Ah it's back to school time - a time for learning, exploration and experimentation, right? Well at least for us here at CAKE. So what better topic to serve as our first "back to school" lesson then - When it comes to female sexuality:

"How straight is straight?"

A little background material. As you all know by now the mission of CAKE reads something like this:

CAKE is dedicated to promoting female sexuality - advancing the nationwide trend to create and develop an independent sexual "voice" and an emerging sexual culture for women. CAKE is dedicated to providing women and their male partners with tools to enrich their sexual lives. 

You got it - women and their male partners. Though we have always believed that sexuality is a fluid thing and one should not be defined and limited by their behaviors, there is a distinct lack of sexual information and entertainment geared towards heterosexual women. Further, if one goes by many mainstream women's magazines, you'd think a straight woman is clueless about her body, that she needs to rediscover her clitoris every month, she watches porn to turn her man on, experiments with dirty talk to discover her inner "bad girl," and enjoys bubble baths to relax before bed. You'd also believe that a straight girl never, ever thinks about having sex with other women. CAKE aims to fill this void in sexual entertainment and dispel the myths promoted by mainstream magazines, TV, film etc. about "straight" women's sexuality.

Contrary to mainstream assumptions, through submissions to Surrender the Pink, CAKE has found that many "straight" girls fantasize about getting down with other women. A good percentage of these "straight" girls, also have tried or frequently experience sexual interactions with other women. Though female bisexuality is sometimes thought of as hip, and of course two girls together will always be a male fantasy, the fantasies and interactions reported to CAKE are coming directly from women's every day lives and thoughts.

If this is reality then, what does "straight" really refer to, if not to exclusively being with male partners? We think it means something about.....lifestyle - CAKE's favorite word. Straight women's lifestyles are defined by how women interact with men and women in all aspects of their lives, not simply by physical interaction. Our mission of defining female sexuality includes redefining the meaning of "straight" - not as a black and white issue, but rather a gray one.

Now after two years of promoting female sexual pleasure, we are finding a disintegration of labels and boundaries which leads us to ask "Can the definition of being straight include wanting to interact sexually with other women?" Or do such labels only exist to define and limit? Ah, as always, CAKE is here to ASK the question, not TELL you what is right and wrong. So what do you think? What is your experience? Well here is a little taste from two fellow CAKE.Girls:

"When I was in high school I was really enamored with a beautiful friend of mine, Molly. She had a party at her house with some of my other friends after we graduated and were all in our first year of college. We were all pretty drunk. Us girls decided to tease the boys and started making out and touching each other in Molly’s parent’s den. Then what began as an attempt to turn the boys on turned into something completely different. We closed the door, leaving the boys one the other side in the living room and started making out pretty heavily. I ended up completely naked on the floor, surrounded by four girls, all of them my childhood friends. My friend Molly went down between my legs and started playing with me with her tongue while my other friend Sarah put her fingers inside me. It was no doubt a wild experience. At the time I was completely turned on and enraptured, but the next day I freaked out. I got angry with my friends because I felt like they ganged-up on me and what we did was wrong. I realize now that I was embarrassed because I saw a part of myself that I was not ready to face….but it was never a question of my liking it. I definitely enjoyed myself. I find myself frequently turned on by women, but it is a strange sort of tormented feeling sometimes. I think, on one hand, women are so sexualized everywhere -in movies commercials, advertisements - that it is impossible not to be sexually attracted to other women. And those images, that are often so degrading, are also appealing, so it turns into this huge internal conflict for me. I wonder if I am really ‘attracted’ to women or if it is because our culture makes them so attractive. On the other hand, in a social setting, after I have had a few drinks, I often find myself gravitating towards women. They are more approachable and much less sexually intimidating than men."

"I long to make love to another woman. I want to make love to her exactly the way I myself like, and see if this is what she likes. I want to feel another woman’s skin and breasts and smell her scent everywhere and taste her wetness and her sweat. I want to press my face into warm, damp fur and feel her pussy swell and open up in response to breath and lips and wet, soft tongue as my own does. I would lick softly and stroke with slippery fingers gently and relentlessly until she held my head and impatiently pushed herself against my face and spread herself wider – only then would I gradually increase pressure and speed. I want to feel the shuddering current coursing through her and then through me. I want to kiss her there afterwards, not directly, but around, the way I myself love to be kissed. I want to hold myself above her, moving just a little from side to side, teasing each other’s pussies with the soft electricity of brushing fur...I want to see her responses mirroring my own and I want to see how she would make love to me. Hmmm"

From hanging out and cuddling with girlfriends, to a fleeting kiss and glance, to an all out experiment in girl on girl action and using these fantasies as serious masturbation material, it seems that "straight" women today are indulging in sexual desires to share a little love with each other. Furthermore, women are attracted to other women in an aspirational – "I like the way she looks, acts, handles herself" – kind of way. From childhood exploration to high school experimentation to present day uninhibited getting it on, women are testing the fluidity of sexual boundaries. This is happening, so we should explore it.

CAKE will continue to define a new vision of sexuality with a philosophy of promoting female sexual pleasure that speaks to all women. We seek to answer the question - what do women want sexually? - with a forum for exploration and experimentation and without the constraints and limitations of social labels and boundaries in order to create real, long term social change.

You just can't draw a straight line without a ruler....