Susie Bright's Journal

Egg Sex: Pregnancy and Erotic Desire

In 1966, when I was eight years old, my mother gave me a little pink book, A Baby is Born. In great detail, and with lots of close-ups and diagrams, it described exactly what a sperm and egg looked like and how they joined together, with subsequent portraits of the developing fetus.

How did the sperm meet the egg to begin with?

"Egg Sex" from Susie Bright's Sexual Reality

The book said simply, "Mommy and Daddy love each other very much. They lie close together and, after performing intercourse, the sperm is on its way to fertilize the egg."

There was no accompanying diagram, so I made what was probably my first earnest attempt to read between the lines of any piece of literature. I gleaned nothing.

Twenty-five years later, I was pregnant, and this time I went out and bought my own collection of pink and blue books bulging with instruction for prospective parents. Of course, there was a great deal to learn about fetal development and breast-feeding techniques, but I couldn't help but check each index under "Sexuality— during and after pregnancy."

All the manuals, from Dr. Spock to the latest yuppie know-it-all, followed an almost identical script: "Mommy and Daddy love each other very much..." Following this vein, the paragraphs on sexuality gave advice that was unexplicit, vague, and almost threatening in their avoidance of the nitty-gritty.

Steeped in a romance-novel notion of marriage, sexual advice to pregnant moms— whether revealed in print or in the strange silences at the doctor's office— gives short shrift to the dramatic changes in women's sexual physiology and desires. Great emphasis is placed on how to cope with the ambivalent husband's feelings towards his wife's body and the burden pregnancy puts on their normal sexual routine.

None of these books was written in the sixties. All of them glow with feminist and holistic approaches to mothering, supporting working moms, refuting the sexist prejudices against breast-feeding, and offering all manner of enlightened positive self-esteem for the mother-to-be.

I began to wonder if anyone knew what went on in women's sexual lives during pregnancy. The most definitive statement the books managed was: Sometimes she's hot, sometimes she's not. This wouldn't be the first time that conventional medicine had nothing to contribute to an understanding of female sexuality.

Meanwhile, my clit started to grow...

Continued in Sexual Reality, "Egg Sex"

 

Photo: Michael Rosen, 1989

Susie Bright— No Dogs, No Indians, No Irish!— Comes to Minnesota

 

I'm coming to the Twin Cities June 2nd and 3rd to celebrate my new memoir, Big Sex Little Death— and to offer a sex-positive parenting class.

June 2nd, 7-9pm

"An Evening with  Susie Bright and Her Memoir"

 Big Sex Little Death

 Smitten Kitten

 3010 Lyndale Ave S., Minneapolis

Free, Open to Everyone

June 3rd, 7-9pm

 "Mom and Dad’s Sex Diary"

"How Raising Kids Changes Your Sex Life and Foretells Theirs"

Smitten Kitten 

3010 Lyndale Ave S., Minneapolis

Tickets are $25/person. Please RSVP ahead.

Much of my maternal family background is from the old Irish ghetto in St. Paul, which is its own "NO Dogs NO Indians NO Irish" saga. I look forward to seeing old friends!

My mom also spend her last years on the Iron Range, (yes, I know where all the Bob Dylan secrets are buried)  and I have thrown the "video gauntlet" down to my pals up there to make the trip!  

 

My memoir begins with my proto-linguist parents, Bill and Elizabeth. They met in Berkeley (so gay) in the war years, traveled to India in the 50s, and then back to California Indian country, which changed the course of their lives.

In the 70s, comes my gun-toting, speculum-packed adolescence from the high school underground newspaper The Red Tide— the last days of the New Left and the first days of women's/sexual liberation. I don't think anyone's talked about the teenage foot soldiers of "women's lib" at the time— we had our own agenda.

The last third, "All Along the Girltower," is the erotic forensics of the then-unspoken-of sex trade, old-school porn, starting On Our Backs, the genesis of feminist sex education and the Shakespearean drama of the Sex Wars. 

As you know, we're unusual in that we're still standing here to talk about any of it!

The Smitten Kitten is one of the most remarkable, avant-garde, progressive feminist sex toy shops ever, and you know I don't say that lightly!

 
Here's a link to the book's preface, if you're curious: "The Terrible Secret of Women's Memoirs: Kill the Cookie."

 

This Sunday: Sex-Positive Parenting with Susie, In Seattle

Mom and Dad's Sex Diary:

How Raising Kids Changes Your Sex Life... and Foretells Theirs

A Sex-Positive Parenting Workshop with Susie Bright

 

Place: Babeland, Seattle, 707 E. Pike Street

Time: Sunday, May 22, 7:30-9 PM

Pre-register to Reserve Your Spot: 206.328.2914 

 

Let's unpack the sexual revolution of parenthood, from the time when you first get pregnant, the baby-and-little-kid years— to finally, the real marathon: kids reaching puberty and mom hitting menopause. 

 

What's a sex-positive parent to do? —There's your own life as a lover and a parent, and then there's seeing your children develop their own sexual perceptions and values.  

 

Yes, this IS the place to talk about things you won't hear on Oprah. There's physical and practical information to share, and emotional and ethical questions that can't be ignored. 

 

What are the most important things you can do, as a parent, to give your children sexual sanity?

 

How do you nurture and enjoy your own mojo as the years go by?

 

 

Come with your questions— I'll have plenty more for you, plus some answers you won't hear anyplace else.

 

Susie Bright is the author of Big Sex Little Death: a Memoir, Mommy's Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn, & Cherry Pie, and Jezebel sex advice columnist with her daughter Aretha.

 

At Your Peril! — Parenting Advice for Lions, Tigers, and Bears

Mommy memoirist Amy Chua and I share one thing in common— we've been humbled by our children, and have reconsidered our own parents in a new light.

I've heard from so many readers since I published my review of Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Some of you asked, "Hey, Susie, have you had the nerve to writing a parenting guidebook?"

Yes, I have, I just haven't garnered huge publicity— which may be lucky, considering the scrutiny! I've written extensively about pregnancy, the grade-school years, teenage sex education, and how I was parented myself.

 

Here's my list:

 

"Egg Sex" from Sexual Reality

This radical childbirth essay is probably the most influential piece I ever wrote about being an "emerging" mom. If you ever see a pain-relieving vibrator plugged into a delivery room wall, with the nurse nearby, nodding approvingly, you know I've done my work.

 

"My Mommy's Job"

How to answer 3rd Grade Homework assignments that require the child to describe their parent's "work." — You and your kid know the answer is controversial!

 

Mommy's Little Girl: Susie Bright on Porn, Motherhood, Sex, and Cherry Pie

The first third of this book is about my life as a parent of grade-school girl— everything from what they "pick up" on the playground, to how to maintain your so-called sex life as a sleepless parent.  And yes, my cherry pie recipe which is guaranteed to enchant any lover for a thousand years.

 

 

 

 

 

Full Exposure

I've had readers from High School to the AARP write me and tell me this was their "handbook" for how to construct their own sexual philosophy.  Here's the intro, and here's the "erotic manifesto" I ended up with at the end of it. Roll your own!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sexual State of the Union

I interiewed high school and college students about their sex lives— and this is what I found out. Check out chapters like "How Safe is Your Daughter?", (one of the best things I've ever written) "Co-ed Confidential," "Is There Good Sex After Vassar?" and "Totally Offensive."  

If I was going to construct a young adult sex ed class, I'd use the experiences I learned in this book.

 

 

 

Big Sex, Little Death

Finally, my upcoming memoir. I write about my own upbringing, amongst ambivalent Irish Catholics, emerging beatniks, and the generational struggle to stop beating the kids.

I consider what I learned after my mother and father died, and what I've concluded— (as well as what I am still completely dazed about).  It includes the issues I raised in my review of "Tiger Mother."

 

 

 

Please let me know the most inspiring parenting stuff you've ever read... I'd love to know.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Anne Seman's and Cathy Winks book, "The Mother's Guide to Sex." They put their considerable "all" into it!

 

Photo: My dad and my daughter, circa 2003.

 

Mad Men, Ft. Hood, & the Stupak Amendment: Connect the Dots

 I can't be the only one to make the connection. 

For those of us who who are devoted to the American tele-novella Mad Men, the recent psycho-shooting at Ft. Hood had an eerie plot echo.
 

(Spoilers ahead).

In Mad Men, which takes place in New York of 1963, there's a fictional character named Greg, an aspiring surgeon who disgraces himself so badly in the operating room that he is forced to go into, shame of all shames, psychiatry. 
 

Since I've placed my life in the hands of a therapist more than once, this reaction came as a surprise to me! 
 

Yet among Greg's colleagues at the hospital, the psychiatry career path is considered a "fail." The deep background on Greg is that we already know he is a messed-up dude, a rapist with serious issues who is the LAST person you'd want to be talking to on a couch. 

As the season closes, we learn that Greg has joined the Army where they're desperate enough to take a loser like him and give him a surgeon's scalpel and a badge.
 

 He's so ignorant he doesn't have a clue that Vietnam is his imminent destination.

Meanwhile, in real life, Nidal Malik Hasan, the deranged Army psychiatrist who went on a shooting spree at Ft. Hood, also turns out to be… a failed surgeon. The detail that caught my eye was the anecdote revealed by his uncle, who said that Hasan went into psychiatry after he FAINTED in the O.R. during a routine childbirth. The sight of a baby emerging from a woman's vagina sent Nidal over the edge.

With that clue, something in me snapped.

This was a guy, who by all accounts so far, has never been on a date, and routinely complained to his mosque's imam that he couldn't find a woman "pious" enough to marry, a virgin who would wear a veil around the clock.

Hassan is being scrutinized for any potential ties to espionage, fanatical religious beliefs, and vicarious PTSD from treating so many broken soldiers.

 But this man's craziness is more clearly understood in the context of his severe and distorted sexual repression.

In the midst of this reality-fantasy convergence, another piece of patriarchal-creep rocked the country— this time, affecting more people than Ft. Hood and Mad Men's viewership combined. We witnessed the Orwellian "health care reform" process become derailed by what I call "The Stupid Amendment," a wildly successful Vatican intervention to make sure that whatever health care plan comes out of Congress, it will be engineered to control women's wombs. 

 In other words, health insurance for men, not for women. 

The Stupak Amendment is ostensibly about preventing women from using their insurance coverage to pay for abortion procedures. But making a rule that women's healthcare below the waist is subject to moral review is outrageous. 

Would any of these politicians consider making a health care exemption to the complications of a man's penis? His prostate? His semen? His scrotum? His urethra? Would urologists, like abortion surgeons, be treated like criminals whose entire knowledge base should be wiped out of existence? Would any man be put on parade to prove "rape, incest, or imminent death" in order to prove that he needed a procedure about ANYTHING?

"Pro-life" rhetoric is now used across the aisle, with even the President proclaiming that the federal government will never fund abortions. 

 

Afghanistan annihilation, yes! Abortion, no!
  
 

 Our war-lovin', misogynistic culture cares so little about "life" that the candlelight vigil for the Hasan's victims at Fort Hood had the air of a rote exercise. Here's Wade Goodwyn, from NPR, talking last week: 

The thing I was struck by was... that the vigil was a well-established routine. 

 

I mean, this was a pretty big moment for me, but I could tell that the attending crowd had done this before. 

And when we interviewed people, the soldiers and the families, after the vigil was over, they'd tell us, "I've been to too many of these already."

This country cares little about killing all life forms and even less about the welfare of its children. Our atrocious infant mortality rates, hungry children, uneducated children, children with birth defects and developmental disabilities treated like trash… my blood's turned cold.  Watching Congressmen gleefully cheer on the passage of the Stupak amendment, for me, was like watching Greg rape Joan— and worse, to witness her acceptance of it.
 

It reminds me of something I wrote in The Sexual State of the Union:

American boomerangs from "Fear of a Black Planet," a Youth Revolt, a genderfuck coup, to the opposite horror: that of a lone man with a big gun. 

Meet the older, privileged, "had-all-the-opportunities" kinda guy who comes equipped with a bomb, no dates, and a pathologically self-centered attitude. Oh, we'll wish he had only been in the Crips! If only he'd been a drag queen, if only he'd pierced his dick and gotten high on dope! Any of these would be preferable, a million times more humane. 

We can diss a counter-culture, but what are we supposed to do with a counter-human? We can't stand to look at the cult of alienated masculinity and wonder how we got here.

Sometimes You Eat the Bear, Sometimes the Bear Eats You

The first thing I thought when I heard a foxy female governor from Alaska was anointed as the McCain's running mate was:

"Wow, they didn't have single man on their short list who didn't have a freakazoid, wide-stance, hooker-party sex scandal on his rap sheet— they HAD to pick a woman."

But I was so naive. Sarah Palin has enough scandals of her own, sexual and otherwise, to make a sailor blush.

I feel a bit sorry for her, as I do for all the photogenic "spokesmodels" that the GOP specializes in recruiting for jobs that they prefer to be handled by professionals behind the scenes. The neo-cons have no respect for government; it's just a business they've enjoyed deregulating. They put up the the most useful idiots on the ballot that they can launder, and smirk at every sucker they take in. After all, Karl Rove's an atheist who's made a career out of manipulating the religion vote!

For all the squawking about Sarah Barracuda's lack of experience, I am certain Palin is smarter than George W. was at any age, and she can READ better than he ever will, on or off a teleprompter. She earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Idaho that she made the grades for, all by herself— without anyone pulling a string. She can shoot a grizzly between the eyes at 100 yards, and is a lot better "close in" that Dick Cheney will ever be.  Let's face it, Palin's an L-Word fantasy writ large, and the perfect example of why butch straight women set hearts aflutter no matter where they appear.

But despite her fantastic hide-your-own-caribou upbringing, there is one way that Sarah Palin betrayed her classic Alaskan heritage and that is by being such a two-faced prig.

I only spent one youthful summer working in the 49th State— but the impression I left with is that Alaskans care about whether you pull your own weight, and mind your own beeswax. That's it. How you spend your personal time, and what you believe in, is entirely up to you.

Like everyone else in Alaska, Sarah Palin had "premarital sex." Like every other Alaskan of my generation, she smoked weed. She lived close to nature and was familiar with the unsentimental cycle of life, death, and birth. She works hard and plays hard. It's no joke that there's nothing much to do in those months of darkness besides fuck, hunt, fish, smoke, and drink. Her teenagers are apparently following in their parents' footsteps... they too, are having sex, and now one of them, Bristol, is said to be pregnant, for the first time. (Her boyfriend says on his MySpace page: "I don't want kids.)"

No one would give a whit about any of the Palin peccadilloes if Sarah hadn't made such a spectacle of herself campaigning as a pro-lifer, gay-hater, abstinence-monger, Creationist-dork. Where does she get off mandating public policy that tells anyone how to live their life?

Sarah's been under the Crony Club impression that's there's one set of rules for stupid voters, and another life of privacy and privileges for the elite. Is it so hard to imagine that Sarah also has family members who are gay, or who've had an abortion? When she was earning her B.S. at Idaho State, I bet she had the sense not to stuff Genesis fairy tales down everyone's throats in Biology class. I can guarantee her family doesn't preach abstinence around the Moose Stew.

A number of people spent the weekend wondering if young Bristol is already a mother, of the mysterious "Trig" who she holds so devotedly to her chest. The idea that mom Sarah might've faked a pregnancy to cover up the family's shame is a real Alaskan Gothic. It's parallel to a doping scandal. Politicians have to "dope up" their family history to make the impossible seem believable. Of course normal flesh and blood family members are going wreak havoc, especially the teenagers. Of course any candidate's life will fail the Leave It To Beaver test. 

It's obnoxious on every side. The way the Democrats spin Obama's home life makes my eyes clench shut. I don't want to know! I don't care if they're crabby or delightful or close-knit or estranged or cute or ugly... SHUT UP already.

I only care about one thing, and that's the politics the candidate is fronting. I expect them to be held accountable to the will of the people— and that's not a profile you'll find in a tabloid magazine. We're the only country in the world that makes our presidential election candidates into a beauty contest. Did "Miss Wasilla" say that she longed for Whirled Peas when she accepted her Miss Congeniality crown? I don't think so.

Why doesn't she just take a big breath of icy Northern Air and tell the truth: Sarah Palin got picked for this job like a two-bit player at a casting call. What McKook doesn't understand is this: Barracuda is an ambitious Sourdough ballhandler who isn't going to let anybody's brats— nor the GOP— stand in her way.

Sex Advice for New Parents Who Wonder If They'll Ever Do It Again

m I just came back from summer camp: Camp It Up! to be exact. It's a family camp for gay/bi/lesbian tribes and their friends— a lot of floatin'-down-the-river, horse-riding, BBQ-chowing, fun. 

Every time someone recognized me in the bathroom line, they'd say, in hushed tones: "Are you doing a workshop, here... please say yes!"

I knew they weren't asking for knot-tying advice; they had the same question as every straight, Ozzie-&-Harriet parent does: Will my lover  and I ever have sex again?

A lot of new moms and dads feel like they're in a time warp with their kids, with no hope of romance or erotic spontanaeity returning.

Well, thanks to my new acquaintance, Nicole Chaison, who edits the super-cool parenting magazine HausFrau, the sex-for-parents workshop (or should we call it a marathon?) can begin.

HausFrau deals with visceral family challenges: head lice, (best comic book ever on the subject)  traveling with kids, and of course, sex. Nicole sent me letters from her readers, who asked— without flinching—  about loaded post-natal topics like low libido, boring sex, anal sex, privacy, children storming your bedroom door, and whether labor and orgasms are related. We're publishing my answers in HausFrau's next issue!

I was inspired by one of the mother-to-be's who asked, "Can I keep doing one of my favorite sexual activities without hurting the baby?" She means fisting. Of course, this woman hasn't given birth yet, so she has yet to find out that her new favorite activity is going to be falling to sleep for a thousand years.

Meanwhile, here's a preview of what we talked about, from my latest In Bed audio show, where I shared a few of Nicole's letters, and my responses:

Listen to an excerpt

Listen to the whole show: LINK

$2 a show, for a year; why not? LINK
 

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions and feedback about the show to [email protected] (Episode 351, August 1, 2008)

Photo Credit: The Brady Bunch Movie (not the series, the movie!) is one of the best gay stoner sex-positive movies ever. Ever.

There Were Two in the Bed, and the Little One Said, MOVE OVER!

Remember the impertinent line, "Do you like to sleep in the nude?"

Today, the rejoinder has a twist: "Yes, I always sleep in the nude— by myself!"

The Times has ripped the covers off  (sorry!) yet another shocking trend that I seem to be a part of: couples who don't sleep the night together, who have separate beds or rooms to get their forty winks.

Apparently, it's all the rage, but strictly on the QT— as spouses are afraid to give the appearance of not liking each other, or giving up on sex.

If they'd interviewed me, this is what I would've said:

Do you sleep the night with your lover?

No, not since we moved in together, when I was in my mid-30s. I sleep in my own room, and own bed.

What happened?

I was sleep-deprived since my first pregnancy, but when my partner's snoring kept me awake, I lost my last shred of equilibrium. One day I said, "I love you to death, but if I don't get to sleep at night, I'm going to kill you."

Is it all his fault, the snoring?

No. At this point, I can't sleep well with anyone. Not my daughter, not my ex, not my best friends. I'm bad in bed. I look back on the time I slept with six people in a three-person tent on a wood pallet in ten inches of Alaska rain, and think, "How did I do it?"

How does it affect your sex life?

It's essential, it's great. I associate being in bed together with making love, fooling around, cuddling, napping, talking, being close... not agonizing hours lying awake.

It's fun to visit each other's bed chambers. We have really different environments.

So it's not just the bed, it's the whole room?

Yeah, my room is my solace, the place where everything suits me.

Don't you ever accidentally fall asleep together?

Sure, for a few hours, it's delicious. But then one of us always wakes up.

What about traveling?

That's hard. When we visit folks who don't know us well, they look a little alarmed, as if we were getting a divorce. It's only by observing us be affectionate with each other that they relax. I've had lots of people tell me they want to do the same thing, but they're afraid of such a notion being taken as an insult. It's a  silly misapprehension, but I understand... I had to screw up my courage in the beginning, too.

The real hardship is that "two beds" simply demands more room, and I do feel guilty about that. "I'm a spoiled pig, a princess who has to have her forty mattresses and still bitches about a pea." I wish I could sleep through anything, absolutely anywhere, as I did as a kid.

In hotels, we ask for King-size, a fun novelty. I also partake in white noise, earplugs, Ambien for the worst nights, recordings of crickets on the river I took from camping last year, etc.

Did it hurt Jon's feelings when you first asked to separate beds?

He believed me and my intentions— but yes, he thought it was weird, and maybe a bad sign... like, what's next? But that changed really fast. Once well-rested, sanity returns. Now he's just as hardcore, as covetous of his bed as I am of mine.

Do you ever sleep or have sex on your partner's bed when he's not there?

I love to sleep on his bed when I'm missing him, when he's not home. It makes me pine, in a good way.

Solo sex, sure. I feel completely comfortable there. Other people? For some reason, my bed has been the social spot of the house, for chatting, eating, reading, sex, working, whatever. I've think I once had a banquet and simultaneous dance party on my queen-size mattress. My lover's bedroom is more hidden, and quiet— no one goes in there except us. I hadn't thought about that until right now...

Do you, like some of the experts in the article, chalk up  the sleeping separation to your mobility and independence as a "modern" woman?

That was very provocative, but no, it never occurred to me. I thought I was just a hormone-wrecked post-baby lunatic who never bounced back. Every year I become more a fussbudget, as much as I try to hide it. I yearn to be easy-going— both awake and asleep— but apparently I'm just part of the overstimulated mob!

So how are you sleeping?

How Dare You Have Sex Without Me!

Hello, gorgeous. You're busy, you're young, you're a super-rich chick. How do you make a bun in the oven with minutes to spare?

According to the London Telegraph, you sign up for in vitro fertilization (IVF) at the doctor's office because you simply do not have time for the labors of actual intercourse.

Anyone got an egg timer?

In Bed with Susie Bright 259: Kicking Up the Kink

My favorite line is from the female fertility specialist: "I told one of my patients who's going through IVF that another patient had just conceived naturally. She said, 'What?— She's having sex? Bloody Luddite!'"

"People want everything now," continues the IVF staffer. "If they can't have a baby now, they want IVF. They think it's no different from putting your name down for a handbag.

"Some people are horrified by the idea that they have to have sex two to three times a week. About 10% of people I see don't have time to have sex. It's usually when you have two professionals who are based in the city and are very busy."

Of course the story is designed to shock the average missionary-position-loving reader, but I had a good chuckle, as well as cause for more contemplative speculation.

At first I thought: "If they think they don't have time to make love, just wait 'till they find out what a time drain is in involved in actual mothering.

The type of person who can't find three minutes for a quickie hardly seems like the sort of person who's ready for parent-style sacrifice and humility.

I also worried about their antipathy toward sex in their relationship... putting the baby-making part aside. Is their marriage nothing more than a double-income bounty machine? How can they stand to spend the rest of their lives with someone they don't want to wrap their arms around?

But perhaps I am falling for the story's eager provocation.

The other side of the coin is that I would have LOVED to be able to take my eggs from my teenage years, when they were at their liveliest, and tuck them away in a darling little box in my freezer to take out when I wanted to use them. I would thrill to have that level of reproductive control!

What do you think of this story? Do you think it's a lot of hysteria over nothing, a pointless "what are the rich people doing today" gossip item? Or, does it hint at something more significant in our reproductive and relationship futures?

I have another item in my podcast this week that intrigued me. A young woman wrote me to say that she loves kinky sex, fantasies, and porn, but her boyfriend has always put the kibosh on her invitations to spice things up.

Then one day, she came home to find Mr. Prude furtively surfing Internet porn. She's been fuming ever since... one can hardly blame her. Feel free to listen and add to my counsel!

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show and requests for Susie's Girly Cards (one month of my podcast for free!)  to [email protected] (Episode 259, August 18, 2006)