Touching Her: The Lesbian Masseuse

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He continued to molest her after telling her to remove her shorts and panties. The girl, who was traumatised, decided to keep silent. But Woodward's attorney, Flynn Carey, argued before the Arizona State Board of Massage Therapy that cuddling is beyond the board's regulatory authority because the woman was a cuddle client, not a massage client. I was captivated by what Eileen Myles told me at the time: “I know how to fight for what I want, to say no, when to wait. I’ve been in time for 65 years. I have a lot to share. That supposedly should only be in my teaching life — that’s not the case. It’s amazing on both sides to be able to share the world from different angles. It’s lively. It’s hot.” Other states, like Arizona, don't regulate cuddle therapy, said Guinazzo, the co-founder of Cuddlist. The cuddle industry "is really where massage therapy was 30 years ago," in terms of regulation, she said. But she expects it's only a matter of time before professional cuddling is regulated. Afterward, she said the woman smiled, said she was feeling "so good" and thanked Woodward. She scheduled another cuddle session for the next week.

Really interview someone,” she said. “Make sure it’s someone you feel comfortable with and can trust.” Nationally, in the same time period, that number grows to more than 14,000. However, the data shows only three percent of all granted sneak-and-peek warrants were for sex crimes, compared to the 73 percent of sneak-and-peek warrants granted for drug offenses. But even though I’ve been out for years now, I’ve still never spent much time around older lesbians. The lesbian bars and events I frequent in New York — the gay capital of the world! — are almost overwhelmingly populated by young people. The older women I did meet tended to be coupled up. I knew that hot older butches, even single ones, were out there, in my city and beyond, but I didn’t know where to find them.Lynette is 53 years old, though she looks at least 10 years younger. She was born and raised in London to Jamaican parents. She’d recently separated from her wife, whom she’d been with for 21 years. This cruise was the gift Lynette gave herself in the aftermath. She was starting over.

Dudes still have the monopoly on porn at 76 percent of PH’s viewers, while women make up that other 24 percent, and I’m sure feel very bad about it. A couple days later — after getting my serious lesbian conversations out of the way — I was about 14 rum punches deep and drunk-dancing on a catamaran. Bonding is built into an Olivia trip, which, I realized soon enough, is basically like grown-up lesbian camp. “It’s funny, because on a normal cruise, you’re trying to spend as much time as you can away from other people,” Jamie would later put it. “But we’re all here precisely because we want to be around everybody else.” I would decide that it was over, and say so, and it would feel like a sort of death, but it would also, I knew, be the right thing to do — so much so that I’d feel it in my bones.I actively choose to identify as a lesbian and a dyke, as well as a queer. I have found love and community unlike anything else I’ve ever known in what still exists of lesbian culture, despite all external (and, TERF-wise, internal) attempts to exterminate it: the art, the literature, the physical spaces. Plus, most importantly (and most obviously), the word “lesbian” quite literally describes what I am: a woman who loves women in both a feminist way and a super-gay way. Eventually, once we’d reboarded the boat after our snorkeling, I did start talking with a few of the women I met at the Gen O mixer earlier that week, and it only took a couple of drinks for us to become the best of friends. Woodward said the client told her in an early cuddle session that the woman was "starved" for maternal, nurturing touch. She said the woman suggested they cuddle without clothing. Woodward responded by telling the woman she would consider the request but it would not be part of her cuddling services and would have to be non-sexual. But the father, 47, who cannot be named to protect his daughter's identity, took advantage of her in 2007 by molesting her during one of the massage sessions. She called a national group that certifies cuddlers. It promptly decertified the cuddler, Susanne Woodward, for breaking its code of conduct.

Cuddle therapy is designed to make people more comfortable with others, said Madelon Guinazzo, co-founder of Cuddlist, a leading company in the cuddle industry.The woman admitted in her complaint that in an early session with Woodward, she told the therapist it had always been her dream to be held naked by a woman. She told me she would be able to help me with my sexual trauma and help me find my voice," the woman wrote in her complaint to state regulators. "She insisted that it would not be sexual and that clothing would be on at all times." Woodward, who has been a licensed massage therapist since 2008, has had no discipline before the board. In July, the woman's cuddling complaint against her came before the massage board for review. She said Cuddlist has since 2015 trained more than 1,300 people in more than 40 states and five countries, and she can count "on one hand" the number who have had to be decertified. But there were, in fact, a number of stereotype-fulfilling boomer TERFs on board the cruise — and plenty of lesbians whose policing of gender norms took more banal forms. The woman who bought me a drink after I sang Kelly Clarkson at karaoke — a petite therapist from California with a prim gray bob — ended up being one of them.