Be Vanilla in Bed

You have the right to…

“After addressing a conference of sex educators, I was chatting with colleagues when one of them invited me to a ‘play party’ where I could have sex with attendees (or just watch them sleep with each other). I replied with a polite no, but he steamrolled over my dismissal, saying, ‘Come on, we won’t bite unless you want us to.’ He assumed I was declining his invite out of fear. It drives me into rage aneurysms when people assume I’m down for anything and everything simply because I talk about sexual freedom for a living.

“It’s not that I’ve never gone there: I tried a foursome once, in university (turns out I’m not that into group sex). Not that any of this is anybody’s business but mine, but because of my career, people assume things about my sex life. That if I pass on a play party, I must be repressed or hung up.

“But I’m not repressed; I just know what I like, and I know that you can’t one-up your way to liberation or satisfaction. As women we should be able to pursue and define our sexual pleasure free of shame and fear.

“Let me be even clearer: you have the right to order vanilla from the sex menu, to like it slow, steady and sweet. Let your tame flag fly if that’s what makes you happy. Doing every freaky thing as if it’s a competition doesn’t get you free. It just gets you tired.” – Jaclyn Friedman, writer