The Phallic Fallacy

At a panel on sex education and porn hosted by Smitten Kitten in Vegas last weekend, discussions about a crap-ton of topics dear to my heart were brought up by panelists Nina Hartley, Sophia St. James, Tina Horn, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Courtney Trouble, Dylan Ryan, and Danny Wylde. I can't even begin to list them all, but I felt that a lot of what was being said needs to be said over and over and over until people start listening. The whole thing was filmed by Smitten Kitten and Reid Mihalko, but I'm not sure if it's available online yet. When it is, I hope that everyone gets a chance to watch the footage. Discussions of barrier use in porn (pros and cons), trans bodies and trans sex, triggers, abuse survivor empowerment... it all went down.

But there was one issue raised by Danny Wylde that's been playing itself over and over in my head, along with a discussion that he and I had the next day about the same issue. That issue was the way in which young men who are growing up with a lot of mainstream porn available to them might learn to see their roles in sex through that imagery. While I'm all about the groundbreaking discussions and leaps forward that have been made for depictions of women in pornography in the past decade, I think that it's getting to a point where a price may be being paid. There is a gaping void surrounding the understanding of (particularly straight) male sexuality, especially when it comes to porn. I feel like women have been eager, and with good reason, to take up this dialogue in recent years. We've become more empowered than ever before in taking back our voices and our desire, doing things for ourselves in sex and porn, and turning the lens of sexual empowerment upon ourselves. It's fantastic. It's necessary. It's awesome.

But what about guys? There is so comparatively little room for men to have these same kinds of discussions, and for many reasons I don't want to try to get into, but the net result seems to be that while the discussion and appreciation of the complex and astounding world of female, trans, and queer sexuality seems to be blossoming, the reverse is happening for male sexuality. Whereas women are more vocal than ever, men/males seem to be taking a back seat, a quiet, passive role, and while this gives the female contingent more talking and breathing space, which is good, a lot goes unsaid. And the result may be that all kinds of men are taking their cues about what their sex should be from places that aren't being very responsible about it, like mainstream porn that shows men as little more than hard-ons and tattoos. Guys in most porn almost never speak or moan, they don't show off their bodies aside from their sex organs, they don't show their faces. They don't moan, they don't writhe, they don't show any complexity or depth to their desire. They are, in very upsetting ways, like machines made only to fuck. They are disembodied organs of lust with no backstory, no layers to their sexualities aside from animal rutting. This is the easy way to film men having sex.

But it is not the whole story, and for people who are consuming this kind of material who may be unsure of the validity of their nuanced, emotionally-driven, difficult sexual desires and bodies and minds, it may be very very limiting. It may be stifling. It may be conveying the message that men do not have complex sexualities, that men just need to want to have sex and to be constantly, continually, perpetually, rock hard.

I am not a man. I am not very male. I don't know what it's like to have a penis. My adventures with strap-ons aside, I can't fathom what it's like for your sexual satisfaction to rely so completely on the engorgement of a phallus that's attached to me. I can't, and won't, say that erections aren't important, or that they're overrated, because I don't know how that really plays out in men's minds. But I will say that reducing sex to the hardness of a cock, and reducing one's abilities to please to that cock's longevity, is really, really wrong. And I will say that I've had experiences with men in which a few minutes of lackluster response from that ONE organ destroyed an entire evening, and sometimes laid waste to months and even years of fulfillment. I won't say that an erection isn't important, but if anyone has it in their mind that it's the only male organ that matters in sex, they're wrong: there's the skin, the balls, the perenium, the ass, the mouth, the fingers, the brain... They are all enjoyable. They are all important. And I think that porn's insistence that sex is an equation that goes: hard cock + pussy + humping = the totality of sex... that's hurting people.

Of course it's not just porn. The rest of our culture feeds into the obsession with erections, too: barrages of commercials, spam e-mails, music, movies... Everything comes back to the men-as-dicks thing. It's impossible to get away from. But porn isn't helping anything, and the further we get into the internet age of easy-to-access porn, the more difficult it gets to pick out the fantasy-vs-reality aspects of pornographic sex. The real bodies versus the professional bodies, with their editing and fluffing and discipline and one-in-a-thousand natural abilities.

I worry about this. I worry that the men I sleep with think all I want from them, or for them, is an ability to get hard. It's so  much, so much more than that. I want them to want more, too.

More on this later...

I'm Off!

Wish me luck, everybody! I will be flying to LA tomorrow morning to conduct interviews with as many adult industry insiders as I can get my grubby little hands on! Or... not hands, I mean. Um. My... interviewing prowess.
Yeah.
Errr... that got awkard.

Yes, so anyway, I will be in LA from Tuesday-Friday, then I will fly to Vegas to try to nab a few more interviews, then back to NYC on Sunday. It is going to be a whirlwind trip, but I think it will be absolutely amazing.

Why?

Because the people I have interviewed so far about their personal relationships to sex and pornography have been fascinating. Everyone is different, and everyone is so eager to talk about their lives and experiences and ideas. The thing I have found the most in common with everyone I talk to is that, while everyone's words are different, their excitement about discussing this part of their lives is almost boundless. While many of us have talked about our sexualities over the course of our lives, I find that few people have been asked about their relationship to porn--sexual, intellectual, spiritual, whatever. This isn't as true, of course, for people who work in the adult industry, but so far, even they have opened up to me in a really amazing way. I have felt privileged to hear the very personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences of everyone I have spoken to so far, and I can't wait to hear more.

I will try to update the blog as often as I can during my trip! I will be all by my lonesome the whole time, so free time will be hard to find. Wish me luck!

Porno Product Placement: WTF?!

So I was watching a porno from a majorly huge company for review the other day when I saw, for the first time in my sexy movie experience, flagrant product placement. For another movie by the same company. I was stunned. And I'm not sure why. It's not as if I expect porn to live up to some kind of moral code that precludes advertisements or something; product placement is a good way to sell products. I get that, and it's cool. Especially in porn, which is one of the least apologetically money-grubbing of the industries, and one which has been steadily losing revenue for years. And it's not as if there isn't room in porn for product placement--really, every time you see a toy in use, it's an advertisement for the company that made that toy. But then again, you don't usually hear the performers discussing the merits of this toy made by this company, which can be purchased at this website or anything nearly so explicit. You just see people using these toys and enjoying them, and then if you really want to try that toy you can go find it on your own. It's not usually product placement so much as product use.

But in this movie, one of the characters was interested in trying anal sex, and her friend told her very specifically to get the DVD of jessica drake's Wicked Guide to Anal to learn how to do it. Which is absolutely acceptable, really. It's a good idea to get some advice on the subject of buttsex before trying it, because anal brings with it FAR more opportunities for disaster than most other sex acts. Learning about it first is excellent advice. And since Wicked made this movie, and also a movie about how to do anal, there's absolutely no good reason not mention it. I have a personal contempt for product placement in "art," but this movie isn't exactly art for art's sake, or any kind of sacrosanct advertising-free zone.

But still, it jarred me. Like, what was this, a Britney Spears video? (If her recent videos [check out the 0:40 mark] are any indication, that woman wears SO MUCH [0:40 again] of her own perfume I think I could smell her coming from miles away.) And I think that's the thing that made me do a double-take: porn is one of the biggest industries on the planet, so why not advertise more blatantly? The thing is that, because of its sexual nature, porn gets virtually nothing done in the way of advertising. Sure there are ads for porn and sex products on porn sites, and at the beginning DVDs, and in the pages of skin magazines, but the jizz biz doesn't really need to advertise for people to seek it out. It's a self-contained industry in terms of its own promotion. And within actual porno movies, there's no room for advertisements. It's not as if your average porn viewer is going to stand for 30 second ads in between sex scenes--that's when we'd turn to the fast-forward button or ad-free content online. Nobody wants to be bothered by encouragement to buy more porn when they're already watching porn.

So when this "casual" mention of another movie by the same company happened, I sat in stunned silence. I think even rewound it to play it again. Did that just happen? It all seemed so commercially meta, I couldn't figure out if it was smarter than I expected porn to be, or more self-referential, or just more boldly greedy. But the fact remained that it happened, and it worked pretty well, actually. Porn, at least from the big companies out in the Valley, is so hugely commercial now that it can do product placement. It's so much like mainstream media that advertisements seem like the next logical step. Or so seems to go the logic of Wicked.

And after all, why not? I think this is one of those instances in which I give in to my knee-jerk reaction about something in porn, but when I reflect upon it I find that whatever my knee jerked against was something I absolutely can't argue with. I've been writing for years, literally, about how porn should be treated more like other forms of entertainment: how we should talk about it more, think about it more, write about it more, and give it more respect. How porn should treat itself with a little more dignity so we can start to view it that way. And while I wouldn't necessarily call product placement a dignified thing to do, by definition it does make whatever product is being placed and the medium on which it's placed more of a serious deal. Product placement in porn is like that medium's way of saying, "We have something really good going here, and in fact it's so good that we're going to take this opportunity to shed light on something else good that we do." It's placing a porno squarely in the same kind of league as any other form of entertainment that assumes its audience is large enough to be advertised to, and that they respect its message enough to be open to suggestion while watching it. So really, this is a great sign.

Right?

New Years Resolution: be my own megaphone

I'm no good at promoting myself. Never have been. It's not that I don't value my own work--it's that I'd rather other people like it and do the advertising/word of mouth/buzz for me. I don't know if it's modesty that keeps me from pushing my brand, or narcissism that makes me think others should recognize my genius and take care of it, or some bizarre mixture of the two. Or perhaps it's just laziness--I work very hard and when I'm done, I don't feel much like spending the rest of my energy on promoting. But whatever the case may be, it's come to my attention, via a very determined photographer who found me on ModelMayhem and then spent an entire day Google searching everything about me on the internet (this sounds a bit creepy perhaps, but it's not, he's actually a fantastic guy), that my body of creative work is actually pretty goddamn extensive. I never have time to do all the things I want to do, but when I had someone else point it out to me, it became clear that I still do a LOT. And have done a lot. And I should really be showing it all off more.

Last year I had a tarot card reading from a dear friend who is excellent at what he does. I wrote down what he told me and let it sit in a stack of papers on my desk for a long time. At the turn of the new year, I unearthed it and glanced over it, and here's what it says in huge letters at the top:

MAKE YOUR VOICE LOUDER.

It's become clear that, while sometimes others are kind enough to take up the banner and do my promoting for me, even then they could not possibly be as dedicated to my cause as I am. Hell, even the people I've hired to do this (read: literary and entertainment industry agents) can't be bothered to do it. Last year the team of agents I'd been working with unceremoniously dumped me after they'd decided that I was not, in fact, going to crap out some piece of sparkly magenta chick lit they could stamp some "Sex and the City" reference on and sell, sell, sell. They weren't interested in promoting me or helping me, just making a dime on me. And I wasn't interested enough in promoting what I actually was interested in making to do the work myself. And now I'm agentless--very freeing, in its way, but not really ideal.

The point here is, it's time for me to start taking myself seriously. I write under no fewer than four different names, some in print and some online. I write fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I do interviews, long thought-pieces, columns, product reviews, DVD reviews, and coverage of events in New York and beyond. I draw, paint, and curate. I do poetry readings live and on video, and translate poetry, and network with people from all over the world to keep it all going. Shit, I can sing. And hell, I even do some modeling for fun. I am a goddamn renaissance woman. But nobody f-ing knows about it.

So here's my resolution for 2012: MAKE MY VOICE LOUDER. I'm getting a mothafuckin' website. I'm migrating this blog to it, and I'm putting up photos of my visual work, and I'm linking to my art show, my McSweeney's column, my articles, my fiction, my poetry, and maybe even my photos. I want it up and running by the beginning March so people interested in the art show can find out as much about me as possible.

So, yeah. RAWR. Expect it.

I Wonder

I like to think of myself as a realist. I've read much on human evolution and sexuality. I have always been tuned toward the sexy side of life, finding innuendo in the most innocent of places and shaping my life around my sexual desires; how could it be shaped any other way? I have placed myself in the world of pornography in some ways accidentally, but in most ways deliberately--I hoped to find like-minded people here. People who see everything for what, biology tells us, it really is: an elaborate construction built up around the urge to fuck. Everything we do goes back to that basic need to try to pass on our DNA, to become immortal through our offspring, to collapse into each other over and over until our seed has taken to the soil of a new generation. And then to keep doing it because we like it. Sex is the basis of every movement of our heads, every building we design, every purchase we make, everything we do. Everything.

Or so I've thought for some time. And I still believe I'm right. But it occurs to me sometimes, when I watch people at the office or overhear conversations on the subway, that this reductive view of humanity is isolating me. It's impossible to know what those guys on the sidewalk actually thought when they turned around to watch that woman in tight pants walk by. Maybe they simply thought, "How pretty." But my brain, saturated in the hardcore and held up by my almost-thirty years of perversion, immediately assumed that their brains took this to an extreme: "How would my dick look in her mouth? I wonder if she can deep throat."

I'm starting to feel like I don't have any firm grounding in the rest of the world. I sometimes fear I've run straight through the looking glass without noticing and landed deep in Lalaland, where everything is distorted, oversized, oversexed. I'm sometimes happy here: these people get me to a degree. They're not afraid of sex or sexuality and they're fun to hang out with and their brains do the same things mine does when they're in public, I'm sure. For us, it's normal to wonder what that guy is packing beneath his skinny jeans, to speculate briefly on his fetishes, to be oh-so-close to just asking him before remembering that sex is not easy for everyone to talk about. It's a huge block in the road for many. For us, though, it IS the road.

I wonder if my sense of up and down is still intact. I wonder if there is an up and a down or just this slippery slope I've been on for years now. I love being able to talk to people about their perversions, to be an understanding ear for their insecurities and a source of answers for many of their questions. I like being the Mama Bear of all things porn for my friends. But this work is doing something to me, to my expectations about people, to my estimation of people. I still think, and always will, that sex is what drives us, but that equation is so simple--if everything came back to this so simply, we'd have never invented calculus. Being an essentialist is easy most of the time, but I've begun to wonder if I can handle the complications that arise when you attribute more than just lust to people's motivations. I wonder if I have any motivations of my own anymore.

I wonder.

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!

Misused Quotes and Misunderstood Quips

I'm casting about for what to say right now and it's not coming easily. I feel like no matter what I end up writing down will come out wrong and upset someone out there. But if I don't try to write about this I'll be upset. So I guess it's worth a shot.

I don't know the exact context of the famous Voltaire and/or Evelyn Beatrice Hall quotation, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's so overused I feel as if it's got to be some sort of sham that gets misappropriated all the time, but I'm going to go ahead and nab it today because it fits so neatly into this situation. The situation being something along the lines of the following:

One of the writers at a publication I'm closely connected to wrote an article that has gotten a lot of very negative attention lately and that publication has decided to stand behind the author rather than taking down the offensive material. There has been a lot of noise made about how offensive this material is, and that noise is not exactly wrong. As someone who is very intimately connected with the publication and thus the material, I feel terrible that it's out there and upsetting people. I am far, far too sensitive for this stuff. In any situation in which someone is upset by something, I almost always take the blame and the hurt feelings very much upon myself. I get upset. I blame myself. I feel absolutely terrible and try to make everyone in the situation happy again.

But sometimes that doesn't work and sometimes it's not even possible. And sometimes it's not even right. The offending material made jokes about two very serious topics: racial stereotypes and rape. They were made absolutely in jest, and the writer, being one of the sweetest people I've ever known, didn't expect anyone to take them seriously. But some people did. And here we enter into that big nebulous grey cloud of foggy moral responsibilities around humor and sensitive topics. Where are the lines drawn in this murky morass of bruised feelings, innocuous humor, insidious inequality and ignorance, and morality? These are subjects that people spend their whole lives trying to understand, but no one in their right mind can claim to have all the answers to.

So here I am, watching this meant-to-be-funny article being taken as very, very not funny. And I'm asking myself all these questions about what's more important here: the offense people have taken to the article, or the right of the author to say it in the first place. The feelings of people who see no humor in touchy issues, or the importance of free speech? Vast, sweeping overstatements I want to make to defend the article, or taking an honest look at how these things really affect our society?

On the one hand, I believe absolutely that sexual assault and racism are deadly serious topics. When I read this article in HuffPo from Eve Ensler today, I almost wept. I myself, and a huge majority of the women I know, are all victims of sexual assault. It is a force of unspeakable evil in our world, and it is perpetuated through silence, sexism, and, yes, mockery. Making the issue of sexual assault seem less important or earth-shattering than it really is in a way defeats everything I stand for as a writer: I believe that the rights of all people are damaged by the pervasiveness of rape in the world today. And it makes me sick to think that I might contribute in any way to that pervasiveness.

The same is true of racism. A few months ago I made the definitive decision to stop reviewing any adult materials that come my way that make use of racial stereotypes as a selling point: I won't review Cougars Like it Black or any of the other silly stuff that feeds into racial stereotyping in the adult industry. It's needless and damaging and gross. And I don't believe that mocking racial stereotypes is a universally good thing--it can be just as damaging as bald-facedly perpetuating those stereotypes.

So I hate to sit by and watch this all happen. I hate to think that people are reading this material and thinking that the people I work with might actually espouse these vile notions. But I also have to ask: what's the point of humor and satire and public writings if not to give some air, some levity, some space to the topics that so offend us?

I absolutely don't love it that neo-Nazis can go around saying awful things about other groups of people. I find it disgusting that some conservatives say hateful things about women who want reproductive rights. I don't love it that there are places on the internet where people can voice their bigotry. But would I rather live in a place where things that offend people are censored? Would I rather live in an eerie silence in which jokes can't be made because they might be offensive? It's the silence we shroud certain topics in, like sex and rape and race, that often does more damage than the words themselves being uttered, called out, decried, and discussed, isn't it? Or am I just making myself feel better?

I have a friend who was so annoyed by a stand-up comic that, last week, he walked up onto the stage at the club and punched the comic in the face for his racist comments about the bartender. I'm certainly not promoting violence in public places on a whim, but I think there's a bit of an analogy here: sometimes it's maybe better to let the unpleasant things you don't like be said and then express your dislike... than it is to tell the person who said it that they had no right to say it or to try to revoke that person's speech. Maybe it's better to deal with the consequences of free speech and to let its not-so-positive iterations be platforms for discussion than to revoke things that are done. As Stephen King said once, "What's done is done and can never be undone, as the Irish have been saying for centuries, and which just goes to show what assholes they are."

Or somesuch. But you see what I'm saying? I'm not sure if I do. But I think the Voltaire or whomever quote above says a lot. This whole thing makes me want to curl up and cry. I don't like it that it happened. But it did. So let's talk about it.

The Post-Convention Wrap-Up: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Well, Exxxotica NJ has come and gone, and I am once again exhausted, energized, and voiceless. This weekend went by in such a whirl of interviews, parties, connections, and craziness that looking back on it I hardly know what to say.

The first thing to be said, of course, is thank you to Exxxotica for making it all happen. This year's convention (the only adult industry convention that comes near NYC, and would be in the city if not for our weirdly prudish government, but that's another story) was bigger than ever and impressively well attended by industry and fans alike. I rubbed elbows with so many of my favorite performers and behind-the-scenes folks that I actually missed seeing and talking to a lot of my other favorites, and that's the suck. But I feel slightly less bad about it knowing that I was simultaneously carting around a gang of WHACK! staffers with me while trying to promote a media event/party we were throwing Saturday night.

Which really is the most... hm... the most interesting, shall we say, aspect of this weekend for me. The party craziness. I've heard it repeated again and again that porn is an insider's industry, and I've seen and heard of many examples of pettiness in the ranks. But I wasn't prepared for the shit that went down surrounding the event WHACK! magazine threw on Saturday night along with HedoOnline. It really brought some of the rumors I'd heard into reality for me.

I have my suspicions about what it was that actually sparked all this nastiness, but the short story is this: WHACK! began to plan a party with HedoOnline that would provide some mainstream press coverage for adult industry people who were in town for the convention this past weekend. The planning began over a month ago, when we sent out feelers to clubs for hosting, stars for attending, and Exxxotica to see if they would like to sponsor the event as one of their official after-parties. We love the guys who run Exxxotica and were eager to work with them to make everything go smoothly. They told us that they'd already worked something out with another venue for their after-parties, so they'd have to decline, but they hoped our event would go well. So we proceeded to plan for the event without using their name on it. We called it a "media event" to avoid the "after-party" moniker, and we made no mention of Exxxotica in our official press for the event, just to keep everything on the level. Especially after I got screamed at by a performer who apparently was misinformed about what was going and threatened with lawsuits if any copyright infringement occurred, we were very, very careful to make the event as positive and well-publicized as possible, but to keep the "Exxxotica" name out of it. We didn't want anyone to get the wrong impression about who was throwing the event.

So in late October we sent out a press release to every major media outlet in the adult biz and in the mainstream. Nowhere in the release did we mention the word "Exxxotica" or "party." We were treating the event as a red carpet media extravaganza that we wanted to invite adult industry professionals to so that they could get some media exposure while they were in town. We invited them to stop by on their ways to other appearances, or stay and have a few cocktails with us. Whatever worked. Let's all be friends, right?

Not so much, apparently. By the beginning of last week, we'd had several media outlets rewrite our headline to read "Exxxotica After-Party" or some variation thereof, which immediately pissed off about... well... everyone. We immediately contacted every place we could that had run this headline, and many of them retracted their rewritten headlines, switching instead to something less inflammatory. But it seems the damage was already done. Rumors flew around, people freaked out, managers pulled their talent, and by the time Saturday morning rolled around, we literally had no idea who would be on our red carpet, even though we'd confirmed attendance weeks in advance from many stars. We spoke via phone and in person to talent managers and stars, and we got a lot of lip service, but it was too late. The rumor mill was hard at work, turning our good intentions into a nefarious scheme to steal Exxxotica's name and reputation for our own self-serving wishes. Exactly the opposite of what we'd tried to do.

Damage control can only get you so far. In the end, we had a fabulous night, and the convention itself was great. We had a great turnout at our event despite everything, there was a big media turnout for the red carpet, and we all had a great time. But it could have been a lot better if some people hadn't decided to get their knickers in a twist over an entirely mistaken impression that they chose to stand by even when there was no need to. I think this has been a learning experience: the industry on the inside is a lot like high school. Lots of fun to be had, but you always have to be watching your back because people actually want to sabotage you. Egos are massive. People take themselves very, very seriously, and a smile and good intentions will not change their minds.

I hesitate to say this because it might come out all wrong, but here goes: It's just porn, people. Relax. I don't mean to say that porn isn't serious business or doesn't deserve real consideration and respect, because it does. It VERY MUCH does. But it's also not the U.N. You know what I mean? We're not holding the fate of nations in our hands here. We're trying to throw a party and do some interviews for everyone's benefit. Can we all just calm down a little bit and get along?

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.

It's International Fisting Day! Let's Party!

I've discovered that today is (unofficially-officially) International Fisting Day. I discovered when Jiz Lee and Courtney Trouble told me about it. Seems there's a movement going on to, more or less, raise awareness about fisting as a legitimate intimate act. Seems there's a generally-held belief in this country that fisting is an extreme sex act that can't even be safely filmed without fear of obscenity charges, so most scenes where fisting takes placed are actually cut so you can't see what's going on.
This strikes me as about as close as we get in America to censorship. And I do not like that one little bit.
I, myself, don't know much about fisting on a personal level. I've never tried it, probably owing a lot to that misconception prevalent in society about how it's a "fringe" act. But I've seen some porn in which fisting happens (mostly off-screen, leaving only the general pumping motion of the arm and wide-eyed gasping facial expressions to clue me in), and I have never seen anyone who's doing it look sad or pained or unhappy. I've seen faces open into what can only be described as transcendent smiles and wide-open pleasure. I've seen women squirt. I've heard people scream in orgasm... In general, I've only ever seen good things.
But I've never tried it. And you know, now that I think about it, maybe it's not just this seemingly unfair prejudice against fisting that has stopped me. There's the logistical issue--I'm very very sensitive and small down there--but more than that, there's the syntactical issue. The word itself--fisting--brings to mind images of faces being punched. It's not that there's anything wrong with the idea of putting one's whole hand into someone else's orifice, at least not so far as I'm concerned, it's that the terminology applied to the act is so violent-sounding. So aggressive. Why not "handing" or "five fingering" or something slightly less heavyweight-champion-esque? If regular sex was called "face-smashing" I might be less inclined to try it, too.
But that's only the veneer, the very outer skin of the deliciously sweet fruit that I'm told by many adult performers and friends is the truth about fisting. And a rose, by any other name, would still feel fantastic. I don't know that I'll try to jumpstart my personal experience with fisting today, but I will talk to people about it and ask them about their experiences to find out more. There is no reason under the sun not to be open-minded about it, to discuss it and make it more generally understood. Nor is there any reason not to let it be shown on camera. But one step at a time, I suppose, is the way these things go.

The Pimp on 86th Street

Ok. I'm pretty sure that I will offend some people with this post. But I'm a little confused about how to feel about what I'm about to describe, and I do my best thinking when I'm writing. So please bear with me.

The other day I was walking down the street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on my way for a much-needed leisurely stroll through Central Park. I was wearing a short sweater dress with tights and cowboy boots, my leather jacket, and a scarf. I was feeling very attractive, as far as it goes, and listening to my headphones and generally enjoying myself. The Upper East Side is a fairly conservative neighborhood where one most typically encounters rich older people the Caucasian persuasion, lots of joggers, families, and so on.

So when I got very publicly, yet quite tastefully (again, as far as it goes) by an older gentleman who looked for all the world like a very high-class pimp... I wasn't quite sure what to think. I'm still not. I may be jumping to very premature and highly politically incorrect conclusions about this man's profession, and it may be tasteless to some to say that his overt check-out was tasteful. But this is how I experienced it:

This gentleman came around the corner as I was walking past. He was older--I'd say mid- to late-fifties, wearing a shiny (not sure of the material, but it was woven, shiny cloth, not like satin or silk) cream-colored silk suit jacket with matching (but not as shiny) slacks, a perfectly matched pale cornflower blue shirt with a cream-colored tie and elegant golden tie pin, understated aviator sunglasses, and a cream-colored fedora with a blue band around it. He was wearing alligator-skin loafers and had a cornflower blue handkerchief in his breast pocket. He was carrying but not using a gold-knobbed cane that matched his outfit. And when I walked by, he stopped in his tracks, lowered his sunglasses just a bit, and watched me walk by. He looked me up and down, but not in a real head-nodding, exaggerated motion. More an appreciative once-over.

Now, this was a Sunday afternoon. It is possible that this gentleman was on his way to or from a very well-dressed and flashy uptown church service. Or on his way to a high-priced benefit gala at the Metropolitan Museum. Or any number of things. But if his outfit and demeanor and not-too-overt-but-still-noticeable look at my body said any one thing louder than all other options, that thing was: high class pimp.

Ok, so yes, I'm making sweeping generalizations based on outmoded stereotypes. But here's the crux of the matter. Whether he was a pimp or not, we're assuming he was... should I be flattered in some way? Angry? Should I feel demeaned because he looked at me like a piece of meat in cowboy boots, or kind of flattered that he did it so respectfully?

The inherent question here is: is it ever ok to get stared at on the street? Different women have different answers, and it's an ongoing topic of debate that I don't have an answer to. But knowing how to feel is even more problematic when the person doing the staring is possibly someone who makes money on selling women's bodies, which might be with their consent or might not be, and who is now staring at mine. In about as complimentary a way as it's possible to stare open-mouthed at a woman on the street. But still. Staring.

Hm. Ideas? Anybody? What do you think about this based-in-reality-but-still-hypothetical-because-we-don't-know-he-was-really-a-pimp situation?

Worst Activist EVAR... But an OK Thinker

I'm not much of an activist. I'm being honest. I believe deeply in the need for change in this country, and I absolutely support what's happening on Wall Street here in my very own city. I believe that fat-cat greed has finally gone too far and that we as a democratic nation need to stand up, a la The Whiskey Rebellion, to make our lowly little voices heard to banks, corporations, lobbyists, and politicians. Likewise, I (obviously) support the ballsy men and women who took to the streets of New York this weekend in NYC's very own Slutwalk. DUH, it's of vital importance that as we move forward as a species, we actively promote the rights of individuals to dress however they want without fear of assault. I'm absolutely pro-slut. And both of these massively important activism events took place in my city of residence this past Saturday! What's a strong-opinioned, publicly vocal feminist to do? Which march to choose?

If I'd been a really good activist, I'd have done both. Dressed in lingerie and hit up the Occupy Wall Street march to make my point about my rights to dress how I want an issue across the board, then headed off to Slutwalk if I didn't get arrested for being too activist-y and flamboyant.

But what did I do? I went to neither. As I said, I'm a bad activist. A crappy one, even. A crap-tivist, if you will. Heh.

No, seriously, I'm ashamed. But I do have my reasons (ahem... boyfriend's birthday, pre-made plans, cold weather...). But you don't need to hear the excuses; the point is this:

In the aftermath, I feel like a fool for not having gone down there. Of course, with Occupy Wall Street, there's still lots of time, and I hope to go down to march later this week or weekend. This stuff is important. But in the days since, I've noticed that while the Brooklyn Bridge mass arrest has gotten huge headlines, Slutwalk got virtually none. But if you ask me, they're integrally linked. Think of it this way: those people who got pepper-sprayed the other day? Mostly women. A lot fo the 700 arrested on Saturday? Women. What do you think would have happened if, as I'd mentioned above, a whole lot of them showed up dressed in fishnets, platform heels, and leather? I'm willing to bet that the "Well, look how she was dressed" feeling that led to Slutwalk in Toronto in the first place would have been brought to bear. I'm willing to bet that the women dressed "all slutty" would have been the first to be photographed, the first to be arrested, and the least likely to garner any sympathy. If you want to get real nitty-gritty, sex workers are a HUGE number of "the 99%" and their numbers are steadily growing as the disaffected workers of America are laid off and need to earn a living somehow. Sex work, sluttiness, and Occupy Wall Street are all part of the same need for change. If a nurse, a waiter, an actor, a secretary, or a retail worker can't earn enough to survive in this economy because the fat cats on Wall Street and beyond don't care about them, think of what those pudgy pussies would have to say about the rights of sex workers to earn a decent living and basic respect.

I wonder, if a group of prostitutes, escorts, strippers, or porn stars showed up at Occupy Wall Street to agitate for their right to work and be respected like the rest of America, what would happen? Would the be spurned by the activist community growing in lower Manhattan and told they're making the whole movement look bad? Or only told by police, as women in Brooklyn have recently been, to put on some damn clothes because they might get raped? Or would they just be arrested for being there and being too sexy? An interesting question, and one that makes me think about just how much work there is to be done. Maybe I'll give it a shot this weekend, peeps. Garter belt and picket sign? A good combo?

Confessor

I'm sitting in the Salt Lake City, UT airport. I've been here for almost four hours already and I've got a few hours to go before my redeye back to New York. Stupid, stupid awesome fun times in Colorado causing hangovers that cause the missing of flights. Gr.

But I've got some quality time with my computer, which is pretty ok. Over the weekend I got to thinking about the interesting position I inhabit as a woman who writes about but does not participate actively in the porn industry. I'm kind of a middle ground between the average consumer/appreciator of pornography and an industry insider. I know a lot about people on both sides of the spectrum, but I fall in the middle of it. I know many people in and out of the industry and see the perspectives of both. I know specialized industry language, but as a mere observer and commentator, I retain a lot of the curiosity and confusion of an outsider.

All of the above is kind of "duh." But the thing that's been capturing my attention lately is how OTHER people respond to me when they find out that I occupy this space between "in" and "out." I end up acting as confessor for some, and as a mostly-blank projection screen for the fantasies, fears, and insecurities of others. I don't come across, at least I don't think I do, as a "porn person." I look like any other person you meet at a party or a bar. But when I'm introduced as "This is Lynsey. She writes about porn," people either open themselves wide and ask questions, or they start to see me in a new way and assume they know things about me. The first few sentences of conversations I have with people I've just met are incredibly revealing about them. Just a few memorable first lines:

"Do you do sex work?" (no)
"I don't like porn at all." (yeah right)
"I'm addicted to porn." (oh?)
"Do you know Sasha Grey?" (no)
"Do you know Jenna Haze?" (yes)
"...how did you get into... that?" (needed cash)
"I watch porn, but I know that every time I do, I'm emotionally damaging myself." (...wait, what?)
"How do the guys groom their pubic hair? Do they wax?" (I have no idea, actually!)

...and so on. When I meet a new person, I never know if our introduction will  be perceived as an opening into a new and interesting world or a terrifying opportunity for revelation. I've heard confessions of addictions, joy about those same addictions, come-ons, put-downs, and everything in between, and it's fascinating. Once that initial, "This is what I do" card is dropped, all bets are off, but I often cease to be a real person for those I meet. I become a repository for fears, a source of information, an interesting curiosity. And most the time, I'm happy to be such. I feel like a priest in a confessional, a fly on the wall of the lives of people who often have not taken much time to think about their relationship to pornography until that moment... or who have spent entirely too much time thinking about it and cannot come up with any response other than shame. I enjoy pointing out to people who feel guilt about watching "violent" porn that the vast majority of it is made by people who very much enjoy that kind of sex--that watching a woman get "demeaned" in porn is often documentation of an empowering experience for that woman. I like to provide much-needed facts for people who have long wondered about the "mysteries" of pornography but never had the initiative to seek answers. I am a debunker, a lending library (literally--I've lent out dozens of DVDs), an insider and a myth, all in one.

Two Totally Terrific Questions, Part I

From various spots around the interwebz:

Wilson said: what do u think abt straight men who like women who enjoy lady sex?

I’m not exactly sure how to answer this question because I’m not entirely sure about what I’m being asked, but here’s a stab at it.

I’m not maybe the best person to ask for a subjective opinion on this because as a woman who loves ladies and ladysex… I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t. I mean, sure, I get the theories as to why some people aren’t turned on by it, and I know it varies from person to person depending on taste, but I can’t really get outside of my own head to really understand why ladysex could be anything but great. But more to the point, I know that straight men especially love ladies, having sex with ladies, and looking at ladies, so it seems to stand reason that they’d also love watching ladies have sex with each other. Double the fun, right?

But that’s answering as if we exist in a cultural vacuum, and sadly, we don’t. The issues that this question raises are multitudinous. For instance, there’s a gigantic double standard in our culture that while it’s acceptable for straight men to unabashedly adore watching women go at it, it’s decidedly less acceptable for straight women to gush over how hot it is when men get it on. Frankly, I can see no good reason for this, but there are certainly enough not so good reasons for it. 

Women who have sex with women can easily have ladysex without being branded “gay” or even bisexual in a lot of ways, because female sexuality is considered (and may well be, but the jury is still out on that one) more fluid than male sexuality. Because a lot of ladysex is viewed as undertaken (especially in porn) primarily for the pleasure of men, watching it happen can be a turn-on both physically and mentally for a man, who feels little of the territorial sexual jealousy that he might get from watching a woman with another man. He can also watch a woman be sexy without comparing himself to another man, feeling nervous by the possibility of homoeroticism, etc. It’s fine for a guy to watch ladies get it on. But the opposite? Bah! A man who even touches another man in the wrong manner, or god forbid kisses him, is automatically labeled “gay.” There’s virtually no wiggle room for most men.

I think because the long-standing relationship model (which, by the way, is steadily being routed but still persists in rarely-examined corners of our lives, like this one) relies on the idea that the male partner in a heterosexual couple is the “important” one, I think that the idea of a husband or boyfriend hooking up with another man is potentially scarier than a woman doing the same with another woman. In gross generalizations, men tend to assign more importance to the physical act of sex than to the emotions behind it, whereas women (again, gross generalizations here) do the opposite. And for straight women who fall in love with men, the overriding idea in relationships is that male attention is more important than female. So for a woman to have sex with another woman, from the man’s perspective, is hot but not emotionally important. Whereas for a man to have sex with another man, even within the context of a relationship (threesome, voyeurism, etc), the fear that an emotional attachment might be made is a problem for the woman. And, of course, there’s that deal-breaking terror: “What if he’s really gay and drops me?” 

So on these many levels, I think the idea that ladysex is a turn-on for men makes sense, culturally, where mansex doesn’t always do it so much.

Most porn does very little to temper these erotic dreams with sometimes-less-sexy realities: sometimes when women have sex, they’re in love. Sometimes they like it better than sex with men. Sometimes they run off together. Sometimes, if there are two women with a man, it’s not ALL ABOUT THE MAN. Gasp! I love threesome porn, don’t get me wrong. And I love threesomes. But I find that in most pornography, the idea is that a man will be watching and therefore the man must be the focus of the action: the cock is fought over, coveted, and worshiped. Sure, this could be fun in a real threesome situation, but ladies having sex is often NOT ABOUT THAT at all. So I sometimes find that men who “enjoy ladysex” in their porn might not get a very well-rounded picture of what ladysex is all about in real life. Just a disclaimer.

Then of course there’s the ancient bias that the female body is more beautiful than the male, which persists to this day and which I find distasteful. I mean, they are beautiful, those lady-bodies. I love them. But to say they’re more beautiful than man-bodies… That’s just silly. I believe that because women are taught from an early age that one of their biggest goals—if not the biggest goal—in life is to be beautiful, women carry themselves that way. They know they’re gorgeous. It’s not hard to notice when someone is projecting attractiveness. So naturally, when we see women together, we think: double-whammy of attractiveness. But the flip side of the coin is that men, and people of other genders who have way more obstacles to accepting their appearance in the first place, are not taught to think they’re attractive. Or, if they are, the attractive factor is rated below aggressiveness, intelligence, money, etc. So while I don’t think the male body is inherently less attractive than the female body, men just don’t project sex appeal in the same way that women do. When they do, and do it well, you get superstars: George Clooney springs to mind. That guy KNOWS he’s hot and boy does it ever show. Women are on him like… women on George Clooney. But the cultural bias that exists in all of us until we confront it tells us that male bodies together are not attractive by virtue of their maleness. But fuck that—I know plenty of women who LOVE gay male porn and erotica. I do. Watching men get into their sexiness is a huge turn-on, even to a queer like me. If the men actually think they’re sexy, we will too!

But then there’s also the idea that a friend brought up to me recently, which was that for him as a straight man, watching lesbian porn was a big turn-on, but he couldn’t quite get himself the whole way there unless there was a cock in the scene, too. And while at first I was confused because…well, that’s not how it usually is for me… I realized something. The reason amateur porn, and gonzo and POV pro porn is so popular is because the whole idea of pornography for those who aren’t hardcore voyeurs (ie, don’t get off just on watching but in taking part) is that you imagine yourself in the action. If your mode of having sex involves your penis, well then, it makes sense that the porn that gets you off would feature a penis you could imagine as yours. And furthermore, even for those who get totally into girl-porn but can’t quite reach the mountaintop of arousal…

So, I guess the short answer is: I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying people of the sex/gender(s) you like getting together for a little sexytime.

Conversations at the Wartime Cafe

I just returned from reading a short piece I wrote for inclusion in my fellow McSweeney's alum Sean Labrador Y Manzano's anthology, Conversations At the Wartime Cafe. A few of us east-coast scribblers included in the anthology got together and read at Bluestockings Books on the LES here in New York. Our pieces centered around our experiences as writers during the War on Terror. It's not the kind of thing I like to glamorize often by talking or writing about. My life as an adult has centered around New York City, and I have been against the wars raging in the Middle East since day one. I saw the towers fall here and it shaped my life, and it still does. But it seems almost disrespectful to talk about it that way sometimes. Commodifying the experience of terror. Sentimentalizing something that is real. Making ceramic plates and conservative mantras on the pain and confusion of that day. Building wars of aggression on the backs of the suffering.

But writing the pieces for Sean's anthology and tonight reading them in a room full of New Yorker's on the almost-ten-year anniversary... I came to realize just how much the twin towers falling and the aftermath that continues to drag itself along on blood-stained feet has shaped me. The images of bodies falling from a hundred stories up when I'd just learned to call New York City home ten years ago--I hadn't realized until now just how burned into my memory those silhouettes are. How much my reality as an adult has been the constant reference to that one moment.

I've felt for a long time that we were crybabies about the whole thing. Not that it wasn't horrible; it was. Not that I don't mourn those who died; I do. But the number of lives our country has taken away from the rest of the world in retribution, holding up that attack ten years ago as a shield against blame for the wrongs we have committed... it makes me sick to think of it. And so I often don't. I avoid thinking about the profound influence that these things have had on me and my life. But right now, sitting here alone and running a fever and somewhat confused, it's washing over me. This is my reality and has been since I was eighteen: that there is nothing just here. There is and never has been an easy black-and-white in war or in politics. There is always that grey cloud of asbestos and fear, even in the brilliant fall morning light, because simplicity was lost long ago, sometime before we knew how to write it down. I often feel that my generation is diffuse, dissolute, disillusioned. That we lost our sense of magic on that morning. But really, I don't think we ever had it to begin with. Really, I think every generation must find this truth in one way or another. We simply have a moment in our collective memory to point to as the root of our childhoods falling away into ideologies clashing, stock markets flopping like dead fish, religions exploding. But what's funny is that in the world we live in, where we are at once more connected than ever and yet further from one another, separated by each other by the screens of our gadgets while tethered to the realities of what our military is doing abroad displayed on those same screens... that we have chosen to largely avoid banding together under that moment. We are too cool, or something. We see the grey in it and we can't figure out how to stand side by side, hand in hand, to find a common emotion here. We clutch our smart phones and can't look each  other in the eye, having come of age in a time when there is no common ground that is sure footing. It's all slippery, it's all subjective, it's all relative, and there is no real comfort there. But is adulthood a place where there can be comfort?

I'll read again tomorrow afternoon, with Sean Labrador Y Manzano, Nick Johnson, Britt Melewski, Keely Hyslop, M.G. Martin, Annie Wilner, Molly Kat, Soumeya Bendimerad, and Tess Patalano. Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn. Would love to see some friendly faces.

You Know What I Love? Ladysex

A friend told me a few days ago that when she told her husband she was excited for my impending visit, during which we would spend some time with our lesbian friend together, he said, "So what, are they going to spend all their time talking about having sex with women?"

She was offended by this question, and I'm glad she was, because that's a willfully stupid thing to say. Obviously women who have sex with women, like our mutual friend and I, don't restrict our conversation to "ladysex," as my friends and I laughingly called it all weekend. We made a joke out of it and referred to "ladysex" at every possible opportunity to poke some fun at the sadly narrow-minded husband. Normally we wouldn't talk that much about it: those of us who enjoy the sexual company of women don't freak out and only talk about that subject when in the presence of others like ourselves, any more than people who have sex with any other type of person talk about the kind of sex they have. That's just small-minded and silly.

But then again, I've started thinking about it on my own, and you know what? While we might not restrict our conversation to ladysex normally, I think that when I'm with my lady-loving female friends, we actually do spend a fair proportion of our time talking about that topic. Here's why:

1) I'm a horny person and I write about sex and porn professionally for several publications. I'm particularly interested in the social, cultural, political, and personal impacts of non-normative sexual practices, gender roles, and queerness of all kinds. So when anything tangentially related to ladysex comes up, my mind veers in that direction.

2) My friends--particularly those with interests in ladysex or any of the things I write about--know that I'm knowledgeable and curious about these topics. They also know I love to talk. So they discuss their ideas, experiences, and frustrations with me, and sometimes ask questions.

3) It's not all that often that those of us women who like ladysex actually get together and have an opportunity to talk about it. So when we do, we really enjoy talking about it. Sharing experiences, ideas, techniques...  you know, war stories and the like. It's fun, and in a world where "ladysex" is referred to by numerous even sillier names ("girl-on-girl" when obviously everyone involved is at least 18 and therefore a woman, etc), represented so flat-out badly so much of the time (we've all watched "lesbian" porno scenes in which it could not possibly be more obvious that none of the women are at all interested in other women), and rarely discussed openly and honestly (safer sex practices between women, for example, are mysterious at best and completely unknown at worst), it's actually important to talk about it. To remember that even though our tendency toward "ladysex" might not be the defining trait of our characters, it is a part of what makes us who we are. To be happy that we've had the experiences we've been lucky enough to have and to feel validated amongst a group of people who understand those experiences--isn't that what people do with everything else? Isn't that what's so often missing in the discussion of sex? I say, talk about ALL the sex you have, whether it's with a man or a woman or a toy or a genderqueer or whatever! Talk about it, validate it, think about it, write about it. Do it and love it and be proud!

So, that being said... you know what I love? Ladysex! Loud and proud, baby!

A Cartoon

I was thinking of blogging tonight but instead started picking up the detritus around my easel. I found a piece of cardboard I'd used as a palette a while ago, with some dried black and tan and red paint on it. The black looked a bit like a frumpy lady's head and the tan looked a little like a sheepdog's head. And the red dot between them... well. I turned it into a cartoon, and I rather like it. So here, ladies and gents, some doodled degeneracy:

"But what about those who swing both ways? AC/DCs?"

I realize that in writing this I'm holing myself up quite solidly in my ivory tower, but I'm prepared to deal with that. This is, after all, my damn blog.

I've been waiting around to hear some responses to the new bisexual men study from Northwestern University before talking about it here because I find the news that--shock!--there might actually be men who are attracted to both sexes out there not particularly amazing. And I find it totally head-shake-worthy that scientists are just now getting around to taking a more legit look at the topic. So the whole thing left me kind of happy but annoyed at the same time. Like, "Really, guys? That's the best you can do in 2011?"

I guess it's a good thing that the subject is getting a good look, I'm reserving excitement over it. The discussion has been solidly centered, so far, around the term bisexual. Which is fine. There are lots of peeps out there who are totally bisexual, and like guys and girls as such, and awesome! Rad! But despite the numerous references to the Kinsey scale in most of the articles I've read about this study, lots of people are overlooked when you restrict the conversation to "bisexual." Especially for men in our mixed-up nation in which the gay/straight binary is hugely problematic if you wish to get into the far-more-seductive gray area, "bisexual" presents sexuality as a simple equation. Man + woman = straight. Man + man/woman = bisexual. Man + man = gay. But how boring is that? How unrevealing? Can't we go farther?

The study in question selected for men who self-identified as gay, straight, and bisexual, which is a bit limited to my way of thinking. From a scientific method standpoint I recognize that setting up control groups and measurable criteria for a study of fluid sexuality and gender expression and so on might not be the easiest thing to do. Science does, after all, like things to be easily quantifiable, and as the ongoing struggle for a definition for the term "queer" proves, taking sexuality at face value and giving it the dignity of an ability to fluctuate is a very difficult thing to grasp hold of linguistically, socially, and definition-wise. But this study looked at, according to Slate, "erectile arousal while watching videos of male and female same-sex intimacy" in men. The "bisexual" ones had to prove "sexual experiences with at least two people of each sex, in addition to a "a romantic relationship lasting at least three months with a person of each sex." Sure, easy to quantify and study. Got that part... 

But what about men who identify as queer, who have had relationships with trans people or genderqueer people who identify as neither? Do their partners not count? Are bisexual people, now that they exist (at least the men do--god knows what the scientific community will do with the idea of female sexuality; the existing track record is not oh-so-impressive), limited to identification only if they have been fortunate enough to find understanding partners of typically recognized genders and had sex with them? What about people who have trouble finding dates because they're "bi" and that can be tough to negotiate with a new partner? Are those people not bisexual?

It's not that I have answers to any of these questions, or that I think I have some solution to the gender binary assumption the study is imposing on its subjects. It's not that I know how to study these things less black-and-white-ly. But I feel it's important to vent my frustrations about a study that is ostensibly cracking open a door of legitimacy for a part of the population that has rarely seen the light of recognition before, yet which is imposing the same kind of biased, problematic thinking that forces these people into the dark locked closet in the first place. It's maybe a half step forward, I guess, after digging down deeper into the already-well-traveled path.

...anyway, anybody recognize that little quote I used for the title?

Weddings Make Me Go "Huh"

Weddings always get me thinking, and summer is always jam-packed with weddings when you’re in your twenties and early thirties. You see your friends and family all happily pairing off in the trappings of tradition, doing silly things like tossing bouquets and garters… and the Electric Slide… ugh… And you find yourself whispering under your breath, “Don’t fuck this up, guys. Good luck!”

Maybe that’s just me. But suffice it to say, I’m not thirty yet and I’ve already been to several second weddings, a few weddings I knew damn well shouldn’t really be happening, and a few weddings that were just confusing. It’s not that I have a problem with weddings. Far from it—I totally and completely support the rights and choices of other people to declare their companionship in whatever way they choose, especially if it makes them happy to do so. And weddings are fantastic ways of announcing the noble intentions of a couple to be partners, lovers, and supporters of one another. Weddings make the families of the nuptial pair happy. They provide a great excuse for excessive eating and drinking. And it’s so lovely to see the bride all dolled up and the groom looking spiffier than usual. They’re great fun.

But they often leave me scratching my head. What, I can’t help asking myself, is the point of all the rigmarole, really? In this day and age (I love using that term—it makes me sound way old and wise), is a wedding really anything more than an elaborate ritual? Isn’t it just a good luck charm on an already-established relationship in most cases? Again, nothing against good-luck rituals. Hell, why not? But I watch the bride tossing a bouquet over her shoulder, the tears that the lucky catcher or unlucky un-catcher sometimes shed, the “something borrowed, something blue” trope that nobody can explain, the white gown that becomes the centerpiece for the entire affair even though there’s no real reason it’s not a blue or red dress… And I just go, “Huh.” Here we all are, dressed up to the nines and waiting patiently for the bar to open, often having traveled long distances and spent huge wads of cash on some ridiculous set of cutlery you know the couple will only use when you come over for dinner, to watch people behave in elaborately codified rituals that mean next to nothing. And it’s really fun and it’s fabulous if those rituals make everyone happy. But, still… huh.

I say, why not have un-weddings? I have no intention of putting a ring on it and I’m happy as can be! Would it be disrespectful to, like Sam Jones in Sex and the City (which had its many faults but also some really good ideas, I think), have an “I’m Not Getting Married” party, buy myself a fabulous dress that’s not white, and get everyone drunk on my tab? Would it be ok to throw a joint “We’re Not Married” party with one or both of my partners and invite all our friends and family to witness our vows of love and respect without putting rings on each other’s fingers that, to me, would only symbolize outdated notions of ownership and exclusivity?

…am I just too bored at weddings to appreciate how pretty the bride looks and enjoy the free hooch?  …that might be it.

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.