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!!!)
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The Stacks - The Other Side of Desire
The Other Side of Desireby 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.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Five Fun Links
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.
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.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The Slow Erosion of the Obscenity Laws
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.
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.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Please Master, by Allen Ginsberg
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:
Read the whole thing, if you dare...
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...
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Nerds in BDSM
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.
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.
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.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Voodoo Sex Ritual
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.
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.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Oscar Dilemma
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.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Rihanna's "S&M"
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.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Stacks - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl With the Dragon Tattooby 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.
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