Too Busy to Get Busy

Shoot, I am tired. I'm trying to do too much with too little right now and it is wearing me down. I am trying to:
-work at a coffee counter from 5:30 am to 10:30 am to cover rent
-walk dogs right after earn the rest of my dollars (if you know someone in Wrigleyville who needs a dog walker I am cheap and reliable)
-teach sex ed in a super part time way
-volunteer to get more experience doing outreach for Chicago Women's Health Center
-develop my own workshop on women's arousal and pleasure for men
-be a comedian
-be a girlfriend

This is too much. I am tired a lot. I'm especially tired because waking up at 4 to get to my first job means I need to be asleep by 9, and my boyfriend could stay up till 2 and still be good at work the next day. So we don't wake up together, and I go to bed way before him, but usually later than I need to, and it is not sustainable. I don't do the coffee counter job on friday, so I slept from 7:30 to 7:00 last night to catch up, and I'm still exhausted.

The great thing about the coffee counter job is it gives me some time to write while I'm there, and I'm loathe to give that up. Also people are really nice to me and I'm in a great mood while I'm there. Oh, and I have rent to pay.

But comedy is nonexistent because of that start time, and I don't have alone-cuddly-sexy time because of that start time. Comedy and alone-cuddly-sexy time are both very important to me.

I think I'm going to have to do some editing on my goals. I want to perform, teach, pay my rent, be a girlfriend, get set to go to grad school and maybe that is just too much, if I also want to sleep enough. Paying my rent needs to happen for the other things to happen. Keeping healthy (aka sleep) needs to happen. Being a girlfriend could maybe be an activity confined to the weekend. Performing- I know that performing is my check-in for what whether my life is on track or not and I need that. But then I also need cuddle time! And I want the people I teach and the audience I perform to to honor their sexuality, and the first part of honoring it it making time for it.

Ok so my priorities need to be:
- my health (which translates to getting enough sleep and keeping a roof over my head)
- my vocation (which obviously you can never be sure of, but why live like you're not a Very Important Person?)
- my relationship (which was before vocation on this list, but then I switched it, and that's really the big question, right?)

But before this becomes a showdown between vocation and relationship, maybe I can just figure out a way to make more money in less time. Without being a legal assistant.

Eeesh. It'll be fine, I'll figure it out.

The Four Percent

On Yes Means Yes, they crunched some interesting numbers. There were two surveys taken, one of young men entering the navy and men enrolled at a university, which asked them to self-report rapes committed and attempted rapes. Well, they didn't use the word 'rape,' they just described circumstances which are rape, like

(3) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down, etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?

In the survey taken of university students a little over 6% of men admitted to raping someone. Of those rapists, 63% admitted to raping more than one person. The average number of people raped per repeat rapist was 5.8. 4% of the university men surveryed committed over 400 rapes.

In the survey taken of young men enlisted in the Navy, 13% self-reported having raped someone (again, the word 'rape' was not used, but circumstances which are rape were described). 71% of self-reported rapists reported raping more than one person (which works out to 8.4% of the young men surveyed), and the average number of people raped per rapist was 6.36.


17.6% of women will survive a rape or attempted rape. So these 4% or 8.4% of men are doing a lot of damage. I agree with the author of the post that shaming of rapists by men who aren't raping would go a long long way in curbing rape. Especially since these guys don't consider what they're doing rape.

Also we NEED to stop telling women that to avoid rape they should avoid drinking. Now, a big big percentage of these rapes were intoxication rapes. But here's the thing- you get drunk, someone is a total asshole to you, you wake up and blame yourself for getting drunk. No, it's the asshole who was the problem. How about instead we tell young men that they should avoid getting drunk so that they avoid raping someone? Or avoid socializing with drunk people so that they avoid raping them?

We need to be really clear with young men what makes you a rapist- having sex with someone who can't or didn't give consent. They didn't give consent if they were drunk. They didn't give consent if you acted upon their body without asking if they wanted you to. So they didn't give consent if you didn't give them a chance to. They didn't give consent if you used physical force. If you touched someone sexually without freely given consent you sexually assaulted them; if you penetrated their vagina, rectum or mouth without their freely given consent you raped them. You're a rapist. If your friend did it, he's a rapist. That's what rape means, that's what rapist means. If you joke about rape, there's a pretty good chance one of these repeat rapists is laughing at your joke.

And from these surveys, it looks like a fair number of men have figured out we look for exceptions to make lots of rapes not 'real rapes' all the time (she was drunk, she was slutty, she did want to make out with him and what did she expect) and so they can rape lots of people without consequences.

Sex Ed needs to focus on what enthusiastic, freely given consent looks like, and how you give your partners a chance to communicate with you about that they want. Almost 20% of women have survived rape or attempted rape; if there was an STD with that high a percentage you know we'd be scaring the bejesus out of some kids with posters about it.

I finally taught some sex ed

I got the opportunity to do the thing I've been saying for awhile that I am preparing to do, which is teach sex ed. It went...ok. The first class went great. The kids were engaged, and asking the right questions, and volunteering what they knew. But I got through a third of the material I wanted to get through. The next class I powered through the material, and the kids looked terrified. We covered 3 bacterial STI's, 4 viral STI's, and barrier methods. I asked them how they were feeling after, and two kids said, out right, "Scared. Scared of sex." Argh. Which is exactly the opposite of what I wanted to leave them with.

Sex is actually not scary. You can get sick or pregnant from it, but now is the best time in history to have sex while avoiding those consequences. And look, here's what kills Americans the most:

Number of deaths for leading causes of death

* Heart disease: 631,636
* Cancer: 559,888
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
* Diabetes: 72,449
* Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
* Septicemia: 34,234

So why are we freaking out kids about the clap when burgers, car exhaust, and slippery floors will be what gets them in the end?

I think because people feeling good about having desires, and pursuing them, as if it's their natural human right, is too big a threat. We need kids to get in their heads that the unpleasant thing to do is always the right thing to do. That doing something just because it feels good is the road to sickness, shame and death.

I don't want anyone to feel scared of what is one of the best parts of being a human. I want them to feel confident about their right to feel good, and their ability to make someone else feel good, in a way that's safe and doesn't create any new people until they want to be parents.

Especially the girls. I want the girls to know their bodies are for them, not for anyone else. The fact that they have uteri doesn't mean their bodies have to be available to anyone else, or fit someone's ideas of aesthetics, or make them into mothers just because it's physically possible to produce a kid. Or that someone else gets to tell them when not to have sex either. Whatever they want for themselves is what they should create. And it's completely possible to wrangle out the kind of life you want from the life you get stuck with.

Ohhh..I don't know. I feel bad for scaring those kids. But it's a start. I had to start somewhere.

Also, if you feel unhappy with the state of sex ed and would like kids to be taught about autonomy, pleasure, consent, communication, fertility, sexual health and family planning, you should financially pony up and support www.scarleteen.com. It's the leading resouce in sex-positive sex ed for young adults. And adults. Because there aren't that many resources about our sex lives which are both not hysterical and not titillating.