Quilts are good for a whole lot of things, wrapping up babies, and throwing over sofas not to mention a multitude of hot and steamy things under the quilt with your favorite person, even if that favorite person is yourself!
Here at BAQS we maintain that open conversations about healthy sexuality are paramount to a healthy happy life
along with lots of quilting and self care. Enjoy the conversation!
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One of my early quilts was a disaster. I chose four dark blue prints in the same scale from the same fabric line. No matter how hard I worked on my sampler squares, all you could see was the exact same color. From a distance of more than two inches, it was bland blueness as far as the eye could see. How boring would quilting be if we all worked in the same color all the time?
The world of sex and romance work the same way.
Statistics tell me more of you are women than men, and most of you are cisgender (your anatomy matches the gender you identify with) however some of you may be transgender (you identify with a gender that does not match your anatomy) or even nonbinary (you do not identify with one of the two most common genders – male or female). Some of you may be heterosexual (attracted to the opposite gender), homosexual (attracted to the same gender), bisexual (attracted to both genders), pansexual (attracted to people regardless of that person’s gender identity), or asexual (not necessarily sexually attracted to any group).
Those differences provide the necessary contrast to make life (or quilting) interesting. Many of the things I talk about may not be your cup of tea, you might even find them shocking. And that’s completely okay. Some people live to make whole cloth quilts in a solid color. Some folks can’t stand pink. Just like there’s no right or wrong way to pick colors for your quilt, there’s no right or wrong way to decide what type of sex and romance you prefer.
As a cis-gendered, heterosexual woman, I can’t speak to every experience (of course) but I will strive to speak in a way that is all-encompassing. When I talk about partners, rest assured that I’m talking about your favorite kind of partner, which is probably different than mine. My blogs will always be sex-positive, even when we’re talking about people who choose not to have sex.
I’m a romance author who writes hot love scenes into her books. I know more synonyms for body parts than you could shake a ‘disco stick’ at. Thanks to my membership in the Romance Writers of America, I’ve attended professional presentations on things like how many orgasms a person really can have in an afternoon (hint: it’s not in the double digits). So if you have questions about anything romantic, sexy, or in-between, drop me an email or put them in the comments.
The Gender Unicorn was developed to explain gender identity to school children. While your sex (between the unicorn’s legs) is genetic, your gender identity (the unicorn’s thought bubble) is how you think of yourself. Your gender expression (the green dots outside the unicorn’s body) is how you present yourself to the world, things like clothes and hair styles. All of things are separate from who you are physically and emotionally attracted to (the yellow and red hearts). From http://www.transstudent.org/gender Designed by Landyn Pan and Anna Moore
Rachel Graves writes diverse mysteries with steamy scenes and supernatural scares. She is a member of several writing organizations, including Romance Writers of America. Her Death Witch series began in August 2015 with Under a Blood Moon (https://www.amazon.com/Under-Blood-Moon-Rachel-Graves-ebook/dp/B011H48XLA) and her first young adult (YA) novel, the Mermaid and the Murders (https://www.amazon.com/Mermaid-Murders-Rachel-Graves/dp/1509208062), was published in 2016.
A quilter since her teen years, Rachel prefers spooky Halloween prints and modern designs. She quilts on a vintage Singer Featherweight rescued from an estate sale and preaches the gospel of a small, carefully curated stash. Visit Rachel’s blog for short fiction and more: http://www.rachelgraves.com/
- Fire in Her Blood – February 2017
- The Mermaid & the Murders – June 2016
- Under a Blood Moon – August 2015
Rachel@rachelgraves.com http://www.rachelgraves.com
Thank you so much for this. Being someone who coordinates a kids camp where quilts are donated, Its easy to get caught up in girl quilts and boy quilts or expectations of what an assumed gender would like.
. Its valuable to me to keep
exploring gender assumptions
I am older and from a pretty traditional background, so some of this info in new to me – I so appreciate learning opportunities like this!
So what defines ‘one orgasm’ because I think I’ve gotten into the double digits in one afternoon. 🙂
And I’m SO not putting my real name here. LOL.
And off to check out your books! 🙂 Any chance you might do a blog post on tools that assist with self-entertainment?
Thank you for your efforts to make the world of quilting inclusive and to recognize the richness diversity brings to our craft.
Well written and thoughtfully commented post. I learned a great deal and am certain others will as well. Not understanding – not even knowing – these basic terms is major roadblock to discussion. THANK you.
i see that Amanda has commented too, and that’s great! One way to think about the “ed” on transgender is that being trans isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something you are. just like you wouldn’t say that a white person was “whited”, you wouldn’t say that a cisgender person was “cisgendered”
also, the bit about “gender not matching your anatomy” is kind of problematic. it’s usually considered to be rude to refer to someone’s anatomy as a gender that’s not theirs. if the person is a woman, then their body is a woman’s body, regardless of what body parts they have. a better way to explain that is to say that cisgender is when you identify with the gender that you were assigned at birth and transgender is when you don’t identify with the gender that you were assigned at birth.
and the definition you’ve given of bisexual isn’t really accurate either, because there are more than two genders. the root of bisexual is bi, which means two, and many people define bisexual as being attracted to two categories of people – people who are the same gender as then and people who are a different gender than them. defining it this way includes people who aren’t part of the gender binary.
while this comment might seem really critical, know that i am REALLY EXCITED that this is being discussed in the quilting world, and i am really appreciative that BAQs is bringing it up! thank you for that!
Rachel,
I greatly appreciate this post and of course these topics are not discussed enough so I applaud your effort here. There are, however, two small edits I would suggest to make this a more inclusive post. One, the ‘ed’ on the end of the word transgender is outdated and should be removed since this is an adjective. Secondly, the description of asexual is not accurate. A lot of asexual folks are attracted to others and in long-term relationships. It has nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with the act of sex. Other than these edits, I really do appreciate the topic and good discussion in this post. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for your edits, Amanda! Those are great corrections and we’ve put them in place. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge.