Success = Federal Censorship

Well, everyone, I've made it. I have arrived at artistic legitimacy, and I wasn't even trying! The way I figure it, if a Federal agency takes notice of what you're doing enough to tell you not to do it, you are a success, which makes me, now, legit.

Check out this image. It's the front of a postcard that apexart was planning to send out to promote my art show, Consent (crappy snapshot, but you get the idea):

Pretty cool, huh? Evocative, intriguing, and yet not explicit. Kind of the perfect thing to mail to 9,000 people in 110 countries, right? Not according to the US Postal Service. I'm getting this all secondhand--I wasn't there for the meeting in which this was actually discussed--but the gist of it is that, when the people at apexart took these postcards and a mockup of the brochure that will feature more explicit images and an essay by yours truly to the Post Office to find out if they would be better off using envelopes, the USPS kind of freaked out. Apparently, according to the Powers That Be, the above image is blatantly pornographic and therefore cannot be mailed out to anyone who has not explicitly requested it. If it is, say the Postal people, apexart could face Federal prison time.

Seriously. They said that.

Look at that image. True, it's from a porn movie (Tristan Taormino's Rough Sex 2) and it features a porn star (Sinnamon Love). And it says the word "porn" on it. But let's take a moment to reflect on what can be sent in the mail. For example, a Victoria's Secret catalogue:

Call me crazy, but that beautiful lady is showing a lot more skin and boob than Sinnamon is on my postcard. And I'm pretty sure that Victoria's Secret catalogs get mailed to hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom don't really want them (like me, for example).

How about a print magazine with a readership of at least several hundred thousand, if not millions, that's sent through the mail every month?

Now, granted, Aubrey Miles isn't getting flogged in that picture. But I've got this suspicion that, given the choice between jerking off to a mostly-clothed, vaguely BDSM image like the one on my postcard, or the one with the totally naked woman with handprints on her tits, most American males might go for the handprint photo.

But my postcard just got censored. Some of this has to do with mailing lists--not everyone on the apexart mailing list signed up for it and therefore there's a bit of a legal leg for anyone who gets offended to stand on if they object and never signed up. But still. Seriously? This is straight up censorship. Freedom of speech my ass.

I'm so fucking edgy, people!

And I'm so glad that this has happened, in a way. Even though it's ridiculous, it points out exactly why it's important for me to speak up on this issue in the first place. The dialogue around pornography and sex positivity in general in this country, despite the efforts of so many for so long, is still nearly nonexistent. The Postal Service would still rather censor material like this that asks people to stop, think, and discuss than deal with any possible fallout. It would rather help disseminate material like the FHM cover above, which is unquestionably sexual and even, many would say, actively promoting the continued objectification of women in America, than help myself and apexart promote a conversation about what pornography is and how it affects us--and how mainstream imagery also affects us. Censorship and a larger unwillingness to talk about these issues is the reason why it's so important for me to keep trying.

The art space is printing up simple white-text-on-black-background postcards with the same text that will be mailed out, and we'll change the brochure to make it more mailing-safe as well. But in the meantime, I've got 3,000 postcards with the image you see above on them that the art space can't mail out. I can, however, mail them to people who request them... Sooooo who wants some postcards? Send me your mailing address to misslagsalot@gmail.com, and proof of government censorship will be yours!

Reflections from Cinekink 2012: Part One

It's that glorious time of year here in NYC when the Cinekink film festival returns to the Anthology Film Archives to entertain, educate, and bring oft-hidden communities of kinksters and the curious together. I'm loving it so far! I've been chosen as a juror to help select winners from this year's short film offerings, which has been tough already given the quality of many of the shorts, and I'll be interviewing directors this Saturday after the Bring It! porn marathon, which is, of course, the most anticipated part of the festival for horny little me.

In the meantime, however, a few observations that will probably all get some more attention later on, when I have a bit more time for reflection.

1) Vajazzling. Cinekink has brought me my first-ever sighting of an in-porn vajazzlement! What's hilarious about this, besides the fact that vajazzling is even a thing, is that the film in which it glitters is one I had already seen. At home, on my teeny tiny little television. I even reviewed it--positively, because it's really a great film. But on my teeny tiny little television at home, I didn't notice the jewels where pubic hair should be because, weirdly, the woman's pubic region is hardly shown at all from the front throughout her sex scene. When I was watching Cabaret Desire on the big screen on Wednesday, however, I caught a glimpse of some raised bumps in the pubes region and thought, "Either that's a vajazzle, or he's eating stone-ground mustard off her private parts right now, and I REALLY don't think he's doing that." Now, reader, please understand that I was very hungry when that thought occurred to me, but also that the color scheme of the sparkly lumps on her pelvis did in fact fit with the idea of mustard seeds, ok? I am a little crazy, but I'm not that crazy, all things told.
But ok, back to vajazzling. This is a trend that I thought had a small upstart kind of flame that went out very quickly, but there it was, in a film that I happen to know was filmed last summer. Now, it was filmed in Europe last summer, and we all know that Europe and America operate on different time lines vis-a-vis trends, but still, I was intrigued. I have no issue, really, with vajazzling. I mean, I love vulvas. And I love sparkly things. So all in all, it seems like a win-win, except for this little nagging, ultra-feminist, "But vulvas are beautiful all by themselves" voice that keeps squeaking at me from the back row. But I mean, why not get some sparkles put in down there for giggles, right?
But then it occurred to me that this actress actually did it for a porno she was starring in. I wonder if that was a giggle. Like, was she so amused by the fact that she was doing something as out-there as performing in a porno? Or was she worried about the lack of inherent glitter on her pubic area, and she wanted to fix that before anyone saw it up close? Or is vajazzling like a thing in the Spanish porn community? I have no way of knowing. But... weird.

2) Anyway, the word "vajazzling" got me thinking about the word "vagina," because I was sitting there in a dark movie theater listening to wet, "slap-slap-slap" noises as the film was playing and thinking, "The 'g' in 'vagina' is pronounced like a 'j' because there's an 'i' after it. So when the 'i' is taken away, it would be pronounced like a hard 'g.' So that means you must have to turn the 'g' into a 'j' in 'vajazzling' or else it'd sound all wrong, but then you're changing the whole root word. This is WAY too confusing!" And it is. The word "vagina" is a huge pain in just about every way. It's super unsexy, as Eve Ensler pointed out. It sounds very medical. It's not a pretty word to look at, and obviously, trying to play with it to make it more fun, a la vajazzling, makes it even weirder. Like, now there's jazz somehow incorporated into lady bits. Because otherwise it'd be "gazz" and then you're just talking about the angry purple-haired girl from Invader Zim. It's ridiculous.
But then, do we want to settle for "pussy"? That's so inappropriate for many contexts. Or there's always "vulva," which is more correct, actually, in many contexts. The inside is the vagina. The outside is the vulva. But "vulva" is even less attractive. It sounds like a lace doily on your great aunt's dining room table. Just. Ick. There's got to be a way around this. There's got to be a better term. Anyone?

3) Asexuality and shame. This is a huge topic and one that I will revisit shortly, hopefully with an interview with the director of the documentary (A)sexual, which screened at Cinekink last night. So I won't get into too much detail here. But here's the gist of it: in clips from television interviews with the founder of the asexual movement, sexual people lightly mocked and also shamed asexual people for identifying as asexual. Asexuality--the state of being uninterested in sex, and a budding identification for about 1% of the population who don't experience sexual attraction--was discussed in the same voice that homosexuality used to be. There were stories of unaccepting families, worried friends, intolerance, and shame. This was mystifying. In the Q&A session afterward, Angela Tucker, the director, said that she was surprised by the vitriolic response a lot of people had to "something that doesn't affect them at all." The same could be said for defenders of "traditional marriage" and other bigots who routinely shame people living sexual lifestyles they don't understand, but that's the thing. Being shamed for one's sexuality is terrible, but commonplace. One could assume, then, that people who renounce sexuality for a life without it would be free from the cycle of fear and shame that centers around sex in our culture, but (A)sexual proved that assumption to be false. It seems that nothing involving sex, or the lack thereof--no lifestyle, no identification, no practice, no lack of practice--can be right. There is shame in every corner. What the hell are we supposed  to do?
The answer, I think, was in the short film by Courtney Trouble and Tina Horn, What Makes Us Queer, which screened directly before (A)sexual: just fucking do what the hell you want and be open, loving, honest, and fearless. And just do it. If you're going to be shamed and castigated for your choices no matter what--just do what works for you.

And that's it for now, folks. Stay tuned! I'll be returning to Cinekink on Saturday for the smutty stuff!

Cinekink and Links! (And also, the MTA is awful.)

This morning has been a testament to the indignities that New York inflicts upon the people desperate and/or crazy enough to be determined to live here, come hell or high water. I spent about 20 awful minutes trapped in a subway car with an incredibly stinky person--and, readers, when I say "incredibly stinky," I really mean it; in New York I am exposed daily to numerous horrific smells, and this was about an eleven on a scale of putridness--before being stranded while trying to transfer to another train for another 15 minutes. When the train finally came, it was too crowded to fit onto, so I ended up walking 15 blocks to get to my dayjob.

Luckily, I love New York, and it was a warm, sunny morning. And also luckily, New York is awesome. Because, disgruntled and grumpy as I was by the Meteropolitan Transit Authority's absolute inability to operate according to its schedule, I still get to go to the Cinekink film festival from Wednesday-Saturday in the East Village this week, acting as a juror for the Kinky Film Festival's short films, and interviewing directors from all over the world. Because New York is amazing.

If you don't know about Cinekink, go to the link and find out more. It travels, so even if you're not in NYC you can catch the kink- and sex-positive awesomehood that is this super-fun film festival. It's one of the best experiences you'll have all year. I say that without any irony--I went last year and I'm SO psyched to be taking part in an official capacity this year that I'm slacking off many of my other duties just to do it. F'realz. Go.

Anyway, on to fun early-in-the-week links to peruse at your liesure (btw that should beproncounced "leh-zherr" like you're British because that's cooler)!

1) The rock star stuff: A fantastic interview in Richardson Magazine with the ever-awesome Jiz Lee, along with a whole lot jaw-droppingly sexy and powerful images of the genderqueer powerhouse!
2) The hilarious-yet-troubling stuff: Nightline did a short piece last week on James Deen. Sounds great, right? "OMG a popular male porn star on a network news show?! That's so great! Men in porn are getting more attention and porn is becoming less taboo!" That's what I wanted to think, too. But, true to form, prime time network television couldn't be progressive or even intelligent about this one. Apparently, according to Nightlime, James Deen's everyman appeal, charm, and sex positivity are "deeply disturbing" because, obviously, Deen is luring underage girls into watching porn. That's right, folks, this nefarious sin-monger is after your children! He'll make off with them in the night and... expose them to new sexual positions and pornography in which he kisses and respects his costars... which is... terrible?
Honestly, I'm annoyed by this bilge, but the way they cherry-picked the quotes for the interview to make him seem as ridiculous as possible (because, let's be real, I'm sure James Deen has got his dark secrets and what-not, but all things told, I don't think he's exactly the plotting, scheming, supervillain type, so they had to go for ridiculous over evil) is just so entertaining. And I'm not sure if the creators of this knee-slapping little segment are aware of this or not, but telling people on prime time that something is bad means more people will Google it. D'oh! Porn and sex-positivity: +1, sex-negativity and small-mindedness: 0.  
3) The absolutely fucking terrible: spoon-feeding semen to elementary students for a "taste test." Worst. Teacher. EVER. Holy CRAP. Let the fact that nobody had any idea this was happening for so long be a reminder that sexual predators are not always the monsters we want them to be. Not ever child molester wears a mustache and skeezy, too-tight pants and goes around gaping openly at children. They're part of our communities. That's why talking to kids about sex. their rights, and their bodies early is so important--so they can learn how to feel empowered enough to say no to weird shit like this. Ugh. This makes me want to go join some other class of animal altogether--amphibeans are looking pretty good right about now.
4) The redemption of humankind through positivity and sharing and porn--and Jiz Lee, again: They've put out a call for submissions to an open-ended "coming out about porn" project that you MUST get involved with if this story applies to you. If you work in or around the sex industry, particularly porn, Jiz is asking that you share your "coming out" story/stories with them. Personally I think this is the best idea anyone's had in a while: sharing stories of similar problems overcome is a surefire way to humanize the experiences and to bring people together. Sometimes the porn community is so dispersed and possessed of so many different types of people that it's hard to reach a consensus or feel a sense of community, but everyone who's worked in the sex industry has got some kind of story about how their friends/family/etc. "found out." They're funny, uplifting, heartbreaking, and ultimately SO human. Porn and sex work of all kinds needs as much humanization as it can get. Please, if you've got a story, submit.

5) Kind of sigh-worthy but still generally good: Susan G. Komen changed its mind about cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood after massive displays of outrage swept the country last week. This is awesome. Not because a bunch of fickle fucks at a bloated charity enterprise were brought back into touch with women's needs and how important listening to the people you serve is (although, yeah, that's great), but because its decision to stop donating to Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screenings brought out the sleeping dragon of Fucking With Women. Last year's Boehner-led assault on federal funding for Planned Parenthood was well-timed in that everyone was so busy worrying about Iraq, the economy, and so on that it met with resistance but still managed to pass. This year, though, when Susan G. Komen for the Cure tried to follow suit, Americans had had enough and vocalized as much--loudly. It's about time that the non-conservatives amongst us who value women's reproductive health all shouted about it at once. "What kind of fuckery is this?" we asked. "The kind we are SICK of taking." Go team!

A Pervert's Gift-Giving Guide: from one degenerate to all of you

Thanks to ColumbiaChronicle.com for this awesome pic!

This might sound a little weird, but bear with me: this holiday season there are a lot of excellent reasons to spend some money on the sex industry. I have a feeling that a lot of you who read this are interested in promoting sex-positive points of view and like to do your best to promote ethical and excellent sex products. I applaud that, and I think it's incredibly important to put your money where your junk is when it comes to porn and sex. In a landscape where free porn of the worst kind is everywhere, where it's so easy to go online and purchase toys and other products from literally anywhere, the holiday season is a good time to make sure that your purchases count toward what you really WANT them to.

Many of us make donations to charities in the names of friends and family for holiday gifts, and even more buy products that support causes we agree with. But one cause that often gets overlooked in the family-friendly season is good sex. But why? Is it really so weird to give a friend an account at your favorite online sex toy purveyor, or a membership to your favorite pay-for-porn site? It's not as if you're asking them to use these in front of you, and spreading the word about excellent, ethical, incredibly hot sex industry goods is super-important for those of us who want to support the best of sex. These companies can't exist without income--help them out!

Here's a list of companies, causes, and carnal corruption to consider spending some bucks on for your loved ones this year:

• Genderqueer superstar Jiz Lee's Karma Pervs: "What is Karma Pervs? In a nutshell, I post unique photo sets of images taken by exciting photographers and visual artists. The proceeds are donated to non-profit organizations in my community." Or of course you can support Jiz directly by purchasing one of their excellent, mind-and-groin-expanding films. If you do either by tomorrow, Dec. 1, you'll get a gift card from Jiz!
• Help support Madison Young's vision for Building Our Own White Picket Fences: an art exhibit-turned-movement that celebrates and explores queer families. Forthcoming books and DVDs commemorating the show still need funding! 
• Donate to The Red Umbrella Project a sex-worker advocacy group based in New York that uses storytelling in public venues as a platform for building understanding of sex work and sex workers. I've attended; it's fabulous.
• Get your honey a membership to The Crash Pad, Shine Louise Houston's groundbreaking queer porn series that will leave misconceptions about queerness in the dust, and everybody's underpants on the floor.
• Or, for those with a penchant for penis, The Heavenly Spire offers a queer look at the glories of masculinity. 
• Good Vibrations is a San Francisco-based feminist and LGBTQ-friendly sex mall! Get what you need from them, or donate to their GiVe program: "By donating products, advertising and sponsorship for fundraisers, along with a percentage of retail sales, we've provided much needed support for women's shelters, HIV/AIDS research, art programs, LGBT benefits, breast cancer awareness and much more."
• Smitten Kitten is your one-stop shop for sex toys, porn, books, and how-tos, with equal variety for men, women, and all other genders. The website features excellent articles from many of my favorite porn peeps including Danny Wylde! 
• Subscribe your friends and fuck-buddies to Whore! Magazine, "a quarterly print publication dedicated to celebrating the current and historical qualities of women who have defined a role for themselves outside the status quo." 
• Want something a little hardcore-er? Try Salacious Magazine, a queer feminist sex magazine that just MIGHT be featuring an interview with moi in the next few issues...
• Donate or subscribe to Bitch Magazine, the feminist response to pop culture! No weird sex-issues required for this one, so you can give it to family with no awkwardness... except the inevitable, "Yes I'm a feminist get over it" talk.
• Send a donation in your gift-receivers' names to Planned Parenthood. Because why would you NOT want to do that?
• Support the Free Speech Coalition, "the trade association of the adult entertainment industry. Our mission is to lead, protect and support the growth of the adult entertainment industry."
• Purchase from Papaya Toys, the new, no-nonsense, socially-conscious sex toy company winning awards like it's going out of style... and all of it is pthalate-free!
• Donate to one of love artist and sexecologist Annie Sprinkle's ongoing, always entertaining, mind-opening, and totally sparkly projects.

Go forth, good sirs, madams, and others... spend thy money in a way that matters!

Why We Should All REALLY Hate "Jack & Jill"

"Wow, I actually FEEL like I'm worth less as a human being when I'm dressed like this! It's working!"

The reviews are in, and it seems that despite its No. 2 spot at the box-office this past weekend, Adam Sandler's drag comedy Jack & Jill tanked with critics. I haven't seen the film myself, nor do I plan to spend two precious hours of this life trying to force a laugh over jokes so bland and overused they hurt my jaw like old gum... so I may just be making assumptions. But based on what I've seen in reviews so far, Adam Sandler, who once made me laugh till I cried with Opera Man and "Lunch Lady Land," has fallen pretty far for this trite take on a man-in-lady-clothes-ha-ha-ha. So I feel pretty much ok with saying the following:

The reason to despise Jack & Jill, and other movies like it, isn't necessarily because it's just a trite and all-around bad movie, although those reasons aren't oh so terrible. The reason isn't even because trans people and cross dressers and those of us who don't find the men-in-plaid and women-in-skirts stereotypes very interesting are sick of seeing the same tired stereotypes trotted out to be reinforced by mocking people who break them--although that's also a very good reason, in my book, to cast shame on Sandler and everyone else involved in this film. But so many other films have done these things that one can hardly cast stones at just the aging SNL star for taking part in it without taking up a whole lot more rocks. No, the reason this movie pisses me, and I hope you as well, off so much is that from the first teaser poster I saw for it in the subway months ago, it has relied heavily on the idea that a woman who isn't classically beautiful--aka Sandler in drag as "Jill"--is funny because she's so ugly. The poster, which bore the faces of both "Jack" (a predictably flummoxed-looking Sandler as a dude who's not all that attractive but who still gets his own feature film) and "Jill" (Sandler in drag as a girl who's not all that attractive and is thus obviously the butt of many jokes), with the legend, "His twin sister is coming for the holidays... and it ain't pretty."

BAM. Right there. Guess what, holiday movie-goers? In case every advertisement you've ever seen for every other product in existence hadn't already driven this point home, along with every facet of modern entertainment and pretty much the rest of the world, if you aren't stunningly gorgeous and you're female: you're a joke. A punchline. You're pretty much worthless unless you go into comedy to make fun of yourself.

Uck. I'm sure that in this movie, Jill bears the brunt of her large jaw, broad shoulders, large nose, and what I'm sure is a very unpleasant, squeaky, nasal voice, but in the end redeems all of woman-kind by proving to Jack just how wonderful a person she is and how he's a jerk for judging her on her looks  instead of her winning personality, or something yawn-inducing along the same vein pumping ever-more sluggish blood along a bored and boring circulatory system of overused comedy. I'm sure that the creative team behind Jack & Jill really thought on some level that they were being kind to ugly girls everywhere by redeeming their character in the end somehow. But they're not being kind, they're just being just nasty and small-minded about people's real experiences in life. They're taking advantage of half the population, which is already so terrified of not being sexually attractive that it injects faces with weird hormones and chemicals, forces feet into uncomfortable shoes, debases itself if it thinks guys are watching, and feeds its own kind on jealousy and in-fighting instead of support and caring. Do we need more of this? No, no we don't.

People, stay out of the theaters for this one. I can guarantee none of the jokes will be original enough to be worth your overpriced ticket, and there are other options that treat women with some dignity. Not very many, sadly, but they're out there.

Links: Lust, Ladygasms, Leg-Ups, and Lunacy!

This pizza? For slightly effeminate bisexual men only, obviously, as denoted by the vegetables. More effeminate bisexual men only like olives..

To all of you out there who make a habit of reading my blog: thank you for bearing with me. The past few weeks have been non-stop and have involved a whole lot of me feeling hypersensitive and sad, and I just haven't had much of a will, or the time, to come up with original content. So thanks for sticking with me if you have; it means a lot!

Now moving on to more interesting things than my own navel-watching (which I think is a much more interesting hobby, personally, than bird-watching--after all, there's sometimes lint in there!)! Some brief thoughts and links and the like:

1) Lust: Erika Lust's newest feature film from Lust Cinema is officially OUT! Keep your eye on this blog and on WHACK! Magazine for a review from yours truly (I'm way more excited to watch this one than I've been about a sexy movie in quite some time), and in the meantime, wrap your brain around this little small-world weirdness: I review porn and other sexy fare for this blog and other websites, as you well know, and I also perform as Fanny Firewater with NYC's own Poetry Brothel--an intimate salon with dressed up poets parading around as whores and giving private, sensual readings for poetry nuts in speakeasies around New York. The Brothel has gotten a lot of attention here in New York and has spread to a few sister brothels here and abroad; one is in Barcelona. Erika Lust's new film, Cabaret Desire, is based on the idea of, and actually set in, Barcelona's Poeetry Brothel. Am I the nexus for the coolest things in the world, or what?

2) Ladygasms: In what may be the most flat-out cool and also exciting science I've heard about in months (yes, "science" is a broad term but I like keeping it all in its place, you know?) scientists at Rutgers (hell YEAH New Jersey, way to be cooler than I thought you were!) have made the first-ever brain scans of a woman before, during, and after orgasm... and put it all in a video so we can watch it! The results are absolutely incredible, with oxygen levels and activity in almost every part of the brain lighting up like fireworks at the moment of climax. Basically, or at least as some journalists have optimistically implied, the female brain is at its most functional during orgasm. That explains a lot, no? While Professor Barry Komisaruk, the lead researcher on the project, stresses how learning about the brain during orgasm can help in a wide range of other areas--as I'm sure he has to do in order to keep his funding--the implications seem clear to me: sex is good for your noggin, and so is masturbation! Rejoice!

3) Leg-Up: (I realize that the term "leg-up" might not be that familiar to everyone, though I use it a lot... I'm not sure if this is something I've taken as a known fact for a while or if other people actually sometimes use it, but just to cover all my bases: a "leg-up" is when someone cups their hands together so that a short person can put a foot or knee into the offered hands, then boosts that person up onto a horse's back... I use it to refer to generally giving someone a hand, but "leg-up" just sounds so much cooler.) Madison Young and her fierce cadre of queers in San Francisco are looking for support for their "Building Our Own White Picket Fences" project. Madison is using this project, which incorporates art, sex, love, and writing, as a platform for discussing the new models of the American family that the queer community is forging; it's not only super-hot and super-cool all at once, but it's mondo important for our society moving forward into a post-prejudiced society. Please go preorder some goodies to help fund those goodies being made, or support the project at its Kickstarter page. For progress! For love! For art!
(Also, I wonder if "leg-up" is pluralized as "legs-up" or "leg-ups." Hm.)

4) Lunacy: I have stayed pretty hands-off with the whole Penn State scandal for several reasons. I'm from Pennsylvania, from a staunchly pro-Joe-Pa family, and I've been very hesitant to make any bold statements until more of the facts about what actually happened came in. I absolutely can't condone the behavior of anyone involved in not reporting the incidents to the police (or maybe not, since the assistant coach who witnessed something [rape? "horsing around"?] now says he did talk to police), but it's been very difficult to watch an icon that made many of the hours of my youth gleam with moral rectitude be torn down, and I don't want to go pointing fingers until I know what really happened. But this morning I heard a short piece on NPR that made me crinkle up my face. I can't remember the correspondent's name, because I'm terrible at names, but on WNYC this morning right around 8:00 am, he read a piece about how he can't help wondering if the cult of hypermasculinity surrounding the sport of American football might have helped this horrible failing to stay quiet--if the fact that men who play football are perceived as SOO-OOO manly that it seems like twice the indignity, twice the shame, twice the wrongness, to imply that they might get involved in the least masculine of all activities: the rape and destruction of young boys' childhoods.
I see what he's saying. I can make the connection myself. Football in America is the ultimate (or at least close to the ultimate) expression of manly manness. There is no women's football league--except the lingerie one, which is pretty much a reinforcement of every male stereotype, just in reverse. Football is accompanied by beer and wings. Football is chest-pounding, Budweiser-swilling, we-are-so-tough-it-hurts fodder for the male masses. And to think that something so absolutely not traditionally American-man-and-flannel-and-workboots as pedophilia could be mixed in with it in any way--it's almost sacrilege. The fact that this piece came on the radio right after a piece about how there have been more people coming forth to talk about their experiences of childhood sexual abuse after the Penn State scandal than after the Catholic Church scandal really drives home the sacrosanctity of the pigskin.
But... Really? Are we really so concerned with masculine stereotyping, so absolutely shit-the-pants terrified of anything breaking the hetero man facade, that we might be able to overlook one of the most abominable crimes known to our species to protect it? That's overstating it--I doubt anyone involved saw or heard something and thought, "I better not say anything because it'll make football seem less manly." But... I just don't know. It's sure food for thought.
And then this afternoon I raed this article in Salon about how Herman Cain doesn't eat "sissy pizza" with "vegetables." Seriously, Herman Cain really said this in an interview with GQ: he associates pepperoni and sausage with men "because the more manly man is not afraid of abundance. A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables!" And he meant it.
And I thought... "Oh my god. How did we get here? How the hell did our society reach a point at which we are so completely wrapped up in make-believe ideas about what makes a person with a penis 'normal' that we are now calling vegetables 'sissy' food? How did this happen? Where did we take a turn down Lunatic Alley?" This is utter craziness. Seriously, people: your food preferences, sporting interests, clothing color choices, sexual orientation... they're just parts of YOU. They're not the things that define who you are, and if they are... they're still your choice. What you like on a your burger and fries does not give you a free pass into some secret society of the manly or womanly or sissy or whatever. How did we get to a point where we think it could?
Uck. I'm going to go home now, and sigh a lot, and then eat some tofu and vegetables in broth. I guess we know what my genitals look like!

San Francisco Wrap-Up: Masquerotica

Last Saturday night I went to the first-ever Masquerotica soiree in San Francisco, the kinda-sorta replacement for the city's long-running Erotic Ball. Having never made it out to the Erotic Ball, I hoped Masquerotica--a costume-mandatory behemoth of a rager with nine stages of entertainment ranging from burlesque to go-go dancers in bubbles and leather to pole dancing to latex showcases-- would be a sexy and sophisticated replacement. San Francisco, after all, is the modern ethical hedonist's mecca for all things sexual. San Francisco is so liberal that I expected the entertainment and partygoers to maintain a sense of detached frostiness--a willingness to party, of course, but a recognition that in a city where big burly bears can walk blocks to a sex party in fairy outfits without being heckled, erotic parties can be a bit banal.

And to some degree I was right. The entertainment was nothing short of fabulous all evening. Some technical difficulties in lighting and sound were a tad annoying, and the space itself was far too large with the stages often much too spread out to get a good rager going. But the shows being put on, even if far apart, were really great. I particularly enjoyed the zombie strippers, performing shamblingly inside a large wire fence and beind handled by white coverall-wearing men. And Unkle Paul's Dark Kabaret showcased remarkable talents (I saw a guy blowing bubbles INSIDE other bubbles!! If I'd been on drugs my brain would have exploded) as well but also stunningly gorgeous latex and corsetry that wowed me. And the dance parties were all great--there were many. And I was right about the crowd being a bit "meh" for the most part. Because of the awkwardly oversized space in which it was held, it was almost impossible to get anyone together in a tight enough knot to get a serious energy buzz going, so the whole affair was rather laid-back.

But it was also unnervingly familiar. The thing about sex parties and sexy parties alike--and you're reading the ramblings of a seasoned pro at swing parties, erotic parties, porn star parties, and so on--is that, no matter how sophisticated the crowd, one element will never disappear. That element? It's not the super-hot fun. No, sadly, it's the creepy staring dude factor. No matter how cultured the clinetele, no matter how liberal the city, at every single party I've been to that has ever had an openly publicized sexual element to it, there has been a gaggle of gawking males standing around and ogling the women who pass by, sometimes following them around (at Masquerotica this was particularly apparent, since that often meant whoever was following me would be doing it for a half mile of corridors and dance floors), sometimes reaching out to try to touch, sometimes dancing too close, sometimes saying innapropriate or unwanted things... you get the idea. Basically, it seems that if you're selling tickets to the public (and often even if you're screening heavily or not allowing single men in at all) for an event that will bring out scantily clad women... you will get a creep factor of way higher than you want it to be.

Now let me make it perfectly clear that I'm not trying to be snotty. As a matter of fact, I've been to so many events where guys stare longer than necessary at me or other women that I hardly even notice it anymore. I've adoped an "I know I'm amazing, so it's only logical that you'd be struck dumb by my coolness" mentality at events like this. I notice the stares in my peripheral vision but usually just walk by. Unless someone accosts me, whatever. They can look all they want. But at Masquerotica I was with a dear friend who doesn't go to this type of party often, and she was unnerved by the dilated pupils, sweaty hands, and panting breath of many of the guys we walked by that night. I couldn't blame her. She'd gone in with the same expectation I had--that people at this party, in this city, would be a bit more inured to people being dressed up and beautiful, or at least more able to hide their astonishment when a pair of beautiful bouncing breasts covered only with pasties or latex walked by. But alas, we were both mistaken. Over the course of the night, we were approached by hyperventilating, handsy clowns; followed by tall men in masks for the length of the show floor; aggressively danced with by sweaty strangers we didn't want to dance with; and otherwise creeped upon. Ick.

I could try to go on some evolutionary-psychology-fueled rant about how men are visually oriented and are stimulated more by looks than women. I could apologize for asserting that guys like this are just creepy and I don't like them. But personally, while I wish this all hadn't happened and that the guys in question would just cool their jets a bit, I think the indictment for this behavior doesn't lie on men per se. But on the culture.

Even in San Francisco, it seems, our Puritan-rooted society hushes up sexuality to such a  stifling degree that, when faced with a sexual situation, people become slobbering stalker-y creepsters. So much of our basic desire to be able to be free with our bodies and comfortable with their sexual natures is so pent up for so long that when a party is offered that promises some small release... it turns into an explosion of awkward. We're not trained or prepared by normal life to be in a situation where there are beautiful bodies bouncing here and there in lingerie. We're used to hands-off environments--even in strip clubs you are not allowed to touch--and Masquerotica was hands-on (if you got permission). We're used to tamping down, shutting up, pretending not to be looking, pretending not to be interested, because we're told it's never appropriate. But what we end up with is not a culture of adults who can handle themselves around sexuality, but a culture full of people reverting to outright rudeness and middle-school behavior because there is no other context in which to get comfortable seeing nearly-naked people. Even in San Francisco, where nakedness and sex is a whole lot more out in the open than in most places, the fun of the evening was transformed for many into a chance to unleash the drooling thirteen-year-old who never grew up because he couldn't find enough free air to feel comfortable around open sexuality. It's a sad state of affairs.

I don't have a solution, but I do have a suggestion: talk, keep talking, write, keep writing, read, keep reading. Go to sexy parties. Open up. Learn how to be appropriate and mature. Sometimes the only way to do that is to be inappropriate and immature first: that's ok. Just know that sometimes you might not get the best reaction to that. But it's all about learning, owning yourself and your sexuality, and moving forward. So here's to Masquerotica! I'd go again in a heartbeat.

OMG This is Gonna Be So Awesome!

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Links-a-Million: Hell is a Drag, Performers are Coming Together, K-Y is Cool, A Cop is Horny, and Porn is the New Punk

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Behemoth

Well, if it's not a writer's duty to post videos of herself reading her writing, then I don't know what is. But... man, I really hate watching myself on video. And I hate to think other people might see it. But that's what video is FOR, and I DID record this video for the Poetry Brothel of New York as my character Fanny Firewater... I just... now that it's up all I can think of is what I should've done differently. Ain't it always the way... Ah well, next time will be different!

Anyway, it's a little sexy but mostly just poem-y. Enjoy!

Quartier Rouge: Behemoth by Lynsey G from Quartier Rouge on Vimeo.

Naomi Wolf Annoys Me Again

Oh, Naomi. We are gonna just keep doing this, aren’t we? Ah, well, why not? After all, every superhero needs a supervillain in order to really thrive. I’m not sure, in this situation, which one is which, but we’re surely diametrically opposed, and I know I’m super, so we may as well get some cool Spandex outfits and go for it.

Look, I kind of see what you’re saying about Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin as having legitimate claims to feminism as legitimate as anyone else. Far be it from me to try to take the name of feminism away from anyone. I totally agree with you that the feminist cause has largely been represented and championed by left-leaning thinkers since the 60’s, and as such is often thought of as a liberal-only cause. And this certainly alienates more conservative women who value things like marriage, family, militarism, and etc. And that, it’s true, is a real shame: feminism, as you say, is about personal choice and freedom, not just for the liberals amongst us but also for everyone: male, female, trans, and everyone else. Feminism is about all of us being equal and autonomous members of our society, whether tattooed queer punks from San Francisco or soccer moms from Iowa, and it’s in a way fabulous that more conservative women are taking up the word and cause in their particular way.

But the thing that pisses me off about conservative “feminists” like you, Naomi--and I say this because your line about finding Michelle Bachmann "slightly unhinged" is, I'm sure, true, but I can think of no-word for a knee-jerk reactionary anti-porn "feminist" like yourself that suits better than "conservative"--and particularly about Tea Party women in the national spotlight, is that the rhetoric they spout is not at its root about equality, freedom, and personal choice. It is about the superiority of certain choices and selected freedoms over others. Women should by all means be free to vocally not support abortion and contraception and relationship models if they don’t approve of these things for their own lives and situations. But feminism, at least as far as I understand it, is not a mantle to pick up and wave around and use as a blanket for prejudice and intolerance of other people’s decisions. Feminism is about respect for the values we share and equal respect for the differences amongst us. Bachmann and Palin and Wolf all argue their points from the position of a soapbox that looks down upon people who dissent or value different choices. They aim to tear down the legitimacy of other people’s opinions not because those opinions might be misinformed or generally counterproductive to the cause, but because they are different from their own, assumedly correct, ones.

I’m sure that it’s not as black and white as all that—I’m sure that these women would tell me that I’m not right about that. And maybe I’m not. But the impression that all three of these women make upon me as pertains to their ideas of feminism and womanhood more generally is one of an almost fascist view of what it should mean to be a feminist based entirely upon what they themselves see as the correct mode of life for women and, by extension, feminists. Mama Grizzlies with big families who value fossil fuel burning, monogamy, and guns are Palin’s "feminists.," and anyone who would dare raise a voice against them can't be part of their club. Heterosexual conservative firecrackers who don’t, apparently, need to be very up on their facts or education because of the strength of their personalities seem to be the "feminists" Bachmann is interested in. And Wolf? Well, her crew seems to be comprised of feminists willing to swallow everything she says hook, line, and sinker, up to and including that pornography is bad for all women and all people all the time and that feminism can be legitimately coopted  by anti-Muslim, anti-pornography, anti-abortion (ahem, anti-freedom-of-choice) totalitarians.

These women all seem much more inclined to react to other people’s ideas and actions with violent opposition, thus, as Wolf says, using powerful emotional rhetoric to gain momentum, than to spend time or effort considering their validity and attacking them on solid rational grounds. They say that personal freedom is important to them, that women should be allowed to make the choices they want to make, but seem to find it completely untrue that women might have real and legitimate reasons for making decisions different from their own. Freedom is only freedom if it allows for personal decision-making based on a variety of motivations, personal creeds, and often wildly disparate backgrounds. Yet Bachmann and Palin seem to want everyone to have their freedom to act in a specific set of preapproved ways. And if one steps out of line with these approved modes of behavior, then those with the freedom to do so will rip you down.

This seems to me very reminiscent of Jim Crow laws. Sure, you’re free to be different and that’s fine, but if you step out of line and try to actually use your freedom to act differently… Well, that’s not fine. But that’s not what feminism is about, and I don’t mean to sound like I’m just grabbing it up to hold over my own personal ideals. I hope to wave it around and point out the fact that different ideals about femininity, feminism, and freedom, can be acted out and respected on their own terms without all this finger-pointing and shouting and rallying people to one cause. Feminism is, or at least can be, big enough for us all to hold hands whether we get along or not, and that’s the beauty of the idea. Right? ...right?

Big-Time Announcement About My Big-Time Art Show!

Big  news, my dearies! Remember that post I wrote a while back about porn is and is not art at the same time? Well I wasn’t just examining the nature of art for fun… although really it is a fascinating subject. No, I was brainstorming. For what? Well, folks,yours truly has been asked to curate an art exhibit in TriBeCa, NYC, next March-May… on the subject of “video sex”! Am I the bomb or what, folks? I won’t give away too many deets just yet, as I’ve still to sign the contract and settle on a specific set of ideas, but check out apexart.com for more information on the space, and check out… well the rest of my writing on the internet… for info on me!

Right now my major thoughts are focusing on the difference between how we all perceive our own personal experiences with pornography and how we exhibit our ideas and feelings about those experiences to the rest of the world. To my way of thinking, for many of us on both the consumer side and the production side of video sex, there is a gulf between what we show to the world as our “public face” about porn—we laugh it off, make fun of it, denigrate it, overthink it, pretend we don’t use it, get all vehemently against it, love it too much, modify our bodies or behaviors to fit into what we see in porn, hate porn stars for their bodies… The list of ways in which we behave toward porn in public conversation is almost neverending. But it is not nearly as nuanced or interesting, I think, as the real, unfiltered, unchecked response that we have privately to this material. The interaction that goes on between us and our TVs or computer screens or romance novels or what have you, the stuff we don’t talk about that happens in our hearts and minds when we encounter porn… That’s the good stuff. Not the masturbation—that’s boring. The thoughts and feelings and ways in which we reconcile the ones we don’t like with the ideals we hold. The ways we ignore or fixate on those things we hate and let ourselves be bared completely, physically and emotionally, to what we DO like. And even more interesting than these private thoughts and experiences or the outward displays we show each other is the space between. If we can assume that people’s public faces with regard to filmed sex, whether we take a positive or negative or somewhere-between stance, are held an arm’s length away from the real experiences we have with pornography when we’re alone in our intimate spaces…. Then what happens between point A and point B? How do we get to point B at all?

I want to examine this idea. I want this to become art. I’ll keep you all updated!

Linkyamory: This is Serious

A very worthwhile call for essays over at QLit: Rejecting the Bedroom: Sex and Sexuality as a Site of Queer Resistance and Space. Anyone with a bent toward queer theory should get up in this biz! The question being asked is totally fascinating: how can queer people make the bedroom not the only place in which it is safe to "be" queer? And how can they "queer" the bedroom on their own terms? I can't wait to read the answers people come up with to these questions.

It raises all sorts of questions about how much the sex we have identifies/shapes/distinguishes us and how we make that sex part of ourselves as a meaningful contribution to the lives we want to lead. And it's an important question, particularly right now, as same-sex marriages start up in the wonderfully accepting city of New York. There have been many articles and many photos from this past weekend, when the first same-sex marriages were performed here in the city (on a lottery system to avoid overcrowding, which is kind of funny and kind of annoying all at once), but this photo set by the Washington Post almost made me cry. You'll see why.

This website, however, DID make me cry. The struggle to discover and claim a space in which to be oneself, whether queer or anything else, is one that is so vitally important, and yet in so many places it is forced into a position secondary to the struggle to simply exist. These are the people who get left out of important discussions like the one QLit is opening, not because the issue is unimportant but because the marginalized and forgotten are busy trying to make their very existence a reality, in their own lives and in the minds of others. The struggle for queer recognition and space is the same struggle as the fight for awareness of native people everywhere, but nowhere more so than in this country, where we are so fascinated by the exotic and the "authentic" but forget about the promises we've broken to our own people. Please visit HonorTheTreaties.org and spread the word. Educate others. If you live in America and don't know about the Laramie treaties or the Supreme Court Ruling about the Black Hills or the fact that the war against the Lakota was the only war in which America negotiated for peace by conceding every demand made by the enemy... You SHOULD.

We who espouse the ideology that we can all get along if we are willing to listen to one another must remember that even the voices that are often unheard are the ones we must endeavor most to heed.

An Ode to Xena

I don't have time to watch much in the way of TV these days, but I have a friend who recently discovered Xena: Warrior Princess and fell completely in love. She bough herself seasons 1 and 2 on DVD, but when someone gave her the entire series box set, she sent me season 1, confident I would love it. I remember watching a few episodes in high school, and one of my best friends was absolutely obsessed with it, but I was lukewarm. It was fun, definitely entertaining, but totally ridiculous. I took myself pretty seriously back in those days.

So lately I've been playing Xena in the background while writing and doing all manner of work. And it's pretty easy to have on and not pay attention to, if you're busy. But a few weekends ago I was very sick and couldn't do any work, so I laid on the couch and watched episode, after episode, after episode. And you know, I kind of fell in love.

Not only is Lucy Lawless completely stunning, and the lack of continuity in accents and historical time period and general... everything... endearing, and the sexual tension between Xena and Gabrielle way fun to ogle at... But Xena: Warrior Princess is awesome in another, more important, way, too. See, the thing about the character Xena is that, yes, she's totally foxy. But that's her secondary characteristic. Her first is that she KICKS ASS, and the fact that she beautiful is just an added bonus. That might sound silly, but think about it: how many shows or movies revolving around strong female characters take the strength and ass-kicking more seriously than the sex appeal? How often does a sexy female lead get to be strong first, sexy second? Especially when skimpy armored breastplates and stunningly beautiful eyes are involved? It's not that it's unheard of for a female lead to be sexy second, but it's very rare that her physical prowess is applied to righteous ass-kickery than to the ogling of the audience.

Not that Xena doesn't use its title character's sex appeal to attract an audience. Not that Lucy Lawless's amazing body and stunning beauty aren't exploited. She's definitely eye candy. But her character is a lot more than that, no matter how cheesy the acting: the Warrior Princess (who, by the way, from all I can tell, is not actually a princess at all) is a justice-doling machine, a conflicted human being, and a strong woman who doesn't need a man or a lover to be bad-ass. She doesn't need to shake her money-maker to get her work done. She's smart, strong... and sexy. But the smart and the strong come first. How many role models do we have like that for girls these days? We've got characters that are smart and strong, sure, but most of them only let their ass-kicking come out after they've used their sex appeal to get our attention. But Xena is more than that, whether her acting is Emmy-worthy or not. In fact, the only female character with the same ratio of strong-to-sexy I can recall in recent memory is Evelyn Salt in Salt... and that part was written for a man before Angelina Jolie came in. The truth is that today, most of our female heroes in entertainment are cute first, heroic second. Sexy before smart. Xena is one of the very few who got it right, and kept doing it for years.

So, I just want to send out a little love note here to the Warrior Princess and all her kick-ass kin: you guys rock.

The Brain Attempting to Work; Instead, Random Neurons Firing Make a Post

I've been thinking a lot about how derivative porn is. No, really. For numerous reasons, I've been pondering how porn as art object is nearly an impossibility, and yet in the same way that it cannot be considered as simply "art," it also can't NOT be art.

Ok, stick with me here. This is convoluted.

So I was thinking about how one could pretty much never take pornography of either the still kind (photos, paintings, etc) or the moving kind (video, animation, etc) and display it in an art gallery and just let it be "art" because the thing about porn is that it CAN'T be viewed objectively. Not only is modern porn very purposefully designed and presented with the goal of arousing its viewer, but our brains are also actually wired to mistake sexual imagery for real sex, meaning that when we see porn, we are programmed to get turned on, whether we want to or not. Of course, we can build up certain immunities by getting used to it or by focusing as hard as possible on the sociopolitical implications of what we're seeing, but some part of us will still--almost always--be going, "Ooooooh boooooobs!"

So porn can never just be displayed as art. People might be able to overcome their initial arousal and walk away stimulated intellectually, but they'll damn well have also been stimulated in another way. Not always a positive way. The thing about something as viscerally reaction-provoking as porn is that, in the same moment it travels from our eyes to our groins, it seems to bypass most of our upper-level reasoning and analytical processes. It elicits strong physical reactions in us, ones that are more easily compensated for or explained by emotional justifications. We skip the "am-I-making-sense-right-now?" series of events and go right into the "that's disgusting!" or "that's hot" or "I hate it" or "I love it" line of thought. It's a lot more difficult to come up with a well-reasoned look at one's genitals becoming engorged than it is to explain why one feels a certain way about what should be done with the national debt ceiling. The impetus to think, explain, talk about it comes from a very different location than the swift shame reaction and the emotional compensation.

And so porn becomes this polarizing thing, this issue we can't be rational about. We don't know how. It's not in our DNA. It can't just be and be aesthetically pleasing, and it has a tough time getting us to think about it on a level that might move us forward in how we react in the first place. And for the most part, it's not trying to. It's trying to get us off. So in that way, no, porn can never be art.

But at the same time, I wonder, isn't that what art IS? It's not, after all, a well-written and -reasoned treatise. The Persistence of Memory isn't The Communist Manifesto, and for good reason--Dali wasn't trying to explain himself when he painted the former. He didn't want you to nod and go, "Oh he's so RIGHT" like Marx did. He wanted to hit you in a non-rational center, a place where your reaction was pure and un-thought-out. He wanted to present you with something you couldn't make sense of until it had already gotten under your skin. Great art doesn't reason with us, and it only lets us think about it after we've taken it in and already made a snap judgment about it. We like it or we don't, and then we think about it. And in that way, porn is undeniably art. Perhaps art that bears with it a lot more in the way of emotional and moral baggage than most art does, but what good art doesn't offend or stimulate us? The point is to move things forward, to elicit a reaction. Both porn and art do that, and splendidly. It's just whether we allow ourselves to think about those reactions in a way that will bring about any great realizations or reflections or movement forward as a species that sets them apart, and that's a shame. Porn could do a lot for us if we'd spend a bit more time looking at it with our thinking caps on... after we'd gotten the arousal part out of the way. And given that porn lets us masturbate to it in a rather less embarrassed way than, say Nude Descending a Staircase, really, porn's got one hell of an advantage.

Ok, so anyway, then I started thinking about other ways in which porn is or is not art and came around to the question of derivative-ness. Is that a word? Derivance? Derivitancy? Whatever. The point is that most art is highly derivative, whether it will ever admit it or not, because very few artist work in a void. Actually virtually zero artists can even claim to, because whether someone sits alone in a white room for a year before creating something is irrelevant--she damn well saw something man-made before that year started and whatever she makes will damn well be inspired by what she saw whether she knows it or not. The brain is a tricky thing. And so all art is derivative--some purposefully and some trying very hard not to be.

But can the same be said of porn? I think the same difficult, paradoxical answer applies here. Emphatically yes, but undeniably no. In some ways porn is more derivative than any other medium because it's based so heavily on sets of tried-and-true formulas. As a money-making endeavor before an artistic one, adult film will reuse any trope that has worked once... over and over and over again, even after it stops appealing to people, just on the hope that it will come back around. Whole genres have sprung up from single scenes. If one company does it, every company does it. And porn doesn't just reference itself, either--porn parodies of mainstream movies and TV shows are popping up every day, some of them scene-for-scene ripoffs of the originals, using the same clothes, hair, makeup, props. Porn mimics and mocks everything from mainstream titles to performer names to fashion trends to soundtracks. It is hyper-aware of its surroundings and its origins.

And yet porn could be said to be the only form of entertainment that, ostensibly, doesn't have to have ANY idea what it's doing or what's been done. Porn speaks the most universal language in the world--far more ubiquitous than music. Sex can be had by anyone, anywhere, and understood instantly by the rest of us, and, hell, animals, too. It doesn't have to be dressed up to look like anything in particular or follow a certain progression to arouse us, startle us, make us understand it. It might be the most original art form there is.

....and my brain just stopped. That's where we get off the ride for the night kiddos. This new job (just landed a full-time gig unexpectedly, hence the scarcity of me on the interwebz) is sucking the energy right outta me! More later, my lovelies...

Phone Whore, Cameryn Moore, and Musings onf the Sex Industry

Moving on with my week of reviews and thinking about Momentum, I wanted to talk about Cameryn Moore for a minute. Cameryn is a phone sex operator and actress who, on Saturday, April 2, performed her one-woman show, "Phone Whore" for all of us oversexed writers. And she kind of blew my mind.

"Phone Whore" is a short, kind of funny kind of not funny, fascinatingly candid look into the life of a phone sex operator. Eminently normal, slyly humorous, and so honest that the viewer feels immediately comfortable even in an off-kilter world of incest fantasy and homoerotic rape play, Cameryn lets the audience into her daily life as a phone whore. And it's fascinating.

I don't know about the rest of you out there, but at various times in my life I've considered becoming a phone sex operator, dungeon mistress, stripper... pretty much anything that seems like quick and easy money using sex as the tool. You know, sex work. What's usually stopped me is a petrifying fear of making an ass of myself. The phone sex operator, particularly, scared me off because just as I was about to call the company to apply, I realized, "Wait a second. I'm going to have to act all this out with just my voice. I'm going to have to talk dirty and come up with scenarios, all on the spur of the moment. I can't even write erotica well--I'd be terrible at this! The guys will end up calling my supervisor, furious that I didn't know enough about their fetish..." I'd have to have a "phone sex voice" which maybe I didn't have naturally, so I'd have to talk funny, and maybe my accent would be bad... And on and on. I always wondered if maybe I was overestimating the difficulty of the job. I mean, I could sit around in my bathrobe and do this for a living... Maybe I was just being a fraidy-cat.

But watching Cameryn glide about her "apartment" (read, one of the meeting rooms in the hotel's conference area, set up like a living room for the show) in her green silk robe, doing things I'd be doing in her place (making a PBJ, working for a few minutes on her art installation, going to the bathroom [ie, the closet, in our case]), then instantly dropping into her quiet, self-assured, not-too-different phone sex voice, I realized I'd been right. Phone sex is not for the faint of heart, nor for the unpracticed improv actor. Cameryn was, in some ways, made for this job: she can tell a story with her voice, as her acting career has shown, and yet remain calm and centered the whole time. And the most important thing: she doesn't judge her clients. Just from the four phone calls she "took" during Phone Whore, one could tell that this is a job where the weird quickly becomes normal and the outrageously bizarre becomes only eyebrow-raising. I might have been game to deal with the lonely guys on the other end of the phone line, but the masochists? The mommy-issues? The closeted homosexuals? The violent pedophiles? I don't know if I could do it. Much less recreate it faithfully in front of a room full of people, sitting there narrating a floridly criminal fantasy for seven minutes, straight-faced, without wiggling around uncomfortably in her chair, without a hint of irony... Far beyond my ken.

It was impressive and scary at the same time, and it made me reflect for a few minutes on my own career. In this line of work I've written fantasy stories about women I've never even seen a picture of, reviewed porn movies that disturbed me and turned me on at the same time, pondered the unknowable aspects of human sexuality, interviewed people who have done things I can never agree with but must respect.... The daily work of someone in the sex industry at my level is fraught with moral grey matter. I sometimes go to bed at night thinking, "Is this really ok with me?" Learning not to judge people for their sexual proclivities is one thing, but actually forcing oneself to get over one's own prejudices and look at the world realistically is another. Tolerance is easy--it's engaging with the things you tolerate and learning to respect them that's difficult.

And Cameryn highlighted this set of issues unique to sex workers, sex writers, and those of us who want to open our minds and the minds of others. Where does my comfort level stop? How far can I push it? How far should I push it? Just how far is too far? Is there a too far? Is there a right and wrong in the realm of fantasy? In the realm of consensual adult sex? The lives of sex workers are rich and varied, incredibly entertaining, and filled every day with the kinds of questions some people may go their whole lives without asking, and thank goodness Cameryn is out there to pose those questions through her art.

She's now touring with Phone Whore and a new show called Slut (R)evolution, and I really encourage any of you who can possibly make it out to see her: GO. Your mind and horizons are begging for it!

Momentum Con Prep, Eman al-Obeidi, Arizona is Batshit, and Sasha Grey's Neü World Order

It's been an ever-so busy week over here, and I apologize for the paucity of blog posts, dearest readers, but do not fret! This weekend I will be attending Momentum, a convention for feminists and sex-positives and all sorts of other thinky/sexy bloggers, social media types, writers, thinkers, and etc. I am frickin PSYCHED! I'm going to attend talks by some of my favorite porn directors and stars, polyamorous theorists and activists, feminists of all shapes, sizes, colors and genders, and oh so much more. I'm packing today and will head down tomorrow, and I promise blogs all weekend!

In the meantime, I've been pondering a few things. This past week has been filled to bursting with exciting/scary/interesting sex news, and I kind of don't even know where to start. I think a quick run-down of the biggest deals is in order, with my very own commentary, of course.

1) Eman al-Obeidi: The Libyan woman who burst into a hotel last week to tell foreign reporters that she'd been repeatedly beaten and raped by Gadaffi's (or however you spell his name) troops after being detained at a checkpoint; who showed reporters her bruises; who was chased through the hotel by government loyalists, wrapped in a tablecloth by a waitress, and pushed into a car and driven away to an undisclosed location; whose parents say she's being held at Gadaffi's compound while Gadaffi's people say she's with family; who was called a drunken prostitute by the government and whose parents then went on TV showing photos of her getting her law degree (I realize that having a law degree in no way precludes anyone from becoming a prostitute, but it is a bit toward the unlikely side)... is now being sued by the men she accused of raping her. Sued. One would assume the charges are being pressed on the basis of defamation of character, but I'd like to point out to these men that, while al-Obeidi's image and name are all over the international news... NONE OF THEIRS ARE. Sure, they might face a bit of annoyance over all this, and I'm sure that the alleged attackers' names have been mentioned here and there, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around how these men could possibly think that they have been in some way more damaged than al-Obeidi herself. Regardless of whether they actually did rape her (as far as I know, there was no physical examination given and so the allegations are just that and no more), somebody sure as shit beat her up, as her bruises proved. And while I understand that in some parts of the world, beating a woman for no discernible reason isn't as much of a shameful thing as it is here, she surely experienced physical pain and embarrassment at their hands. And then was humiliated by the rough treatment she received from people who would do anything to get her out of camera's reach in the hotel where she tried to tell her story. And then was whisked off to an undisclosed location and called a drunken prostitute on the news. And now she is being sued because she is hurting other people?
It just boggles the mind.
I try to understand the differences between cultures and gender-based ideology when I consider these things, but from a purely and completely logical standpoint, this makes NO sense. This woman was abused in some way physically before she came forward, and she was damn well treated abominably on camera by hotel staff and government workers, and now she's somewhere in Libya probably being treated terribly again while her parents are offered money and houses to get her to recant her story... And she's being punished. There is just no fucking way this makes sense. And I'm kind of pissed off that this isn't a bigger story.
As I've mentioned before, in times of war and upheaval the struggle of women to maintain their rights and legitimacy as human beings seems to often be compromised. I mean, hell, since we've been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, abortion rights and same-sex marriage debates have become the hot topics here, and that's an incredibly softened version of what's going on elsewhere. Sex-based repression seems to go hand-in-hand with military action and civil unrest. And granted, it's sometimes difficult to keep a real focus on the struggle of women when there are bombs going off, guns firing, and riots in the streets. But women are half of every single equation there is, and when they start getting treated as if they're invisible and expendable simply because there's violence to be gawked at, there's a serious problem. Where's the outrage over Eman al-Obeidi's situation? Where's the international demand for justice? Where's our giving a shit about women in trouble in other parts of the world? Where IS Eman al-Obeidi, for god's sake? Why don't we care?
This is maybe a bit of a silly diatribe; after all, women are treated with contempt, disdain, and violence every day in so many parts of the world. The Congo, Saudi Arabia, Iran, hell, everywhere. I can't get on here every day and lecture everyone for not paying enough attention when the amount of attention that needs to be paid is far beyond the cognitive capacity of most of us. But when such a radically insane story pops up that seems to me to demand attention and very little gets said about it, I get all kinds of pissed off.
Eman: if you're out there and you're reading this (which would be amazing), I can't offer you much aside from support. I'm too poor to buy you a plane ticket, and I'll be damned if I know how to get you out of wherever they're holding you and onto a plane. But if you can make it to New York, you've got a place to stay. You've got friends here. Hang in there.

2) Arizona has just passed legislation that will, ninety days after signing, prohibit women from getting abortions based on the assumed race or gender of the fetus. Which is just like... what? I mean, really? In Arizona, are people really going to abortion clinics and saying, "You know I just REALLY wanted a boy and the early sonogram showed that it might be a girl, and anyway, it might be Pacific-Islander and I really want a black baby, so let's get rid of it"? I cannot fathom that this is a problem so dire in the state of Arizona that this law is necessary to protect the welfare of fetuses. One more notch in the bedpost for anti-womens-reproductive-rights conservative assholes who will take any chance to further restrict the ability of women to make their own medical and reproductive choices. Sigh.

3) Sasha Grey has a "neü" book out: a series of photographs from her time in the adult film industry called Neü Sex. She's been out and about promoting it and has been getting media attention from her oh-my-god-a-smart-girl-who-did-porn public, and that's fantastic. Go, Sasha! But as Tracy Clark-Flory pointed out, a lot of what Sasha said at her appearance at Housing Works this week didn't make much sense. And that's kind of the thing about the entire Sasha-Grey-post-porn phenomenon that gets on my nerves: in context, none of this makes sense. Sasha Grey isn't in any real fundamental way radically different from a ton of other porn stars I know. She's incredibly sexual, beautiful, business-minded, well-spoken, attention-seeking, and... here's the not-shocker... intelligent. I get it, I get it, the stereotype of the female porn performer is a big-boobed, tan, not-so-smart blonde, and Sasha breaks that mold in a whole crap-ton of ways. But the only way in which she stands out from all the hundreds of other porn performing brunettes with brains bigger than their breasts is that she's so vocal and so public about how smart she is. Which, again, isn't really a problem. Good for her for being vocal about the fact that porn doesn't equate to stupidity. But I guess what I find missing from her soapbox is interest in expanding this platform of hers to include anyone but herself. Sasha is not the only smart sex worker out there, and since she's so fixed on being a crossover star based on her brains and ballsiness, it'd be really nice of her to mention more often that she knows lots of great, smart, talented people in the adult business. But she doesn't. She's distanced herself from the business for years, ever since her career started blossoming in other areas. I've heard rumors that she didn't even call AVN back when they sniffed around asking her to host this year. She hasn't performed since, I hear, 2009. She hasn't been at many conferences lately, and I haven't seen her in a signing booth since 2009. She's become separated from her past, and while there's nothing wrong with that if she wants to move on, she continues to use her past in the sex industry as her raison d'etre for everything else she does, and that seems like something of a dirty move to me.
I think what it comes down to is that, look, Sasha is capitalizing on what made her famous to get more famous. And I certainly can't fault her for that--after all, I named my blog after the McSweeney's column that got me enough attention to drag a readership over here in the first place, and to which I will now completely unabashedly post link. But it seems that in order to use her past to promote her present, she is joining the crowd in casting aspersions upon the industry she left. By showing how different she is from the industry and very purposefully distancing herself from it to gain more legitimacy, she's just adding to fuel to the fire of public opinion about how porn is no place for an intelligent and talented woman. But I know many intelligent, talented, interesting, educated, beautiful, incredible men and women in porn, and Sasha, it seems, is totally willing to pretend they don't exist... or worse, that she is better than them... to get what she wants. And it annoys me.
Every time she does something new and the media goes bananas about it, I scratch my head. "Why do we still care?" I ask myself. Obviously, Sasha is a captivating porn performer with a presence that earns her a fanbase that includes porn fans and merely curious anti-establishment types alike. And I applaud her for that. But at the same time, I mean, she's not the only person who's ever done porn to possess a brain that works, and it's an indictment of our culture that we are so endlessly fascinated by this "diamond in the rough" idea that we fail to look for any more diamonds. It's more fun to look at "the exception that proves the rule"--who we like to assume is Sasha and only Sasha--than to look at those who comprise the rule. Most porn stars are happy to do interviews in which they can prove that they are indeed smart, but for whatever reason, people don't like to read them that way. It seems that we want most porn stars to talk about sex and money and prove the stereotype so that we can all go on paying them no attention until they end up on Charlie Sheen's arm or starring in Stephen Soderbergh movies, because that's easier for all of us. But if we instead spent any time really thinking about people who make make porn, talking to them and about them like thinking individuals (as I try to do in my interviews here and on WHACK! Magazine), we'd notice that Sasha Grey is totally great and everything, but she's not much more of a diamond than anyone else.

Tidbits to Tantalize You

 I may not appreciate all the sentiments in The Observer article, but I gotta admit,

this graphic is quite entertaining.

Welcome to spring, my lovelies! It is officially post-spring equinox now, and we are officially on our way toward warmer days and higher libidos! I don't know about you guys, but I find it a whole lot more difficult to get randy when my toes are freezing and I'm under five blankets. How are you supposed to throw your partner around and enjoy yourself when it's fifty degrees in your apartment?

Oh, wait, that's just me because my landlord's a psycho and keeps the heat too low? Ah. Well. At any rate, I'm looking forward to warmer weather. This winter in NYC was brutal, outside and inside.

Anyway, as it's getting warmer I'm having a harder time sitting still to write. I'm assuming you are, too. Given it's a beautiful spring weekend, let's not be too serious about our fodder today, shall we? Let's link:

1) Fascinating study results on the LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation) phenomenon: turns out women don't experiment with other women nearly as much in college as we all thought they did. Surprisingly (or not) enough, less-educated, less-privileged women have substantially more same-sex sex and relationships. Well I'll be damned! You mean less-educated working women have rich and interesting personal lives less informed by what society expects of them and less carefully considered in light of what feminist literary theory says? No way!
Actually, this news makes me feel much better about my notably less-than-lesbian college experience. I've known for most of my adult life that I liked women, but I've never been good at expressing that to other women. Especially as a petite, femme-by-genetics woman who also liked men, I just never knew how to attract women who wanted to "experiment" as much as I wanted to. When I found one who wanted to make out in a bar, it always turned out she was experimenting for the benefit of the watching men nearby. I wanted to take her home. It never worked out further than some awkward fumbling, and I felt very sad about this because I believed that women were supposed to do this in college and I must have just been that unattractive to the experimental ones. That or I was at a Catholic university... hm... Might've been the Catholicism, now that I think about it.

ANYWAY...

2) The Observer says that young people in New York are no longer interested in sex because they're too busy worrying about their online personas getting mixed up with someone else's, preserving their mystique, and doing cocaine. Lucky for the libido of the city, however, we're assured that the younger generation, the 19- and 20-year-olds, are horny as ever and ready to take their places.
I've never been much of a hard partier or bar-goer myself, so I guess I can't comment much on the phenomenon, but I think some of the ideas mentioned in the article as side notes should be taken way more into consideration than your Facebook wall the day after a one night stand: for instance, Freeman mentions that "the cab right back to Bushwick" after a Manhattan bar is awkward and better avoided. But Freeman seems not to take this into real consideration: he's assuming that, A) the young professionals have enough cash to get a cab way the hell out to Bushwick, and B) that it's ridiculous to think young people would let a commute get between themselves and boning. But let's be real. A) Most young people between 21 and 30 in NYC are people like me, who have taken the very worst of the brunt of the recession. We're not exactly swimming in cash here. Cabs are expensive. An awkward cab right is one thing: a fluorescent-lit, crowded, uncomfortable, and too-long-because-the-MTA-never-fixes-anything subway ride? Dealbreaker. If one of you lives in Astoria and the other in Bushwick and you've got work tomorrow and you need to rely on getting the N train home after midnight? Fucking forget it. Sex is great, but it's not worth that. Make a date for later or drop it. B) Speaking of getting reamed by the recession more than the opposite sex: anyone who wants to have a real career in NYC right now who's at the "assistant" or "associate" level at his or her company isn't make shit for a salary and is probably working another job when he/she gets home at night. We all have blogs, some of which are professional in nature. Lots of us wait tables or tend bar to make extra cash to cover the rest of the bills in this overpriced metropolis, or we take night classes in the hopes that someday we CAN make enough money at one job. By the time our daily routine of work, work, and more work is over, that subway ride home with a new acquaintance is looking more dismal than ever.
Look, I'm not saying they're RIGHT. I know plenty of people who have fun random hook-ups all over the place. But I admit, I often marvel that they can muster the energy. Being young and in New York right now is exhausting. It's always been exhausting, but I'd argue that most of us are balancing a whole lot more work than social life right now to stay afloat, and sometimes, even when you're young, it's too much to want to get it on with that cute piece of ass at the end of the bar.
Also, c'mon Observer. Can we please be done making new and improved versions of "Sex and the City" headlines and titles for things? God, that show's been off the air for years now, and it's obviously ruined living in New York for everyone young and sexy by making people expect way too much out of our libidos already! Thanks.


3) Can I just show some more disgust for Apple real quick? Seriously, I've been annoyed at this company for subtly brainwashing its faithful into a weird state of Mac-crazed, glazed-eyed submission for years now. And I was pretty annoyed that in some circles the release of the new iPad outweighed the disaster in Japan as a newsworthy topic last weekend. And I've always found Apple's creepy sense of over-morality unsettling: come on, you make some of the most user-friendly tech gadgets in the world and you won't let people put porn apps on them? WTF?
But now I'm really pissed. While the App store continues to deny anything "overtly sexual" admittance to the Pearly, Sleek, and Impossibly Cool Gates, it's ok with the Exodus International app. Exodus International is a virulently anti-homosexual organization that favors exorcism, the God/Satan dichotomy, and demon-blaming when it comes to homosexuality. Ummm... Apple? You got anything to say about this? You might, um... Want to do that. Stat.