Geeky Sex

Sexy Things Powerpoint

2012-01-28T07:41:00.002-05:00

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!

2012-01-21T14:25:00.001-05:00

Answer: NEVER.

Via Better Late Than Never

Five Fun Links #10

2011-12-25T12:14:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-19T23:32:00.001-05:00

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

2011-12-02T11:07:00.001-05:00

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

2011-11-30T20:08:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-30T19:32:00.001-05:00

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

2011-10-26T20:52:00.002-04:00

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

2011-10-23T11:00:00.000-04:00

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

2011-10-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

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.

Tim Gunn on Female Star Trek and Superhero Costumes

2011-10-20T13:23:00.001-04:00

In the first episode of their web series, Crazy Sexy Geeks, Tim Gunn, Jennifer Ewing, and Newsarama "Agent of STYLE" Alan Kistler, discuss the style and practicality of female costumes in Classic Star Trek and in comic books. (Geeky Sex doesn't get any geekier than this, friends!)

Sunday Comics: Premières Fois

2011-10-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

I'm spending the weekend at New York Comic Con and perhaps I'll discover something new to write about in one of these weekly comic book review, in the future. But today I'm brushing the dust off of a graphic novel that I discovered while on vacation in France a year and a half ago. I stopped by the wonderful comic book store Album, located in Paris at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Boulevard Saint-Germain and, out of curiosity, I checked in the basement for some of the tasteful, European comic book erotica I'm always hearing about. I found a few good examples, so this probably isn't going to be the only foreign comic I'm going to write about...

Premières Fois
written by Sibylline, with various illustrators
Delcourt, 2008

Premières Fois is French for "first times," and that's exactly what this book presents -- ten short comics, about five to ten pages each, following various female protagonists through their first time engaging in various different sexual experience. The experiences are first vaginal sex, first role playing fantasy, first drunken hook-up, first threesome, first trip to a sex club, first submission scene, first pegging, and first sex while watching porn.

The stand out story in the collection is a story about a sex doll. All of the other stories in the book are narrated by the woman in the experience -- this one is narrated by the doll herself. The result is hugely disturbing. In a comic book illustration there is no way to tell the difference between a woman and a realistic sex doll, so what we have here is a story narrated by a woman with a strangely blank expression. She arrives strapped into a crate, lives in a closet, is only taken out by her lover for his own pleasure, and is eventually forgotten when the man begins a relationship with a woman he seems to treat no better. The title of the story, "Nulle," completes the word -- it's most direct translation into English is "nothing" or "null," but it also has a connotation of worthlessness.

The other stories are quite a bit more fun. The best ones are enormously entertaining to read and pretty damn hot -- a well delivered spanking, sleazy bathroom sex between strangers that turn out of be a roll playing married couple, a first vibrator, a woman trying on her new strap-on before pegging her boyfriend for the first time. The more middle of the road ones treat their subjects about how you expect, verging on cliché, but they're charmingly told. Only two of the stories seemed a little unrealistic to me -- the couple visiting a sex club for the first time seemed a bit idealized, and the threesome scene was narrated by a "unicorn" (the mythical hot bi girl who responds to classified ads from couples looking for no-strings-attached threesomes). The second one seemed particularly like a missed opportunity, because there are so few good depictions of the laborious process of setting up a threesome.

The illustrations in this story are all black-and-white pen and ink drawings, but the similarity ends there. Some of the drawings are cute and cartoony, some are sexy. Some are contained within panels, some have more organic page layouts. The art in the story "X-Rated," illustrated by Dave McKean (yes, that's the guy who did the cover art for Sandman) draws heavily from cubism. "Soumission," the story about a submissive encounter, is drawn by Cyril Pedrosa in a rough style that is both ugly and beautiful in the same time, very appropriate for the subject matter. One thing that is consistent throughout the book is that the characters have realistic proportions for attractive young people, which is a welcome change from the tiny waists and torpedo breasts in a lot of erotic comics.

Finally, a note about the language... Unfortunately, Premières Fois isn't available in English as far as I can tell, and a long ago year of barely remembered high school French is not going to get you through this book. That being said, it isn't that difficult to understand, so if you have any French proficiency you should be able to follow it, even if you can't understand the occasional slang expression. If you're looking for the opportunity to practice your French, there are worse ways to do it!

Five Fun Links #7

2011-10-12T08:45:00.000-04:00

1) Check out this awesome Tumblr of vintage erotica images. (Barely NSFW.)

2) Just in time for Halloween, Examiner.com brings us the top ten porn spoofs of horror movies!

3) In the wake of 100 Year Starship symposium, blogger Thomas Roche speculates about sex in space. (Some NSFW ad banners on page.)

4) French left-wing daily Liberation profiles "le polyamour."

5) Former Sex Is Fun frontman Kidder Kaper hilariously describes his family's trip to a county fair. (Okay, so this doesn't have anything to do with sex, but it's pretty funny.)

Sunday Comics: Introduction & Optic Nerve #12

2011-10-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

First, a word of introduction. I've been trying to think of new ways of breathing life into this blog and it occurred to me that there are a lot of sexy comics out there -- and a lot of them are on my bookshelf. And since comics and Sundays go together, a new feature was born -- the almost weekly sexy comic book review!

I'm going to review a bunch of different comics, ranging from pornographic to artistic to pornographic to foreign. I suppose my review of Scalped #36 & 37, my post about Aunt May's love life, and my recent comments about superhero sex in the DC Comics relaunch also fall in this category, retroactively. I'm going to choose them based on what I'm interested in -- sex scenes will be less important than thoughtful sexual subject matter. Some comics you can expect to see reviewed soon are Alan Moore's Lost Girls and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.

But for my first review I'm going to do something more recent: a short, poignant story that came out just a few weeks ago, and that took me by surprise -- and a very pleasant surprise it was, too. Sometimes sexy comics, like love, find you when you're least expecting it.

Optic Nerve #12
written and illustrated by Adrian Tomine
Drawn & Quarterly, 2011

This issue contains two stories and it's the second one, "Amber Sweet," that is getting it a review here. The story is a simple one. A young college student notices linger glances, secretive whispers and lewd comments when she walks by, and is surprised to learn that she looks just like an Internet porn star named Amber Sweet. Little by little, her life is disrupted by the coincidence -- she drops out of school, moves, and breaks up with boyfriends, all because of Amber. Then, one day, she's sitting in a café and Amber walks in. The story is about an afternoon that they spend hanging out.

Tomine is an enormously subtle writer and artist who puts a world of meaning into every word and every line. His stories are simple and beautiful and sad. Like all of Tomine's work, this vignette has a melancholy feel to it, and an ending that's less like the ending of a story and more like an ending in real life -- that is to say, a partial resolution that doesn't necessarily make it all worth while. Amber is a good person who destroys the protagonist's life through no fault of her own. The protagonist seems to know, in her anger, that Amber isn't to blame. She never expresses who is to blame. A society that worships and shames sexually powerful women in the same breath?

That seems to be what Tomine is saying, but he lets us arrive at that idea ourselves. To Tomine, this is a story. It is not a tract, and he doesn't have an agenda. Reading it, I felt connected and disconnected from it all at once, which is how I think Tomine's characters feel about the world they inhabit as well. The ability to transmit a feeling of ennui to his readers through his extremely poignant but oddly empty writing, and his extremely well drafted but oddly sterile illustrations, is probably the reason Tomine enjoys such a large following.

SlutWalk NYC

2011-10-06T12:41:00.000-04:00

This weekend I participated in SlutWalk NYC, my hometown's version of the feminist protest that has been sweeping North America and the world. It began, as I understand, in Toronto earlier this year when an ignorant cop made the latest in a long line of comments about a rape victim's provocative clothing. Feminists marched in Toronto in their slinkiest garments to drive home the very obvious fact that just because a woman is perceived to be a slut doesn't justify rape.

I don't own a red dress, so I went in boy-slut clothes -- jeans and a leather vest, like the cover of a gay pulp erotica novel. (I'm also considering this as a Halloween costume, we'll see...) We marched from Union Square, down Broadway, crosstown on St. Mark's Place, down Second Avenue, then took 3rd Street back to Lafayette and returned to Union Square for a rally -- which was sadly rained out, though only after some delightful performances by girl punk bands and at least one very powerful poetry reading.

There's been a lot of debate about whether SlutWalk is a legitimately empowering feminist protest, or whether it perpetuates a sexualized image of women that our culture would be better off without. I think SlutWalk is a great event and I'd like to see it continue for a long time. First of all, it's one of the few feminist protests out there that actually stands in solidarity with sexual women. I understand why feminism wants to move away from sexy images of women that encourages objectification, but when feminists shun women who dress in provocative ways and embrace their sexual power they are essentially saying that those women don't deserve respect, even from other women, which plays into the idea that they are the "kind of girl" who it's all right to rape. Secondly, the image of SlutWalk is a fantastic one -- angry, proud women taking a stand against rape in skimpy outfits is a fabulous contrast. The casual male passerby will definitely get an eyefull, but the image he sees will be sexy, empowered women who are angry about sexual violence and insisting on respect. Events like this steal sexy imagery from the realm of male fantasy and connect it to real women. It has often been said that rape prevention education needs to stop focusing on teaching women how not to get raped and start focusing on teaching men not to rape women. SlutWalk successfully does that, and I hope it will continue for years to come.

Pendard: Now On Facebook

2011-09-30T10:00:00.000-04:00

I have just started a Facebook profile, Le Pendard. Please be my friend!

And for the full social networking experience, follow Pendard on Twitter too!

Thoughts on Kidder Kaper Leaving Sex Is Fun

2011-09-30T01:06:00.000-04:00

A few years ago I got really into podcasts about sex. There was a period of time when, on a weekly basis, I was listening to Savage Lovecast, Polyamory Weekly, Kinsey Confidential, Ropecast, Mistress Matisse and Open Source Sex on nearly a regular basis, along with one of my favorite podcasts, Sex Is Fun. Then I decided I could better spend my subway commutes reading and I backed off a little, but I still tune in on a semi-regular basis.

Early week I downloaded a recent episode of Sex Is Fun where they interview Susie Bright -- you should never miss a word out of Susie's mouth, if you can help it -- and I got an unpleasant surprise: at the beginning of the interview, one of the show's four hosts, Kidder Kaper, announced that it was going to be his last interview. Then on Tuesday, Kidder explained his reasons for leaving on his farewell episode.

If you haven't listened to Sex Is Fun before, you really should. It's a fun and informative podcast. It isn't as polished a production as some podcasts. It often feels like a morning talk radio show, with all the spontaneity that comes with it. There are four hosts: Laura Rad, a sex educator and recent mom who prefers not to put too much of her personal life on the show; Coochie, a experimental, kinky girl who supplies some dry humor; Gay Rick, who provides a gay perspective and also works as a sex educator in the fight against HIV; and then there's Kidder. It's difficult to explain exactly what Kidder's role on the show is, but he's definitely the leader. His on-air personality is a well informed frat boy, rude but fun, for whom the whole subject is one big party, and who's always ready to stick a new sex toy in his butt for the sake of his loyal listeners. And if the line of duty takes him to a totally hot swingers resort on the Gulf of Mexico, it's not too much of a price to pay. In recent years Kidder written sexy party games for Greatsexgames.com (I've had a couple of really fun parties with his Super Thoughts & Actions), wrote a Sex Is Fun comic book sex guide, and he's prone to daydreaming on the show about writing sex ed guides for Christian teens, or starting a sex-positive cable network. It seemed like, if any one could do it, it would be Kidder with his endless supply of enthusiasm.

Considering I'm not an all-that-regular listener anymore, I found myself getting really sad listening to him talk about how and why that endless enthusiasm has run out. I have difficulty explaining exactly why I feel that way. I can't fault him for wanting a change. My enthusiasm for writing this blog ebbs and flows and it's not a tenth of the work Sex Is Fun must be. And I certainly don't expect the guy to live up to an online persona he has cultivated. Besides, if I ever miss the sound of his voice I won't have to go far. With 295 episodes in the archive, I could listen for years before I ran out.

All the same, it's sad to see someone so unique move on. The other hosts of Sex Is Fun are great and I'm sure the show will continue to be good, but there was nobody quite like Kidder on sex podcasting and personally I'm going to miss listening to him. When I hear him talking about how the show has accomplished everything that he wanted for it and it seems like the right moment to leave, I wonder if he knows just how good he still is. His enthusiasm (which he claims has been feigned lately, but you'd never know it) is infectious. He sounds like a big kid, the kind who's impossible to be mad at even when he says something that offends you, whose eagerness to talk can overpower any inhibition. He spends a lot of his final episode praising his colleagues -- and rightly so -- but I wonder if he understands that it's his zeal that opens the door and lets Laura, Coochie and Rick's message in.

Kidder's not going away. He's still prolific on Twitter and Facebook, he and his wife Jade are writing a new blog, Kaper Life, and he promises new projects on the horizon in the farewell episode. (I'm still hoping for to see that cable network some day.) But when he says he's coming at the world from an angrier place these days, when he says he's tired of answering the same questions from people who are ignorant about sex, and when talks about confronting religion like he's fighting a war, I hope he hasn't lost the fun. I wish Kidder luck on all of his future projects. I just hope he doesn't forget to Play With It.

Sex in the DC Universe Reboot

2011-09-29T12:00:00.001-04:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about the portrayal of women in the DC Universe reboot. The controversy is centering around Catwoman, who sleeps with Batman in Catwoman #1, and Starfire, who hooks up with both of her male teammates in Red Hood and the Outlaws #1.

The objection, of course, is that these characters are not behaving like real sexually empowered women, but like male fantasies of women. Laura Hudson makes this argument very eloquently in her post at Comics Alliance. She hilariously points out (with illustrations) that we are shown two pages of Catwoman's breasts before we ever see her face, and that Starfire constantly strikes swimsuit model poses, apparently for nobody. In an article for her That's My Cape column at Newsarama, Jill Pantozzi goes farther, saying that DC's relaunch is supposed to attract new fans, but instead of trying to expand their audience to women and younger readers DC is apparently making a play for the audience they already have -- men, ages 18-35.

Here's my two cents: I think that Catwoman and Red Hood are not sexist comic books, per se -- I think they're just BAD comic books. DC has 52 new ongoing series -- some of them are good and some of them suck. These two comics are just not worth reading. Their lousy characterization of women has less to do with the fact the the writers are sexist and more to do with the fact that they're awful writers and realistic characterization is simply beyond them. Jill Pantozzi is right that these comics are unlikely to attract new young or female readers. But more to the point, they're not likely to attract any new readers at all. Because they're bad. And because readers who are not familiar with comics start with Batman and Superman, not Red Hood and the Outlaws.

It's unfortunate that these two titles have created bad publicity for the DC's new initiative, because there are plenty of good comics in the relaunch and a lot of them have very positive portrayals of female heroes. The relaunch of Wonder Woman is the only take on that character that has interested me since the original Golden Age version, which was empowering and delightfully naughty and subversive at the same time. Meanwhile, DC is starting a Batwoman series about a former US Marine who was kicked out of the Corp because she refused to dishonor herself by lying about being a lesbian. There has been some controversy about the new Batgirl series but it has all centered around the publisher's decision to heal the title character from a physical disability -- no one denies that she's a strong and realistic female character, before or after her miraculous recovery. And personally, I laughed outloud at the scene in Demon Knights that reveals that Madame Xanadu (a long-running hero in DC's lesser known magical world) is cuckolding her boyfriend Jason Blood with his alter-ego, Etrigan the Demon, because Jason is just too vanilla for her.

The first issues of the new DC titles have plenty to offer, whether you're looking for good storytelling, realistic portrayals of women, or romance and sex that won't insult your intelligence. Unfortunately, there's also Catwoman and Red Hood. You can't win 'em all.

Listen to Me and Teresa on Poly Weekly!

2011-09-27T07:44:00.002-04:00

Well, that was fast! Cunning Minx interviewed Teresa and me about geeks and kink on Monday night, and our episode of Poly Weekly is already up. Teresa has listened to it and says it's good -- hooray! I'm going to fight hard against my natural aversion to listening to my own voice recorded, and go listen to it soon.

You can download the show through iTunes or find it here.

Five Fun Links #6

2011-09-24T08:50:00.003-04:00

1) Charming and random naughtiness from the 1950s.

2) Need a vibrator? Maggie Gyllenhaal will loan you one!

3) Abstinence explained for girls and boys!

4) Scarletjohannsoning is becoming a craze after a recent photo leak. (Both NSFW.)

5) If you're in New York, don't miss SlutWalk on Saturday, October 1!

Interview Report

2011-09-24T08:28:00.002-04:00

The interview with Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly went pretty good. Teresa and I talked to Minx about geeks and kink, in the wake of Teresa's article on the subject, in which I was quoted. There were some technical difficulties with Skype but I think it mostly went well.

I'm dreading listening to it 'cause I hate the sound of my own voice and I think I may have droned on a little too long about Wonder Woman. But I'll definitely post a link once the show comes out. Not that you should need a link -- Poly Weekly is awesome and you should listen to it every week!

Geeks and Kink on Chinashop Mag

2011-09-19T21:17:00.002-04:00

Stop by Chinashop Mag for a great article on the links between geeks and kink.

I'm quoted in the article at the end. The author, Teresa, contacted me for a comment just a few hours before the deadline so I dashed off a rambling, three-paragraph-long reply that wasn't very well organized, thinking she would just find the best sentence or phrase. Instead, she used what I wrote almost in its entirety, which made me wish I had taken a little more time on it. The amount that can be said on the subject of kink and geeks is enormous.

Fortunately, I'm going to have a chance to expand on my comments a little bit. Teresa is being interviewed by one of her other sources, Cunning Minx, for the Polyamory Weekly podcast, and I'm going along for the ride. Should be fun!

Five Fun Links #5

2011-09-07T06:46:00.001-04:00

1) Men like to cuddle more than woman. I always kind of suspected...

2) NYC has a topless outdoor pulp fiction appreciation club? Books and boobs, that's the most awesome idea ever!

3) Hurricane Irene, as covered by drag queen blogger Hedda Lettuce.

4) Sex blogger Chelsea Summers comes out under her real name.

5) When asked if they'd rather give up sex or cell phones, 33 percent of people had really screwed up priorities!

Missing: Geeky Sex Blogger!

2011-08-29T23:46:00.005-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted here but I don't want you to think I have deserted my post. It's just that stuff came up and my energy has been going in some other directions. Let's face it, I'm not the most dedicated blogger. A lot of people look at blogging like it's their job, something they need to do both when they feel like it and when they don't. Not me. I'm not paid to write here, I do it because I enjoy it, so every once in awhile there's going to be a lull. Maybe good bloggers don't desert their loyal readers just because they don't feel like writing for awhile. Maybe good bloggers care about things like building an audience. Apparently I don't. But I do care enough to say: thank you for being patient, and thank you for checking back (or, more likely, subscribing to me on Google Reader). I appreciate it.

So, what's been happening to me? Well, first of all, I've found myself single for the first time in what seems like a brazilian years. My decision to break up with my girlfriend Annabelle last winter was followed quickly by my other girlfriend Esmé's decision to break up with me. Goodbye, poly network -- oh well. There followed a little bit of moping, a period of intermittent dating, followed by a summer of no dating at all. I did a lot of fun outdoors activities to take its place and consequently I'm in better shape than I have been in ages, but still, I'm starting to miss going on dates, meeting new people, etc., so I'm making an effort to get moving in that direction again.

Secondly, I've been funneling my creative energy into a fiction project that I could describe as Geeky Sex: The Novel. It's a story about kink and nonmonogamy and erotica in the 1950s and 1960s, and I'm very excited about it. In the process of researching it I've read a lot of books that really deserve a review on this blog -- Secret Historian, Forbidden Apple, Pulp Friction, Leatherfolk, and a small collection of vintage erotica novels I've bought from eBay. All of these books deserve a book review on this blog, without question. I even started writing a few posts, but I think I'm just not in commentary mode at the moment. Besides, who wants to read a blog full of book reviews about history where there used to be fun links and musings on the Mile High Club?

Well, suffice it to say, my interest in geeky sex hasn't gone away. It's just shifted gears and hasn't fit very well into the context of this blog recently. That said, I would like to move back in this direction a little bit. So, thanks again for being patient. Perhaps I'll have something a bit more substantial to share in the near future and then it will be back to business as usual.

It's Okay to Be Takei

2011-05-20T23:56:00.000-04:00

Five Fun Links #4

2011-05-15T12:38:00.001-04:00

1. An blog on the delightful sexual subtext of old Wonder woman comics.

2. Surprise, surprise! The sex trafficking scare is based on sham science.

3. Sexy Fandom is nerdy and hot.

4. The Sexademic explains porn with science.

5. A number of fantastic videos on YouTube of Susie Bright and Tristan Taormino on a panel at the Sex Bloggers Convention. (I'll embed one, you can find the rest at Susie Bright's blog (start from the bottom).

It Gets Better Ad for Google Chrome

2011-05-04T07:45:00.002-04:00

New from Google, the multi-billion dollar corporation that knows all of your personal information and has insinuated itself into everything you do -- and yet manages to seem like it has a giant heart of gold. Take, for example, this new ad for Google Chrome which celebrates the It Gets Better Project as an example of what someone can do to change the world with free Google software. Just to remind you that Big Brother is watching you -- in a benevolent way! (Seriously, all joking aside, way to go, Google!)

Review: Big Sex, Little Death

2011-04-28T21:51:00.001-04:00

Big Sex, Little Death
by Susie Bright
Seal Press, 2011

Some people are just extraordinary. There's no other way to say it. Some people, for some reason, have the courage to live big adventurous lives. I've met a few of them and I'm convinced it isn't something they do on purpose. They've never made a conscious decision to be that way and frequently they don't even realize they are that way. If you ask them they'll say that it's chance that has always led them to the center of things. They don't see that they have some sort of internal compass that points them towards adventure and a personal gravity that draws others into their orbit. Susie Bright is one of those people (though I'm ninety-nine percent sure she's one of the ones who would deny it).

Her new book, Big Sex, Little Death, is a memoir of the first half of her life. It begins with her childhood and ends shortly after the birth of her daughter in the early 1990s. In a way, it's a shame it doesn't go further, but then Susie has written a great deal about the other parts of her life in other books and her excellent blog. Those were the days when she was "Susie Sexpert" -- a nickname she now dislikes -- the one who kept us apprised of the Sexual State of the Union, told the Wachowski Brothers and two straight girls how to finger fuck, and still makes sure we had top quality stories to read while we masturbate. That was the Susie Bright I was familiar with. For the purpose of this review, let's call that one Susie Version Four. Even though I read her blog quasi-religiously I didn't know how much of the picture I was missing until Big Sex, Little Death came along.

This book deals almost entirely with Susies One through Three. Susie One was a bookish young girl whose college professor parents met living in India. She was raised in California. After her parents divorced her mom took her to live in Edmonton, Alberta. Unfortunately, her mother's bitterness about the glass ceiling that kept women from getting very far in the world of academia translated to some borderline abusive, borderline suicidal behavior, so Susie learned to walk on egg shells. After Susie was injured in one of her mother's quasi-suicide attempts -- one of the most shocking moments in the book, to which I can't do justice in this summary -- her mother wisely sent her back to California to live with her father. The sheltered girl transfers to a high school in Los Angeles, and within a year has blossomed into Susie Two, who joins a student communist group called the Red Tide and starts experimenting with casual sex. Eventually she drops out of high school to become a Socialist labor organizer in Detroit and Louisville, where she is threatened with guns, witnesses a stabbing and has her apartment vandalized by the KKK. But a Party schism (what a cliché!) sends her packing. In San Francisco, she becomes Susie Three, a lesbian, a vibrator expert in a feminist sex toy store, and front line infrantrywoman in a feminist culture war. As a contributor and editor of On Our Backs, the first lesbian porn magazine, she's accused of helping the patriarchy enslave women by the sex-negative, second-generation feminist movement.

I bought this book because I was interested in Susie's life as a sex-positive celebrity. Interestingly enough, that's the part I found to be the least spellbinding. I was most enraptured by the stories about her childhood and about her political awakening. Those were the moments when I felt like, after all these years of learning about what Susie does, I was finally learning who she is. Throughout the book, Susie comes off as strong, intelligent, adventurous and endearingly vulnerable. She seems to always be in just a little over her head -- so reliably over her head, in fact, that you can only conclude that that's where she wants to be.

There is one thing in this book that I did find a little bit shocking. No, it wasn't the fact that, at sixteen, Susie was running around having casual sex with all of the International Socialists. Susie's mostly regret-free sexual adventures were fun to read, and (dare I admit it?) pretty hot. No, the thing that shocked me was none of the intelligent, serious thirty-year-old Socialist men she meets seems to have any problem having sex with someone so young. Maybe I'm being extremely naïve, but this seemed like a huge generational difference. I remember being hit on by a seventeen-year-old one time and being quite frankly frozen with inhibition -- and I was only twenty-three at the time! I feel like I grew up in a generation where it's generally held that high schoolers should fuck high schoolers, college students should fuck college students, and after that, anything goes. At almost thirty, I'd feel wrong hitting on a college girl. It's hard to believe things were so different just thirty years ago.

That's my only complaint. It's not really about the book at all, and it's probably just my latent sex-negativity talking. Besides that recurring "yuck" moment, I can recommend this book with my whole heart. Get a copy. If you know any feminists, get them a copy too. (Mother's Day is coming up!)

Good Friday

2011-04-22T11:41:00.000-04:00

Damn! THAT'S some kinky shit!

Happy Earth Day!

2011-04-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Wednesday...

2011-04-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

...here's a funny video!

How To Get A Guy To Notice You While You're Having Sex With Him

From The Onion, funny as always.

Via Slog

Five Fun Links #3

2011-04-10T22:53:00.001-04:00

1) Rachel Kramer Bussel interviews Susie Bright about her new memoir.

2) This blog's name says it all: Bangable Dudes in History.

3) If you like Oglaf, you'll love Ménage à Trois and BDSM Bad Advice. (Thanks to SoftAndThorny for the recommendation!)

4) SlutWalk Toronto!

5) Geek and feminist blogger Teresa Jusino (a friend of mine) has a new Tumblr just for her feminist opinions!

Where Did That Come From?

2011-04-02T01:05:00.002-04:00

I went to see Susie Bright at Bluestockings on Wednesday and I think I volunteered, in the regular course of conversation, to be her unpaid, part-time, telecommuting intern. You know, like you do in regular conversation. I'm a little confused how that happened but it sounds like an absolutely brilliant way to spend my free time! Hope something comes of it!

Review: It Gets Better, by Dan Savage and Terry Miller

2011-03-31T22:35:00.004-04:00

It Gets Better
by Dan Savage and Terry Miller, ed.
Dutton, 2011

Last Tuesday, March 22, was the release date of the It Gets Better Project book and I was at the TriBeCa Barnes & Noble to see Dan Savage, Terry Miller and a few other contributors read from it. The project is probably the greatest thing Dan Savage has ever done. That's saying a lot, but I think it's the truth. It isn't the funniest, and wittiest or the most complicated but I think that Dan has gone from saving people's sex lives to saving their lives, period.

After the reading, I stood in line to get two copies of the book signed. When I got to the front of the line I told Terry and Dan that one copy was just for me, but the other copy was for a high school student I met a few years ago. I spent a year as an assistant ESL teacher in a high school and, during a tutoring session, my best student came out to me. At the time he was just out to his parents. No one in the school knew. I'm still not sure why he picked me to be the person he told. I may have, at one point, displayed a certain openness towards homosexuality and polyamory in a general way. He also may have seen me reading a novel by Jean Genet and gleaned that I was an ally from that. But I think the reason he told me is that I had no reason to care whether he was gay, one way or another. I was the low-risk option -- not really his peer, nor really his teacher (as an assistant teacher, I wasn't even empowered to give grades). For awhile, I was the only person he had to talk to about gay issues. We stayed in touch after I moved on. He still isn't completely out to his friends (and I worry about him sometimes), but some sort of progress is being made -- last summer he came to visit me in New York and we had a drink in the Stonewall Inn. After I finished telling Terry and Dan the story, Dan shook my hand and thanked me for being there for a gay kid at such an important moment. I was really proud at that moment (Dan Savage shook my hand!) but I also felt like I didn't deserve to be proud. I didn't really do that much. It isn't that hard to be there for someone when they need you.

The It Gets Better Project is all about being there for gay kids who have nothing else. The book (which is mostly transcripts of the It Gets Better videos that have been popping up on YouTube since last summer) aims to do that. It contains 103 versions of what is essentially the same story: The writer had a tough time as a kid in high school. They were harassed mercilessly, maybe by their own parents, maybe even to the point of considering suicide. But once they got out of high school they were able to find a community of people who accepted them and build a life for themselves better than anything they'd ever dreamed of. Some of the letter writers are famous (Barack Obama, Gene Robinson, Ellen, Michael Cunningham, Alison Bechdel, David Sedaris, Perez Hilton), some are just ordinary lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people. There's an essay in Spanish, and one in Arabic. There are cartoons. The evidence being offered is anecdotal but as the same story is repeated over and over again it takes on a certain statistical quality. When every story ends the same way, it becomes easier to believe that yours will too.

My only criticism of the book (and it hardly qualifies) is that, in text form, many of the messages aren't quite as powerful as they are on video. But whatever is lost by the individual messages is more than made up for by having so many of them packaged together. And it is undeniable that this message needs to be out there in as many different forms as possible, taking advantage of many different media. This book can go places the Internet videos can't, and vice versa. If the recent gay teen suicides have taught us anything it is that this message needs to be out there in as many forms as possible.

I'll Buy Some...

2011-03-25T07:26:00.002-04:00

You know those awful Axe body spray ads where the guy is mobbed by cheerleaders (or whatever) that can't control themselves? Those ads suck. They should have been like this.

Via Tiny Nibbles

"I Have Sex" Videos

2011-03-24T07:59:00.004-04:00

I've been seeing a series of these videos popping up around the Internet supporting Planned Parenthood. A number of different universities are making their own. They're great videos and they put faces with the victims of the cuts Republicans plan to make Planned Parenthood.

I just want to say that it is very important (duh) to protect Planned Parenthood from Republican attack -- to protect Republican interests as much as our own. As usual, the GOP isn't thinking, it's just reacting. I know a key part of their base is against abortion, but Planned Parenthood is not allowed to use the $75 million it receives from the government on abortion because it's already illegal to use federal money to fund abortion. Instead, it uses that money to provide women and men with sex ed information and birth control, which studies have shown helps prevent abortion.

Now, I believe in a woman's right to choose. I think it's disgusting that we live in a world where women in South Dakota who want to get an abortion are now required by law to go see conservative Christian groups who will try to talk them out of it -- with no exception made for rape victims. But I think it's undeniable that abortion is a controversial procedure that falls in an ethical gray area. I don't think I'm the only pro-choice person who says the less abortions the better. Well, the best way to get less abortions is to give more federal money to Planned Parenthood -- money they're not allowed to spend on abortions and will have to spend providing birth control and sex ed services.

My message to Republicans would be, you can oppose AT MOST one of the following things: (1) abortion; (2) birth control; (3) single mothers. And if you're going to oppose any of them, you had better start supporting the hell out of the other two.

Five Fun Links #2

2011-03-20T08:27:00.001-04:00

1. A Lutheran minister tries to codify the ethics of Dan Savage and puts his finger on a few places where the sex columnists ethics fall a little short.

2. Worst threesome EVER in season 2, episode 3 of Awkward Embraces.

3. It's hard to give kids good sex ed without getting shot down as porn...

4. A dirty Wii game (sort of).

5. My new favorite NSFW blog, at its new digs on Tumblr.

BONUS LINK! This fan fic crossover between Oglaf and the Old Spice Guy was suggested by ladyofthelog on last Sunday's links post. (On a personal note: I DON'T UNDERSTAND FAN FIC!!!)

The Stacks - The Other Side of Desire

2011-03-19T15:55:00.001-04:00

The Other Side of Desire
by Daniel Bergner
Ecco, 2009

This book presents four true profiles of people who have sexual desires that are considered unusual. The first is Jacob, who is a Midwestern businessman with a severe foot fetish. He can’t derive sexual pleasure from anything besides a woman’s feet but he is ashamed of his fetish, can’t conceive of admitting it to his wife, and has fallen into the hands of a quack psychiatrist who has treated him with chemical castration. This hasn’t knocked out the fetish however, and he occasionally considers suicide for relief. The second profile is of the Baroness, a designer who creates latex clothing in her East Village boutique, staffed entirely by her submissives. The Baroness is a sadist who is in a vanilla and sexually monogamous marriage but does extreme BDSM play with others on the side and is a fixture in the NYC kink community. She is very well adjusted in her alternative lifestyle and sees her sadism as a service she provides to help masochists discover themselves. The third profile is of Roy, a man with apparently normal sexual appetites who suddenly discovered an attraction to young girls and was arrested for making a pass at his step-daughter’s friend. This chapter goes into recent research into the causes of pedophilia and points out that a great many men have a desire for the young but know better than to act on it. The fourth profile is of Laura and Ron Parisi. She becomes a double amputee after being hit by a car. He is an advertising photographer who has both an emotional and physical attraction to disabled women and is making a photo series of them based partly on the work of surrealist artist Hans Bellmer. The two meet during this project and end up getting married.

One criticism I've heard of this book from members of sexual minorities is that it's written for vanilla people who want to satisfy their curiosity. This is true, as far as it goes, but I don't think it's a strike against the book. Berger treats his subjects with compassion and tries valiantly to help outsiders understand their unusual sexual tastes. He never sensationalizes (although to book cover does with the subtitle, "four journeys into the far realms of lust and longing"). We never get the impression that he's the emcee at a freak show. His sympathy for Jacob, the foot fetishist, is clear, as is his hostility to the psychiatrist who is making Jacob's life so miserable by feeding his shame. The Baroness also comes off well, and I think any reader that didn't come to the book hostile to BDSM will respect her for her ability to create a community around herself (not to mention to maintain her marriage to a vanilla man). And Berger is at his best during the portion of the book about Ron, the amputee fetishist. As I read Berger's poetic descriptions of Bellmer's strange artwork and Ron's photography, I actually felt my perceptions changing and started to see a strange beauty in something I might have normally considered unsightly.

The third section, about Roy, the pedophile, is the most disturbing part of the book, and it's where I have the most trouble affixing my stamp of approval. Pedophilia is such a taboo and the act of abusing children or teens is such a disgusting one that it is difficult to look at pedophiles as tortured, pitiable men. Berger's writing is strong enough that it makes the reader feel this way, on occasion. It's an extremely uncomfortable feeling to have. It's difficult not to feel that even a hint of pity for a pedophile, even one who suffers silently and never abuses a child, makes us complicit in their evil behavior. Berger's ability to make us feel something for them to a testament to his writing. However, unlike the new perspective he offered me in the amputee section, I'm not sure I want to thank him for the new insight in this case. This is one area where I would sort of prefer to keep my mind closed and impermeable.

I've heard kinky folk criticize this book because they're being lumped in with pedophiles and I would wager that foot and amputee fetishists feel the way (I'm not acquainted with any). I sympathize with that. To compare their consensual and harmless behavior with the sexual exploitation of children is to conflate transgressive behavior with something that is unethical and wrong. And yet Berger may have a point. All through pedophile section he is trying to tell us that pedophiles aren't that unusual, and that the main difference between normal men and men like Roy, who attempt to have sex with young girls, isn't so much the lack of attraction to a girl below the age of consent as the willingness to act on these feelings. After all, hasn't Roy been able to sustain regular, vanilla, heterosexual relationships? Didn't his aberrant behavior surface only after years of apparently normal sexuality? Even he was unaware that he had any particular inclination towards the young. Berger seems to be leading us towards the conclusion that Roy, out of all of the book's subjects, is the most normal.

Whether or not you enjoy this book is going to depend on your reaction to the pedophilia section. Do you enjoy being challenged with these sort of ideas? Are you okay with being made extremely uncomfortable by some of the conclusions they lead you to? Do you want to reexamine your beliefs on this subject? If the answer is yes, there's no question that you'll love this book. If not, steer clear of the third section and you'll be on safe -- and less challenging -- territory. The book will be pleasant and won't create any strong reaction. For my part, as uncomfortable as it was I was glad I read it. Frequently the ideas that are the least comfortable are the ones most worth thinking about.

Five Fun Links

2011-03-13T22:38:00.000-04:00

1. Violet Blue gave a talk at SXSW called "Sexual Survival for Geeks." Listen to the podcast of the talk here, read Violet's account on her blog, and read MSNBC's coverage (!) here.

2. Oglaf: A hilarious, dirty, online comic. NSFW!

3. A mom writes about raising an effeminate son.

4. Everybody's doin' it in da butt!

5. An ode to the hickory switch.

The Slow Erosion of the Obscenity Laws

2011-03-12T20:38:00.004-05:00

Recently I've started doing some research about literary obscenity trials surrounding for the project I've hinted at in previous posts. Actually I spent the day Saturday at the New York Public Library going through newspapers on microfilm as well as a few out of print books. It turned out to be a mostly fruitless day and it left me in an unaccountably foul mood. Towards the end I really began to understand what the problem was -- I think the fight against America's obscenity laws is far from the finest hour of lovers of free speech and open sexuality.

The history of obscenity trials is a slow march towards permissiveness, emphasis on the word slow. Obscenity in the United States was defined by the R. v. Hicklin (a British legal precedent that was applied in the US) and the infamous Comstock Laws of 1873 as any piece of literature that, in whole or in part, could cause lascivious thoughts in its readers. Anthony Comstock's definition of obscenity was comprehensive: it included any writing at all about sex, sex education, abortion or birth control methods and sex toys. He removed all such information from libraries and he used his vast power as New York's Postal Inspector to make sure no such information could be circulated through the mail. Eventually, this Victorian purity was challenged by people such as birth control educator Margaret Sanger, and eventually was dealt a major blow in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses which lifted the ban on Joyce's masterpiece and set a precedent that a literary work couldn't be declared obscene based on certain passages and needed to be considered on the whole. This kicked off a number of clarifying obscenity trials (Roth v. United States and others involving Lady Chatterly's Lover, Tropic of Cancer and Howl, to name a few) and culminating in the Supreme Court lifting the ban on John Cleland's 1750 erotic novel Fanny Hill in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, in the process declaring that only books "utterly without redeeming social importance" could be declared obscene. In 1973 Miller v. Texas established the current standards, which made for a shifting threshold of obscenity based on community standards.

So what problem could I possibly have with this admittedly slow trend in the right direction. Ultimately, all of these arguments are about what is obscene and what isn't, and it's a bit sickening to watch one book defending its freedom of expression by drawing a distinction between themselves and books that are really obscene. The argument completely buys into the idea that censorship of sexually explicit material is all right and throws many other people who's freedom of expression has been curtailed under the bus. And, yes, I know that laws change gradually and a lot of the practice of law is about making the argument that is practical rather than the argument that is ethical or right. That, more than anything, is probably what contributes to my feeling that the law is a dirty, shameful business all around.

I understand why things had to unfold the way they did. If lawyers for Ulysses had chosen not to argue that Ulysses should be decriminalized because it had artistic merit, and had instead argued that all sexual content should be protected by freedom of speech (including gay, sadomasochistic erotic novels, for example) a 1933 judge would have laughed them out of the courtroom and the Comstock Laws would still be in effect. I'm not saying that anyone should have done anything differently. I'm just saying that such a calculating and cowardly strategy doesn't deserve to be celebrated quite so much. We eventually got where we needed to go but a lot of innocent writers, artists, publishers and merchants had to go to jail in the meantime.

Please Master, by Allen Ginsberg

2011-03-04T21:51:00.000-05:00

I was just thumbing at random through my copy of the Complete Poems of Allen Ginsberg, and I happened across a poem called "Please Master." With that title, I had to read it. And let me just say, as a straight guy who isn't usually that into gay erotica -- that poem is FUCKING HOT!

Here's how it starts:

Please master can I touch your cheek
please master can I kneel at your feet
please master can I loosen your blue pants
please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly
please master can I gently take down your shorts
please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes
please master can I take off your clothes below your chair
please master can I kiss your ankles and soul
please master can I touch lips to your muscle hairless thigh
please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach
please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass (...)

Read the whole thing, if you dare...

Nerds in BDSM

2011-03-02T08:29:00.000-05:00

Since it is practically the definition of Geeky Sex, here's a link to Mistress Matisse's article in The Stranger about why the BDSM community is ruled by nerds.

Why are nerds so omnipresent in the BDSM scene? Because being a nerd—especially if one participates in nerd culture around things like comic books, science fiction/fantasy, RPGing, etc.—is excellent training for becoming an active member of the BDSM community. The young nerd, shunned by the elite, perforce becomes accustomed to hanging around other nerds and social outcasts of all types. Nerds thus develop a high tolerance for socially nonconforming people and come to feel that such individuals are, by definition, nicer and more interesting than the Cool Kids. They embrace being weird, in other words.

Plenty of non-nerds like BDSM—in private. But they're unwilling to make the cultural leap into a stigmatized social group. I've seen non-nerds who I knew were as kinky as Caligula walk into a BDSM party, look around, think "Oh no, these people are way too weird," and leave. But when the grown-up nerd goes to his first BDSM social gathering, what does he see? People wearing unusual costumes, calling themselves made-up names and titles, having conversations rife with obscure jargon. Why, it's just like a Star Trek convention! So the nerd takes it in stride.

Anyone who has ever spent any time around the BDSM community will recognize that what Matisse is saying is true -- I've been to munches where there's more talk about video games than kink. But interestingly I find myself agreeing with the first paragraph quoted here, but disagreeing with the second one.

It takes a strong degree of exhibitionism to do a scene in a BDSM party and I think that exhibitionism can exist -- or not -- within the nerd group or within the Cool Kid group. Let me piggy back on Matisse's Star Trek convention comparison. I'm a Trekkie and I'm interested in kink, but I feel out of place at both Star Trek conventions and BDSM parties. This isn't because I don't like nerds (ask my friends, if you can tear them away from Buffy) but because I don't feel a lot of inclination to do either activity in a large group of people. I'd rather confine my Star Trek watching to a small group of friends, and I'd rather explore kink with a small group of lovers. If I do go to some kind of nerdy event (the last one was New York Comic Con in early 2009) I don't dress up. When I go to a BDSM party (the last one was TES's Back to School Party, also in 2009) I find the most private spot I can to play -- and end up a bit uncomfortable anyway.

Not that I think Matisse is wrong about her theory. It's just incomplete. (And, giving her the benefit of the doubt, she has word limit in her column.) I think the social structure of the BDSM community is more welcoming to nerds. But I think there are also other dynamics in effect explain the large number of kinky nerds -- nerds are more likely to explore interests that aren't mainstream, the technicality of BDSM might appeal to them, and they might need to look further than cool kids for a sense of sexual agency and power. But, nerd or cool kid, it takes a certain kind of personality to want to explore your sexuality publicly. Some of us are more comfortable doing the big stuff in private.

Voodoo Sex Ritual

2011-02-28T05:23:00.001-05:00

On Friday night I saw a story on the Fox 5 10 O'Clock News about an apartment building in Brooklyn that burned down. What was this story's focus? Sadness over the elderly woman who lost her life? Concern for the many people who are now homeless?

No, the object of the story was to say the words "voodoo sex ritual" as many times as humanly possible in three minutes, and the intrepid Fox 5 team rose to the challenge. I didn't start counting until at least thirty seconds into the story, but I still managed to count 18 times they managed to work in the three-word phrase. Often they managed to hit it two or even three times in one sentence, and always with a special tone to emphasize their moral disgust. They never varied the wording, never tried throwing in "voodoo ceremony" for variety, just kept hitting the phrase in a viewer-entrancing litany over and over and over, as if their Neilsen number ticked up decimal point every time they said it.

From what I can tell from the news story, what happened is a man who is a voodoo priest and a woman were having sex. They had lit some candles around the bed as part of a voodoo ceremony. The sheets caught fire. The man attempted to put out the fire with water from the sink but was unsuccessful. The woman opened the apartment door, and which point a wind tunnel was created which drew the fire into the hall. From there the rest of the building caught fire.

If any chicken were beheaded, any sheep entrails read, any cow tongues bound with twine, the story doesn't mention it. So seriously, why are they harping on the voodoo aspect. Every bullshit relationship book in your local chain bookstore will tell you how romantic it is to light candles by the bed to have sex (gag!). You hardly need to be a voodoo priest to accidentally burn down your apartment -- a sentimental teenage girl could do it just as easily after prom. (Tangent for vanilla people and sentimental teenage girls: Have you ever tried getting wax out of sheets? Don't go there!) But rather than pointing out the potential lesson that non-voodoo practitioners could take away from this tragedy the news spent their time condemning the man and woman involved for putting the life of everyone in their building in danger for their bizarre sexual gratification... and never mind that the danger was a freak accident that could have happened to anyone.

What we've got here, clearly, is blatant media sensationalism. There is a time-honored formula for this kind of thing and it drives me absolutely insane. It consists of triggering three sets of emotions in people: arousal, envy and moral righteousness. Your first reaction to a sensational sex story (doesn't have to be voodoo sex, could be Charlie Sheen or Tiger Wood) is to think, "Wow, that's hot! I can't believe there are people out who are nasty enough to do freaky shit like that to get off!" We've all got a little bit of a voyeur in us. We all want to hear about other people's kinky sex. You may not want to do that particular thing (I'll say it again, wax + sheets = bad) but just the idea that people are out there doing crazy shit to get off arouses you. Then the jealousy kicks in. You think, "How come this stupid moron who apparently can't figure out how a fire extinguisher works is having the sex of his dreams when I, a mature, responsible, successful person, don't get my fantasies fulfilled?" This thought lingers in your mind just long enough to suggest the true answer: that the stupid moron doesn't have the sense God gave tiny animals to be afraid of fire, but he has enough guts to admit to himself what kind of crazy sex he wants to have, get over the shame, and go out and find it. And you don't. But that answer is unacceptable -- it means you're dumber than Charlie Sheen, Tiger Wood and Mr. Voodoo Sex Ritual! So you go looking for another reason and your cultural programming kicks in. Sex is nasty, dirty and wrong. If it was okay to have great sex you would be, but you're not, so clearly it isn't okay. And this moron is doing it. How dare he do something so morally reprehensible?!? And you've arrived at righteous indignation.

Arousal, envy and moral righteousness: It's an ugly set of emotions and the more small-minded and repressed the viewer being triggered is, the stronger they are. And to be really clear, I do think that Mr. Voodoo Sex Ritual, Charlie Sheen, Tiger Wood, Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton are irresponsible. But the message I'm getting from the news isn't "If you light candles, bring a fire extinguisher." It's more along the lines of "Voodoo sex ceremonies are sick and wrong and people who engage in them are willing to selfishly put people's lives at risk for a cheap, sexual thrill."

There is something so ugly, abhorrent and pathetic about a group of tiny people condemning someone, not because that person made a mistake but because the group is too repressed to do what they want to do. I have way more contempt for that kind of person than two people who accidentally kicked over a candle. But there's one group of people I have ever more contempt for: TV reporters who manipulate this ugly dynamic to make money. That is the definition of depraved.

Oscar Dilemma

2011-02-27T08:25:00.005-05:00

This year is a strange one in that I've actually seen a lot of the movies nominated for the Academy Awards. I was a little on the fence about which movie I was rooting for -- The Kids Are All Right or The King's Speech. The part of me that is sex-positive wants to support The Kids Are All Right because it's a good look at gay families and is one of the first times I've seen the complexities of female sexuality portrayed in a movie. The thing is, I sort of like The King's Speech more, despite the fact it is about stuffy English people who probably don't have sex.

This moral quandary was making me lose sleep until I found out the The King's Speech apparently scouted their locations by watching gay porn. That was the missing ingredient I needed to love it with my whole heart!

Click here for pictures. (NSFW!)

Via Violet Blue.

Rihanna's "S&M"

2011-02-19T18:18:00.003-05:00

A few people have asked me my opinion of Rihanna's S&M video. The truth is that I avoided watching it for awhile. I don't like pop music much, and I like celebrities whip up publicity and make money by simultaneously titillating people with sexy images and stirring up righteous indignation -- frequently in the exact same people.

However, I watched it now and I like it. The music is even pretty good, for pop music. The video is certainly hot (titillation accomplished), apparently enough that it has been banned in nine countries (righteous indignation accomplished). Some controversy has been stirred up, and not just from BDSM-phobic people -- fashion photographer David LaChapelle is suing Rihanna for ripping off his images.

I can understand why some people who are actually in the BDSM scene might have objections to the video. We don't know whether Rihanna is kinky herself or whether this is a publicity stunt. Her video has a whole mish-mash of fetishes and different kinks on display almost interchangeably (bondage, puppy play, etc.), and there seems to be a lot of posing in hot, probably really expensive latex fetish clothes going on, and almost no sadism or masochism. But I say, who cares?

Just the other day, I was writing how cool I think it is that polyamory, bisexuality and BDSM are portrayed positively in a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and how, when an alternative lifestyle is portrayed in a positive way, it's good for both people who are part of a lifestyle and people who may discover it now that it's less scary. Well, Rihanna's video makes BDSM look fun, sexy and not too serious. It's a far cry from the way it usually looks in pop culture -- dangerous, abusive, self-destructive. It certainly will help that Rihanna spends most of the video in the dominant role, but she also spends part of it restrained behind plastic so she doesn't completely shy away from the image of a submissive female, which is what presses the most buttons with the obsessively politically correct.

Even if Rihanna isn't kinky (which she might be) she has done a service for people who are. Besides, it's actually a pretty catchy song. I'm humming it right now.

The Stacks - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/The Girl Who Played With Fire

2011-02-18T20:10:00.002-05:00

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
by Steig Larsson
Vintage Books, 2003

I'm not usually one for paperback thrillers. The last one I read was The Da Vinci Code about five years ago and I didn't like it that much. But hardly a day goes by when I don't see somebody reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or one of its sequels on the subway so I decided I had to either check them out or risk becoming irrelevant. I certainly never thought I would end up writing about them on this blog, but I feel compelled. We live in a very sex-negative culture, so when somebody goes out of their way to do something sex-positive, it can be surprising, and I think it's good to acknowledge the effort.

That goes doubly in this case. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is essentially a book about misogyny and violence against women, and it features a lot of twisted sexual dynamics, including rape, incest and child molestation. The bad guys are frequently sick fucks who are in to twisted sex -- pornographers, sex traffickers, serial killers and rapists, corrupt officials who sexually take advantage of isolated young women that they have power over.

The protagonist of the novels, Lisabeth Salander, is such a woman. She is the titular girl with the dragon tattoo, who plays with fire and kicks the hornet's nest. She's an abuse survivor who turned the tables on her abuser and is on a mission to punish all transgressing men. Early in the series she is brutally raped, and she revenges herself with equal brutality. The first two novels (I haven't read the third) center around incest, molestation, and trafficking of prostitutes by organized crime.

It would have been easy for the author, Steig Larsson, to just leave it at that. I'm sure most of his readers would have been happy to read the literary equivalent of an episode of Law & Order: SVU, where sex is bad and people who are interested in sex, especially unusual sex, are evil criminals. For that matter, I'm sure his editors and publishers might have preferred that he remain unambiguous on the subject and avoid straying into controversial territory. Indeed, I think if this book were written in the United States, Larsson probably wouldn't have been able to do so at all.

So, thank God it was written in Sweden, because Larsson had to opportunity to make something very clear -- sex, even sex that most people would consider deviant, is not wrong if it is between consenting people. Despite the content of the story, Larsson has given all of his characters full sex lives. Salander is bisexual and experiments with BDSM with one of her girlfriends, who co-owns a fetish clothing store. Despite the fact that she is a rape survivor, she has healthy sexual relationships with several men and women over the course of the books. The other protagonist, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, is ethically nonmonogamous, with many female partners. One of these, his editor, Berger, is in a polyamorous relationship with her husband and Blomkvist, a relationship that very clearly includes both sex and love for both men.

In fact, there is hardly a main character in the book with a monogamous, heterosexual, vanilla -- aka "normal" -- sex life. It's a pretty huge stand to take in novels that will mostly be read by house wives and which will sell hundreds of thousands of copies in supermarkets and airports. In fact, it's one of the first times I can think of that polyamory or BDSM have been used in a non-sensational way in a mainstream book. All three of the books in this series hit #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List, which means that Steig Larsson has probably educated more people about polyamory and kink than Dossie Easton, Janet Hardy, Jay Wiseman, Tristan Taormino, Christopher Ryan or Dan Savage.

The most amazing thing is I have yet to hear any backlash against the sexual tastes of the characters in these stories, which is pretty incredible considering these books were probably read by a lot of conservative housewives supposedly fighting a culture war against this very thing. Maybe they don't care, as long as the books are set in Sweden. Or, who knows? Maybe bisexuality, polyamory and BDSM have entered the general consciousness and are considered valid lifestyle choices (though maybe a little weird). I certainly hope that we'll see more examples in the near future of alternative sexuality being shown in a positive light in mainstream literature. It's the first step to greater things for all of us.

Susie Bright on Political Violence

2011-01-12T06:16:00.002-05:00

In the wake of the attack on Rep. Gifford, Susie Bright has posted on her blog about the various times when people have tried to kill her.

I was seven months pregnant; I had to go to the bathroom every few minutes. I asked my producer to follow me into the lavatory on the ground floor; I felt a little nervous from all the anti-Susie protests upstairs in the auditorium.

It was one of those giant tiled restrooms with a dozen stalls and porcelain sinks lined up against the wall. From the rear corner a young blond woman, with a sharp tool grasped in her hands, rushed up to me. I don't know know what I would have done without my colleague there. —Or without my giant belly giving this young woman pause.

She was in tears as she accused me of "female genocide"— yes, she with the blade in her hand. It made her angry to see me as a mommy-to-be, a real woman who had to take a piss, who might not be a monster after all. She wanted me to be that monster so badly, so she could destroy me.

In her usual, sex-is-politics way, Susie breaks down exactly what's going on in the minds (and what isn't going on in the bedrooms) of these crazy, gun-wielding psychos. Definitely worth a read, both for its bearing on the current situation and the political violence that seems like it has always existed in this country.

New Year's Resolution

2011-01-08T06:28:00.001-05:00

Okay, yeah... So it's a bit late to be posting my New Year's Resolution but in this case it kind of proves my point. I haven't been posting much on this blog. My head has been elsewhere. So my resolution is that I'm going to post something new -- actual content, not just a link or a video -- at least once a week in 2011.

It isn't really that much of a commitment. I've got dozens of ideas, it's just a matter of finding the time to sit down and write one of them! Look for the first post soon: my comments on a sample chapter of Susie Bright's new memoir Big Sex, Little Death.

The Bizarre World of the Bisexual

2010-12-28T20:29:00.000-05:00

Another funny video.

Footlocker Ad

2010-12-27T11:47:00.000-05:00

Here is an amazingly sexy Footlocker ad. And that's a sentence I never thought I'd type...

Via Violet Blue

Have a Merry and Safe Christmas

2010-12-24T11:32:00.003-05:00

Japan is a place with more psychosexual weirdness going on than the rest of the world combined. I've got to admit, I don't totally get it. But I thought this video was kind of amazing. It seems really obvious when you say it, but this is the first time I've ever seen sex used to market safer sex in an effective -- and Christmasy! -- way.

Also, I have too many friends who would enjoy watching a video with some hot Asian gay guys and a drag queen for me to buy Christmas presents for all of them, so I'm giving them this post this year. Merry Christmas.

Via Tiny Nibbles

Christmas Is in the Air!

2010-12-03T07:08:00.003-05:00

Everywhere I go they're playing Christmas songs. I have one to play too! This music video was just sent to me on Facebook by its director, the creator of the Family web series, as well as another upcoming series about being a poly parent. No nudity but there are some racy moments that are most definitely NSFW. Enjoy!

"Christmas Down South" music video - rated R version
Uploaded by 3DogPictures. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

My Dirty Christmas List

2010-11-30T19:38:00.002-05:00

I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been working on two large writing projects that involve a lot of research on the front end and then a lot of writing. The first project isn't very sexy so a lot of my time has been taken up with not-very-sexy topics lately. However, I'm almost done with the research on that project and I have a good start on the actual writing. Very soon, I'm going to be shifting focus to the researching the second project... and that promises to be a lot more fun!

So here is my dirty Christmas list: a list of books I'm planning to read eventually for research. You don't want me to have to go to the library to get them, do you?

Fiction

Dangerous Liaisons, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
120 Days of Sodom, by DAF de Sade
The Story of O, by Pauline Reage
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall
Last Exit to Brooklyn
Black Spring, by Henry Miller
Sexus, by Henry Miller
Lolita, by Vladmir Nobokov
Naked Lunch, by William S. Borroughs
Venus in Furs, by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Non-Fiction

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, by Alfred Kinsey
The Technology of Orgasm, by Rachel P. Maines
The Destroying Angel, by John Money
Sex in History, by R. Tannahill
The Velvet Underground, by Michael Leigh
The Velvet Underground Revisited, by Michael Leigh

Make Love, Not War!

2010-11-10T22:10:00.002-05:00

I would like to recommend an article that Betty Dodson just wrote about Christine O'Donnell on the liberal website Truth Out. With everything that has been written about Christine O'Donnell in the last few months it didn't really occur to me that the voice that was missing was Betty Dodson's. As Dodson points out, on the subject of masturbation she is the exact opposite of Christine O'Donnell -- Betty Dodson has spent forty years helping women learn how to masturbate and understand their own orgasms, whereas Christine O'Donnell built her career around the idea that masturbation is a sin.

Dodson writes:

Still, I can see our commonality. We were two cute but undereducated girls with many handicaps and a lot of courage to make a difference by speaking out. Masturbation is a lustful sin in her eyes, and she is now a polished TV personality. I've been supportive of this basic human activity for decades and I can't even get arrested.

The rest of the article goes into the reasons why Dodson feels that the lack of personal sexual freedom and the ignorance of both men and women about their sexual bodies -- ignorance that masturbation would help them overcome -- is actually at the root of all of the world's problems. You might think that she's over simplifying things with this "make love, not war" argument but she actually manages to make a surprising amount of sense.

Until we acknowledge and accept masturbation as the foundation for all of human sexual activity, we will continue to be a nation of fast-ejaculating men and pre-orgasmic women. Through the consistent practice of masturbation, girls can become orgasmic women who are rarely victims because they have self-esteem and can speak their minds. Boys who have trained themselves to control ejaculation will become men with sexual self-assurance who are less prone to violence. By lessening sexual ignorance, boys and girls will make better social adjustments. Once we can accept sexual diversity as the law of the land, the quality of everyone's lives will improve.

Finally, the entire article is worth reading for this double entendre alone:

Finally the GOP gave sex-starved Americans a sex scandal - blow jobs in the oval office! Ken Starr blew a load of taxpayers' money detailing the entire episode.

Priceless! (emphasis mine)

Read the whole thing here

VOTE

2010-11-02T00:00:00.001-04:00

Please don't forget to vote for some Democrats sometime today. It only takes one hand to punch a ballot!

Durex Ads That Made Me Smile

2010-10-27T18:18:00.003-04:00

I just saw these ads from Durex that made me smile. You can click them to see larger versions. They depict the back of a fridge and the back of a television, and the writing at the bottom says, "Gel lubricant from Durex. Enjoy the other side."

Gel lube, of course, is designed to be used for anal sex. And, while Durex undoubtedly has a better ad campaign, if you're going to get some I recommend you buy Boy Butter.

This Bugs Me

2010-10-26T22:51:00.004-04:00

Okay, I'm going to go really, really geeky here but I'm a writer and I get hung up about language so just let me rant.

I like good funny tee shirts. I like wearing them and they make good presents and since I'm poly and have a lot of friends who are poly, I thought a good, funny poly tee shirt would be a great thing to find. I've looked several times but the only one I seem to be able to find is this one.

This shirt bugs the heck out of me. Not because the joke is a little long-winded, possibly a bit awkwardly phrased. Not because it's an etymology joke. I'm the kind of person who would love a knee-slapper about hilarious suffices. And you've got to admit that this kind of humor is pretty appropriate to the subject, since polyamorists are generally a pretty smart, geeky group of people who could enjoy a dorky joke like this just as much as I would.

No, this shirt bugs me for a much simpler reason: Who the heck says it's wrong to mix Latin and Greek roots in the same word?!? That's perfectly normal. It's called a hybrid word and there are plenty of them. Automobile, dysfunctional, kilometer, electrocution, hyperactive, bilingual, sociology, sociopath, television. Even the most heteronormative etymologist wouldn't have a problem with polyamory on a grammatical level. If he did, he'd be a complete hypocrite because heteronormative is another Greek-Latin hybrid, with a French suffix to boot.

Besides polyamory, a lot of words to describe sexuality are also hybrids, like heterosexual, homosexual or bigamist. Polyamory is just the latest in a long tradition of English words that have smashed together bits and pieces of other languages. That's what makes the English language great!

So you heard it here first, kids. Polyamory is most definitely NOT wrong.

RE: What the Fuck Is Going On?!?

2010-10-16T11:58:00.002-04:00

Actually, this seems like a pretty reasonable explanation for what appeared, at first glance, to be one hundred percent bullshit from the Obama Administration. Not that I'm happy about what is happening, but maybe there is an explanation other than some sort of desperate move to the right from a panicking party facing a midterm defeat.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!

2010-10-14T19:19:00.003-04:00

Okay, kids. Let's review.

REPUBLICANS (the Log Cabin kind, but still) file a lawsuit asking a judge to file an injunction stopping Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Check.

The judge files said injunction. The military can't kick out gay people now. Check.

DEMOCRATS (our heroes, the Obama Administration) ask for a stay on the injunction so they can appeal it and try to make it okay to kick people out of the army for being gay again. Waitaminute, huh?

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Dogging

2010-10-09T12:27:00.002-04:00

I just came across this article in the New York Times about "dogging," which is English slang for having sex in public in places where people will see you and watch. In the town of Puttenham, in Surrey, so many people are coming from out of town (usual pun disclaimer) that it is becoming quite a nuisance.

Puttenham, about an hour’s drive from London, has fewer than 2,500 residents and is famous for its ancient church; its friendly pub, the Good Intent; and its proud inclusion in both the Domesday Book — an 11th-century survey of English lands — and “Brave New World.”

Unhappily for many people here, it is also famous for being featured on lists of good places to go “dogging” — that is, to have sex in public, sometimes with partners you have just met online, so that others can watch. So popular is the woodsy field below the ridge as a spot for gay sex (mostly during the day) and heterosexual sex (mostly at night) that the police have designated it a “public sex environment.”

Read the whole thing.

Okay, people. I do not object to having sex outside in public areas. I have had sex outside in public areas. I've actually done it kind of recently. However, when your outdoor sex has a voyeuristic aspect, you are including other people in your outdoor sex, and including people in sex with you without asking their permission first is WRONG. I would be all in favor of a world where people could take off their clothes and have sex wherever the mood struck and no one would have a problem with it. But we don't live in a world like that and people do have a problem with it. So let's do our best to respect everybody's bountries. Okay, mates?

Tim Gunn's It Gets Better Video

2010-10-05T21:10:00.002-04:00

Over the past week I've been watching quite a few of the It Gets Better Project videos while reading Slog and I've really been blown away by what I've seen. That said, I have to say that I've liked the videos by ordinary people much more than the videos by celebrities -- for example, the video by Perez Hilton didn't do much for me.

However, for whatever reason, I just watched Tim Gunn's it gets better video and I was totally blown away. In it, Gunn admits that he was in so much despair about being gay that he attempted suicide by taking pills when he was seventeen years old. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Gunn's reality show (see how I avoided saying the name of the show as if I'm not totally sure if it's the one with the models or the designers) but it strikes me that admitting to a failed suicide attempt is a pretty big step for a celebrity to take. These people are very concerned with their public image and it says something about Tim Gunn that he's willing to take a risk in the way he's perceived in the media if he can help a gay kid. So I say bravo to Tim Gunn, just as I said bravo to Dan Savage for starting this whole thing. Well done, guys.

It Gets Better Project

2010-09-24T01:14:00.004-04:00

In response to the recent rash of gay teen suicides -- or maybe I should say in response to the recent rash of the media paying attention to the gay teen suicides that have always been going on -- Dan Savage announced in this week's column and podcast that he's starting a YouTube channel.

As Dan explains in his column:

Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids. (...)

I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

So here's what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.

This is such a fantastic idea I don't know why anyone has thought of it until now. Needless to say I'm a big Savage Love fan but this time Dan is taking things beyond his usual entertaining smear campaigns against Republican politicians, subversive attitude towards monogamy, and ingenius verbal take-downs of clueless letter-writers. This time I firmly believe he's going to save somebody's life. You only need to watch the video he posted with his husband Terry to see that this is coming from the heart, more so than some of his past projects.

Please head over to It Gets Better Project to see not only Dan's video but the videos submitted by other gay adults. And if you're gay, lesbian, bi, trans or queer and you have some words of wisdom to help the younger generation tough out the bad times, post a video of your own.

Leader of Stonewall Raid Dies

2010-09-08T21:09:00.003-04:00

Seymour Pine, the police inspector who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn in 1969, has died at the age of 91. Read his obituary in the New York Times.

In 2004, Inspector Pine spoke during a discussion of the Stonewall uprising at the New-York Historical Society. At the time of the raid, he said, the police “certainly were prejudiced” against gays, “but had no idea about what gay people were about.”

The department regularly raided gay clubs for two reasons, he said. First, he insisted, many clubs were controlled by organized crime; second, arresting gay people was a way for officers to improve their arrest numbers. “They were easy arrests,” he said. “They never gave you any trouble” — at least until that night.

When someone in the audience said Inspector Pine should apologize for the raid, he did.

“There’s been a stereotype that Seymour Pine was a homophobe,” Mr. Carter said. “He had some of the typical hang-ups and preconceived ideas of the time, but I think he was strictly following orders, not personal prejudice against gay people.” (...)

“He once told me,” Mr. Carter said, “ ‘If what I did helped gay people, then I’m glad.’ ”

This is a man who was on the wrong side of history and seems to have recognized it, after the fact. To me he comes off rather sympathetically in this obituary -- someone who had the prejudices of his time, acted on them and did something wrong, then had the humility to admit he was wrong. If only all of the opponents of gay rights were like that.

Adam Carolla on Savage Lovecast

2010-09-08T06:57:00.003-04:00

As a straight guy, I just want to say that listening to Adam Carolla guest-star on last week's Savage Lovecast to give the perspective of straight guys was extremely painful. He launches into a whole bunch of bullshit about how if a woman wants to have a threesome it means she's unsatisfied with the relationship that she's in and she's going to break up with her partner in a month, and suggests that all the "fun" in your life is over when you get married. All the while he steadfastly manages to avoid the question that Dan is asking him -- should a straight guy be willing to have a guy-guy-girl threesome in order to get a guy-girl-girl threesome? Would Adam Carolla do it? He refuses to say. And his jokes about all the gay sex he used to have with Jimmy Kimmel back in the Man Show days (Kimmel is a "power bottom," says Carolla) are funny but don't redeem him.

Click here to listen to this wandering, cringe-worthy diatribe. It's about a quarter of the way into the show, after the question about student loans.

Sacrilegious Fun

2010-08-17T10:07:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine just started a Twitter feed called Xtianity_inbed. It operates on the same principal as the fortune cookie game in which you add the words "in bed" to the end of your fortune with frequently hilarious results. My friend, however, is playing the game with Bible verses. Here's a taste.

Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them... in bed. Luke 2:9

Don't miss a minute of the sacrilege: Go follow her!

The Mile-High Club

2010-07-20T19:11:00.000-04:00

About a week and a half ago, my partner Esmé and I found ourselves on a trans-Atlantic, red-eye flight. There came a moment somewhere in the wee hours -- time kind of breaks down as you fly across the time zones -- when the lights were out and everyone on the plane was asleep. There was only one thing to do: try to sneak into the airplane bathroom and have sex.

We ran the standard play. Esmé went to the bathroom. A minute later, when there was no line, I got up, knocked on the door and she let me in. The bathroom was tiny and smelled less than pleasant. I had the nervous shakes, imagining how we would try to leave one at a time only to find a line of passengers waiting outside. It was difficult to find a position, so we finally settled for me sitting on the closed toilet while Esmé sat on my lap. We fucked as quickly and quietly as we could. I left first. Thankfully, no one was waiting and no one seemed to have been awakened by any moans we had failed to stifle. I went back to my seat, Esmé joined me a moment later. We had successfully joined the Mile-High Club.

It's safe to say the main reason to engage in airplane sex is for bragging rights. The threat of discovery adds a certain thrill to it, but the setting isn't particularly romantic, nor is the sex especially good. But not many people can say they've done it, so the opportunity was too good to pass up. I wouldn't want to only have sex in airplane bathrooms but the novelty of doing it once was pretty fun.

The fantasy of having sex on an airplane is surprisingly prevalent. I went on the Internet afterward to see what I could find. Perhaps naïvely, I was only expecting to find a few humorous, probably bullshit first-person stories, maybe a How-To page on About.com, and some info about possible legal consequences. Silly, silly Pendard... I had no idea that airplane sex is some of the geekiest sex there is.

First of all, it appears that Rachel Kramer Bussel edited an entire book on erotica on the subject. I haven't read it but I have difficulty imagining enough different scenarios to fill an entire book.

I also located the official Mile-High Club website, where you can post the story of your high-altitude hook-up and even buy the tee shirt to commemorate the experience.

And if my less-than-steamy description of the airplane bathroom failed to turn you on or you're scared to risk discovery and (unlikely) prosecution, don't despair! If you're willing to spend a little money you can join the Mile-High Club in comfort and style by chartering a plane. There are a number of companies that explicitly offer the service, including Mile-High Club Chicago, Mile High Atlanta, Intimate Skies in Honolulu, and Mile High Flights in Gloucestershire, UK.

Or you can just do it the old-fashioned way. Some suggest discretely fucking in your seat on a nearly empty flight but I don't see this going so well -- for one thing, all flights are overbooked these days. Your best bet is the bathroom. To get in there, you'll need to book the latest flight you can, either cross-country or trans-Atlantic, then just wait until everyone is either sleeping or engrossed in the in-flight movie to make your move. Unless you happen to find yourself on one of the new Airbus A380s. Singapore Airlines has beds in first class but so many people have been loudly taking advantage of them the airline has added a no sex rule.

Sad news, but I'm sure people will continue to find a way.

Sex at Dawn - Highly Recommended

2010-07-07T09:21:00.002-04:00

On this week's edition of the Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage took the remarkable step of dropping his usual call-in format for the first time I can remember to interview Christopher Ryan, author (along with Cacilda Jetha) of a new book called Sex at Dawn. The book is about the origin of human sexuality in pre-agricultural, gatherer societies and what habits we might have evolved then that make the present-day commitment to life-long monogamy so difficult for so many people. I say that Savage interviewed Ryan, but the fact is he spent a significant amount of time gushing about how great the book was.

I love reading books about science and sociology and I love reading books about polyamory, but normally I wouldn't give a book like this a second glance. Why's that? Because I'm suspicious of books where people attempt to apply science or history to present-day problems. Frequently these books are the worst kind of science, the kind that comes up with the conclusion before doing the research and then ignores whatever evidence doesn't support the pre-selected topic. Take, for instance, that section in the first edition of The Ethical Slut where Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy say that monogamy was only invented because society needed to know who should inherit stuff. It's an interesting theory, sure, but Easton and Hardy are not anthropology experts and are definitely biased towards polyamory so can you really trust what they say? And, sure enough, that section disappeared in the second edition.

But Dan Savage recommended Sex at Dawn. In fact, he called it "the single most important book about human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey unleashed Sexual Behavior in the Human Male on the American public in 1948." It's true the man has an agenda when it comes to sexuality but he also has a nearly infallible bullshit detector and isn't know for ignoring or glossing over facts that contradict his beliefs. So I went on the book's website and noticed two very good signs. The first was that, Savage notwithstanding, most of the people who had reviewed and recommended the book were from academia, experts in fields that the book draws its evidence from, such as psychology, biology, anthropology and primatology. The second that the authors specifically state that their book won't make recommendations about how to interpret the information they're presenting and how to apply it to modern life. They waive their right to an opinion and an agenda.

So I headed out and bought a copy yesterday evening and I haven't been able to put it down ever since. I've read about a third of it in the last twelve hours. I was seen wandering down sidewalks in my neighborhood while reading, bumping into innocent pedestrians (I'm not proud). Every polyamory book club should put down what they're reading and start reading this immediately, that goes without saying. But this isn't just a book for poly folk. Although Ryan and Jetha are arguing it's likely that for ninety percent of its existence the human race was organized into hunter-gatherer bands that were sexually nonmonogamous, they never make any sort of attack on modern-day monogamy. Rather, they seem to hope that their research will lighten the load of modern humans who have chosen to be monogamous, to give them peace of mind when the going gets tough. When tempted towards adultery in the twentieth year of a monogamous marriage, they will be reminded by this book that there's nothing wrong or unusual about their desires, that they don't mean they've fallen out of love, and that errant desires, in and of themselves, don't constitute a betrayal of their partner.

Once I finish the book and find the time I'll post a full review. But, especially recently, waiting for me to blog about something involves running the risk of death by natural causes so I encourage you to visit your local independent bookstore and pick up a copy now.

Today in the Times...

2010-06-26T20:49:00.003-04:00

In today's New York Times, Camille Paglia editorializes about the recent search for "female Viagra," a drug that will boost the female sex drive. According the Paglia, this Holy Grail will never be found. A drug cannot turn frigid women back on, claims Paglia, because their problem is not caused by physiology but by the sexless culture of the white American middle class.

The implication is that a new pill, despite its unforeseen side effects, is necessary to cure the sexual malaise that appears to have sunk over the country. But to what extent do these complaints about sexual apathy reflect a medical reality, and how much do they actually emanate from the anxious, overachieving, white upper middle class?

I'm not completely convinced by Paglia's arguments but there are definitely interesting ideas to be discussed in this article, and I was pleased to see it in the mainstream press.

The Stacks - Bondage for Sex

2010-06-16T20:24:00.003-04:00

Bondage for Sex, Volume 1
by Chanta Rose
BDSM Press, 2006

Bondage has two kinds of practitioners. There are the ones who are using rope as a medium to create mind-blowingly gorgeous works of art. And then there are the ones who just want to tie 'em up and fuck 'em. This book makes no bones about the fact that it is written for the latter group. I find that refreshing because most books about bondage seem to be written by and for the artistic types.

I've always found myself in the second group. I like rope, I think it's beautiful to look at and fun to use (even if it takes awhile) but every once in a while I meet a real expert and I realize that I have nothing even approaching their level of skill or interest -- for some it's a full-blown fetish. And I've all but given up listening to The Ropecast because I know I'm never going to have that level of commitment to rope. Chanta Rose, who has designed bondage for several sites in the Kink.com constellation (most famously, Chanta's Bitches), is one of those experts, beyond any doubt, but she had the benevolence or the business sense to write this book for the rest of us.

Bondage for Sex's simple concept is right there in its title: this book isn't about bondage for it's own sake, it's about bondage to enhance sex. It presents about a half-dozen basic ties, each with a few variations. Unlike other bondage books I've looked at, which include drawn diagrams that frequently confuse the hell out of me, Rose has included photographs of the ties in every stage of completion. Not only is this much easier to follow, it's considerably more fun to look a photographs of beautiful bondage models than crude pen-and-ink sketches.

At this point, I've tried nearly every tie in this book with my partners, so I can report that the book's directions are straight forward and easy to follow. The most difficult tie, a chest harness, takes a while to get the hang of, but it is a great design -- unlike several other chest harnesses I've seen/attempted, it has a very convenient "handle" positioned on the upper back for which there are no end of uses.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in bondage. It's a fantastic place to start!

Filthy Gorgeous Things

2010-06-07T22:38:00.001-04:00

I have an article on Filthy Gorgeous Things

And, like, I promise to actually do some blogging and stuff pretty soon. I've had a few ideas for posts but I've been in the middle of a decidedly non-sexy research project.

Safety First!

2010-05-19T00:09:00.003-04:00

Please watch this video. It could save your life.

Via Slog

Scary Stuff

2010-05-11T06:40:00.002-04:00

Surprised Employer Fires Sex Blogger

A St. Louis-area nonprofit has fired a 37-year-old office worker – after discovering that in her own time, the woman blogs about her polyamorous escapades. (...)

According to TBK, her boss – at the suggestion of top management – searched the web for information about employees, and discovered the sex blog. When she arrived at work April 27, she was fired on the spot.

Per an account TBK posted on another website, Aagablog, her boss was furious. “I need to let you go," the woman said, according to TBK. "Corporate office suggested I Google employees. I typed in your name and it took me two seconds to find your website. How COULD you put that stuff out there? What were you thinking?! I feel like I’m talking to a 14 year old! We’re DONE.”

I came across this article while surfing the web last night. It is scary stuff. While I don't provide intimate details about my own sex life on my blog like TBK did, I don't imagine that would necessarily be enough to save me if my employer found out about it. TBK's mistake was signing up for a Twitter account using her real name. She didn't realize it was going to be displayed, and by the time she changed it it had already been archived by a search engine. I quickly ran and Googled my real name (something I haven't done in a while) to make sure I hadn't sprung any leaks. So far so good.

I've often wrestled with the idea of giving up my pseudonym. I also write more conventional things online and offline under my real name and it would be very convenient to shed the alias. I've always admired people like Rachel Kramer Bussell or Susie Bright that have made the decision to live their lives out in the open. If my conventional writing ever takes off, I might be in a position to "come out" and acknowledge this blog as well. In fact, I might have to, since some of my conventional writing still deals with polyamory, kink and other kinds of alternative sexuality. (Some doesn't, but some does.) However, as long as I have a day job -- in fact, as long as I foresee the possibility of needing to interview for a day job -- I've got to try to keep the genie in the bottle. It goes against everything I believe about being open and proud of who you are, but I guess that's the price of a little privacy.

The Making of "Fun Home"

2010-05-09T08:49:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine had to do a project for her graduate program featuring a novel or movie about grief and loss. I suggested to her that us use Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, which is a graphic novel memoir by a lesbian woman about her father, who was gay and in the closet and who dies under conditions that may or may not be suicide. It's an excellent book and I really love it. I've been meaning to review it in this space for a long time but I've never gotten around to it. Now that her project is finished, my friend sent me this YouTube video she found, in which Bechdel discusses how she made the art in Fun Home. I thought it was really fascinating so I'm sharing it here. I'll write a review soon, hopefully.

Never Have I Ever...

2010-05-01T22:08:00.003-04:00

About a month ago I played a game of Never Have I Ever as part of the TMI Party I threw for a group of friends. I'm kind of bad at thinking of things on the spot so I made a list. Here's part of it.

Never have I ever received money in exchange for sex.

Never have I ever had intercourse in public.

Never have I ever broken a piece of furniture while having sex on it.

Never have I ever cheated on someone.

Never have I ever had sex with a co-worker.

Never have I ever been in an orgy.

Never have I ever had sex while dressed as an animal.

Never have I ever had sex with someone I regretted having sex with later.

Nonmonogamy in France (But Not for Long)

2010-04-27T18:04:00.002-04:00

I know there are people out there who are very concerned with the legal rights of poly people, who want to legalize plural marriage and get existing laws to recognize that a person can have more than one domestic partner. I've never felt the need to be one of those people. I feel like a drama queen pretending that poly people face hostility and institutionalized discrimination on the same level as, say, gay people. Most poly people have one domestic partner or they have no domestic partner -- in other words, their either functionally coupled or functionally single. Either way, the existing laws work fine for them. Only a minority try to have more than one domestic partner. They're the ones all the activists in the community are working for.

All too often, when a story comes along that should really be a wake-up call, we dismiss it. Laws used to target nonmongamous people are usually used against the polygamous marriages of Mormons and Muslims.

Today, I happened on the story of Liès Hebbadj, a French restaurant owner born in Algeria. He lives in Nantes and has four partners. While he's maintaining that he has multiple unmarried partners, French authorities are accusing him of practicing plural marriage, and Brice Hortefeux, prefect of the Loire-Atlantique region, wants to strip Mr. Hebbadj of his French citizenship because of it.

From Le Monde, a French national newspaper (my translation):

According to the Minister of the Interior, the man, who was born in Algiers, has four wives and each one receives Single Parent Aid—offenses, the minister days, for which he deserves to be stripped of his French citizenship which he obtained through marriage in 1999. Liès Hebbadj admits having “mistresses.” “If you can be stripped of your French citizenship for having mistresses then a lot of Frenchmen could be. Mistresses are not forbidden by Islam. Maybe they are by Christianity, but not by France, as far as I know,” he has told the press. (…)

[Hebbadj], 30, is not described as an extremist by local authorities. He had a halal butcher shop in the south of Nantes and is the president of a Muslim cultural association in Rezé, in the Nantes suburbs. He is only officially married to one of his partners.

None of the offenses alleged by Brice Hortefeux are punishable by loss of citizenship. But the cancellation of his naturalization could be obtained, with the permission of the Council of State, if the man was already officially married at the time of his marriage in 1999 and therefore obtained his citizenship “through lying and fraud.”

I briefly lived in Nantes a few years ago, so I think I had better start by deflating a few images you might have of France. First of all, France has a reputation of being a country of sexual libertines where anything goes. This is not true. It looked that way to US government book censors in the 19th century and to American expatriates in the 1930s, but the United States has made great strides since then, whereas France has not. France doesn’t have sex-positive movements to the same extent as the US today. Sexual subcultures remain mostly underground. In the US, gays and lesbians led the way for everybody else by making sure their existence was in everyone’s face. In France today, tolerance for gays does not extend to offering marriage rights. Just a few days ago the openly gay mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delano, said that the French gay rights movement movement is going through “a sad period of silent regression,” pointing out a laundry list of recent homophobic crimes. In the most heinous, a middle aged gay couple from Couy, a small village in the Loire valley, was buried alive last year. Polyamory, BDSM and other subcultures are not nearly as visible. Sexuality in general seems to be surrounded by uniquely French flavor of erotic mystique which interferes with any attempt to confront it in an objective and realistic way.

Secondly, France also has the reputation for being less racist than the United States. Again, I’m sure it seemed that way to African American expatriots coming out of Jim Crow in the 1950s but that doesn’t make it true today. The French have historically had a very strong sense of their national identity. As long as immigrants assimilated to that identity, race wasn’t a big problem in France. In recent years France has seen an influx of Muslim immigrants of North Africa who have the radical notion that they would like to hang on to some of their own culture, perhaps even integrate parts of their culture into French society. This has provoked a radical backlash from the far right Front National political party. President Sarkozy’s UMP party is also concerned with this issue. Sarkozy has created the Ministry of Immigration, Integration and National Identity -- its name alone should give you an idea of its goals. Even the French left is on board with the most famous discriminatory measure, the headscarf ban in French schools. I’ve heard Socialists defend the ban by saying that schools should be secular institutions. However, although the ban technically covers any religious expression, it is not enforced when Christian children wear small crosses around their necks. For all of the left’s arguments that the veil is a tool of misogyny, it is undeniable that these laws curtail the freedom of an unwanted minority group to express itself in a way that goes against the beliefs of the majority in French society. For some French racists, the fact that Muslim girls are now forced to attend separate Islamic private schools to get around the public school law is a feature of the law rather than a flaw -- just as the French seem unconcerned by the fact that the law President Sarkozy has just proposed against wearing full-body veils in public will keep conservative Muslim women confined to their homes, as if France were run by the Taliban.

Now back to Mr. Hebbadj. This guy is going to get royally screwed. He’s transgressing against France’s “national identity” in two different ways: he’s a Muslim and his marriage doesn’t follow the state-sanctioned, monogamous model. Notice the catch-22 of the French argument: the French government will only recognize Mr. Hebbadj’s marriage to one person, yet they refuse to pay a single parent child support credit to Mr. Hebbadj’s four wives because they aren’t really single.

Worst of all, Mr. Hebbadj is probably not going to have any support from anyone in the French sex-positive community, such as it is -- nor would he in the American one. The polyamorous and open relationship crowds aren’t comfortable with forms of polygamy in less sex-positive forms. They don’t see that there’s a connection between their right to run their love lives the way they see fit and other people’s right to run their love lives the way they want. They don’t see that the same people who want to protect society from people like Mr. Hebbadj want to protect it from people like them. Even though very little information is currently available in the press about Mr. Hebbadj and his partners, the sex-positive poly people assume the four women made the decision to marry Mr. Hebbadj because of some kind of oppression, even though if a white woman made a similar decision they would believe she was exercising her freedom. Those people are making the same argument for the headscarf ban: that Muslim women don’t have enough experience with freedom to exercise their freedom of choice without being exploited, so they should be denied freedom of choice in some areas for their own good. It is undeniable that exploitation occurs in some cases, but taking away their right to choose isn’t the way to fight it.

I've already written in support of Mormon polygamy, but the truth is that polygamy in a religious context is an uncomfortable gray area for me. It is for many polyamorous people. As a group, we're mostly sex-positive and humanist. Though we have every reason to be more tolerant, our bias against religions that practice polygamy is the same as the bias against it in the monogamous culture that surrounds us. We imagine that there are always exploitations and consent problems in a religious polygamous marriage (but not a religious monogamous marriage). But the truth is that, especially in the western world where such things are not the norm, people who choose nonmonogamy in a religious context deserve to have their decision respected just as much as people who choose nonmonogamy in any other context. And when the laws of supposedly liberal western nations are used against these people, we should be very, very afraid.

---
UPDATE 4/29: I finally found an English version of this story, which you can read here. Via @polyamorie

Moral Indignation, by H. L. Mencken

2010-04-22T18:06:00.003-04:00

The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the republic -- against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the cigarette, against all things sinful and charming -- these astounding Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. (...) The hardworking householder who, on some bitter evening, glances over the Sunday Evening Post for a square and honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann Act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to wither.

-from Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), public domain

The most amazing thing about reading H. L. Mencken is that, if there weren't occasional references to historical events, you would completely forget that his criticism of American society is nearly a century old. The main theme of his career was to mock and excoriate the small-minded idiots who attack art, literature, science and harmless fun in the name of morality, virtue and religion -- to do so viciously but without ever sacrificing humor. Reading him today is at once remarkable and depressing; remarkable because he sees so clearly into the heart of the American character that his criticism transcends his era, and depressing because we're still fighting the same battles today that he was then. I wish he was still around to help us.

I'll leave you with one more quote from the same book:

It is argued against certain books, by virtuosi of moral alarm, that they depict vice as attractive. This recalls the king who hanged a judge for deciding that an archbishop was a mammal.

Green Porno Is Back!!!!!

2010-04-20T19:40:00.002-04:00

It's too good to be true. Isabella Rossellini has made a follow-up to Green Porno called Seduce Me. She covered the bees in Green Porno, so Seduce Me touches on the birds and other non-mammals -- with Isabella in all of the bizarre animal costumes you could ever want. Also, a lot of beefy arms. You can watch the "first season" by following the link. It features three minute segments about cuttlefish, ducks, snakes, salmon and bedbugs and it's as wonderful and weird as ever!

Bravo, Mr. President

2010-04-16T08:52:00.002-04:00

The New York Times reports:

President Obama on Thursday ordered his health secretary to issue new rules aimed at granting hospital visiting rights to same-sex partners.

The White House announced the rule changes, which will also make it easier for gay men and lesbians to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners, in a memorandum released Thursday night. In it, the president said the new rules would affect any hospital that participates in Medicare or Medicaid, the government programs to cover the elderly and the poor.

“Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindness and caring of a loved one at their sides,” Mr. Obama said in the memorandum, adding that the rules could also help widows and widowers who rely on friends and members of religious orders who care for one another. But he says gay men and lesbians are “uniquely affected” because they are often barred from visiting partners with whom they have spent decades.

I like Obama but he has been less than a full-throated supporter of gay rights. (That's right, I said "full-throated," deal with it.) He may be making a tiny incremental move like this one because he hopes to tap some gay money for the midterms. But whatever his reasons this is great news.

Nerd Sex at "In the Flesh" Reading

2010-04-16T00:10:00.003-04:00

Tonight I went to the In the Flesh Reading Series where Rachel Kramer Bussel's topic of the month was nerd sex, a topic after my own heart. A lot of the readings were rather off topic although still good.

The two stories that stood out most to me, however, were also the two nerdiest. Mike Albo read a story set in the fantasy world of pornographic spam e-mails. Mike prefaced his story by saying he does nothing but stare at his computer and masturbate all day and then read an extremely witty and hilarious piece where buxom fantasy sluts who write in broken English hit on the reader, go on about their affairs with butterflies and the Nike logo and then transform into desperate bored gay men or sex-starved Midwest housewives.

Emerald closed the evening with the only actual erotica story of the evening -- that is to say, the only one with an explicit sex scene. In it, the protagonist takes her broken laptop to the Apple Store Genius Bar, meets three beautiful computer geeks who she invites into the back alley, one at a time, to fuck her while the others fix her computer. The story is apparently in Best Women's Erotica 2010 and was so hot that I'm planning on picking up a copy just so I can read the whole thing.

All in all, it was an even more fun time than usual -- nerdy sex stories warm my comic-loving, sci-fi watching, little Trekkie heart. Here's hoping Rachel comes back the the topic with more actually nerdy material. Nerds rule most every sex subculture, so you know there's gotta be some great material!

The Vault - Breaking Upwards

2010-04-15T14:31:00.003-04:00

Breaking Upward (2010)
directed by Daryl Wein
written by Peter Duchan and Zoe Lister Jones
starring: Zoe Lister Jones, Daryl Wein

I went into Breaking Upwards with a misapprehension which I admit is going to color this review: I thought it was a movie about polyamory. I could be excused for making this mistake. The film’s trailer shows the central couple questioning monogamy, talking about seeing other people, discussing the terms of seeing other people, going on dates, cruising Greenwich Village hipsters at a Greenwich Village hipster party together, and dealing with jealousy over interacting with other people. It has gotten some attention in the poly blogosphere, which is how I heard about it.

But Breaking Upwards definitely isn’t a film about polyamory. It is a film about Zoe and Daryl, a young, Jewish, artistic couple that live in Greenwich Village. They love each other but the passion is gone. However, they are so co-dependent that neither one can take the blow of instant separation so they concoct a novel scheme of progressive separation. They begin by spending three days a week apart from each other, then tentatively begin seeing other people. They quickly start to notice other people and let them into their lives, causing a number of conflicting feelings. Daryl helps Zoe hit on a man at a party but is jealous about her casual sex with an actor. When he sleeps with his writer boss and a new acquaintance, Zoe asks not to be given the details.

Their arrangement perplexes their parents. Daryl’s mother is left out of the loop (leading to some destructive prying) but Daryl’s father seems to quietly understand what his son is going through. We get the feeling from certain remarks Daryl makes about his parents’ marriage that his dad understands what it means to love someone but not be in love with her anymore but the filmmakers never follow up so I couldn’t tell if Daryl’s insights were real or if he was too young to understand his parents yet. Zoe’s mother is much more free-spirited. She has dabbled in polyamory and takes the young couple to a meeting of middle aged poly people. The parents were the best part of the whole film, because they added some wisdom, perspective and humor to Zoe and Daryl’s melodrama.

Zoe and Daryl briefly flirt with the idea of maintaining their open relationship. He even considers turning down a career opportunity that requires him to move to Vancouver to stay with her. But his mother forces them to ask themselves if this kind of relationship can last. I’d answer yes, but the movie says no as if it’s a foregone conclusion. They don’t want a complicated open relationship that requires them to confront their feelings for each other and fly in the face of Daryl’s mother’s expectations, they choose to avoid all that drama and end it… in the middle of a Passover Seder with their families and friends looking on and participating in the recriminations. Well, so much for avoiding all that drama. Daryl decides to move to Vancouver after all and as the taxi arrives to take him to the airport he sees Zoe across the street crying and smiling and waving to him. Meaning they are no hard feelings? I’m not quite sure. It was a weird scene.

I saw the movie with my partner Annabelle River. The two of us laughed very loud at a moment in the movie when Zoe and Daryl are seen reading Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong. Annabelle liked that book while I couldn’t even finish it, and my problem with this movie was exactly the same as my problem with the book. I found it very difficult to sympathize with these people as they floundered in a problem of their own creation as if it was something that had just happened to them. Occasionally the film delivered a poignant and touching moment where I really connected with Zoe and Daryl but more often their interactions with each other and others were cold and ambiguous. I couldn’t tell why the filmmakers had included many of the scenes or what they thought I would get out of watching them. Furthermore, all of the secondary partners that Zoe and Daryl interact with were poorly developed, mere plot devices, as if making them more than clichés (a pretty girl next door, a horn dog who bolts after sex, etc.) would bring up questions the filmmakers didn’t want to address. For that matter, Zoe and Daryl don’t have much going on in their characters. I can’t think of a single thing I learned about either one the doesn’t have to do with their relationship, their jobs (he’s an aspiring writer, she’s an aspiring actress) and the fact they’re Jewish. The parents were developed much better and I suspect that had more to do with good acting than good writing.

So to sum up, Breaking Upwards is well made and feature some great actors. It has some nice moments and some beautiful footage of Greenwich Village at its most charming. Despite this, the characterization and story are mostly a yawn. The film poses some interesting questions about alternative ways to set up relationships and then ignores them. If the filmmakers had been interested in exploring the answers, their film would have been much more interesting.

Well, That's... Interesting... ????

2010-04-14T23:36:00.003-04:00

Wii Fit Injury Turns Woman Into a Sex Addict

I just followed a Slog link to this article on Yahoo! news. And I have absolutely nothing to say about it. Nothing insightful, nothing mocking, nothing funny. It sounds fake to me. But it's geeky sex, so here it is! Enjoy... I guess...

The Stacks - Scalped #36

2010-04-06T06:30:00.000-04:00

Scalped #36: "A Fine Action of an Honorable Catholic Spaniard"
written by Jason Aaron
illustrated by Davide Furnò
DC Comics/Vertigo, 2010

You may not be familiar with Scalped. It certainly hasn't done anything before now would warrant mentioning it on a blog like this. It's a crime comic book that follows the adventures and misadventures of a number of Native American cops and robbers on a Lakota reservation is South Dakota, a reservation haunted by violent years of government repressionand civil rights activism in the 1970s. (For a brief history lesson, click here.)

Scalped has been compared to The Sopranos, except with Indians instead of mafiosos. So far the series has focused on the undercover FBI agent and general badass Dashiell Bad Horse. He is trying to take down corrupt tribal elder and casino owner Lincoln Red Crow -- and discovering things are not as morally black and white as he assumed. The series also features an ensemble cast from all walks of reservation life, many of whom it has only begun to explore 36 issues in.

One of these is Shunka. He's Red Crow's trusted right-hand man, doer of the dirty work. He's part hitman, part consigliere, always in the background, the only man on the reservation who might be a bigger badass than Bad Horse. Writer Jason Aaron hasn't developed the character beyond that. Issue #36 opens with Shunka breaking and entering, holding a man at gunpoint, threatening to kill him -- then embracing him and fucking his brains out. Shunka is gay, and deep in the closet.

The issue explores homosexuality and homophobia among modern American Indians. Shunka's lover Joseph Crane tells him that Indians traditionally respected gay and transgender people, whom some tribes dubbed Two-Spirits, but that in modern times they have assimilated the homophobic attitudes of the white rural communities surrounding their reservations. In the story, Crane is a tribal leader in a neighboring state who embarrassed the wrong people by coming out. Shunka is there to help intimidate him into silence but it doesn't work and Joseph Crane ends up murdered. Shunka's first reaction is to shrug and leave town, but he has started to fall for Crane. The issue ends with Shunka deciding to unleash his own brand of justice on the men who murdered Crane.

Since Scalped is frequently compared to The Sopranos, people are going to want to compare Shunka to Vito Spatafore, the closeted mobster who is outed and eventually killed on that series. But the comparison doesn't do Scalped justice. Jason Aaron is giving us a much more interesting portrayal of homophobia in gangland. Vito Spatafore's story always rubbed me the wrong way -- the moment he was outed is he suddenly becomes every gay cliché in the book, as if now that he's out he's reverting to type. One moment he's a mob enforcer, the next he's going to BDSM clubs in full leather gear, running away to a small town in Massachusetts to hang around in antique shops and live in domestic bliss with a tough but sensitive biker. Shunka, by contrast, remains the same person after we learn he's gay. Before, he was a violent badass that we didn't really like. That hasn't changed -- although, romantics that we are, we're rooting for him to get justice for his murdered lover.

That's the reason why Scalped is handling its gay story better than The Sopranos did -- no stereotypes. Shunka is a criminal and a murderer. He doesn't go running to the antique shop when we find out he's gay. He stays true to form and gets ready for a blood bath, gay stereotypes be damned. This story is not being played for laughs. It is deadly serious.

The story concludes in Scalped #37, on sale on April 28.

Breaking Upwards

2010-03-29T21:28:00.005-04:00

Somebody (not me) has recently said polyamory is the new black. Yeah, it sort of is. There's a new movie coming out about a poly relationship. Normally, I would be very wary but its trailer is so charming that I'm totally disarmed. I will go see this movie, no problem. Maybe it's beautiful use of New York as a backdrop. Maybe it's the parents, who seem hilarious. Maybe it's the naturalistic sounding dialogue, which reminds me a lot of the absolutely fabulous Humpday. I don't know. But I definitely have a good feeling about this movie. Yes, it's going to be melodramatic -- every attempt to address poly is melodramatic because, let's all admit it, poly is melodramatic. But I feel like it has promise anyway.

According to the website it opens on Friday in New York. You can see it in Los Angeles and San Francisco shortly thereafter.

Pope vs. Dalai Lama

2010-03-14T10:03:00.002-04:00

from John Safran vs. God
via Feminisnt

Evangelicals Threaten Traditional Families More Than Gay Marriage

2010-03-13T12:19:00.001-05:00

I want to recommend everyone read an article from Friday's Christian Science Monitor called "High Divorce Rates and Teen Pregnancy Are Worse in Conservaive States Than Liberal States".

The headline of this article shouldn't surprise anyone. Everyone knows abstenience-only education doesn't work so it's no surprise that teen pregnancy rates are higher in areas that have a large number of evangelical Christians who think try to scare kids away from sex by downplaying contraception. The high failure rate of marriages in these communities also shouldn't shock anybody -- evangelicals believe a lot of myths about marriage, enter into them with unrealistic expectations and end up more disappointed. No surprise there.

No, the reason you should read this article is that it follows up this news with some very well-reasoned analysis. In fact, it if the first time that I've seen a mainstream media source explicitly state something that I have always believed -- conservatives, not liberals, are responsible for the decline of the American family.

The reasoning goes like this: Evangelical Christians in Nevada, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma look around them and lots of divorce and teen pregnancy. They think, "Why is marriage in so much trouble in my state?" They look at all of the alternatives to marriage gaining popularity in places like New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland. They think, "These cultural changes are creating misery all around me, but they aren't fully established yet where I live. I should oppose them with religion, abstenience-only education, and by oppressing gay people."

They don't realize that Nevada, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma have the highest five divorce rates in the country, while New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland have the lowest five divorce rates in the country. When it comes to teenage pregnancy, those liberal states are 44th, 50th, 46th, 48th and 40th nationally. Meanwhile Nevada, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma are 19th, 10th, 2nd, 5th and 6th nationally. Since the evangelicals haven't bothered to look up the stats, they don't know that traditional families in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maryland aren't experiencing any of the negative effects supposedly caused by the decadence surrounding them -- gays and swingers and kinksters and polyamorists and abortionists and so on. And the ignorance of the statistics cuts both ways: To the people in the blue states, the red state crowd seem to have lost their minds since they're freaking out about things that don't seem like big problems.

The evangelicals never consider that the high divorce and teen pregnancy rates they observe all around them are caused by something going on in their own state rather than by the decadence they perceived in other parts of the country. So they step up their attempts to fight the decline of the family, in the process forcing people who don't want traditional marriage at all and people who aren't ready for traditional marriage yet into traditional marriages, while feeding disinformation about sex to their children. And their problems get worse. So they try harder. And their problems get even worse. So they try harder still.

I was so happy when I read the Christian Science Monitor piece. For a long time, it has been completely maddening to me that no one in the mainstream media has ever explicitly talked about this theory. It's too bad that the Monitor buried the true subject of their article under a headline that just cites the statistics. I would have prefered something more explicit like, say, "Evangelicals Threaten Traditional Families More Than Gay Marriage" -- but I'll take what I can get. I just hope it won't be too long before news agencies all over the country pick up this story and run with it, because I'm a kinky, polyamorous, sex-positive, gay-friendly guy and I want to protect the traditional family from all of its enemies!

Lazer Tits

2010-03-13T09:57:00.002-05:00

I used to spend my Saturday morning lying on the couch watching cartoons. Now that I've grown up I spend it lying in bed surfing around the Internet. It's the same basic concept.

My favorite site of the morning (so far): a blog called Lazer Tits. The name pretty much describes it. It's a bunch of retro girlie pictures the subjects of which have apparently discovered, after all these years, the ability to shoot lasers out of their tits. And these bloggers have decided to showcase these talented ladies in all their disco glory (and, as you will see, it is a lot of disco glory!).

You know, every once in a while I tell someone the title of this blog and they don't get what geeky has to do with sex and I have to try to explain it. From now on, I'm just going to send them to Lazer Tits.

Via Slog

Going for the Gold

2010-02-26T13:28:00.002-05:00

I know there is a rumor that the reason that I haven't been blogging for the past few weeks is that I'm an Olympic athlete and I've been in Vancouver competing. Sadly this is not true.

I say sadly because Carnal Nation is reporting that the athletes in the Olympic Village have used up all the condoms that have been provided for them, a total of 100,000! Apparently 8,500 emergency condoms are being rushed in. According to the article:

Canadian skier Emily Brydon believes the condoms are being used for safer sex. "What happens at Olympic Village stays at Olympic village,” she says. “There's a lot of stress pent up over the week, so it's safe to say that some good times happen."

Snowboarder Crispin Liscomb agrees. "Everyone focuses so much on their event for their days, that in afternoon it's on. After four years, and really months and months for some of the sports with nothing but water and granola, these guys are ready to part and enjoy and vent."

Some might say it is a little be sensationalist to imply that the entire Olympic Village has turned into a huge orgy full of very beautiful, very athletic people... but that's what I prefer to believe so I'm going to imply away. Yes, the hottest, most exclusive orgy you'll never be invited to is going on right now in Vancouver, and the countries of the world are being united as never before.

Those Crazy Trannies Aren't Crazy Anymore in France

2010-02-12T11:35:00.002-05:00

The French government has just announced that it no longer considers transsexualism to be a mental illness. It is the first country in the world to do so.

V-Day Approaching: Save the Vaginas

2010-02-07T09:31:00.002-05:00

This article horrified the hell out of me this morning. It is called "The Six Weirdest Things Women Do to Their Vaginas."

And as weird as these six things are, the weirdest thing that I've ever heard of doing to a vagina -- bedazzling it, also known as (and it's hard to even write it) vagazzling -- is not on the list.

Come on, people. Leave vaginas alone. I promise you it ain't broke. Please, for the love of God, don't try to fix it!

The Joke Is In Your Brain

2010-02-05T06:31:00.001-05:00

Make Haiti Your Valentine?

2010-02-03T19:50:00.003-05:00

Today's Savage Love Letter of the day:

I enjoyed the opening to "Savage Lovecast" 172 in which you described being asked for advice from mainstream publications on "spicing up" couples sex lives. I thought your response was great. My wife and I, big fans of yours and the show, saw the devastation from the earthquake in Haiti and felt the need to do as much as we possibly could. We decided that we'd take the money we'd normally spend on Valentine's Day—flowers, dinner out, and the other stuff you came out so strongly against—and donate that money to the relief effort in Haiti. We're encouraging others to do the same. It's cheesy and lame but love doesn't cost a thing, and neither does staying home on Valentine's Day and fucking.

The Stacks - Howl on Trial

2010-02-03T08:05:00.001-05:00

Howl on Trial
edited by Bill Morgan & Nancy J. Peters
City Light Books, 2006

Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl was first published by the small press run by San Francisco's famous City Lights Bookshop in 1956. The books, printed in the UK, were seized by Customs as they entered the US on the grounds that they were obscene material. The seizure created enough press to justify a second edition, which City Lights owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti had printed locally so that Customs would have no authority. In 1957, undercover officers purchased a copy of the book at the bookstore and then brought charges against Ferlinghetti and the clerk that sold the book. The book was labeled obscene and banned. The court case that followed was one of about a dozen cases that changed America's strict obscenity laws so that books that employed gutter language and sexual imagery (frequently homosexual imagery) in pursuit of lofty literary goals could be sold in the Land of the Free.

Reading Howl, it isn't difficult to spot the passages that the censors may have objected to.

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sits on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candel and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended faiting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N. C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver -- joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pettycoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, (...)

In the end, the publishers convinced the court to rule that Howl was a serious work of literature, to add support to the legal precedent set during the Ulysses obscenity trial that held that an artistic work must be judged as a whole and not on the basis of a few passages taken out of context, and slam the door on the argument that a serious work of literature could be banned entirely because it was unsuitable for children.

Howl on Trial is a fantastic record of these historical events. It contains some historical perspective -- an introduction by Ferlinghetti, a timeline of important dates in the history of censorship, etc. -- but the genius of the book is that it tell most of its story through primary source material. It contains the text of Howl, news articles, editorials and criticisms by famous critics, letters to the editor by ordinary San Francisco citizens both in support of and in opposition to the poem, and the full transcript of the trial.

This is going to be a short review since there isn't much to review. You can't exactly criticize a court transcript based on its literary merit! If you are interested in history, if obscenity trials interest you as much as they interest me, you will find this account as fascinating as I did.

I have only one complaint that I wish the book had addressed. It is all well and good that Howl was ruled to be literature and not smut -- and therefore not subject to censorship. But what about the smut? Neither the historical figures, nor the historians who contribute their opinions stand up for the rights of authors and publishers to publish obscene material that doesn't have literary value. That omission makes me think we might not have come as far since 1957 as we think we have.

Webster's Dictionary Banned in California for Sexual Content

2010-01-25T18:43:00.003-05:00

The Guardian reports some southern California school districts have banned Webster's Dictionary because of it's "graphic" definition of oral sex as "oral stimulation of the genitals." Banning books in a hysteria over sexual content has truly, truly reached a new low.

This strikes me as the perfect thing to post on a blog called Geeky Sex -- it's an attack upon sex and upon geeks. I mean, who else would look up oral sex in the dictionary, right?

I could point out how ridiculous this is on a number of levels: for instance, it is so non-graphic a person who had no idea what oral sex is probably couldn't picture the act from this definition and would at the very least need to look up "oral" and "genitals" as well.

But what would be the point of explaining how ridiculous it is. I would rather talk about the fact that sex-phobics have become so frightened of sex that they have started attacking words, rather than ideas, and attacking them in the most basic, elemental way. In the past they've been content to ban ideas that are adjacent to sex -- for instance, the 779 pages of Ulysses that don't contain explicit sexual imagery. But that no longer is enough. Now they will not be content until they have banned the entire English language, for it isn't until children are condemned to a state of total illiteracy and ignorance, able to communicate with each other in only through grunts and gestures, that they will be safe from knowledge of sex.

Five-Foot Shelf - Update #1

2010-01-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote that someone needed to make a list that collects the absolutely indespensible sex-positive sex books so bookstores that don't have a clue about good sex writing would have a standard to aspire to. I likened this to the Harvard Five-Foot Shelf, a collection of supposedly indespensible literature in 51 volumes selected by the president of Harvard University about 90 years ago.

I was foolhardy enough to undertake this project. However, I wasn't quite foolhardy enough to believe I could select the 51 essential sex books all on my own, so I sollicited recommendations from my readers. I've received a few comments and e-mails full of suggestions

Here's what we have so far.

Annabelle River, of Annabelle's Manifesto recommends:

- Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
- Mommy's Little Girl, by Susie Bright
- Public Sex by Pat Califia
- Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
- The Devil at Large, by Erica Jong
- Different Loving, by Gloria Brame & William Brame
- Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, by John D'Emilio
- The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, by Elna Baker

Teresa of The Teresa Jusino Experience, recommends:

- Virgin: The Untouched History, by Hanne Blank

Via e-mail, D. M. recommends:

- Whipping Girl, by Julia Serrano
- My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
- Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein

Cleofaye recommends:

- Sex for One, by Betty Dodson

I wish to also nominate the following books that no one else mentioned:

- Justine, by DAF de Sade
- Philosophy in the Bedroom, by DAF de Sade
- Opening Up, by Tristan Taormino
- The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, by Tristan Taormino
- Henry and June, by Anaïs Nin
- X: The Erotic Treasury, edited by Susie Bright
- Sex for Dummies, by Dr. Ruth Westheimer & Pierre Lehu
- Under the Roofs of Paris, by Henry Miller
- Some of the themed erotica collections from Cleis Press edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel -- but I've only dipped into a few of them and don't know which specific ones to nominate!

Finally, I wish to use my editorial power to promote the following books directly to the list:

1. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey
2. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, by Alfred Kinsey
3. The Guide to Getting It On, by Paul Joannides
4. SM 101, by Jay Wiseman
5. The Ethical Slut, by Dossie Easton & Janet W. Hardy
6. Anal Health and Pleasure, by Jack Morin
7. The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex, by Cathy Winks & Anne Semans

***

We're off to a good start but we're never going to finish it without your suggestions. Please send them -- and encourage your friends to send theirs!

Young James Dean

2010-01-19T21:15:00.004-05:00

You must watch this music video of "Young James Dean" by Girlyman. It is directed by Margaret Cho. The song is about queering gender identity and the video features a lot of really hot butches, femmes, trans guys, drag queens and other awesome queer people.

Via Margaret Cho's Blog

The Paradox of 1960s Erotica

2010-01-19T06:12:00.005-05:00

This weekend I was in Chicago to visit Annabelle and to do some research on a new project. For the project (which I'll talk about later), I spent part of the day on Saturday and Sunday at the Leather Archives & Museum in East Rogers Park looking at vintage erotica and learning about the history of the Chicago gay leather scene. I've already written almost a year ago about LA&M's exhibits on the history of the gay leather community in Chicago and their wonderful collection of books about BDSM -- I'm still looking for a private collection to equal it in New York.

Most of the erotica that I looked at at LA&M this weekend was the pulp variety from the 1960s. It always strikes me how very different old erotica is from today's variety. Today, erotica stories tend to be fairly realistic depictions of sexual encounters you could actually have. Not so in the pulp stories of the past. Those stories are full of fantastic and bizarre situations. They take place in exotic locales -- Europe, New Orleans and (the most debauched of all) New York. They're filled with immoral Oriental girls and insatiable mulattos who coerce their victims with razor blades. And despite the fact that these books were being labeled obscene and their writers, publishers and distributors persecuted for being moral degenerates, the stories are -- fascinatingly -- full of negative messages about sex. Promiscuous female characters are shamed as sluts and harlots. As surely as the sun rises, a woman who gets a taste of sex will fall into a spiral of depravity and degradation, homosexuals usually end up dead, and sadists are possessed of an uncontrollable bloodlust that inevitably leads to murder.

This echo of moral judgement is one of the most fascinating things about erotica of this period -- the very condemnation and sex-negativism that interfered with the sale of this kind of material is the source of most of most of its stories. It nearly qualifies as Stockholm Syndrome. The books ridicule and perpetuate harmful stereotypes about the very kind of people who presumably consumed them. Why do the authors and publishers decry and lament the conditions that allow them to make a living? Why do the readers of these appreciate such a thorough denunciation of perverts like them (or, at least, the type of pervert they would be if they could find the courage)? It is paradoxical, so say the least!

Another striking thing about these books is how many of them insist that the subject matter is true. Often this comes as a disclaimer on the cover or before the title page that goes something like this: "I wish I could tell you what you're about to read was fiction but, sadly, every horrible word of it is true." It then goes on to explain that the names, locations and other particulars of this true account have been changed to protect the identity of the characters from anyone who might try to fact-check the "true story."

Another variation on this theme is the so-called "documentary" book. These expose the "sordid" details of the underground sexual communities of the day -- homosexuals, sadomasochists, sex workers -- in a format that poses as either journalism or psychology. One suspects from the very unrealistic dialogue in the "interviews" that the material in most of these books is made up wholesale, but some of the most famous ones are probably actual reportage. These books are so fascinating because they both condemn sexual "perversion" while at the same time feeding it. I mean, for what reason would anyone buy such a book except for the thrill of reading about all the hot things it condemns? One wonders how many people found their sexual subcultures after reading condemnations of them in books like Louis Berg's The Velvet Underground.

***

While at the Leather Archives, I also had the chance to see a fascinating documentary by filmmaker Ron Pajak called Quearborn and Perversion. The film details the history of the gay community in Chicago, beginning in the 1934 and ending in 1974. The film was a fascinating account of what it meant to be gay and lesbian in one of America's toughest cities at that time. It takes it's name from the Chicago police department's nickname for the corner of Dearborn and Division Streets, a prominent gay cruising area at that time.

I wish I could discuss the film at length but I was recovering from the flu that night and rather loopy, so some of the details are eluding me today. However, I did very much enjoy the Q&A after the film with director Ron Pajak and Chuck Renslow, who opened the famous leather bar Gold Coast in June 1958 and spoke very eloquently about the period, including some interesting anecdotes about bribing the police to avoid raids.

Geeky Sex: Now on Twitter

2010-01-12T19:49:00.002-05:00

Somehow I forgot to mention... I'm a Twit.

I joined Twitter a week or two ago. If you have an account, please follow me. We'll see if I can say anything interesting in 140 characters and I'll make sure you never miss a Geeky Sex post.

Sex Worker Literati - 1/7/10

2010-01-08T08:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday night I went to Happy Ending Lounge on the Lower East Side to see Sex Worker Literati, a monthly reading by people who are or once were sex workers of various different types. Sex work activism (and I think this event qualifies as activism since increasing sex worker visibility is a major goal) is a cause I support but in which I don't feel very engaged -- I've never been a sex worker, nor have I ever known one well (to the best of my knowledge). Having never been to this event before I was a little worried that I wouldn't relate to the stories. Turns out anyone can relate to good writing!

Sex work activist Audacia Ray hosted the event along with David Henry Sterry, the author of Hos, Hustlers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, a book about sex work that has been getting quite a bit of press lately. A number of writers read on the theme of "My First Time." Ray started it out with a story about anally fisting a New York Fire Fighter when she worked at a massage parlor and the evening took off from there. Zoe Hansen told about the first time she used heroin (and made us all want some). Chelsea Summers told about her first night working as a stripper. Jennifer Blowdryer told us about her first porn movie with hilarious, deadpan delivery. David Henry Sterry told the most heartwarming bestiality story anyone's ever heard. Scarlett Fever told us a hot story about working in a Times Square strip club. Damien Decker closed out the evening by telling how a black man raised in upper middle class Sweden fakes enough racial hatred to become a professional interracial cuckolder.

This highpoint of the evening for me was somewhat unrelated to the main event (so often the case). I met Chelsea Summers through a friend of mine, and talk to her about why men aren't often sex writers and whether Fleshlights are creepier than giant veiny dildos. I've been a fan of Summers's writing for Filthy Gorgeous Things and her blog pretty dumb things ever since I heard her interviewed by Susie Bright more than a year ago.

So True

2010-01-07T00:45:00.002-05:00

The Onion reports: Nation's Nipples Severely Under-Clamped, U.S. Bureau Of Masochism Reports.

This article is both funny and heartening to see.

Many have praised the study as an urgently needed wake-up call, saying they hope it will encourage more direct government involvement in the public's eroticized pain needs.

"With any luck, this study is just the beginning," Topeka, KS submissive Glenn Lange said. "Unless we want to live in a nation where you'll only find nipple vices or welting rods in a museum, the government needs to step up."

However, citizens like Nathan Cardozzi of Boston disagreed, claiming that increased government regulation would only stymie what has always been a private act of exquisite torture between two or more consenting adults.

"Mmmph mmmph mrrrr mmmmph," Cardozzi said through the ball gag he was forced to wear to plug his filthy voice hole. "Mmmmrh mrrrhhhhh mmmph mummm."

"Mmmrphmphmmhmmmrh," he added, slowly shaking his head.

via My Licit Affairs

Sex, or the Lack Thereof, in Contemporary Literature

2010-01-05T07:41:00.001-05:00

Just in time for my Five-Foot Shelf project comes a a fascinating article about sex in modern literature in yesterday's New York Times Magazine!

The article, written by Katie Roiphe and entitled "The Naked and the Conflicted," essentially accuses the most recent generation of male novelists of being prudes, and it backs up its claims. Citing the work of Michael Chabon, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Benjamin Kunkel and Jonathan Safran Foer, and comparing them to male novelists of the previous generation such as John Updike, Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow, the author makes a case that male novelists have become a lot more hesitant to explore sexuality than their prececessors.

Rather than an interest in conquest or consummation, there is an obsessive fascination with trepidation, and with a convoluted, postfeminist second-guessing. Compare Kunkel’s tentative and guilt-ridden masturbation scene in “Indecision” with Roth’s famous onanistic exuberance with apple cores, liver and candy wrappers in “Portnoy’s Complaint.” Kunkel: “Feeling extremely uncouth, I put my penis away. I might have thrown it away if I could.” Roth also writes about guilt, of course, but a guilt overridden and swept away, joyously subsumed in the sheer energy of taboo smashing: “How insane whipping out my joint like that! Imagine what would have been had I been caught red-handed! Imagine if I had gone ahead.” In other words, one rarely gets the sense in Roth that he would throw away his penis if he could.

The literary possibilities of their own ambivalence are what beguile this new generation, rather than anything that takes place in the bedroom. In Michael Chabon’s “Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” a woman in a green leather miniskirt and no underwear reads aloud from “The Story of O,” and the protagonist says primly, “I refuse to flog you.” Then take the following descriptions from Jonathan Franzen’s novel “The Corrections”: “As a seducer, he was hampered by ambivalence.” “He had, of course, been a lousy, anxious lover.” “He could hardly believe she hadn’t minded his attacks on her, all his pushing and pawing and poking. That she didn’t feel like a piece of meat that he’d been using.” (And of course there are writers like Jonathan Safran Foer who avoid the corruptions of adult sexuality by choosing children and virgins as their protagonists.) (…)

The younger writers are so self-¬conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically un¬toward. For a character to feel himself, even fleetingly, a conquering hero is somehow passé. More precisely, for a character to attach too much importance to sex, or aspiration to it, to believe that it might be a force that could change things, and possibly for the better, would be hopelessly retrograde. Passivity, a paralyzed sweetness, a deep ambivalence about sexual appetite, are somehow taken as signs of a complex and admirable inner life. These are writers in love with irony, with the literary possibility of self-consciousness so extreme it almost precludes the minimal abandon necessary for the sexual act itself, and in direct rebellion against the Roth, Updike and Bellow their college girlfriends denounced. (Recounting one such denunciation, David Foster Wallace says a friend called Updike “just a penis with a thesaurus”).

This generation of writers is suspicious of what Michael Chabon, in “Wonder Boys,” calls “the artificial hopefulness of sex.” They are good guys, sensitive guys, and if their writing is denuded of a certain carnality, if it lacks a sense of possibility, of expansiveness, of the bewildering, transporting effects of physical love, it is because of a certain cultural shutting down, a deep, almost puritanical disapproval of their literary forebears and the shenanigans they lived through.

I live at the crossroads of being a sex geek and a literary geek (as well as several other kinds of geek, to be perfectly honest) and I have been feeling exactly what this article is describing this way for a long time, without being able to express it so well. I’m a fiction writer and lately I’ve been wrestling with the question of how to incorporate my interest in sexuality into my work. I’ve been having a hard time. While I’m certainly familiar with all the great writers who have talked about sex in very interesting ways I can’t get over the feeling that sex is not literary. Or at least not appropriate in contemporary literature.

Roiphe does an eloquent job documenting this, but doesn’t go looking for the causes (except for suggesting at one point that novelists of the past generation might have been emboldened by court decisions to explore topics formerly banned under obscenity laws). It’s nothing but speculation but I wonder if it’s a side effect of the proliferation of writing workshops, and the homogenizing effect they have had on the most recent literary generation. The creative writing workshop has moved novel-writing into the academic sphere. When Plato separated intellectual rigor from physical pleasure, he bequeathed a stuffy attitude about sex to modern academia.

I also wonder if the publishing industry has something to do with the decline of sex in contemporary literature. It’s difficult to prove that publishers rule out publishing authors write about sex—but the fact that most books that take a serious look at sex are published by small presses is People’s Exhibit Number One. With the exception of a few smaller presses like Cleis or Greenery that publish erotica that is also well written, major publishers are not especially eager to take literary writing that includes sex.

A personal experience also makes me suspicious of publishers. A few years ago, I had very little trouble getting a story I wrote about a political topic published in a major literary review. My follow-up story was about polyamorous teenagers and I shopped it around to a dozen major reviews without any luck. Maybe they just didn't think the story was as good as I thought it was -- there's no way to know -- but I couldn't help feeling the topic played a role. It seems likely that the sexual revolution of the ’60s and ’70s, coupled with fall of obscenity laws, created a brief period when writers who talked about sex were welcomed by publishers. The backlash of second-wave feminism and political correctness may have set up the opposite effect. Today’s writers may want to write about sex but concentrate on other topics because they just can’t get those books published.

In any case, I greatly recommend you read the entire article and not just the excerpt posted above, and kudos to the Times Magazine for choosing to publish such a thought-provoking piece.