieces here.

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October 10, 2015
Having trouble finding casual sex?

Over on the Good Vibrations Magazine, I received a comment from a woman whose husband travels a lot. The two of them have a non-monogamous relationship and she’s had some difficulty finding casual partners:

I wanted to address your concept of having casual sex in a positive fashion, and how difficult that seems to be, especially for men. It’s a paradox…most men seem to choose casual sex because they don’t want to have to deal with “relationship” stuff, but if you’re sleeping with someone on a regular basis, you’re having a relationship, albeit one that leads to the bedroom and not the altar. It’s much more difficult to have casual sex than a committed relationship: it takes honesty, openness, integrity and an extremely high degree of communication. It seems to be way too much work for most men.

I think that part of the difficulty she’s facing may be partly due to the ways that we talk about casual sex and I think it’s worth unpacking that a bit.

There are a lot of different meanings that people apply to casual sex and it often seems like we think of it as an either/or. Either it’s a casual thing (and there’s no “relationship”) or there’s an emotional commitment (and it’s not casual). And this is the sort of thinking that seems to make this so difficult.

It’s important to recognize that there’s no such thing as “not being in a relationship.” There’s a relationship between any two things, people, or concepts. That relationship may be physical, mental, emotional or a combination of the above and some people would also add “spiritual” to the list. It may also be indirect, or quite distant. But to say that you want to have sex without having a relationship is simply inaccurate- a relationship is already there. The question then, isn’t how to keep from having a relationship, but rather, what kind of relationship you want to create.

Once you start asking that question, then you can start to figure out where your needs, desires and wants are. This particular person wants to find someone for occasional sex with someone who is willing to meet her husband (and get the green light from him), will check in with her every so often to make sure that everything is working for each of them, and is ok with telling her when he has other lovers. None of that seems unreasonable to me, but if she starts her search by looking for someone who thinks of casual sex as “we’ll get together, boink, and go home”, that’s likely to lead to a mis-match. And given that many people define “casual sex” like that, I’m not surprised that she isn’t finding what she wants.

It can also be challenging for women who want to have these sorts of relationships with men because a lot of men get caught up in the virgin-whore dichotomy. Not that this is limited to men, by any means, but finding guys who can have a sexual relationship with a woman that’s not centered on dating/marriage without putting her in the whore/slut category isn’t easy.

Making this even more complex, many men simply don’t have the emotional self-awareness or relationship skills to manage what she’s asking for. In general, boys aren’t taught the skills they need to figure out what they’re feeling, how to tell someone about it, how to ask for what they need/want, how to listen to a partner, etc. It’s not that boys and men don’t have feelings, but a lot of them deal with the difficult ones by getting angry or disconnecting. And how in the world is a guy whose skills are limited like that supposed to manage a relationship like the one she describes above? (Fortunately, some people are teaching their boys better skills than these, but it’ll take some time before that’s the norm.)

It sometimes seems to me that some men say that they want casual sex because they’re scared by emotional connection and want to avoid it. Emotional connection can be scary when you don’t know how to create and nurture it. And when we continue to talk about it as either/or, we only make it worse. When the only choices we hear about are full-on-commitment or 100% uncommitted, it’s no wonder that so many of her potential partners get scared off.

So my suggestion to her and to other women in similar situations is to stop looking for casual sex and instead, to look for someone interested in creating a sexual relationship that fits her needs. Put the cards on the table from the very beginning, perhaps in an online personals ad, and let that be the first filter you use. Let go of the idea that either you’re in a committed ongoing relationship or you’re in a casual connection, and instead, create the relationship you want.

I also want to point out that any relationship will work better when there’s “honesty, openness, integrity and an extremely high degree of communication.” Having multiple partners certainly adds extra challenges, simply because there are more people to take into account. But the skills that help people deal with conflicts, stay connected, and generally create successful relationships aren’t limited to any particular structure.

Since I like to offer resources whenever I can, here are a couple of really good books on the topic:

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships is a great look at the more common (and many of the less common) forms that open relationships can take. There are also lots of tips and suggestions from people with real-life experience with each of them.

The Ethical Slut: A Roadmap for Relationship Pioneers offers a lot of really good information on many of the concerns or questions people have around things like boundaries, safer sex, flirting and jealousy.

There are also a lot of online resources and communities, especially if you’re looking for info about swinging or polyamory, so take a look there. The best way to find someone is to be in the communities that they’re likely to be in, too. Plus, you’ll find lots of helpful info, so you can avoid some of the mistakes that other people have made.

Lastly, don’t settle for less than you deserve. It’s absolutely possible to create the sort of relationship you want, and it’s a lot easier when you’re clear in your intentions and you’re not willing to settle.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Visit his webpage to read more of his pieces here.

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July 2, 2015
What’s The Big Deal About Women Earning More Than Men?

About ten years ago, Laurie Toby Edison published Familiar Men, a book of non-erotic nudes of men. It’s an amazing book, and I was proud to contribute The Day I Found My Ass for it. Edison captured some deeply moving images of men of many different ages, races, and backgrounds to show how our perception of nudity and sexualization differ when men are the focus, rather than women.

I remember going to one of her signings and hearing her talk about the response her photos received. Edison said that one of the most common questions she heard was, “What do these men do?” It took her by surprise, until she realized that most people are used to looking at how men are dressed and how we act in order to figure out what we do for a living. So many of the definitions of masculinity are tied up in being a provider, being a worker, being a breadwinner, that when the visual cues are taken away, a lot of people are confused. Of course, that’s really only the case in non-sexual photos like those in Familiar Men, and there aren’t too many of those. How many nude images of men can you think of that weren’t intended to be sexual?

I’ve been thinking about this in light of the recently-released study showing that 4 out of 10 US households with children have mothers who are the primary or sole earner for her family and the predictable right-wing freakout about that. I think it’s important to unpack what it means when someone like conservative radio host Brian Fischer means when he says, “I don’t think it’s a healthy dynamic to have a wife outearn her husband, because so much of his sense of worth as a male is tied up with what he does vocationally.” Why is so much of men’s self-worth tied to how we labor? Why is what we do for a living one of the first things people ask about?

“What do you do?” is one of the most common party conversation openers. Of course, that’s an easy topic to talk about, though I wonder if social conventions will change in response to our disastrous economy and the desire to avoid unpleasant topics at a dinner party. But why do so many men base their sense of personal value on what their income is? And why do so many women in these situations do more childcare and household labor to bolster their partners’ egos?

This seems like an especially important question to consider in a world in which global wealth inequality is growing faster than ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM

If these right wing pundits really want to make it possible for male-female couples to raise children on one income, they might consider pushing for the economic structures that would make that possible. But leaving aside their logical inconsistencies and how they deal with cognitive dissonance by insisting that men are designed (despite the actual science) to be the breadwinners, it seems to me that masculinity is at a turning point.

For a long time, we’ve defined masculinity in terms of “performance.” Using things like job performance, sexual performance, or athletic performance as our measuring tools creates men who look strong, but are hollow on the inside. When jobs are lost or bodies change, when the performance shifts, many men struggle with their self-worth. It’s in these situations that men’s egos get coddled, because that seems easier than reinventing what it means to be a man.

I think it’s time for us to stop defining our value by looking at how we perform. I think it’s time for us to ask ourselves what value be bring to our relationships, to our communities, and to the world. I want to see masculinity defined as something more than how well we score.

That’s not an easy path because it means that we need to look at how fear and shame have been used to control us. We need to explore the messages we’ve been forced to accept about ourselves. We need to create our self-worth, instead of getting it from performing to some external standard. And we need to learn new tools for dealing with the parts of ourselves that we’ve been avoiding. In my work as a coach, I’ve spoken with a lot of men and their partners about these kinds of things and I’m always amazed at the courage it takes to step out of the Act Like a Man Box.

And that’s the turning point we’re at. It’s time for us to be brave enough to decide that being a man isn’t about performance or scoring. It’s time to make it about something that really matters.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Charlie Glickman

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October 9, 2014
Cisgenderfluid

“How do you identify?”

That’s often a tough question for me to answer. As a general rule, I’ve shifted away from identifying as anything because I’ve found that when I do, it can be hard to let go of that self-identity when things change. In my experience, life brings lots of surprises that are difficult enough to navigate without adding the challenges of changing an identity. When I hear people say things like “I can’t be attracted to that person. I’m straight/gay/queer/lesbian/kinky/vanilla/etc.” I see how their identity crisis is complicating their situation and I try to avoid setting myself up like that.

At the same time, there are words that I sometimes use to describe myself because they convey some useful information. Some of them are: queer, kinky, poly, able-bodied, white, Jewish, pagan, atheist, male, and cisgender. But many of these have been mutable over time.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been playing more with gender. I’ve always run a lot of yin energy and I’ve had a lot of fun exploring how that plays out in my life. On an energetic level, I feel very balanced between male and female and I like how that works for me. At the same time, using words like “genderfluid” to describe myself hasn’t felt accurate. I’ve called myself cisgender because it seems to accurately describe my baseline. I’m very present in my masculine body and in being a man. I’m also very aware of how I move through the world and that I receive the privilege that cisgender folks accrue. I know that receiving cisgender privilege feels like a misgendering to some people, but it doesn’t feel like that to me (even while I resent living in a world that gives me that privilege while denying it to so many others). I don’t experience tension or conflict between how I feel physically and how I feel energetically and emotionally, and I don’t think that transgender fits how I feel. So how do I describe myself when I’m simultaneously a cisgender man and genderfluid?

Obviously, by creating a new word: cisgenderfluid. It honors the cisgender aspects of my life while making room for the gender-creative parts of my psyche and my life. It acknowledges that I don’t face the same challenges that most trans and other gender-transgressive folks do, and recognizes that I don’t fit into the standard box of masculinity. It gives me the freedom to play with gender and to queer it, and it provides a foundation on which to stand. It makes room for the fact that my baseline is cisgender while creating space for me to step away from that when I feel like it. It expands the conversation about gender in some ways that I really enjoy and it recognizes that I often occupy the space of both.

I’ve been talking with friends about this over the last few weeks and the more I have done so, the more this word feels like a good description for where I am at this moment in my life. I think there’s a lot of room here to play in and I’m going to check it out for a while. And if you’re curious about these terrains or if you think you might want to explore them, I invite you to come and join me.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.

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August 24, 2014
What Revenge Porn Tells Us About Sex and Humiliation

I’m always intrigued by the many ways that sex and shame intertwine in our culture, and “revenge porn” says a lot about that. Revenge porn sites, if you aren’t familiar with them, are designed for men who want to upload sexy photos of their ex-girlfriends and lovers without permission. One of the most common scenarios is for guys to take images that their partners shared with them while they were dating and use them to “get revenge” on them. Whether it’s because of a bad breakup, lingering resentment, or simply a desire to lash out at an ex, it’s taking sexual shaming to a whole new level.

Jill Filipovic and Thomas MacAulay Millar have already done an excellent job of discussing these sites and situating them within the context of the sexual shaming that celebrity women are subjected to, such as Matt Lauer’s insulting comments to Anne Hathaway (and her snappy retort, “I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants.“). But there’s an element that I think they both miss.

Our culture loves to humiliate people. One of the reasons “reality shows” are so popular is the possibility of seeing a meltdown. (Actually, given how the shows are designed, it’s pretty much a guarantee.) Think about how many talk shows are structured to give the viewer a chance to shake their heads or boo a speaker. And a quick look at the supermarket checkout stand will give you plenty of examples of articles about “worst beach bodies.” For that matter, what about all of those magazine articles that mock someone’s clothing, makeup, or hair on the red carpet? As a society, we clearly enjoy shaming and humiliating people.

Of course, there’s a clear gender imbalance here. Women are subject to much, much more scrutiny when it comes to physical appearance. Every aspect of a woman’s outfit or hairstyle or presentation is an opportunity for someone to scoff, roll their eyes, or talk about how it shows off all of her “flaws.” According to Brene Brown, men’s shame usually centers on not appearing weak while women’s shame often revolves around not being perfect. It’s no wonder, given that women get attacked for not being flawless.

But in addition to everything that Filipovic and Miller say regarding revenge porn, consent, and sexual assault, I think we also need to ask ourselves why, precisely, we think there’s something so shameful about sex that a photo of a woman giving a blow job or showing her breasts justifies her losing her job or being shamed. Why did the photo of Anne Hathaway without underwear provoke so many responses? Have none of those people ever gone commando themselves? Have none of them ever seen a vulva? And while there’s certainly no shortage of woman-shaming around other aspects of life, why in the world is it so much more virulent, threatening, and pervasive when it comes to sex?

I know that sexism is a huge piece of that. But so is sex-negativity and sexual shame. Plenty of people have written volumes about slut-shaming and how it’s used to police women’s choices. (I’ve had quite a bit to say on the topic, myself.) And what’s often left out of some of those discussions is the fact that sexual shaming only makes sense if you think that sex is shameful. Sexualized shaming of women only makes sense if you think that women’s sexuality is shameful. Getting off on sexualized shaming of women only happens if you get off on shaming and humiliating women.

So ask yourself – do you get a thrill when you see a fashion disaster? Do you enjoy a feeling of smug superiority when you hear about a celebrity trainwreck or when you see someone in a paparazzi photo that shows them simply being human instead of being perfect? If you do, then you might want to consider what makes you different from the men who created or participate on revenge porn sites. It’s easy to attack and blame them for their violations of women’s consent, for their sexualized shaming of their exes, and for being creepy. But maybe it’s time that we take a look at how many ways we create a culture in which their behaviour is simply a more extreme version of some behaviours that we don’t even notice anymore. Creepshots are pretty closely related to paparazzi photos, after all.

I’d love to live in a society that doesn’t get off on shaming people. Shame is powerful and while it can serve some positive purposes, as a culture, we’ve allowed ourselves to become hooked on it. I don’t see how that can be a good thing, and I think it’s up to each of us to find healthier ways to move through the world. One step we can take is to stop indulging our taste for shaming, especially sexualized shaming of women. And maybe the next time a celebrity does something embarrassing, we could just let it go. Maybe we could see what it’s like to not mock or shame people. Maybe we could ask ourselves why we get off on humiliating other people, how that shapes our relationships, and what that says about our own choices.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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May 28, 2014
Why Men Need to Learn How to Not Be “That Guy”

Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville wrote a piece today about why she thinks that straight men shouldn’t write articles or blogs telling other men how to not be creepy. She makes some good points, though I think she also misses some key points.

Her first argument is that when men talk about creepiness, they tend to frame it as something that other men do:

I would wager that virtually all of the men who have behaved toward me in ways described as “creepy” don’t consider themselves creepy. “Creepy” is something other dudes are. If you want to have a serious talk with men about their interactions with women, you can’t use language that very few of the men who need to take this lesson believe applies to them.

There’s certainly some truth to this. A lot of men have no idea that they’re being creepy, and plenty of other men don’t care if they are or not. But I think she’s wrong about how “virtually all of the men” think about themselves.

See, here’s the thing- almost all of the messages that boys and men receive about how to approach someone for sex, how to ask for what you want, how to perform masculinity, and how to deal with rejection teach us to push someone’s boundaries. They teach us to not take no for an answer. They teach us that sexual success is measured by how often you have sex, rather than the pleasure and joy of the participants. All of these messages teach men to be creepy.

As a man who is both deeply committed to being an ally to women, and as a man who is deeply committed to crafting an honest, authentic, passionate life, I’ve struggled with these messages. I had to learn through trial and error (and unfortunately, far more error than I wish) because I didn’t have a single role model to point the way. And I find it troubling that anyone who wants to create a world of gender equality would advocate for men not stepping up and taking that on.

Many of the men who come to my workshops are really worried about being creepy. They genuinely want to learn how to flirt with women, and to be romantic and sexual with women. And they want to do it without being creepy. So unless someone offers them useful tools for how to do that and helps them see how we need to resist the patterns of sexism, sexual intrusion, and gender roles, how does Ms McEwan think that will happen?

Personally, I’m not a big fan of othering the creeps. I know that I’ve done things that were creepy, simply because I didn’t know how to not do them. I agree with Ms McEwan that nothing good comes from pretending that it’s those “other guys.” But I disagree with her that men talking about creepiness has to use that false dichotomy. The fact that it often has doesn’t mean that it must. Rather than shutting down men’s voices, I’d rather create a call to action for the guys who get it, so they can stand up and be heard.

In her second point, Ms McEwan argues that many of the writings on the topic focus on the well-intentioned and clueless men, while ignoring the existence of predators. I totally agree with that. I also agree that there are predators who will take the lessons meant for non-predatory men and use them to camouflage their intentions, just as they often pretend to be “hapless dude[s] who just didn’t know any better” when they get caught.

But I’m still not convinced that the way to deal with that is by not making room for men to teach each other how to navigate consent, communication, boundaries, expectations, and relationships. She says that “If those [well-intentioned but clueless] guys want to not harm women, they’ll learn even if you target your allyship in a way that centers accountability for any harm, irrespective of intent.” How, precisely, are men supposed to learn these things if we don’t ever talk about how to do it? After all, it’s not as if guys are discussing their relationships at the corner bar. And it’s not like most people get to watch other folks talk about their sexual desires in healthy, respectful ways. So unless there are books, workshops, or websites to learn from, how can that possibly happen?

At the same time, I 100% agree that men also need to learn that we are accountable for any harm we do, whatever the reason. As important as they are, intentions don’t matter when it’s time to make amends. And you don’t get to pull the “Golly! I had no idea that wasn’t ok.” card more than once. Men who use that excuse over and over, without taking steps to change how they act, place themselves firmly on the douchebag-rapist spectrum. But we can hold onto that AND the fact that boys and men need to teach each other how to act honourably.

Ms McEwan’s third point is that men need to make room for women to talk about these issues:

Instead, invite a woman to write a piece about consent from her perspective, then leverage your male privilege to endorse and champion it. Host it in your space. Invite other men to listen to what your female guest writer has to say. The thing about “creeps” is that they don’t respect women; they don’t listen to us; they don’t empathize with us.

If you really want men to not harm women, then find ways of encouraging them to respect, listen to, and empathize women. To see what “creepiness” looks like from our perspective.

Yes. This. A lot. But it’s also not enough. It’s not enough because cisgender women have no idea what it’s like to live as a cisgender man, to grow up being shamed into masculinity. You don’t have that lived experience, any more than I have the lived experience of being shamed into femininity. This doesn’t have to be an either/or. We can serve as allies and support women, and we can also show men what it means to “respect, listen to, and empathize [with] women.” We need to model it to each other, we need to teach each other how to do it, and we need to hold ourselves and each other accountable. One way we can do that is by writing about it. (And yes, the fact that I’m not straight makes a difference in how I approach this issue.)

Do I think that straight men teaching other straight men how to not be creepy is necessarily a good thing? Not at all. I think McEwan drops a lot of truthbombs in her post. And I’m troubled by the fact that a lot of the marketing behind the “how to not be creepy” books and articles rests on a foundation of “this is how to get laid.” Acting like an ethical, honorable person because it’ll make it easier to have sex is creepy. Fighting the cultural programming and learning to be an ethical, honourable person is not. Unfortunately, most of the writing I’ve seen on the topic is the former. I think we need to see more of the latter.

That’s why Sabrina Morgan and I started teaching “How to Not Be ‘That Guy’”, our workshop on this topic. We’ll be in San Diego on February 5 and in Oakland, CA on February 26. While these presentations are focused on the tantra/sacred sex communities, you don’t have to be part of them to attend. We also have a more general version that focuses on heterosexual men, and we teach this workshop for many different communities, including queer men, transgender men, the BDSM community, the polyamory/open relationship world, and other sex-positive circles.

We also both offer our services as sex coaches. I work with individuals and couples over Skype, and we both do in-person sessions. So when you’re ready to figure all this out, or when you need some support to improve any part of your sexual and romantic life, get in touch!

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.

March 1, 2014
What Does “Sexual Success” Mean?

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself what a successful sexual experience is?

It’s an important question because how you answer it says a lot about your attitudes and beliefs about sex. And that has a big impact on the kinds of experiences you’re creating and the sexual relationships you build.

One of the more common definitions of “sexual success,” at least for male/female dynamics, is intercourse that leads to orgasm. And while the inclusion of a woman’s orgasm in that formula is an improvement over definitions that leave it out, this way of thinking about sexual success is still wrapped up in the goal-oriented and limited model that so often results in embarrassment or shame.

Take, for example, what happens if someone is taking a blood pressure medication that causes him to not get erections. Or if someone has endometriosis or another health issue that makes vaginal penetration uncomfortable or painful. Or if someone doesn’t orgasm reliably from intercourse. Or if they’re facing emotional or relationship difficulties that make it hard to relax into pleasure. For a lot of people in these kinds of situations, their sexual difficulties are magnified by their belief that they’re failing at sex.

One response to that is to push harder for a quick fix or a pill or a magic recipe that will allow for the kind of sex that they imagine will solve their problems. I once had a client who came to me because he wasn’t getting erections and he wanted to know if Viagra or a cock ring would help. It turned out that he was under an incredible amount of stress- he’d lost his job, his house was in foreclosure, and he and his wife were talking about divorce. But it was the fact that he wasn’t getting erections that finally prompted him to get help.

He had no idea that stress can cause erection difficulties. It makes sense- when your fight or flight response kicks in, that’s probably not a good time to be having sex. And your body doesn’t care if the adrenaline is coming from being chased by a hungry tiger or from a looming work deadline. In fact, I don’t consider what this man was facing to be “erectile dysfunction” since his body was actually functioning just right, even if it was inconvenient. Unfortunately, his ideas around sexual success (not to mention the Act Like a Man Box) had him convinced he was failing at sex.

It’s not just men who face this, of course. A lot of women in similar situations fall into this trap, too. And while many queer folks have redefined what sex means to them, others are still convinced that a particular sex act or a specific response makes sex successful. Another client I worked with had a very idiosyncratic sexual response and she needed the right combination of sensations to orgasm. For her, oral sex was pleasurable but it wasn’t ever going to be on the list. Her girlfriend, however, was determined to make her orgasm from oral sex. She was convinced that her oral skills were top-notch and that they should be enough. The two of them were on the verge of breaking up because they each felt like they were failing at sex, when what they needed to do was rethink that success meant.

One way that I know that a client is stuck in their definition of sexual success is that they talk about how sex “should be.” As in: I should be able to get an erection when I want to, or I should be able to make her orgasm from oral sex. Any time I hear the word “should,” I look for the underlying shame because it’s almost always there, and sexual shame is often intertwined with the idea of success or failure.

Fortunately, there’s a way out of the trap of sexual success. All you need to do is redefine what it means. My personal definition is that a sexual experience is successful if everyone has a smile on their face at the end of it. It doesn’t matter what sex acts you do, and it doesn’t even matter if orgasms happen. If you both/all have smiles when you’re done, that’s a successful time. Imagine how much easier sex would be if more people could come to it from that perspective.

Of course, there are further nuances to this. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not be smiling after sex. They might not have had their needs or desires attended to. Something might have happened that triggered them. They could have had some physical discomfort or pain. In those situations, I still wouldn’t consider it a failure if the experience became an opportunity for growth. Scientists often say that an experiment is only a failure if you don’t learn anything from it. So even if a specific sexual encounter doesn’t result in smiles, it’s still a success if you take the experience and use it to build towards the next time.

When you shift your thinking around this, it opens up a lot more room to play and have fun in bed (or wherever else you happen to be). If something comes up and one kind of sex isn’t available, there are still lots of other ways to enjoy yourselves, and they all count as a win. That takes the pressure off and makes more room for you to have a great time.

Rethinking what sexual success means to you can take some practice, especially when feelings of embarrassment or shame arise. It’s not always an easy path to follow, but it’s worth the effort. As difficult as it can be, the payoff is happier, healthier relationships and more fun sex. As a sex coach, I help a lot of people find their way there and I’d be happy to talk with you about how I can be of service to you. If you’re feeling stuck, check out my sex coaching site and get in touch!

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.

January 12, 2014
Something I Want Men To Know Before Flirting With Women

There’s been an important shift in several different communities and scenes lately. In the kink world, in atheism circles, among feminist folks and their allies, in pagan communities, I’ve been seeing more people than ever before talking about the effects of sexual coercion, assault, harassment, unwanted attention, and other related topics. Of course, none of this is particularly new and women have been talking about it for years. But what’s different is the nature of the dialogue. More men who want to be allies to women are speaking up, and thank[tps_footer][/tps_footer]s to the potential of the internet and social networking, more people are seeing the patterns than ever before.v There are plenty of folks with lots of great stuff to say, and I don’t feel the need to repeat their words here. Instead, I want to address something that I wish I’d understood much earlier than I did.

Many of the reactions to this growing awareness that I’ve seen from men is some form of resentment that they don’t get to flirt with, cruise, or attempt to pick up women whenever they happen to see someone attractive. Leaving aside the underlying assumption that men should be able to express their sexual desire any time we want, I want to talk about the general cluelessness of most men around the incessant sexual intrusion that most women experience and the effects that has on flirting.

I’m writing this specifically for the men who want to flirt with women, whether the hope is for a one-night stand, a relationship, a conversation, a date, or simply to pass the time. What happens when the intention is to harass, stalk, annoy, or get any other reaction from women is a different thing. But right there, that is the root of the problem. A lot of the time, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference. That sucks for the guys who genuinely want to connect with someone. And you know what? As much as it sucks for you and me, it’s many, many times worse for women. We can decide to deal with this situation or not, but women don’t get that choice because they get harassed all the time. So the first thing we need to wrap our brains around is that expecting women to have sympathy for how we feel when this is unpleasant for us is like expecting someone with a broken leg to have sympathy for someone who’s got a sprained finger. If they have the bandwidth and interest, that’s great! But resenting them when they don’t isn’t helpful. We need to stop expecting women to coddle our feelings and take care of them for ourselves.

More important, though, is that getting upset when someone assumes ill intentions on your part doesn’t help. Yes, I know that it hurts. And I understand that it’s easy to take it personally unless you really understand the effects of widespread, ongoing, and relentless sexual intrusion. That’s the thing that we need to get- most women are dealing with the emotional, mental, and physical pain of moving through the world as targets. It’s not fair or reasonable to expect them to assume good intentions every time a guy flirts or makes a move. I would love to live in a world in which that wasn’t the case, and we don’t live there. Deal with it and work to change it, but don’t expect women to act as if it’s safe for them to assume good intentions. Their experience says otherwise. When men lash out online or in person with violent speech and threats of rape or murder, that lets women know that they’re smart to be defensive. If you’re doing that, you’re contributing to the problem. Stop. Now.

There’s a lesson to be learned from marketing. When companies sell a product, part of how they develop a successful promotion is by figuring out how different approaches will be received by potential customers. It doesn’t matter if a campaign would be effective at convincing the marketing department, the admin staff, or the IT folks. The only relevant metrics are how it’s perceived by the target audience and how they respond to it. Similarly, if your flirting doesn’t have the effects you hope for, that’s not the fault of the woman you’re trying to approach. It means that there’s something about your approach that doesn’t work for that person at that time. Take a lesson from marketing and assess how and when you’re flirting, rather than blaming or attacking someone.

That means being aware of how other people perceive you. You might be an awesome guy who would never hurt anyone. But if you’re physically big, or if you take up a lot of space (physically or energetically), if you’re in a setting in which she can’t get away (like an elevator or on a plane), you’ll do better if you’re more gentle in your approach. Even if none of those things are true, try being more gentle and see how that works for you. While it goes against “traditional” gender roles, that’s what makes it work. The usual gender roles are exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.

Given that I’m a cat person, I think of it as making my lap inviting so that the cat will want to come sit with me, rather than dragging it out from under the bed and getting angry when it bites me and runs away. Sure, there are some cats who like it when random people pick them up. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the many other cats who hate it. That’s one of the things that makes being inviting so effective – it works on more cat s than an aggressive approach and the ones who don’t want your attention at all can go their own way without anyone getting hurt. Chasing a cat is not going to convince it that it’s safe with you.

Making yourself inviting means letting go of your attachment to the outcome of your desire. When you can engage with someone without expecting any particular result, you can receive any reply without taking it personally. No matter how a specific woman responds, you won’t jump to conclusions about what that implies about you. There are a lot of reasons someone might not want to accept your invitation, and many of them really have nothing to do with you.

Making yourself inviting means enjoying the conversation, in and of itself. Even if that’s the only interaction you have with someone, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t go anywhere. Let go of the notion that success means anything other than a good connection. If that leads to something else, have fun! But if you only think of the flirting as a means to an end, rather than something fun on its own, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and resentment.

Making yourself inviting means investing your energy and time in a future payoff. If someone’s not available or interested right now, you can leave room for a future connection. Offer your contact info without asking for or expecting hers. Maybe she’ll reply, or maybe you’ll run into her at another party. If she’s someone you already know, you’ll see her again. Take the pressure off her and you’re much more likely to get the response you want.

Making yourself inviting means knowing how to offer an invitation that makes it clear that you value her consent and honor her autonomy. Start off with “if you’re interested…” and follow up with what you’re offering. Demonstrate that her interest is a requirement for you. In a world that actively shames women for their desires and that tells them that their consent is irrelevant, that can be a powerful thing and it’ll make you memorable.

Making yourself inviting means being able to have a conversation with someone and not letting your attraction distract you too much. As an exercise, try walking down the street without assessing women’s attractiveness. There’s nothing wrong with looking at pretty people, but it’s a problem when all you can see about someone is whether you’d have sex with them or not. A lot of guys get so used to scanning a crowd for a pretty face or a hot body that they lose the ability to see past that. It’s good to practice not doing that and it’ll make it much easier to let go of your attachment to the outcome of your desire. Just to be clear – I’m not saying it’s a problem to look. It’s a problem when you can’t maintain eye contact without checking out someone’s cleavage or when all you care about is whether you think someone is hot. If you’re not interested in someone as a person, don’t be surprised if she’s not responsive to your advances.

Making yourself inviting means learning how to manage your sexual energy instead of letting it take over. It means accepting that it can feel intrusive, even when that’s not what you meant. It means being able to apologize for hurting someone, even when it wasn’t your intention. It means understanding that someone’s lack of interest or unavailability isn’t necessarily a rejection of you. Making yourself inviting means learning emotional and energetic self-regulation, which is part of emotional intelligence.

Will this sort of flirting work all the time? Of course not. For a lot of different reasons, there are plenty of women who will misunderstand what you’re doing and think that your less aggressive approach signals a lack of interest or that you’re not macho enough for them. But in my experience, the tradeoff is worth it and you’ll get far fewer defensive, angry reactions. And you really are more likely to get what you want when it’s based on a foundation of respect.

Even more important that that, though, is that it starts to shift the ways in which gender roles and sexual communication work. It’s time to stop feeding the cycle of war between genders. And yes, I have lots to say to women about what they can do about that, too. But I’m not willing to expect women to make the first move on this one. Besides, it’s much more effective to model what you want other people to do than to demand they take the first step.

Ultimately, I want you (yes, you!) to be able to create the sexual and loving relationships you want. Adapting your flirting and cruising methods to take into account the history of sexual intrusion and assault that most women have experienced and the deeply ingrained and dysfunctional gender roles modern society holds will make them much more effective.

This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.

December 27, 2013