Before we begin this story (a long one, so settle in), let me tell you about the first sex talk I ever got: It was in middle school. I went to gym class prepared to run laps for forty-five minutes, because I sucked at basketball. Instead, however, the class was instructed not to change into their uniforms. Boys were to report to one classroom, girls to another.

I still don’t know what the girls did in those forty-five minutes, but the boys received a lecture from our mustachioed coach about the importance of abstinence. “Keep it in your damn pants!” could have been the title of the lecture, as that was the most oft-repeated phrase of the day. We watched a video of a woman giving birth. I passed out somewhere around the time the baby’s head began to appear. For the rest of the year I was known as “that kid who passed out in health class.”

Last night I attended perhaps the third sex talk of my life. This one was…different.

If the title of my first talk was “Keep it in your damn pants,” the title of last night’s talk could have been “I like that pinky in my ass.” This phrase, or a variant of it, was used seven times throughout the evening, by both the speaker and various audience members.

But that’s not how lecture titles work. If it were, PrezBo’s free speech class would be called “I’m an occasional user of cocaine.” In fact, the talk chose a name for itself. It was sponsored by Take Back the Night, and it was called “Getting a Grip: Mastering Your Sexuality.”

The speaker was Megan Andelloux, whose website describes her as a “clinical sexologist” and a “certified sexuality educator.”

I knew things were going to be awkward for me as soon as I showed up. At the desk outside Altschul auditorium, I told the organizer “I’m here to learn about the sex stuff.” She did not laugh.

Instead of laughter, I was given a pamphlet on sexual fantasies, a packet of lubricant (“silicone-based!” one of the organizers exclaimed gleefully), and, most terrifyingly, a blank notecard. Oh god, I thought to myself. What are they going to make me write on this?

The second awkward moment was when I walked into the auditorium. There were a few men present, but we were vastly outnumbered by women. Why was this awkward? I don’t know. I’m an awkward person.

And it wasn’t just a couple of people who were present: I’d been in this auditorium before, for an astronomy class, and the place was at least as full last night as it ever had been in any of those lectures. Eventually my male co-editor showed up and sat with me.

The desk, upon which my astronomy professor had often placed free stress balls or alien-shaped erasers, was instead covered with sex toys. I mean, there were a bunch of them. Look:

I would be lying if I said I knew what even half of those things were for. The only item on that desk I felt 100% comfortable around was the water bottle, but who knew what it was doing there in this context? (It turned out she just used it to drink from).

Andelloux wasted no time in recognizing this abundance of riches. “Sometimes I forget how many sex toys I have,” she said in opening the discussion. “And whenever I’m packing them, I think ‘I didn’t bring enough!’”

She explained a little bit about her background, which included teaching sex ed to kids, working at feminist bookshops, and answering people’s questions about sex. What she noticed, she said, was that “adults were asking the same questions that kids were asking.”

Worried by this, she went on to found the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, an institute she describes as “a magical land filled with dildos and a cat.” The organization’s actual mission statement is a little less whimsical: According to its website, CSPH “is designed to provide adults with a safe, physical space to learn about sexual pleasure, health, and advocacy issues.”

To encourage audience participation in the night’s discussion, and also just because she apparently felt like being nice, prizes were offered to random people at random intervals. The options included:

flexible coil restraints
a “tickler”
anal beads
an under-the-bed restraint system
a flogger
feathered nipple clamps
a vibrator that pulses to the beat of music at a club
She gave away the first prize almost immediately, and the randomly-chosen winner selected the vibrator, to racuous applause. I did not applaud, not because I wasn’t happy for the winner, but because I was busy desperately seeking a shadowy corner of the auditorium where I might be invisible and thus ineligible for prizes. No such luck.

The two-hour event then began in earnest, with the question “What do people want from sex?” Several answers rang out from the prize-emboldened audience. “Orgasm!” shouted someone. “Release!” came another voice. “Pleasure!”

“Babies?” someone suggested, and everyone had a good laugh. “Or maybe, ‘not babies,’” Andelloux offered. Then she pulled up a Powerpoint slide which showed survey results to the same question.

The number one thing people want out of sex is “To be wanted,” according to the slide.

Andelloux highlighted problems with the way we communicate about sex: “We talk about sex the way Cosmo talks about sex, and that’s not healthy,” she said.

The biggest problem with communication, Andelloux seemed to be saying, is that it is so often shame-based. She noted that in its definition of sexual health, the American Centers for Disease Control doesn’t talk about pleasure or the ability to achieve orgasm — the World Health Organization does, and that was the definition of sexual health she used throughout the evening.

It was around this point that I became keenly aware of two things:

My feelings of awkwardness at attending this event were entirely a product of the shame-based sexual education I received growing up
This personal revelation didn’t really help anything in terms of how awkward I felt
At this point she started using the word “cock” a lot (something she had warned us would happen: “Cock is gonna be flying out of my mouth like crazy”), and so I mostly stopped taking notes and started doodling intently in my notebook while hoping that no one could see how mortified I was.

The next thing in my notes is about masturbation. Andelloux thinks we should all be doing it. “Masturbation is so good for your body,” she said.

Well let me tell you something, Megan Andelloux: If you’d been around to talk to my priest on the Saturday before my Confirmation, I might have been saying a lot fewer Hail Marys that night. (I am mildly embarrassed making that joke, but I’m doing it anyway to prove that I have learned something about communication).

Aside from its health benefits, Andelloux said, masturbation lets you figure out what you like. That, in turn, will make your sexual encounters with other people better.

“Expecting the other person to know what to do to your body is fucking mean. It’s mean. Don’t do that to them,” she said. Instead, she recommended masturbating to figure out what you like, and then guiding your partner(s) during future encounters.

Again, the reason more people don’t do this, according to Andelloux, is that people are afraid to “own” their desires.

“Sex is like eating a cupcake,” Andelloux explained. When you see a cupcake, you immediately go “I want that in my mouth. We don’t talk about sex that way,” but we should. Andelloux recommended telling your partners exactly what you want and what you don’t want.

This provided a nice segue into the issue of consent. In sex, she said, it’s important to identify what you want and verbalize it. Verbalizing those desires, she acknowledged, is often scary. “Our culture does not support us taking ownership of our sexual desires. It shames us for it.”

But it’s important to do it anyway. And if your partner says no to something you express an interest in, she said, the appropriate response is to thank him or her. Saying no is a way that your partner shows she is taking care of herself, and you should appreciate it.

“Just because your partner has a desire does not mean that you want to fulfill that desire,” she said. “Boundaries are important.”

It was at this point that someone asked a question about the utility of faking orgasms. “Please don’t fake orgasms,” Andelloux responded. “…You are teaching someone what not to do.”

The next section was about talking dirty. I went into mild catatonic shock during this part, so my notes are not very good. I did doodle a pretty decent tree surrounded by grass, however:

I was afraid the branch looked like a penis, so I drew another branch and tried to put a bird’s nest in there, but that made everything worse.

Meanwhile, Andelloux made audience members yell out “dirty” phrases. Even just remembering it now is blush-inducing. This is where the “pinky up the ass” phrase got the most usage, though it was not the phrase’s first appearance of the evening.

Andelloux showed us how to say “I like that pinky up my ass” in both a cute, sexy way and also in a commanding, sexy way. The dealbreaker, as far as I was concerned: Both ways involve actually verbalizing the words “I like that pinky up my ass.”

Also heard: “I’m deep-throating your foot right now.” I don’t know what that means, and I didn’t ask. Mercifully, neither did anyone else.

We then watched a video in which a couple argued in very explicit terms over whether or not one member of the couple should urinate on the other (Warning: Explicit language. So explicit. Very, very explicit.). This was what I imagine electroshock therapy must feel like.

The evening drew to a close with a question-and-answer session. We all had to write something down on notecards and hand them in, but if we didn’t have questions we could just write “I have no questions” three times, like some sort of magic phrase that would finally get me out of there and let me reflect on what, if anything, I had learned.

The magic trick worked. I was finally allowed to leave, and I went home and I’ve spent the last fifteen hours or so reflecting (often unwillingly, because I couldn’t get certain images and words out of my head). Here’s what I learned: I don’t like talking about sex stuff. I don’t like listening to other people talk about sex stuff.

Here’s what else I learned: I’m in the wrong on this. Andelloux’s talk was explicit and at times, for a kid who grew up in the South being screamed at by gym teachers, embarrassing. But it is also necessary. Her points about the lack of communication even between partners, and the shame-based way we talk about sex, are inarguable.

It’s really saddening to think of all the people who grow up thinking something’s wrong with them, or that they’re undesirable, or any other negative thing, just because they’re afraid to talk about sex or they haven’t been properly educated about sexuality.

Through events like last night’s, Andelloux, as well as organizations like Take Back the Night, are fixing that problem for the current generation of sex-havers. That’s a good thing, and these events are good things. Even if I don’t necessarily feel 100% comfortable attending them.

Birth Control: Talking ‘Bout The Pullout Generation

When a recent study concluded that nearly 1 in 3 straight, sexually active young women used the withdrawal method for contraception, the media breathlessly coined a neat phrase to characterize these 15- to 24-year-olds: “The Pullout Generation.”

Elite Daily asked: “Gen-Y Or Gen-Pullout? Coitus Interruptus Is The New Form Of Birth Control” and New York Magazine breezily headlined its coverage, “No Pill? No Prob. Meet The Pullout Generation.” The Huffington Post held a forum, asking “Is this an appropriate method of birth control in this day and age?”

The truth is, “pulling out” is old news. Indeed, it’s perhaps the oldest form of contraception (besides abstinence) and has been practiced for millennia. Though clearly not the most effective method of birth control, and offering no protection against STIs, withdrawal is free and when done with skill it can be somewhat effective.

According to Planned Parenthood:

–Of every 100 women whose partners use withdrawal, 4 will become pregnant each year if they always do it correctly.
–Of every 100 women whose partners use withdrawal, 27 will become pregnant each year if they don’t always do it correctly.
–Couples who have great self-control, experience, and trust may use the pull out method more effectively. Men who use the pull out method must be able to know when they are reaching the point in sexual excitement when ejaculation can no longer be stopped or postponed. If you cannot predict this moment accurately, withdrawal will not be as effective.

To find out more, I crowd-sourced the issue on SurveyMonkey and asked why my 20-something peers — savvy, educated — relied on such a frowned-upon form of contraception. I got over 30 responses that fell into five overarching categories:

1. No Access To Contraception
Responses in this bucket ranged from “Didn’t have a condom” or “forgot” to just going for what was most “convenient” in the “heat of the moment.”

2. Personal Preference
These answers were mostly about feeling liberated from other forms of contraception. People said pulling out “feels better” and can be “more pleasurable.”

3. Extra Protection
Some responders said they just wanted a little extra peace of mind. One guy wrote that he pulled out “just to be safe, the pill and condom have failed before,” and another said “there’s always the possibility that a condom could fail so I pull out every time” and even “…my girlfriend’s on the pill. She just gets paranoid and prefers that I pull out to be safer.”

4. Bad Options
Let’s face it, current methods of contraception fall short in many ways. Responses here included, “I don’t like how birth control [pills] negatively affect my sex drive” and “My partner could not stay erect while using a condom.”

5. Pitfalls
These comments took a little more courage, but felt pretty honest:
“I was drunk and wasn’t thinking,” one person wrote. Another said she was “too shy to mention he should use a condom.”

All in all, a wide range of reactions from the field. For an expert perspective, I spoke with Megan Andelloux, founder and director of the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, R.I. She was part of that HuffPo video conference on “The Pullout Generation” so I asked her to unpack the study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, and the subsequent public outcry.

According to Andelloux, pulling out isn’t a millennial thing at all. It’s just that these days, women, in particular, are more open and chatty about the type of birth control they use and about sex in general (see, for instance, Lena Dunham’s “Girls”).

“What is different,” Andelloux says, “is that women are feeling more comfortable or in control to say what they’re using. For many people, when they heard about the withdrawal method, it was always couched as a ‘non-effective form of birth control.’”

Andelloux says the withdrawal method should once and for all be viewed as a legitimate form of birth control. “One of the main issues that strikes me about this is we don’t actually talk about how to use withdrawal,” she says. “We get really shocked by the information, because we don’t take the time to explain how to do things correctly. One of the main reasons people get pregnant from this stuff is because guys don’t have ejaculatory control. Premature ejaculation is way more common than erectile dysfunction.”

Andelloux adds that even with all the downsides of pulling out, “it’s better than nothing.”

Here are some more important details of the Obstetrics & Gynecology study that make it more nuanced than some of the headlines suggest:

During the 47-month survey period, 31 percent of female subjects used withdrawal at some point. Of these women, 21.4 percent experienced an unintended pregnancy during the study. That sounds like a pretty high number until we read on: 13.2 percent of the women using only other contraceptive methods (not withdrawal) also became pregnant.

Our Bodies, Our Blog, critiquing the study in a piece called “Headlines About The Pullout Generation Are Premature,” points out that nearly 9 out of 10 women who practiced withdrawal also used other methods of contraception during the study. So whose “Pullout Generation” is this anyway?

An alternative interpretation put forth in New York Magazine suggested that some women are switching from hormonal birth control to a combination of period-tracking and the withdrawal method as a way to reclaim their bodies from artificial cycles of estrogen and progesterone.

All this being said, it’s important to repeat that the withdrawal method, on its own, is far from the most effective form of contraception. “If you were not looking to become pregnant or there is a concern of STI,” says Andelloux, “there are better choices out there.”

Better, but still not good enough, it seems. Yes, my generation will shift to better birth control — when birth control options themselves get better.

Megan Andelloux, a sexuality educator and sexologist, answers questions during a forum at UNH discussing “Orchestrating Orgasms.” On stage with her is a UNH student.
(Nilsen/Democrat photo)Hundreds of university students packed into the MUB’s Granite State Room on Thursday night to hear Megan Andelloux, a sexuality educator and sexologist, give her presentation on “Orchestrating Orgasms.”

Earlier in the day, conservative advocacy groups Cornerstone Action and Americans for Prosperity N.H. expressed their dissatisfaction that Andelloux’s presentation was being funded by UNH’s student activity fee, which comes directly out of each UNH student’s required college expenses and is used to pay for student events and groups.

In an email interview, Cornerstone Action Executive Director Ashley Pratte said, “I think it is ridiculous that the student activities fee is going toward this lecture. Student activities on campus are meant to promote an engaged community. This is no way an educational event or opportunity for the students.”

Pratte continued, “If they (the university) desire to promote a hookup culture rather than a quality education maybe they shouldn’t ask for more taxpayer-funded public money.”

A long line of students led into the Granite State Room before the start of Andelloux’s presentation. Some UNH students had been waiting in line for an hour.

When asked about the controversy surrounding the event, some students disagreed with concerns surrounding the sexual nature of the event.

“They (conservative advocacy groups) need to be a little more mature about it,” said Colby Hufnagle, a UNH freshman.

UNH senior Danielle Hall agreed with Hufnagle. “There’s a reason it was voted in. It’s an interest, it’s education,” Hall said. “Just because it doesn’t cover STDs, doesn’t mean it’s not educational.”

The outpouring of student interest in Andelloux’s presentation even caught MUSO, the UNH student group hosting the event, by surprise.

“When I thought of creating this event and putting it out and “fliering,” I had no idea that we would fill over 500 students in the room,” said MUSO executive director Taylor Barclay. “I didn’t know that the line would be all the way out the door and up the stairs.”

Speaking to the event’s controversial content, Barclay said, “It’s hard because some people just have a different opinion. I’m very sex positive and open about sexuality and I think everyone should learn about sexuality. Some people just disagree with that. Opinions are opinions.”

Barclay declined to comment on how much Student Activity Fee money was spent on the event.

Talking openly about sex was the main theme of Andelloux’s presentation. Andelloux, who started her career as a sex educator for Planned Parenthood, said that as she moved to adult sex education, “The adults were asking the same questions the kids were asking.”

“Why should we be talking about this (sex)?” she asked the audience. “We shouldn’t be shocked by our sexuality, we should be safe with it. These messages don’t get talked about and we don’t get a space to discuss it.”

Andelloux has worked as a sex educator for 17 years, and currently works as a clinical instructor for Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and the Brown University Pediatrics Residency Program.

Andelloux said she was aware of the controversy surrounding her subject. She noted the controversy has increased in the past two years, to the point where she has had police escorts to some of her events.

“I think it’s really interesting that we’re really focused on that money aspect when it comes to sex,” she said. “That we don’t raise that issue with concerts, and we don’t raise it with politicians. Everything has an agenda, but denying that sexuality is a basic component of health is absurd.”

Many questions about many different topics were asked throughout the evening, and Andelloux said more than once that UNH was her favorite school to speak at so far.

“This was an amazing group,” she said. “I really saw a different type of audience in here tonight where there was a lot of kindness. The event was much bigger than I expected. Great questions, I had a blast.”

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During the next three months, I'll be providing workshops for the ladies at the Gloria Gemma foundation on various issues surrounding sexual pleasure while dealing with breast cancer. Providence Monthly publishes an article on why we’ve been silent for so long on and how Rhode Island is breaking boundaries in a positive way.

Allison put together a Kickstarter less than a month ago, and we already raised the needed funds to support the book. But hey, we are still going since we have a couple weeks left. If we hit a certain mark, we will be contributing to Girl Sex 202.

But the items on the table hinted at what was to come.

Where else would you see an antique vibrator, a stuffed plush yet anatomically correct breast, a dildo shaped like the honey bear found in most New England kitchens, and a large penis with a syringe that would allow it to squirt the fluid of the owner’s choice? It might seem odd to some, but it’s just Cambridge, upstairs at the Middle East.

This show, the first of Sandra Daugherty’s East Coast tour, opened with a short set by local comic Will Smalley. Smalley opened up to the audience about how some argue that he doesn’t look as gay as he is (the cardigan he wore settled it for this crowd), and what happens when you visit a gay strip club in Montreal and meet former WWF IC Pat Patterson while suffering through a defective zipper.

His relaxed stage presence allowed him to work in what some might consider blue material without seeming at all crass, or deliberately pushing taste’s envelope.

After making the crowd laugh, Will stayed onstage for the first segment of the show proper, an open dialogue between Sandra and her guest co-host Megan Andelloux on body hair.

Andelloux, a Mass native who has guested on the Sexnerd podcast in the past, was an entertaining contrast to Sandra’s peppy inquisitiveness. Megan, the more clinical and forceful speaker of the two, had a great rapport with the audience.

Either that, or she won the audience over early with the story of her horrible first waxing experience.

Anyone who can talk about pus generation with both a straight face and good humor is certainly an asset at any sexual discussion. The three speakers discussed the pros and cons of threading, shaving, and waxing, until the matter was laid bare.

Sandra then led an audience-helmed segment termed “Choose Your Own Adventure.” Suggestions of topics were shouted out by the crowd, their worthiness ranked by the applause each idea generated. What topics made the cut? The medical risks of a-t-m, how to get a quiet romantic partner to be noisier in the bedroom, and the exciting purpose of the flange on a butt plug.

The audience got a little science, some relationship advice, and some really good cautionary advice.

Sandra, Will, and Megan hung out a bit after the show, meeting fans, posing for pictures, and pressing various types of flesh. The live podcast was a rousing success, and an excellent beginning for the tour. The next show in NYC has already sold out, but tickets are available for the shows in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Answering questions at my organization, The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, RI. Stop by and see the magical land of dildo’s, antique vibrators and sexual medicine devices, and a kitty named Bisquit.

Answering questions at my organization, The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, RI. Stop by and see the magical land of dildo’s, antique vibrators and sexual medicine devices, and a kitty named Bisquit.

Answering questions at my organization, The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, RI. Stop by and see the magical land of dildo’s, antique vibrators and sexual medicine devices, and a kitty named Bisquit.