Kitty wants to play-do you? There are all sorts of ways to please a woman and Megan Andelloux returns to teach you the hottest. Come find out some new tricks for using your hands and mouth to make your partner purr.

Megan will take you through her hot spot anatomy, genital massage/masturbation techniques, g-spot stimulation, AFE play, and the best ways to use toys.

When: 3/22, 8pm

Where: Good Vibrations, Brookline, MA

Cost: 20.00 pre-registered, 25.00 at the door

Audience: General Public

This interview is one in a series of expert interviews on the AccessRx.com blog. We add new interviews on a regular basis. Please see our complete list of insightful interviews.

1. Why is there such a disconnect between the “health” side of sex and the “pleasure” side of sex?

Talking about sexuality in America can be challenging for many folks. The medical “health” world tends to shy away from discussing sex toys, orgasms and sexual pleasure for fear of promoting “smut” or losing their professional nature. The “Pleasure” focused world is often bored discussing or reading about sexual health due to years of sex education that is fear based (you’ll catch a disease! You’ll be labeled a whore!) Due to the lack of early onset holistic sexuality education these two worlds don’t know how to work together and how much they support one another. Times are starting to change however. Sex toys companies, film producers and pleasure activists are starting to work with the medical field, consulting professionals to ensure health, safety and pleasure. The medical world is starting to conduct studies that recognize the importance of pleasure and it’s effects on our health. Sex Educators are gaining more access to discuss pleasure issues in school systems, which is crucial to help alleviate fear about the body, sensation and thoughts.

2. How can a couple that has been mostly sexually inhibited break out of their rut and try new things without being embarrassed or self-conscious?

Breaking out of a rut is challenging! It can be embarrassing, uncomfortable and feel downright weird because it’s a new experience. Sometimes people forget that those sensations are normal reactions to experiencing a new activity. I like to compare it to the first time a person learns how to hold a pencil. It’s uncomfortable and awkward. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just NEW. So keep that in mind. You may find after a few tries that you really enjoy this new behavior or fantasy. You may also find that you won’t. But you’ll never know if you don’t try. So scootch yourself. Take a class on sexuality (many are held at sex toy shops, colleges or community centers). Purchase a book or watch a video on sexual fantasies and see what is arousing for other people. Think about what turns other people on and ask yourself, could this be a turn on for me? Then turn to your partner, tell them what you just saw or read about and say, “I just learned about ________. What do you think about that?” That gives you the opportunity to introduce a topic without disclosing too much information about how you feel. You are merely asking them for their thoughts on a topic. It’s a great way to start a conversation, especially about a behavior you might want to try out.

3. How should a couple go about experiencing with sex toys? Will they really make a difference in the relationship?

Sex toys can be a healthy component to enhancing a sexual relationship with yourself or a partner. The first study examining American’s sex toy use was conducted last year and found that almost half of the American population reports using sexual aids at some point in their life (52% of women and 45% of men) but you shouldn’t expect it to fundamentally change your relationship. Sex toys can make in difference in how you experience pleasure, foster communication, create a special bond between you and your partner, and assist in sexual expression if there are physical limitations. If you choose to experiment with sex toys, I would recommend starting small. Don’t necessarily go with what your best friend or magazines recommend, but rather discuss, what are we looking to get out of buying a sex toy? Is it to explore a fantasy? To cause (or intensify) orgasms? To stimulate a part of the body that may be difficult to reach? Then, start to narrow down your search. There are so many different types of sex toys out there; lubrication, vibrators, blindfolds, butt plugs, strap-ons, cock rings, etc. And each person is going to experience an item differently. So communicate with your partner about the experience and laugh. Sex can be awkward, weird and downright funny-it’s playtime for adults! Approach it that way: a fun expression of your creative sexual side.

4. You suggest that women celebrate menstruation! Why in the world would they want to do that? Explain your thoughts here, please and thank you!

How one feels about menstruation is correlated to their comfort or discomfort around sex, body image and sensations experienced. Menstruation is a taboo in our society. Labeled as “feminine hygiene” this phrase contributes to the fear that the vagina is dirty. In fact, if cared for properly, the vagina is the cleanest part of the body. No douches, sprays or chemicals need to take residence here, as they will only increase the chances of infections occurring. Menstruation is a natural, healthy function. To surround it in shame, dread or not publicly discussed contributes to individuals feeling disgusted or wishing for their periods to be over. For some people, their periods can be very painful, but they are not always that way! My suggestion to celebrate menstruation is an attempt to get people talking about it in a natural, normalizing way. Sexuality educators work hard every day to help make people feel more comfortable in their bodies and feeling comfortable about periods is another way to help people experience that.

5. What are your top sure-fire ways to keep things hot in the bedroom?

Communicate. Masturbate. Touch each other throughout the day (not just when you want to have sex). Laugh. Embrace the awkwardness. Try out new things. But most of all, have fun. Sex is playtime for adults!

FUN, WITH MENSTRUATION: the nose is the perfect place to test out a pocket rocket.

Tampons soaked in red Kool-Aid hung from their strings on every wall. Paper cut-outs of a uterus accompanied a giant fabric vagina like back-up singers in a band. Everything was red.

This was a menarche party, in honor of 13-year-old Rebecca Zakarian, the niece of party organizer and sex educator Megan Andelloux. The party, held in Providence, Rhode Island, sought reconciliation between the misunderstood and psychologically estranged Aunt Flow and her nieces of the world.

For many it was our first time rejoicing over leak week, the bleedies, riding the cotton pony, or more specifically ” ‘that time of the month’ where ‘I’m not at my best’ because ‘my vagina is bleeding.’ ” Rather than dread or detest our blood, we celebrated it.

More specifically, we celebrated menarche, the first menstruation, when our mothers claimed with traces of fear in their voices that now we were women. Andelloux doesn’t adhere to the myth that womanhood is handed neatly over upon menstruation. “It’s like, now you are fuckable, you can get pregnant, now you’re a woman,” she characterizes the thinking, “as opposed to her earning her power and becoming a woman.”

Along with that thinking, we were taught that bleeding is shameful and when you are bleeding, you should do anything to conceal it.

“Everywhere you go somebody is  bleeding,” notes Andelloux. “Our culture says, ‘Don’t talk about it.’ It’s a way of repressing women.”

Though the shame of menses has dominated since before the Bible proclaimed the impurity of bleeding women, there are cultures that embrace the powers of menstruation. For example, the Brahmins of South India celebrate menarche with Samati Sadang, a ritual celebration in promotion of fertility. The menstruating girl sits on a banana leaf eating raw eggs with ginger oil, and is then bathed in milk. Afterwards, the family parties down with good eats and rejoices in the girl’s maturation. Unfortunately, this is not the norm in our American society.

Not only do women endure shame while walking along the beach in soft focus, but the products designed for concealing this shameful experience have proven deadly in some cases. In 1980, Proctor and Gamble introduced Rely tampons, advertised as the most absorbent tampon on the market. Made of synthetics like polyester, their greedy fibers drank up the fluids of menses, while breeding the deadly bacteria of Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS); According to Karen Houppert’s The Curse and the 1995 Village Voicearticle “Pulling the Plug on the Sanitary Protection Industry,” 38 women died that year, poisoned by TSS. Rely was quickly pulled from the market.

Because of this, the market, formerly unregulated, was forced to standardize absorbency. Though the occurrence of TSS has dropped dramatically (by ’96 there were fewer than 100 cases reported to the Center for Disease Control in the US, as opposed to 892 in 1980), the health threats of mainstream tampons have not disappeared.

In 1997, New York Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney first introduced the Tampon Safety and Research Act in hopes of protecting the 73 million women (that’s one third of the US population) who use tampons in the US. The bill proposed that the National Institute of Health, rather than the tampon companies, conduct research on TSS, and the threats of dioxin, a chemical produced during the bleaching process of paper and pulp. The bill, reintroduced in 2001, has gone nowhere.

Though tampon manufacturers insist dioxin is present only in trace levels, there haven’t been any conclusive studies about the significance of dioxin accumulation in the body.

Dioxin has been connected to the chronic and painful uterine disease endometriosis, characterized by lesions on the outside of the uterus that shed monthly with menses, causing internal bleeding and scar-tissue. Endometriosis can also lead to infertility. Seventy-nine percent of monkeys fed dioxin in the early ’80s developed endometriosis nearly 10 years later, according to the Endometriosis Association. The occurrence of the disease increased as the dose of dioxin increased, but even monkeys administered only five parts per trillion developed the disease. According to the FDA, tampons today contain .1 to 1 part per trillion.

Though companies like Kotex, Playtex, and Tampax dominate the feminine hygiene market, constituting 90 percent of sales, there are alternatives to these products.

Andelloux introduced many of these products at her party. Cotton tampons completely free of dioxin; reusable (the Keeper, and Divacups) and disposable (Instead) cups worn internally that catch rather than absorb the blood of menses; sea sponges also worn internally that act similarly to a tampon, absorbing the menstrual discharge; and washable fabric pads.

You’ll see none of these items at your local supermarket. These products are outside of the mainstream for many reasons. For one thing, the Keeper, Divacups, and sea sponges all require women to touch themselves during insertion.

“One of the things I learned from this party is how much power women’s bodies have and how scared people are of them,” says Andelloux.

Andelloux believes that education can change our perceptions about menstruation and women’s bodies. “If we just normalize it and say, ‘Okay, that’s all right that we bleed,’ people will feel less screwed-up about it.”

Michelle Ryan, a party attendee, illustrated the historical inadequacy in menstruation education with a story her Grandma told her about her first period. Her grandma, who didn’t know anything about menstruation when she first bled, ran to her mother in anxiety and fear, thinking she was dying. Her mother in frustration and annoyance responded in a harsh voice, “Go talk to your sister — and stay away from boys!”

That’s not the message I want to leave my sisters, nieces, or maybe someday even my daughters with. Fortunately for the menarche party’s guest of honor, Rebecca Zakarian, that’s not the message she received either.