Jane Vargas, Ph.D
Sexuality is a hot button like no other in our culture. Politicians and parents debate the benefits and decry the dangers of making sexuality part of our children’s education. And at the same time our culture, increasingly saturated with sexual imagery both on and off the Internet, becomes more and more “pornified.”
For me, there’s another aspect of sexuality that I’ve found at least as compelling as the broader social issues and that is individuals’ feelings about their own sexuality (hmm ... the two may be related, do you think?) Whether someone e-mails me asking how he might broach the topic of his fantasies with his wife or asking me the reasons he has those fantasies in the first place, the underlying question is nearly always, “Am I normal?”
I’ve come to believe that we don’t choose our fantasies; they choose us. We have a lot of trouble accepting this truth and that’s why very often our sexuality paradoxically both imprisons us and unleashes us. Our secret fantasies make us feel guilt and shame ... but resorting to our favorite ones gives us unrivaled pleasure.
In 1993 I was dating a man who, I discovered without benefit of his disclosure to me, enjoyed an erotic response to women’s lingerie. At the time, I was the editor of a city magazine and didn’t know anything at all about sex that Jesse Helms might not give the seal of approval.
This special man’s predilection for lingerie opened my sexual world exponentially and very soon I developed a little mail-order hobby creating audio fantasies for men with fetishes. Over time this avocation became a business but even so remained a passion. It wasn’t the fantasies themselves that hooked me (although I enjoy all manner of fantasy with gusto) but rather the men who ordered from me. Once they ordered, listened, and felt understood, they wrote me their truths ... their demons, their pleasures, their secrets and their private joys relating to their sexual longings. The fantasies I wrote and recorded reflected that I come from the point of view of not only accepting—but celebrating—a person’s (consensual) sexual desires. In many cases—in most cases—I was the first person my customers ever felt safe enough with to share their secrets.
I presented in-depth, qualitative research of lingerie fetishism that I had conducted in 2001 to The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, a professional association for sexologists. The pleasure of this research inspired me to seek formal education on the topic of sexuality; in 2003 I earned my Ph.D. in human sexuality at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.
I have appeared on television, in magazine interviews, and for nearly ten years have written a monthly advice column for a national magazine. Please feel free to contact me at jane@jane.tv.