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Advice from three of EMandLO.com’s guy friends. This week they answer the following: “Would most men be cool with a woman proposing marriage to them? (assuming they’re in a serious committed relationship where marriage has become an unspoken expectation for both parties).” To ask the guys your own question, click here.

Straight Married Guy (Figleaf): I was pretty cool with it!

We’d been in a serious committed relationship for years, and I’d known almost right away that I wanted to marry her. The expectation had even gone from unspoken to spoken when her fairly conservative mom cornered us coming out of a hotel room together on a family trip and said, “So what’s the deal with you two?” We stammered a bit and my partner blurted out “But we’re going to get married.” And I nodded vigorously. Now, at the moment it wasn’t strictly true. We’d talked about it a lot but never made an actual decision. We talked about it later, a bit surprised that in our mid-thirties we were still making excuses. I think I said we should make it official. She said “Should we do it?” and I said yes. And we stopped being nervous staying in the same hotel room around her mom. But not until we really were married.

Anyway, while there seems to be a resurgence of “tradition” where people sometimes fly to special destinations just to pop the question and where guys are “formally” asking the bride’s fathers for their daughter’s “hand in marriage,” I think it’s also fine for women to pop the question instead. I also think that if a guy can’t handle being proposed to at the very least with grace and good humor, then he’d be kind of a brittle husband anyway.

Gay Engaged Guy (Joel Derfner, author of Swish): I think most men would probably feel at the very least uncomfortable if a woman proposed to them. Just or not, gender expectations are very powerful in society, and when it comes to things like this I think it’s impossible not to be aware of the taboos involved. My husband proposed to me, and I told him he had to; the closest I can come to explaining is that I wanted to be the girl, though I’m speaking of course in the most metaphorical of senses. (It took him forever, and when he finally did it and I asked him what had led him to take the plunge, he said, “I just decided that I would only propose to you if you didn’t nag me about it for a month, and you just kept nagging, so I kept postponing.”) There must be exceptions, but gender expectations create powerful taboos, and I suspect that even a particularly enlightened man would see this as an instance of the difference between “equal” and “the same.”

Straight Single Guy (Tom Miller): Did she ask my mom first? Am I getting the ring I’ve had my heart set on since I was a little boy? I have a good friend who proposed to her husband and I thought it was pretty cool. I’ve certainly been asked out by a few ladies and I’m not sure why this is too-too different. I’m not sure what the engagement ring protocol is at that point, but I’m sure we’d figure it out. And if she felt goofy about the whole thing later, we could always go through the dad/ring/bent knee/flop sweat/she said yes motions of the traditional proposal.

Our “wise guys” are a rotating group of contributors, some of whom wish to remain anonymous and some of whom like the attention. Tom Miller writes the Tomfoolery blog for YourTango; this week’s Gay Engaged Guy is Joel Derfner, author of Swish; and our Straight Married Guy is Figleaf, the guy behind RealAdultSex.com. To ask the guys your own question, click here.

MORE LIKE THIS ON EMandLO.com:

• Should Marriage Vows Expire Every 7 Years?
• Why Public Proposals Are a Bad Idea
• 5 Ways to Rekindle the Flame

***AN EM & LO ARCHIVE CLASSIC***

Each week, we at EMandLO.com predict the course of your love life for the week with our own version of irreverent horoscopes — ignore our advice at your own peril! (Hyperbole intended for dramatic effect.) This week, we present your horos in short poem form:

aries (Mar. 21st-Apr. 20th)
What’s the fastest animal in the world? An Ethiopian chicken! That’s a classic from Truly Tasteless Jokes. We were reminded of it by the speed with which you’ve been taking things lately in the booty department. Slow down, lest you end up with your head cut off.

taurus (Apr. 21st-May 20th)
A friend recently proposed we try a social experiment: don’t call or email anyone for a month — you can pick up the phone and answer emails, but no initiating allowed. Our friend said we’d feel like we were going mad the first few days, but eventually we’d feel relaxed and at peace. Being the organizer, the party planner and/or the pursuer can be stressful, exhausting even. Let everyone come to you this week and perhaps you too will feel relaxed and laid back (i. e. someone lays you back on the bed).

gemini (May 21st-June 21st)
Be the first one to speak up at the office meeting, the first one on the dance floor at the eighties night club, the first volunteer from the audience at the magic show, the first one to make the move, the first one to introduce the Jell-O mold to the bedroom. Boldness is a color that will look good on you this week.

cancer (June 22nd-July 22nd)
If you were eleven years old, we’d tell you to spend the week in your treehouse in the company of a few imaginary friends. It’s too bad that kind of behavior could get you arrested at your age. But do whatever you can to be aloof and observant this week. And hey, if you want to talk about it with an imaginary friend, we won’t tell.

leo (July 23rd-Aug. 22nd)
Okay, we know it dates us to talk about Swingers, but we’re doing it anyway: Swingers is an unparalleled morality tale for our times, chock-full of lessons in love and lust for the fools of our generation. Let’s examine one particularly insightful scene that may come in handy for you this week, shall we? In a bar, Trent encourages his best friend Mike to approach one fine-looking honey sitting alone at the bar. His advice: you’re this bear with these vicious claws but you act like a soft little bunny. Be the bear, Trent says, and be merciless. So Mike attempts to be the bear. And what happens? He ends up bricking big time. Our advice: be the bunny this week.

virgo (Aug. 23rd-Sept. 22nd)
We always thought it was the married ones who got all the attention (i. e. people automatically want what they can’t have). But this week, it’s the wedlocked who are into you. Enjoy the flattery, take advantage of the attention, get a couple free drinks out of it. But put yourself in their spouse’s place before you commit to anything more than a peck on the cheek.

libra (Sept. 23rd-Oct. 23rd)
You’re cute and all, but the offers haven’t exactly been pouring in lately, have they? Well, don’t take all this rejection sitting down — get off your arse and shake it for a change! Your luck might just change. At the very least, your bum will benefit.

scorpio (Oct. 24th-Nov. 22nd)
Sit back and observe the one who interests you. The more you know about this person, the easier it will be to mesmerize him or her when the time is right. But please, don’t “observe” your subject from their fire escape at three a. m. And when we say “mesmerize,” we don’t mean you should try out some cheap hypnosis technique you got off the Internet to turn them into your own personal sex slave.

sagittarius (Nov. 23rd-Dec. 21st)
If you’re trying to seduce someone, don’t strain a brain cell figuring out some new and novel approach. Instead, focus on your strengths, whether that’s telling a joke, writing a poem or doing a little jig in tiny red briefs.

capricorn (Dec. 22nd-Jan. 20th)
In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. or Ms. Right doesn’t arrive neatly packaged on your doorstep with postal insurance and a “Right” label on their forehead. No, you and your right-hand man or woman will inspire each other to be better people (and more right for each other) on a daily basis. If you keep your standards high, everyone will have a happy ending, just like in Hollywood.

aquarius (Jan. 21st-Feb. 18th)
“I don’t want to be your Rice-a-Roni any longer,” says one ex-boyfriend to another in the classic (the only?) gay baseball buddy flick The Broken Hearts Club. Rice-a-Roni — the ultimate ’70s game show consolation prize, the one thing you know you’ll go home with, even if you lose. (It’s “Garlique” these days, last time we checked Jeopardy. ) Anyway, we think it’s time you stopped being someone’s Rice-a-Roni, too. And the only way to do that is to start feeling better about yourself — take some me-time, pamper yourself, eat french fries for lunch, whatever it takes. Pretty soon someone will recognize you for the grand prize that you are.

pisces (Feb. 19th-Mar. 20th)
You can’t complain that you “never meet anyone in bars” if you’re looking for a teetotal life partner: if you walk on the wild side, you’ll be hanging with the wild children. Fortunately, we happen to think that that’s just what you need right now. Do whatever it is you do to let your hair down — drink at a dive bar, catch an eleven p. m. movie instead of the seven o’clock showing, karaoke till dawn or perhaps just go out with bedhead — and you’ll find like-minded souls a-plenty. Perhaps you should consider sleeping with one of them.

MORE FROM EMandLO.com:

• 5 Ways to Rekindle the Flame
• 10 Unsexy Things That Can Improve Your Sex Life
• 10 Things You Never Want to Hear After a First Kiss

We get a lot of advice questions coming in at EMandLO.com, but sadly, we just can’t answer them all. Which is why, once a week, we turn to you to decide how best to advise a reader. Make your call on the letter below by leaving your advice in the comments section. 

Submit Your Own Question to EMandLO.comTry Our New
*PRIVATE* Advice Service!

Dear Em & Lo,

I’m a 26-year-old virgin and, while I’m not waiting for marriage, I am waiting for the right guy. You know, that guy that won’t pressure me for sex because it’s the 3rd date or break up with me after 3 months because I’m not ready. And yes, both of those situations have happened, on more than one occasion. As I get older, it seems more impossible to find a guy that will wait for sex. I want someone to respect me and make me feel safe enough to want to share that with him, because if a guy can treat me like crap after a nice evening where I cooked dinner and he didn’t get any, then imagine how much worse I would have felt had I given in and slept with him.

So, I guess my questions are: are there guys out there that will wait and respect me, how long is too long for him to wait, and what do guys think about a girl making them hold out for sex? I have male friends that respect me for waiting but, guys I date — that’s something else.

– The 26-Year-Old Virgin

What do you think the 26 Y.O.V. should do? Let her know in the comments below:

***AN EM & LO ARCHIVE CLASSIC***

Last week we reviewed some great love stories available on Netflix Instant — along with our opinions on which were best for date night and which were probably best saved for quiet moments alone with a pint of ice cream and your favorite sweatpants. And with so many good options to choose from, we’re back with more recommendations!

1. Awkward Love
Watch Lars and the Real Girl, NOT Dark Horse
Dark Horse is the gentlest of the Todd Solondz movies, but considering he’s made such feel-goods as Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, and Storytelling (aargh), that’s not saying much. For a cringeworthy movie that’s much sweeter and more positively hopeful, go with Lars, with the bonus of golden-boy star Ryan Gosling.

2. Iconic Horror
Watch Nosferatu, NOT Rosemary’s Baby
The classic ’60s flick starring Mia Farrow’s Vidal Sassoon haircut is basically a movie about date rape and a metaphor for anti-choice zealotry. Not exactly a fun Saturday night. Plus, there’s an orgy scene with lots of naked old people. ’Nuff said. Better to go with the one of the first-ever of the genre: Nosferatu. Sure, it’s silent, and it’s almost 100 years old, and it’s German Expressionist, but don’t let that scare you. It’s one of those films everyone should watch — so why not watch it together? The tragic ending is way more romantic than almost any other horror available on Netflix Instant (except maybe Let the Right One In, which is great if you prefer your scary stories from this century). And since it’s a mere 81 minutes long, have yourself a bloodcurdling double feature with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari!

3. Italian Costume Drama
Watch A Room With a View, NOT Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet
You might think, How could we go wrong with the quintessential Shakespearean romance in the hands of an Italian master? Well, it’s long, and there’s a lot of complaining. Stick with a witty Edwardian period piece by Merchant and Ivory that’s based on the E.M. Forster novel, shot beautifully all over Italy and just oozing romance. No double suicide or annoying whining to contend with!

4. May-December Relationship
Watch Manhattan, NOT Lost in Translation
If we have to watch some relatively unattractive older man win the heart of an incredibly good-looking much younger girl, we’ll take Woody Allen’s neurotic over Bill Murray’s depressive any day — and so should you.

5. TV Series
Watch The L Word, NOT House of Cards
Don’t get us wrong: House of Cards is a great show — and the first original series on Netflix. But the sex in it is way more about power than love, or even lust. There’s prostitution, pedophilic-ish relationships, and hand-job rapes on dying cancer patients (no joke!). If you like the sex on your shows to actually be sexy — at least when you’re watching with someone you hope to have sex with later — you can’t do much better than Showtime’s ode to modern Sapphic love, The L Word.

MORE LIKE THIS ON EMandLO.com:

• The Great Movie Kiss Off: The Notebook vs. Brokeback Mountain
• Top 10 WTF Sex Scenes
• Top 10 Worst Lines in Rom Com History

• The Frisky: How not to exact romantic revenge.
• YourTango: Could an open relationship be right for you?
• Nerve: Are sugar daddies just a myth?
• HuffPo Women: The #1 piece of relationship advice you can stop taking now.
• PopSugar: 9 reasons to love weddings when you’re single.
• How About We: What your favorite TV show says about you on a date.
• 150 Shades of Play: Our book won an IPPY!

available on Amazon

Freud, Schmroid. If you’re looking for a good book on the interpretation of dreams, check out the one by our very own Lauri Loewenberg, dream interpreter extraordinaire! Dream On It: Unlock Your Dreams, Change Your Life (published by St. Martin’s Press) features hundreds of real dream interpretations and a comprehensive dream symbol dictionary to help you understand and make the most of your nocturnal visions, especially the sexy ones. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to sex dreams, which Lauri says are often “not about a physical union you want, but rather a psychological union you need!” There are 10 kinds of sex dreams; below are 5 of them; check out Dream On It for the other five archetypes (The Friend, The Same Gender, Oral Sex, Family Members, and Masturbation):

1. The Mystery Lover – This is the most common of all sex dreams. Many of us wonder if this dream is actually a glimpse of our soul mate who might be out there somewhere waiting for us.  Alas, t’is not so.  But what is so is that the unknown, faceless man or woman that often appears in our dreams does indeed hold significance….Our dreams have a cool way of showing us the different parts of our personality in the form of a person so we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and what makes us tick. That being said, the mystery lover in your dreams is the embodiment, the personification of the qualities we tend to associate with that gender….Throughout life we struggle to incorporate the right balance of each [gender] into our personalities and behavior.  A man wants to be caring and understanding, yet he doesn’t want to be a sissy.  A woman wants to assert herself, yet she doesn’t want to be labeled the B word!  Our mystery lover dreams are guiding us towards that perfect balance of firm and gentle, bold and caring, yin and yang.
2. Cheating — These dreams can be infuriating, worrisome and the cause of many a slap across the face first thing in the morning.  In fact, in a recent survey I conducted with over 5000 participants, the cheating dream came in as the #1 most common dream! As upsetting as these dreams can be, the good news is that they rarely indicate that your mate is getting his or her pleasures elsewhere.  They do suggest, however, that something rather than someone is taking the time and attention from your mate that you feel you deserve.
…[If] you are the one straying in your dreams you need to ask yourself what you may be doing that is taking your attention away from your mate.  The guilt you feel in the dream is a tell tale sign that, deep down, you are aware that this may not be sitting well with your significant other….Once you can pinpoint what it is your mate is “cheating on you” with, or what you may be guilty of giving too much time to, it’s time to compromise.  Offer to give up or cut back on something your mate isn’t a big fan of if he or she promises to cut back on the activity that is causing you to feel left out. If you both stick to the compromise, you’ll find that the dreams will stop.
3. The Ex — Past lovers are very popular characters in our naughty dreams. Even though it may be light years since you were with this person, he or she STILL continues to appear in your dreams, bringing those old feelings back to the surface that leave you wondering if you still may be holding a flame.  

Most often, the ex we dream about the most is our first love.  Strangely enough, we continue to dream of our first loves, even if we’ve moved on into a happy marriage.  Don’t worry, it’s not that you want the ex back, it’s that you want what he or she represents back: excitement, bubbles, passion!  You are likely to get these dreams when you are in a dry spell or when your marriage or current relationship gets a little too routine and humdrum, as all relationships do from time to time.  Your dream is using your ex to remind you of the passion that is still alive inside of you.  These dreams are actually good for you and are alerting you to the fact that the passion department doesn’t want to become a thing of the past.
4. The Co-Worker – This dream can make work a very uncomfortable place to be. Unless your co-worker causes your heart to skip a beat and your mind to wander into naughty, naughty land, then your sex dream(s) about him or her are nothing to cause you concern.  However, understanding the dream is well worth your while because odds are, that dream is actually trying to help you improve yourself at work.  Your dreaming mind may be telling you that you need to “come together” on some level with your co-worker, for the sake of work, that you need to have a meeting of the minds in order to make co-existing and co-working more efficient.  

But what if you don’t really have much to do with a particular co-worker during the day but you find yourself knocking boots at night?  All you need to do is ask yourself what stands out about that person.  Is he really good with computers?  Does the boss seem to favor her?   Maybe he’s easy going and doesn’t seem to have a care in the world.  There is very likely a quality he or she possesses that your dreaming mind feels you would do well to take on as your own.
5. The Boss – Shagging your employer at night can sure make it difficult to come into work the next day.  If this is the case with you, remember, sex dreams are not necessarily about the person but rather about what he or she represents.  In the case of your boss it is most likely power, authority, management skills, decision making, et cetera that you need to merge into your own life.
 Do you need to take on the role of boss at home and better manage those unruly kids?  Are you facing a tough decision?  Do you need to fire or get rid of a certain element, person or behavior in your life?  Or perhaps you simply need to merge with your boss psychologically in order to deal with a client or project. Whatever the case may be, your boss dream is telling you that it’s time to take charge! Being decisive and authoritative would suit you well now.

For more on the 5 sex dreams above and to discover the meaning behind the other 5 most common sex dreams — The Friend, The Same Gender, Oral Sex, Family Members, and Masturbation – check out Lauri’s new book Dream On It, available everywhere! Check out all of Lauri’s books here.

Our contributor is a college student who wishes to remain anonymous. She has this to say about labels…

I’m definitely not straight, definitely not gay, nowhere near asexual, and not exactly bisexual.

In its simplest form, the meaning of heteroflexible can be found on the sexual spectrum as a sliding scale between straight and bisexual — and this is the label I am most comfortable with, if I’m forced to give my sexual orientation a name.

I’m often not attracted to the conventional manly/good-looking man, and I like men who explore their own sexual flexibility. I often find myself sitting silently when my friends swoon or trade obscene sexual quips about men in magazines or on the streets. Even when I was as young as 2nd grade, I can remember not having as many crushes on my fellow peers as everyone else. In middle school, I had an unusual amount of male friends — and as it turned out, my best male friend had just as many female friends. Not surprisingly, under those circumstances, combined with hormones and peer judgement of preteens, we had more than one conversation about whether or not we were gay. Thus the contemplation of my sexuality began to evolve.

As soon as high school hit and puberty was in full swing, I was certain guys were on my mind and they were absolutely in my bed. But I still wanted to kiss girls too.

At that time, however, being bisexual had more of a stigma, even for women, and it wasn’t something people were jumping to identify with unless they’d had a “real” relationship with a woman. If you were like me, and had only kissed and crushed, then it was easier to just be a straight girl who liked watching The L Word.

And then, at the beginning of college, I took a class where the professor had us write down three one-word self-descriptors — such as “tall, white, male” or “lesbian, Asian, woman” — and then had us each cross one out. I crossed out my sexuality. Being “straight” didn’t feel right. I crossed out the descriptor that felt the least important to me. Maybe it didn’t feel as important because as a straight person I felt little oppression, but it also didn’t belong on the list because it didn’t feel a part of me.

This was a significant exercise for me because it allowed me to really think about my own sexuality. I always felt like my sexuality was very fluid, but at the time I had only ever had boyfriends and had only kissed women before. I felt like, if I identified as bisexual, I would be discriminated against. And also that I’d be a “poser” because I’d never had a girlfriend or even slept with a woman before. In other words, as Britney Spears almost kind of sang, I was not straight, not yet bisexual.

Part of me still feels uncomfortable about the idea of being in a relationship with a woman. Women and romance is still a mystery to me. I don’t even know what kind of woman would like me. The role I play and the type of relationship dynamics I have in my female vs male friendships are very distinct from one another. So I can’t help but think that a romantic relationship with a woman would be very different from the relationships I have with men. I think I would take a more submissive, possibly not as confident, position in a relationship with a woman. Whereas with men, I feel a perfect balance between mutual nurturing and free spirited-ness. The thought of being with a woman can feel scary, because it is an unknown.

I still think about women and have crushes on women, though. I sleep with women. I fantasize about women and how different being with a woman might be from being with a man. However, I always end up with bigger, more accessible relationships with men. I consider myself heteroflexible because that is what I feel is the closest label to my reality.

I could go without a label. Or pansexual even hits close to home. But heteroflexible feels more honest and genuine to what I’ve experienced. Maybe it’s simply my lack of experience that leaves me identifying as heteroflexible — or maybe it’s my heteroflexible nature that makes me lack a more bisexual existence. I suppose only time and self-exploration will tell.

Our sexuality can feel intimately intertwined with who we are. Labels can make us feel closer to or further from ourselves. They can map out and give us little pushes in the movement and labyrinth of defining oneself — being comfortable with accepting of oneself. For now I will let my heteroflexibility, sexual fluidity, and (oh yeah, thanks to Freud) my pleasure principle guide me.

MORE LIKE THIS ON EMandLO.com:

• I Can’t Handle My Boyfriend’s Bisexuality
• How Do Men Feel About Their Girlfriends Kissing Another Girl?
• When Should I Tell Men About My Lesbian Past?

The following is the inspirational “Lover’s Guide” that comes with the new Bridal Pleasure Set from Lelo, which reminds us all how special sex can be, married or not:

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One of our favorite sex educators, Cory Silverberg, just came out with a new children’s book called “WHAT MAKES A BABY: A Book for Every Kind of Family and Every Kind of Kid.” It’s brightly illustrated, awesomely inclusive, and very, very sweet. Plus, it makes the perfect gift for families with little ones (or little ones on the way)! Cory says it’s intended for kids 4 and up — of course, we read it to our 2 year olds. They ate it up…literally. Cory, we’re going to need another copy without drool on it!

EM & LO: Your average reader might wonder why you chose to be vague about who has eggs and a uterus and who has sperm — for example, you write “Every body that has a uterus always has it in the same place…” without ever mentioning the word “woman.”  Can you explain?

CORY: I guess the simple answer is that I wanted a more honest book.  It’s just not true to say that every woman has a uterus. Most women have a uterus.  But not every woman does. And for that matter, not every woman who has a uterus has one that either can or will be home to a growing fetus at some point in their lives.

As a sex educator who works mostly with adults I see every day the effect that sex education has on adult sexuality, and it isn’t all positive.  When we teach children at the youngest ages that being a woman means having a uterus and eggs and being a man means having a penis and sperm, it may seem like a small thing but actually it’s a message that goes deep into our psyche.  And later on, for those of us who want kids and try to make them and find that our bodies won’t co-operate, it can feel like an enormous betrayal.

So that’s one reason.  Another more specific reason is that I wanted a book that would work for every kind of person.  I was particularly thinking of all the transgender, transsexual, and gender non-conforming parents I know whose bodies simply don’t fit that narrow story most books tell.  Some women’s bodies don’t have a uterus because the weren’t born with one.  That doesn’t make them any less a woman or any less a mother.  I feel like we all deserve books that reflect our experience, and that’s how I wrote What Makes a Baby.

If you cover the different ways babies can be born (vaginally, cesarian), why not cover the different ways they can be made (intercourse, IVF, etc)?

That will be in book 2!  What Makes a Baby is the first of a series of three books, but it’s written for the youngest age group, children as young as 4.  Little children tend not to be very good at sitting still for a long laundry list of things.  There’s a reason picture books usually follow a standard format and length;  it works!  I wanted a book that wasn’t just a text book for kids, or a check list of what kids MUST know, I wanted a book that kids and parents would want to read. And when it comes to young children that means being spare with words and information and letting the meaning and hopefully a bit of poetry flow.

The truth is that there are so many variations on how we’re making babies (at least in terms of getting the sperm and egg together, and then getting them to a uterus) that to do it properly would have meant a lot more pages.  So we made the decision to save that for the next book which will be about three times as long and be geared to older children.

You’re so careful about terminology, so why did you decide to refer to the embryo and fetus as a baby (“But before a baby can be born it has to get bigger, and bigger, and BIGGER” next to pictures of the various stages of gestation starting with 2 weeks)…?

This was one of those things I struggled with for a long time.  When I’m working as an educator and teaching live, I use the terms embryo and fetus (and sometimes zygote, which usually gets a few laughs). In a book you don’t get a chance to explain or talk around words, you just have the word on the page.  And in a picture book the language has to serve many functions.  It has to convey meaning of course, but it also has to be fun to read out loud, it has to have the feeling you want to convey.  Ultimately the words embryo and fetus just didn’t do it for me.  So it was a creative decision not a pedagogical or political one.  Of course it has political implications.  Some people feel very strongly that a baby isn’t a baby until it’s born.  Others think that a baby is a baby sometime after conception.  Others think that it’s a baby at the point of conception.  I’m not ignorant of these debates, and originally I used both embryo an fetus as they reflect my own understanding.  My hope is that I have left enough space in the story for parents to share their own beliefs and values around this question.

“Some babies are born by coming out through a part of the body that most people call the vagina.” Why not just say “…a part of the body that’s called the vagina”, since that is precise and accurate? And what are your thoughts about parents using euphemisms for genitals?

Language is language, and it doesn’t become any more or less important when we’re using it to describe our bodies than it does when we’re using it to describe our feelings, or a book we read or our favorite toy.  I think kids should know all kinds of words for different body parts including genitals.  So I wouldn’t say that people should never use euphemisms for genitals, but I would say that kids should know the terms that doctors and health care providers use in addition to whatever words a family might use.  I think euphemisms can be a problem if they are really about embarrassment or shame.  But sometimes we use words because we like the way they sound and feel, and I’m not sure why we need to police parents and families in that way.

Why did I write “most people call the vagina”?  Again, because I think it’s more honest.  Not every one calls that part of the body the vagina.  Most people do, but not everyone does.  So why not just say that?  It opens up the opportunity for a conversation about language and doesn’t foreclose options for the readers.

This language also has particular meaning and importance for Trans* dads, who have given birth but who often don’t use the word vagina to describe that part of their bodies.  So many of us have the experience of having to change words in books while we read them to kids so that they reflect our experience.  I wanted a book that would require the least amount of re-writing, and using this phrase makes it a little more real for a few more people.

Have you gotten any criticisms or hate mail from anyone? We’d guess if you’ve gotten any, it would be from the religious “family values” anti-gay crowd.

Yes I have.  It started when I launched my Kickstarter.  There were a few posts (one was on Glen Beck’s website The Blaze) and they seemed to suggest I was destroying families with my book.  There have been a few more articles – as you guessed – from conservative and generally homophobic organizations, since the book came out.  I’m glad when my work makes people think and starts conversations, but unfortunately in each of these cases, as far as I can tell, the people writing have not actually read my book and don’t seem to be interested in having a conversation as much as using my book as an occasion to spout the same narrow minded often hateful perspective they usually take.

“What Makes a Baby” is on sale now on Amazon.com!

MORE LIKE THIS FROM EMandLO.com:

• A “Beautiful Body” Project Celebrates Hot Mamas
• “Personhood of Semen” and Other Hilarious Sex Laws
• Question of the Week: When, If Ever, Is Nursing in Public Too In-Your-Face?