Tommy and Buzz: All My Love

I recently came across this picture of Tommy and Buzz. I got to wondering what the story was behind the moment they shared together on the beach. The inscription on the back of the photo is so tantalizing and sweet:

"To Buzz, I'll always remember the times we spent together. All my love, your Tommy."

If Tommy or Buzz are still alive they are now both close to or well into their 80s. The world has totally transformed in the time that has elapsed since this moment was captured on the beach. Do you think they still remember that day?

I've carefully looked at each of the 300+ websites that this image appears on and searched for clues to their identity. There are none. It's likely neither know that their image has been populated around the internet.

Who they are and were--and what times they shared--are likely forever lost to history. If someone had not located this picture and taken the time to digitize it, the entire memory of this experience might have been erased for all times.

 I'm overwhelmed contemplating that thought. It inevitably reminds me that some day I too will be erased from the this world. All that I am will be reduced down to ever-smaller bits of data. Eventually that which is I will evaporate and return to whatever it was from which I emerged from when I became an I. It will happen to you too.

Go back and read that again slowly. 

...and now back to Buzz and Tommy

Let's Talk about Sex

The last couple of days I've had sex on my mind. I might as well talk about it here.  This all started a few days ago when I came across this tweet from the comic Paula Bel.

It's likely safe to assume that Bel's intention was comedy as she is, after all, a comic. However I read the tweet as yet another nod to the pervasive stereotype that teen boys are out-of-control sex crazed monsters and girls are tender vestal virgins who need to carefully guard their untouched wholesomness. We have so many ways to tell girls they should "keep their legs closed" because boys are apparently incapable (or not required) to keep their pants up. 

We live in a society that denies the sexuality of teen girls while both simultaneously valorizing and ignoring the sexuality of teen boys. What's worse is that we live at a time where the development of boys and girls is rapidly changing. Girls are now entering puberty as young as seven or eight years old. Caucasian boys, on average, are entering puberty at 10. African American boys are entering puberty, on average, at 9. 

Our children are developing their sexual bodies and emotions at earlier and earlier ages. There is no research to suggest that children are also developing critical, moral, or emotional thinking earlier--skills that equip young people with the ability to navigate the feelings developing in their young bodies. 

The best we offer, it seems, is to suggest that girls keep their legs closed and boys explore their sexual feelings behind a closed bathroom door. That can't possibly work out well.

We ignore our children. We don't offer our children help and guidance in caring for, celebrating, and enjoying their developing sexuality. 

We tell girls not to be sexual. We ignore them (while simultaneously dressing them up like sex objects). Girls are left to figure out their sexuality on their own. We give them no skills to learn about their bodies and responses. We don't teach them about empowerment or equip them with negotiation skills to say yes or no. We don't teach them that they are in control of their own bodies and their own pleasure.

We let girls grow up and discover their sexuality alone in a society where women are treated like the sex objects of men. Then we somehow expect teen girls will act as something other than the sex objects of men.

We ignore our boys sexuality--or send it underground. Boys expected to be boys, and we tolerate their exploration of sexuality behind the closed door of a bedroom or bathroom. We leave them to themselves to figure out what to do with their feelings and bodies. We give them no skills at how to negotiate desire and closeness within the context of relationships.

We let boys grow up and discover their sexuality in a society where men are treated like the takers of the sex objects they want. Then we somehow expect teen boys will act as something other than the takers of the sex objects they want. 

Nope. This doesn't have a chance of working out. Not a chance. Not a damn chance.

This morning I came across a blog on Psych Central entitled "My Teenager Has Sex on the Brain." The post made me so sad. The author started off, it seems, with good intentions. She talked about having open conversations about sex with her son. It seems, however, that once he started to actually express his sexuality and sensuality his mother wanted to shut it down. While she didn't say this directly, the author seems to suggest that sexuality and sensuality is something that one waits for--perhaps for marriage. Sexuality and sensuality isn't something that someone safely explores, incrementally, over time. 

These two have had their make-out sessions and some time to be stupid before we figured out they were up to no good. Their hormones are going bonkers and my son is thinking with the wrong head. 

What a missed teaching moment for this teen boy and his partner. There is nothing wrong with make-out sessions. What a great way for two young people, equipped with communication and negotiation skills, to consensually explore closeness, sensuality, and feeling good. What a wonderful opportunity to discuss the merits of waiting to have sexual intercourse, and the variety of ways to people can share closeness.

Why shut down the conversation, and the experience, and deny teens the experience of their bodies and the closeness and attachment they want with another person?

My son has turned into a typical, nasty, horny teenage boy and I hate it!

What a sad and painful way to think about a teen aged boy. His nastiness can easily be something beautiful and sublime. Rather than to teach him that sexuality and sensuality is something that is forbidden and nasty (outside of marriage, of course), why not give him a variety of skills to be close and sensual with someone he loves and cares for? Why not teach him about handholding, and kissing, and touching, and tenderness, and saying yes, and saying no?

Why not teach girls the very same thing?

How in the world can we expect teen boys and girls to have healthy, robust, tender, loving, sensual and erotic lives if when they start to explore their bodies and relationships we think of them as nasty? How do we expect teen boys and girls to grow up to be men and women who do not see see women as objects to be used and men as users of objects? 

Think for a moment who is currently allowed to be sexual in our culture. Boys and men will be boys. They are nasty, gross, and dangerous. They are expected to be sexual in ways that are gross. We either ignore it, forgive it, or despise it. Increasingly so in the last few years, middle aged women (aka, cougars) are allowed to be sexual as long as they are pretty objects are on the hunt to be consumed by the nasty young men.

Everyone else has their sexuality and sensuality repressed or otherwise ignored.

When we live in the world like this, how to we expect our world to be different than it is?

....and let's not forget about the plight of teens who have same sex attractions. They are perhaps the most invisible of all.

Sex Education

In this video we have a frank discussion of changes that take place in boys during puberty. Sex is also talked about as something that is pleasurable. A shame sex education has not continued to develop from this 1957 film so teen boys and girls can understand their bodies and the possibilities (and complications) of sharing closeness and pleasure with another person.

Unlike the previous video, Molly grows up doesn't address that sex and sexuality can involve pleasure.

...and in the 60s... perversion!

...though sex in marriage isn't necessarily filthy...

Sexuality intercourse outside of marriage is irresponsible and possible disastrous. Also, watch out for that animal appetite.



Talking about sex can be a bugaboo....

The County Masturbation Trainer

Carnegie Hall, Baldwin-Wallace College

Who knew my career would lead me to having discussions about whether someone had the attention span to masturbate? These were not topics of conversation in the old sandstone building, pictured on the left, were I did my undergraduate study of psychology.

Nevertheless, I did indeed find myself having just this conversation a few short years after graduating. Since May has been named the National Month of Masturbation, I thought I might revisit this discussion. First a little background.

One of the nondescript homes nestled along a tree lined street in suburban Cleveland held a group home that I worked in over eighteen years ago. I was the QMRP of a home for people with developmental disabilities. Our residents were some of the most challenging individuals who were living outside of institutions. A few years prior to getting the job, one of the last developmental centers in Ohio was closed down. Of the 3,000 individuals that the institution once cared for, a handful remained. Twelve of that handful of hard-to-place residents were placed in my group home.

The residents had cognitive abilities that were below the threshold of what tests could measure. They had little to no verbal language skills. Our one resident who could speak had echolalia, which means his language capacity consisted solely of being able to echo back exactly what was spoken to him (at least simple words). The remainder of the residents of my group home had no formal language skills.

The residents had spent their entire lives living in an institution. Care was something provided on a production line. Compassion was something that came infrequently at best. The people who had been put in my care did not know how to dress, bathe, cook, or eat. Behavior plans were created to help residents (those who had the motor skills) learn to dry themselves after showers, dress themselves as independently as possible, and use forks and spoons to eat food. Every day that I went to work I felt like I was entering into a secret world of broken people that the world had forgotten.

While not many words were spoken, sounds would fill the air. For those who took the time to listen closely, human desires and wishes could be heard. The residents would desperately try to communicate with their caregivers. Sometimes we got it right, sometimes we didn't.

Sexuality, and desires for the sensual, were some of the most obvious of all communications. A few examples come to mind (all modified, disguised, and a hybrid of many different experiences).

• The woman who would spend significant amounts of time attempting to masturbate. She never could quite orgasm (perhaps due to side effects of psychotropic medications or lack of skill). She would try so long and hard she would injure her genitalia. 
• There was a male resident who suffered a similar problem. Every time I turned around he was trying a new way to stimulate his penis. He would try rubbing and banging his penis on any surface he could find. Like the female resident, he never seemed to manage to have an orgasm, and frequently damaged himself. 
• A third resident could frequently be found wearing a female resident's clothes and masturbating with them. The female resident would discover him wearing her clothes and chase him around the house pinching him.
• Another resident, who was able to have an orgasm, would frequently chase staff and residents around and throw his ejaculate on them. On one very unfortunate day, I was on the receiving end of this.

Why do I share these experiences? We don't often think of our most vulnerable and disabled community members as sexual beings. We should, because they are. We also take advantage of these people's vulnerabilities and push our own moral agendas on their sexuality. Too often our modes of treatment control rather than liberate the human experience.

How are their vulnerabilities taken advantage of? These residents, with no verbal skills, were heavily medicated to manage symptoms that they were not able to verbally express. I'm not even sure if we always knew what their symptoms actually were. Sometimes medication was used to manage dangerous behaviors such as self injury that could be life threatening. Other times medication was used to control symptoms that were considered a nuisance, like medication to dampen the sex drive of the man who threw his ejaculate at people. Resident staff, who were untrained, would roll their eyes at masturbating residents and yell at them to stop. One parent told me she knew her son didn't really want to masturbate because he was Catholic and knew he would go to hell. She insisted that his treatment plan included making him stop masturbating. 

Being young, idealistic, and a product of the Dr. Ruth school of parenting, I had a much different idea of what should be happening. Prior to working at this particular group home I used to drive a resident to an adult store so he could buy gay erotica. Now I was being told to develop behavior plans so a person could be trained to stop masturbating with women's clothes. I wasn't very happy about this but had not yet developed (or been granted) the authority to make an impact. This was one of the first experiences that pushed me toward getting a graduate degree.

Back to the group home. I discovered there was a county masturbation trainer (not their real job title, I think it was something like sexuality trainer, or something like that). They came out to the group home and evaluated the residents. The evaluation revealed that many of them did not possess neither the physical ability (i.e., dexterity) to masturbate or  have the attention span to learn.

Those that did, assuming that their guardian gave consent, could have access to a variety of training materials (videos, instruction with anatomically correct dolls, etc.). As you might guess, the only resident that was deemed capable of learning to masturbate was the resident who had the guardian who believed that masturbation was a sin. 

Can you imagine that--not having the attention span to masturbate or the physical ability to manipulate your body parts with your hands (or other tools) to get the job done? Just think about that for a minute. I'll wait.

Here is an interesting factlet: from the time period of 1942-1989, it was reported that 652 men in a single institution were castrated to control (aka prevent) masturbation. Some current treatment protocols involve squirting lemon juice into the mouths of people who are masturbating in inappropriate places. Click here for a very interesting article about interventions for socially inappropriate masturbation.

Imagine that. Castration to control masturbation. Squirting lemon juice in the mouths of those who are being offensive and wacking off in public. Is one expected to believe that someone with no verbal skills can distinguish between the pleasure of masturbating in private and the punishment that comes from masturbating in public? I think not.

There are of course better ways to help out those who are most vulnerable. Are you the caregiver for a person with a developmental disability, or know someone who is? An educator? Do you have a disability yourself? I've put together a few resources.

• "Sexuality and disability is still a taboo subject: Therefore, it is important to be informed about sex and erotic desires and the possibilities to fulfill these desires." Check out the website www.myhandicap.com for more information. Of particular interest, and for provocative thought, read their article about sexual assistants. 
• For more information about disability and sexuality, check out the Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality.
• Disabled World offers a helpful page on disability sexuality and sex and sexual issues with disabilities.
• Two helpful lists of books and training materials for sexuality education with persons with developmental disabilities can be found here and here.

May is for Masturbation

In 1995, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders dared to utter the word masturbation. Among the many things she said, Dr. Elders said "in regard to masturbation, I think that is something that is part of human sexuality and it is a part of something that should be perhaps be taught." John Boehner, who was apparently still orange at the time, said "her war on tradition values, her crusade to legalize drugs, her efforts to put condoms in the pocket of every five year old is over."

"I told someone, 'I went to Washington feeling like prime steak, and I left feeling like low-grade hamburger,' " Joycelyn Elders, MD

The resulting controversy resulted in her being forced to step down at the leading medical voice of our country. She was clearly a woman before her time--and a woman we very much needed to show us the way. Take a listen:



To help keep our country talking about the importance, the San Francisco store Good Vibrations named May as National Masturbation Month to keep our focus on open, honest, and frank talk about masturbation and sexuality--just as our Surgeon General had hoped.

I'm not sure we really have gotten all that much further toward a responsible, open, and non-sexually repressed society in the 18 years since Dr. Elders was fired. I remained shocked at how many psychologists are unable to talk about sex and sexuality with their patients, and remain amazed that so many come to my office having felt prevented by other therapists about talking about sex and sexuality.

This of course does not surprise me. In my eight years of post-baccalaureate training, sex was not mentioned a single time in a class, lecture, workshop, or small group meeting. Not a single time.

Okay, that is a bit of hyperbole. It was mentioned once, as a post-doc. Our list of "pleasant" activities for teens to engage in to help improve their feels included masturbation. No one ever mentioned it and the list was eventually changed. Already being irreverent, and iconoclastic, I  made it a point to continue talking about masturbation.

I have a few key experiences and people to thank. My parents, of course, who I believe came from the Dr. Ruth school of parenting (is there such a school?). Sex and sexuality was something that was private but could be discussed in appropriate ways (and my mother was filled with all sorts of wonderfully inappropriate jokes). I also was a trained safer-sex educator in New York City in the early 90s. I carted around a bag of dildos and condoms in the subway back and forth to classes that I taught teens so they had the skills to protect themselves from HIV. I also have to thank my first very first patients at the Free Medical Clinic of Cleveland. I had no choice but to figure out how to talk openly about sex in the context of therapy because it was part of what every one of my clients wanted to talk about.

My biggest thanks, however, goes to one clinical supervisor in my doctoral program, Glenda Russell. She was my only supervisor who spoke about this part of the human experience. She taught me that if I'm not talking about sex and sexuality in therapy with my clients I am doing something wrong. She taught me how to talk about it. Additionally, she taught me that it's my responsibility to bring it up if it wasn't being talked about.

If your clients aren't talking about sex, age, religious, race, disability, or any other difficult topic in the first three or four sessions they will never be able to talk about it. If they don't bring it up, it is your responsibility to bring it up so it becomes something okay to talk about. 

I haven't forgotten these words--and have seen hundreds of patients blush at first mention of sex, masturbation, sex toys, or any other "sensitive" topics. I've also watched those same patients look relieved and relaxed as they are able to become more whole people, capable of openly talking and thinking about "unmentionable" issues.

In honor of masturbation month I have a few things to say: shame on you, therapists who are unable to have frank conversations about sex and sexuality. This is important, and by not creating space for your patients to think about these issues you are failing in your responsibilities to your patients. The biggest shaming goes toward clinical training programs who are so uptight that they swoon at a single mention of sex or masturbation. It's not as if we are going to grow blind. In fact, there are myriad health benefits associated with masturbation for both men and women. Try it out. You'll see.

Lastly--all of you--go out and have some safe and consensual fun. Talk about masturbation. Talk with your friends about sex. Go to a sex shop. For those of you who are repressed New England types, try holding hands in public. You have to start somewhere. 

Vibrator Miscellanea

My post-doc director of training frequently reminded us that 20 years from now we'll look back at the kind of therapy we practiced and be unable to believe we practiced that way. Our ways of understanding will become more complex, new types of therapy will develop and evolve, and things that were once popular will fade into obscurity.

Let's take hysteria as an example. During a large portion of the 19th century hysteria was all the rage. Women's sexually, however, has been deemed pathological and diagnosed long before that. In her book The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, Rachel P. Maines quotes a medical text from 1653:

When these symptoms indicate, we think it necessary to ask a midwife to assist, so that she can massage the genitalia with one finger inside, using oil of lilies, musk root, crocus, or [something] similar. And in this way the afflicted women can be aroused to the paroxym. This kind of stimulation with the finger is recommended by Galen and Avicenna, among others, most especially for widows, those who live chaste lives, and female religious, as Gradus [Ferrari da Gradi] proposes; it is less often recommended for very young women, public women, or married women, for whom it is a better remedy to engage in intercourse with their spouses.

We have the ancient Greeks to thank for the notion of hysteria. Plato thought the uterus was a living creature that wanders around a women's body. At times it can wander to the wrong area which would cause "blocking passages, obstructing breathing and causing disease." Those pesky uteri.

What are the symptoms of hysteria? They include faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and as Maines aptly writes, "a tendency to cause trouble." Ladies, if you have any of these symptoms you might need treatment.

Charcot demonstrates a case of 'hysteria' c. 1885

Thankfully, treatment options expanded quickly in the 19th century. Physicians, interested in increasing their income, looked for ways to improve tedious manual treatments. It could take hours to manually induce a hysterical paroxysm. This seriously cut into billable hours. Also, for those of you who think physicians enjoyed this--they didn't. There is no evidence that physicians of the time found this an enjoyable task. To the contrary, they found it tedious and uninteresting work. It probably would have been considered unimportant work had it not made a significant amount of income.

How is this for an interesting fact: electric vibrators were first used in medicine in 1878 and were made available as a consumer product by 1900. The first appliances (in order) electrified: sewing machine, fan, teakettle, toaster, and electric vibrator. It took another ten years until the electric vacuum, iron, and frying pan were consumer products that were available for purchase. This tells you a little something about what made money at that time (businesses will develop products most likely to sell) and thus, what people considered important. Hysteria was big business.

Vibrators were so widely available they could be purchased for home treatment (medical use only, please!) from the Sears catalog:

We also have an advertisement from a 1913 edition of the New York Times:

Curious for even more images? Check out the vibrator museum. There is a collector for everything, isn't there? I wonder how many accidental electrocutions there were from these contraptions.

Cabinet Card Gallery

Curious why a fainting couch appears here on this post? It appears that these Victorian ladies, reclining on their fainting couches experiencing "the vapors," were actually having a personal physician apply the appropriate treatment for hysteria. Who knew? I certainly never did.

Back to Maines book one last time:

Hysterical women represented a large and lucrative market for physicians. These patients neither recovered nor died of their condition but continued to require regular treatment. Russell Thacher Trall and John Butler, in the late nineteenth century, estimated that as many as three-quarters of the female population were "out of health," and that this group constituted America's single largest market for therapeutic services. Furthermore, orgasmic treatment could have done few patients any harm, whether they were sick or well, thus contrasting favorably with such "heroic" nineteenth-century therapies as clitoridectomy to prevent masturbation. It is certainly not necessary to perceive the recipients of orgasmic therapy as victims: some of them almost certainly must have known what was really going on.

And now back to my point. We forget in our current modernity that we all all one day be obsolete. While we might not be applying "vibration" to heal the wounds and maladies of our day, our current notions of sanity and insanity are as tightly wound with the Zeitgeist of 2011 as they were in 1900. 

The vibrating doctors meant well--at least most of them probably did. We mean well, too. We do the best we can with the knowledge and understanding of the world that is currently available to us. Too bad only a few of us have figured out that some certain portion of what we call therapy now will sound ridiculous in another 100 years.


 (Not to mention the aspects of therapy that already sound ridiculous but clung to to by a some ardent believers of different kinds of historical therapies).

By the way, apparently Maggie Gyllenhall is staring in the upcoming movie "Hysteria" that was recently screened at the Toronto Film Festival 

Should Parents Allow Teens to Have Sex in the Home?

In a recent Daily Dose piece in the Boston Globe, Deborah Kotz poses the question "Should parents allow their teens to have sex in their house?"

It's an unwritten rule in America that teens don't discuss their sex lives with their parents--except, perhaps, to obtain contraception--and that they don't invite their boyfriends or girlfriends to sleep over in their rooms, at least when mom and dad are at home. yet in Holland, two-thirds of dutch teenagers ages 15 to 17 in committed relationships reported in a national survey that their parents allow their significant other to spend the night in their bedrooms, and girls were just as likely as boys to gain this permission.

NEWSFLASH -- your teens are likely already having sex. They are probably having it in your house and you don't even know it.

The problem with unwritten rules is that they are generally stupid. They are also generally based on misinformation, prejudice, and otherwise unexamined beliefs. 

We here in the United States have been busy teaching (or at least complaining we should be teaching) abstinence only sex education. This form of "education" teaches that the only appropriate choice for unmarried teens (and presumably adults) is complete abstinence from sex. Also notable is what abstinence only sex education doesn't teach: it excludes information about sexual and reproductive health education including birth control and safer sex.

Since it is illegal in most of the United States for gay and lesbian people to be married, I suppose this means that gay and lesbian people are presumably never supposed to have sex. 

Check out the trash that the state of Florida puts out under the guise of sex education. The "It's Great to Wait" website points out that one study of one high school show that 50 percent of teenagers dont' have sex. Do you suppose the other 50 percent of teens that are having sex will get the information they need to develops safe, healthy, and loving relationships from this website?

Let me be unequivocally clear about this: the evidence simply does not support the use of abstinence only sex education. Tell kids to wait doesn't decrease unplanned pregnancy, it actually increases it. Conservative Republicans who have demanded we teach abstinence only sex education in Africa as a requirement for HIV funding has failed as well--abstinence only sex education has increased rates of HIV infection.

Here is one great article that reviews the research. There are many other research reports out there demonstrating that the "Abstinence-only was an experiment it failed." 

This, however, is not really my point today. Back to the article from the Boston Globe:

And there’s no worry that young teens in passionate love will leap into early marriages before they’re ready -- a notion that propels American parents to urge their teens not to have serious relationships in high school and college. “Very few Dutch parents think that teens will marry the first person they fall in love with,” she said.They’re comfortable with the idea that their kids may be ready to have sex but not start a family. As a result, they make sure their teens adequately protect themselves from pregnancy.

This nudges me a little closer to my point. How do teens learn how to have healthy loving relationships?

They practice. They watch. The model.

Our earliest opportunities to practice is with our first relationships. Our parents give us our original model for how to have relationships. What do some parents teach their children about relationships? In 2010 more than 5 children were killed every day by child abuse. We teach that relationships kill. Every 10 seconds in the United States a case of child abuse is reported. That's over 6,000,000 children every year. That's just what's reported. We teach that relationships hurt.


Here a real parent, also a family court judge, is teaching a child about relationships. It's graphic, awful, and difficult to watch. Many argue that this child is being spanked and it is an appropriate form of discipline. What do you think? What do you think she was taught about the world and how to relate?



How children feeling about spanking: Their own words and images

17.6 percent of women in the US have survived a completed or attempted rape. Of those, 21.6 percent were younger than 12 when they were first raped, and 32.4 percent were between the ages of 12 and 17. We teach that relationships are about violence.

It is a twisty path I've just taken you on. Sex education, to child abuse, to rape, and now back to sex education. It's important, and it's related. We can't pretend that we can naturally figure out how to have healthy, peaceful, and loving relationships. We learn now to do them within the context of the relationships we form through our lives. We can't pretend that telling kids to wait and  not providing them with skills at saying no and saying yes to sex will actually help anything. It only hurts.

Back to the Globe article:

Dutch parents have been educating their teens on these concepts since the sexual revolution, according to Schalet, though they emphasize that sex should only spring from committed, loving relationships -- not hookups. “It’s never just pure sex, but sex within a relationship.”

This isn't to say that some Dutch don't abuse their children. It isn't to say that some Dutch don't experience sexual violence. I'm sure they do. They are, however, having a dialogue about something important. The Dutch are onto something. They teach about sex. They teach about relationships. They show kids the way, the kids can find that way, and everyone is just a little bit better.

We have to talk openly with our kids. Their lives depend on it.