Create a Pandora station called “They Might Be Giants – Children’s Songs”. Wait for “Rainbow Connection” by Kermit to come on while you are snuggling with your children in pre-bed cuddles. Try to sing the song while looking at your children. Watch time literally speed up as you gaze upon their faces. Feel the bitch slap of father time stealing your babies from you. Hide all of this from them. Wait until they go to bed and then cry into your pillow.
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I am Heidi Anderson, a foxy feminist atheist skeptic woman and mom with a hard-core science fetish!
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As a dear friend and I venture back into the dating scene, I have combined everything I have learned about dating from pre-marriage to post-marriage, as well as from the experiences of other women in my life. If you want to add your own advice for other dating newbies, feel free! Also, this advice is pretty much for heterosexual females, due to my own realization that I am either NOT bisexual as I have thought lo these many years, or just incredibly lazy in bed (GIRLS ARE HARD IN BED!!!!!!) 1) Your sexuality truly is yours and yours alone. I used to think it was an asset, i.e. that I was more valuable if I was better in bed, or would be considered a more desirable person. The only self-esteem bolstering I can get from my sexuality is based on my being true to it. However, people wanting to fuck me says nothing about how they actually feel about ME. 2) Men do not have to like you or even find you attractive to want to fuck you. This can be confusing for naive people. 3) However, by that same token, do NOT rule yourself out based on what you think are your physical flaws. I am a big girl, WITH pubic hair, who sometimes forgets to shave her legs. I have NEVER IN MY LIFE been kicked out of bed. Ever. In fact, if a man WERE to kick me out of bed based on some physical attribute, I would thank him joyfully as I ran from his bed and dodged that douche bullet. 4) Competing for cock is ridiculous. There is plenty of cock. More than enough in fact. Whenever God closes a door of cock, she opens a cock window.
5) People show you who they are, even when you do not want to see it. Pay attention. Someone who is not friends with any of their exes, or has only dated “crazy” bitches, probably IS himself the crazy bitch. 6) Sex can be 100% technically great and still not be good for me. By that same token, I can have sex with someone with ED or other issues, and it be mind blowing. Without sounding too woo, sex is about energy for me, not just pawing at meaty parts. Meaty parts are nice too though. 7) If a guy wants to date you, he will pursue you. I hate to sound all “The Rules” and “He’s Just Not That Into You”, but do not make excuses for a dude who supposedly likes you not trying to see you. When a guy likes someone, he is pretty much going to go after her. If he is too scared to go after you, he might be too scared OF you. Trust me, it is no fun to be in love with someone who is scared of you. 8) Finally, and most importantly, if I was not me, I would totally fuck me. I would also fall madly in love with myself and remind myself constantly of just how adorable, sexy, precious, and important I am. However, this is probably WAY too much to expect of someone else. Or at least, only one someone else :) Being open, honest, and sincere about wanting more than one lover in your life is not slutty. It is ETHICALLY slutty (kudos to Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton!) PS No truer words have been spoken than from my friend aagblog: ”You can put up with a lot of Ayn Rand for a man in panties.”  Jake Gyllenhaal reveals his fountainhead. I was thinking about conformity and happiness today. Talking with my sister, we acknowledged how often we feel alone and as if we don’t fit in, and how we feel sad too. But she reminded me that the propensity for sadness is in us regardless, and is not due to non-conformity. One of my sons is a different child, and I know he will struggle. My goal is to help him love himself while struggling, and help him modulate his anxiety in healthier ways than disrupting class. There are people in this world who are touched with darkness* and those who are not. Call it what you will, but I can generally feel it and sense it in people. The more difficult of my sons has it, but the younger one seems to not have it.
People who do not understand what it is to be “touched by darkness” often have little patience for those of us who do. We are told to snap out of it, to cheer up, to learn to fit in, to learn to get along in the world. What people do not understand is that in many ways, the darkness comes from seeing the world EXACTLY as it is, and lamenting over the fact that nothing we do will change that. We take this as a tragedy and a personal failing, and often struggle to want to remain in this world. A friend gives examples of what we hear: ”Why are you always so miserable? Why do you get upset so easily? Why can’t you just be happy? Stop getting worked up over things that don’t matter!” ”Just relax! Everything is fine!” It can be soul shattering to hear those things – because we know the suffering that is going on, and we know we can’t stop it. What people like me have to learn to do is to take our joy where we can find it, and learn to pretend to be normal to not scare the normal folk. But inside, we are still just as touched by darkness as we always were. We have just learned to only share it with those who understand.
*I used to think this was basically code for mental illness, and while it certainly can mean that, I also think it signifies a heightened sensitivity and sense of empathy. Using Sex Positive/Kink/Poly Community Skills in Sexual Assault Prevention Here is the Prezi of the workshop, and here is a link to a wonderful recap/liveblog: http://imaginetoday.net/2011/04/02/momentum-liveblog-part-three/ In fact, Jill’s liveblog recap is better than my notes. Damn girl. You are quite the note taker! Thanks! Last year, I was sure that discussing safe anal sex procedures in front of famed atheist/evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins at TAM (during a workshop on sexuality) would be the highlight of my speaking career. Now, I am not so sure. In April, on the weekend of my 38th birthday, I will be in Washington DC presenting a workshop at Momentum, at conference that is “making waves in sexuality, feminism and relationships through new media!” Not only that, but I will be presenting at the same conference as just about every single one of the women I have followed in the sex positive community, including Tristan Taormino, Always Aroused Girl, Anita Wagner, Jenny Block, Dylan Ryan, Carol Queen, Ducky Doolittle, and SUSIE FREAKING BRIGHT!!!!!!!!!! My workshop:
Like many average looking women, I was completely bowled over by the character of Donna Noble. She is a temp who manages to cross paths with The Doctor and eventually become his companion. Not only is she not the drop dead gorgeous companions of the past, she actively harasses The Doctor in ways none of the other companions did. She pulls his Time Lord pigtails over and over again. I won’t go into any spoilers about where the following passage comes from, or what the context is, but when I watched this scene in Doctor Who I found myself crying.
This scene knocked me flat on my ass. Why AM I shouting at the world all of the time? Why do I have so much attitude, so much lip? Why do I see everything as a fight, a struggle in which I have to prove myself? Why do I make everything such a fucking battle? Because underneath all that bluster, all that armor, all that stuff I think makes me look like a bad ass, a part of me is terribly afraid that nothing that I say is worth hearing. It would be easy to stop here and wait for the chorus of people to chime in with accolades of my wit, my intelligence, my beauty, and my general awesomeness. But it would not work. It would be a quick salve that would last until I felt needy again, and then I would once again need to hear it outside of myself. But guess what else is inside me? A growing part of me that thinks, no KNOWS, that what I have to say, what I have to offer this world is unique and worthwhile. The matter and electrical energy that comprises me has NEVER existed in this combination before, and it never will again. If I compare myself to other people, there will always be someone smarter, prettier, sexier, more feminist, more skeptical, a better writer, or even more bad assed. And that is ok – this is not a competition. But no one can EVER be Heidi Marie Anderson better than me, and I can’t be them. As long as I try to convince other people of my worth, I will come up short. Haters gonna hate. Someone will always have issues with me. But as long as I KNOW my worth, that worth can never be taken.
My sons were just watching Max and Ruby while I was making cookies. Ruby was the Princess, and Max and his grandmother (the Prince and the Queen) conspired to test the Princess’ true royalty by putting a pea under tens of mattresses to see if she felt it. She did feel it, of course, and her sensitivity proved her to be a real princess. This annoyed me. I have always hated this fairytale. Why was her weakness/inability to find the source of her discomfort a sign of true femininity? What the hell does femininity even mean? So it occurred to me that some women go through life complaining about being uncomfortable, but have no idea that it is due to the pea under their mattress. Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test and still complain about being uncomfortable to be seen as feminine. Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test, and then get mad as hell that someone put a goddamn pea under the mattress to test their femininity. These women then organize, tell others, and make it their life long goal to expose the vast Patriarchal Pea Plan.
These are the loves of my life, or rather the product of my partnership with the love of my life. I always love their goofy faces best of all!
 I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son! “ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when it would come, but I was sure of its eventual arrival. When I first started thinking about losing weight/eating better/etc, I remember being afraid of a backlash. Thinking that people who enjoyed my “fuck you society!” posts about being fat would be disappointed in me. Worried that if I wrote about something so mundane and trivial as weight loss and food, that people would think less of me. That I was “bowing down to the man” or selling out. Several of my friends thought I was ridiculous to think that this would happen. All of those friends were thin. My fat friends knew exactly what I was talking about. So this morning, I basically got the “Heidi, I am glad you are trying to get healthy, but why are you writing about it and posting your weight and focusing on this and I am sad to see you become this. You were an inspiration to me and now I am sad.” And it hurt, but like most things, it hurt because it was true. I AM writing about weight loss, and posting my numbers, and any petty thoughts I may have. I AM writing about being hungry and how it feels to wear smaller clothes, and the battle that goes on in my heart in regards to my love of being mobile and there for my children that sometimes seems at odds with my love of my curves. But this is the price I pay for living “publicly” – when you put your thoughts and actions out in the public arena, people are free to comment on them. And I understand that. But the focus on my weight is only the flip side of what was a false confidence about my weight. I have never thought I was ugly – NEVER! This is not about that. But part of the reason I focused so hard on building my identity into that of the “happy fat girl” or the “outrageous fat girl” was so that I would not have to deal with REAL ASPECTS of myself. How many teenagers truly NEED sex education? Surely they know what they are doing, are practicing safe sex, having good boundaries, and making sure they are engaging in partnersex for the right reasons! Why am I so sure of these things? Because I was a teen who did all of these things, and I NEVER had Scarleteen! In my day we learned about sex the old-fashioned way, from our parents,schools, and churches! AND WE LIKED IT! None of this fancy “interweb” for us! Everyone’s parents teach them to respect their bodies from the time they are tiny children – right? All parents pass on the message that “your body belongs to you and YOU choose what to do with it” and follow it up with a respect for boundaries! And what parent does not tell her child that she is allowed to tell someone NOT to touch her, for any reason? If parents did not do this, we might see an epidemic of sexual abuse in this country – as if!
Parents and caregivers approach childhood masturbation and sexual exploration with a healthy attitude towards privacy AND encouragement of pleasure! Only in ancient times did people try to convince children that masturbation was evil and destructive, and that hellfire and brimstone awaited those who touched themselves! We live in an age of enlightenment where people recognize the need for children to develop their sense of sexuality for themselves BEFORE they try to share it with others. While the role of parents, families, and religious communities is to provide our youth with a strong foundation for creating sexual values that work for them, schools focus on the public health perspective of youth sexuality. Thank goodness that all of our youth have access to healthcare and information on contraception, disease prevention, and the range of variety in sexual orientation, gender expression, and healthy relationships! Can you IMAGINE what it would be like to live in a society that did not train its members to be responsible sexual partners? Where variety was discouraged? Where people were encouraged to lie about who they were rather than be different? Where teens regularly face socially and institutionally accepted harassment for being 10% of the population? Where people learned how to be sexual from “Cum Sluts 2: Electric Boogaloo” instead of real live people they trust? INCONCEIVABLE!!!!!!!! There would be pandemonium – everything from girls becoming young mothers, STDs running rampant, sexual assault in high numbers, and even kids killing themselves rather than be honest about their sexuality! If we lived in a society that sent mixed messages to youth about sex, pleasure, relationships, and their place in the world, I could see the need for an organization that has been the premier online sexuality resource for young people worldwide since 1998 and provides free, inclusive, comprehensive and positive sex education, information and one-on-one support to millions, and has never shied away from discussing sexuality as more than merely posing potential risks, but as posing potential benefits, something rarely seen in young adult sex education. But let’s get real here – that’s about as likely as a creationist being healed from demons, shooting wolves from a helicopter, promoting abstinence while her own teen daughter is pregnant, being part of a failed presidential team, quitting her job, and STILL maintaining relevance in national politics! *For the sarcasm impaired, here is the bottom line. Scarleteen talks to teens and young adults about sexuality in a respectful, truthful manner that seeks to honor where that person is on their sexual journey while at the same time encouraging responsibility and self-respect. And they do it on a shoestring budget of less than $70,000 per year.
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