This week we had the esteemed pleasure of acting as lesbian sexperts for Jezebel for their “How to Lose Your V-Card to a Lady” post which made us feel very Susie-Bright-consults-on-Bound-esque, except for free. If you haven’t read it, you should, because it’s very good and popular and so forth and well put-together. It’s still in the skyline three days later, which means we’ve ‘made it’ as lesbians.
The only piece of advice we gave them that they didn’t publish was probably bad/amazing advice (as follows):
Our first unanimous piece of advice is “drink.” This may seem unwise, and perhaps the opposite of the advice we’ve been solicited to provide, but good grief, this stuff is nerve-wracking. Don’t drink too much! You’ll need to remember your first time. For example, some of us don’t know when our first time was, and for that we must blame the drink.
Anyhow, this conveniently ties in to what we’ve been doing here these days…
Four weeks ago on NSFW Sunday we talked about what lesbians don’t talk about when they talk about sex AND YOU ALL HAD A LOT OF FEELINGS.
A few days before the aforementioned post we’d started an ‘anonymous google doc’ wherein Autostraddle team members asked their own questions and gave their own answers so that we could ‘determine’ what people ‘want to talk about.
Three weeks ago we talked wetness & orgasms, two weeks ago we talked about tops and bottoms and last week, positions (69, scissoring, etc). This week…
The Anonymous Sex Doc presents…
Do you feel like you know what you’re doing when you have sex with girls?
* I was really confused when I was fifteen, but just went for it and that went ok. So I figure if I did it then I can do it now. If you don’t just go for it then no one would ever have sexy time. Everyone is a little different so just ask people what they like.
* Not really. I just kind of went for it from the start. I mean, I know what *I* like, presumably other girls would be similar? And if not, they’ll tell me?
* Not really? But I guess I feel that way about most things in my life. no one has complained yet, so I feel like that’s the important thing.
* Sure. Though I always try to listen to the person with whom I’m having sex to make sure that I “know” what I’m doing. People are different. Communication is key.
* The first time I had sex my girlfriend didn’t know I was a virgin so I acted “as if” and it worked.
* Definitely. But having sex with a new person would still take a while to work out the kinks, probably.
* Yes, I have the same parts and am a pro at masturbating. It was a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out how to give a boy a hand job. My bad on the chafing. Although I will note here that I find it annoying that a lot of women don’t know what they are doing WITH THEIR OWN BODIES. Because they think they are fat, or smell/taste weird or whatever they are so uptight they really are kind of checked out of what they are feeling physically. You have to bring a little sexual self awareness to the table.
* Sometimes yes and sometimes no.
* Yes, because I explored my own body first. it’s not really that different, i mean, things are usually in the same place. then you adjust your style to find out what she likes.
* Yes constantly i am afraid that i am doing the wrong thing all the time.
* I always knows what I’m doing with everyone. /ego
* The more girls I sleep with, the more confident I am, but I still feel like I have a long way to go. I’ll keep practicing, no problem.
* Yup. Once you get used to their specific terrain, the same principles apply. Communicating helps.
* Not really, but I’m working on it!
* Yes I feel like I know what doing. I’m fairly easy so I’ve had a lot of teachers / practice.
What was your first time like?
MY FIRST TIME:
About.com has tips on “first time lesbian sex” and Betty Dodson helps a Newbie Lesbian Needs Oral Sex Pointers. Nerve’s “My First Time” series has featured one lesbian, a 16-year-old female from Milwaukee, WI: “When I was sixteen, I had a boyfriend who was eighteen and a best friend that I wanted to fuck who was seventeen.” Or read the new book I Kissed a Girl: A Virgin Lesbian Anthology is about other people’s first time.“
ETC:
Porn: Things You Learn From Porn: a delightful list from randomsexfacts.
Uncovered: Jordan Matter’s Uncovered is a book of portraits and personal statements from over 80 brave women, who posed bare-breasted for the project in public locations across New York City.
How to Have Cybersex in 1999: Oh, those were the days to remember.
Lady Gaga: Camille Paglia has, surprisingly enough, written something I totally disagree with. This time, it’s about how Lady Gaga signals “the death of sex”:An erotic breaker of taboos or an asexual copycat? Camille Paglia, America’s foremost cultural critic, demolishes an icon.
BRAS: A brief history of the bra at Vice Magazine.
Sugarbutch: On Making Sex Last: Cheerleading & Open Relationships:.Do you really want to know? We sleep around. We’re both big sluts. The commitment, to me, means that we are each other’s biggest cheerleaders. We don’t believe in possessing each other. I am always on the sidelines yelling, ‘Go you!’”
Sexy Tumblr Alert: forms y details is for all ye capable of handling a lot of black & white photos of girls kissing. I mean there are a lot of girls kissing happening on this tumblr for real.
i’m going to take this moment to talk about Me and My Magical Adventure to say that i spent the day on the beach and both my inner 14-year-old boy and my outer feminist self were satisfied. nearly all the women here are topless, regardless of their age or shape. later, my roommate and i were talking about it with out host mom and she said “if men don’t have to wear top, why should women?” like it was the most normal thing in the world. yay for gender equality and everyone being alright with their bodies.
WELCOME TO CIVILIZATION
yes i agree i think everybody should be topless.
I plan on purchasing Uncovered like, on the now. It looks fantastic.
It looks like Paglia is again given to exageration. Just as she once comically overrated Madonna, she has now comically overrated Lady Gaga’s importance relative to sex. It isn’t that she is far off in her estimation of Lady Gaga. She nails the lack of eroticism of the entertainer who does come across more asexual than anything else. Maybe the term should be plastic sexuality since it is what Lady Gaga traffics in. Paglia can’t quit while she is ahead and this is where she again stumbles into hyperbole. Lady Gaga has some enjoyable music and many fans who go along with every statement she makes. The recent speech in Arizona defending her choice not to join with the ban was laughable in it’s attempt to make greed seem understandable. That does not equate to the end of anything. It just proves that there is a sucker born every minute as Barnum once said. The sucker is not those who love the music. It is catchy and of the moment as cotton candy is. It are those who give Lady Gaga too much credit whether it be as a force for good or as Paglia states, for bad.
Why link to that Vice essay? It’s a mostly straight girl talking about how pussy is gross, calling lesbians “dykes”, using lazy racist slang about Indians, & then ending her essay by proclaiming how easy it is to get girls off & how anyone who can’t make a girl come by doing waving motions is an idiot.
This is what I got from that article. vaginas = pile of black puke.
also that Lindsay Lohan is a “cum dumpster.”
i feel like the smart thing to do here would be for me to avoid this conversation altogether, but i have to point out that the author of the vice essay never equated vaginas to black puke. she compared the act of going further into a sexual experience with another woman to that of going further into the experience of eating exotic or unfamiliar foods, both of which were, apparently for her, not her ‘thing.’
Okay okay wait let me try again. vagina=squid?
I’m just kidding. I know that wasn’t really what she meant but I couldn’t help make that connection anyway. Maybe subconsciously I think my vagina looks like a pile of puke and I need to take a self esteem class like Daria in that one episode.
Really? I thought it was hilarious. That essay really wasn’t taking itself seriously, I find.
sorry. someone sent it to me in a link when i was looking for “first time” articles and i didn’t have the time to read it because i had already spent 40 hours looking for shit. vice hasn’t been irresponsible before, so i figured it was okay. sorry. my bad. i suck. fire me. take me off payroll. i apologize to everybody.
What payroll?
exactly
the first time i had sex with a girl katy perry was all over the place. so it was like “omg, this is amazing. i did kiss a girl and i DID like it and i’ll kiss her forever”. then i stopped having sex with that girl, and actually listened to the rest of the song, and well it all went to shit. now i drink a lot and am mostly broke. this went sour quickly huh?
That thing about “surprisingly” disagreeing with Camille Paglia was satirical, right?
yes i don’t think i’ve really ever liked any of the words she has said, but that being said i haven’t read them all
I’m really happy you said that. You know that moment when you think someone’s perfect and you’re totally MFEO and then they do something like say, “I think Season 6 of The L Word was really Ilene Chaiken’s best work.” and your heart completely stops?
I had one of those.
Feel free to smack me. I’d understand. I’ll take it. HIT ME.
I just read the Vice article in question. I have no understanding why such an offensive lesbian bashing piece of crap is linked here. I have long recommended this site. Now I see nothing that could not possibly more offensive, more hateful and more just sickening. What is next? Maybe a link to some garbage by Donald Wildmon?
P.S. The cheap, hateful shot at Lindsay Lohan should have maybe given pause. If Autostraddle edits the “cumdumpster” bit out of there, maybe it is a clue that it does not need to be linked. There are plenty of sites more than willing to link that lowlife’s link.
And by recommending this site I mean “Autostraddle” not this piece of garbage “Vice.” I guess tomorrow Autostraddle will link Perez Hilton and interviews with Michael Lohan. Sorry for the sarcasm but really ticked off.
Reading the Gaga piece, I get the feeling that Gaga’s popularity makes Camille Paglia feel old. Like, “these KIDS don’t know what a REAL MUSIC ARTIST IS.” I’m sure I’ll do the same thing when I’ve aged out of pop music’s major demographic, but I hope I’ll be less insulting to those who are still in it.
I tend not to take vice seriously. so much is all for shock value.
I liked this week’s NSFW… : )
thank you via, i like the kind baby deer in your icon
My first time was with a straight girl… and I totally knew what I was doing. I guess I had some sort of self-confidence … I mean I *knew* I was gay, so I felt like I *knew* what to do… and although the ramifications of afterward (because of her straightness) turned into some stupid Lifetime movie… it definitely cemented the fact that I was gay.
I agree with Camille Paglia’s premise. Lady Gaga isn’t real, but a character, an image, a performance just like Jo Calderone. But then critiquing her is best left to fandoms. It’s like analyzing Sci-Fi characters, which I have certainly indulged in.
What Stefani Germanotta is doing is performance art, but I am freaked out by the number of people who can’t, or don’t want to, separate fantasy from reality. She’s pretty much being rewarded for exploiting the queer community.
I completely agree that Lady Gaga is, for the most part, performance art and it has been unsettling that her exploitation of the queer community has not been noticed for what it so clearly is. It is early 70’s David Bowie redux and at some point maybe Todd Haynes will be making a film called Bad Romance which dissects her act as well as Velvet Goldmine dissected a barely disguised Bowie’s. Bowier did have some timeless music though. Not so sure about the lasting power of Gaga’s music which may age as badly and quickly as much of Madonna’s music has.
I do have to disagree with Paglia not critiquing it. That is what she does. I find Paglia very annoying especially in her tendencies to buy into archaic notions of straight women not being as artistically inclined. Critiquing pop culture is something she does and some times she nails it as she does here. Sadly she overdoes it though which means it goes from a smart piece on just how superficial Lady Gaga is to a hamfisted piece on the end of sexuality as she says.
That is a shame because the piece, until it goes over the top, is dead on.
Doesn’t she herself identify as queer to some level? Can you exploit a community you yourself belong to?
Oh yes, you can absolutely exploit a community you belong to. Often times it’s members of a community that exploit it the most.
My question then is then where do you draw the line between celebrating your community and exploiting it? If your main inspirations come from your community and your work heavily reflects that, at what point does it become exploitation? If you don’t engage with it you’re seen as “ignoring your community”, but when you do it’s exploitation or selling out – can’t win?
(it’s something I’m dealing with personally with my creative stuff and I don’t really have any answers – but would like to hear your thoughts)
The funny thing is, she doesn’t even hide it. That Telephone video was a bunch of run of the mill exploitation films wrapped up in a music video topped off with blatant product placements. Lesbians in prisons? Revenge plot? The Pussy Wagon? Beyonce as a Foxy Brown type character? She’s not even in the gray area, but flaunting it. Where the gray area is is another topic.
What is with the overreactions lately? I didn’t enjoy the Vice article either but the world has not ended.
Anyway. I’ve liked the anonymous doc experiment. Can we expect more next week?
I don’t see anyone overreacting. It just is shameful that such a hateful article is linked on this site. It is not an overreaction. If other sites linked it I wouldn’t object. That a site which promotes a respectful, considerate attitude to lesbianism and female bisexuality would link such garbage is downright embarrassing.
derogatory lindsay lohan comment aside, i don’t find the vice article to be hateful or anti-lesbian or anti-bisexual.
@brianna — we have some more stuff yeah, if people want it there is more where that came from!
My “first time” with another woman became sexual assault. My “second time”? Online – fun, but more like writing erotica than anything else. Most I’ve done otherwise is kiss other girls and it’s usually been disappointing (mainly because the other girls had no clue wtf they were doing).
So as far as sexual experience with women go I still consider myself a virgin – I refuse to count the assault – and I’m still seeking that experience, an actual consensual physical intimate safe fun experience that I’ve been longing for YEARS, but haven’t been at all successful. It’s almost like chicken-and-egg – no girl will want you if you’re inexperienced (especially if, in my case, you’ve slept with a guy but not a girl) but where else are you going to get experience from!?
:(
no girl will want you if you’re inexperienced (especially if, in my case, you’ve slept with a guy but not a girl)
false.
it’s very believable though, so it keeps a lot of women from feeling confident enough to try or even admit to themselves that they’d want to try. i believed it for about 6+ years.
try telling that to the girls here – I still get asked sometimes “what are you doing here?” at lesbian events and some even question my supposed queerness! I suppose it depends on the circles you’re in but some people here are horribly biphobic.
(that and I am apparently bad at picking up people. tried many MANY times over the years, but hardly anyone’s interested. the one girl that *was* interested ended up being a major dramatic mess and we hardly did anything. just got rejected for a date yesterday and am healing from that heartbreak so this is making me sadder than usual. :( sorry, venting.)
right there will be assholes anywhere, but you just have to feel appreciative that they were assholes upfront, so you didn’t waste any time on them.
there are other types of people. you shouldn’t assume everyone is the same w/r/t intentions and reactions, especially as they pertain to you and your past, you know?
all I’m really assuming is that either my luck with ladies is utterly shoddy or I’m just not attractive enough for anyone!
i lost my virginity to a guy and my girlfriend shamed me for it. i later dumped her… don’t listen to assholes because, well, they’re assholes. and trust me, if you’re down, it’ll happen and it will be like your vagina exploded. in a good way.
@Tiara
If I remember correctly you are from Aus, me too- and have had similar reactions from “gold-star-girls”. It’s just about finding the right people to befriend etc blah blah- The people who matter won’t worry about who you have or have not slept with….
someone who gets it!
the people who don’t worry about it unfortunately aren’t interested in sleeping with me either, boo.
I had the same problem for what felt like forever! And still cop it sometimes because I have slept with men in the past- even though I haven’t for a couple of years…(my poor ex went without for a very looong time! poor guy!)
There will be someone, and I’m sure you have heard it a zillion times before- its usually when you aren’t looking (which is a pain in the arse to say the least!!)
I’m a “gold star” and I never gave a damn if a girl had slept with a guy. I don’t even know why I should care since I’m not a guy and thus not competing with them at all.
Most people have a hard time finding a same-sex partner because there aren’t as many of us. The End.
I mean god, if I could count the number of bisexuals that have said lesbians are secretly bisexual and repressing it just so they can be part of some silly club…well, it’d be more than the total number of “gold star” lesbians. Like “OMG, you’ve never had sex with a man? Then how can you know it’s not for you if you haven’t “explored” your sexuality? How can you “close” yourself off to a whole gender?” blah, blah, blah. I obviously don’t think they’re all like that though.
but my oh my….what a damn cool club it is!
Some people are silly, but you however should be cloned!
I think in your case it might be not because you are bisexual, but because you are currently seeing a guy, if I am not mistaken.
a) this has been happening long before I was seeing anyone – I had people ask me how it was possibly that I could not consider gender as an important factor (o_O?)
b) Woo polyamoury!
c) doesn’t make me any less queer, or any less worthy of being in queer spaces.
What I meant is, this is not something that happens specifically in queer spaces, but also in straight environments. If people know you are dating someone they will behave differently. That being said, you are totally queer otherwise what do we have this word for, right?
“no girl will want you if you’re inexperienced (especially if, in my case, you’ve slept with a guy but not a girl)”
It’s false, ok, because it’s not impossible; but at the same time it’s a bit more unlikely. As a lesbian, personally I am more comfortable when I can sort of trust that the person I’m with has an enduring attraction to women – which is sort of harder to know if she is less experienced. It happens – happened to me as well – but you kind of need to be really a lot into that person to take the risk. I mean it’s always about taking risks, all the time; but with a girl who is inexperienced and maybe is not really sure if she’s regularly attracted to women it might feel sometimes like “too much risk”
How the heck can you ensure anyone has an “enduring attraction” to anything!? We can’t tell the future. And besides, how the heck do you measure this anyway – a report card? A meter? I’ve known I was queer since I was 12 – just because I grew up in Asexual Homophobe Middle of Nowhere, am evidently unattractive to anybody, and couldn’t even get a *kiss* until I was 21 doesn’t mean my attraction’s any less valid.
It’s a risk no matter who you’re with, whether they have “experience” or not. It’s not like that’s the only quality that makes a person or makes a relationship.
of course you can never be sure of anything; that is precisely because you look for “tell-tale” or “promising” signs whenever you take a decision in conditions of uncertainty. You can be right or wrong, take the right or the wrong decision; what decision you take depends both on the “risk factors”, and how crazy you are about the “risky” person, and on your risk propensity / aversion.
Personally my risk propensity varies a lot with time depending also on what I’m going through in other spheres of my life.
Understood. I had a girl start off as interested in me and when she found out I’d only been with men and had yet to be with a woman, she totally bailed due to my inexperience. How do I get the experience if you’re not willing to take that chance with me?
I had my first sexual experience with a girl in high school but didn’t have sex w/a girl ’til after college.
But, also, I occasionally indulged/considered two probably slightly sketchy solutions to this problem:
1. I found that lying and saying I did have experience was just the thing. In my head, I thought ‘confidence is what really matters, and this slight deception will make me confident.’ I’m not sure if I ever did that, because um, my whole memory of that time in my life is a little fuzzy and was complicated by layers of self-delusion, but I considered it.
2. Other bi girls!!! When i moved to nyc in the summer of ’04, I literally met girls on craigslist. idk, it was a weird time. I always ended up hanging out with bi girls who said they were just looking to go out and hang out with other bi girls. My (now) best friend Haviland was the first actual lesbian I ‘dated’. Before that, it was just going out and having fun with other girls who were in the same stage of life that I was, who I met mostly through the internet — though in that case, it’s actually also just as important that these girls that you meet might also meet another person, and then you sort of pool your friends and your life grows and you can have sex with whomever you want.
Hmhmhmmmm, I feel like this “I will never be attractive to another girl”-feeling is quite common. I had it and still have it, too, and I have been with girls. It doesn’t stop there, and it’s something everyone needs to work out for themselves.
(Not that I’m an expert on THAT, though…)
I think that Riese’s comment is especially interesting because I thought of similar yet different solutions. The similarity is maybe to change your own thinking about what it is that you want and how, and how you are going to get it, and how you are going to present yourself in that situation.
It’s a shifting of attitude that has nothing to do with other people in the first place.
I always wanted my first time with a woman to happen a long-term relationship. I held on to that and it just. didn’t. happen. I don’t know what changed anymore, but I don’t really care today: when the chance was there, finally, I took it, and my first time was instead a one-night stand. I never wanted that, but I don’t regret it and never have. So it was me opening up to another possibility of things happening that actually made things happen.
And Riese is right – I mean, you don’t need to lie about your previous experience, but if you can communicate what you want NOW what need is there for the other person to know if this is your first time? If you don’t want them to know don’t tell them, that can actually help. I’ve heard this story before, more than once. ;)
All in all: Go, girl! (And maybe tell me this, too, in response?) I’d definitely feel honored if you’d ask me out. ;)
A friend of mine once told me about how weird and awkward her first time with her first girlfriend was. And then after, she said, “That’s okay, because now I have a ton of other good sex memories.”
So sometimes it’s like that.
My first time was fantastic. I didn’t tell the girl it was my first time and just went for it. A year later I told her that I was a V and she was shocked so I say SUCCESS! Thing is: Yes, every girl is different and technique is very important but there are fundamentals and if you have experimented with yourself AT ALL or know anything about the female body then its pretty easy to start. As a newbie all I knew was be consistent -> clit = win. And I won. Now, to step your game up and to keep it fresh and interesting there needs to be communication and you actually have to learn to be observant and attentive to how your girl responds to what you do but if it’s your first time nobody expects you to be an ace in bed. If you have great chemistry together, I think, that’s half the battle. And the other half will cum to you as you go. ;)
I thoroughly enjoyed the Vice article, especially the part where the writer goes into detail about fingering another woman. Like it’s as easy as sticking two fingers in a gopher hole and poking around until something moves. If it were that easy I think more people would be lesbos.
On a more serious note if you are taking offense at the Vice article, then too bad. There’s a lot of other stuff in the world to be offended by (like gauchos) than a straight chick bragging about her lady pleasure giving fingers.
Corey Crossfield is sometimes my favorite
I don’t believe in HAVING sex with someone who make you embarassed to TALK about sex with… My GF an I talked about it ALL THE TIME, and by the time we were ready to have sex, I knew exactly what she antes/liked….
Wanted**
Vice has this thing they do, and they do it very consistently and quite well, regardless of whether I always like it. I’m sure they talk about penises the exact same way. I’ve heard lesbians talk about penises that way. Not wanting to stick your face into a vagina/not enjoying that experience doesn’t make you homophobic – it just means you’re probs straight.
Other than the crudeness, that whole thing kind of reminded me of when Mena Suvari was on Six Feet Under, and Clare Fisher was megacrushing on her, and then sexytime happened and she got freaked out. And that shit went on for like, so many episodes and the buildup and the rolling in the grass was so amazing. And then we find out Clare isn’t as up for the lady-loving. So like, whatevs.
That scene would have been very nice, though.
uhm, so, the girl I lost my virginity to reads this every Sunday. HIIIIEEE HONEY!
I felt like I knew what I was doing because I read books. Lesbian romance books. And some short story autobiographical collections which I think are now referred to as “blogs”, only these were in paperback book form. Not that I just reproduced what I read, but you know, it just made me feel like I knew what I was doing.
We’re still together, so I’m gonna call it a success. (It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.)
Anyway, what I really wanted to say is, if Lady Gaga is the death of sex this Camille Paglia is the death of feminism. I mean why should Lady Gaga be a sex symbol in the first place, why won’t she have the right to be as sexually dysfunctional as she wishes, etc.
JUST BECAUSE SHE’S A WOMAN she needs to represent and signify SEX and I find this terribly and clearly SEXIST for sex’s sake we are in 2010
My first time I was really nervous, had absolutely no idea what I was doing. My lips and hands were shaking. I’d read a lot of erotica before it happened but it’s completely different when you’re in the story. It was more of me touching her than her touching me though. I hadn’t kissed or done anything romantic with anyone until I met her. So, for me the most exhillirating part was seeing what things I could do to get a response from her. The next time I was with her, sexually, (maybe a year later, it had become a “friends with benefits” type of thing), we spent six amazing hours exploring each other. It was like a first time, because we tried a lot of new things. The other girl I was with inbetween those times hadn’t been with a girl before, but I have no complaints. If anything she was better at touching me because she didn’t go right into what she might’ve done to other girls or herself. Ignorance is bliss, right? Maybe having sex is like anything else we do, repetitive actions form habits or a set of motions that show up in “similar” situations. Which aren’t always applicable/effective. My resolution is that the next time I’m with a girl (most likely nervous and shaking) I’ll forget everything I think I know as I explore my new territory. Sometimes knowledge can cloud your views and your reflexes.
Sorry, if this is hard to follow. Also, for clarification, I’m 18 and do not consider myself an expert. I wouldn’t even say I’m a novice.
Thanks for reading.
PS: if you think I’m right or wrong, have some advice or something to add I’d like the imput.