Greta Christina's Blog

Is All Porn the Same?

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

You may have read or heard this criticism of porn. I've heard it more than once. It goes roughly like this:

"All porn is basically the same. Porn may be fun and arousing -- but as a literary/ art/ cinematic form, it's inherently tedious. After all, there just aren't that many ways for people to have sex. So describing or depicting it is automatically going to become repetitive."

Now. Obviously, I have no truck with this attitude whatsoever. But it took me a little time thinking about it to realize what exactly was wrong with it.

Not that much time, though.

First, and at the risk of being snarky: If you think there are only a handful of ways for people to have sex, then I feel sorry for your partners. There is quite a bit more variety available in sex than a few standard variations on fucking and sucking. Read any good general sex guide, like The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex or The Guide to Getting It On, and you'll get a sense of the tip of the iceberg. Or take a look at the wildly entertaining, insanely thorough Human Sex Map. You could spend an entire lifetime trying all this stuff and still not scratch the surface. (Thanks to Joreth for the link on the Sex Map!)

But second, and far more importantly:

What makes porn interesting isn't that it comes up with some new and different sex act, or some new combination of previously known sex acts.

What makes porn interesting is that it comes up with new ways to look at sex.

Think about other topics for literature or film or art. Think about, say, murder. There are only so many ways people can commit murder, too. You can shoot someone; stab them; strangle them; poison them; bludgeon, electrocute, smother, or drown them; set them on fire; cut off their head; hit them with a vehicle; throw them off a high place. I'm sure there are more... but you get the idea. There are probably no more ways to kill a person than there are to have sex with them. Maybe even less.

And yet murder is a vastly fruitful topic for art and film and writing, one that inspires both fascination and respect. Yes, genres such as murder mystery or true crime may be looked down on... but I don't think anyone would argue that all writing/ film/ art about murder is the same.

Why? Because, while there may be a limited number of basic methods to commit murder, there are a limitless number of reasons to do it. And a limitless number of consequences for it. And a limitless number of ways to feel about it: before it happens, and during, and after.

What makes writing about murder interesting isn't that it comes up with a new and different physical method of committing murder. What makes, say, "In Cold Blood" or "Hamlet" more interesting than, say, "The Vicar in the Parlor" or "A Deadly Game of Love" or some other generic detective novel of the month is that it makes you look at murder differently. And for that matter, it makes you look at humanity in general differently. It makes you look at what causes conflict between people. What makes that conflict turn murderous. Why some people murder and others don't. Whether everyone is ultimately capable of murder. Whether murder is ever justified, and if so, under what circumstances. How murder affects the person committing it. How murder affects a family, a community, society as a whole. The relationship between moral responsibility and abusive upbringings or mental illness. Etc., etc., etc.

And what makes good porn more interesting than... well, than "The Vicar in the Parlor" or "A Deadly Game of Love" or some other generic porn novel of the month?

It's exactly the same thing. Good porn makes you look differently at what sex means to people. How sex feels to people. Why people want to have it (apart from the obvious biological drive). What people get out of it (again, apart from the obvious). What about sex can be surprising. What about it can be disappointing. How sex can change relationships. How it can change the way people see themselves. How sex can bring out the worst in people, or the best, or the most complicatedly human. Etc., etc. etc.

Now, I can hear a chorus already starting to ring: "Lord, have mercy. Porn with plot. Shoot me now." And I'll certainly admit that bad porn can be bad by being too plot- heavy, just as it can be bad by having no plot at all. Plus, to make things worse, a lot of plot- heavy porn makes the mistake of simply dropping the plot in around the sex, with little or no concern for their relevance to each other, in that Plot/ Sex Scene/ Plot/ Sex Scene structure we're all so depressingly familiar with.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about weaving the two together. I'm talking about making the sex a central part of the character and motivation... and vice versa. I'm talking about sex scenes that get you inside, not just what the characters are physically doing or physically feeling, but that gets you inside how it feels to be these unique people having this particular sex. I'm talking about sex scenes that get you to care passionately about these people and the sex they're having, and that move their story forward. And I'm talking about non-sex scenes that keep the theme of sexuality alive, taking the changes and discoveries that happen during the sex and running with them. I'm talking about porn where you don't even divide it into "sex scenes" and "plot scenes," where it's all just an integrated part of a compelling and arousing story about sex.

And that kind of porn can come in infinite variety.

Yes, a lot of porn sucks. Porn is just as subject to Sturgeon's Law as any other art form: 90% of it is crap because 90% of everything is crap. Porn may even be somewhat more subject to Sturgeon's Law than other art forms -- since, like any art form that's stigmatized or trivialized, talented and ambitious artists often stay away from it for fear of ruining their careers. (A phenomenon with an unfortunate vicious circularity to it.)

But the "All porn is the same" critique is unjust. It marks an unwillingness to explore the more interesting and imaginative regions of it... or, in a more generous interpretation, simply an unfamiliarity with those regions. And to roll your eyes and complain, "I don't want plot in my porn, I just want it to get me off" -- and then turn around and complain, "Porn is so boring, it's all the same" -- is unjustness compounded. It's trying to have your cake and eat it too... and then complaining that the fact that you can't is the baker's fault.

(P.S. Just to clarify: I'm not specifically talking about video porn here. I know that when a lot of people hear the word "porn," they think "video porn"; but for an assortment of reasons, I actually think video porn is less fertile ground for genuine variety and artistry than other media. I'm talking about porn in general, and about solo-artist media like writing, drawing, and comics in particular. That caused some confusion in the comment thread when this piece originally appeared on the Blowfish Blog, so I want to set the record straight here.)

Simple Pleasures: A Review of "First Time"

I have a piece up on Carnal Nation, the new website for news, reviews, advice, and commentary about sex. My piece is a review of the new adult comic collection, "First Time," written by French female author Sibylline and drawn by an assortment of artists. It's titled Simple Pleasures: A Review of "First Time", and here's the teaser:

Interesting scenarios about sex, simply and skillfully executed, with an eye for both the excitingly hot side of sex and the human side.

Sometimes, that's all it takes.

Of course, that's harder to accomplish than it might seem...

First Time, a collection of erotic comics all drawn by different artists and written by the same author, fell into my lap a couple of weeks ago. (Conflict of interest alert: I work for a company, Last Gasp, that sells the book, which is how it fell into my lap.) When you've worked around porn for a long time, sometimes you can just smell when something is special. Within fifteen seconds of opening First Time, I knew I was going to love it; within three minutes of flipping through it, I knew I was going to be raving about it.

And yet, it's hard to put my finger on what exactly makes the book so special.

To find out what what exactly makes this book so special, read the rest of the review. (BTW, Carnal Nation pays by the hit, so if you click on the review, you'd be doing me a kindness.) Enjoy!

Anti-SM Hysteria? In San Francisco? (Moooo!)

(If you're not a Bay Area resident, ask someone who is to explain the "Moooo!" joke.)

You know, there are some assumptions I make because I live in San Francisco. And one of those assumptions is that, when I pick up one of the local alternative free newspapers, I won't find grossly bigoted misinformation being spread about my consensual sexual orientation.

I was wrong.

San Francisco residents may already be aware of the "Whipped and Gagged" piece that ran this week in the SF Weekly -- a lurid and hysterical piece on the Kink.com porn production company, attempting to whip up outrage over the fact that Kink.com employees got technological training funds from the State of California... and equating consensual sadomasochism with torture. (Violet Blue does a thorough evisceration and debunking of the piece on SFAppeal.)

The hysteria about "your taxes are paying for porn!" is irritating enough. (Kink.com is a legally recognized corporation in San Francisco, and had every legal right to apply for and receive these training funds.) But it's nothing compared to the grotesque misinformation the piece spreads about SM. It repeatedly describes Kink.com's films as "torture- based pornography" and "videos depicting sexualized torture," and repeats the anti-porn canard that porn performers don't want or freely choose the work, and only go into it out of economic desperation. (In fact, Kink.com is renowned for seeking out performers who are lifestyle players and who give authentic, enthusiastic performances -- and for treating those performers well.)

I sent the following letter to the SF Weekly, both as a letter to the editor and as a direct email to the editor himself. I encourage all readers of this blog -- especially those who live in the Bay Area -- to send their own letters. They're not going to know that we're mad if we don't tell them.

Editor:

I thought you should know that, as a direct result of Matt Smith's bigoted and willfully ignorant piece "Whipped and Gagged," I will no longer be picking up the SF Weekly, or looking at it online.

I would not read a paper that was luridly bigoted and hateful about gay people, and I have no interest in reading a paper that is so luridly bigoted and hateful about consensual sadomasochism. In equating consensual sadomasochism with torture, the piece fosters grotesque misinformation about sadomasochists. And Smith's response to criticism about the piece makes it clear that he is not only unapologetic about this, but is likely to continue doing it in the future.

To try to whip up hostility and fear of sadomasochists in a town as proud of its sexual diversity as San Francisco is not only unethical, but one of the most foolish business choices I can imagine. Unless a sincere and strongly worded apology is forthcoming, you have lost at least one regular reader -- and I suspect that this piece is losing you more. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Greta Christina

Perverts Put Out, Sat. April 25

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, or if you're going to be in the Bay Area this Saturday, I heartily encourage you to come to Perverts Put Out, the long- running pansexual reading and performance series. I'm not reading this time, but PPO is always a good time, and is often a transcendently mind- blowing and amazing time, with readings and performances about sex that are funny, freaky, poignant, thought- provoking, unsettling... and, of course, hot.

This Saturday is their Erect the Maypole edition, and readers/ performers will include Meliza Banales, m.i. blue, Sherilyn Connely, Nabil Hijazi and TedPro, Thomas Roche, horehound stillpoint, and Hew Wolff, with emcees Dr. Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard. Perverts Put Out will be on Saturday, April 25, starting at 7:30 pm, at CounterPulse, 1310 Mission Street in San Francisco. $10-15 sliding scale. I'll be there -- hope you will, too!

One Night Stand: A Review

Something from the archives today. This review was written for Alt.com. FYI: This piece includes references to my personal tastes in porn; family members and others who don't want to read about that, please don't read this piece.

Real dyke porno.

God, I love it.

Porn aficionados may know Fatale Video as one of the first producers of "by lesbians for lesbians" video porn (and of the groundbreaking "Bend Over Boyfriend"). They were making feminist indie porn in the '80s and '90s, way back before it was cool. (Conflict of interest alert: I worked for Fatale and its sister company On Our Backs, well over a decade and a half ago, and I performed in one of their videos.)

Lately, Fatale has taken to distributing adult lesbian videos from other filmmakers, making indie dyke porno available to a wider audience. And this business model is being put to excellent use with their latest release, One Night Stand (Pour Une Nuit). A queer/ dyke/ tranny-boi porno from France, One Night Stand is an intense, authentic, raunchy porno, with a kinky sensibility, an emphasis on immediacy and heat, and a gritty, arty, urban feel.

The look of One Night Stand is not slick -- but it's not amateurish, either. The grainy hand-held look gives it the raunchy, entertainingly dirty feel of an amateur porno shot in someone's basement.... but it was filmed by someone who clearly gives a shit about filmmaking and knows their way around a camera. The lighting has a tough, urban look without being harsh or shadowy. And the shaky hand-held-ness is done expertly, always in the service of capturing the eroticism and energy of the scene.

In other words, you get the best of both worlds. You get the authentic, passionate, in- your- face realism that's so appealing about amateur porn... with the skill and artistry of professional work. In some ways, "One Night Stand" looks even grittier and shakier than a lot of amateur videos... what with it not having been shot by a single static camera stuck on a tripod. But it's also striking and beautiful, with the strong, sensual impact of a real movie that most amateur pornos are missing.

(The rest of this review contains explicit adult material. If you're under the legal age to read adult material in your area, do not click through to read the rest of the piece.)

Call for Adult Fiction Submissions: Fishnet

I have a new gig! Starting pretty much now, I am the new editor of Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine of Blowfish. I'm also the old editor of Fishnet -- I was actually the nagazine's first editor, way back in the mists of time when dinosaurs ruled the earth -- and I'm thrilled to be back in the saddle.

So if you're a writer of erotic fiction, please read over this call to submissions, and send me your work! And if you're not a writer of erotic fiction but you know people who are, please feel free to post this call for submissions and pass it along. This is an open call for submissions, and I'm happy for it to be sent and posted anywhere that it's legal.

A quick note to my blog readers: Due to this gig and its demands on my time, I may be blogging slightly less often than I used to. More likely, I'll be pulling a bit more stuff out of the archive than usual. But not to worry -- I'm still passionately devoted to this blog, and will still be here almost every day with wisdom and rants about atheism, sex, politics, dreams, and whatever. And you'll be getting my picks of erotic fiction... so on the days that I'm not here, that should help give you the strength to carry on. :-) (And yes, I will occasionally be publishing my own work there.)


FISHNET MAGAZINE:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR EROTIC FICTION

Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine of Blowfish, is seeking submissions. We are looking for adult fiction that is both literate and hot: fiction that explores the human experience of sexuality, while at the same time working as fun and exciting stroke material. We want hot fiction that goes beyond a mere sex scene -- give us a good story, get us inside the skin of your protagonists and show us what they find exciting about the sex they're having. Good writing is important, as is originality. Tender or melancholy stories are fine, but we're also not afraid of stories that push boundaries, that blur the lines of gender, propriety or even consent. Challenge our assumptions, but make our toes curl while you do it.

Payment: Fishnet pays 5 cents per word, paid on acceptance. We will need your real name, address, and a US social security number (if you have one) before we can pay you. We are happy to run pieces under pseudonyms, if you prefer.

Rights: We take first perpetual web rights, exclusive for 6 months; a non-exclusive print anthology reprint right; and non-exclusive, perpetual audio performance rights (i.e., we can podcast it). The author retains copyright and all other rights.

Length: We are ideally looking for pieces longer than 1000 words and shorter than 4,000. Shorter and longer pieces will be considered, but are less likely to be accepted. Absolute upper limit: 6,000 words. (Long pieces may be split and published in two parts.)

(Addendum on length: Please note: We can only publish a handful of longer stories, and are much more likely to say "Yes" to pieces that are 2,500 words or less.)

Content: We are open to stories about any and all genders, activities, and sexual orientations. Stories about non-consent are acceptable, but will be prefaced as such. We cannot accept stories about explicitly underage characters.

Reprints: We are strongly focused on original material. We will consider reprints if they are exceptional. Reprints will be paid less than original work.

Submission method: Send submissions and inquiries to fiction-editor@blowfish.com. Please send submissions by email, as text in the body of the email -- no attachments, please, they will be rejected unread. Please include a short bio (100 words or less) with your submission. Bios may include a link to your blog or website. Please include Fiction Sub: (STORY TITLE) in the subject line, replacing (STORY TITLE) with the title of your story. Please also make sure that your submission does not contain "curly quotes" or other special characters. Please mark paragraph breaks with double line breaks, not with tabs.

Please also send a short cover letter that mentions the word count of the story enclosed and a couple of any relevant fiction sales (we also welcome first-time authors). We encourage you to send the cover letter as a separate email in case our spam filter catches the story by mistake; if we get just the cover letter, we know something happened and can contact you to fix it.

Multiple submissions: Please, no more than three submissions per author at one time. Multiple submissions should each be sent in a separate email.

If you have questions or want to submit work, please email fiction-editor@blowfish.com. We look forward to seeing your work.

Blinded With Science: Sex, Sexology, and What Women Really Want

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

So why do people do the sexual things they do?

And more to the point: If you have a theory about why people do the sexual things they do, how would you prove it?

There's an article in the New York Times that's been making the rounds, a piece about current sexology research and what it says about female desire. The bit that's getting the most attention is the research by psychology professor Meredith Chivers on different types of visual erotic stimulation (images of men and women doing it, images of two men doing it, images of two women doing it, images of solo men, solo women, monkeys, etc.), and which types aroused men compared to women. And what this says about male versus female sexuality. And what that says about how our sexualities evolved.

The data everyone's talking about, though, isn't so much about what kinds of dirty pictures women and men like to look at. (Although that is interesting and pertinent: if the research is correct, men tend to be aroused by a fairly narrow band of imagery that clearly correlates with their sexual orientation, while women tend to be aroused by imagery that's all over the map.) What's getting the attention is the stuff about how hard it is determine which images women are aroused by... because women's self- reported mental responses, and their involuntary genital responses, don't match up.

At all.

Hm.

Now. Chivers' conclusion is that women are physically aroused by a broader range of visual stimuli because, due to evolutionary pressure, it behooves women to be physically ready for sex they don't want. To put it more bluntly: Women get raped. If women are physically aroused by a broad range of visual stimuli, we will be physically ready for sex even if we don't want it, and are thus less likely to be injured during rape. Thus increasing our chances of survival.

Um...

Okay. That's the preface. Here's what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about how difficult it is to draw useful conclusions about the evolutionary reasons behind any behavior. But especially sexual behavior, and behavior related to gender differences... since both sexual behavior and gender roles have heavy cultural baggage, and are the subject of intense social pressure, both conscious and unconscious, pretty much from birth.

So here's my argument.

Is Chivers' explanation plausible?

Sure.

And I've spent the last twenty minutes or so coming up with a whole passel of explanations that are also plausible.

Why are women stimulated by a broader range of visual stimuli than men?

It could be that women's sexuality is more bound up with emotional attachment than men's... and emotional attachment is more complex than simple lust, with a wider range of potential objects.

It could be that women live in a culture steeped in imagery of sexual women, a culture where women are constantly presented as objects of sexual desire, and thus even straight women learn to see other women that way.

It could be that women's sexual desire is less gender- specific than men's. (There's some other data in the Times article backing up this theory.)

It could be that women are less aroused by visual erotic stimulation than other forms (such as verbal), and that showing women visual images isn't the best way to figure out what we're aroused by.

And it could be that women's sexual desire is more complex and multi-factorial than men's in many ways, with a less specific and more sweeping scope.

And why is women's self- reported mental arousal less likely than men's to match our measured genital arousal?

It could be that women are taught from birth to be disconnected from our bodies and our sexuality, so we don't find it as easy to identify our genital sexual responses.

It could be that women are taught from birth that being sexual is dirty and bad, and so aren't as comfortable speaking frankly about it as men. In other words, women don't want to admit what it is that's turning them on. (Even to themselves. See above.)

It could be that male physical arousal is easier to notice -- what with the boner and all -- and thus men are more likely to define "arousal" as "genital arousal," and to self- report it as such.

It could be because of Chivers' "surviving rape" explanation.

And it could be, again, that women's sexuality is more complex and multi-factorial than men's, with a stronger "purely mental" component.

To be very clear: I'm not actually advocating any of these positions. I'm coming up with them to make a point. That point:

I could do this all day.

And I'm not sure how you would test any of these theories.

See, here's the thing. As evolutionary biologist PZ Myers points out, there are enormous problems with these sorts of evolutionary "just-so stories." They're very easy to come up with (fun, too!), but they're very difficult to test. You have to somehow screen out cultural influence (was the study done cross- culturally, or just in North America?). You have to screen out historical influence (if X behavior pattern is universal now, how do we know it was universal a thousand years ago, or thirty thousand?). And you have to screen out behaviors that are inborn from behaviors that are learned. As Chivers herself acknowledges, "The horrible reality of psychological research is that you can't pull apart the cultural from the biological."

And as any good skeptic knows: If a theory isn't testable or falsifiable, it's worthless. Whether it's a belief in God, or a conspiracy theory, or a simple theory about the evolutionary forces driving the development of certain sexual responses... if there's no possible data that could prove your theory incorrect, or no way to acquire further data either supporting or contradicting your theory, then your theory is useless. It has no power to explain the past or predict the future. It's pointless. It's not even wrong.

It's easy to come up with possible explanations for behavior. Especially when it comes to sex. It's almost like a Rorschach test: in the absence of a truly excellent set of supporting data, the theories people come up with to explain sex tells you more about the theorizers than they do about the theories.

It's a lot harder to come up with theories that are really supported by all the evidence; theories that explain and predict evidence that can't be explained or predicted any other way; theories that are more than just examples of the human brain's amazing ability to come up with explanations for stuff.

By all means, we need to be doing careful scientific research into human sexuality. I wouldn't in a million years suggest otherwise. We just need to be very cautious, very rigorous, and very slow, about coming to conclusions about what that research means.

These ideas were developed in a comment thread on Pharyngula.

Is All Porn the Same? The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's a defense of porn against the criticism that it's an inherently tedious, cookie- cutter art form; that because there aren't that many ways for people to have sex, porn is automatically going to be repetitive. It's titled, Is All Porn the Same?, and here's the teaser:

First, and at the risk of being snarky: If you think there are only a handful of ways for people to have sex, then I feel sorry for your partners. There is quite a bit more variety available in sex than a few standard variations on fucking and sucking. Read any good general sex guide, like The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex or The Guide to Getting It On, and you'll get a sense of the tip of the iceberg. Or take a look at the entertainingly long list of adult movie genres available for rent at Bluedoor.com. (Admittedly, many of these genres refer to technical formatting and plot devices and whatnot... but there are more than enough sexual options to keep an enterprising couple busy for a good long time.)

But second, and far more importantly:

What makes porn interesting isn't that it comes up with some new and different sex act, or some new combination of previously known sex acts.

What makes porn interesting is that it comes up with new ways to look at sex.

To find out more about what I think makes good porn interesting -- and why porn is no more likely to be repetitive than writing/ film/ art about any other topic -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Sex -- The Great Exception

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Why should sex always be the exception?

From laws about free speech to social rules about polite conversation... why is sex the exception?

Yesterday, in a piece about censorship and the controversial Robert Mapplethorpe art exhibit, I talked about how William F. Buckley was offended by sadomasochistic sex: so offended that he equated it with the Holocaust. I talked about how intensely offensive I found this comparison. And I argued that, if people like Buckley are allowed to ban forms of expression that offend them -- such as the Mapplethorpe exhibit -- then people like me will be able to do the same with forms of expression that offend us... such as Buckley's repulsive opinions.

And then I pointed out that, of course, the main difference between Mapplethorpe's photos and Buckley's words was that Mapplethorpe's photos were sexually explicit, and Buckley's words were not. So therefore, in any court of law, my "If he can ban my offensive expression, I should be able to ban his" argument would be laughed out of the room. Sexual speech does have some First Amendment protection -- but not nearly as much as it should. Obscenity laws exist, and have been both applied and upheld. Recently, even. When it comes to the principle of free speech and free expression, sexually explicit content is an exception.

Which leads me to today's question:

Why is sex an exception?

The principle of free speech is interpreted pretty darned broadly in the U.S. But there are exceptions. There are exceptions for false advertising. For violating copyright. For slander and libel. For revealing state secrets. And for talking about sex.

In other words: Sex is seen as being in a category with fraud, theft, character defamation, and treason.

Why?

What -- if you'll excuse my language -- the fuck?

The whole idea of "community standards" for obscenity is another perfect example of this principle. Think about it. We don't allow communities to set standards for any other area of expression. We don't allow communities to set standards for expression of political opinions or religious beliefs; for musical genres or styles of poetry. But the idea that a community should be able to set its own standards for sexual expression: this, for some reason, is seen as totally normal and entirely reasonable.

Thus creating a legal situation that, if my understanding of the law is correct, would otherwise be considered untenable: a situation in which a reasonable person cannot tell ahead of time whether or not they are breaking the law. A porn producer in Los Angeles, whose product may be shipped all over the country, has no way of knowing whether the possession and sale of their video will violate the law in Bumblefuck, Tennessee. They have no way of knowing ahead of time what the legal limits are, so they can stay within them. They won't know until after the trial. They won't know what the crime is until after they've been convicted of it.

And the "I know it when I see it" obscenity principle is yet another example. Can you imagine a Supreme Court Justice saying, "I don't know what treason is, but I know it when I see it?" "I don't know what establishment of religion is, but I know it when I see it?" The whole point of courts is that they're supposed to tell us what the law means. They're not supposed to punt the question to "community standards" and to vague intuitions that we all supposedly agree on... except that we don't.

But it isn't just to obscenity laws that this exceptionalism applies. Heck, it isn't even just laws. We have, for instance, a basic (if sometimes grudging) respect for the idea that different people have different tastes: in music and movies, food and clothing, places to live and home decor and almost every other aspect of life. But not in sex. Differing tastes in sex are still seen as a moral issue, even when they affect nobody but the people having the sex.

And we don't even feel comfortable talking about sex, the way that -- in this chatty, opinionated, "couldn't shut us up with an industrial vice grip" country -- we feel comfortable talking about almost every other aspect of our lives. Even though better information about sex broadens our sexual perspective, making for both better sex lives and greater tolerance of sexual diversity, we are still reluctant to discuss our sex lives with anyone but the people we're having them with. We'll talk about deeply personal, powerful things -- jobs, family, food, music, drugs, travel, childhood, art, even politics and religion -- but not sex. Not in any detailed way. That's just... different.

Why?

I don't actually have a good answer to this question. I do think I may have a glimmer of one: Sex makes us feel irrational, and it's probably asking too much to expect us to behave rationally about it. Sex is a powerful force in our lives, a fundamental animal drive, and we tend to be irrational about those, to set up essentially random taboos around them to give us a feeling of control. People have a lot of fears about sex... and those fears can be exploited by powerful people trying to make headlines and win elections. And of course, the United States is a country founded in Puritanism, a country in which conservative religion is a powerful force... with both the irrationality and the fear of sex that comes with that territory.

But I don't really have an answer.

I just want us to pay attention to the question.

I want us notice the phenomenon. Whenever we treat sex as a side of human experience that is set apart, different from all other aspects of human experience and with special rules all its own -- or when we see other people treating it that way -- I want us to start asking: Why?

And if we don't have a good answer -- if we can't really come up with a good reason for why sex should be made an exception -- I would like us to seriously consider knocking it off.

Offended

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Does a society have the right to protect itself from being offended?

The other day, we were watching "Dirty Pictures," a made- for- TV movie made in 2000 about the Robert Mapplethorpe censorship case in Cincinnati. For those who might be too young to remember: Robert Mapplethorpe was a gay photographer whose work included a certain amount of sexually explicit imagery, including some depictions of fairly extreme sexual practices. In 1990 there was a big kerfuffle when the director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Dennis Barrie (played in the movie by James Woods), was tried on obscenity charges for displaying the Mapplethorpe photos in his museum.

The movie is good -- overwrought in places, but overall thoughtful and interesting, and good at giving the events a human face. And the format is unusual: the basic form is a docu-drama, but it's interspersed with commentary from real people, from Salman Rushdie to William F. Buckley, talking about the controversy and the issues it raised.

It's William F. Buckley I want to talk about today.

Buckley was speaking in defense of the prosecutors of the case. He said that a society has the right to decide what it's offended by... and to protect itself from that which offends it. And at one point he said -- I'm going to have to paraphrase here, since I erased the Tivo before I realized I wanted to write about it -- that a society can look at sadomasochistic imagery, and at the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and say, "We don't want this."

And I was so offended by this statement, it took my breath away.

I don't mean mock offended. I don't mean "offended as a useful rhetorical device" offended. I was genuinely, seriously, viscerally offended. I wanted to reach into the television and smack him across his smug little rat face. I sat there, shocked, thinking, "Did he just go on national television and equate consensual sadomasochism with Nazi Germany?"

How dare he.

How fucking dare he.

It is, in my opinion, grossly outrageous to equate a sex act between consenting adults that gives them both pleasure with the deliberate genocide of millions. It's not just offensive to sadomasochists. It's offensive to people who went through the Holocaust. It dehumanizes the one, and trivializes the other. It was one of the most offensive things I'd heard all month.

And yet at no point in my outrage did I think, "There oughta be a law. He shouldn't be allowed to do that. There oughta be a law against equating sadomasochism and the Holocaust."

Why not?

I'm trying to think of a nice way to say, "Because I'm better than him." I'm failing. Because I'm better than him.

What Buckley failed to realize is that the First Amendment that protects our right to offend one another works for everybody. Him, me, everybody. What he failed to realize is that, if Cincinnati can pass a law saying that an image of a man peeing in another man's mouth is offensive and can therefore be banned, then San Francisco can pass a law saying that equating sadomasochism with the Holocaust is offensive and can therefore be banned.

I would never try to do that. I refer you once again to the "I'm better than him" principle. But there are some folks on the left who don't quite grasp the "We can't ban speech just because we don't like it" concept. (As I learned when I defended Fred Phelps' First Amendment right to express his evil, hateful, repulsive opinions... and ran into a bunch of progressives who were all too eager to find loopholes in the First Amendment just so we could nail the bastard.) If we don't protect speech that offends in Cincinnati, we can't protect speech that offends in San Francisco.

What Buckley failed to realize is something blindingly obvious, something many, many people have said before me: We don't need the First Amendment to protect the radical assertion that puppies are cute and apple pie is delicious. We don't need the First Amendment to protect popular speech. We need the First Amendment to protect unpopular speech. We need the First Amendment to protect Nazis marching in Skokie, and war protesters wearing black armbands to school in Des Moines; to protect Fred Phelps when he pickets funerals, and lefty radicals when they burn the American flag. We need the First Amendment to protect Robert Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati... and we need it to protect William F. Buckley in San Francisco.

In other words: We need the First Amendment to protect speech that offends people.

That's the whole freakin' point.

Now, many people at this point are going to argue -- Buckley himself would probably argue if he were still alive -- "Yes... but sex is different. When it comes to sexual expression, we have community standards for what's acceptable. That's what was at stake here -- a community's right to define what obscenity is for themselves. Not about politics or religion or art. Just about sex. Because sex is different."

But I have yet to see any good argument for why sex should be different.

Sex is often seen as different. Sex is often the great exception: to free speech laws, to free enterprise laws, to notions about good manners, to notions of ethics and morality.

But I have yet to see a truly compelling argument for why that should be.

And that's tomorrow's piece.

You Got Religion In My Porn! The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This piece, and the piece it links to, includes references to my personal sexuality: not to my sex life per se, but to my sexual fantasies and my tastes in porn. Family members and other who don't want to read about that, please don't.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about the influence of religion on porn: not religion being used to oppress or demonize porn in this case, but religion as inspiration for porn. I've been writing more erotic fiction lately, and a fair amount of it has religion as a major theme... something I never used to be interested in, either as a porn writer or a porn reader. So I'm trying to figure out what that's about... and am asking other porn writers/ readers if they've ever found their interests shifting in this direction.

It's titled You Got Religion In My Porn!, and here's the teaser:

Part of it, I think, is actually the atheism. Not surprisingly, I spend more time thinking about religion now that I'm an atheist blogger than I have at any time in my life (since I was a religion major, anyway). So religion is just on my mind more... and consequently, it's more in my libido.

Plus, being a critic of religion, the darker aspects of religion are particularly on my mind. And the erotic imagination/ porn- writing parts of my mind are pretty dark, and they tend to gobble up dark things like they were chocolates. Nom, nom, nom.

And of course, as Ingrid points out, anything that's forbidden or taboo almost automatically becomes erotic. As an atheist, religious thinking about sex -- imagining sex through the eyes of a fervent believer, putting myself and my libido into that mindset -- feels kind of taboo... and thus it becomes more erotically exciting than it might otherwise be.

I think there's something else, though; something other than the accident of what I happen to be thinking about these days. That's probably why I started playing with it in the first place; but it doesn't explain why I've been running with it so eagerly.

To find out what I think my new-found interest in religious porn is about -- or to chime in with your own thoughts and experiences about it -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

(Note: If you decide to comment on this piece here in this blog, please consider cross- posting your comment to the piece itself on the Blowfish Blog. They like comments there, too.)

The Erotic Fiction Anthology: A Victim of its Own Success: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about the strange nostalgia I have for the days of my youth when erotic fiction anthologies were few and far between, instead of numerous and widely available like they are today. It's called The Erotic Fiction Anthology: A Victim of its Own Success, and here's the teaser:

I don't normally indulge in "It was so much better in the old days" nostalgia. I'm 47 years old, and am highly conscious of the dangers of incipient old farthood. And I've felt for years that if you refuse to see anything good in current popular culture, you might as well just start yelling at kids to get off your lawn. Anyone who thinks movies aren't as good as they used to be needs to start watching documentaries; anyone who thinks hip- hop is just artless noise needs to start watching "America's Best Dance Crew."

But when it comes to erotic fiction anthologies, I have to admit that I have more than a touch of cranky old-fart nostalgia.

And strangely, it's a nostalgia for the days when erotica was stigmatized, marginalized, and dirty.

To find out why a sex- positive writer like myself would be even a little nostalgic for the days when erotic fiction was even more stigmatized than it is now, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Craig’s List Porn: The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, includes descriptions of my personal sex life, including my personal tastes in porn. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.

Hi, all! I'm back from the wedding, and am finally almost caught up on my sleep. I'll blog about the wedding as soon as I get pictures from it; and I should have a new original post up here soon.

In the meantime: I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog! It's about an odd source of erotica that I've becoming mildly obsessed with: namely, the Craig’s List Casual Encounters ads. The piece is called Craig’s List Porn, and here's the teaser:

I'm finding this interest of mine a little puzzling. I mean, it's not like the ads, as porn, are all that high- quality. Boy, howdy, are they not. If I were reviewing them as a porn critic, I'd be merciless. They make all the mistakes that bad amateur porn makes (and bad pro porn, for that matter): they're full of cliches, they tend to be either too terse or too florid, they either over- describe the physical action or don't describe it enough. And they -- how shall I put this? -- fail to grasp what it is about the sex they're describing that might grab the attention of the reader and make her want to find out more. Not all of them -- I've seen a few that I'd give a "keep working, this has potential" to if they showed up in a porn- writing class -- but mostly.

(snip)

But when I'm looking for fantasy material, I still find myself drawn to them again and again. They're certainly not my Number One source of free online porn (right now that would be SpankingTube), but it's one I keep coming back to.

And I'm trying to figure out why.

To find out what it is about this poorly- written grab bag that makes it such compelling fantasy material, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Sex -- The Great Exception: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It asks a question I've been asking myself for a long time: Why is sex always the exception?

Why is sex the exception to laws about free speech? Why is it okay for a Supreme Court Justice to say he can't define obscenity but he knows it when he sees it... when he wouldn't in a million years say that he can't define treason, or separation of church and state, but he knows it when he sees it? Why does our culture have a basic (if grudging) respect for differing tastes in music and movies and home decor... but little to no respect for differing tastes in sex?

It's called Sex -- The Great Exception, and here's the teaser:

Why is sex an exception?

The principle of free speech is interpreted pretty darned broadly in the U.S. But there are exceptions. There are exceptions for false advertising. For violating copyright. For slander and libel. For revealing state secrets. And for talking about sex.

In other words: Sex is seen as being in a category with fraud, theft, character defamation, and treason.

Why?

What — if you’ll excuse my language — the fuck?

The whole idea of “community standards” for obscenity is another perfect example of this principle. Think about it. We don’t allow communities to set standards for any other area of expression. We don’t allow communities to set standards for expression of political opinions or religious beliefs; for musical genres or styles of poetry. But the idea that a community should be able to set its own standards for sexual expression: this, for some reason, is seen as totally normal and entirely reasonable.

To find out more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Come See Greta Read! SF 1/16 and 1/29, Oakland 1/22, Marin 2/6

Hi, all! It's going to be a crazy month of literary porn readings for me. I have four different readings scheduled in the Bay Area for the next few weeks -- in San Francisco, Oakland, and Marin County. Three out of four of these readings are for Susie Bright's stunning new erotica anthology, X: The Erotic Treasury... and the fourth is the always astonishing, always inspiring Perverts Put Out!. So if you're going to be in the Bay Area on any of these dates, come by and listen to me read my porn! And say howdy -- I like to meet my readers whenever I can.

Here's the schedule.

Friday, Jan. 16, 7:30 pm
Counterpulse, 1310 Mission St., San Francisco
Perverts Put Out!
Perverts Put Out!, San Francisco's long-running pansexual performance series and its premier salon of dirty talk, has featured stellar line-ups of truly twisted, mega-talented artistes...and even an occasional naked mayoral candidate. Join us for the Bye-bye Bush edition, as we throw one last shoe at W. There will be the usual excellent array of delightfully pervy performers, including Charlie Anders, Greta Christina, Stephen Elliot, Shar Rednour, Kirk Reed, Thomas Roche, and horehound stillpoint, all emceed by your devoted servants Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard. A splendid (if somewhat disreputable) time is guaranteed for all.

Thursday, Jan. 22, 7 pm
X: The Erotic Treasury reading
Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave., Oakland
The reigning mistress of erotica, Susie Bright, has expertly chosen 40 of the hottest stories ever written: breathtaking new stories as well as the most sought-after stories from the Best American Erotica series, which are sure to amuse, arouse, and twist your sheets. Elegantly designed in a "gotta-touch-it" die-cut slipcase with a stunning and sensual cloth-covered book, the package cultivates the quality and taboo satisfaction of the stories about all kinds of lovers: heartbreakers, foxes, maniacs, romanticists, hell-raisers, and utter bandits. This reading will feature Greta Christina, Donna George Storey, Pam Ward, and Susie Bright, with discussion time afterwards.

Thursday, Jan. 29, 7:30 pm
X: The Erotic Treasury reading
Books. Inc., 2275 Market St., San Francisco
See above about the book. This reading will feature Rachel Kramer Bussell, Greta Christina, Donna George Storey, Susie Hara, and Susie Bright, with discussion time afterwards.
Important note: This event is now at the Books Inc. on Market St. in the Castro, not at the one in the Opera Plaza. If you thought it was at the Opera Plaza... you thought wrong, pal.

Friday, Feb. 6, 7pm
X: The Erotic Treasury reading
Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera
See above about the book. This reading will feature Greta Christina, Bill Noble, and Susie Bright, with discussion time afterwards.

So if you're in the Bay Area, or you're going to be visiting in late January or early February, come listen to me read, and say hi. Or if you're shy, just come listen to me read, and then slink off into the night. In either case, hope to see you there!

On Writing Porn in Public

Please note: This piece discusses my personal sex life, in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read about that stuff, please don't read this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

I'm not usually a fan of exhibitionism. Not the secret kind, anyway. I worked as a stripper years ago and enjoyed the work -- erotically as well as professionally -- and I'm perfectly happy to strip for a lover, pose and perform for them, etc. But the sort of sneaky, secretive, "fingering under the restaurant tablecloth/ fucking on the picnic table that you hope nobody can see" sort of exhibitionism has never done it for me. I'm not comfortable with the consent issues raised by involving people in my sex life who didn't agree to be involved. And besides, the fear of being caught doesn't make me excited. It makes me anxious, distracted, unable to concentrate on the business at hand. It's one of those kinks that I more or less understand intellectually, while being totally baffled by it emotionally.

But I've been discovering an exception.

That exception is writing porn in public.

Like countless other writers with laptops -- and like countless writers with typewriters and pens before us -- I've discovered the joy of writing in cafes. It's a great way to avoid both the claustrophobia and the easy distraction of working at home all day.

And I've discovered that there's something uniquely hot about sitting down at a cafe, opening up my laptop, and setting to work on a dirty story. Something that makes me finally get what it is that turns people on about secret exhibitionistic sex.

Part of it is that, without actually feeling unethical, it feels sort of naughty and bad. Like I'm getting away with something.

Breaking rules is almost always exciting... an excitement that can easily be turned sexual if you squint at it just right. And when you grow up in a culture that condemns almost anything sexual as wicked and forbidden, it's hard not to think of the wicked and forbidden as naturally sexual. But when you live in San Francisco in the sex- positive community, it's awfully hard to feel like anything you're doing is wicked or forbidden. We're all so damned accepting.

But writing porn in my neighborhood cafe? That definitely feels naughty. I love writing about ex-Catholic women seducing their priests, and sex workers being drawn into sadomasochism by their customers, and high school slumber parties gone wrong... when, as far as anybody knows, I'm just working on my Ph.D., or my manifesto, or my screenplay, or whatever it is people do on their laptops in cafes. (Yes, I know. Some of them are probably writing porn, too. Don't harsh my buzz. Anyway... that's also kind of hot.)

Add to that the fact that I almost inevitably get turned on when I write porn. If I'm not, it's a clue that I'm not doing it right. So you take the "secretly writing dirty dirty porn in broad daylight in a public place" aspect, and you add the "getting wetter and wetter by the minute in broad daylight in a public place" aspect... and it definitely makes me feel hyper-sexual, like an insatiable slut getting fingered in the back seat of a car because she can't wait 'til she gets home.

There's something else going on though, too. In an odd way, even though the public-ness of a public space is somewhat distracting, it also provides a curious focus.

See, when I'm writing porn at home alone, there's nothing to stop me from reaching for the vibrator when I get turned on. Which is a good time, of course -- writing porn puts my sex fantasies into sharp, intense focus, and I love jerking off when I do it -- but it does tend to derail the writing pretty damned fast. My porn is always better if I can hold off on masturbating to it for as long as I can. It's frustrating... but the frustration amps up the intensity of the scenario I'm trying to create, makes me focus extra-hard on the details and the motivations and the subtle emotional shadings.

And when I'm writing porn in public, I don't have a choice. I can't just jerk off as soon as I start getting turned on. (Not if I want to go back to that cafe, anyway.) I have to keep my attention on the writing. I have to channel my arousal away from my clit and into my story. Writing in public forces me to have the discipline that I don't always have at home.

Writing porn in public gives me focus in another way as well. When I get deeply involved in a raunchy fantasy, deeply turned on by it -- and then remember where I am, and take a sip of coffee, and look around me at the barristas and the cafe art and the people playing chess -- the contrast is like diving into a cold pool after sitting in a hot sauna. And getting back into my dirty story is like climbing back into the sauna. The shock of it wakes me up, makes me pay attention. It makes me feel intensely conscious of how I feel in my skin, intently present in the here and now.

And that's always a good place to write from. Porn or otherwise.

So now I'm curious. Am I the only one? If you're a sex writer -- professional or amateur -- do you ever write porn in public? And if so... what is that like for you? Is it harder than writing at home? Easier? Some of both?

And those of you who do like secret exhibitionism -- the actual sex kind, not the "writing porn in cafes" kind -- is this at all how you feel about it? Does it make you feel hyper-sexual and slutty? Intensely focused and conscious of the here and now? Frustrated in a way that winds up your arousal? Like you're getting away with something naughty? Something else entirely?

Prurient minds want to know.

Bettie Page, 1923-2008

Please note: This post discusses my personal sex life, sexual fantasies, and tastes in porn, in some detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't read this one.

I have a confession to make.

From a purely erotic, purely visceral, "what do I watch in porn to get me off?" standpoint, Bettie Page has never been a huge favorite of mine. Of course she was beautiful; of course she was lush; of course her playful manner and big, cheerful grin were irresistibly charming. It's just that I have a strong preference for authenticity in porn: for porn that looks like the performers are really getting into it. And I never quite got that from Bettie. Whether she was getting spanked or tied up, or spanking or tying up another girl, the playfulness and the grin made it impossible to believe that she was taking any of it seriously. It always looked like a little kid playing Cowboys and Indians. Even when she was scowling or hollering, you could see that she was grinning inside.

But I loved her anyway.

And I loved her for the very things that made it hard for me to genuinely get off on her movies and her photos: her playful manner, and her big, cheerful grin.

Bettie Page was doing erotic and fetish modeling during a time -- the 1950s -- when these activities were not only illegal, but surrounded by a dark cloud of secrecy and intense shame. And yet she posed in her photos and performed in her movies with a shameless joy. Not the wild, defiant, "fuck you and your shame" Jezebel sort of shameless (which I'm also fond of, don't get me wrong), but the sort of shameless that doesn't even see what there is to be ashamed of. She was sex-positive before we even had a word for it. She was a role model for fetish pride, for taking pleasure in bodies and in sex, for women proudly and cheerfully claiming their sexuality... way the hell before it was cool.

And even when she became a born-again Christian and left the world of erotic and fetish modeling forever, she never (to my knowledge) disavowed it or spoke of it as anything to be ashamed of. As recently as 1998, she said in an interview with Playboy, "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."

Bettie Page died on Thursday, December 11, at the age of 85. She will be missed.

Video below the fold. (Video not for people under 18.)

"Not a very nice story": Susie Bright Interviews Me for "X: The Erotic Treasury"

Please note: This piece discusses my sex life -- specifically, my sexual fantasies and my tastes in porn -- in a certain amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read about that, please don't read this piece. Thanks.

Sex, religious cults, atheism, spanking, pen-names, astrology, being made an example of, and the process of writing porn... what do all these have to do with each other?

Susie Bright (of Best American Erotica fame, and of Susie Bright's Journal fame) has put together a new erotica anthology, X: The Erotic Treasury. It's a beautifully- edited book, as Susie's books always are... and for once, the production values are worthy of the content: a cloth-bound hardcover book, gorgeously printed on non- crappy paper, all in a sensuous- to- the- touch die-cut slipcover.

I have a story in the collection... a rather disturbing erotic story that I thought I'd have a hard time ever getting published, so I'm thrilled that it's not only seeing the light of day, but is being showcased in this beautiful format. The story, "Deprogramming," centers on physical and sexual abuse in a religious cult... and a couple who escaped from the cult and are now consensually re-enacting it.

Susie interviewed me recently about my story, and we talked about -- you guessed it -- sex, religious cults, atheism, spanking, pen-names, astrology, being made an example of, and the process of writing porn. Here's that interview. Enjoy!

SB: You were raised as an atheist, but when do you remember being fascinated with the "cult" experience?

GC: I wouldn’t describe myself as fascinated by cults, although I do find religion in general to be a compelling subject.

But it sounds like what you want to know is what inspired me to write this piece. It's not a very nice story, but it is a true one, so I'll tell it.

I was watching a documentary about Jim Jones (of Jonestown fame) and his People's Temple. At the point in the story where things were starting to go wrong in the church, it said that members of the church who disobeyed the rules were punished by being spanked.

It's a terrible story. They described the incidents, and what they called "spanked," I would call "badly beaten." But there's a deeply ingrained part of my mind and my libido that almost inevitably gets turned on when I hear the word "spank," and that starts to conjure erotic images and stories. So I found myself having sexual fantasies about this scenario... while at the same time being horrified by it, and feeling ashamed for being turned on by it.

That's where "Deprogramming" came from. I was trying to capture that feeling of being simultaneously horrified and turned on. I decided to have the survivors of the abuse in my story re-enact it in an erotic way: for the characters, this was a way for them to reclaim the experience and move past it... and for me, it was a way to give myself, and my readers, permission to be turned on by it.

My story isn't specifically about the People's Temple. It's about a fictional religious cult that I made up. But it's definitely influenced by real cults that I've read about...

Does your family know about your erotic writing? Have they read it?

I've asked my family not to, actually. My porn is like a window into my libido, and it crosses a boundary for me to have my family looking through that window. I don't want my family to know what I think about when I jerk off. Call me old-fashioned.

Have you written any manifestos?

Definitely. Many times. In my blog. Probably the best known and widest read is Atheists and Anger -- an attempt to answer, in detail, the question, "Why are you atheists so angry?"

Have you ever used a pen name for your erotic work?

No.

This was a conscious decision I made very early on. It's very important to me to keep my identity integrated; to resist the tendency to present one face to some people and a completely different face to others. Writing under my own name is an important part of that.

I totally understand why other writers use pen names, I'm certainly not critical or judgmental about it. But it would be wrong for me. I want to stand behind what I write 100%.

Has your work ever been "made an example of"?

Oh, yes.

The best example: I wrote a piece a few years back for the Skeptical Inquirer, called Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do With God.

The piece talks about how, although it might seem that an atheist philosophy has no comfort to offer in the face of death, in fact this is not the case. And it offers, as examples, some of my own atheist thoughts about death that I find comforting and hopeful.

I started ego-Googling my name and the title of the piece... and found that several Christian ministers were quoting from the piece out of context, as an example of how even atheists admit that life without the promise of life after death is bleak and hopeless.

No, really. Here's how they did it.

They would quote the part at the beginning, where I talk about how atheism seems to offer no comfort in the face of death. And they would completely ignore the entire point of the piece... which is that, while that might seem on the surface to be the case, it most emphatically is not.

FYI, when I find that happening, I write to these ministers; point out that they're quoting me as saying the exact opposite of what I'm actually saying; and remind them about the commandment against bearing false witness against your neighbor.

What is your astrological sign? Any other signs and symbols regarding the occasion of your birth?

What's the astrological sign that thinks astrology is bunk? That's the one I am.

Seriously. Of all the religious/ spiritual/ metaphysical beliefs out there, astrology is one of the few that actually makes testable claims (namely, that people's personality and behavior are affected by the time of their birth). These claims have been tested. Extensively. And they've been conclusively found to have absolutely no basis whatsoever.

The only thing special about the occasion of my birth -- apart from my being born, of course -- is that it was on New Year's Eve. Which meant (a) my parents got to take me as a tax deduction for the entire year, and (b) I got a great excuse for throwing a big birthday party every year.

When you think of your recent writing, for "X," and then consider your recent sex life in reality, what comes to mind?

I think, "I really hope people understand the difference between fantasy and reality. Otherwise, they're going to think I'm a total nutjob."

"X: The Erotic Treasury" is available at Powell's, Amazon, Last Gasp, and fine bookstores everywhere. If you've enjoyed this interview, a PDF of other interviews with "X: The Erotic Treasury" writers (most shorter than this one -- I took the liberty of posting the longer version of mine here) is available online.

Support Same-Sex Marriage -- Buy Porn!

Hey, this is cool.

If you subscribe to the Crash Pad lesbian porn video series on Thursday, October 30, 100% of your subscription fee will go to the No on 8 campaign to protect same-sex marriage in California.

(Here's more info on the Crash Pad series. These are seriously hot videos, btw, authentic and well-made, passionate and nasty... all those things that Gretas like best.)

If you've been holding off on donating to No on 8... maybe this will inspire you. Support same-sex marriage while you buy porn!

A Clowncar Named Desire: Sex, Humor, and Ellen Forney's "Lust"

This review was originally published on ALT.com.

Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads From Seattle's The Stranger
By Ellen Forney. Introduction by Dan Savage.
Fantagraphics Books. ISBN 978-1-56097-864-8. 168 pages. Hardcover. $19.95.

It's completely hot.

And it's completely hilarious.

That's a hard combination to get right. Sex and humor are a tricky combination. I've written about this before: a big part of sex is about building up tension, and a big part of humor is about breaking tension, so they're two great tastes that don't always taste great together.

But comic artist Ellen Forney makes it work.

For several years, Ellen Forney has been illustrating the adult online personal ads of the Seattle alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger. In Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads, she collects the best of these cartoon illustrations...in a nasty, silly, sexy, filthy, shameless, constantly surprising, and joyfully exuberant display of the unbelievable variety of human sexual desires. From "Pirate Wench" to "Panty Bear," from "Pull My Hair" to "Watch Me Undress," from "Have You Been A Bad Boy?" to "Force This Top To Be A Bottom," from "You Are A Mechanic" to "I Like Knives" to "Erotic Hypnosis" to "My French Maid," Forney's comic illustrations are a hot, hilarious, thoroughly delightful parade of human libido. If you've been playing the adult personals for any length of time, you'll find this book both inspiring and hysterically familiar. And if you've never run or answered a personal ad in your life, you'll still find it... well, both inspiring and hysterical.

Like I was saying, "sexy" and "silly" is a combination that's hard to pull off. But Forney has the knack of it. She has an unerring eye for the overlapping ground between sex and humor -- namely, playfulness. What's more, she has the ability to make her subjects seem completely human -- imperfect, vulnerable, goofy, hopeful -- in a way that's loving and friendly, and that actually makes her subjects seem even more sexy. And the shamelessness and pure adventurous spirit of these advertisers is simply inspiring. (Anyone who runs adult online personal ads absolutely needs to read it... if only to get some new ideas.)

But Forney is more than just an enthusiastic appreciator of the astonishing variety of human sexuality. She is also an exceptionally skilled comics artist, with a distinctive, immediately recognizable style that is a major part of the beauty and eroticism in this book. She has a strong, bold, sensual line that seems like it was born to draw sex. And her drawing and design skills are on proud display here. From the text of the BDSM ad written into the ropes tied around a naked body, to the lush Art Nouveau styling on the "Hairy Girl" ad, she shows inventiveness, imagination, and serious artistic chops. She clearly has a deep respect for sex, and is clearly thrilled to be using her considerable talents to illustrate dirty personal ads.

And the fact that the comics are illustrating real-life sex -- or at least, real-life sexual desires, at least some of which must have gotten translated into real-life sex -- gives them a tremendous amount of erotic punch. For me, at least. I've always found real-life sex stories to be hotter than fiction: reality gives a sexy story an immediacy that makes it very hot indeed. These aren't unattainable fantasy figures; they're real people, looking for some real action. I love looking at these cartoons and imagining, in detail, what the people behind the ads actually wound up doing. I love thinking about which ads I might actually want to answer, and what might happen if I did. And I love imagining what kind of cartoon Forney would draw if I ran an ad myself. Yum.

I should tell you that not all of these comics are explicitly sexy or dirty. Many of them are, but a lot of them aren't. And they're not all meant to be. Many of these cartoons are just supposed to be funny. So if you're looking at this simply as a stroke book, you may find it disappointing.

But I found Lust to be not just intriguing and funny and beautiful, but extremely arousing as well. And I found that even the silly, funny, non-explicit cartoons add to the overall eroticism of the book. Ellen Forney has found a way to turn the goofy, absurd, "what would this look like to space aliens?" side of sex into something hot, enticing, and erotically inspiring. It is sexy, it is unique, and it is not to be missed.

(Disclosure: Ellen Forney is a contributor to a book I edited, Best Erotic Comics 2008, as well as the cover artist for that same book. The Lustlab Ad of the Week feature, alas, is no longer running; but you can find many of them in the Lustlab archives on Forney's blog.)

On Watching... The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, contain detailed descriptions of my personal sex life and sexual practices. Family members and others who don't want to read about that: This would be a very good post to skip.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about... well, the title on this one is pretty self- explanatory. It's called On Watching The Same Ten-Second TV Spank Scene… Over And Over And Over, and here's the teaser:

It seemed vaguely ridiculous at the time.

It seems even more ridiculous now.

Why -- in a world where I have almost infinite pornographic material at my fingertips -- would I find a ten-second spanking scene in a cable TV comedy series so erotically compelling? Why would I rewind and re-watch it a half a dozen times... and then fetch my vibrator, and watch it a dozen times more?

What is it about sex scenes in non- porno movies and TV shows, novels and comic books, that makes them hot? Not necessarily better than porn; but different, and different in a way that makes them special and exciting?

To find out why and what, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Lights, Camera… Richard Kern's "Action"

Please note: This review includes a passing reference to my personal sex life. Family members and others who don't want to read that stuff may want to skip this one. There are also nude pictures in this review; please don't click the "Continue" button if you're under 18 or don't want to see those. This review was originally published in Adult FriendFinder magazine.

Action
By Richard Kern
Book with DVD; hardcover, color. Taschen, ISBN 978-3-8228-5649-9

Here's what you see in this book. Apart from photos of naked girls shamelessly showing off their goodies, that is.

You see smiles. Half-smiles. Awkward grimaces. Coy sidelong glances. Eyes gazing up in adoration. Eyes lowered sweetly and shyly. Eyes shut tight in rapture. Intense stares. Puzzled stares. Thoughtful stares. Looks of concentration. Looks of amusement. A sneer, a yawn, a tongue sticking out. Grins. Glowers. Giggles.

Now, here's what you don't see a lot of in this book:

The sultry model's pout.

You know the one. The "stare at the camera without smiling" one. The one that's supposed to look sexy and smoldering and "come-hither," but usually just looks blank. The one you see on almost every goddamn page of almost every goddamn erotic photo book on the goddamn planet. If you've seen any decent amount of contemporary adult photography, it's a facial expression you're almost certainly way too familiar with.

There's not a whole lot of it in Richard Kern's "Action".

And that, all by itself, is enough for me praise it to the skies.

It's not just that I'm so bored with the sultry model's pout that I could scream and set fires. That's certainly true -- but there's more to it than that.

Two Erogenous Zones Walk Into A Bar: Sex And Humor

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my sex life: This piece talks about my sex life a little. Not in a lot of detail, but some. If you don't want to read about that stuff, use your own judgment on this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

I want to like it.

Really, I do.

But mostly, I just don't.

I'm talking about humor in porn. And to some extent, I'm talking about humor in sex.

If you're one of these people who complains that porn is too serious and you wish they'd lighten up and have some laughs with it... well, I guess I'm part of the problem. Sorry about that. I've written some laugh lines into some of my porn, but I do it sparingly, and I never do it when a story is heading into the home stretch.

I just don't like it. Not usually. Not as a porn writer, and not as a porn consumer. I find it distracting, I find it un-sexy, and I find it a mood-killer. Or a mood-dampener, anyway.

Part of the problem with funny porn, of course, is that so much of it isn't actually funny. In the same way that commercial porn often winds up with half-assed writing (for books), half-assed lighting and framing (for photos), and half-assed writing and lighting and framing and acting and music and everything else for porn videos, the attempts at humor in all porn media often wind up being pointless, labored, and flat.

But even when humor in porn is done well, I still don't often like it.

It's not just porn, either. It's sex itself. I once had a sex date with someone -- a couple, actually -- who wanted to have sex with Warner Brothers cartoon music in the background. They were definitely of the "people take sex too seriously, we wish they’d lighten up and have some laughs with it" camp. I liked the idea in theory... but in practice, I found the music extremely distracting. I'd be working up to a nice erotic climax, when I’d hear some comic "boing" in the background, and completely lose my momentum. I felt bad -- I felt like I was one of those people they were complaining about who took sex too seriously -- but it absolutely did not work for me.

So here's what I think the problem is:

Laughter is a tension breaker.

And I don't want the tension broken during sex.

Sex is about tension. Obviously sex is about a lot more than that... but tension is one of the main things that makes it work. The slow, gradual, rise-and-fall buildup of tension, the amping up of erotic tension to an almost unbearable level of pleasure, the sudden, explosive release of all that tension in orgasm... that's what it’s about, baby. And I don't want it interrupted with some silly dirty pun or a comic "boing" on the stereo.


I'm not saying I never laugh in bed. Of course I do. And laughter can have some real benefits to sex. It can be a bonding experience, making sex feel like a naughty conspiracy that the two (or more) of you are in on together. And it can release the bad kind of tension as well as the good, smoothing over awkward moments and making you feel good about yourselves and each other.

I'm saying that when I do laugh in bed, it tends to break me out of my erotic mood. And it can take a little doing to get back into it and find my place again. That's true for sex with another person, and it's true when I'm enjoying porn by myself. Humor and laughter can definitely add to a sexual scenario... but for me at least, it does so at the cost of sexual arousal. It releases the tension too early, and in a non-erotic way. I can be turned on, and I can laugh, but I can almost never do both at the same time.

It can still be worth it. It can definitely be worth it when I’m with someone else and we’re getting the good bonding stuff you get from a good laugh. And porn can sometimes use humor in a similar way: early on in the story, to establish a mood and get you to bond with the characters. But once things really get going, I want my erotic tension to be broken in a shattering orgasm -- not in a fit of the giggles.

Come See Me Read! Perverts Put Out, Sat. April 19

If you're going to be in the San Francisco area this Saturday, come see me read! I'll be reading at the vaunted and notorious Perverts Put Out series, Saturday, April 19, at the Center for Sex and Culture. Other sex writers reading that evening will include Jim Provenzano, Kirk Read, Steven Schwartz, horehound stillpoint, Fran Varian, and emcees Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard. In celebration of tax season, this will the the very special FTIRS edition of Perverts Put Out.

The Center for Sex and Culture is at 1519 Mission Street, near Van Ness, in San Francisco. It's very close to the Van Ness MUNI stop and to many Market Street buses, and not that far from the Civic Center BART stop. Perverts Put Out starts at 7:30, and admission is $10-15 on a sliding scale. Hope to see you there!

"Variety in itself is arousing": My Podcast Interview with Radio Blowfish

Check out the podcast interview that just went up on Radio Blowfish! In the interview, we talk a lot about adult comics in general, porn in even more general, and my new book Best Erotic Comics 2008 in particular. Among other things, I talk about why I think comics are almost an ideal form for erotica, why I think variety is so important in porn collections, and how I went about finding the comics I chose for the anthology. It's fun, it's chatty, and it's not too long (about 10 minutes or so -- I forgot to time it when I was listening).

If any of this sounds interesting to you -- or if you've been reading my blog and are curious about the dulcet sounds of my voice -- you can visit the main Radio Blowfish site (my interview is Episode 73, at the top of the dial as of this writing), or you can go directly to the listen and download page.

FYI, some of the material is sexually explicit. Like, duh. So you may or may not want to listen to it at your job, depending on where you work. Enjoy!

Dirty Comics Re-enactment! New York "Best Erotic Comics" Event, Wed. March 5

It is killing me that I can't be there for this event. So I'm hoping my New York friends and blog readers go for me, and tell me all about it.

It's a Best Erotic Comics 2008 New York launch party and benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund... in which performers will be re-enacting stories from the anthology.

Loki in heaven, I wish I could go.

New York's funniest comedians will "act out" BEC stories by Colleen Coover ("A Bondage Tale"), Jessica Fink ("Cassie's Bush"), Ellen Forney ("Your Handy Map to Erogenous Zones"), Justin Hall ("Birthday Fuck"), Ralf Konig ("Roy & Al: Sniffing Around"), Erica Erika Moen ("Silver Bullet"), and Dori Seda ("Fuck Story"). Listen, laugh, squirm, and get turned on as they treat you to a night of sex and comedy you won't soon forget. Hosted by Rachael Parenta, the event will feature comedians Dan Allen, Sara Benincasa, Jon Friedman, Margot Leitman, Matt McCarthy, Giulia Rozzi and Bex Schwartz.

The event is at the Parkside Lounge, 317 E. Houston Street in NYC, Wednesday March 5 starting at 7:30 pm. Admission is a $10 suggested donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. It's for 21 and over only, with a 2 drink minimum. For more info, visit the CBLDF website.

If you're in the New York area, please please please go... and please tell me how it went. I'm dying to know.

"Stories I wanted to tell": An Interview with "Best Erotic Comics" Artist Trina Robbins

And welcome to the second in a series of interviews with the artists of Best Erotic Comics 2008. Today's interview is with one of the book's Hall of Fame artists, Trina Robbins. I've been an admirer of Trina for many years, both as a comic artist and as a historian. The author of The Great Women Cartoonists, The Great Women Superheroes, and From Girls to Grrlz : A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines, as well as many other titles, Trina has been a powerful influence on the comics scene since the underground days. I was thrilled to have her work in Best Erotic Comics 2008, and even more thrilled to interview her here in my blog.

BTW, Trina will be one of the panelists at tonight's Best Erotic Comics 2008 launch party, Thursday 2/28 at 7pm at the Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission Street in San Francisco. Come by and say howdy!

Greta: Thanks so much for agreeing to be interviewed! Tell me about your piece. What inspired it, what were you trying to accomplish with it, etc.? I know why I like your piece and why I included it in the anthology -- but what do you think makes it stand out?

Trina: Nothing heavy, really, just: what if the tables were turned and WE were the pets? Not even really an animal rights story, because I certainly am not opposed to neutering pets -- at least until someone invents tiny kitty kondoms. Our two cats are neutered -- they're a male and female -- and sometimes the poor dears get an inkling of an idea about what they're supposed to do, and they assume position, the male biting the neck of the female, but then they can't remember what comes next and they just kind of stand there. It's funny in a pathetic way. My partner calls it the love that can't remember its name.

And tell me a little about the history of this piece. You originally drew it in 1978, but it's being published for the first time here. Can you tell me the story about that?

Yeah, back in '78 I had done some illustration for this men's mag, and I got along nicely with the editor. I sent him a sketch for the comic and he liked it and gave me the go-ahead, but by the time I finished the piece, he'd been fired and the new editor wanted nothing to do with anyone the old editor had worked with. So it has sat in my file cabinet till I heard from you.

Well, I'm so glad I could help it to see the light of day! Since you bring up men's magazine, I wanted to ask: Do you see erotic comics as a separate genre from mainstream comics? Or do you see your erotic work as being an integral part of the comics world?

Well, they obviously ain't mainstream. But comics are comics (or comix) and there are many different kinds and they're all valid.

And when you're creating sex comics, is it important to you that they be arousing to the audience? Or are you focused entirely on other artistic goals?

I've done so few sex comics! I've certainly never done any with arousal of my readers in mind -- they've always simply been stories I wanted to tell.

Since you have done non-erotic comics as well as erotic ones, I'm curious: How has your adult work affected how your non-adult work is received? Has it made it harder to get your non-erotic work published or recognized? Easier? Or has it had no effect at all?

Far more non-erotic than erotic! But I don't think one ever affected the other.

You've been doing comics -- both adult and non-adult -- for a long time, since the early days of the underground comics era. How do you think adult comics have changed since then? And how have those changes affected your own work over the years?

I'm not an enormous readers of erotic comics, but the impression I get is that first of all, there are genuine women drawing erotic comics now, so you've got a different viewpoint than you had 35 years ago, and also of the ones done by men, I think far less of them are the kind I've always objected to -- the kind where rape and torture of women is portrayed as something cool and/or amusing. I'm sure you know that there are people who have accused me of being a censor simply because I have objected to comics that portray rape as funny. Those people don't quite get it that objecting to something is not the same as censoring it.

On that topic -- not the topic of censorship, but the topic of the changing world of adult comics: Do you think the increasing acceptance of comics as a serious art/ literary form has affected sex comics? Has it made it easier for adult comic artists to work? Or are artists less willing to do sex comics for fear of not being taken seriously... whereas 30 years ago they didn't care because they weren't getting any respect anyway?

Certainly there are some excellent graphic novels out now that deal with sex and that are widely respected. Michelle Tea's Rent Girl comes to mind, as well as Phoebe Gloeckner's books. And those books are definitely taken seriously.

Do you find that working on adult comics is an erotic experience? Or when you're doing the drawing, are you just focused on the craft of your work rather than the eroticism of the scene you're creating?

As I said before, I'm focused on telling a story. I find the idea of people as pets being allowed to mate before being neutered ironic rather than erotic!

And finally -- what are you working on now?

I've been writing educational graphic novels for kids and they are definitely not erotic! They're meant for the classroom, as teachers and librarians have become aware that kids are reading less, but that kids WILL read graphic novels. Some of them came out very well, thanks to a bunch of good artists: the stories of Hedy Lamarr, drawn by Cynthia Martin; Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to get her pilot's license, drawn by Ken Steacy;and Florence Nightingale, drawn by Anne Timmons, with whom I also team up for our ongoing graphic novel series, GoGirl! I just finished adapting a Ray Bradbury story into graphic novel form for Scholastic, and this Spring Anne Timmons and I will be doing a graphic novel adaptation of Little Women -- like I said, definitely not erotic!

Retired cartoonist Trina Robbins has been writing books and comics for over thirty years. Aside from writing about women cartoonists, she has written books about dark goddesses, Irish women, and women who kill.

Previous posts in this series:
"That's the fun of it": An Interview with "Best Erotic Comics" Artist Justin Hall

Are You A Sex Addict? Part 2

Part 2 of a two part post. Please note: This post discusses many different aspects of my personal sex life -- many, many aspects -- in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't. Really, really don't. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

In the last column, we were discussing this Sexual Addiction Screening Test created by Dr. Patrick Carnes, inventor of the term "sex addiction." We saw a noticeable pattern in this test: the pathologization of unconventional sex; the pathologization of sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be; and the pathologization of people who make sex a high priority in their lives. (Thanks to Dr. Marty Klein's Sexual Intelligence blog for the tip). Today we continue going through the test, looking at all the questions that a sexually healthy person might answer "Yes" to... and examining what exactly is troubling about this test and the model of sexual dysfunction it represents.

(This piece contains explicit descriptions of sex. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.)

Are You A Sex Addict?

Please note: This post discusses many different aspects of my personal sex life -- many, many aspects -- in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't. Really, really don't.

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Are you a sex addict?

Probably.

I seem to be.

Via Dr. Marty Klein’s excellent Sexual Intelligence blog comes news of this Sexual Addiction Screening Test from SexHelp.com, a site designed "to help those affected by sexual addiction and compulsivity." The site was created by Dr. Patrick Carnes: inventor of the term "sex addiction," founder and designer of multiple treatment programs for sex addiction, and author of several books on sex addiction.

According to Dr. Klein, Dr. Carnes admits he has no training in human sexuality. But let's not focus on that just now.

Because according to this test, I have a problem.

Which is a bit odd. My life is good; my sex life is great. Things in my life are stable and flourishing, and sex is a happy part of that.

So I don't actually think I have a problem.

I think this test has a problem.

I think this test has several problems. I think this test represents an extremely narrow, rigid view of what can constitute a happy sex life. It pathologizes any kind of sex that's unconventional. It pathologizes any kind of sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be, or whether their sexual sensibilities are reasonable. And it pathologizes anyone who makes sex a high priority in their life.

And I think this is the problem with the way sex addiction commonly gets treated. In fact, I think it's the problem with the whole "sex addiction" theory in the first place. I don't deny that some people behave compulsively around sex, self-destructively and destructively of others. I'd be an idiot to deny that. I just don’t think "addiction" is the right word -- or the right concept -- for that problem.

And I think this shows up in this test. Specifically, it shows up in the way that unconventional sex, sex that defies conservative sexual mores, or making sex a high priority in one’s life, are all seen as signs of sex addiction.

But maybe I'm in denial. Maybe I'm one of those addicts who can't admit they're an addict. Let's take a look at the test, and at all the questions I answered "Yes" to... and let's see.

(This piece contains explicit descriptions of sex. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.)

"That's the fun of it": An Interview with "Best Erotic Comics" Artist Justin Hall

I'm very proud and happy to present the first in a series of interviews with the artists of Best Erotic Comics 2008. One of the things I'm most proud of with this book is the wide variety of first-rate comic artists I was able to showcase, and I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with some of them directly and find out more about how they work, how they approach comics in general and dirty comics in particular.

Today's interview is with Justin Hall, best known for his True Travel Tales comic series, and known to Best Erotic Comics readers as the artist of the sweet, kinky, hilarious, and seriously dirty "Birthday Fuck." Justin and I talked about the comics industry, the sex industry, the challenge of telling true stories, the balance of arousal and artistry in erotica, and lots more.

Please note: Some of the content of this interview, and some of the images illustrating it, are not appropriate for minors. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.

"Best Erotic Comics 2008" -- A Couple of Cool Reviews

My new book, Best Erotic Comics 2008, has gotten a couple of nifty reviews already, and I thought y'all might like to see them.

The excellent and prolific sex writer, editor, and blogger, Rachel Kramer Bussel (most recently editor of Best Sex Writing 2008), has written a very glowing and nicely thorough review of the book on Amazon. She gave it five stars, and says, among other things:

This first in the annual series shows comics that aren't just designed to turn you on (though some of them surely will), but also tell humorous, honest stories about a range of sexualities, using various artistic styles that show readers just how many ways one can interpret sex.

And Audacia Ray (blogger and author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration) has created a very nice video review of the book. Embedding the video doesn't seem like an option, but you can watch it on Audacia's Live Girl Review blog.

You can buy Best Erotic Comics 2008 at Last Gasp (the publisher), and at many locations and online stores, including Powell's and Amazon. Many thanks to Rachel and Audacia for the kinds words. So glad you liked the book!

Best Erotic Comics 2008 Is Here!

It's here at last! Best Erotic Comics 2008 has arrived at the Last Gasp warehouse. It's available for sale at Last Gasp, and is already available at many locations and online stores, including Powell's and Amazon.

A literary and artistic exploration of human sexuality -- and a fun dirty book, featuring today's smartest, raunchiest, funniest, filthiest, most beautiful, and most arousing adult comics! Best Erotic Comics 2008 smashes the divide between literary/art comics and adult comics by including both the hottest work from the literary/art comics world -- and the highest-quality work from the adult comics world. Artists include Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, Gilbert Hernandez, Michael Manning, Toshio Saeki, Colleen Coover, Ellen Forney, and many others. The wide variety includes work that's kinky and vanilla, sweet and perverse, and straight, lesbian, and gay. Features recent comics, a handful of vintage Hall of Fame gems -- and some works never published before! 200 pages. Color and b&w.

Work by: Belasco, Marzia Borino & Mauro Balloni, Susannah Breslin, Katie Carmen, Cephalopod Products, Daniel Clowes, Vince Coleman, Colleen Coover, John Cuneo, Dave Davenport, El Bute, Jessica Fink, Ellen Forney, Phoebe Gloeckner, Daphne Gottlieb and Diane DiMassa, Justin Hall, Gilbert Hernandez, Molly Kiely, Ralf Konig, Dale Lazarov & Steve MacIsaac, Michael Manning, Erika Moen, Quinn, Sandez Rey, Trina Robbins, Toshio Saeki, and Dori Seda. Cover art by Ellen Forney.

I'm immensely proud of this book, and am delighted with how it turned out. I think I really did do what I set out to accomplish: make an adult comics collection that's both arty and dirty, with comics that will make you think, make you grin, and make you want to whack off. And everyone who's seen the book has commented on its tremendous variety: not just a variety of sexual preferences and practices, but a variety of moods and stories and artistic styles.

I'll be blogging about this book a lot in the coming weeks, with artist interviews and links to reviews. But for right now, I just wanted to let y'all know: It's here.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn -- Or Not

This piece originally appeared on the Blowfish Blog.

Porn is not sex education.

I'll say it again: Porn is not sex education.

I'm saying this to everyone who's reading this. But I'm especially saying it to parents: Porn is not sex education. So you need to make sure your kids are getting actual sex education. Because if you don't, then all they really need to know about sex they'll learn from porn -- and they're going to get it completely wrong.

This came up because of a piece I heard on the NPR radio show, "This American Life." The program was on the topic of "talking to kids," and it had a whole segment on talking to kids and teenagers about sex. The entire segment was excellent... but the part that jumped out at me was the teenagers saying that they didn't have good information about sex. Specifically, they didn't have good information about the actual mechanics of sex, what goes where and how.

And so they looked at porn.

And I didn't know whether to vomit, throw things, or cry.

It wasn't just the appalling state of sex education in our country that made me want to cry. Although that was a big part of it. The sex education these kids are getting from their schools is pathetic and insulting, and they know it.

No, what was really making me want to throw bricks through windows was that these teenagers were getting their sex education from porn... and I know, in great and vivid detail from the many years I've been watching porn, exactly how lousy that education will be.

Here is a very short list of things that people will get grotesquely wrong if they get their sex education from porn.

What women's genitals look like. This is a biggie. If you're looking at porn video to satisfy your curiosity about what a pussy looks like -- well, standards of female beauty in porn are almost as rigid with pussies as they are with basic body types, and female genital cosmetic surgery in the porn industry is getting increasingly and depressingly common.

What male genitals look like. Another biggie -- literally. Every time I read a letter to a sex advice columnist from a guy complaining that his dick is pathetically small -- not like the guys in the porn videos -- I want to scream and bite people. Male porn actors are specifically selected for their large genitalia. They are not a statistically representative sampling. Statistically speaking, they represent the far, far end of the bell curve.

The realities of female sexual response. This may be the worst offender of the bunch. There's already enough ignorance about what gives women sexual pleasure and what gets us off, without "porn as sex ed" adding to the mix. Look, I have no doubt that there are some women out there who don't need foreplay, get very aroused by giving blowjobs, have intense multiple orgasms from intercourse alone, and couldn't care less if you touched their clit. But if that's how you're trying to get a woman off, you're really not playing the percentages. Trust me on this.

The realities of male sexual response. If you're getting your sex education from porn, you're going to think that it's normal for men to get rock-hard immediately, at will, and to stay rock-hard throughout the encounter until they come. You won't necessarily know that (a) male porn actors are specifically selected for their ability to get wood and keep it; and (b) the omnipresence of wood in porn videos is due in large part to the miracle of video editing (and more recently to the miracle of Viagra).

To round it all off, we have the actual mechanics; the "What happens during sex?" stuff that the teenagers in the NPR story were desperately looking for. The sex in porn videos is choreographed to give a clear, unobstructed view of the penetration. It's choreographed to look good -- not to feel good. I shudder to think of a generation coming into their sexual prime thinking that reverse cowgirl and that stupid position where the woman sticks her leg up on the wall are the gold standard of the sexual nuts and bolts.

And all of that is just the tip of the sexual misinformation iceberg.

So I want to say a few things to parents:

1. Sex education in our country is in an appalling state. It has huge holes in it at best, and dispenses gross misinformation at worst.

2. If you think your kids aren't seeing porn, think again. Even before the Internet, kids and teenagers were looking at porn. (How many of us swiped our dad's Playboys for a peek? I sure did.) And with the Internet, the horse is definitely out of the barn

So do something. If you're not comfortable talking frankly with your kids about sex yourself -- and I have more sympathy for that position than you might imagine, I sure didn't want to talk with my parents about sex -- you need to make sure they have a way to get the information they want and need. Get them books. Point them at the Scarleteen or San Francisco Sex Information websites. Send them to the sex education programs offered by the Unitarians. Make sure there's an adult in their life they can talk about sex with. Or suck it up, get over your discomfort, and talk to them yourself.

But for the love of all that is beautiful in this world, do not let them grow up thinking that they can get accurate, useful sex information from porn. They can -- once they're adults, of course -- use porn to get entertainment, inspiration, arousal, even some interesting new ideas. But the sex information they'll get from porn will be, if possible, even more useless and misleading than the sex information they're getting from their schools.

Which Side Are You On? Pro-Porn and Anti-Porn Arguments

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life: This post talks about my personal sex life, including a few details you may not want to know about. If you don't want to read that stuff, please don't read this post.

This post was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

You'd think this would be a no-brainer. I've performed in porn. I've produced porn. I've sold porn. I've written porn. I've reviewed porn. And I've read and looked at porn, many many times, purely for my own libidinous pleasure. And whenever I read someone reflexively attacking porn, railing about how horrible it is and how it's degrading and ruinous to all that is good and wonderful about sex, I get very cranky and argumentative.

But here's the kicker. When I read people reflexively defending porn, raving about how wonderful and uplifting it is and how all criticisms of it are absurd and unfair, I get cranky and argumentative as well.

You might conclude from this behavior that I am a cranky, argumentative person.

You might be right.

But there's more to it than that. (She said, crankily and argumentatively.)

The core problem, I think, is this. Critics of porn often focus exclusively on the specifics of how porn commonly plays out in contemporary culture. They see the body fascism, the rigidly narrow and male-oriented vision of sexuality, the sexism (and yes, there is sexism in porn, just like there's sexism in every other part of popular culture). And they conclude that the particular is the same as the general. They conclude that because that's how porn commonly plays out in contemporary culture, therefore that's what porn is always like, de facto and by its very definition.

(They also focus on video porn to the exclusion of all other forms. Not entirely unfairly, as that is the lion's share of the porn market... but somewhat narrow-mindedly as well. And there's an unfortunate confirmation bias when feminist critiques of porn focus on video, since written fiction is a far more woman-driven form of erotica than video has ever been. Especially when you look at the vanishing line between the erotica and romance genres.)

By the same token, though, defenders of porn often focus exclusively on the ideal of what porn could be, while ignoring the ugly realities of what it very often is. And I'll include myself in that critique. I've definitely been guilty of saying, "But what about Candida Royalle? What about Libido Productions? What about the dozens of other wonderful indie porn productions I could name?"... while ignoring the over 10,000 pieces of formula-driven, factory-made, tedious pieces of sex in a box that come out every single year, and that porn customers snap up like candy.

I'm not going to say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think the idea that the truth of two opposing extremes usually lies somewhere in the middle is total bullshit. I am, on the whole, very much pro-porn, if for no other reasons than (a) I think there's no way to stop the fucked-up kinds of porn without stopping healthy sex information and expression, and (b) I like to get off on it.

And I think anti-porn writers have a very bad habit of ignoring Sturgeon's Law. They fail to recognize that, yes, 90% of porn is crap... but 90% of everything is crap. And in a sexist society, 90% of everything is sexist crap. I've seen some very good arguments on how most porn is sexist and patriarchal with rigid and misleading images of women... but I've never seen a good argument for why, in a world of sexist TV and movies and pop music and video games, porn should be singled out for special condemnation -- to the point of trying to eliminate the genre altogether.

But I also think that pro-porn advocates -- myself included -- need to stop pretending that there isn't a problem. We need to recognize that the overwhelming majority of porn -- or rather, the overwhelming majority of video porn, which is the overwhelming majority of porn -- is sexist, is patriarchal, does perpetuate body fascism, does create unrealistic sexual expectations for both women and men, does depict sex in ways that are not only overwhelmingly focused on male pleasure, but are rigid and formulaic and mind-numbingly tedious to boot. And we need to be trying to do something about it.

What I think is often missing, from both sides of this debate, is nuance. I think anti-porn writers need to acknowledge that the crappy realities of average porn don't automatically prove that all porn is evil by definition. And I think pro-porn advocates need to acknowledge... well, the crappy realities of average porn.

And goddamn it, this cranky and argumentative sex writer wants nuance. If I have to scream myself blue in the face to get it.

Male Dom Female Sub

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, discusses my personal sex life -- or to be more accurate, my tastes in porn -- in a certain amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Has anyone else noticed a drastic shift in kinky porn in the last few years?

It used to be that the most common trope in kinky porn was the dominant woman. Madame Cruella, Mistress of Pain, Kitten with a Whip -- these were the themes and images that dominated, if you will, the world of SM porn, both in writing and in visual art. It was a cliche, even: everyone knew the cliche of the powerful business executive who paid to get beaten and humiliated once a week -- or who built a library of fem-dom porn to help him fantasize about it.

But in the last few years, I've been seeing a definite shift. In the kinky porn that comes across my path (and a fair amount of kinky porn comes across my path), I'm seeing less and less porn starring dominant women, and more and more starring submissive women and dominant men.

I'll admit that I haven't studied this trend with any scientific rigor: this observation is very much anecdotal, and I could be talking out of my ass. But I really don't think so. I was actually so used to the prevalence of dominant women in SM porn that it took me a while to realize that they weren't nearly as prevalent as they used to be.

And now I'm wondering: What's that about?

You could argue that this trend is sexism at work. Most porn is still aimed at a primarily male audience, after all. And while men were happy to fantasize about powerful women with whips back when it was overwhelmingly a man's world, as women have been gaining more and more power, men are fantasizing more and more about taking that power away.

I suppose there might be something to that theory. But it can't possibly be all there is. Because women are having these fantasies, too. In droves. Women writers and artists are creating a lot of this male-dom female-sub porn -- and increasingly, a female audience is sucking it up. Myself included. I eat it up like popcorn.

In fact, you could argue that this dynamic is happening because of the opposite of sexism. Women have had submissive and masochistic fantasies for ages, and porn is finally starting to cater to our goddamn fantasies of being the helpless, vulnerable center of attention/ object of desire -- not just men's.

But I think there's something else going on here, something that's key. Again, I haven't studied this with any kind of rigor, so I'm just going to speak for myself, on the assumption that what's true for me may be true for others as well.

I think that we fantasize about what we don't have. Stressed-out city folks dream of tropical paradises and bucolic rural getaways; bored small-town folks dream of the excitement and glamour of the big city. Unhappy single people dream of true love; unhappy married people dream of being footloose and fancy-free. Etc., etc., etc. That's the whole point of a fantasy, isn't it? Even if your life is generally good, you're still not going to fantasize about the things you already have.

So what does this have to do with male-dom female-sub porn? After all, we still live in a sexist world where women have less power than men. Wouldn't women and men alike be fantasizing about men in shackles and women with whips?

In the much broader and more obvious sense, of course that's true. We've made a lot of advances, but the world is still very sexist indeed. But -- again, speaking only for myself now -- in a more immediate day-to-day sense, the reality that I want a fantasy escape from isn't sexism.

It's the fight against sexism.

It's the constant vigilance against the stupid sexist indoctrination that's been sunk into my head since I was an infant. It's the constant struggle to be assertive when I've been taught to be compliant, to speak up when I've been taught to be a good listener, to argue when I've been taught to be agreeable... all without turning into an asshole. It's the constant half-second arguments I have in my head every time a guy says or does something sexist -- is this particular battle worth fighting? Do I respond, or let it go?

It gets exhausting. Not just for women, but for men as well, who're contending with the flip side of gender indoctrination and changing roles and expectations. And I think a big part of the appeal of the male-dom female-sub fantasy is that it offers a break from the fight. It offers an opportunity -- whether in a role-play scene in real life or a masturbation fantasy in your head -- to take a vacation from the battle, to briefly
wallow in the familiar roles, in a safe place that's separate from your everyday life.

And like most vacation spots, for most people it isn't the place where you'd really want to live. Sure, there are people who do 24/7 male-dom female-sub relationships, just like there are people who sell their houses and move to Tahiti. But for most people, part of the pleasure of a good vacation is how happy you are to come home from it, the fresh perspective it gives you on everything you love about your everyday life. The indulgence in a fantasy of a masterful man and a compliant or helpless woman gives you a break from the struggle against sexism in your everyday life... so you can emerge rested and refreshed and ready to do battle once more.

Perfect Porn and Other Myths

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. Please note: This piece discusses, not so much my personal sex life, but my tastes and preferences in porn, and it does so in some detail. If you don't want to read that, please don't.

It's almost a throwaway line. And yet it's stuck with me for weeks.

"I figured out pretty soon that, to get a video that pushes all your buttons and doesn’t grate on any squicks, you have to win the lottery and produce it yourself."

This is spanking model Adele Haze, in a blog piece titled Why I Modelled for Lupus Pictures. It's a smart, insightful piece about why she was willing -- not just willing, but happy -- to perform in a spanking video for a production company that she knew was going to physically push her much, much harder than she liked. The piece has some compelling implications, not just about spanking porn or even porn in general, but about any kind of sexual relationship, and indeed any kind of job.

I've written about those implications elsewhere. But right now, I'm fixated on this one comment she made almost in passing. Again:

"I figured out pretty soon that, to get a video that pushes all your buttons and doesn’t grate on any squicks, you have to win the lottery and produce it yourself."

I think this is one of the smartest things I've read about porn. I think it has important implications, for both porn critics and porn consumers alike. And I think it has even bigger implications for porn creators.

I've been a porn consumer for close to thirty years now, and a porn critic for over a decade. And as both a consumer and a critic, I've definitely fallen into the trap Haze is talking about. I've griped about porn -- videos, stories, photo collections, comics, whatever -- being too arty, and I've griped about them being too raw. I've griped when porn took forever to get to the good parts, and I've griped when it rushed to the sex too soon. I've griped when the porn I was watching was too soft-focus and romantic, and I've griped when it treated its characters like meat. I've griped because the performers didn't spank as hard as I liked, and I've griped because they spanked too hard.

In other words, I've definitely griped about porn because it either didn't push all my erotic buttons just right, or because it grated on some of my squicks. I've griped when it hasn't fallen into my perfect window: the perfect amount of artistry without sacrificing spontaneity, the perfect amount of teasing and buildup to get me worked up without getting me frustrated and bored, the perfect degree of roughness or kink to be convincingly real without being terrifyingly brutal.

And I -- along with every other porn consumer and porn critic -- have to acknowledge that this really isn't fair.

Of course I have a right to my erotic buttons. I have a right to express those erotic buttons. And I have a right to seek out porn that pushes them. Absolutely. But it isn't right to act as if porn creators have done something wrong for failing to push them.

Besides, and much more to the point...

The porn that I've loved most passionately hasn't necessarily pushed my erotic buttons at all. And some of it has definitely grated on my squicks. The porn that I've loved most passionately has been the porn that most effectively got across how the people in it felt about the sex they were having -- regardless of whether the sex they were having was sex I wanted to have, or even wanted to fantasize about.

If I can be drawn inside the head and the skin of the performers/ characters/ models, if I can be made to really feel what it feels like to be this person/these people having this sex and to feel what they find hot about it, the actual content can be just about anything. It can be content that would usually bore me, and it can be content that would usually squick me. If I can get why they find it hot, I can generally find it hot myself.

This is the main reason I'm so rabid about authenticity and enthusiasm in video porn. An authentic, enthusiastic performance in a porn video will completely bypass the presence or absence of my erotic buttons, and will turn me on by the sheer force of the performers' own excitement. A competent piece of push-the-buttons porn will only get me off if it hits my buttons successfully.

And I think that's a lot of what's wrong with so much porn. Mainstream video porn especially, but it's true of almost any commercial porn. I think way too much porn focuses way too hard on maximizing their button pushing and minimizing their squick-grating (emphasis on minimizing their squick-grating). They spend way too much time and energy checking off boxes on the "positions and sex acts" checklist (did we get the blowjob? did we get the reverse cowgirl? did we get the anal?) and making sure none of the "avoid at all costs" boxes get touched (did the guys' dicks touch each other? does the girl look even slightly fat?). And as a result, they all too often forget the entire point of the exercise -- namely, to show how exciting it feels to have great sex.

On Surfing the Web... The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, contains very explicit details, not so much about my personal sex life per se, but about my fantasies and my tastes in porn. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog -- with a nosy little poll at the end of it, aimed at readers of all stripes but especially at other sex writers and educators. It's called On Surfing the Web for Spanking Porn, and it begins very much like this:

Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed by it.

I know that seems weird. I've been writing in shameless detail about my sex life, my sexual fantasies, and my tastes in porn for years. Why should I be embarrassed about surfing the web for spanking porn?

I think I'm embarrassed because I'm so single-minded about it. As a porn critic, I pride myself on having eclectic tastes, on being able to be turned on by almost any sexual scenario if it's executed with passion and skill. All of which is true.

But when it comes to my free time, my "me" time, my non-professional "looking at porn just to whack off" time, I'm very single-minded indeed. I want to look at photos of women being spanked.

Within some pretty specific parameters.

To find out more about those parameters -- and how I feel about the whole thing -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

His Hands: A Dirty Story

I haven't been posting much about sex here lately. Except for the stuff about the sexual hypocrisy of right-wingers, of course. Which is entertaining in its own way; but not exactly hot.

So today I'm posting a dirty story from the archives. (Family members and others who don't want to read my porn, now would be a good place to stop.) This piece was originally published in the Five Minute Erotica anthology, a collection of short-short (1000 words or less) erotic fiction edited by Carol Queen. As usual with my fiction, I'm not illustrating it with any pictures, since I want you to visualize the characters however you want. Enjoy! Story begins below the fold.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn — Or Not: The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, talks about sex. Not about my personal sex life so much -- it's more in the "social and political commentary" vein -- but if you don't want to read about the sex stuff, then please hang up now.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, about kids and teenagers learning about sex by watching porn. It's called All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn — Or Not, and it begins very much like this:

Porn is not sex education.

I’ll say it again: Porn is not sex education.

I’m saying this to everyone who’s reading this. But I’m especially saying it to parents: Porn is not sex education. So you need to make sure your kids are getting actual sex education. Because if you don’t, then all they really need to know about sex they’ll learn from porn — and they’re going to get it completely wrong.

To find out more about why using porn as sex education is such a bad idea, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

How I Write Porn

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. Please note: While this piece doesn't talk about my personal sex life per se, it does talk about my taste in porn, which may be TMI for family members and others.

*****

Disclaimer: I'm aware of the pitfalls of writing a "how to write porn" piece using your own porn writing as an example. So if you don't like my porn writing -- the passage I wrote for this piece, or any of the rest of it -- please feel free to ignore this advice.

I usually start with the physical actions. What the characters are doing, what they're saying, which body part is going where.

"He gripped her wrist and twisted it behind her back."

It's what I call "the skeleton." And the problem with most bad porn fiction is that it stops there. Too many porn writers think that a description of sex acts is all a porn story needs.

I have more sympathy with these writers than you might imagine. When I'm writing a first draft, I get very excited about these things, too. After all, when I'm having a sex fantasy, these are the things I fixate on: the breasts spilling out of a low-cut blouse, the cock pushing into a tight asshole, the hand smacking down on the bare bottom again and again. I know how those sex acts make me feel. Vividly.

And it's easy to forget that conveying the sex acts doesn't convey the feeling.

But it doesn't.

So then I move on to how the sex feels: the emotions, the sensations.

It's what I call the flesh of the story. How does it feel to be this person, or these people, having sex? How do these sex acts feel physically -- soft, tight, sharp, gentle, smooth, cold? And how do they feel emotionally – nervous, urgent, giddy, relieved, beloved, dirty?

So not just, "He gripped her wrist and twisted it behind her back," but:

"He gripped her wrist and twisted it behind her back; his nails dug sharply into her skin, and she felt a rush of excitement, followed immediately by a flush of shame."

And that's better.

But it's still not enough. Not for me. I've read plenty of porn that stopped there, and if it pushes my personal erotic buttons, it'll be enough to get me off. But it's not enough to make a story linger in my mind after I come; to shift the way I look at sex; to make me jerk off to the story again and again. For me to be happy with a sex scene, it's definitely not enough to just describe the sex acts that are happening -- but it's also not enough to convey how the sex feels physically, or even how it feels emotionally.

It has to convey what the sex means.

Why the people are having it. Whether it's giving them what they'd hoped for. What about it is surprising. Whether anything is going to be different now because of this sex.

That’s the nerves of the story. And the nerves are what gives a story life.

So not just, "He gripped her wrist and twisted it behind her back; his nails dug sharply into her skin, and she felt a rush of excitement, followed immediately by a flush of shame," but:

"He gripped her wrist and twisted it behind her back; his nails dug sharply into her skin, and she felt a rush of excitement, followed immediately by a flush of shame. She had specifically asked for this, had spelled out the fantasy in some detail. And now that it was here, digging into her flesh and forcing her face-down onto the floor, it was too much: not just the helplessness, but how exciting the helplessness felt. She didn't want to be that person, that cliche, the powerful woman who deep down just wants to be mastered by a more powerful man. Her safeword bubbled up in her throat, but she gritted her teeth and choked it back down. She had asked for this, by God, and by God she was going to see it through.

"He forced his knee between her thighs and fumbled with his zipper, and she whimpered, in something resembling real panic, as she felt a flash of wetness inside her pussy. I don't want this, she thought. I don't want this, I can't do this, please stop. The words in her head made her pussy wetter, and the sharp fingers forcing her cunt lips apart made it wetter still, and she moaned in humiliation and rage at her treacherous pussy that was begging for his cock to force itself inside her against her will, and that was getting off on her shame and fear."

You may notice that this passage suddenly got a lot longer. And it's not just the "why" stuff that made it longer -- there's more "what" and "how" as well, more skeleton and flesh.

Here's why. It's usually the skeleton of a porn story that gets me started -- some fantasy image of some physical act. But it's the nerves that drive it. Once I find the meaning of a story, once I know who these people are that I'm jerking off to and why they're having the sex that they're having... that's what tells me what happens next.

And when I'm rewriting and polishing a story (if the acts and feelings and meaning of a porn story are the skeleton and flesh and nerves, then the rewrites and polishes are the skin), a lot of what I'm checking for is the balance between the three. Does a section feel tedious? There's probably too much physical description: I need to sink into the character's bodies and get at what they're feeling. Does it seem cliched? I need to remember what makes these characters unique, why they're there and what they're getting out of it. Is it starting to lose momentum and sexual heat? Maybe there's too much deeper meaning stuff, and I need more strong visual images of what's physically taking place.

So if I can get all three of these things in balance -- clear descriptions of sex acts, vivid evocations of emotions and sensations, and unique characters and motivations -- there's a good chance that this will be a story I'm happy with.

Which Side Are You On? Pro-Porn and Anti-Porn Arguments

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, a meditation on the pro-porn/ anti-porn debates suggesting that both sides might be being a tad simplistic. It's called Which Side Are You On? Pro-Porn and Anti-Porn Arguments, and here's the teaser:

You’d think this would be a no-brainer. I’ve performed in porn. I’ve produced porn. I’ve sold porn. I’ve written porn. I’ve reviewed porn. And I’ve read and looked at porn, many many times, purely for my own libidinous pleasure. And whenever I read someone reflexively attacking porn, railing about how horrible it is and how it’s degrading and ruinous to all that is good and wonderful about sex, I get very cranky and argumentative.

But here’s the kicker. When I read people reflexively defending porn, raving about how wonderful and uplifting it is and how all criticisms of it are absurd and unfair, I get cranky and argumentative as well.

You might conclude from this behavior that I am a cranky, argumentative person.

You might be right.

But there’s more to it than that.

To find out what more there is to it than that, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Best Erotic Comics 2008 - Artist List Finalized! Plus Call for Submissions for Best Erotic Comics 2009!

It's at the printers! The artist list is finalized! After some predictable delays in production, my new anthology, Best Erotic Comics 2008, is moving forward, with an expected publication date from Last Gasp of December 2007!

Here's the skinny. (Yes, in this case "the skinny" is the book's official blurb, but I wrote the blurb myself, so it actually represents the book very accurately.)

A literary and artistic exploration of human sexuality -- and a fun dirty book, featuring today's smartest, raunchiest, funniest, filthiest, most beautiful, and most arousing adult comics! Best Erotic Comics 2008 smashes the divide between literary/art comics and adult comics by including both the hottest work from the literary/art comics world -- and the highest-quality work from the adult comics world. Artists include Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, Gilbert Hernandez, Michael Manning, Toshio Saeki, Colleen Coover, Ellen Forney, and many others. The wide variety includes work that's kinky and vanilla, sweet and perverse, and straight, lesbian, and gay. Features recent comics, a handful of vintage Hall of Fame gems -- and some works never published before! Color and b&w.

Work by: Belasco
Marzia Borino & Mauro Balloni
Susannah Breslin
Katie Carmen
Cephalopod Products
Daniel Clowes
Vince Coleman
Colleen Coover
John Cuneo
Dave Davenport
El Bute
Jessica Fink
Ellen Forney
Phoebe Gloeckner
Daphne Gottlieb and Diane DiMassa
Justin Hall
Gilbert Hernandez
Molly Kiely
Ralf Konig
Dale Lazarov & Steve MacIsaac
Michael Manning
Erika Moen
Quinn
Sandez Rey
Trina Robbins
Toshio Saeki
and Dori Seda.

Cover art by Ellen Forney.

I am enormously excited about this book. It really is both dirty and arty, mind-expanding as well as dick- and clit-expanding, which is exactly the line I was trying to walk with it. And everyone who's looked at it so far has said that they're struck by the sheer variety of the material... something that makes me very happy indeed. Variety -- not just variety of sex acts and sexual orientations, but also variety of sexual moods and attitudes, relationships and settings, narrative tones and visual styles -- was one of my top priorities in choosing the material, and it tickles me that this jumps out so clearly.

I'll be blogging about Best Erotic Comics a lot more as it gets closer to publication. I'll be posting artist interviews, explaining more about my selection process, gassing on about why I did the book in the first place, and more. But I wanted to start spreading the news now.

And I want to start spreading a related piece of news: Best Erotic Comics is an annual series, and the deadline for the next volume is fast approaching! For details, please check out the guidelines below the fold. (Even if you're not a comic artist, you might be interested in the guidelines, as they explain a lot about the book.) Thanks, and see you in the funny papers!

Male Dom Female Sub: The Blowfish Blog

Note: This post, and the post it links to, has a fair amount of sexual content: not about my personal sex life per se, but about my personal fantasy life and my tastes in porn. Family members and others who don't want to read about that: Now would be a good time to disembark.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, about a sea-change that's been happening in the world of SM porn. It's called Male Dom Female Sub, and it begins thus:

Has anyone else noticed a drastic shift in kinky porn in the last few years?

It used to be that the most common trope in kinky porn was the dominant woman. Madame Cruella, Mistress of Pain, Kitten with a Whip -- these were the themes and images that dominated, if you will, the world of SM porn, both in writing and in visual art. It was a cliche, even: everyone knew the cliche of the powerful business executive who paid to get beaten and humiliated once a week -- or who built a library of fem-dom porn to help him fantasize about it.

But in the last few years, I've been seeing a definite shift. In the kinky porn that comes across my path (and a fair amount of kinky porn comes across my path), I'm seeing less and less porn starring dominant women, and more and more starring submissive women and dominant men.

I’ll admit that I haven't studied this trend with any scientific rigor: this observation is very much anecdotal, and I could be talking out of my ass. But I really don't think so. I was actually so used to the prevalence of dominant women in SM porn that it took me a while to realize that they weren't nearly as prevalent as they used to be.

And now I’m wondering: What's that about?

To find out what I think that's about, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Christian Spanking Porn

This piece originally appeared on the Blowfish Blog. I don't really talk about my own sex life in this piece, but it may still be too much information for family members and others with, you know, boundaries. So be advised.

Since this piece appeared, some changes have been made to the Christian Domestic Discipline website. The half-hearted language about consent being important for legal reasons even though the Bible doesn't require it has been removed, and replaced with a simple, straightforward sentence that they do not condone nonconsensual CDD. And the porn (excuse me, the "Christian spanking romance fiction") and the "CDD 101 Handbook" have either been removed entirely or moved to an area where you have to register to access. (I'm not sure, since I wasn't willing to register.)

I doubt highly that my piece was the sole instigator of these changes, since the Christian Domestic Discipline thing was all over the blogosphere for a while, including sites with a lot more traffic than mine. But since the questionable nature of their consent and the dirty dirty nature of their stories was largely what the blogosphere commentary was focusing on (that and the crotchless pantaloons), it seems likely that these changes were made in response to that commentary and to the extensive critical traffic they no doubt received as a result.

In the case of the consent issue, I'm extremely glad that they changed the language, and can only hope that they haven't simply removed the "wink wink, the Bible says consent isn't required so be careful of the lawman" stuff to a less public area. In the case of the stories, I'm sorry that they're gone, since they were weirdly hot. -GC

Christian Spanking Porn
by Greta Christina

Christian spanking porn. Not three words I ever expected to string together.

But that's what this is. It's not what the creators call it -- but there's no question in my mind, that's what it is.

And I'm finding it deeply weird.

View from the Fourteenth Floor

I'm working on several different blog pieces now, none of which is finished yet. So tonight you get a dirty story from the archives. Note: This is a very nasty story, and family members and others who don't want to read my porn or know too much about my fantasies may want to stop now. FYI, while I usually illustrate my blog posts with lots of pictures, I'm not going to do that here, since I want you to be able to picture the characters and the scenario on your own. Enjoy!

Perfect Porn and Other Myths: The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This piece, and the piece it links to, includes references to my personal sex life, specifically my taste in porn. Family members and others who don't want to read about that... um, don't.

"I’ve definitely griped about porn because it either didn’t push all my erotic buttons just right, or because it grated on some of my squicks. I’ve griped when it hasn’t fallen into my perfect window: the perfect amount of artistry without sacrificing spontaneity, the perfect amount of teasing and buildup to get me worked up without getting me frustrated and bored, the perfect degree of roughness or kink to be convincingly real without being terrifyingly brutal.

"And I — along with every other porn consumer and porn critic — have to acknowledge that this really isn’t fair."

That's the teaser from my latest piece on the Blowfish Blog, Perfect Porn and Other Myths. In it, I meditate on an observation from spanking model Adele Haze: "To get a video that pushes all your buttons and doesn’t grate on any squicks, you have to win the lottery and produce it yourself." To find out why I think this is important -- not only for porn consumers and critics, but for porn creators as well -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Ticky-Tacky, or Why Most Mainstream Het Porn Bores The Pants On To Me

This piece was originally written for Fishnet about ten years ago. A few of the details of the porn industry formulas have changed since then, but it's somewhat unnerving to realize how apt this piece still is. FYI, the videos here used to illustrate ticky-tacky porn here are not necessarily ones that I've seen. If I'm mistaken and one or more of them is actually an exception to the ticky-tacky standard, please accept my apologies. (The videos illustrating concepts of good porn are all ones that I've seen.)

*Little boxes, on the hillside
Little boxes, made of ticky-tacky
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same...*
-Malvina Reynolds, "Little Boxes"

No, don't worry. This isn't a rant about why porn is sexist and oppressive and demeaning and generally a Bad Thing For Our Society. I like porn quite a bit. I whack off to it all the time. And I have a very squishy soft spot in my heart for video porn. Real actual people having real actual sex, right there in real life videotape in the privacy of your own living room -- what could be bad?

But Lordy, Lordy, am I ever tired of the formula. I am so tired of flat stomachs and big fake boobs and long ratty bleached-and-permed hair. I am super-tired of pussies shaved into the Hitler moustache. And Christ on a crutch, I am so far beyond tired of cum shots that I could just plotz.

It's not that I could never find any of these things arousing. I'm just tired of the repetition. I'm tired of seeing the same types of bodies and the same hairstyles and the same four or five sex acts over and over and over again. And I'm tired of what this repetition, this sameness, says to me about the porn industry.

You see, it seems to me as if the folks in the mainstream het porn industry are not really trying very hard to turn people on. They seem instead to be trying desperately hard not to turn people off. The decisions about what body types and hairstyles and sexual variations get put on video seem to be based, not on creating images that customers might find arousing, but on avoiding images that customers might not want to see. The very narrowness of the erotic vision speaks to me of marketing meetings, and lowest common denominators, and fear.

Playing the Race Card: Candida Royalle's "Caribbean Heat"

This piece was originally published by Adult FriendFinder magazine in 2005.

Playing the Race Card:
Caribbean Heat

Produced by Candida Royalle. Directed by Manuela Sabrosa. Starring Felinia, Nicole, Susan, Paola, Yinna, Sol, Max, Spider, Bruce, Danny Boy, Red Phoenix, and Adrian. 84 minutes. Femme Productions.

First, let me ask you this: Have you seen any of Candida Royalle's movies before?

If you haven't, let me explain real quick. Candida Royalle was the first smut producer to make movies specifically for women, and she pretty much single-handedly invented the "couples" video. Her company, Femme Productions, makes videos aimed at what women want to see in dirty movies: compared to most mainstream pornos, they feature more foreplay, a slower and more sensual pace, less focus on genitals and insertion shots, more full-body sensuality, better production values, greater variety in body types, more plot and character development, an emphasis on sex in the context of relationships and romance, greater attention to the woman's experience and pleasure, fewer money shots, and better-looking men. Much, much better-looking men. Candida's work has been hugely influential on the porno industry: her success made other producers realize, not only that straight couples liked to rent dirty movies, but that both women and men were hungry for passionate, labor-of-love porn with good production values and not-completely-stupid writing and acting.

Although I usually prefer my pornos to have lots of raunchy sex and not much plot, I've always been fond of Candida's movies. She does a great job of conveying the unique pleasure of sex with someone you actually love and care about, something most dirty movies don't even get close to. And even if the sex in her videos isn't usually my favorite type to watch, her work does a beautiful job of expressing passion and enthusiasm, getting across what the characters are feeling and why they're enjoying it... which automatically makes it hot. (That's often true in porn, video or written or whatever -- if you get a good strong sense of the characters' excitement, it doesn't necessarily matter whether the kink they're enjoying is your personal fave.) I'm always happy to watch Candida's videos, and I'm always curious to see what she'll do next.

So anyway. Candida Royalle has a new-ish video out, "Caribbean Heat." Now, this one Candida didn't actually direct. She produced it, and supervised the direction; but unlike every other movie Femme has made, this one was directed by someone else: a new female director, Manuela Sabrosa.

And Candida's absence does show. I liked "Caribbean Heat" a fair amount, but I didn't wildly adore it, and I don't think it's one of Femme's stronger efforts. It does have many of the company's usual good points: a patient pace, a relative dearth of cum shots, attention to female pleasure in general and foreplay in particular, women who don't look like Barbie dolls, and some seriously fine-looking men. But it has some weaknesses that are unusual for a Femme production. The editing is often awkward and choppy, with oddly abrupt jumps that skip over some nice bits and generally interrupt the erotic flow. There's an odd lack of focus and direction; there's no clear sense of mounting excitement and passion, and while the performers' pleasure is visible, it's not particularly infectious. And the format (five separate, unconnected vignettes) means that one of the things I like best about Femme videos -- namely, a reasonably well-written story sustained long enough to get me caring about the characters and their sex lives -- is completely absent from this one.

More to the point, the sex didn't really wind me up that much -- although to be fair, that's largely a matter of taste rather than actual artistic failure. The sex in "Caribbean Heat" is sweet rather than fierce, gentle rather than intense, romantic rather than passionate. This is often the case with Candida's movies, but it's even more so in this one. Even the "casual sex with strangers" fantasies are more romantic than they are nasty. And even the supposedly kinky scene -- the master and maid one, with the leash and the cage and the riding crop -- is quite gentle overall, with the actual kinky elements getting very minimal play. The pacing adds to this quality as well: instead of insistently building a driving tension towards an intense release, the sex scenes feel more like rolling hills of sensuality, with arousal rising and falling in gentle waves. I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing; for porn viewers who are sick of being pounded like a jackhammer by conventional smut videos, it may be a positive blessing. It's just not my style. (As anyone who's been regularly reading this column knows, it's really, really not my style.)

But "Caribbean Heat" does have something good going for it: something very special, almost unique, a trump card that all by itself makes the video worth checking out.

That trump card is race.

Here's the thing. Virtually all contemporary porn videos fall into one of two categories. The vast majority of them are white as the driven snow: their performers are 100% lily white, with not even a single person of color onscreen to upset the delicate sensibilities of the porn-watching public. And the ones that aren't all-white tend to be racial fetish videos: nasty black women with big booties, fiery Latina tamales, mysterious and submissive Asian ladies, hugely hung black studs fucking dainty white women, that sort of thing. Adult videos starring people of color that treat their performers like regular people instead of stereotypes and that don't descend into creepy fetishization of their race... those are rarer than hen's teeth. There are some exceptions (the interracial Romeo-and-Juliet movie "West Side" leaps to mind), but there are damn few.

"Caribbean Heat" is one of them. With a vengeance.

"Caribbean Heat" was filmed on location in Central America, and features an all-Latino cast. But unlike most adult videos with a non-white cast, this movie treats its Latino characters like... well, like characters. Like people, with their own sexual feelings and desires and experiences. They're depicted as the subjects of their own sex lives, not the exotic hot-tamale objects of white lust; the sex is seen from their perspective, not the perspective of white people who are hot for them. To add even more to the authentic "this is how we see ourselves, not how others see us" quality, the dialogue is almost entirely in Spanish. (Subtitles are added when they're really necessary; but of course this is porn, and not particularly chatty or plot-driven porn at that, so subtitles mostly aren't needed. If you don't speak Spanish, you can still get the gist.)

The video was directed by a Latina woman, which almost certainly makes a huge difference. The box cover says that director Manuela Sabrosa "shows you what lovers in her corner of the world do," and for once, the box cover does not lie. Sabrosa is revealing her own erotic world in this video, and she's clearly seeing the skin and flesh of her performers, not from the outside, but from within.

And this quality alone makes me give "Caribbean Heat" a solid thumbs-up. Racism in porn is one of the largest and most active bees in my porn-critic bonnet. And it's not just about politics, either -- it's about pure, selfish pleasure. All-white casts don't just seem racist to me; they seem freakishly artificial, and they add hugely to the ticky-tacky "they all look just the same" look of so many dirty movies. And the racial fetish videos just make me queasy. But "Caribbean Heat" is a delight. It's such a sweet and rare pleasure to see a beautifully wide range of naked skin colors in a porno, without those skin colors being framed as exotic, alien, slightly bizarre fetish-objects. It's so much fun to see non-white porn performers revel in the pleasure of their bodies, without those bodies getting slotted into someone else's kinky pigeonholes. To some extent, all pornos display their performers as objects of other people's lust, and I don't usually have a huge problem with that. But when it comes to race in porn, the objectification thing gets grotesquely out of hand, to the point where it's impossible for me to enjoy it at all. It's a genuine treat to see a porn video that shows people of color as regular hot people who are fun to watch while they fuck.

Greta's Reading at "Perverts Put Out," Sat. July 28

This Saturday, July 28 -- the evening before the legendary Dore Alley Street Fair -- there's going to be another in the excellent "Perverts Out Out" erotic reading series -- and I'm in the lineup once again! It should be a great evening, with writers including not only moi, but Charlie Anders, Gina de Vries, Thea Hillman, Mattilda (Matt Bernstein Sycamore), Kirk Read, Lori Selke, horehound stillpoint, and emcees Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard.

So if you want to hear me and a bunch of other good sex writers read about, you know, sex, then come to CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street in San Francisco, this Saturday, July 28, at 7:30 pm. Admission is a $10-15 sliding scale. And if you're one of my blog regulars, please come introduce yourself. Hope to see you there!

"A price I was willing to pay": Hard Porn, Sex Work, and Consent

This is one of the smartest, most thoughtful things I've read lately about sex -- not just porn or SM, but sex -- and I wanted to call y'all's attention to it and talk about it a little.

It's by spanking model Adele Haze (I don't know why spanking models are called models instead of actors or performers when they work largely in movies, but except for curiosity I don't really care). In this piece, Haze talks about a shoot she did with Lupus Pictures, a kinky video production company that's renowned/ infamous for making movies with extremely heavy content: very hard spankings/ beatings, done with intense implements, causing real suffering and serious bruises and marks.

Haze makes no bones about the fact that the actual "getting caned" part of making this video was very difficult and not at all pleasurable. But she also makes it clear that she found the experience extremely satisfying, and doesn't regret it in the slightest. She found it professionally satisfying -- Lupus's production standards are apparently very high, and as a performer it was an artistic pleasure to be working with them. And she found it sexually satisfying -- the caning itself was far from enjoyable, but the prelude and the aftermath were an intense erotic pleasure, and she was able to tap into some very dark fantasies of non-consent in a way that she hadn't been able to before in a professional setting.

Pertinent quote: "So yes, I knew there would be pain, and I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it. I wrote it off as a side-effect: a price I was willing to pay. In hindsight, I’m glad to say that my judgement on this was sound."

I think the thing I like so much about this piece is that it makes the parallels between making spanking porn and doing any other kind of job vividly clear. And it makes the parallels between making spanking porn and being in any other kind of sexual relationship vividly clear as well.

See, in any kind of job, and in any kind of relationship, there are things you like and things you don't. Even if it's a job or a relationship that you're basically happy with, there are going to be parts that are hard to deal with. What makes a job or relationship a healthy one is that the good parts make the bad parts worth putting up with -- and that you're free to make that decision.

And that's true for porn -- all porn, not just spanking porn -- as much as it is for any job. I think some people have a tendency to think that if every single thing on a porn shoot isn't a perfect erotic dream for every performer, it's therefore exploitation at best and coercion at worst. (Eros Blog, the blog where I found this piece, has an excellent analysis of this coercion/ exploitation question with porn in general and with Lupus Pictures in particular, in his piece Evil Porn Werewolf Enslavers Debunked.) But if you look at making porn as (a) a job and (b) a sexual relationship, you realize that porn doesn't have to make all its performers perfectly happy in order to be a healthy job. It just has to make them happy enough. There has to be enough about it that they like, sexually and professionally, for the stuff they don't like to be worth putting up with.

(Via Eros Blog, who got it via Spanking Blog. God, I love the Internets.)