Possibly TMI. Please don't read if you are uncomfortable about some sexual topics.

I was writing a bit yesterday about my body and sexuality and I thought more about it last night. Nothing earth shattering, really, but definitely a new experience for me. I was very honest with S about how much I miss the fun-ness of my breasts (versus the functionality of them) - I've missed that for a long time. First the breast reduction surgery, which put them out of commission for a long time, and then pregnancy, which has also put them out of commission due to extreme sensitivity. He asked me if I regretted my surgery. And I don't - I don't miss being so self conscious or the weight of them - but I really miss the sensation of my breasts before surgery. I might have waited, had I known, until after I was done having children to have the surgery so that I wouldn't be so concerned about my ability to breast feed, but there would have been drawbacks to having the surgery post-children as well. So, I feel like I'm missing something very dear to me.

Just rolling over from one side to the other is hard enough, so any active type of sexuality is pretty much out. I also haven't had any wake-up-from-a-dream-orgasms in ages. This is very new for me. I could "count" on them fairly regularly before. I'm surprised this has stopped - if anything, with all the extra blood in my body, you'd think arousal would be easier, not more difficult. This also makes me feel that something is missing.

I'm also thinking about the Dave Attell comedy special we watched last night. I can laugh at a lot of things - even things that really, at bottom, concern me (b/c, if we can't laugh at our fears on occasion, they will eat us) - like the way women's sexuality is viewed. And...I would have to say that at least 50% of the male (and sometimes even female) comedians that I see discuss oral sex. Let me be clear - mostly fellatio. This is a subject that has always bothered me. I see/feel some type of in-equality about it. As if it is really the only thing that a man "should" enjoy about fore-play - because oral sex performed on woman is usually joked about in negative terms. When I say "should" I mean, if I were brand-new to our culture and had to judge its values about sexuality around comedians, I would think that the only thing men want is oral sex. Period. And that somehow, even while wanting it so much, that they view a woman who performs it as somehow degrading herself.

I wish I could pinpoint the degradation part of the equation. I know that I, personally, offered up this "service" to my first boyfriend in order to avoid being pressured to have full-blown sex. I hate that I had this experience. To his credit, he didn't ask/force me (although why this should be such a cause for kudos is even a bit sad) - But the fact that even so young I considered his sexual "needs" to be so much more important than my sexual hesitations says a lot - and this is with a boyfriend who asked me to please help him figure out how to make me orgasm. He worked pretty hard it - so it wasn't as if my first experiences were with a self-centered, hormonal . Although I've been intimate with very few men who would ever have considered my sexual satisfaction un-important, I still, I think, fundamentally, assume that S's needs are more important than my own. Why?! This makes me so sad. It makes me draw the conclusion that I some how "breathed" in this attitude - that it just absorbed itself into me, despite relatively positive experiences around sex. That's why I hesitate to cling to the idea of personal responsibility - there is such a thing as society's influence, as nebulous, as PC, as vague as it sounds. There has to be when sometimes I leave the house and wish for an emotional chastity belt if only to assure myself that nothing, nothing, will violate me.

I have very ambivalent feelings about oral sex - the same way I do about people using the word "pussy" - its strange to have people (men usually, but sometimes women too) using a derogatory term for something they spend so much time thinking/fantasizing about. I feel violated at times by our culture. As a woman. I feel...intruded...upon. And to feel otherwise, I have to make a very concerted effort to narrow my focus, avoid pop culture, and remind myself over and over that I am more to my husband than a body, that I am more to society than a body. That makes me sad. It reminds me of why I am so worried about ever bringing a girl into this world. How could I ever teach a daughter that her body and her sexuality are HER prerogative - not the world's, not her boyfriend's, not society's? I feel like the sanctity/preciousness of my physical relationship with my husband is a total fluke, and due more to his basic goodness as a human being and my extreme self-reflection, than to society teaching either one of us healthy values about our physical relationship.

Ladies - how do you do it? How do you keep your self "unviolated" - how do you honor and celebrate your bodies and your sexuality in the face of everything? How do your daughters do it? How do you teach them? How do you teach your sons to respect a woman's boundaries - to see as precious, as valued, a woman's openness to you?