MOJ MUELLER:
Women, Sex, Power, Love, Men, Politics & Narrative Reframing
The “First Time” Project
EVERYONE REMEMBERS THEIR FIRST TIME, RIGHT? Loving, traumatic, quick, painful, joyous, funny, violent, drunken, stone cold sober, silly, too young, too old, overdue, in a truck, a car, a field, a motel room, the marriage bed ~ all of this and more makes up a slice of our, women’s, first experiences of sex.
IF YOUR EXPERIENCE WAS ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY LIKE MINE, growing up in rural America during the 60s and 70s, ‘the bases’ were attained slowly or quickly over time, and there was constant discussion regarding who had ‘done it’ or not, beginning – as I recall – in middle school.And, by the time I’d ‘done it’, at the ripe old age of 19, I’d certainly visited first, second and third base and also fought off not one but two of my ancient seeming, gross, married with children, male teachers, so maybe it was time to hit a home run. And, for the record, I hate sports metaphors, but until we feminist the language, here we are – playing fucking baseball. Wanna Play? Want to share your story? Let’s balance, reframe, and change the perspective of an overwhelmingly male narrative of sexual initiation, by telling women’s stories, women’s experiences …
First Time Stories
The First Time: How Old Were You?
How old were you when you were first sexualized by a man (or a woman, for that matter)? Turned into an object of desire by the male gaze, by a teacher, preacher, neighbors, family member or parent? By your culture at large suddenly making you aware of what your body...
The First Time: K.B.
*It's been an age since I have posted anything on the theme of 'The First Time' but then this arrived in one of my inboxes. I have slightly edited it for clarity. I haven't abandoned the project, just trying to figure it out, recalibrate and re-think how to and who...
The First Time: At a Friend’s Farm
Last night I watched the film Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. I had never read the book; is it possible I'm the only woman in America - not in a conservative cult - to have missed it?! I'm not sure why we didn't have a copy. It certainly wasn't and isn't even...
The Weeping Bride
Three times in my life I have watched women friends of mine, dressed all in white, carrying beautiful bouquets of flowers, walk down the aisle sobbing. The first time I was in my mid-twenties; I had known the bride and her family since middle-school. Her groom,...
Jerry Springer
I confess I never watched the Jerry Springer show, although I certainly knew what it was, from clips and headlines, and the general unavoidable knowingness of the flashiest flashpoints, highs and lows in the cultural zeitgeist. Springer, even having never watched it,...
PSA: OB/GYN Visitors Guide
*from ProPublica, September 2023, and worth reading and sharing widely...authors: Adriana Gallardo, for ProPublica, and Jessica Schreifels, for The Salt Lake Tribune. This guide was created in response to ProPublica and the Tribune reporting on abuse by OB/GYNs, and...
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible. Not the films, but the original TV series, from the 1960s. There was an episode - I can't find out the name of it, if indeed it was named - that has stayed with me, all these years later, in the way some stories do. We only got that channel before...
Ladies! Ladies? Women? Where You At?
I've been thinking about the Bechdel Test as I often do during or after consuming media, and recently I thought of it as I started the Apple TV series Shrinking, featuring Harrison Ford (adorbs), Jason Segal (meh) and the amazing Jessica Williams. There are three main...
The First Time: Reality Check
*another re-post from the project that got me started here, because it matters now more than ever that we acknowledge women's stories - not just because we matter, women and girls matter - but because our complications are lived reality, and hiding behind...
The First Time: A Dare
*This is another re-post from The First Time Project, sent anonymously to in 2024, for me to I share here with you. I started this project, and this blog, to elicit women's narratives of their first time having sex because if I read one more example of how much fun it...
The First Time: Is That All There Is?
*Major snaps and my deepest gratitude to the very first respondent (months ago now but credit still very much due!!) to The First Time Project, who sent the following, anonymously, not two days after I requested submissions re: The First Time, and which I repost today...
The First Time: O.P.
* a repost of the original The First Time entry - because 2025 is here, we have three more weeks of a decent man in the White House, and given all we - women especially - are facing, our stories are more important now, imo, than ever. The First Time Project got me...
What Were You Wearing? The Exhibit.
*If you haven't read about this exhibit or seen the website, I highly encourage you to do so with the caveat that it's painful, triggering for victims/survivors of sexual assault, and powerful. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what I was wearing the first time,...
Mother
*a poem by Jim Moore, published - where I found it - in the print issue of the NYer July 29th of this year and notable not just because of its power, but also because it deals with a subject one so rarely sees anywhere: male rape, which does in fact happen. Moore...
The First Time: Esther Greenwood
*Esther Greenwood, is, of course, the main character of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I confess, I avoided this slim novel forever - until just last month, because it was, I knew, about an intelligent, troubled young woman, written by an author who took her own life in...
The First Time: K. B.
We were roommates for a while in the mid-eighties; she was twenty or twenty-one, was at least four years younger than I was, had studied modern dance at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She had come to NYC hoping to perform and study dance with the Martha Graham...
The First Time: Reality Check
I started this project – The First Time - in hopes of eliciting women’s narratives, women’s stories, to highlight the other side of the coin of the never-ending, head-banging litany of men, men, men (and teenaged boys) and their limited point of view on their first...
The First Time: The Accomplishment
My first time was awful. Unwanted. Scary. Painful. And yet, an accomplishment. My first time was actually with my husband-to-be and it wasn't the first time we had tried. When I call the experience an accomplishment, it is accompanied by feelings of loss,...