Puff, Puff, F*ck? →

I’m not ever going to advocate that someone turn to drugs and/or alcohol to make their sex life more fulfilling or pleasurable. It’s potentially dangerous for a lot of different reasons. But for those of you who do use these substances as a way to cope with issues that make intimacy difficult, just know that I see you and you shouldn’t feel shame for doing what you think is best for you and your body.

I have anxiety. More specifically, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and most of its accompanying symptoms, like a pervasive feeling of impending doom, trouble sleeping and problems with concentration. I’m notorious for being a worrywart, and for finding things to make me worry if there weren’t enough already. I’ve been this way since at least my early teen years, and I’m fairly certain it’s genetic, based on conversations with my mom.

My anxious thoughts make communicating difficult at times. I’m afraid the person I’m talking to won’t take me seriously, because what sounds like a perfectly rational statement or concern to me sounds like paranoid rambling to someone else. I’m very good at knowing what I want or need in all facets of my life, but absolutely terrible at communicating it — to friends, lovers, family, whoever. It’s why I struggle with writing consistently, because I’m afraid the things I feel are unique only to me and I’ll sound…crazy. I’m slowly unlearning that mindset but it still shows up every now and then.

In the decade or so since I became a teenager, I’ve learned some more about myself. As an adult, my anxiety hasn’t gotten worse — there are just more things to be anxious about. Even as I got older and embraced my sexuality, I realized my anxiety was showing up in the bedroom, too.

In my day-to-day life, I hate feeling inconvenienced by arguments or disagreements, so I generally let things ride until it’s so far past what I’m okay with that I have to speak up. When it comes to sex, this has led me to some not-so-comfortable situations where I allowed things to happen that I wasn’t okay with. I struggle with those moments in retrospect, because I don’t think I can feel violated since I didn’t speak up or otherwise indicate my discomfort or non-consent, and people aren’t mind-readers. But that’s a mental unpacking for another day.

Despite having understanding and communicative partners, I always felt uncomfortable expressing my sexual needs. Part of it is the social conditioning that seeks to shame women for being open about sexuality, and the other part is my anxiety. There was a point where I just wasn’t enjoying sex because I wasn’t communicating what I wanted. And that’s where my good friend Mary Jane comes in. Sex is complicated! Especially if you’re prone to overthinking and you have self-esteem issues that make it hard to get out of your head and into your body.

[I’m so bad at finding good pictures. All the ones with the keyword smoke or smoking looked cheesy or otherwise didn’t apply.]

I smoked and had sex for the first time on the same day in high school. They were both pretty underwhelming experiences. After that, I engaged in both activities pretty sporadically until I got to college. I was having sex way more often, but that knot in my gut just wouldn’t go away. I could never feel truly comfortable, just that I was going through the motions with enough self-awareness to actively consent to everything that was going on.

I started smoking more consistently in college, and that’s when something clicked. Sex was way more fun when I was high. I was able to communicate more, to share those desires that I normally felt too awkward to say out loud even with a trusted partner. Because my communication was more open and fluid, I was able to try new things. Everything also felt so much better physically.

Being able to speak up made me more confident about myself, and my confidence helped me develop my sexual identity. Granted, I’m still very young and my sexual needs and desires will change as I get older, but I’ve been told that the kind of insight I have about my sexual self and myself as a sexual being takes years if not decades for people to understand, if they ever do.

Part of the danger in using intoxicating substances is that they alter how you function. As we (may or may not) know, physical drug addiction boils down to our bodies essentially needing to be in this altered state to function normally. It’s why physical withdrawal symptoms are potentially fatal. To be completely honest, I still self-medicate my anxiety with weed to this day because I can’t afford to/don’t have the time during regular business hours to see a psychiatrist.

At any rate, I knew that I didn’t want to have to be high in order to enjoy sex for the rest of my life, so about 2 years ago I did what I should’ve done years ago: I turned the lens inward to dig into the root of my anxiety — specifically about sex — so I could unpack it and figure out a more sustainable coping method. It took a lot of internal dialogue, journaling, and talking to my partner about the things that made me so uncomfortable.

I don’t feel the need to share all of my findings, but suffice it to say that I’m an overthinker who constantly seeks external validation and it really throws me for a loop when I think I won’t get it. The discoveries I made about myself during this introspection actually led me to start blogging as a means of expression and connecting with others who may have felt similarly.

I don’t have it all together by any means, and I definitely don’t have my anxiety under control. But I’ve made a lot of progress in feeling comfortable advocating for myself in the bedroom while sober.

High sex still feels better, though…

If Sex Workers lose, We All do.

*A note about language: many words and phrases have been used to describe sex work and Sex workers throughout history, most of them derogatory. Some sex workers have opted to reclaim these slurs for themselves as a means of resistance. That's not my lane, so I will be using "sex worker" as an all-encompassing term.

This bad weave bitch is really the president and I am DISGUSTED.

In my corner of the internet, sex work is having a moment right now. That's not to imply that it hasn't always been a part of my life in some form or another (more on that another day, maybe), but the recent SESTA/FOSTA bills signed in to law by y'alls little president has radically altered the way we'll engage with sex and sex work as a society in the years to come. 

"But Sexology Bae," you're undoubtedly asking yourself, "what are those acronyms and why are they throwing people into hysterics?"

Great question, reader! Let me help break it down. I'll to my best to give an overview of SESTA/FOSTA as well as explain the differences between sex trafficking and sex work.

These are actually 2 separate bills, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, and the Fight Online Sex Traffickers Act. The broad premise is to make websites liable for what people say and do on them, in an attempt to crack down on websites that supposedly enable sex trafficking. You might have noticed this impact, should you frequent websites like Backpage.com or the personals section of Craigslist. More recently, sites like Patreon are shutting down the accounts of sex workers or refusing to release payments to preemptively cover their butts.

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There is an important distinction to be made between sex trafficking and sex work: CONSENT. People who are being trafficked are inherently forced against their will to participate, by violence, threats, or other means. Sex work, while nuanced, is the exchange of sexual acts or goods or services between consenting adults. Sex work is commonly called the world's oldest profession, and the shame and vitriol that sex workers face for providing in-demand services is ultimately rooted in outdated ideas of what people (namely women) should be allowed to do with their bodies.

People operate under this moral panic over saving trafficking victims with the understanding that consenting sex workers will likely be negatively impacted too. I'd go so far as to say that it's intentional, but it's hard to imply that there's malicious intent behind these efforts to stop trafficking because everyone agrees that exploitation is bad. I'll stop being frustrated about the shame that sex workers face when we acknowledge as a society that people sell sex because people are willing to buy it, and unless you're one of the people involved in the transaction you should leave well enough alone.

My biggest issue, as someone who knows a lot of sex workers and saw how this impacted them, is how uneducated the general public is about modern day sex work and by extension how little they care about sex workers. I feel like there are three common sex work archetypes: the street walker, the high-class escort/companion, and the abused trafficking victim (sometimes conflated with number one).

While sex trafficking is very real and something that thousands if not millions of people are experiencing at any given time in our country alone, it's important to remember that not every person who participates in sex work is trafficked. Implying that every sex worker is a trafficking victim is dangerous, because it allows for the passage of laws and policies that put sex workers in danger and makes their jobs harder, such as SESTA/FOSTA. Other all-sex-workers-are-trafficking-victims policies that negatively impact sex workers are those that attempt to "get them off the streets", via arrest or other misguided detaining efforts like group homes. For actual sex workers, all this does is keep them from making money, putting them at further risk of being exploited.

As SESTA/FOSTA takes hold and more websites shut down or otherwise block sex workers from accessing them to advertise, sex workers will lose their ability to thoroughly screen clients and eventually be forced back to the streets, which ironically increases their chances of being trafficked. 

I need to break this down a little bit further for the sake of nuance. Even if they aren't being trafficked, all sex workers are not necessarily in the profession completely willingly. This is part of a phenomenon called "survival sex work", which is when people turn to sex work out of necessity because they can't participate in the so-called formal or mainstream economies due to things like family needs, (lack of) formal education, and the like. I had the opportunity to work with people who participated in survival sex work while in college during my work with a local New Orleans non-profit, Women with a Vision.

I naively approached this work with the idea that sex workers were either doing it because they loved the work, or they were trafficking victims participating against their will. I learned that there's a gray area, and it's not a bad thing to acknowledge it because the people participating in survival sex work are normally the workers who are on the streets and more likely to face violence and arrest, so they need the most advocacy and protection.

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This is all of us trying to find cat memes in 5 years.

Now that Sex Work 101 is done, you're probably wondering wtf this has to do with you and why you should care that life may get a little bit harder for people who sell sex. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 is the basis of the open internet as we know it today, and SESTA/FOSTA was able to pass by targeting this portion of the now 22 year old legislation. Section 230 was intended to prevent a platform from being held liable for content posted by its users. By amending this section, the doors are now potentially open for websites to start blocking any kind of speech they think could present a liability issue--negative news about the president, for example.

 The passage of SESTA/FOSTA has poked a hole in this pillar of internet freedom, potentially signaling the beginning of a crackdown on all morally abhorrent content. Morally abhorrent, of course, if you're an old conservative white person who wants to preserve the status quo. Free speech as we know it will likely come under fire sooner rather than later, and the powers that be are counting on society to ignore the plight of sex workers while they continue to snatch the rug from under the rest of us. We ALL have something to lose here.

Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit 2018: Sponsor Call!

I've been incredibly fortunate to be award a blogger's scholarship to attend the 2018 Sexual Freedom Summit, hosted by the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. I'm really excited to be able to attend, especially as a new sexuality/sexual health blogger. I hope that my biggest takeaway is learning from folks who have been doing this work for years or even decades, because their insight is invaluable.  

As a young Black woman in the sexuality blogosphere, I find myself having to speak louder to be heard by those in the "mainstream", in order to access resources I need to advance my work. It's hard to be heard in this environment when you're counted out before you given a chance most of the time due to your age, race, and or/gender. This community is very small, and while it makes leaders fairly accessible, it presents a challenge for a newbie struggling to build a presence.

To that end, I'm reaching out for financial assistance to cover some of the remaining costs after my scholarship. I will be traveling from Houston, Texas, to Washington D.C. for the conference, so flying is my only option, as is staying in a hotel near the conference location since renting a car is cost-prohibitive because I'm under 25. I estimate that I'll need an additional $400 to cover remaining costs without financial strain. 

For companies/organizations, my sponsorship tiers are below. For entities or individuals interested in working with me or other exchanges for sponsorship, please send me an email at sexologybae@gmail.com. 

$25: 1 month of promo

At this tier, I will advertise your company as a featured partner on my Twitter page [3-4 tweets over the course of the month] and my blog landing page during the month of your choosing. 

$50: 1 month of Tier 1 promo + product review + conference promo

At this tier, I will provide the same level of promo as in the $25 sponsorship tier in addition to a product review and additional tweets with the hashtag(s) and/or tagged account(s) of your choosing during the conference itself. 

$100: 3 Months of Tier 1 promo + product review + conference promo

This tier includes all of the benefits from the previous tiers, but you will remain a listed partner on my Twitter page and blog landing page for 3 months of your choosing.

For sponsorship levels above $100, we can work together on a customized promotion plan. Thank you so much for