Nicolas and another counselor discuss how to use vernacular terms when talking about sex organs. The first part is a discussion about counselors' messages around oral sex risk.
N: Rejection with a big R. So, but alot of women I talk to that's kind of been their experience. Like, the first time they try to get a guy to use a condom for oral sex they kind of get really ridiculed and like humiliated.
C: Well, condoms with oral sex. Uhm yeah. The big message is oral sex is safe, so the ridicule on that level makes sense, I mean what are you doing, what, what you think I'm gross? I mean I can understand it from the guy's point of view. One of the things that I've told women to do is what hookers I know, have known do, just put a condom in your mouth and do it in the dark. You have to practise on somebody and stuff unrolling it but if you're doing it in the dark, most guys don't know. Hookers do it all the time. But. You really think that? I don't know, I never talk to women who have, are using condoms for oral sex, it's usually gay men.
N: No they're not, they're not using it for oral sex but they tried it once, because they really wanted to be, like they had had, for instance, they went through a period where they were really unsafe and then they had an epiphany, or gotten an STD so they're like really hard line all of a sudden and they try, they feel, because the message isn't that it's safe, it's a very mixed message, you know, there've been some cases, we don't really know, it's rare, it's your decision, that's the message which is no message. That's
C: Well that's the message that we're giving.
N: Yeah, which is no message.
C: But the message in the, especially in the gay community is like if you're going to have unsafe sex, have unsafe oral sex.
N: Right, but generally like uh, because of most counselors I find that test clinics take a kind of legalistic stand toward it like, I'm not going to risk my professional career by telling you to do something that just has some risk to it, so they kind of take this legalistic stance like you know, it's your decision I can't make the decision for you, these are the facts, they don't really give advise around it, which leaves the people with a very frustrating answer because they, you know, people really go in wanting boundaries in black and white and here's someone saying it's all very unclear, some people got it and some people haven't. So anyway, to get back to that thing, this was a woman who had tried to do it once and never tried again because she was ridiculed. So, and it probably gets back to that fear of rejection, you know, with any condom use.
C: Yeah. Not just with condom use. I think women have a really big fear of rejection anyway because that's our value is our bodies, our value is sex partner and mothers, still, I mean that's still how women are raised in our culture, but one of the things that I talk to, that I say to women and to men who are worried about giving somebody head, giving a guy head, without condoms is you know, you don't have to put the tip of it in your mouth to go down on somebody, you can use lube and your hand on top and there's actually yoga things, there's this one called the juicer
N: The juicer? OK
C: HHHH Where you have your hand on top of the head flat, the palm, and your fingers around and you turn it this way while this hand is going up and down,
N: Oh yeah.
C: Or the two hands, and
N: And this is tantric because it takes a long time to come that way or something?
C: You know, I don't know why it is but it was, where was I, I was at some place they were doing a demonstration, this woman who did sexual massage and tantric yoga, maybe it was the sexual massage part or the thing, but she was talking about it in a performance art piece three or four years ago.
N: Yeah, so getting back to this thing, your advice about you don't have to have penetration, so how do you go about that discussion?
C: I talk about hand sex, I talk about oral sex, I talk about mutual masturbation, I talk about, I guess that's basically what I talk about.
N: And you use the word mutual masturbation?
C: Uh hm.
N: Is that a sexy word?
C: It's not a very sexy word but then they know what I'm talking about, it gives us someplace to start. It's like, I don't use, when I talk to men, I talk about their genitals very differently than when I talk to women, I think we had this discussion before.
N: No, I don't think so.
C: Really? Like I can say to a man so if you put a condom on your dick, and dick isn't the way he signifies his penis, he'll say, when I put a condom on my cock, but if you say to a woman when you whatever, when he touches your pussy, and she finds that offensive, everything shuts down.
N: Well I mean a guy might also shut down too.
C: They don't usually. They don't. The ones who are going to shut down I feel like I get a really good hit off and I'm already talking very clinically with.
N: Right.
C: So you know. But women who don't shut down around other things, there's words that you just can't use.
N: Cause they're shame words.
C: Because they're shame words. And dick and cock are power words.So uhm, I tend to use a family word, which is tuppy.
N: Tuppy. Your tuppy. I've never heard that.
C: Yeah, it's family thing, and southern I think.
N: Your family. But other families too.
C: Other people too.
N: Ok.
C: Actually it's funny because tupped, is an Elizabethan word for fucked.
N: Oh, ok.
C: It's in Othello, that old black ram has tupped your ewe.
N: Hmmm.
C: So what I'll say to them is your vagina, your tuppy, and almost everybody's response is that's so cute.
N: HHH Cause it does sound like baby talk.
C: Uh hm, and then everyone's comfortable, and then if they want to use a word, I'll say tuppy, sometimes I'll say yoney,
N: Yoni?
C: It's an Indian word.
N: How bout ho?
C: Ho, ho is a hooker.
N: It's more of a person than the actual part of the body?
C: Ho is whore.
N: Oh ok, I thought ho was like hole?
C: It might but ho is whore,
N: It's pretty much more negative.
C: Yeah, Yoni is not, it's a hippy word.
N: Eastern term?
C: Eastern?
N: Now when you use tuppy does that kind of set up a sort of context where the person is referred to as kind of younger, because it's a toddler word?
C: No, I don't think so. Because I talk about my tuppy.
N: Ok. HHH.
C: Like I'll say, so like, like for me if I'm doing a condom thing I'll say, like latex, it pulls, it pulls on my lips so no one is going to put anything into my vagina, my tuppy, without, and then that sets it up. And they say tuppy, and I say yeah you know, it's a family name, it's a family word for vagina, you know if I explain it and people tend to, I never know what word to use because women have all have their own word that they want, oh and they'll say oh I like cunt or I like this or tuppy's great and they let me know and that gives us a place to work from.
N: Cause if you just stayed with "vagina" what would happen?
C: It's very clinical. I feel like vagina. Vulva is different, I use "vulva" sometimes, I feel like vagina, first of all doesn't refer to the whole thing so much and uhm,
N: Tuppy kind of includes the whole pubic area?
C: The clit, everything, your stuff my friend who used to say.
N: Your package.
C: Your package. I just think that when you start talking about vaginas, you set it more in a clinical thing and people are less likeley to open up and tell you, tell me, feel like women open up more to me.
N: That's good. And you opened up my eyes the other day when right before lunch you told me that you had heard it was recommended that women, when they're using barriers for oral sex, use some of their own vaginal fluid on the side next to their mouth so that they can get the taste of sex.
C: Women who are having sex with women, yeah.
N: And that was.
C: I think it's great.
N: Yeah, I mean, and it got me thinking about a lot of my homophobic assumptions about what it would be like to eat your own fluids, cause it's so, I mean to me it's like the fluids of the other person, I couldn't because I associate it with women, so that was kind of neat.
C: Have you ever gone down on your wife and then kissed her, or any woman?
N: Yeah
C: Well what do you think she's doing. She's tasting her, has she ever gone down on you and you kissed her.
N: I guess so yeah, but there's a little qualm there, I mean I think about it.
C: Well because it's probably the whole big thing, and it isn't so much with women because there's a level where, lebianism isn't necessarily accepted in our culture. Bisexuality and women if they're bonded to men, women who are bisexual and they're bonded to men, that's ok, that's actually kind of neat. You know, our whole culture plays in that.
N: There's a whole pornographic genre about that? Is that what you're talking about or?
C: Yeah, the whole thing well because it's not real sex anyway, cause you can't really have sex if you don't have a penis.
N: But it's ... ok.
C: SO, and as long as these women aren't opting out of the whole penis thing.
N: If a man appeared.
C: =If a man appeared,
N: =Then he were to prempt, they would then both focus on him.
///cat jumps up on table////
C: I hope you're not allergic.
N: No I love cats. My cat died.
C: Do you want a cat?
N: No, not right now thanks. I'm enjoying my freedom.
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