Sexy Things Powerpoint

I'm writing a longer post right now -- *gasp*, content! -- but I'm taking a break to laugh my ass off about this Powerpoint presentation. Seriously, if this isn't the reason Powerpoint was made, I don't know what is. But it would be a bad idea to show it at a board meeting.

Seriously!

Answer: NEVER.

Via Better Late Than Never

Five Fun Links #10

1) In honor of the Iowa Caucuses: SANTORUM!

2) Plus, a lot of people are googling "Santorum" for the first time.

3) A blog about writing literary erotica.

4) Coming soon to Vegas: sci-fi themed prostitutes?

5) Doctor Who companion Katy Manning (Jo Grant) in a Playboy shoot from 1978. Probably the only Playboy shoot ever to feature a Dalek as a prop. (NSFW)

Five Fun Links #9

1) Susie Bright on being bisexual in the early days of the bisexual movement.

2) Do you believe any of these 5 myths about sex in history? (I did.)

3) Polyamory in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: coming soon to a theater near you?

4) Sex injuries!

5) Worst sex writing of 2011.

Polyamory and Occupy Wall Street

Time Out: New York recently published an article about non-traditional relationships at Occupy Wall Street. I initially read the article because I wanted to know what it said about polyamory -- but, while the poly group seems to be having a lot of fun (as is often the case!), I was more impressed by the insights of Catherine and Sebastian, the monogamous couple that was interviewed.

Catherine quotes Kurt Vonnegut: "When you fight with your spouse, what each of you is actually saying is, 'You're not enough people!'" She hopes that the future of relationships includes a more communal style of living. “Nuclear families can be so isolating,” she says. Sebastian points out that even if you believe in nuclear families, that model isn't looking sustainable.

According to marriage historian Stephanie Coontz, couples demand too much from their spouse. "We expect more of our partner than ever before," she says. "Deeper love, deeper friendship, more emotional and practical support. But we expect less of other people, friends or family who could help support our relationship."

Living with other couples can provide the nonsexual benefits of polyamory—you can have a support system while remaining monogamous, and passionately so.

"Monogamy and nonmonogamy are about sex, and marriage is about much more than sex," says Sebastian. "Monogamy is a desire in your heart. It is not a law. Laws don't work in relationships. Relationships are living things that evolve." Sebastian says marriage changed his heart, and living in Zuccotti provided another epiphany. “We should fight against a society that makes it impossible for you to live financially, unless both partners are working six days a week," he says. "We don’t want to disappear into communes so this can keep going on. This is the time to fight back."

The reason reading this made me so happy is that I've often thought there are a lot of things about polyamory that could benefit other types of relationships. Unlike other kinds of nonmonogamy (which are great, and I say this without judgment), polyamory is not just about sex -- it's also a philosophy that emotions are messy, that love can't be contained, that possessiveness and jealousy are destructive, that no person can or should be everything to another person. All of these ideas can be transplanted to monogamous relationships as well, and Catherine and Sebastian are living proof that these ideas are gaining a following, even in more traditional relationships.

I'm very happy to see these issues being discussed in the Occupy movement. One of the strengths of that movement is the fact that it refuses to be about just one thing, and so it becomes a space where everything can be discussed. This drives more traditional political activists crazy because they can't think of anything past 2012. They aren't wrong: we do need to be very concerned about 2012. But I've always believed that social change is a gradual change, and it doesn't keep time with two- and four-year election cycles. Election cycle change is cyclical (Democrats voted in, Republicans voted in, Democrats voted in, etc.), but social change happens at the root of an entire generation's belief system.

Occupy is the second kind of movement. Its members are posing questions that the entire country is now trying to answer. Does democracy go hand in hand with capitalism? What is the responsibility of a nation to its citizens? What is a fair distribution of wealth? What kind of country do we want to be? The Occupy movement is asking the questions. Our whole society is trying to answer them now -- you should have heard the discussion at Thanksgiving dinner at my house! As for figuring out how to cash in on Occupy for political gain, that's up to the Democratic Party. I wish them the best of luck, but it's their problem. Hopefully they'll figure out how to align themselves with the changes of outlook that are going on, not just among the Occupiers but among the rest of America.

I am extremely encouraged to see that Occupiers are asking questions about polyamory, and poly-related ideas. These questions aren't the main thrust of the movement, but they are connected to the question of what kind of a country we want to be. The extraordinary success of the LGBTQ rights movement in the last forty years is proof that attitudes can change very quickly -- and ideas that infringe on our ability to be ourselves and love whomever we choose are discarded quickly in a country built on freedom. We have a long way to go before we shed all our sex-negative attitudes, but we're on the right track.

Via Poly in the Media

Five Fun Links #8

1) Nonmonogamy in the Atlantic.

2) Scientific American debunks some classic porn myths and suggests some benefits.

3) Dan Savage on the moral freak-out that shut down a sex club in Maine.

4) For you Star Wars fans out there: Slutty Stormtroopers! (NSFW)

5) Tumblr, why do you always have such hot videos for me? (Very NSFW, 18+)

Proust on Sadism

I have spent the month of November -- which is National Novel Writing Month, after all! -- working on the novel I started this summer. It is set in the 1950s and 1960s, and it is about obscene literature and sadomasochism.

In the section I have been working on for the past week and a half, a character makes the argument that the pulp fiction of the '50s is nothing new, and that its writers are in fact part of a long literary tradition. I've been exploring this idea by tracking down works of literature that address this subject matter, and today I finally tracked down this quote from Marcel Proust. It appears on page 162 of the Gallimard edition of Swann's Way, as the young narrator spies on a lesbian couple having some kinky sex:

"Les sadiques de l'espèce de Mlle Vinteuil sont des êtres si purement sentimentaux, si naturellement vertueux que même le plaisir sensuel leur paraît quelque chose de mauvais, le privilège des méchants. Et quand ils se concèdent à eux-mêmes de s'y livrer un moment, c'est dans la peau des méchants qu'ils tâchent d'entrer leur complice, de façon à avoir eu un moment l'illusion de s'être évadé de leurs âmes scrupuleuses et tendres, dans le monde inhumain du plaisir."

TRANSLATION:
"Sadists like Mademoiselle Vinteuil are such purely romantic beings, so naturally virtuous, that even sensual pleasure to them seems like something evil, the privilege of the wicked. And when they allow themselves to give in to it for a moment, it is in the guise of evil that they try to dress their accomplice, so as to have, for a moment, the illusion of having escaped from their scrupulous and tender souls, into the inhuman world of pleasure."

That's an astonishingly open-minded and, I think, accurate description of the kind of people who are drawn to BDSM, especially when you consider that it comes from a book published in 1919!

Swimming Against a Tidal Wave

Every once in a while I hear a criticism of sex-positive blogs (like this one) -- that they present a rosy view of sexuality, and never deal with the negative sides of sex like rape, like rape, sexually transmitted disease, human trafficking, etc. I think about this a lot, because it certainly isn't responsible to act like sex is fun and amazing for everyone, everywhere, always. There's a dark side to this subject. You can't deny it.

Now, I've always been able to duck these criticisms because I don't feel like I'm required to present a balanced view of my subject. I don't claim to be a "sex-pert," a sex educator, or an authority of any kind on the subject. I'm just an enthusiast. I like to explore the subject of sexuality -- and when something makes me geek out (and isn't too private to share with strangers on the Internet) I write about it. This blog isn't meant to be a definitive work on the subject. I'm just an enthusiast.

But when sex-positive people are criticized for not dealing with the dark side of sex, it really rubs me the wrong way. I got thinking about it again recently after the cast of the Sex Is Fun podcast had difficulty expressing why they shied away from darker topics, and I think I finally figued out why this criticism bothers me so much. People are quick to criticize a sex-positive blogger, podcaster or expert for not giving equal time to darker topics, but nobody expects equal time for sex-positive topics from sex-negative experts.

Sex is presented a number of ways in our culture. It's presented as fantasy by TV, movies, advertisements, fashion models, and porn. It's presented as sin by religion. It's presented as disease by doctors, STI awareness campaigns, and abstinence educators. It's presented as politics by women's rights activists, fundamentalists and marriage equality crusaders. It's presented as crime by police, newspapers, television, and some feminist movements. It's presented as humor by everyone from stand-up comics to your friends at the bar. Some of these six ways of talking about sex are important, some of them are fun, and some of them are pure bullshit. But none of them are really about enjoying love and sex, or embracing them as a force for good in our lives.

Compared to these six ways of talking about sex, the sex-positive message is tiny and marginalized. These five approaches are what you get from every mainstream media outlet. Sex-positive commentators are struggling to be heard on blogs, podcasts, small presses and free alternative papers. For those of us who are trying to present sex in a positive light, it's okay to take the darker side of the topics as rote. It's okay to overcompensate in favor of the positive message. It's okay if Violet Blue or Susie Bright don't spend all day talking about human trafficking -- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has more than got that stuff covered. There's not much for The Stranger to say that every major media outlet in America hasn't already said.

Sex-positive writers are swimming against a tidal wave of negative messages about sex, yet they're the ones who are expected to give equal time the negative side of sex? Why not ask Dr. Phil to give equal time to the positive side of sexuality? Sex-positive writers haven't got the time. There are too few of them and they're fighting an uphill battle to elevate the discourse about sexuality. That's the reason, for instance, that you will hardly ever see a bad review on this blog -- I could write ten bad reviews a day of things I felt portrayed sexuality badly and still never scratch the surface. Rather than become an increasingly bitter blogger, I've decided I'm only going to write good reviews of things that deserve recognition for some welcome sex-positivity. The only exception I've made in three years was for something I felt was passing itself off as sex-positive when it really wasn't.

Here's the size of it: sex-positive outlets have enough work to do countering negative messages. The don't have time to send them, no matter how valid they may be. It's very important that people talk about sex as a vector for disease, or in the context of sex crimes -- but plenty of people are already doing that. On the other hand, very few people are talking about healthy, happy sex -- you know, the kind of sex most people are having. And that's too bad. Because the when healthy, happy sex is ignored, when it isn't spoken of, when it is repressed, when it is locked behind millions of bedroom doors and made invisible, that's when all the negative stuff can perpetuate itself. A culture with a healthy attitude about sex wouldn't have half the problems we do.

So, to all you bloggers, podcasters, writers, actors, web series directors, here's a request from me and my fellow enthusiasts -- keep it positive!

Sunday Comics: Batwoman: Elegy

Batwoman: Elegy
written by Greg Rucka, illustrated by J. H. Williams III
DC Comics, 2010

Last week I reviewed a rather obscure comic in a foreign language so I thought I might review something a little more mainstream this week, and you can't get much more mainstream than the family of superheroes that surrounds Batman. Batwoman is a recent addition to this family, vaguely based on a character that hasn't been seen since the early 1960s, yet very, very different. The most glaring difference? Batwoman is an out and proud lesbian.

Batwoman: Elegy collects the first six issues of Batwoman's adventures -- they were first printed about two years ago as Detective Comics #864-#870. There are two stories in the book. The first introduces Batwoman in the present day, and introduces a nemesis with a big connection to her past. The second story flashes back to Kate's youth, and we see what drove her to become a superhero.

Batwoman's sexuality is a big part of the buzz surrounding her character, and since this is a blog about sexuality, that's what I'm going to be writing about here. But while the fact that her alter ego, Kate Kane, occasionally finds time to date women is not the central part of the comic book. Batwoman is a superhero crime fighter first. She's cut from the same cloth as Batman, but while the Dark Knight fights psychopaths and gangsters, Batwoman has her own niche battling a coven of witches and magicians that are part of a relgion of crime. The addition of magical creatures to the noir world of Gotham City is weird and creepy, but it works. The contrast in genres is driven home by the fact that Batwoman is an ex-Marine who, with intel help from her Marine colonel father, has a very nuts-and-bolts, military approach to battling magic.

With all of this going on, Kate Kane doesn't have much time to date. There seems to be a romance with a Gotham police detective simmering on the back burner, but not much has happened in that subplot so far. Where Kate's sexuality is really important is at a key moment in her origin. Like Bruce Wayne (Batman), Kate Kane lost family members to violence at a young age, but lacking a billionaire playboy's perogative for eccentricity, her first thought isn't to strike terror into criminals by dressing as a flying rodent -- instead, she follows in her father's footsteps and joins the Marine Corp. Kate becomes a model cadet, even becomes friends with Dan Choi, future leader of protests against Don't Ask Don't Tell. Choi's cameo is apt, because Kate soon finds herself accused of fraternizing with another woman. It's Kate's word against her accuser's -- all she has to do to keep the career she wants more than anything is lie. Her commanding officer invites her to do so, ready to look the other way. But she's a Marine, and Marines are nothing without honor, so she tells the truth in spite of the consequences.

For a major comic book company to introduce a prominent lesbian character to headline one of their longest running, most important series (the "DC" in "DC Comics" stands for Detective Comics) is cool enough. But for them to forego a bunch of scene of Kate making out with women and instead make the injustice of DADT part of Batwoman's origin story is pretty damn incredible for a company that needs to sell comics in Alabama and Utah, not just New York and California. For many years the plight of gay soldiers was almost invisible -- many people don't have gay friends, and most people don't have friends in the military, so the problem was more abstract than marriage equality. When you read this story you can feel the heartbreak of having your selfless desire to serve your country rejected because of bigotry. Batman's origin is a bit far-fetched, but you believe that someone like Batwoman, with her deep sense of honor and her desire to serve, would turn to vigilanteism as a last resort.

For those who read this trade paperback and like it, there are several uncollected Batwoman issues that continue the story, and you can find them in the back issue boxes in your local comic book store -- Detective Comics #871-873, and Batwoman #0, which lead into a new, ongoing Batwoman series that began last month as part of the company-wide relaunch. It promises to be one of the best series DC publishes, and if you have any inclination towards monthly comic books you should buy it!

Book Review: Secret Historian

Secret Historian
by Justin Spring
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010

Recently I've been doing some research about the history of alternative sexuality in the 20th century. If that sounds like a pretty wide-ranging subject, it is, but I have a project in mind that's still a twinkle in my eye and I'm sort of feeling my way towards it. Anyway, each time I'm in a bookstore I've been combing through their sexuality and LGBT sections looking for anything that's vaguely historical. At one recent trip to a Barnes & Noble, I saw the book Secret Historian and thought... who the hell is Sam Steward. So I bought The Gay Metropolis instead and didn't give it another thought.

Until a few weeks later, when I was once again looking for books online. In the meantime, I had read an essay by Steward in Leatherfolk, a book about San Francisco's gay leather scene which includes a history section. Steward's essay covered the 1940s, the earliest period in the history section. It describes how he met Alfred Kinsey and became an unofficial contributor to Kinsey's research. Steward was set up on a play date with a gay sadist so that Kinsey could film a movie of them, all in the name of science. It was an amazing true story, and when I ran across Secret Historian again in my online search I was thrilled to learn more. I didn't know what I was getting into.

Secret Historian is 414 pages long, and it's an honest 414 pages. There's no big print or wide margins here. It is a thick, exhaustive description of Steward's life. Occasionally it might be a little too detailed, but most of the time it was utterly absorbing. Steward led an amazing, compartmentalized life which he recording in meticulous detail, as if he knew it would be interesting to posterity. He grew up in a repressed Ohio Methodist, but was already experimenting with gay sex before he left high school, including a tryst with silent movie star Rudolph Valentino. Steward's literary aspirations took him to Paris, where he was befriended by Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, and became the lover of Thorton Wilder. Back in the States he taught English at Loyola College in Chicago, struggled with alcoholism rooted in his conflicted attitude about his sexuality, and kept meticulous records of his sex life, including a tryst with a young Rock Hudson in a department store elevator and a fetish for the sailors training at the Great Lakes naval station. These adventures, together with Steward's collecting of gay paraphernalia and his involvement with BDSM culture, attracted the interest of Alfred Kinsey, and Steward became an unofficial collaborator in Kinsey's groundbreaking study of human sexuality. Steward eventually became a tattoo artist, under the alias Phil Sparrow, at Navy Pier to have an excuse to interact with sailors and found it much more lucrative than teaching. In his middle years, he developed a close friendship many prominent gay men of his era, including Julien Green, George Platt Lynes and Glenway Wescott, but his attempt to get on Jean Genet's good side were never successful, and Steward's translations of his novels were unsuccessful. In the mid-'60s Steward relocated his tattoo shop to Oakland, California, where be became the unofficial tattoo artist of Sonny Barger and to Oakland Hell's Angels. He also began writing a beloved series of erotica novels, creating the literary alter ego Phil Andros, a young hustler on the make.

The only criticism I can make of this book is that it's a little bit too detailed. At times its tales of endless hookups gets a bit monotonous. But the book is well worth reading for the vivid description of the many worlds Steward traveled in his life -- the literary salons of 1930s Paris, the quiet desperation of a closeted academic, the seedy subculture of tattoos and motorcycle gangs, the middle aged writer of pulp erotica, and a lonely old age as a respected elder in San Francisco's gay liberation and the AIDS epidemic. It's an incredible life.

In the end, Sam Steward seems to become the prototypical gay man of his generation. Its a rather tragic life, all told. Steward accepts his homosexuality more than many -- he never marries or makes any pretense of heterosexuality -- but all the same he never manages to find enduring love, and seldom even achieves the fleeting kind. He seems to live his life with the assumption that this sort of relationship is unavailable to him, and that is the tragedy that many generations of gay men forced to live in the closet had to live. Nonetheless, there's hope in the fact that the tragedy didn't overwhelm Steward -- while lacking love, he still lived an extraordinary life, one that Justin Spring has set down in great detail in this book, and which we are all privileged to be able to read about, and remember.