The Ultimate Guide to Kink: book review
I was, at first, conflicted when Cleis Press invited me to review The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge, ed. Tristan Taormino. I’m so unkinky personally. I like gentle sex, and although I had a “try anything twice” motto a few decades ago, by now, I feel pretty secure in knowing what works for me, and it’s decidedly, deliciously, vanilla.
I’ll admit it, I’ve never understood what could be pleasurable about pain. I’ve been in two devastating automobile accidents with residual and lifelong pain, I shattered my shoulder in ten places two years ago, I have arthritis in my neck — I know pain. I couldn’t imagine bringing pain intentionally into my sex life. Imagine my surprise reading this in Tristan Taormino’s introduction:
| Tristan Taormino |
When people experience pain, adrenaline, endorphins, and natural painkillers flood their nervous system. People get off on this chemical rush, which many describe as feeling energized, high, or transcendent… In the context of a sexually charged scene, some people, when they are aroused (and their pain tolerance is much higher), process a face slap in a different way: it feels good.
Oh! Now I get it. (Are true kinksters laughing at my innocence?)
- Patrick Califia, who writes “Butthole Bliss: The Ins and Outs of Anal Fisting” (“one of the most extreme sexual acts that one person can allow another to do to his or her body”) and “Enhancing Masochism: How to Expand Limits and Increase Desire.” He defines masochism as “the desire and the ability to become aroused and perhaps even climax while experiencing sensations that other people avoid.”
- Hardy Haberman, who writes “A Little Cock and Ball Play,” including household items you can use as sensation implements: toothbrush, paintbrush, nylon scouring pad, mushroom brush….
- Jack Rinella, who writes “The Dark Side.” As the Dark Lord, he advertised for men who desired to be “subjugated, degraded, dominated, humiliated, and violated” — about 120 men responded.
- Lolita Wolf, who writes “Making an Impact: Spanking, Caning, and Flogging,” including choosing an implement, techniques, and why the bottom and the top enjoy it.
- Barbara Carrellas, who writes “Kinky Twisted Tantra,” including “The Tao of Pain.”
Patrick Califia challenges those who brand BDSM players as “mentally ill”:
The assumption that variant sexualities are mental illnesses has more to do with conservative religious values than it does with objective observation. If a mental state or human behavior is unhealthy, we ought to be able to demonstrate that it makes that person unhappy, interferes with their ability to give and receive love, prevents them from setting goals that give them a sense of fulfillment, and injures their health.
Naked at Our Age wins AASECT book award
“Dear Ms. Price,” the email began. “It is my honor to notify you that your book, Naked at Our Age, was selected by the AASECT Awards Committee as the 2012 Book Award winner.”
The email listed the AASECT members who had nominated and endorsed my book, and continued,
This award is presented to the author(s) of a book that makes a significant contribution to AASECTs vision of sexual health and to the clinical and educational standards of the field. The nominated book can be written for a professional audience or for a general audience and must have been published in English in 2011.
AASECT is The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists, the primary professional organization of this field. As the website explains,
In addition to sexuality educators, sexuality counselors and sex therapists, AASECT members include physicians, nurses, social workers, psychologists, allied health professionals, clergy members, lawyers, sociologists, marriage and family counselors and therapists, family planning specialists and researchers, as well as students in relevant professional disciplines. These individuals share an interest in promoting understanding of human sexuality and healthy sexual behavior..
Do you see why I’m thrilled by this award? These are the people I learn from at conferences and through their books and websites. These are the people who showed me the diversity of sexuality education and how much it’s needed at all points of our lifelong journey. These are the people who have chosen sexuality education as their life’s work.
And they have chosen Naked at Our Age as the best sexuality book of the year!
As proud as I am, I know it’s not just my book. It’s compelling because of your concerns and questions that comprise the 135 candid reader stories. It’s a solid guidebook to solutions for age-related sex problems because of the 45 experts — most AASECT members themselves — who graciously provided the answers to your questions. I’m also grateful to those of you who reviewed Naked at Our Age on your blogs, in publications, and on Amazon, so that potential readers learned about it.
I’ll receive this award personally at the AASECT conference in Austin next month — where I’ll also present a session on blogging about sexuality.
Thank you for making this book what it is, and for recognizing it with this honor.
Vaginal dryness and senior sex orgy? Reader Q
Q: I have recently started to have a physical relationship with a more mature woman. She happens to be 12 years my senior. I normally use lubricant because she is normally dry, regardless of how much foreplay we engage in. She has approached me about engaging in a small orgy. We were wondering if there would be any issues with a few men?
My response:
It’s completely normal for women to need lubricant for sex as they age. A woman can be extremely aroused and still not lubricate the way she used to. You’re right to use lubricant, as you’ve discovered already. Prolonged intercourse – whether with one man or “a few” – will require frequent application of lubricant.
Besides the dryness, though, she may find the group sex she’s considering physically uncomfortable sooner than she expects because of the thinning of her vaginal walls. If you plan to go ahead with this scene, be sure everyone understands that not every sex act has to culminate in intercourse, and make sure the other men involved agree not to push that part of it.
For everyone’s health and safety, be sure that condoms and dental dams (or the female condom, which works for both uses) are within easy reach and used with every interaction. Don’t forego this because the other men insist that they are “safe.” Your sexual health and your partner’s are your own responsibility. (Please read the FAQ, “Six Basic Facts Seniors Need to Know about STIs”)I can’t tell from your question whether your partner has had sex with multiple partners before and wants to do it again, or whether this is a fantasy of hers that you’d like to help her indulge. Don’t go into it lightly. Talk a lot first. Try roleplaying, just the two of you, pretending you have a third (or fourth) by “talking dirty” about what you’re fantasizing is going on. That may help you each understand what you’re imagining and wanting from expanding your relationship.
I could write pages about the issues to think about and talk about, how to negotiate what’s okay and what’s off limits, how to choose and invite new partners, how to test your fantasy in stages, how to make sure your partner (or any of you) can stop or leave if it doesn’t turn out to be right after all, how to care for each other afterwards.
As you see, I’m not moralizing – if you both really want this and it fits with your own beliefs, go into it thoughtfully and with plenty of dialogue and preparation.
If I’ve left you worried, frightened, or dismayed, then maybe this would be too big a step for your relationship to handle.
This question and my response were first published on the Safer Sex for Seniors website where this question was originally submitted — direct link to this Q &A here. Here’s what I wrote about this site when it first went live.
I’d love to know what my readers think about this topic and my response. Please comment!
“Outstanding Self-Help Book” says ASJA about Naked at Our Age
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| Photo by Dorri Olds |
I wrote in an earlier post that Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex won the outstanding service (which means self-help) book award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), the nation’s professional organization of independent nonfiction writers.
Last night, I received the award in person at the ASJA conference in New York City.The award was introduced with these quotes from the judges:
Naked At Our Age: it’s a disarming title, so appropriate to a topic that’s often ignored — senior sex. Forget “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Joan reached out to older men and women, straight and gay. Boy, did they ask, and wow! did Joan tell.
Joan is a recognized sexuality expert*, so of course her book provides educational and heartfelt advice about sex (including some very personal and moving reflections).
If you’re thinking, “been there, read that,” think again. Joan isn’t afraid of opening the reader’s mind about how to think and talk about sex. The book is comprehensive — if you’ve ever thought about it (even in your best dreams), you’ll read about it here. Prepare to be educated, surprised, or sometimes shocked.
We’re pleased to honor Joan with this ASJA award.
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| Photo by Mark Bennington |
*The big laugh of the evening came when the presenter misread “expert” as “subject,” saying “Joan is a recognized sexuality subject” — which sent everyone into gales of laughter, including me! Photographer Mark Bennington captured my reaction!
It is a profound honor to receive this award from my ASJA peers – the writers I read, respect, and sometimes envy!
Many of you longtime ASJA members knew me for decades as a health and fitness writer. What happened to morph me from rah-rah-fitness-is-for-everyone to preaching and teaching the pleasures of older-age sexuality?
Writing has always been an avenue – maybe call it a running path – for following my passion. I became a high school English teacher to be the teacher I always wished I had. Then in 1979, my daily fitness habit saved my life after a car crash – my heart was strong enough to go on automatic pilot while I waited for help, smashed and bloody – so I became a fitness writer and, once I could walk again, an aerobics instructor.
So it was natural that when I fell in love at age 57 with a man who was 64, I turned my writing to senior sex. Our profound and spicy love affair became the inspiration for the book I wrote at age 61, Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty, to celebrate the delights of older-life sexuality.
I started calling myself an advocate for ageless sexuality. The media called me “senior sexpert” and “wrinkly sex kitten” – I’m still trying to grow into that one.
Many readers, however, wrote me to call me “wrong.” They told me that they were not having great sex lives. 150 readers sent me their stories and their questions. I realized that finding answers for them needed to be my next book, my most important book.
I didn’t know the answer to every question, but I knew the experts who did, and I assembled 45 of them to write tips and answer reader questions. The stories and the expert tips, along with my candid commentary, became Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex.
This book means the world to me both professionally and personally. Robert, my lover who inspired my senior sex writing and who became my husband, died when Naked at Our Age was a book proposal. Writing it was my way to paw my way through grief and re-commit to my mission to help others through my writing.
Not usually at a loss for words, I don’t know how to express how much this award means to me. Thank you.
Thank you, Dorri Olds and Mark Bennington for permission to use your photos here.
If you’d like to purchase Naked at Our Age from Amazon, here is the direct link.