Best Sex Writing 2010 (5 page)

I tracked down a local clinic that offered labiaplasty and met with Michelle, a lovely registered nurse in her midtwenties. I gave her my made-up spiel about why I wanted labiaplasty, emphasizing that I had no physical problems whatsoever but just didn’t like the way I looked. “Many women have it strictly for cosmetic reasons,” she assured me. “It’s about making you feel better about yourself!” She then gave me a sunny presentation about how simple it was, how attentive they would be, and how I needn’t feel embarrassed. I listened to her very convincing pitch, after which I asked about possible side effects, like nerve damage or loss of sensitivity. “Oh,” she said, looking sincerely befuddled. “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening here. Really, it’s such a simple procedure. But you could ask the doctor at your next appointment.” With that cleared up, she slipped into hard-sell mode and pulled up her online calendar to book my follow-up. By the time I left the office, I almost felt excited for my pretend surgery.
It’s all so easy! Like getting my teeth whitened. Sure, it was going to cost me $5,934, but really, I should have done it years ago! I could only imagine what it must be like for women who truly are ashamed of their vagina and who encounter the bright-eyed, Noxzema-clean Michelle, who promises such a quick and simple solution to their woes.

While it’s not hard to find a doctor happy to perform labiaplasty, it’s a bit tougher to find info on how safe the surgery is—as exemplified by my free consultation. And this is because no one really knows. Again, no long-term studies have ever been done. Websites and doctors downplay possible side effects and instead list “mild discomfort and swelling” as the main things to worry about. In 2007, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement that the surgery is “not medically indicated,” and that it is “deceptive to give the impression that vaginal rejuvenation, designer vaginoplasty, revirginization, G-spot amplification or any other such procedures are accepted and routine surgical practices.” They offer a frightening list of potential complications, including “infection, altered sensitivity, dyspareunia, adhesions, and scarring.” The surgeries were also blacklisted by The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists after doctors saw an increase in women needing reconstructive surgery due to badly botched jobs. They issued a statement saying the procedures are “not very anatomically based and have the potential to cause serious harm.”

So despite the lack of a formal study, there is little doubt that these surgeries can be incredibly risky and can come with grave complications. But it’s tough to find anyone who will open up about a procedure gone wrong—no one wants to be the cover girl for bungled vagina surgery. Even our reigning queen of vaginas, Jenna Jameson, was close-mouthed about her experience; when
the famed porn star reportedly underwent a vaginoplasty in 2007, she was supposedly so upset with the results that she went into hiding. And when a woman with an “ideal” vagina is getting vaginoplasty, we’ve got a problem.

There are a handful of organizations and individuals who are trying to tip the information scale in the other direction, letting women know there are roads to empowerment that don’t involve incisions. Most notable is The New View Campaign (
www.fsd-alert.org
), a group dedicated to “challenging the medicalization of sex” and the organizers of the aforementioned vulva play. Its website provides an extensive overview of vaginoplasty, as well as links to books and videos on women’s sexual health and dysfunction. The group has a long list of endorsements from various doctors and social scientists; it even gets the thumbs-up from former prostitute turned sex guru and performance artist Annie Sprinkle. Its latest efforts include The International Vulva Knitting Circle, a playful way to bring women together to talk about their bodies and knit vulvas. So far there are circles in Brooklyn, Melbourne, Toronto, and Auckland, with hopes to exhibit a global collection of the handiwork in New York next year.

Offering a male perspective on the subject is British artist Jamie McCartney, who’s educating people on vadge variety with a piece called
Design a Vagina.
He is making two hundred casts of volunteers’ lady parts and will be hanging them together in large panels. (I had the opportunity to participate as a volunteer and see McCartney’s work—let’s just say it made a lasting impression.) McCartney hopes his sculpture will eventually find a home in a public space, saying, “for many women, their vagina is a source of shame rather than pride, and this piece seeks to redress the balance, showing that everyone is different, and everyone is normal.”

For the younger ladies, there is
Scarleteen.com
, a fabulous site that offers “sex ed for the real world.” In its “Give ’Em Some Lip: Labia That Clearly Ain’t Minor” section, the site answers young women’s questions about what a “normal” vagina looks like and provides helpful pictures and diagrams, including a link to the eye-opening drawings of Betty Dodson, a regular contributor to
BUST.

So there are a few voices yelling into the void, people working to follow Ensler’s edict to “spread the word.” And while some women might cringe at the idea of vagina sculptures and labia costumes and vulva cozies, they would no doubt prefer them to the proliferation of perfectly healthy women putting their most intimate body part under the knife for a potentially dangerous, unnecessary procedure. As it stands now, any means to bridge the gap between the mass of swirling misinformation and the truth should be welcomed, since what we have are the conditions for a perfect storm. With a lack of education and information, a built-in cultural shame surrounding vaginas, a preponderance of false images in the media, and a line of medical professionals taking our signed checks and nodding reassuringly, in five years’ time, will getting a streamlined vagina be as common as a tummy tuck?

As The New View Campaign points out: just as the fight to rid Africa of female genital mutilation is gaining real momentum, the West appears to be picking up the very knives they are putting down. And yes, there are numerous differences between FGM and labiaplasty. But there is also the eerie similarity that both are born of cultural standards imposed upon the women of the society. While our surgeries may be done entirely by choice, one wonders at what point the disconnect occurs between denouncing the use of a scalpel by others and then picking it up ourselves.

 

 

The older I get, the luckier I feel not to have been busted for breaking a sex law. It’s not that I have been doing anything particularly scandalous. Public sex sure isn’t my thing, and I’m not in the habit of spamming my friends and colleagues with XXX emails. But in a world where a teen can get arrested for texting a boyfriend her own nudie shots, I don’t want to take anything for granted.

Really though, my clean record probably has as much to do with where I’ve lived, as with what I’ve done. Growing up in Canada meant that I didn’t worry about the legal ramifications of losing my virginity to my high school boyfriend. Had I spent those angst-ridden years in Texas, or even Maine, I could have been charged with the crime of underage sex.

Similarly, accompanying a terrified sixteen-year-old to a New York City clinic for an abortion a few years back could have been
illegal if I had done the same thing in many of the thirty-four states with parental consent and notification laws for this procedure. So I’ve been fortunate. But plenty of other people haven’t. We often don’t realize that sex regulations extend beyond archaic blue laws banning things like having sex in a toll booth, or forbidding sororities on the basis that women living together constitute a brothel. Such prohibitions may remain on the books, but people seldom, if ever, face charges for breaking them. The sex laws that do get enforced every day tend to be a lot less laughable.

Occasionally, the focus on a particular case can lead to a law’s repeal. For example, in 2004, a Texas mom was arrested for violating that state’s ban on selling sex toys after she was busted hawking vibrators to her friends. The coverage of the incident drew attention to the statute and eventually led to its 2008 nullification. And famously, following a 2002 arrest for having anal sex with his boyfriend, John Lawrence argued his case before the U. S. Supreme Court, and succeeded in getting the federal sodomy laws overturned.

Nevertheless, for many people, simply paying their fine or doing their time is preferable to embarrassing publicity that can accompany fighting charges. Still, plenty of cases do make the papers, whether those involved want them to or not.

Here are fifteen recent examples highlighting the fact that even in the land of the free, the freedom to express your sexuality can still be pretty limited.

1) Over the past year, New York City has seen thirty-four gay men arrested for prostitution in what many people are calling an antigay sting operation. One case, reported by the
New York Times,
involved Robert Pinter, a fifty-three-year-old massage therapist, who was approached by an undercover police officer in the adult section of a video store. As Pinter told the
Times,
“[the man who
propositioned me] was very charming and cute, and we agreed to leave the store and engage in consensual sex.” Pinter explained that man then offered him fifty dollars for doing so—an offer which he says he did not respond to. Once outside, Pinter was handcuffed and arrested on charges of “loitering for the purpose of prostitution.” The relationship between gay men and the police has often been far from harmonious (hell, arrests of gay men in the sixties are what prompted the Stonewall riots in 1969), and this situation has renewed fears that old habits die hard.

2) Despite the fact that Georgia has some real problems with youth sexual health—among other things it boasts the eighth highest teen pregnancy rate in the country—this state has put a lot more effort into targeting teens than it has into helping them stay safe. One particularly outlandish case involves a young man named Genarlow Wilson. Genarlow was recently freed after serving almost three years in a Georgia prison. He had been sent there at seventeen for getting a blow job from a consenting fifteen-year-old girl. Though Genarlow was only two years older than the girl, in Georgia, he was above the age of consent and she was below it. As a result, the high school senior was charged with aggravated child molestation. At the time, Georgia had a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years for this crime, so that’s what he got. A year into his sentence, the law was changed to make the maximum penalty a still pretty serious twelve months in jail. Even so, it took another two years for a judge to order Genarlow’s release.

3) Florida is famous for its liberal views on how little clothing can be considered publicly acceptable. It’s not so liberal, however, when it comes to the kind of sex it considers acceptable for people to have privately. In February, a lawsuit was filed against a strip mall–based private swingers club. The charges came after
a year-long undercover operation, and despite the sheriff’s acknowledgment that “detectives never found any evidence of drug use or sales and never saw any instances of anyone paying for sex.” Swinging is legal, so in the end, the best the cops could do was charge the club with violation of local zoning codes.

4) Starting off 2009 with a bang, six Pennsylvania teens—three girls and three boys—were busted for child pornography. The charges came after a teacher confiscated a student’s cell phone and discovered that the girls had sent naked pictures of themselves to the boys. Initially, the boys were charged with possession of child pornography, and the girls with manufacturing, disseminating and possessing child pornography. These charges could have come with jail time and the requirement to register as sex offenders. The AP reports, given such daunting prospects, “all but one of the students accepted a lesser misdemeanor charge, partly to avoid a trial and further embarrassment.” Public panic over sexting is growing and as a result the Pennsylvania case is far from an isolated incident. In fact, U
SA Today
reports that, “Police have investigated more than two dozen teens in at least six states this year for sending nude images of themselves in cell phone text messages.”

5) No one has ever claimed that Georgia is a haven for the LGBT community. But a recent decision by a custody judge to bar a gay dad from “exposing” his kids to his “homosexual partners and friends,” is a reminder that in this state, the notion that everyone is equal under the law only applies if the “everyone” in question isn’t gay. In this case, the man’s soon to be ex-wife argued that the fact that her kids have a gay dad has landed them in therapy. So she asked that the restriction be imposed to protect them from discomfort. But as the father said, “In general, that [restriction] will never allow me to have my children present
in front of any friends, whether they’re gay or straight—no one hands you a card saying are you gay, straight, heterosexual, bi, whatever.”

6) After his boxers were spotted by cops as he peddled his bike around town, a twenty-four-year-old Bainbridge, Georgia, man became the first person arrested there under a new city ordinance that prohibits wearing pants low enough to expose a person’s underwear. Arrests like this have become common all over the country as more and more cities adopt so-called
baggy pants bans
. Most of these laws focus on visible underwear. But some, like the one passed in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, in 2007, take the clothing restrictions even further. That ordinance not only outlaws “any indecent exposure of any person or undergarments,” but also bars a person from, “dressing in a manner not becoming to his or her sex.”

7) Last February, Wisconsin mom Amy Smalley was charged with the felony of “exposing a child to harmful descriptions.” The issue came to light after her eleven-year-old son told a counselor about conversations his mom had with him and his brother. These included talking about her sex life, explaining how to perform oral sex and showing the boys a sex toy. The charges, which could have landed Smalley three years in prison, were pled down to a misdemeanor. Smalley was placed on probation and had to undergo court-ordered counseling. As the Court TV website put it, “Smalley called it education. Prosecutors called it a crime.” I call it terrifying. As a mom myself, I can easily see having similar conversations. (Okay, not for a while as my daughter is only two. But still…) Sure, Smalley probably made a bad judgment call. But really, is this any worse than parents who let their kids watch “Family Guy” and “South Park,” despite the endless stream of rape jokes and blow job humor?