Five Fun Links #10

1) In honor of the Iowa Caucuses: SANTORUM!

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

3) A blog about writing literary erotica.

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

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

Review: Big Sex, Little Death

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!)

The Stacks - Howl on Trial

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

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.

My Take On the Abortion Restrictions In the Health Care Bill

It just goes to show that Congressional Democrats love America so much that there is no sacrifice that they wouldn't force vulnerable, marginalized, poor women to make for their country.

Yes, these poor women are true American heroes. Many of them are minorities, some speak very little English, most are in desperate situations and have nowhere to turn, and almost none of them know anyone with any influence in the American government who gives a shit about what happens to them. But despite all of that, there is no price too high for them to pay for their country, whether they want to or not. God bless them.

New Hampsire Approves Marriage Equality

New York Times:

NEW HAMPSHIRE LEGALIZES SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

BOSTON — The New Hampshire legislature approved revisions to a same-sex marriage bill on Wednesday, and Gov. John Lynch promptly signed the legislation, making the state the sixth to let gay couples wed.

The bill had been through several permutations to satisfy Mr. Lynch and certain legislators that it would not force religious organizations that oppose same-sex marriage to participate in ceremonies celebrating it. Some groups had feared they could be sued for refusing to allow same-sex weddings on their property.

Mr. Lynch, who previously supported civil unions but not marriage for same-sex couples, said in a statement that he had heard “compelling arguments that a separate system is not an equal system.”

“Today,” he said, “we are standing up for the liberties of same-sex couples by making clear that they will receive the same rights, responsibilities — and respect — under New Hampshire law.”

Prop 8 Opposition Crosses Partisan Lines?

This morning the New York Times has a very interesting article symbolizing the way that the fight for gay marriage is now crossing partisan lines.

BUSH V. GORE FOES JOIN TO FIGHT GAY MARRIAGE BAN

SAN FRANCISCO — The David and Ted show is back in business.

Eight and a half years after their epic partisan battle over the fate of the 2000 presidential election, the lawyers David Boies and Theodore B. Olson appeared on the same team on Wednesday as co-counsel in a federal lawsuit that has nothing to do with hanging chads, butterfly ballots or Electoral College votes.

Their mutual goal: overturning Proposition 8, California’s freshly affirmed ban on same-sex marriage. It is a fight that jolted many gay rights advocates — and irritated more than a few — but that Mr. Boies and Mr. Olson said was important enough to, temporarily at least, set aside their political differences.

“Ted and I, as everybody knows, have been on different sides in court on a couple of issues,” said Mr. Boies, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, the contested 2000 vote count in Florida in which Mr. Olson prevailed for George W. Bush. “But this is not something that is a partisan issue. This is something that is a civil rights issue.”

I grew up around a fair number of Republicans and I understand that party's pre-Bush philosophy. While I think their individualist policies can be a tad heartless at times they hold some appeal for me. What I never got was why so many Republicans got so bent out of shape about what other people decided to do in their sex life, since that opposition seemed at odds with their fierce support of self-determination and a person's right to live their life without interference from the government. Now that the GOP has fallen on hard times I'm overjoyed to see some Republicans are reexamining their hypocrisy.

However, not everyone is so happy by this indication that Republicans are pulling their heads out of their asses. A lot of people who have been fighting the battle for gay marriage a lot longer than these two seem to think they're a couple of ambitious glory hounds trying to argue another major case before the Supreme Court and are on the verge of a colossel blunder that their more experienced comrades have been avoiding. A bit further down in the article you'll read:

Not everyone in the gay rights movement, however, was thrilled by the sudden intervention of the two limelight-grabbing but otherwise untested players in the bruising battle over Proposition 8. Some expressed confusion at the men’s motives and outright annoyance at the possibility that a loss before the Supreme Court could spoil the chances of future lawsuits on behalf of same-sex marriage.

“It’s not something that didn’t occur to us,” Matt Coles, the director of the LGBT project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said of filing a federal lawsuit. “Federal court? Wow. Never thought of that.” (...)

“We think its risky and premature,” said Jennifer C. Pizer, marriage project director for Lambda Legal in Los Angeles, adding that a loss at the Supreme Court level could take decades to undo.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal are probably two of the largest players in the fight for marriage equality and their opposition is not a good sign. I admit when I read that I had a paranoid thought -- what if this isn't two celebrity lawyer hogging the limelight. What if it's deliberate sabotage? Are Republicans that smart?

Sad News, Fellow Geeks: Prop 8 Upheld

Today the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage that passed Election Day. Prop 8 was one of the few dark clouds of last November’s election. The Yes on Prop 8 campaign consisted largely of Mormons from Utah using disinformation of interfere in California politics despite the fact that getting involved in politics violates their tax exempt religious organization status and the fact that their own members have been persecuted over marriage. By spreading a lot of crazy rumors (like their claim that if Prop 8 wasn’t passed kids would be required to learn all about gay sex in kindergarten, no matter what their parents’ wishes) and, to a certain extent, preying on the homophobia of the huge black electorate that turned out toe elect Barack Obama, Mormons and other bigoted gay marriage opponents managed to pass the law.

Opponents sued on the basis that denying one minority the right to get married when everybody else can is clearly against the law. Well, apparently the Supreme Court didn’t feel like wading into civil rights issues because they upheld the ban. They did give the gay community a tiny consolation prize: the 18,000 gay couples married in California before the ban took effect will remain legally married. We can only hope the fact that so many gay people can be happily married without undermining straight marriage will change a few minds in 2010. If you look at the statistics, gay marriage has been gaining ground almost everywhere, California included, as people get over their initial knee-jerk reaction.

Closer to home (for me at least) the debate of whether gay marriage should be legalized continues. Today, the state comptroller issued a report that states the economy of the State of New York would benefit greatly from gay weddings. Something to the tune of $210 million would be pumped into the economy in the next three years by gay couples getting hitched, the government estimates. Considering how hard California has been hit by the financial crisis, maybe they should reconsider…

McCain's Daughter Defies the GOP Over Birth Control

Last week in her Daily Beast article "The GOP Doesn't Understand Sex" Meghan McCain, daughter John McCain, took a stand against the Republican abstinence-only approach to sex education and endorsed the use of birth control. She particularly took aim at Bristol Palin, the daughter of her father's former running mate, who with masochistic self-sacrifice to her mother's political ambitions has taken up the abstinence-only cause despite being living proof that it doesn't work.

Meghan McCain writes:

(...) the American public and media remain overly engrossed in our politicians’ sex lives and, as in this case, those of their families. There’s an especially unhealthy attitude among conservatives. Daughters of Republican politicians aren’t expected to have sex, let alone enjoy it—as if there were some strange chastity belt automatically attached to us female offspring. God forbid anyone talk realistically about life experiences and natural, sexual instincts. Nope, the answer is always abstinence. (...)

Here’s what I’ve never understood about the party: its resistance to discussing better access to birth control. As a Republican, I am pro-life. But using birth control and having an abortion are not the same at all. Actually, the best way to prevent abortions is to educate people about birth control and make it widely and easily accessible. True, abstinence is the only way to fully prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Still, the problem with abstinence-only education is that it does not make teenagers and young adults more knowledgeable about all the issues they face if or when they have sex—physically and emotionally.

The key, honestly, is communication between parents and children. At the end of the day, the worst thing parents can do is raise children who are not prepared for the situations they may encounter, especially when they’re not planned. (For anyone who remembers their teen years, you know what I mean.) Unfortunately, Republicans typically don’t like to discuss or deal with things they think are wrong or immoral. And that’s a huge mistake. If we can’t discuss birth control in addition to abstinence, and in a nonjudgmental way, kids will continue to make bad choices for lack of having access to informed, safe options. Not everyone shares the same beliefs, and more importantly, people don’t always react the same way to their circumstances. Which is why it is so important to encourage honest, open communication about the realities of sex within the party at large, and more specifically, between parents and their children.

The entire article is well worth reading. Also worth reading: Susie Bright's response to Meghan McCain on Bright's blog.

Gay Marriage Legalized in Maine!

Yesterday the Maine Legislature passed a law legalizing gay marriage in their state. This morning the governor signed the bill! Gay marriage is legal in Maine. However, citizens have the right to challenge laws in Maine (the "people's veto"). If opponents can get 55,000 signatures there will be a referendum this fall. No one can get married until then.

No, Senator McKinley, I Will Not Co-Sponser a Leadership Bill With You

Porn Star vs. Pervert

Porn star Stormy Daniel is running against Louisiana Senator David Vitter, aka Vitter the Shitter. In 2007 Vitter hired prostitutes so he could indulge his diaper fetish but apologized and saved his political career. Back in November he named him to my list of the Top 10 Sex Scandals of the Bush Era.

According to Daniels, she has been recruited by a grass root political action group that she hasn't even met but that claims not to affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Prop 8 News

Well, it ain't good news... According to the New York Times the California Supreme Court justices seem ready to uphold Proposition 8, writing the gay marriage ban into the state constitution. The only sticking point is apparently the 18,000 marriages conducted before the ban went into effect. The court apprently doesn't think Prop 8 invalidates those marriages. Ken Starr and the homophobe brigade are scrambling for some kind of counter-argument that vaguely makes sense. Nothing so far.

Baby steps, baby steps...

Don't Divorce Us!

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Saddleback Update

The election is too close to call. Dan Savage reports that the definition of the new sex term "saddlebacking" (named for Rick Warren's Saddleback Church) is neck-and-neck between "anal sex with a condom, the opposite of barebacking" and "when straight teenagers have anal sex instead of vaginal sex to supposedly preserve their virginity." Only time will tell.

So True...

via Slog, who got it from Wonkette

(That's Bush's face on the condom. It took me a minute to get it too.)

Define a Sex Term

As anyone who reads about sex, is interested in sex, or has ever had sex should know, Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch in Lake Forest, California, has been invited to give the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration next Tuesday. Warren is much more progressive on a lot of issues than most evangelicals which is undoubtedly why he was invited. Unfortunately Warren isn't so progressive when it comes to gay rights -- he was a big supporter of Prop 8, one of the few dark spots of the November elections. It's hard not to see inviting a California homophobe to the Inauguration as a tacit approval of Prop 8. Obama has tried take some of the sting out of this sleight by inviting gay Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson to give the Inauguration prayer but some people are still royally pissed off.

One of the most creative and hilarious reactions is coming this week from sex columnist Dan Savage -- and the good news is we all can be a part of it. During an interview with Savage last month Stephen Colbert suggested that Saddleback, the name of Warren's church, sounds like some kind of gay sex. Ever since then Savage has been gathering possible definitions for the term from his readers and in this week's column he puts the final definition up for a vote. This isn't new ground for Savage. He and his readers coined the term pegging (anal sex with a dildo), and they forever stained (pun intended) the reputation of Senator Rick Santorum by giving his name to the frothy mixture of feces and lube that is sometimes the accidental by-product of anal sex.

The nominated definitions are:

(1) "Logically, if 'barebacking' means having butt sex with no condom, then 'saddlebacking' should mean having butt sex with a condom."

(2) "Saddleback (verb): to submit someone to any kind of humiliating, unreciprocal sex act, either literally or metaphorically, consented to by passive partner due to submissive/masochistic tendencies, desire for approval, or other darker motive. E.g., 'I don't know why Obama is letting Rick Warren saddleback him into presiding over his inauguration.'"

(3) "The saddleback position involves placing your lubed dick between the butt cheeks of your partner. This position can be performed on your sides or on top of a facedown partner (maybe with a pillow under his or her hips). My favorite way of finishing up the saddlebacking is to lift up and come on my wife's sweaty back. The saddleback is a nice compromise position when your partner won't allow anal entry."

(4) "To saddleback is to rail against gay sex in public while secretly indulging in the same in private. Ted Haggard? Total saddlebacker. Larry Craig? Saddlebacker. Rick Warren? Probably a saddlebacker."

(5) "'Saddlebacking' should be the term for the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities. 'After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she's saving herself for marriage.' Please, please adopt this definition!"

(6) "Saddleback (verb): to ejaculate on the back of a partner at the culmination of doggy-style anal sex."

(7) "Before being invited to give the invocation, Mr. Warren was most noted for his book The Purpose Driven Life. Therefore, 'to saddleback' is to fuck with a purpose, i.e., to procreate. A heterosexual couple asked if they're trying to have children could reply, 'No, we're not ready for kids yet, but we'll probably start saddlebacking next year.'"

I myself favor definition #5. I think it's perfect. You can vote for the one you like best by sending an e-mail to saddleback@savagelove.net with the subject line "saddleback: 5" (or whatever definition you favor). Remember, voting is your civil duty!

Prop 8: The Musical

Music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray). Starring Allison Janney, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, Margaret Cho, and Jack Black as Jesus!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Gays vs. Mormons

The Mormon Church donated as much as 80 percent of the funds raised to pass Proposition 8 in California. You have to admit that's somewhat ironic coming from a group that has famously had its marriage rights attacked. Mormon groups from Utah helped to finance a misinformation campaign that scared some Californians into voting for the measure by falsely claiming that without it schools would be required to teach about same-sex marriage, that parents would have no control over what their children learned about sex in school, that churches would be forced to change their doctrine, and that people could be sued for anti-gay beliefs.

There have been numerous groups that have recently suggested punishing the Mormon Church in some way. A number of activists and blogs, such as America Blog, have begun doing research into the possibilities. Gays have already showed their displeasure at a protest at the headquarters of the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City on Friday night.

A few other ideas retaliatory ideas have been floated. Mormons Stole Our Rights, a new website, is dedicated to revoking the Mormon Church's tax-exempt status as a religious institution. The law says that religious institutions must refrain from significant lobbying efforts and trying to affect legislation. However it isn't clear if the Mormon Church violated the letter of the law, since it did not give money to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign, just encouraged its members to do so.

Another idea is to take our displeasure out on Mormon-owned businesses, a surprisingly long list of large corporations, including American Express, the Marriott Hotel, Dell Computer, Novell and Priceline.com. Check the Mormon Stock Index for a complete list.

The most extreme notion that I've heard is a boycott of the entire state of Utah. Utah rakes in a lot of money each year through tourism and some gay activists think that boycotting Utah ski resorts, national parks and the Sundance Film Festival might send a powerful message to the Mormons.

Election News

California residents passed Proposition 8, amending the state's constitution to ban any further gay marriage. Tens of thousands of gay couples have married in California since a State Supreme Court decision overturned the state's marriage ban. It is unclear whether those marriages will remain valid or whether Proposition 8 will be applied retroactively.

Gay marriage was also banned in Arizona and Florida.

In Arkansas, a referendum made it illegal for gay couples to adopt children.

A Colorado ballot measure that would have defined life as beginning at conception, was soundly defeated. The measure could have made abortion and many kinds of birth control illegal.

A South Dakota ballot initiative to limit abortion was defeated. It was the sequel to at 2006 initiative that banned abortion outright, including cases of rape, incest and instances where the life of the mother was at risk. This ballot initiative made exceptions in those cases and was expected to pass.

Oh, yes, and Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States in a landslide, while his party dramatically increased their majority in the Senate and House.