Sex talk poll

[rowanf]

I was chatting with a friend about what one says in a journal. I said I mostly just talk about my life. Except for sex. I go back and forth between feeling it is private, not wanting to embarrass people and wanting to shout my joy from the rooftops. I sometimes feel that the lack of mention of sex in my chronicles distorts its importance in my life and distorts the view of my life that it presents. Perhaps it is that my model for journalling is my mother who has kept a journal since high school. There is a lot about daily ironing and who she visited but not a word about making love (though I'm quite sure she did).

So, even though I have a sextalk friend's list that I could lock it to, I don't talk about sex. On one hand it would get repetitive... how many times is it interesting to read "X & I had great sex this morning/afternoon/evening"... but then there are lots of repetitive things in my journal - caching, georging, tuesday dinner, going to lunch, doing the various organizational things that recur in my life. Sooo. what does a good Ljer do when confronted with a problem? Create a poll!

[Poll #668763]

Second question by mr_kurt *grin*

Comments

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Not a good time for this poll for me. I was just muttering about how when you go out on the net, it's all sex, sex, sex, and don't people actually have real lives, that they are so obsessed with sex, pro, con, bring it on, or lack thereof. Maybe it's because I was wandering through Yahoo 360, and wondering why sex is such a pervasive theme. Overexposed, if I may use the term. ;-) And this from an erotica writer, and poly person. Because while it's important to me, it's only one aspect of a full life (like yours).

My avoiding this poll has nothing to do with you, my personal thoughts on sex, or related. I used to like sex talk. I need to stay on LJ and not wander other parts of the net... "I like my cigar, too, but I take it out now and then." --Groucho Marx

[rutemple.livejournal.com]

I personally tend to leave it out, and only partly because my dearling is SUCH a private person who is utterly convinced of answer 3 to question 1. She's never even read Dooce, though you know your shared profession is one where people do Google-checks as well as reference checks.
The idea of veiled references to which brand of tape is used cracks me up.
[Gaffer's tape! use gaffer's tape you dearling fools! you can actually rip it, remove it when you're ready, and the glue's not ooky!]

It's true that TMI and overstim can be a killjoy, where I'm just as delighted to imagine the fun you're having... but then I dunno, it was also great fun to see the pix from Folsom a few years ago when you were a demo model for the knotty boys. You could always do a filter and let folks opt in or out for whatever reasons of their own, make explicit posts friends-locked ideally avoiding the slack jaws and melted eyeballs of potential future employers, lj-cut explicit what-not and let folks glide on by on the days they want to and read and grin on the days they want to.

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Since my answer wouldn't fall into any of the above, i'll comment here:
Assuming partners are informed and consent to having sexual activity discussed, share however much you want. If participating parties wish, give them the right of first refusal.

As for question the second- maybe filter the more graphic for anyone who reads at work in a more restrictive environment. And please, not duct tape. Vetrinary tape is much more utilitarian- it's sufficient for restraint while not sticking to body hair- a decided plus for some of us.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Yes, since some of us read LJ at work, it's nice to be warned. I have friends who are very considerate by marking things NSFW and putting them behind cuts.

[rowanf.livejournal.com]

*laugh* The duct tape was a joke, honest.

I do have a "sextalk filter" which was opt-in when I started it (ages ago) but I don't post to it. My last post was in April 05 and wasn't about sex, I just used that filter 'cause my co-workers aren't on it. I find that quite sad.

And I am on other people's sex filters (and quite like that actually). This was more a philosophical question than a mechanics question. If I, a sex positive, sacred sexuality practitioner doesn't talk about sex in her journal is there something wrong with that? I'm trying to get a handle on my inhibitions but doing a check-in with my friends. Thanks for responding!

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

** checks his filters. Yup, you're on my poly one (which usually transcends to sex-positive in general) and the pagan one. I think you may even be on the used-three-times in the last four years smut filter.

I figured as poly/sex-positive, consent was probably a given. How much to talk about at least varies personally given on my mood- which at least personally is more of determining factor than content.

[rubibees.livejournal.com]

Wrong? I'm not sure I would use that word. I'm pretty new to your journal so I just thought you were kinda private about that part of yourself...given that your journal is totally public, it makes sense. I think we all filter what we write, consciously or unconsciously, for those who we think might read the journal. If your question is a way to feel out (ahem) whether or not your friends are willing to allow you the safe space to journal about your sex life, then it seems you have a yes. And thats a different question.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I can't really figure out how to answer the poll, but I wanted to raise my hand as another woman of considerable sexual appetite and imagination who finds it next-to-impossible to journal about it in any detail more revealing than "much good snuggling was had by all."

Goddess knows I'm not reticent about much of anything else. I'd suspect it was generational, except that my generation were the original Free-Love Flower Children ...

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't actually talk much about sex either. But I have an opt-in sex-tmi filter, and sometimes I use it. Not often. Mostly it's about my own sex brain, not what I do in the sack.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nod. One other thing that I think is worthy of mention is that sex talk is never really as much fun to read or write as it was to do.

I don't mind reading about sex, and I kinda-like it on several levels... "my friend is happy", "my friend trusts me enough to share this with me", "wow, that's how I feel/kinda like how I feel/not what I feel/etc."

But I have to admit that even if I broke through feelings of propriety, and was willing to share what had happened, I'd kind of wonder who really cares that on X-night, I spun a really hot fantasy verbally while making love to my partner, so that both my words and my physical actions were combining in a crazy melding of pleasure? I'm not going to go much further than that, and even reading it sounds as much like boasting as sharing interesting news.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* The way I see it, those who really care probably already know.

[malterre.livejournal.com]

Just make custom groups and those that don't want to read it don't have to and you can write as you like. (I'm on three people's sex filters BTW ;-)

Other people's sex lives

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

I'm glad for you that your sex life is great, I really am, but right now reading about other people's great sex makes me weep. Sex with the person I love is forbidden me because it would hurt at least two people, perhaps more - and I am in a place where sex with the people around me is not an option. So I have been celebate (not by choice) for far too long. Maybe you could write about it and put a 'warning' in the subject line or something.

On the other hand, I'm always open to suggestions on new and inventive ways to have sex (which brand of duct tape, etc.) and sometimes reading about that can be great fun.

Up to you, really. What are *you* comfortable with telling us?

[purplevenus.livejournal.com]

Where is the button, for "SHare up until your comfort zone, or veil the id's of your partners" ?

[alces2.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't actually mind it although if it became too explicit I might not read it. Now I do think that part of writing a journal is as a cathartic experience. So I suppose if somehow this made you feel better that would probably be a good thing. I would say that personally I could not write about such things in a public journal. I would not be comfortable at all. The only other little issue that I might wonder about is whether there would be any problems talking to people you know in person who read your journal. Of course, that could result in some really interesting conversations, although that might not be the best conversational topic at some, uh, parties.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

my favourite book on writing about sex is Jenifer Crusie's Welcome to Temptation where the heroine discovers she can write the best sex scenes based on her own best sex. Show don't tell, as they say - if you're going to say something, I think you have to have detail; you wouldn't just say 'I had a great meal' - you'd list the dishes. 'I had great sex' makes the reader think 'lucky you'; 'I found kissing either side of his mouth alternately was a real turn on' gives them something more interesting to think. Ultimately the question is whether it's on the list of things you want to say - not ought to or should want to or shouldn't wnat to, but whether it's what the part of you that writes wants to write.

Some diarists have used asterisks or code - Hans Christian Anderson;s code was something quite funny that I can't recall (had a nice firm handshake, maybe?). They want to tally it without describing, and it's a more interesting thing to write (and write) than the banal description.

[jemyl.livejournal.com]

I like healthy candor in any talk about sex. To talk about it or not, though, is a question that also should depend on what a person's partner will find comfortable. Saying that your husband/partner is the best lover you have ever known and you call him "the man with the golden tongue" is a happy, uplifting comment. Detailing how and where he employs his tongue during a lovemaking session, well, I think that should be kept as fodder for a steamy novel instead of included in an Internet journal entry. Online journals are just too public and too easily accessed by any and everyone. Limiting such comments to friends only is one route which helps, but is not foolproof.

I have always found a good rule of thumb about sex talk to be: don't put in your journal anything that you wouldn't want your mother, your father and every one of your grandparents and each of your children or, in the case of a teacher, your students to read.