Oral Sex

I titled this "Oral Sex" because not only is that what this post is about, but I knew it would be eye-catching.  I also knew that when people typed it into Google hoping for some tips and tricks, they might just get this post instead, and gain a different sort of understanding.

I spent the past week at my parents' house, which gave me a rare opportunity to talk with my mom almost uninterrupted.

We talk via telephone often, but there are always chores or kids calling to me in the background, and my thoughts can get muddled.

We've become friends over these last several years, my mom and me.  It hasn't always been that way.  There was a lot of lost trust and argument and general dislike through the years... especially the teenage ones.  We have our differences now, but we've chosen the road of sorting them out over coffee, instead of estrangement, and I'm thankful.

This past week we got to talking about how things have changed since she was attending the public school system.

She told me about a movie that she watched on Lifetime that discussed oral sex in middle school, and how it is becoming so common - even at school.

I already knew this, unfortunately.

A school in our area ended up with separate lunch tables for boys and girls and banned recess because 11 - 13 year olds were using the time for, let's face it, blow-jobs.

For the girls, it didn't always feel like a choice.  Peer pressure was intense.  If you wanted a boyfriend, it was expected.  And when you're 12 or 13 and just slamming head-long into puberty, you desperately long for acceptance, especially by the opposite sex.  And the boys felt like - well - if he's getting it, then I deserve to have it too.  A dad even stood up at the parent meeting and announced that his son was just doing what he wished he could do at that age.

When I was in middle school I am certain this was happening, but it wasn't quite as common.  More common was groping in the hallway and during movies in the social studies classroom.

As a young girl I can't say that I enjoyed any of that, but I allowed it.

I didn't know what else to do.

I remember feeling incredible attraction to several different boys.  I remember wanting them to like me.  To choose me as their girlfriend.  To dance with me at the 8th Grade Dance.

I was a bit awkward, and so they didn't often choose me for for their girlfriend or their dance partner.  That would have been much too public an acceptance.  But they did grab my butt in the hallway.  They did touch my breasts in social studies class.  And so...  I thought... it seemed better than nothing.

At all ages, we women simply want to be thought beautiful, attractive, lovely. 

My daughter wears her dance costume covered in pink sequins and her pink hair bow and sparkly, strappy shoes and asks her daddy to dance with her.  Asks us to watch her put on a show.  Loves for us to delight in her beauty and personality.

We never really lose that.

It stays with us.  It just manifests in new ways.

We realize there is a great big world outside of our family and we'd like them to accept us too.  We want them to delight in us as we wished our parents would.  For some of us, our daddy's said yes to dancing.  Said yes to applauding our preschool shows.  For others, they turned away: ridiculed us, left our moms.  And for BOTH it is intensely difficult to navigate the pressures that lay before us when we hit middle school and are faced with boys who are riddled with hormones and educated by their peers and the pornographic media that is so readily available on the internet and all around us from the time we are born.

I don't blame the boys.  The media portrays sex as something they deserve in a dating relationship.  And it feels good... obviously.  Oral sex is "better" because it doesn't result in pregnancy.  It feels safer.  And it can be carried out under the lunch table or within a circle of your friends in the parking lot.

The thing is...  it's a really bad idea.  And without a serious committed relationship...  it's degrading.

First of all - oral sex can transmit the same diseases.  You can get them all, Ladies.  On the Lifetime program that my mom watched an STD infected so many girls there was a line stretching down the hallway outside the nurses office for treatment and testing.

But second, and really more importantly, this is about our dignity.

This is a huge loss for girls AND boys, and while boys shouldn't be asking for it, they're battling the urge to fit in, the screaming of their hormones AND the fact that YOU are allowing it.

If all the girls got together and said NO, then the boys would back down.

Sure, it would get ugly for a few days.  Maybe even a few weeks.  But girls need to stick together on things like this.  We are strong together.  You can take a stand at your school.

You're not a plaything or a cheap hooker.  You are a young woman of dignity.  You are beautiful and priceless and there will be a man someday who won't ask such things of you.  And those men will be much more common if you stand up for yourself today.  Should they get a clue about treating you like a princess?  HECK YES.  But as long as they aren't, it's up to us to tell them NO.  It's up to us to hold on to who we are and not give that away to a boy just because he asks, or pressures, or gets his friends to pressure.  Because after you give a guy a blow-job, you don't have a lot of other places to go, physically.  And he has already used you just to pleasure himself.  It's like masturbation with a doll.  You can't go places emotionally with a boy that you've already gone everywhere with physically.  If it happens, it's rare, and you've got to take a lot of steps backward to go forward.

Take it from a girl who's been there.  Who has felt the pressure and who has given in.  Who has been called "dirty" by someone she loved.  Who has tried everything to get a boy to stay - and they left anyway.  Guys respect you if you stand up to them.  If you use your smarts.  If you respect yourself.  It is okay, even today, even in our rape-driven, sex-on-the-first-date, Cosmo reading culture to look a boy (or man) in the eyes and say, "I'm not that kind of girl."  It doesn't matter how many times you've already given in.  You can change.  You can be bigger and better than you were.  You can be a leader and stand up for you and the other young women around around you.

You can walk away.

Letter to a Young Girl.

Dear _________,

I am writing because I was told something about you.  I don't want to say that anyone around me is a gossip, because they are not.  I just want you to know that I know how it feels, and I want to say, that you don't have to keep doing what you're doing.

I remember when I was your age.  I thought I knew everything.  I believed so many lies.  I thought that all the hot guys just wanted sex, and if I wanted a hot guy, I'd have to put out eventually.  I dated a boy who told me if we hadn't had sex in six months the relationship was over.  That was when I was fourteen.  I'm sure that your freshman year seems like eons in the past, but these are the times in your life that will be etched into your memory forever - bright and sometimes glaring memories of choices you made in your youth that will forever affect your heart and soul.

I've been told that you don't care about any of that.  That sex to you is meaningless.  You just do it for fun.

It's an easy thing to say and work to make yourself believe.  Lots of us get there - to that point where we believe it - but when we look back on our partners, however many there may be - nameless or faceless - they all own a part of us now.  And it's something that is so true it burns inside.

Perhaps you have completely bought into the lie that it IS meaningless.  If that's the case, then it's important for you to look back on the first time.  Was it meaningless then?  Did you even want to do it?  Were you afraid?  Did he hurt you?  Or was it someone you loved deeply - you thought they loved you - you thought this was going to be forever?  Maybe not - you had no thoughts about the future - you just wanted the assurance that someone loved you RIGHT NOW.  Or at least lusted enough to want to be with you completely in that moment.

I guess the whole reason for me writing is because I care about you so much.  You are truly beautiful.  Talented, good looking, intelligent.  You deserve more than just the occasional roll in the hay with some boy who might not give you the time of day tomorrow, or who will talk about you like some warrior conquering a city, or refer to you as a tramp because you gave it up so easily.

Sex does mean something.  It's the most complete physical union possible between two people.  It is the way we create new life.

Spirituality aside.  Sex is emotional.  Sex is physical, mental - you have to give up something of yourself to have sex, and even more of yourself to enjoy it.

A shame to be comfortably numb.

A shame to miss out on the beauty behind the action.

I don't know what happened to you in the past.  I don't know what you are thinking or how you are feeling but I know that there is pain when someone you've given something so important to treats it like it doesn't matter.  When he treats it like a business deal.  You can pretend that it feels the same to you, but it would just be a lie.  And you know what?  He's lying too.


There was a day in all our lives when we were innocent children.  When we believed in the reality of princes and princesses and knights in shining armor.  A time when all of us women believed we could be the princess, and all the boys believed they could be the knight.

In this crazy world we lose that somewhere along the way.  We make a mistake or we are hurt by someone or someone takes our innocence from us by force.  But inside we are always the princess wishing for the knight.

It is my prayer that soon, your tears will be wiped away and you will find the one who treats you like the princess you are.

- R.J.

99 Ways to Please Your Man.

Okay, readers. I have decided to start a smallish series on the evils of consumer media and culture, beginning with magazines and how they have defamed, de-faced, and de-valued women.

This is the first in the series.

99 Ways to Please Your Man was the approximate title of one of the articles selected for my reading pleasure in my "Cosmo experience".

I admit that when I first read the article, I tried to read it for humor. I tried to look at it and really picture people attempting to do these things in all seriousness - and I admit that this was, well, at times, hilarious, but by the time I finished reading the article I realized that mostly, it was just sad.

I can remember a time during study hall in middle school where I saw a friend who was reading Cosmo at her desk. She informed me that she had swiped the magazine from her mother's collection and that I HAD to read some of the articles inside. This was a big deal for us seventh grade girls. We were just starting puberty, for the most part. We barely knew what sex was, let alone "how to please [our] man", so this was big stuff: educational stuff. I can still remember some of the things in that article. In fact, I used some of them later, when the opportunity arose. The thing about all of this is, it's fake.

I'm not saying that the theories and ideas aren't scientifically proven - they well might be - I'm sure that there has been all sorts of research done regarding nerve endings and stimulation and everything else. What I am saying is, reading these things simply isn't healthy - for an adult woman - let alone a young teenaged girl.

Articles like this served me in my life only to make me do things that I otherwise would not have ever done or thought necessary. They made me think that there were certain things I had to do in order to keep a boy interested, in order to make him happy, in order to make him like me, to make him find me fascinating and beautiful. When things got stale with a boy, I'd think back to that article in Redbook or Cosmo or Seventeen, and I'd try a new trick. I relied on those magazine articles, on the movies I'd seen, on the television programs I watched, to keep a boy interested.

The results were that, sure, he would be sort of interested - but the problem with that is, he wasn't interested in me. Or my ideas. Or my personality. Boys who really DID like me for who I was had this warped idea of what I was into, what I was about, what I liked to do with my time - all because I thought that this is what it took to keep a boyfriend. To be honest, I think some of the stuff probably just scared them.

Why do we read these articles? Is it because we think that our instincts aren't good enough? Is it because we think we're lacking something essential when it comes to our sexual relationships all by ourselves? Is it that we feel we NEED this help in order to be attractive to our boyfriends? And no, ladies and gentlemen, these articles are NOT fashioned toward the old and married, they are fashioned toward the single and boyfriended. Is this truly what we feel will keep a man interested in us?

This hurts my heart.

I fell into this trap as a young girl. I tried all sorts of things to keep boys around. I think the saddest part was that I was trying these things on boys who really did love me. Who really did want to be with me WITHOUT all these tips and tricks that made me feel shameful and dirty. I think that most of my relationships ended because I wasn't confident in simply being myself. I was so worried about pleasing my boyfriend physically, so terrified that he would be bored with me - not because he had indicated that he needed these things, but because the media told me that this was what men are about.

What a huge disservice to men! To be labeled as solely sexual beings? To be told that you want nothing else in a woman except for her to be good in the bedroom? I am certain that men find this a nice attribute when the time comes, but really? How shallow to be defined by this!

But we buy it.

This is why Cosmo puts it in the 'zine.

We feel like we NEED these tips to keep men interested. We feel like we are NOT good enough all on our own. We feel like if we don't give in to sex with our boyfriend then we are going to be passed over for the next girl who will. We feel like there is NO MAN ALIVE who would want us for who we are and not what we can dish out physically. Wow, ladies, if I were a man I might be sort of offended. Do we really feel this way? And if that's true then why in the world do we want a man anyway?

No, there is more. We know that men are more than a body in the bedroom. We know that we are more than that too - but we're so afraid.

We're afraid of being alone. We're afraid of giving up our hearts and then having them shattered on the floor in front of us. We're willing to do anything to avoid that feeling - that shattering feeling when our broken heart is handed back to us, mangled and unrecognizable and we have to go back out and face the cold world with nothing...

This is a scary thing. It is a hard thing. It is hurtful and it breaks us. But we are better than this.

1. We do not need a man in order to have value.


2. In order to keep our man, we do not need a magazine to tell us new things to try in the bedroom.


It has taken me a long time to write those words, to be honest. I have never been very confident in myself. Not just me all by myself and alone. I was about twenty when I decided that I wasn't going to pretend to be someone I wasn't in order to get a boy to like me. That I wasn't going to spend hours getting ready for a CLASS that that hot boy shared with me just to hopefully gain his coveted attention. It has taken me even longer to understand #2.

I'm not huge into magazines, but I have let them and the media affect me. I have always felt inadequate, even since marriage (things don't magically change in this department when you get married, I was dismayed to find). It has taken me until VERY recently to understand that when you are married to someone, when you have a deep trust with someone, when you both know that breaking up isn't something you're laying out on the table over every petty argument - it is only then, with REAL trust, that you can open up to a person physically: sexually. It is only then that you can be creative all on your own.

When you have a relationship like this you don't NEED a magazine to tell you 99 new tricks to try on your man. You just need to know that you are loved unconditionally, and that you love unconditionally, and things just sort of... fall into place.

I know that many of my friends don't have marriages like this. I know that many of my friends are still dating, or engaged, and that it is very hard to believe. It is very hard to wait. I know. I have been there. I have wanted so desperately to do the right things to make a man love me. I have thought that I could figure it all out through research - that someone else could tell me what I needed in my relationship - that TV really showed me what my boyfriend wanted me to do and be like. The truth is, it's all lies.

Oh, readers, I have only just learned this. I think this is why the article touched me the way it did. I went through so much of my life trying to be someone I wasn't. I went through so much of my life doing things that made me feel ashamed and whorish and ugly just to get a boy to stay with me or love me more or to "make him happy". I wish I had just listened to myself. I wish that I could've avoided all of those things and that all the boys around me could have too. How much happier would we be if we could just trust one another and ourselves to know what to do when the time comes?

After all, sex is a holy command. One of the few given to us from the beginning, way back in the garden. God said "be fruitful and multiply": go and have sex. We KNOW how to do this, ladies and gentlemen. We don't need a magazine or a porno or a television program as a how-to. It's built in. When everything is as it should be. When there is mutual respect and trust and the knowledge that our marriage commitment is the REAL deal - not just a contract that can be broken, but a convenant commitment, then we'll know exactly what we're doing, and we won't have to be ashamed.

Crosses at the side of the road.

Several times a year, I'm not sure the official occasions, but several times a year, different Catholic Churches in our area post hundreds of crosses outside near the main drag with American flags and signs about how many children are "killed by choice".

Just to put it out there up front, when we're talking strictly politics, I am pro-life. I know that there are all kinds of horrifying circumstances under which pro-choice folks would say that I was being an unmerciful and complete jerk, but after have my own child (the first one) I finally understood the miracle of birth, of life, and I realized that killing an unborn child was just wrong, period. Before that, I was pro-choice in certain circumstances - like rape, for example. I will say that I have a lot of nuancy little beliefs regarding circumstances like that - or incest, things like this - but let's just say for the sake of argument right now that I'm totally pro-life.

A few years ago I always felt a sort of righteousness about those crosses standing at the side of the road. I always thought they carried some kind of important message to those unwed mothers who were thinking of getting an abortion for the sake of convenience or because they were afraid their parents would be upset. That should teach them - or something.

But lately I've realized that the approach of bumper stickers and roadside crosses is really the totally wrong approach.

I find several things interesting about the particular display I've been passing taking my son to school this week.

The first thing is that there is no sign accompanying this display for a help line or something else for women considering abortion. Just this morbid display.

The second thing (and then I'll stop because there's a lot more to address) that I notice is that accompanying these crosses are a bunch of American flags. I'm not sure what message this is supposed to send - like - Americans are evil? Or Americans are the people the message is for? Or Americans are the ones who have killed all of these unborn children? Or is it supposed to be some symbol of patriotism? No idea. I think it makes zero sense. Either way abortion is an international deal. Also, if it's supposed to make me feel all patriotic and like it's my duty as an American citizen to be pro-life, then maybe they should have some stuff about war there as well. I'm sure THAT would go over well in an area supported by a Naval Base - but really? War causes the death of thousands as well. Where's their statement on that? Oh wait, the pro-life stance also has to be the republican stance, which is generally pro-war. Not saying how I feel on that issue really, but I do see an issue with the juxtaposition of statements.

Also, I remember when I was pregnant with my first child. There was an element of shame accompanying that. I've spoken about this before. We are trained as young women that getting pregnant is pretty much the worst thing that could befall us as a result of our sexual actions. The shame didn't go away for me just because I was married. It still felt scary and like I'd done something wrong to be in the place that I was in. I admit that as a teenager if I had gotten pregnant I would have strongly considered abortion. I would've felt that anything was better than facing the shame that would be brought on my family and the disappointment I would feel from my parents - the discrimination I would feel from pretty much everyone around me - the unwed teenage mother - people would stare. People would talk. My life would generally suck. No amount of crosses along the side of the road or pro-life bumper stickers would make me feel differently.

The baby growing inside of me - even as a married mother - was remote. Especially in the first trimester. The only evidence of the little life was me vomiting and feeling generally crappy. It's not a lot of inspiration for a fifteen year old girl whose parents will probably disown her (at least that's what they've threatened) if they find out. A young girl will do ANYTHING to hide something like this when they've been brought up to feel they will be looked SO down upon, disowned, sent away, scorned, ridiculed, etc.

So perhaps, we pro-life folks should try another page in our book. One where those girls are welcomed into our homes. One where those girls are supported and taught how to care for their children and educated that pregnancy ISN'T the end of the world. There are other reasons to avoid pre-marital sex.

So maybe if we MUST place those crosses by the roadside, we could also include a cute baby picture and a phone number someone could call who is considering abortion. Maybe when we see a young girl with a swelling belly we could be kind to her, open the door and carry her bags and ask her what she's thinking of naming the little life, instead of staring blatantly and talking behind her back. Maybe we could wipe her tears and hug her instead of deciding that she is a worthless member of our society. Love trumps hate - every time. Making her feel badly for already doing something doesn't change what she's already done. More hugs, less cross displays. Thanks.