Charles Martin's Blog, page 25
December 9, 2014
December 8, 2014
December 5, 2014
Tony Trammell and Godzilla at Planet Dorshak Tonight
6-9 pm Friday, December 5
Planet Dorshak
3003A Paseo in Oklahoma City
Planet Dorshak is proud to welcome one of our favorite pop artists, Tony Trammell. With decades of experience producing for numerous magazines and books, Trammell is known for creating visceral and iconic imagery and will be selling paintings all through the month of December.
December 4, 2014
December 3, 2014
My Phat Status: Artist As God
PREVIOUS/NEXT
Talk to the Hand: The War on Female Sexuality
This bleach-blonde woman’s head is going to explode. I’m positive. Every time she screams her O face at the camera, her expression consumed with ecstasy as she masturbates, I cringe a little in fear but even more in envy. I’m not a porn star. Sometimes I wish I could be one for a day, but overall I’m okay with being a thirty-five-year-old working mother of two. Then there are those times when I think: What’s wrong with me? My face looks nothing like that porn goddess*. Have I lost the childhood glee in pleasuring myself?
Childhood glee? Yes. You know the time when you were under your Smurf covers at night, hoping your mom or dad wouldn’t crash your one-person party as you found the perfect spot, that flesh button you pushed over and over again like you were playing Super Mario Bros. and this was level eight, clutching your Strawberry Shortcake doll in your other hand and wondering how this magic existed in your stubby little fingers? Yes, that childhood glee we become regulars at by toddlerhood and masters of by our teen years, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And it was magic and pure innocent curiosity.
So, why was I now feeling like a failure when I masturbated alone next to my sleeping husband? I wanted to be the porn star, this ideal sex creature able to drop mind-blowing orgasms as easily as drones air strike Iraq. In the six years we’ve been together, I’ve rarely been able to orgasm through intercourse with my husband, and I thought something had to be wrong with me. And I wasn’t alone.
From the time of Shere Hite’s 1976 groundbreaking study, The Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality, the female orgasm has been a mystery to even some women. Hite asked 100,000 women, ages 14 to 78, questions like what they do and don’t like about sex, how an orgasm feels, with and without intercourse, and the conclusion was startling. Her study proved most women do not orgasm through traditional intercourse (simulates sex with finger through hole). In fact, only about a quarter achieve orgasm through vaginal intercourse.
However, this vital information didn’t stop all the myths about female sexuality. Go sit with a gaggle of female college students during happy hour and you’ll hear things like, “I think my showerhead has ruined me for Brad.” Rest assured your shower massager didn’t ruin you for Brad or anyone else. According to PsychCentral, it’s the third most common way women discover how to orgasm. Yet, some women are still fearful masturbation will make sexual intercourse with their partners less enjoyable.
The myths of human sexuality and masturbation have existed since the first time a caveman scratched his ass on a stick and realized it felt good. No, men do not go blind and hair does not sprout on their palms, but then most already figured that out by age 13. For women, the idea of self-pleasure and guilt has deeper roots, partially due to the Victorian age and Sigmund Freud attributing hysteria, described as being over-sexed, strictly to women. Thanks in part to Freud’s wisdom, women were subjected to all sorts of crazy “treatments,” including forced manual stimulation until they came. Sounds legit, right? What was even worse were actual clitoridectomies performed, a nightmare-inducing solution by English physician Isaac Baker-Brown.
Only the real mind-fuck wasn’t started in the Victorian age. No, the doctrine of female sexuality having only one goal, procreation, is as imbedded in society as the old church down the street. And how does procreation occur, girls and boys? Not alone relaxing in a bathtub with a glass of Pinot Noir and a water-proof Rabbit but politely and passionless in bed while praising the Queen of England. Without procreation, female orgasm was considered pointless, but it was even more than that. It was dangerous.
Another theory as to why men suppressed female sexuality was to control property rights, which has existed since patriarchal societies rose in the wake of ancient war, plundering, and rape. By making natural sexual desires extinct, men could ensure no one else was banging their spouses, thus preventing property disputes by having legitimate heirs. With the advent of the home paternity test, this isn’t so much an issue today. Some would argue the equality movement and sexual liberation of the 60’s and 70’s resolved any residual issues women should have about their sexuality.
Yet women are still posting to Ask Alice! concerned that their sex toys are mangling their clits. And, as women become more open about their sexuality, large swaths of men and women respond with the age-old practice of “slut-shaming.” Victorian men have nothing on the wide-spread sexual suppression of the Internet.
Although I’d like to think most women and men agree sexuality is vastly different from morality, physicality is something else altogether. At one point I’d even thought, “Maybe my drawer-o-toys is preventing me from having an orgasm with my man!” I tried to wean myself from my favorite toys in an attempt to improve my chances. After all, I didn’t want to fake orgasms with him and he was trying so damn hard. But, unless I wanted to shove his head southward every time we had sex, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I was back to the drawer despite the underlying fear that I was destroying the 8,000 nerve endings in my clit, making orgasm progressively harder to achieve.
Turns out, the worry was for nothing.
The Kinsey Institute says using vibrators will not physically injure the clitoris, the only part of a woman whose main function is to serve pleasure. While a woman cannot destroy those thousands of nerve endings in her clitoris with simple masturbation, she can temporarily desensitize it. However, as women age, it’s logical our sexual bodies change too. Not as much of a change as, say, boobs after breastfeeding two kids, but clitoral stimulation is affected by many factors: hormones, the ability to relax, medication use (like birth control and antidepressants) and mood. That doesn’t mean stop taking your meds because you’re having trouble getting off. It just means try a different tactic. This is war and your clit is in need a NATO negotiation meeting.
That brings us back to childhood glee. For me, I’m enjoying my little lady sans vibrators at the moment. It’s my current tactic to regain the territory between my legs and allow my toys to do their job better once I return to them. Vibrators are like shampoos. Sometimes you have to use another brand, maybe even a shitty brand, to appreciate the bounce and volume you get from your holy grail. And you know what? There’s something incredibly liberating knowing you can give yourself pleasure, alone, no man or batteries needed. If the world crashed around me, I’d have my hand down my pants with a smile because I’ve won the war on my clit and, in a small way, the battle against female sexual suppression in general. Hell, forget the drones. We should airdrop vibrators on Iraq. At least some self-stimulation manuals, perhaps? Hmm, baby steps…baby steps…
*For pictures of women having real orgasms, look here.
December 1, 2014
November 29, 2014
Deluxe Scavenger Hunt – Kinda
Want to fill out your holiday shopping list while looking damn cool in the process? Deluxe Winter Market is the place for you and it is going on today and tomorrow at Leadership Square in Oklahoma City. We have a bit of an informal scavenger hunt involving:
1. Bombs Away Art (buy anything)
2. Base Vines & Cattle (buy anything)
3. Jerry Bennett (buy anything)
4. Wise Wolves Chess (play at least one game).
These are all close friends who are great at what they do and are worthy of your support. If you complete the scavenger hunt and send me an email (charles@literatipressok.com) listing what you bought and who you played in chess, I will send you a book of your choice along with a personal Word of the Day story inside! Amazing, right?
So, get to it. Use your holiday dollars wisely by shopping local and supporting our beautiful art scene!
