I Love Bitchy Jones So Much
I love sex and I love kink. But sometimes I come across things that don’t sit quite right, in ways I can’t put my finger on. There are moments when I feel like “your kink is OK” doesn’t quite capture the nuances of sexuality, or when something bothers me about how the world of kink seems irrevocably tied to the world of consumer products. Costumes, equipment, jargon, seals doing tricks. And yes, plain old sexism.
Bitchy Jones articulates what I wish I could.
In my own sex life I lean towards the submissive end of the spectrum, but she makes female dominance sound incredibly sexy. And most hetero women need reminders now and then that enjoying sex and being sexy are not one and the same.
“Opera Gloves” to appear in Dirty Girls: Erotica For Women
My story “Opera Gloves”, which was originally to appear in the canceled Alyson Books anthology Second Skin, will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women
“Opera Gloves” is about a lesbian sexual encounter in a box at the Wiener Staatsoper, and features a pair of very long, very shiny black PVC gloves.
In The Flesh tonight
Just a reminder that I’m reading tonight at the In The Flesh Reading Series.
This will be the first time I read my writing publicly. The last few weeks were spent picking out an already-published story to read while simultaneously hoping I could write a new and better one. Although the new story is taking shape nicely, I’ll be reading an excerpt from my story Can I Help You? which appeared last year in Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories about Feet and Shoes.
The other participants look very interesting and I’m looking forward to the entire evening, so be sure to come out!
Pleasure and Display
Bitch|Lab pointed to this article at Rollertrain:
Top 10 Reasons Why I Hate Fake Lesbian Porno
Many of the problems Rollertrain has with mainstream lesbian porn are also present in mainstream pornography in general - the emphasis on display for the camera over good sex, the uncomfortable positions, the affected moaning.
It led to an interesting conversation wherein we wondered why, in mainstream pornography, the performance of pleasure from the women involved is so important (moaning obligatory) while pleasure itself is shunted to the sidelines. The traditional feminist explanation might chalk it up to power, saying that we demand the porn actress make a show of enjoying herself in the same way we expect the waitress to smile at us and act cheery even when we know very well that she is probably counting the minutes until the end of her shift.
It’s also possible that the display for the camera is simply more important to the average viewer than the experience it depicts. What other explanation exists for the dearth of breast-fondling and head-burying?
Also, pornography where the actresses are clearly bored is very boring to watch.
Are the public schools OK?
I had an interesting encounter in a coffeeshop today. I was enjoying the 19th-century part of Orlando and an overly-sugary fruit smoothie when a man approached me, asking if he could ask me some questions.
It came out that he chose me to ask because I looked like I was still in public school (my youth isn’t over yet, but I didn’t think I looked quite that young). He had a thick eastern european accent, and had recently moved to Canada.
“The public schools…are they OK,” he asked, “or should I put my kids in private school?” I assured him that the Canadian public school system is pretty decent. He shook his head and continued: “but what I want to know is, do they teach moral values?” I was confused and wondered about what he meant. They did teach me to share and play nice as a youngster.
Eventually it came out that what he was worried about was sexual education. He wanted to know the specifics of what was taught. “I don’t want them to learn that kids having sex is OK,” he continued.
My instinct at the time was that the program was probably a bit too liberal for his taste, and I think that a liberal sexual education program is a very good thing. I firmly believe that old-fashioned notions of the virtues of purity versus the sinfulness of sex are deeply sexist, repressive, and unlikely to lead to health and happiness. At the same time, I respect the right of parents to bring up their children within a certain value system, and I had no desire to engage him in argument. At this point I pulled a cop-out, saying that it had been a while since I’d taken any sex-ed in school (and that in a different province) and that he’d be better off asking a teacher or the school board about the specifics of the curriculum.
I continued to wonder afterwards how old his children were and what his worst fears about the program looked like. Was he conservative enough to balk at anything other than abstinence-only? Or was he worried that the program would tell his children something along the lines of “sex is lots of fun and everyone should be having it. Here’s how to perform a blowjob”?
I also wondered what is being taught in sex-ed these days, since the last time I encountered it was in 1996. I have a tough time differentiating between the stuff I was taught in school and the stuff that was in all the sex-ed books that my mother left on my bed at age 8. I learned about “the birds and the bees” from one of those books long before I encountered it in the classroom.
I also remember one video shown in school that stated, without equivocation, that homosexuality was both common and completely normal. That would have been a fairly controversial statement in relatively conservative Alberta, but it passed without comment in the classroom. However, when the teacher was asked via the anonymous question box how homosexuals have sex, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “your imagination is as good as mine.”
We learned that there are other sexual activities besides penis-in-vagina intercourse and memorized the definition of masturbation, but didn’t learn what an orgasm was. The clitoris was just a lump on an anatomy diagram, a diagram that the teacher apologized for having to hand out (”I apologize, girls…this one is very rude”).
Curious as to whether the curriculum now teaches that kids having sex is OK, I took a look at the Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education. The following objectives appear:
“affirm that sexual feelings are a natural part of human life”;
“integrate the positive, life-enhancing and rewarding aspects of human sexuality while also seeking to reduce and prevent sexual health problems”
“[help students learn to] integrate sexuality into mutually satisfying relationships”
“sensitively address and resolve conflict that may arise as a result of differing values and beliefs surrounding sexual health and sexuality”
So, it would appear to be generally forward-thinking and pro-sex, which I am fully in favour of, but also find myself wondering where the gaps might be.
I also wonder if that man would have approached me if he’d seen I was reading a book with a naked woman on the cover.
The Whore
In my last post, I mentioned that I had a few misgivings about The Warrior Prophet (and the book that precedes it in the series, The Darkness that Comes Before). First among them was that the feminist in me wondered why every female character was some form of prostitute.
I can understand why The Whore is so appealing to authors. Her profession offers the thrill of the illicit and forbidden; it speaks of the demi-monde, the underground, the bohemian. She can be exceedingly glamorous or exceedingly downtrodden (or both), and it’s easy to give her a dark or mysterious past. She has more mobility than the housewife or the schoolteacher; the better to accompany the men on their epic treks or high-stakes adventures. She usually has the opportunity to bed every male character of note, a handy plot device indeed.
As a love interest, she is ideal. Since she is sexual, she is probably beautiful (when it comes to books, a woman is seldom the former without also being the latter). She is physically available for plenty of sex scenes but her emotional inavailability, as well as the presence of her customers, provides conflict and tension. Living in a society that exploits and shames her has given her a tough and cynical exterior but preserved the vulnerable interior - she desires True Love (and possibly babies) but has seen too much of men and the world to believe it is possible.
Of course, I have nothing against characters who are prostitutes. I loved Esmenet in The Warrior Prophet, even though she embodies many of the tropes above. But it bothers me when characters like this come up again and again as the primary - or only - representation of womanhood in novels where the male characters are interesting and diverse.