Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Scalpels and Patches

Some people are mistakenly calling it the female Viagra. The truth is a bit more disturbing. This week the BBC reported on a new patch for those among the one million UK women who experience early menopause due to the surgical removal of their ovaries. One distressing result of this premature menopause, which causes decreased testosterone production, can be reduced sexual interest. The patch, called Intrinsa, slow-releases testosterone as a means of pepping up desire. It will be available through the National Health Service (NHS), Britain’s sensible if under-funded socialized health provision for all residents. It's being used in other European countries, although the FDA has not yet approved it here.

I have just got to digress immediately. Call me kooky, but the fact that slapped me upside my consciousness in all this is not that the drug companies are treating this symptom in women who have undergone hysterectomies. No, it is the appalling number of women who have undergone this operation in the first place.

I know less about medicine and medications than most people, but I can count. Let’s look at the numbers. Let's assume that out of a population of 60 million, about 30 million Brits are women. Of those, only 19 million are between 16 and 65. I remind you that a million UK women have had their ovaries removed. Can you imagine one out of 19 men having their balls fall to the knife? What’s wrong with this picture? Why hasn’t medicine found better solutions for “heavy bleeding and pelvic pain” than amputation?

I don’t claim to understand why radical surgery is the favored treatment procedure. At least having “created” the problem, the medical establishment has found in this patch a solution that, thankfully, provided 74% of the 500 women in the test group with an “increase in satisfying sex.” Unfortunately they have not given us the dirty details of what constitutes satisfaction, but hey, I’m a huge fan of satisfaction. The doctor cited in the piece did concede that there are a complex set of possible barriers to wanting sex (he mentioned children being around) – far more than a hormonal patch can cope with.

It's great that the tested women feel the patch has elevated their appetites – and I wish all women lust and passion – but I feel like they’ve got us coming and going: cutting us and then patching us. Viagra and its cousins have been such massive money-spinners that naturally there is an effort to pathologize women’s sexuality, so they can slip us some expensive hormones.

What to do about this lack of desire?

One: value women’s innards more and commit resources to finding less horrendous solutions to bleeding and pelvic pain than removal.

Two: look at the physical and psychological complexities of living without key organs – as is done when limbs are lost – to ensure that the women still feel whole.

Three: begin a Sexual Improvement Campaign that places huge anatomical posters of the clitoris in sports bars and that makes strong vibrators available free in every home.

That’s all bound to heat up the numbers of women reporting satisfaction – with or without cutting and patching.

Q&A: The man who couldn’t resist exhaust pipes

ASK A CONSENTING ADULT

My first Q&A comes from Anya L. who asks,

“Fetishes are fine, if mutual. But what if you hook up with someone who can’t get aroused without, say, toe-sucking, and you aren’t into that at all?”

Thanks for asking, Anya. I completely agree with you that fetishes are fine, even when they are not always mutual. So what’s a fetish? It’s simply an activity, image or scenario that makes the fetishist more intensely ga-ga than it makes the average horn-dog.

 

When two (or more) people become lovers there will be a lot of divergent tastes to work out, once the three-month hormonal tornado settles down. If one of you is a libertarian and the other is a Christian fundamentalist, you’ll be likely to run into bigger problems than just a toe-sucking (or role-playing or latex) fetish. If your main squeeze is into Bond and Rambo and you like musical comedies, how do you handle it? You negotiate and sometimes you compromise. Maybe you take turns choosing the movies, maybe you each go separately with other like-minded friends or maybe you make deals (buttered popcorn or oral sex) to sweeten the compromise.

 

Fetishes can sometimes seem awkward to others, even when they are practiced without another human partner. This week the British tabloid newspaper The Sun reported on a car mechanic named Chris Donald who, in addition to having a girlfriend, makes passionate love to cars. The article quotes Chris as saying: “There’s more to car love than exhaust pipes. Stroking the body panels and delicate touching makes excellent foreplay.” Apparently at least 20 people have driven to Chris’ garage to masturbate while watching Chris “service” their autos. He’s not the only such tradesman: The Sun claims to have reported in 1993 on an electrician Karl Watkins who “was jailed for having sex with pavements...”

 

But you, Anya, are probably talking about the sexual dynamic between two humans. Let’s look at your example of toe-sucking. Maybe your honey is increasingly crawling down to your most distant digits for some lapping. It isn’t necessary for you to share this fetish – that is, it isn’t necessary for you to hunger to swallow a toe or have a toe swallowed. But perhaps there is something in foot worship for you, like the sensations you reap from your partner’s tongue or from a reverent foot massage.

 

Even if those don’t particularly move you, maybe you’re turned on by how excited it makes your lover, and you recognize that you’re going to benefit from that arousal in the end (or in any other geographic area of your choice). If your tootsies really can’t bear it, consider allowing your partner to play a sex video focusing on their fetish while you are making love.

 

If your lover wants you to suck their toes and you’re reluctant, drown those (clean) feet in your favorite chocolate or whipped cream. If your relationship is non-monogamous, perhaps the fetish can be satisfied elsewhere. Unless there is danger to health and safety – elements which trump desire – continue to try to expand both of your sources of desire. Sex should be a matter of consent and mutuality. Where there is attraction and affection, creative solutions can’t be far behind. At least toe-sucking doesn’t require a car-lift.

 

Got a question? Whisper it right here in my ear.

Solo Play More Orgasmic than Partner Sex

Single Australian women over 40 have twice as many orgasms by their own hand than those depending on their partners. Is anyone surprised? My digits know my pussy damned well, and my Magic Wand vibrator knows it even better. Older women have had years of self-practice and some have elevated it to an unparalleled art.

The Betty Byrne Henderson Centre is undertaking a five-year study with 500 Queensland women aged 40 to 80 years. They confirmed a lot of trends we might have anticipated. As reported in the Sunday Mail, “55.2 per cent of women with no current partner could achieve orgasm every time with masturbation while only 24.6 per cent of women with a current partner could achieve orgasm every time.”

My London friend Sue O’Sullivan, an activist around women’s health and HIV/AIDS and in her 60s, perfected a wonderfully complicated, pervy wank script during a decade she chose not to date. Here’s what she told me:

“I've been single for over ten years now - and there's nothing more irritating than hearing someone talking about not having any sex when they mean they don't have a partner. I wank regularly and consider myself sexually hard done by if I don't have two or three orgasms in a session.

“Here’s how I do it now that I've been post menopausal for almost 15 years - wow - that long! I pull out my lubrication, after rubbing some health shop vaginal cream on my clit and around the vulva and into my vagina. I already have my clean and trusty big dildo out of its cotton bag. And I might have my little black dolphin out too. It depends how complicated I want to get. I am totally into oral sex at this point although it's nothing I ever did much of with pleasure when I was with men. In the few minutes it takes to get ready, my mouth is aching to be penetrated by a 'hard dick.' I lick my lips and tease them with the tip of the dildo. It’s a real challenge if I want one of those big boys anally too, although Pilates has restored a lot of my agility. Finally, I coat the Wand with the regular lube and start it on slow. It can end in two or three orgasms.”

I’m curious about one thing: Could the same thing be said of men over 40? Please write and let us know.

Too tired for sex? I don’t think so!

I was startled to see a Reuters headline that claimed: “US women too tired for friends, sex: poll.” It reported on a National Sleep Foundation survey called “Sleep in America” that questioned over 1,000 women between the ages of 18 to 64.  70% indicated that stress and anxiety were messing up their snooze. Women, duh, are overworked.

But now, here’s a lesson about journalistic packaging. The study looked at what time-pressed women were shifting in order to cope and deal. Sleep was the first loser with a full 52% of the respondents going without enough. Exercise at 48% was next to go. Hanging with friends and family got short-changed by 39%, while 37% quit eating in a healthy way.

Finally, the very last thing to be limited? Sex, at 33%. The headline says “US women too tired for friends, sex,” but in fact women seem to be fighting like hell to hang on to sex. It’s more precious to us than siesta, sit-ups, socializing and sushi.