Greta Christina's Blog

"Straight Porn Will Make You Gay": The Delusion of Sex-Negativity

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. I never reprinted it here, since the piece was topical and time-sensitive. But the Blowfish Blog archives are apparently no longer on the Internets, and the original piece is no longer available. So in the interest of completism and making all my published works accessible, I'm going ahead and posting it here.

You've almost certainly heard this story already. Michael Schwartz, chief of staff to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), recently told an audience at the conservative Values Voters Summit that "all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards." And the media, including the blogosphere, went Foom, with scornful, unrestrained, finger- pointing hilarity. If it were physically possible for the media to piss itself laughing, it would have.

It's been an easy story to make fun of. (Fun, too!) And I absolutely think it's a story that's worth making fun of. I plan to make fun of it here myself. But a lot of the fun-making about this story has, I think, missed one of its most interesting angles.

Granted, there are an awful lot of ways to go with this story. You can go with the "Are you fucking kidding me?" angle, a.k.a. the "This is so stupid it's laughable" angle, a.k.a. the "If what Schwartz says were true, our species would have turned gay and died out generations ago" angle. You can go with the "Yippee, let's instill homophobia and sex-phobia in our kids all at once, using the one to whip up the other" angle. You can even go with the "What are you going to do when your kids figure out you're lying to them? What will that do to your family values?" angle.

All of which is intriguing, and all of which has informed my thinking on this topic. But it's not what I'm finding truly fascinating.

What I'm finding truly fascinating is the profound futility, to the point of delusion, of the ultimate purpose behind Schwartz's bizarre connection between straight porn and homosexuality.

Schwartz's ultimate point wasn't "Straight porn makes you gay." I'm not even sure he believes that himself. (In fact, he backpedaled from it just a few sentences later in his speech, saying, "If it [porn] doesn't turn you homosexual, it at least renders you less capable of loving your wife.") His ultimate point wasn't that. His ultimate point was, "Teaching ten- year- old boys that straight porn makes them gay is a great way to keep them away from porn." His point was that ten- and eleven- year- old boys are profoundly grossed-out by homosexuality... and therefore, telling them that porn will make them gay is a nifty way to make them not want porn.

To me, that's the money quote. Not the one about how all porn is really gay porn. To me, the money quote is, quote: "If you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he's going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he'll lose interest. That's the last thing he wants."

So here's what I want to know.

Does Michael Schwartz truly believe that you can keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women, just by telling them it'll make them gay?

Does Michael Schwartz know any pre- and early- pubescent boys?

Has Michael Schwartz ever been a pre- and early- pubescent boy?

There is just about no force on earth that could keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women. You could bar their paths with oceans of fire, mountains of jagged rocks, canyons filled with snakes and poisons and pop quizzes... and pre- and early- pubescent straight boys would still find their way to pictures of naked women.

Does Schwartz really think that saying "Straight porn will make you gay" is going to do the trick?

Is he so deluded, so out of touch with the realities of human sexuality, that he thinks this pathetic bit of propaganda is going to have any effect whatsoever?

Come to think of it, it might have an effect. Telling kids that straight porn will make them gay might well contribute to the toxic mess of shame and guilt and mixed messages they're already being taught about sex. (Especially if their parents are Values Voters.) And it could easily create a serious rift of mistrust between parents and children. Telling your kids such a transparent falsehood is very likely going to make them mistrust anything else you say about sex... or any other topic, for that matter. (See above, re: "What are you going to do when your kids figure out you're lying to them? What will that do to your family values?")

But if Michael Schwartz seriously thinks his "straight porn will make you gay" propaganda is going to keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women, he's deluded. Deeply, profoundly, almost hallucinatorily deluded. It would frighten me if it weren't so funny. In fact, it does frighten me, even though it's so funny. It's probably so funny, at least in part, because it's so frightening. The man is so out of touch with the realities of sexual desire that an entire nation could only gasp in shock and then fall all over itself in fits of hysterical giggles.

And that profound delusion is exactly where reflexive sex-negativity leads to.

Sex-negativity isn't just about viewing sex as wicked and disgusting (and thus a treasured gift you should save for the person you love). Sex-negativity is about ignoring or denying the realities of sex. It's about pretending that teenagers will abstain from sex if the schools scare them enough. It's about pretending that gay people don't come that way from a very early age, that they can change if they really try, that their lives will be miserable if they don't try. It's about pretending that pre- and early- pubescent straight boys won't be interested in pictures of naked women if you only tell them an idiotic lie about how it'll make them gay. It's about prioritizing your personal view of the sexual world you wished we lived in -- rigid, narrow, confined, with only a handful of situations in which people have sex and only one partner they have it with -- over, you know, reality.

And it's not just about doing all this as deliberate propaganda (a.k.a. "lies"). It's about getting so deeply enmeshed in the propaganda that you believe it yourself.

I'm not convinced that even Michael Schwartz believes straight porn makes you gay. But he does seem to believe -- sincerely, and with all his heart -- that telling 10- year- old boys "Straight porn makes you gay" will keep them away from porn.

He seems to have swallowed his own Kool-Aid.

And that's not just scary. It's not even just scary and hilariously funny. It's both of those things... and at the same time, it's one of the saddest things I can imagine.

The Rest Stop

Please note: This story contains extensive sexual content -- what with it being porn and all -- and is not to be read by readers who are under 18, or who do not want to read adult material.

The Rest Stop

He pulls his pickup truck into the rest stop. It's one in the morning on a weeknight. The rest stop isn't a happenstance place where he stopped to catch some sleep before moving on. It's his destination.

Nobody else is there yet. But another truck that had been behind him on the highway pulls in after him. He ducks his head, prays to God for forgiveness, then flashes his lights. A specific sequence of shorts and longs, signaling what he's here for: signaling generally, and then more particularly, what he's here for. A sequence he now knows intimately. A sequence he sometimes has nightmares about.

The truck behind him flashes back.

Greta Reading at Perverts Put Out, Sat. 1/8

Hi, all! On Saturday January 8, I'm going to be reading at Perverts Put Out, the San Francisco sex reading series of song and story. Perverts Put Out!, San Francisco's long-running pansexual performance series, has featured stellar line-ups of truly twisted, mega-talented artistes... and even an occasional naked mayoral candidate.

January 8 will be the Happy Effiing New Year Edition of Perverts Put Out! Come overcome Seasonal Affective Disorder with a pleasantly perverted post-New Year's bash! Performers will include Sherilyn Connelly, Gina DeVries, Philip Huang, Lady Monster, Kirk Read, horehound stillpoint, Hew Wolff... and, of course, MEEEEE Greta Christina. All presided over by the beautiful and talented Simon Sheppard.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Reservations are being recommended for this edition of Perverts Put Out. To make reservations, go to the Perverts Put Out website. If you don't make reservations and the event sells out, don't say I didn't warn you. (Also please note: The event is going to be at the Center for Sex and Culture this time -- NOT at CounterPulse.)

Perverts Put Out
Saturday, January 8
7:30 pm
The Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission Stret, San Francisco
$10-15 sliding scale

Penitence as a Perpetual Motion Machine

Warning: This is not a nice story.

This story contains extensive sexual content -- what with it being porn and all -- and is not to be read by readers who are under 18, or who do not want to read adult material. In addition, this story contains content that some people may find disturbing, including references to non-consensual sex. If you don't like that sort of thing, please don't read it.

But if you're a sick fuck like me -- enjoy!

Penitence as a Perpetual Motion Machine
by Greta Christina
(Originally published in Fishnet)

"I'm here to see Sister Catherine."

"Yes. It's nice to see you again, Mary. Please have a seat. Catherine has just finished up with another -- visitor. Why don't we take care of business now. She'll be with you in a moment."

Mary Elizabeth nods. She hands the woman behind the desk four hundred dollars in cash, and sits, keeping her coat on and her purse clutched in her lap. She tries not to look at the lobby: the garish red and black decor, the velveteen curtains tied back with steel chains, the worn spot on the black leather sofa. It makes it harder for her to think of this the way she needs to think of it. She sits, and stares at her knuckles gripping the handle of her purse, and waits.

"Mary Elizabeth. Please come in."

Catherine has stepped into the lobby. She is dressed, as always for their meetings, in a modified modern habit: the knee-length gray dress, the heavy hose and sensible shoes, the small, unimposing wimple. She has carefully wiped all traces of makeup from her face.

She takes Mary Elizabeth by the hand, and leads her to the now-familiar room, the one fitted up like a schoolroom. An office or rectory would have been better, but this was the closest they had.

"Sit down, Mary. We have to have a difficult conversation."

When Porn Goes Bad: "Girls Gone Wild"

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

I am hereby changing my mind.

I am officially and publicly declaring that I was mistaken, and am shifting my position.

Not about porn in general. But about one particular brand of porn.

Specifically, the "Girls Gone Wild" videos.

And the way I'm changing my mind is illustrating one of the most important points I've been making about it.

You may have already heard: A woman who appeared in a "Girls Gone Wild" video recently sued the producers. In the incident, the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, was dancing at a bar where "GGW" was being filmed: someone else pulled down her top and showed her breasts, and the footage was put into a video. In the original footage, Doe was heard saying "no" when asked to show her breasts, shortly before another woman suddenly pulled her top down. But the GGW producers argued that, simply by being in the bar and dancing where the video was being filmed, she was giving consent: not just to appear in the video, but to appear bare-breasted. Inexplicably, a jury ruled in GGW's favor. As jury foreman Patrick O'Brien said, "Through her actions, she gave implied consent. She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing."

Sluts just have it coming to them, I guess.

Now, on top of being evil on GGW's part, this was just plain dumb. I mean, how hard would it have been to simply not use the footage of this one woman? They must have thousands of hours of footage of women pulling up their shirts and showing their boobs. Why on earth didn't they avoid the bad publicity and the ugly court case, and just leave the few minutes of the girl who said "No" on the cutting room floor?

Given their history of legal problems and bad publicity, wouldn't they be a little more careful about consent?

Which brings me to the part where I'm changing my mind.

In the past, I've defended the "Girls Gone Wild" videos. I said I could see the appeal in them; I said it was legitimately exciting to see people take sexual risks and push their own sexual boundaries, doing dirty things they never imagined themselves doing. I argued that, whatever you might think of the company producing the videos, the patronizing, pitying attitude towards the women performing in them that's so common is absolutely unwarranted. I said that the women in them were clearly aware of the cameras, indeed happy to have the cameras on them; and that while many of them certainly seemed, shall we say, tipsy, none of them seemed intoxicated to the point of obliterating consent. And I pointed out that the GGW producers were -- they claimed -- very careful to get consent from the women in their videos... and in the videos I saw, this claim seemed entirely plausible.

But this case is making it clear that this claim is bogus. It's become clear that the producers of the "Girls Gone Wild" videos are sloppy at best about obtaining consent from the women who appear in them. Clearly lots of women are willing and even eager to be in these videos... but it's becoming clear that the producers are careless, to say the least, about making sure that this number is 100%.

So I'm retracting even the ambivalent support I gave them in the past. New evidence had made my previous position unsupportable, and I am therefore changing it. The "Girls Gone Wild" producers are sleazebags. They are not a trustworthy source of consensually- participated- in porn. Don't buy their videos.

So what's the important larger point about porn that this case illustrates?

*

One of the most common critiques of the video porn industry is that the women who perform in them aren't consenting. (Concern about male porn performers seems, for some reason, to be largely absent.) The more moderate versions of this critique assert that female porn performers go into it for bad reasons, out of economic necessity or poor self-esteem or desperation for attention. The more hysterical versions of it claim that the mainstream video porn industry is inexorably tied to human trafficking, and that women are literally threatened and forced into having sex on camera.

And I don't dismiss these critiques out of hand. I think it's very possible, likely even, that some porn performers aren't entirely self-actualized, that some of them go into it for unhealthy emotional reasons or because they need a paycheck. I think people go into a lot of industries for unhealthy emotional reasons (acting and modeling leap to mind), or because they need a paycheck (pretty much everyone who works for a living leaps to mind). And while I think the more hysterical critiques are, well, hysterical -- at least as far as the mainstream American video porn industry is concerned -- I'm open to being persuaded otherwise. If there really are problems with consent in the video porn industry -- as there obviously are with the "Girls Gone Wild" videos -- I want to know about it.

I just differ with these critics about what the appropriate response is.

If there's evidence that a video porn company is being careless at best and callous at worst about the consent of its performers, then shouldn't our objections be aimed at that company -- not at the very concept of video porn?

Here's an analogy. Labor abuses in the cocoa farming industry are very well documented, including extensive use of child labor. It's not just an isolated incident here or there -- it's endemic to the industry. And it has been for years.

So what is an appropriate response to this? Should we be selective about what kind of chocolate we eat, only buying fair-trade chocolate that we know is not supporting child labor, and boycotting any chocolate companies that won't abide by those standards? Should we be encouraging restaurants and bakeries and other consumers to do the same? Should we be publicizing this issue until non- fair- trade chocolate is sufficiently unpopular that it's no longer profitable, and fair trade becomes the industry standard?

Or should we be condemning the very idea of eating chocolate? Should we be treating the entire chocolate industry, and indeed the very substance of chocolate itself, as irrevocably tainted? Should we be treating anyone who enjoys chocolate with moral repugnance, as callous, child-hating villains, more concerned with the gratification of their sybaritic hungers than they are with abused children? Should we be tying in people's specific concerns about abuses in the chocolate industry with their general shame about food, using that shame to make them feel guilty about their physical desire for chocolate and the pleasure they take in it?

And if we think the former approach is both more effective and more just... why should we be applying the latter strategy to video porn?

If there's evidence that a video porn company is being careless at best and callous at worst about the consent of its performers, then shouldn't our objections be aimed at that company -- not at the very concept of video porn?

And I'll point out again: In the chocolate industry, these abuses are endemic. They're not exceptions. They are the industry standard. They're very well-documented. And the victims are, I will say yet again, children.

Which is patently not true of the video porn industry. I've seen some individual, anecdotal accounts from people in the porn industry who say that they went into it for bad reasons, that drug abuse in the industry is common (unlike, oh, say, the music industry), that they felt pressured to perform sex acts they didn't want to, or that they were pressured into it by abusive men in their lives. (Linda Lovelace is the most famous example of this last one.) I've also seen individual, anecdotal accounts from people in the porn industry who say that they freely chose it, that they love it, that they feel empowered by it, that they feel perfectly capable of accepting or rejecting roles and sex acts, that in fact video porn is one of the few industries where women have more status and earning power than men. I've seen porn videos where the performers were clearly bored and phoning it in at best, detached and unhappy at worst. I've also seen porn videos where the performers were clearly inspired, excited, joyful, and wanting nothing more than to be doing exactly what they were doing. (As a porn critic, I have consistently endorsed the latter and excoriated the former.)

What I have not seen is good, careful, independent documentation of endemic or even common labor abuses across the industry.

And until I do, I'm not going to stop watching video porn.

If there's strong, well-documented evidence from independent sources that a particular video porn company is being lax or callous about the consent of their performers -- as the "Girls Gone Wild" producers have shown themselves to be -- I want to know about it. I don't want to support companies like that; I want to encourage other porn consumers to remove their support. And if there's strong, well-documented evidence from independent sources that the video porn industry as a whole is being lax or callous about the consent of their performers, I want to know about that, too. If that's true, then I will readily denounce the industry, and stick to the equivalent of fair-trade porn: amateur and indie porn, from small, labor- of- love porn producers, whose performers are clearly in it for something other than the money.

But when I see poorly- supported accusations of labor abuses in the commercial video porn industry getting tied in with standard sex-negative hostility towards porn in general -- scorn and trivialization of the desire for porn, shaming of people for wanting it, the stubbornly willful failure to distinguish between the basic idea of porn and the specific ways it sometimes plays out in our culture, the patronizing assumption that no woman could possibly really want to perform in porn and therefore any woman who does must be self-loathing at best and coerced at worst -- it renders these accusations considerably less credible. It makes them look less like genuine concern for the well-being of performers in the video porn industry, and more like... well, more like standard sex-negative hostility towards porn in general. It makes me take these accusations with a large grain of salt.

A handful of salt, in fact.

But give me some better evidence, minus the sex-negative axe-grinding, and I'll change my mind.

After all, I changed my mind about "Girls Gone Wild."

Thanks to Bacchus at ErosBlog, for his classic piece Evil Porn Werewolf Enslavers Debunked, to which I am indebted for this line of thought.

Lady Gaga: Music Videos As Porn

This piece was originally published on CarnalNation.

I realize that I'm late to the Lady Gaga party. (Hey, I'm 48 years old. Cut me some slack.) But I gotta say -- I'm impressed.

If I just listened to her music, I'd only be moderately interested. I think her music is perfectly fun, well- above- average dance pop music. But I've been watching her music videos... and they're making me think that this woman is a force to be reckoned with. (Yes, I realize she doesn't direct her own videos -- but they are clearly collaborations, strongly shaped by her artistic vision, and they're a central part of her public persona.)

And what's striking me about Lady Gaga's music videos is not just how smart they are, or how imaginative, or how lovingly crafted and visually stunning, or how just flat-out funny. What's striking me about Lady Gaga's music videos is how strongly influenced they are by sex culture: by fetish fashion, by sexploitation flicks, and by plain old dirty porn.

What's more, they seem to be strongly influenced by these cultures, not as an outsider, not as someone who's manipulating this imagery to titillate/ shock the audience, but as an insider, someone who's intimately familiar with both sex culture and sexual marginalization. This isn't Britney Spears, using schoolgirl or slavegirl or girl- on- girl imagery to excite her audience without any apparent understanding or affinity for it. Lady Gaga's music videos (coupled with her interviews about her work) show a thoughtful, informed insight into polymorphous perversity. She has an analysis that could easily hold its own in any queer theory/ gender theory/ sex theory forum -- and damn do I love a sexy girl with an analysis! -- and her freak flag is waving high and proud.

In a way that -- if I can be crass for a moment -- makes her videos very functional as porn. I've certainly seen other music videos that turned me on. I can't remember seeing any that made me this hungry to watch them again and again... with a vibrator handy.

"Telephone" may be the best example of these porny influences. A brazen riff on "women in prison" sexploitation flicks -- and "women in prison" porn flicks -- the video plays with kinky imagery, catfight imagery, and girl-girl porn imagery... all reclaimed into a defiantly queer sexuality. (Yes, Lady Gaga is an out bisexual.) The women are costumed in the sexist, sluttiest, most wildly fantastical, least plausible prisoner uniforms imaginable, far outstripping the implausibly slutty costumes of any "women in prison" porn or sexploitation movie I've seen: elaborate platform heels, leather bondage collars, luxuriously trashy lingerie, chains draped around bodies, sunglasses made of cigarettes, leather gear studded and zippered within an inch of its life. Latex prison stripes for Ms. Gaga herself -- rudely stripped off by the butch prison guards, to reveal black taped X's over her nipples and fishnet hose with nothing but pixels underneath. All with cleavage and thighs and asses on meticulously offhand display. And all with breakneck-speed costume changes that defy even porn logic.

Although... well, maybe "Beautiful, Dirty Rich" is the best example. A decadent, libertine, "beautiful useless people" bisexual free-form grope-fest, its vision of trashy affluence would do the excesses of either the Weimar Republic or the Roman Empire proud. Statues get humped, piles of money get rolled in, and the brass railing of a posh elevator gets used like a stripper pole. All in a style that hints at both amateur basement porn and "La Dolce Vita."

And now that I think about it... maybe "Bad Romance" is the best example. This may be both the strangest and the kinkiest Lady Gaga video of all. (Not surprisingly, it's also my favorite.) In a futuristic bathhouse, strangely costumed women perform a private stage show for wealthy, sinister men who sit back calmly and consume the entertainment. (Much like we, the audience, are consuming the entertainment.) Gaga is forced by her fellow dancers into displaying herself and performing a sex-kitten lap dance for the audience, and later takes herself into the bedchamber of one of them, who seems to have paid for the pleasure at an Internet auction. (I think. This particular video seems to have been influenced by Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" films as much as by fetish porn, and the storyline is a little surreal and hard to follow.) This is Lady Gaga, though, always firmly in control even when she's wildly out of it, and she takes her revenge in the end by... well, I don't want to spoil such a lovely surprise.

The fashion in this video isn't just influenced by fetish fashion. The fashion is fetish fashion: from the masked latex catsuits to the strappy red lingerie to the six- inch- heel patent leather boots. Much has been made of the unwearable Alexander McQueen "alien" shoes that Lady Gaga proved were wearable in this video. I have not yet seen any mention made of the fact that the things bear an uncanny resemblance to pony play shoes. The ones that look like hooves.

But then maybe... oh, you get the idea. There's "Paparazzi", an ambivalent encomium to exhibitionism, sexual and otherwise, which eroticizes crutches and wheelchairs in a way that makes me think Gaga must have seen Japanese medical/ bandage porn. (Not to mention David Cronenberg's "Crash.") There's "Poker Face", featuring yet another bisexual free-for-all grope-fest. There's "LoveGame", with the poles on a subway car being repurposed as stripper poles, and the male dancers getting arrested and bent over cop cars, and Gaga seducing a cop in the security booth. (A cop who, mysteriously but alluringly, keeps switching genders.) I could go on.

But I kind of want to get to the point here.

Now, Lady Gaga is far from the first person to incorporate porn imagery into pop culture. She's not even the first person to incorporate it into music videos. Madonna leaps immediately to mind, as does Fiona Apple's "Criminal," as does every rock or rap video with scantily-clad coochie girls, ever. But Lady Gaga does it in a way that seems to be unique. (At least, I haven't seen it before. Again -- middle-aged lady here. Not exactly a connoisseur of the contemporary music video genre.)

The way Lady Gaga incorporates porn imagery into her music video is entirely shameless.

And by "shameless," I don't mean "flaunting it" or "in your face." I mean, quite literally, "without shame." Lady Gaga's music videos incorporate a fascinating assortment of influences, from culture both high and low. I see Fellini in her videos, and Matthew Barney, and David Cronenberg, and "Natural Born Killers," and the high-art end of high fashion, and "Thelma and Louise," and much more.

I also see sexploitation, and fetish culture, and porn.

And nowhere do I see any hint that these influences ought not to be mixed -- or that some are more equal than others.

The high-art influences and the porny influences are folded into one another seamlessly. The "women in prison" story in "Telephone" is given equal weight to the "women on the road/ mass murder" story. In "Bad Romance," the latex fetish gear contributes as much as to the unnervingly antiseptic surrealism as the glossy white sets and the cyborg facial jewelry. The sexual exhibitionism in "Paparazzi" is as much a part of the commentary on fame as the flashing lights of the cameras. Sex is clearly a central part of Lady Gaga's life and work -- and she explores it in her videos with every bit as much enthusiasm, and every bit as much gravitas, as she does any other aspect of her life and work.

And I think this is not only why I like these videos so much, but why I find them so arousing. My favorite porn is almost always porn that (a) vividly gets across the feeling of a unique sexual experience, and (b) applies careful and loving craft to the medium in question, in a way that enhances the expression of sexuality rather than obscuring it. My favorite porn is almost always porn that recognizes the human complexities of sex... while luxuriously rolling around in it, and enjoying it to its fullest.

Lady Gaga's music videos do all of that. They don't just incorporate porn and sex-culture imagery. They do it with passion, and with respect. They do it with a "fuck you" defiance, not only of sexual repression and demonization, but of sexual trivialization, the notion that sex and the body are petty distractions from the loftier arenas of human expression.

And that makes them both artistically compelling, and totally freaking hot.

(Note: This piece was written before the "Alejandro" video was released. Which is a shame, since it's dirtier and kinkier and queerer than all the other videos put together. I may have to write a review of that video all on its own.)

Porn, Social Criticism, and the Marginalization of Kink

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

Is it valid to criticize rough-sex porn for perpetuating misogynist images of women?

Or, to look at the question from the other side: Is it possible to critique rough-sex porn without marginalizing kink?

If you've been around the porn wars, you've almost certainly run across a particular form of anti-porn critique. "Erotica may not be inherently bad... but look at how misogynistic so much commercial porn is! Look at how it portrays degradation and violence against women as sexually pleasurable! Women being slapped and treated roughly during sex! Women being called sluts and whores and sex toys! Women being given forceful deep-throat blowjobs that make them choke and gag! Is that a vision of women and sexuality we want to accept?"

I was reading one of these screeds the other day (somebody linked to it in a Facebook conversation)... and I started spewing out a seriously annoyed mini-manifesto/ rant.

You know who finds that imagery hot? You know who gets turned on by images of women being slapped and roughed-up? You know who gets turned on by images of women being called sluts and whores and sex toys? You know who gets turned on by images of women having hard cocks forced down their throats until they choke and gag and cry?

Me.

I do.

And I am bloody well done with being told that I'm a bad person, or a bad feminist, for finding this imagery hot.

I am a kinky person. I am a consensual sadomasochist. And I am bloody well done with having my desire to see kinky imagery, consensually engaged in as an acted-out fantasy, treated as a desire for actual, real-world degradation and oppression of women. I am bloody well done with having kinky sexuality marginalized by well-meaning concern trolls who supposedly have my best interests at heart.

When critics point to rough or kinky sex in porn as evidence of its misogyny, I think they often fail to realize that they're marginalizing kink, and people in the kink community. Including -- need I say it? -- women in the kink community. Kink is already seriously marginalized: plenty of people see it as sick and sad at best, abusive and destructive at worst, self-evidently and by its very nature. Kinky people are already made to feel ashamed and guilty about what we do and what we like to think about. And it troubles me greatly when progressive, feminist people -- people who are normally sensitive to a fault about marginalized communities, people who would passionately decry any attempt to say that (for instance) gay and lesbian sexuality is inherently sick and sad -- are this tone-deaf about how their ideas are contributing to the guilt and shame and demonization of yet another sexual minority.

(And yes -- the fantasies depicted in rough and kinky porn are consensually acted out. The myth of people being forced into the porn industry is just that -- a myth. There are plenty of people who are willing to do this work for money. There's no earthly reason for porn producers to force anyone into it at gunpoint. Sheesh.)

Okay. So that's the manifesto/ rant. Which I was all ready to make the focus of today's column.

But then I started thinking. (Always a danger.) And I started asking myself, "Is it really that simple?"

*

Here's the conundrum.

I do, in fact, think it's valid to critique popular culture -- including porn -- for the cultural messages it conveys, about gender or anything else. Regardless of whether those messages are being conveyed intentionally or unconsciously. Hell, I do it myself all the time. I criticize movies, TV shows, music videos, advertising, etc. -- and porn -- for perpetuating sexist and misogynistic imagery.

For instance. As a film critic and social critic, I might point out that action movies commonly perpetuate some very common sexist tropes: e.g., weak helpless women who need rescuing by strong male heroes. Now, someone who likes action movies might reply, "Hey, it's just a fantasy that I enjoy. I'm not saying that I want a world in which strong men rescue weak helpless women, or that the world is really like that. It's just an escapist fantasy." And yet I think it's valid for me to critique this trope and how common it is -- even though it is just a fantasy, consensually participated in by the actors as well as the audience. The fantasy is exactly what I'm critiquing -- that, and how ubiquitous it is.

So how is that different from someone critiquing rough or kinky porn for perpetuating sexist imagery of women?

Or similarly, as a film critic and social critic, I might criticize the "Sex and the City" movie for depicting women as vapid consumers whose emotional lives center on possessions. But someone who likes that movie might say, again, that it's just a fun fantasy that doesn't imply anything about the people who made it or the people who enjoy it. Why is it valid for me to critique these depictions of women in "Sex and the City"... but it's not valid for someone to critique, say, "Rocco: Animal Trainer 5" for depicting women as subjugated sex toys who exist to be used roughly by men and have cocks forced down their throats until they gag?

So if I'm going to defend my social criticism of the fantasy images depicted in action movies or "Sex and the City" -- even if those images aren't meant to say, "This is how the world ought to be," or even, 'This is how the world really is," even if those images are simply saying, "This is a fun and entertaining thing to think about as a distraction" -- why is it not valid for someone else to critique the fantasy images depicted in rough or kinky porn?

I want to be very rigorous here. I want to be sure I don't reach my conclusion first and then contort my ethical thinking so I can get there from here. I don't want to have my rationale be, "I like kinky porn, therefore it's okay; I don't like "Sex in the City," therefore it's not." I don't want my ethical thinking to just be a rationalization of my personal likes and dislikes.

So I've been thinking about this carefully and at length. And here's what finally occurred to me. (Or, to be more accurate: Here's what finally occurred to Ingrid. I chewed over this idea in my head for days without a solution; I ran it by nearly a dozen people who all came up with interesting questions and thoughts, none of which actually resolved the conundrum... and Ingrid thought about it for ten minutes and came up with the answer. I love being married to a philosophy major.)

Here's what it is.

The problem isn't with critiquing kinky or rough-sex porn for perpetuating misogyny.

The problem is with critiquing rough-sex or kinky porn for perpetuating misogyny... simply because it's rough or kinky.

The problem with the "rough or kinky porn perpetuates imagery of women as sexual victims" trope is that it shows absolutely no awareness of consensual kink. It shows no awareness of kink as a consented-to activity among equals, in which fantasies of inequality or non-consent are played out with the willing and enthusiastic agreement of everyone. It shows no awareness of the complex layers and meta-layers of kinky fantasy and the acting-out of fantasy: the ways that kinky people can experience themselves simultaneously as victims/ perpetrators and as caring, affectionate partners giving each other what we most dearly want... and the fact that we often enjoy porn which acknowledges that experience and caters to it. It shows no awareness of the fact that there's oodles of rough and kinky porn in which women dominate men. (Not to mention rough and kinky gay male porn -- Loki knows there's plenty of that -- and by-lesbians-for-lesbians porn -- there's not a ton of that these days, but the rough stuff definitely makes up a solid chunk of what there is.) It shows no awareness of the fact that plenty of women enjoy these fantasies every bit as much as men... and that while men are more likely to be consumers of video porn, including rough or kinky video porn, women are avid consumers of these fantasies in other media. (Most notably fiction -- especially in the blurry and increasingly non-existent line between romance novels and erotica.)

And it shows no awareness of how this reflexive criticism of rough and kinky porn plays into the marginalization of kinky people.

If people want to critique sexism in porn, I'm all for it. I've done it myself, more than once. And if people want to critique sexism in rough or kinky porn, I'm all for that as well. But the critique needs to be better-informed, and more nuanced, than just, "Look! Women being dominated and humiliated and slapped around! It's so sexist!" It needs to not just reflexively say that any depiction of rough or kinky sex in which women are the bottoms is sexist... simply because it is rough or kinky sex in which women are the bottoms, purely on that basis alone.

Thanks to Ingrid, Ben, and the folks at the Center for Sex and Culture salon for helping me think this one through. This was a tough one, and I couldn't have gotten here alone.

When Porn Goes Bad: "Girls Gone Wild"

I am hereby changing my mind.

I am officially and publicly declaring that I was mistaken, and am shifting my position.

Not about porn in general. But about one particular brand of porn.

Specifically, the "Girls Gone Wild" videos.

And the way I'm changing my mind is illustrating one of the most important points I've been making about it.

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Thus begins my latest piece on the Blowfish Blog, When Porn Goes Bad: "Girls Gone Wild." To find out why I'm changing my mind about the "Girls Gone Wild" videos -- and what this change of heart illustrates about some common feminist critiques of the porn industry -- read the rest of the piece. (And if you feel inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Why Porn Matters

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

Why does porn matter?

In my career as a sex writer, I've written many times in defense of porn. I've written about why it's morally defensible. I've written about why it's legally defensible. I've written about why it's a valid thing for people in monogamous relationships to enjoy. I've written about why it's feminist... or at least, why it can be feminist, why it's not automatically and by its very nature sexist (even though a fair amount of it is).

Today, I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about why porn matters. I want to talk about what porn contributes: to individuals, and to a culture. I want to talk about why porn has redeeming social importance... even the "no redeeming social importance" stuff, the sleaziest, skankiest, artistically shabbiest, porniest porn you can imagine. I want to talk about why porn, simply by its nature as porn, has value.

(Quick clarification: When I say "porn" here, I don't just mean "porn videos." Past experience has taught me that, for some reason, when you say "porn," many people automatically think "video porn." That's not what I mean. I mean any porn, in any medium: fiction, photography, drawings, comics, videos, video games, campfire stories, cave paintings, whatever.)

*

Years ago -- okay, fine, decades ago -- I did this consciousness- raising seminar thing (long story, don't ask), and one of the topics we were working on was sex. At one point we broke up into smaller groups, and were asked, among other things, to share our wildest sexual fantasy, something we'd never told anyone.

So we went around the circle… and the first person confessed, with great trepidation, that he fantasized about having sex with two women. The second confessed, with obvious reluctance and embarrassment, that she fantasized about having sex with her husband's best friend. Etc. There were a couple more which I now don't remember: I just remember that they were all more or less along these same lines -- extremely common fantasies that filled these people with shame, distress, and fear.

And then it was my turn.

If there had been a hole in the floor under my chair, I would have crawled into it.

My wildest sexual fantasy -- that week, anyway -- involved being initiated into a group sex cult. In this fantasy, I was first tied up and forced to watch the members of the group perform a series of kinky acts -- being sexually displayed, tied to a table, whipped, fucked in the ass, forcibly penetrated at once in multiple holes, etc. Then, the next day, I was forced to participate in each of these acts myself, in the same sequence, for the entertainment of the group. The sexual performance I was being made to watch was behind a curtain of gauze, so I could only see the silhouettes... which somehow enhanced the intensity of the performances in my imagination. And I knew when I was watching the performances that I'd have to repeat them the next day: so the "watching" part of the fantasy was fraught with shock at the knowledge that I'd soon have to do all of these things myself... and the "performing" part was fraught with anticipation/ dread, remembering with each new humiliation that something even kinkier was just around the corner.

So it was my turn to share. And I thought, "Oh, fuck. What on earth are these people going to think of me? If they're this freaked out by their own very standard fantasies -- hubby's best friend, doing it with two girls -- how on Earth are they going to react when they hear what my twisted sexual imagination has come up with? They're going to think I'm mentally unstable. At best. A moral degenerate at worst." I was very attached to this group at the time, and the thought of being alienated from it was quite upsetting.

But it was my turn, and I'd promised to be honest during this process. So I told.

Here's what happened.

First: The people who'd confessed, with deep shame and fear, about sex fantasies that approximately 90% of the population shares... they weren't horrified by mine. They were actually sort of impressed. One person expressed admiration for my imagination; all of them said they were impressed by my honesty. Some of them even seemed to be getting ideas from hearing my fantasies: either they'd never thought about going to these places but now had gotten their horizons expanded, or they'd already been having fantasies like mine and now felt like they had permission to explore them. And the people with the more conventional fantasies were clearly relieved at how normal their own fantasies suddenly seemed in comparison to mine.

Admittedly, these were special circumstances. The consciousness- raising group fostered a strong bond of trust and acceptance, and I have no idea how any of these people would have reacted if they'd heard about this fantasy at a cocktail party or seen something about it in a movie. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that revealing a somewhat unusual and fairly kinky sex fantasy, rather than alienating people, could not only generate trust and respect for my own sexuality, but could make people feel more comfortable with their own.

So that's the first thing that happened. Here's the second.

When I revealed my "initiation into the sex cult" fantasy, the next person in the circle looked at me with tremendous relief. His own wildest fantasy -- that week -- was something roughly as freaky as mine: something involving a memory from an orgy he'd had in college, where they'd put a tarp on the floor and greased it up with oil and went at it in a big slippery bisexual puppy pile. He was clearly a fellow-traveler, a giant horny sex freak with a wild imagination and a strong taste for erotic adventure.

And he had been having the exact same freak-out I'd been having. He'd been listening to the distressed, shame-faced confessions of almost absurdly normal fantasies... and had been feeling intense apprehension about telling his own fantasies and being seen as weird and depraved. And he was immensely relieved at the fact that I'd gone first, and had broken the sex-freak ice. My story made it that much easier for him to tell his story.

I think you see where I'm going with this.

I am well aware of the deep flaws in porn. I'm aware that way too much of it, far from exploring the wide possibilities of sexuality, simply mines the same predictable, easily- marketable veins, over and over and over again. I'm aware that way too much of it, far from alleviating people's insecurities about their sexuality, actually exacerbates them. I'm aware that way too much of it is sexist, perpetuating screwed-up stereotypes about both women and men. (Unlike, say, every other aspect of our popular culture, like TV and movies and pop music and video games and books and magazines and news reporting and so on, all of which are bastions of feminist thought. ) And I'm very, very well aware that way too much porn is just bad: mediocre at best, embarrassingly shabby at worst. Sturgeon's Law -- "90% of everything is crap" -- applies to porn as much as any other human endeavor, and possibly even more so, since the stigma surrounding it makes many good writers/ artists/ actors/ etc. avoid it like the plague. As porn consumers, I think we deserve better, and I think we should demand better.

But even given all of that, I passionately believe that porn has value.

I think that porn can, and often does, accomplish everything that telling my fantasy accomplished in that consciousness- raising group so many years ago. (Which was, in its own way, a form of porn.)

I think that porn can normalize sex. It can make sex seem more familiar, and less scary. It can remind people that sex is a natural desire, one that all or most of us share. It can remind us that, no matter what our sexual thoughts and desires are, chances are someone else is having them, too. It can make us feel more comfortable with our sexuality. It can make us feel like we have permission to explore our sexuality, in fantasy or in the flesh or both. It can expand our sexual horizons: exposing us to possibilities we might never have considered, and making our own sex lives richer. It can make people with fairly standard sexual desires feel more connection and understanding for those of us whose desires are on the fringe. It can make people with fringe desires feel like we're not alone.

If the only thing porn accomplished was to create sexual excitement and pleasure... that would be plenty. Sexual excitement and pleasure are positive goods, valuable simply in and of themselves. If that's all that porn contributed to the world, I'd still be defending its value, simply on that basis alone.

But I think that porn does contribute more.

Porn is a way that, as a culture, we tell each other our fantasies.

I think that matters.

And I'd like to see it get some respect.

New Fishnet Story: "War Games"

"Under Stalin," Sergei gritted out as he put his shoulders under the spray again, "I would have had you flogged."

"Oh, I am sure of it," Cherevkin said, amusement coloring his tone. "In fact, I don't doubt you would have insisted on seeing to it personally. And liked it."

Sergei's head snapped up. "Watch yourself, comrade."

"I was enjoying watching you. Pity you stopped," the colonel answered. And he started fiddling with the control for the showers.

He growled. Couldn't help it, an actual growl, as he stared at the bastard. The spray fluctuated on his body, hot then cold, strong then weak, as Arkady toyed with the water pressure and smiled at him.

*

That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: War Games, by Jackie Weiss. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "For Love or Pay"

I was stretched out on the grass, flat on my stomach, elbows propped up and binoculars pressed tight to my eyeballs. Some ants were using my bare legs as an obstacle course, and mosquitoes were probing my bare arms for veins. Not exactly the sexy, high-tech, action-packed lifestyle of the PI that you see portrayed on-screen and in-print. But a living, nonetheless.

My current assignment was to determine if one "Evan Michaels" was actually in love with my client, Morris Mercer, or merely gay for pay. It promised to have all the usual irritating aspects of domestic cases, along with large dollops of boredom mixed in. Rich Mr. Mercer had suggested I follow Evan around for the few days my client was out of the country on business, see if the guy visited any girlfriends, showed any interest in said girls beyond just friends.

So, I was making love to a grassy knoll that overlooked Mercer's rambling ranch house in the hills and fondling a pair of high-powered night-vision binoculars. Just me and the insects under the light of a silvery moon.

Until Evan suddenly sauntered out of a sliding glass door and padded over to a poolside lounger. Even in the greenish glow of my goggles he was a sight to behold. Big and built, with long, smooth legs topped by wide, rippling thighs, stomach flat and ribbed, pecs cleaved and plated, arms thick and heavy. He had a Superman tattoo on his left breast, and that was no false advertising. His hair was tousled, chin dimpled, face strong and stone-cold handsome, a plush pair of lips the wettened cherries on the mouthwatering hunk of man-cake.

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That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: For Love or Pay, by Heather Towne. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Soft Landing in the Tropics"

Unfortunately, even under my blue, at-home-now sweat pants, the warm feel of Rita’s bare-to-the-hip leg draped over mine means otherwise. I want her to know I’m glad she’s here. With my unpinned foot, I begin to lightly stroke her exposed thigh. Rita sighs and continues to read.

There’s always a point of no-return in the middle of something you know you shouldn’t be doing. If that something is between a man and his step-daughter, at its apex, a gentleman step-dad excuses himself and walks away. Instead of using it to walk, my curious left foot slides higher, plowing the slippery boxers along the curve of her, hoping for a peek at some panties.

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That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: Soft Landing in the Tropics, by Gary P. Victor. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.)

Please note: This story contains content that some people may find disturbing, such as non-consent, borderline consent, seriously bodily harm, or incest. If you're not interested in reading stories with this type of content, please don't read this story. Enjoy!

You Got Religion In My Porn!

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

If there are any other porn writers out there -- pro or amateur -- I'm curious: Has this ever happened with you?

And to all you porn readers out there: Have your reading interests ever shifted in this direction?

I've been writing more porn fiction lately. In the past, fiction never came easily to me, and I typically spent six months or more writing and re-writing a single story. Lately, though, a lightbulb has gone off over my head about how to write porn without needing it to be 4,000 words long or agonizing over every word (a topic for another piece), and of late I've been writing porn fiction at a much faster clip.

And a weirdly large amount of it has been about religion.

So I'm trying to figure out what that's about. I'm not a religious person, and I don't come from a religious background. I was raised by rock-ribbed agnostics: at most I've had a vaguely woo belief in some sort of world- soul; and today, I'm a hard-core naturalist/ atheist. And until recently, I was never very interested in religious porn. It didn't gross me out or anything; I just never got the appeal.

So why the recent obsession with religion in my porn?

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.

I suppose I should clarify: My religious porn is not about spirituality. It is not about Tantric energy, or ancient Wiccan rituals invoking the Goddess, or Pan coming back to Earth and fucking it into enlightenment. It is not slash porn about Kali and Vishnu, or Jesus and Mary Magdalene. It is not about the saints, mortifying their flesh into transcendence. (Although that last one, now that I think about it...) My religious porn is about religion. Human religion, as humans practice it. It's about religious followers being led by their faith into sexual lives they find disturbing and confusing; about religious leaders using their power to sexually manipulate their followers; about fervent religious believers struggling with sexual guilt. (Dark things. Nom, nom, nom.)

And I think my religious porn is about two things.

I love to write porn about borderline consent. I usually don't care for porn about unambiguous non-consent: I tend to find it either horrific or unconvincing. I do, however, adore porn where consent is technically present but emotionally absent; porn where a character feels that they don't have a choice, even if they do. And religion is fertile ground for that. Cult members desperate to please their leader; wives who comply with their husbands' increasingly bizarre sexual demands because their faith teaches that marriage and obedience are sacred. People who are free to leave the sexual situations they feel forced into, as long as they're willing to suffer eternal damnation. That sort of thing.

And I love to write porn about shame.

Shame is often at the center of my fantasy life. And when it comes to shame, religion is very fertile ground indeed.

It's not just the obvious sexual shame that many traditional religions teach. It's not just the standard social shame at breaking the rules of your religion and disappointing your family/ neighbors/ religious teachers. It's the deep, personal shame at disappointing God. It's the belief that, no matter how secret you keep your sexuality, no matter how private and not- hurting- anybody your sex life is, God is always watching. God knows every dirty thing you do. When you fuck, or get spanked, or look at dirty videos on the Interweb, or even just whack off in the dark, God is watching, like an omnipotent voyeur. He's even watching the dirty movies you screen for yourself in your mind. And unless your sexuality fits into his fairly specific vision, your sex life is letting him down. How selfish of you. You should be ashamed. (The details of that specific vision vary from religion to religion, of course... and of course, we have the puzzling question of why he created your sexuality that way in the first place... but let's not worry about that now.)

As an atheist writer, I find this notion repellent and sad. It makes my heart hurt; makes me rage at pointless suffering and ruined lives. It makes me want to devote the greater portion of my writing career to battling it.

But as a porn writer?

Dark things. Nom. Nom. Nom.

So. Other porn writers? Other porn readers? Have you ever found your writing/ reading wandering into this area? This is sort of new territory for me, and if anyone has thoughts about it, I'd be very curious to hear them.

For examples of what I'm talking about:
Christian Domestic Discipline
Penitence as a Perpetual Motion Machine
"Deprogramming," from X: The Erotic Treasury, edited by Susie Bright

New Fishnet Story: "The Great White"

The man behind the counter said it was new in. The large conical shaped snout, the upper and lower lobes on the tail fin, the side gills, they are all anatomically correct. The rows of razor sharp teeth have been replaced with soft and pliable plastic incisors, each one acting as a stimulator similar to those found on cock rings. But the best part of all, so the man said, is the dorsal fin. Inside the shark is a tiny motor that runs off batteries. By pressing a small button on the tail section, the motor sends little vibrations to the tip of the dorsal fin. Once the head section of the shark has been fully inserted, the fin is perfectly placed to tickle the clitoris. As well as being arguably the most well known predatory fish in the ocean, nature has designed the arguably the best ergonomically satisfying dildo on the market.

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That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: The Great White, by Craig Wallwork. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.)

Please note: This story contains content that some people may find disturbing, such as non-consent, borderline consent, seriously bodily harm, or incest. If you're not interested in reading stories with this type of content, please don't read this story. Enjoy!

Lady Gaga: Music Videos As Porn

I realize that I'm late to the Lady Gaga party. (Hey, I'm 48 years old. Cut me some slack.) But I gotta say -- I'm impressed.

If I just listened to her music, I'd only be moderately interested. I think her music is perfectly fun, well- above- average dance pop music. But I've been watching her music videos... and they're making me think that this woman is a force to be reckoned with. (Yes, I realize she doesn't direct her own videos -- but they are clearly collaborations, strongly shaped by her artistic vision, and they're a central part of her public persona.)

And what's striking me about Lady Gaga's music videos is not just how smart they are, or how imaginative, or how lovingly crafted and visually stunning, or how just flat-out funny. What's striking me about Lady Gaga's music videos is how strongly influenced they are by sex culture: by fetish fashion, by sexploitation flicks, and by plain old dirty porn.

What's more, they seem to be strongly influenced by these cultures, not as an outsider, not as someone who's manipulating this imagery to titillate/ shock the audience, but as an insider, someone who's intimately familiar with both sex culture and sexual marginalization. This isn't Britney Spears, using schoolgirl or slavegirl or girl- on- girl imagery to excite her audience without any apparent understanding or affinity for it. Lady Gaga's music videos (coupled with her interviews about her work) show a thoughtful, informed insight into polymorphous perversity. She has an analysis that could easily hold its own in any queer theory/ gender theory/ sex theory forum -- and damn do I love a sexy girl with an analysis! -- and her freak flag is waving high and proud.

In a way that -- if I can be crass for a moment -- makes her videos very functional as porn. I've certainly seen other music videos that turned me on. I can't remember seeing any that made me this hungry to watch them again and again... with a vibrator handy.

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Thus begins my latest "Media Darling" piece for Carnal Nation, Lady Gaga: Music Videos As Porn. To find out more about how Lady Gaga's music videos are influenced by sex culture and porn -- and how they're different from other music videos that use sex to sell -- read the rest of the piece. (And if you feel inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to Carnal Nation -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Broom Closet"

It took a little bit of cunning to get out of "Serenity Now -- Step One" class, but since I've been such a goody-goody I'd racked up some trust points and the instructor bought my story that I was feeling queasy from weaning off my meds. The truth was I was feeling really horny and wasn't about to pass up broom closet sex.

I went back to my room to give my lie some credibility, and to change into a skirt and take off my panties, having the passing thought that what if he just wants to talk?

In a broom closet? Not likely, dummy.

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That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: Broom Closet, by Paula Treconi. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

Porn, Social Criticism, and the Marginalization of Kink

Is it valid to criticize rough-sex porn for perpetuating misogynist images of women?

Or, to look at the question from the other side: Is it possible to critique rough-sex porn without marginalizing kink?

If you've been around the porn wars, you've almost certainly run across a particular form of anti-porn critique. "Erotica may not be inherently bad... but look at how misogynistic so much commercial porn is! Look at how it portrays degradation and violence against women as sexually pleasurable! Women being slapped and treated roughly during sex! Women being called sluts and whores and sex toys! Women being given forceful deep-throat blowjobs that make them choke and gag! Is that a vision of women and sexuality we want to accept?"

I was reading one of these screeds the other day (somebody linked to it in a Facebook conversation)... and I started spewing out a seriously annoyed mini-manifesto/ rant.

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Thus begins my latest piece on the Blowfish Blog, Porn, Social Criticism, and the Marginalization of Kink. To read the mini-manifesto/ rant about how critiques of rough porn marginalize kink -- and my more nuanced analysis of whether political criticism of porn should be handled differently from political criticism of any other form of pop culture -- read the rest of the piece. (And if you feel inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "I Wish You Were Braille"

I sat up and kissed him hard; part of my brain wanted to take a chunk out, to consume him, chew him up and swallow. We knelt on the bed facing each other. Finally I could reach his ears, his neck; I ran my tongue in the hollows of his collarbones and followed the thumping vein in his neck up to the back of his ear. His hands were all over me, under my clothes, on top of them, like they were another layer of skin that felt just as good to touch as my bareness underneath.

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That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: I Wish You Were Braille, by Louise Lagris. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

Why Does Porn Matter?

Why does porn matter?

In my career as a sex writer, I've written many times in defense of porn. I've written about why it's morally defensible. I've written about why it's legally defensible. I've written about why it's a valid thing for people in monogamous relationships to enjoy. I've written about why it's feminist... or at least, why it can be feminist, why it's not automatically and by its very nature sexist (even though a fair amount of it is).

Today, I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about why porn matters. I want to talk about what porn contributes: to individuals, and to a culture. I want to talk about why porn has redeeming social importance... even the "no redeeming social importance" stuff, the sleaziest, skankiest, artistically shabbiest, porniest porn you can imagine. I want to talk about why porn, simply by its nature as porn, has value.

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Thus begins my latest piece on the Blowfish Blog, Why Does Porn Matter?. To find out why I think porn -- not sex art, not erotica, but regular old "purely for the sake of turning people on" porn -- is important and valuable, read the rest of the piece. (And if you feel inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Porn, Relationships, and What It's Reasonable to Ask For

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

When you're beginning a relationship, is it reasonable to ask your partner not to watch porn?

Yesterday, I posted a column here about porn. I was writing in response to an advice column by Scarleteen, an answer to a letter from a young woman who was upset because her boyfriend watched porn. I posed the question, "In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner not to watch porn?" And I concluded that it was not. I concluded that people have the right to watch whatever they want when they're by themselves and on their own time, and that asking a partner not to watch porn is no more defensible then asking them not to watch reality TV or read true crime. I concluded that trying to regulate your partner's private cultural pleasures -- pornographic or otherwise -- is like trying to regulate their imagination.

But some readers thought I'd misread Scarleteen's advice. They said Scarleteen's point wasn't that people have the right to ask their existing partners not to watch porn... but rather that if someone objects to porn, they should spell that out at the beginning of a relationship. And on re-reading the Scarleteen column, I think they're right. In my defense, the situation I was writing about was, in fact, the situation described in the letter -- dealing with an existing partner who watched porn, and trying to decide what to say to them. But I do think I misread Scarleteen's intention in their response, and for that, I apologize.

So now I'm going to address the position Scarleteen took: that people who object to porn and are beginning to date someone should spell out their position early, and should state clearly that they don't want to be involved with someone who watches it.

And I'm basically going to stand by my original position.

Which is that this is an unreasonable, overly controlling thing for an adult to ask another adult. It's somewhat less unreasonable than asking it of a partner you're already involved with, someone who's already gotten emotionally invested in your relationship before you dropped your "It's me or the porn" ultimatum. But I still think this is seriously pushing the line between "reasonable negotiation of desires and limits in a relationship," and "controlling attempt to regulate not only your partner's behavior, but their imagination."

Here's why.

Like I did in the previous column, I'm going to take this question out of an erotic context, to give it some perspective. (I am, however, going to keep it gendered for the moment, since much of the previous conversation was about gender and sexism.)

Let's say a single straight woman has objections to televised sports. She thinks they're immoral, or politically objectionable, or she simply finds them upsetting. (Which some women do -- as do some men.) And let's say she tells all her potential partners, "I just don't want to be involved with someone who watches sports. Ever. Even when I'm not around. Even on their own time. Even if it's just when they're hanging around with their friends. If we're going to get involved, you have to be someone who doesn't like watching sports on TV, and you have to promise never to do so."

Would that be a reasonable thing to ask?

I would argue No.

And I'd argue it pretty darned strongly.

At my most sympathetic and calm, my response to that would be, "You should know that an awful lot of men watch sports on TV. And plenty of those men don't fit the stereotype of the sports-obsessed Neanderthal. You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what kind of man likes to watch sports on TV, and whether those men could share your basic values -- assumptions that really aren't warranted. If you're going to rule out all men who ever like to watch sports on TV, you're going to limit yourself to a very small dating pool indeed... without a very strong or reality-based reason for doing so. You might want to rethink this. You might want to look more carefully at why you feel so strongly about sports -- and at whether there might be a better way to handle those feelings than refusing to be involved with anyone who enjoys them."

If I were feeling less sympathetic and calm, my response would be, "Are you out of your mind? What difference does it make what your partner watches on TV when you're not around? How is that any of your business? Again -- you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what kind of man likes to watch sports on TV... assumptions that really aren't warranted. What on earth makes you think that's a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another?"

And frankly, if I were dating that woman, I'd end things as soon as I could after that conversation -- even if I didn't like sports. I'd see it as a huge red flag that she had a very controlling side of her. I'd see it as a huge red flag that she was a seriously insecure person -- one who dealt with her insecurities by expecting her partner to tiptoe around them. I'd be out the door as fast as I could -- even if I never planned to watch another sporting event in my life.

Why should porn be different?

If watching porn didn't carry the stigma that it does -- if any and all pursuits of sexual pleasure didn't carry the stigma that they do -- would we see these two situations as any different? If it weren't the case that sports are a generally accepted cultural activity and porn is emphatically not, would we even be having this conversation? If there weren't a stigma around porn, would anyone seriously consider asking their partner never to watch it... and if there weren't shame around porn, would anyone who was asked not to watch it take the request seriously?

Now. To be fair, it's certainly true that in relationships, we get a few "I know I'm being irrational, but I feel strongly about this, so can you please just humor me?" free passes. I think we do, anyway. But when we ask for those free passes, I think we need to acknowledge that that's what we're doing. I think we need to acknowledge that we're asking for something unreasonable, above and beyond the call of duty -- and not act as if we have the moral high ground.

And we need to recognize that not everyone is going to say Yes. We need to recognize that a lot of smart, thoughtful, decent people are going to turn us down. Especially when the activity we're asking our partners to forgo is something that's both ridiculously common and generally harmless.

Like watching sports on TV.

Or watching porn.

Does my hypothetical woman have the right to ask her potential partners not to watch sports on TV, even when she's not around? Sure, she has the right to ask. We have the right to ask for pretty much anything. We have the right to ask our potential relationship partners to not smoke, to tie us up on a semi- regular basis, to take Argentine tango lessons, to watch the entire DVD set of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in a one-weekend marathon, to wear polka dotted underwear every Friday without fail.

But does that make it a reasonable thing to ask?

Is "don't ever watch sports on TV, even when I'm not around" a reasonable thing for one adult to ask of another? Is it reasonable to expect that people will say Yes? Is it reasonable to expect people to even take this request seriously?

I don't think so.

There are lots of things that we have the right to do, which are still not right or reasonable for us to do. We tend to make that mistake a lot: the mistake of thinking that because we have the right to do something, we should therefore just charge on in and do it. It's not clear thinking. We have the right to scream bigoted epithets on the street corner, too. That doesn't make it right or reasonable to do it.

Now.

I will qualify all this by adding: If someone is very firm in their anti-porn position -- if they've thought it through carefully after being exposed to many sides of the debate about it, and their feelings against it are still as strong as ever -- then yes, they should warn their partners up front that this is the case. I don't think it's a reasonable thing for them to ask... but reasonable or not, if it's a dealbreaker for them, then by all means, they should ask it. If I were dating someone who felt this way, I sure as hell would want to be warned upfront, before I'd invested a lot of time and emotional energy in the relationship. I'd want to run screaming sooner rather than later.

But here's the thing. In this particular letter, in the letter to Scarleteen that started this whole conversation, I did not get that impression at all. Nothing about this letter gave me the impression that it was from a confirmed, hard-core anti-porn feminist who was familiar with feminist arguments in favor of porn and had rejected them. Everything about it seemed to be from a young person who was upset by porn, and who ascribed much her of her upset to the supposed sexism of porn... without ever really thinking about it carefully, and without ever being exposed to feminism that enjoys and supports porn. (Scarleteen seems to have gotten the same impression, since they made sure to tell her that being anti-porn wasn't the only way to be feminist, and they provided links to a wide variety of feminist writings on porn.)

So my advice to her would not be, "If you're opposed to porn, to the point where you're not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to spell that out early in a relationship."

My advice would be, "If you're opposed to porn, to the point where you're not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it, you need to seriously rethink whether that's a reasonable thing for one adult to ask another. If you're assuming that a shared opposition to porn means you'll have shared values about sex and gender and politics, you need to seriously rethink that assumption. You need to be aware that there are a lot of pro-porn feminists in the world -- women and men both -- and that opposition to porn isn't the default feminist position. You need to be aware that an awful lot of men watch porn, and it doesn't automatically make them sexist objectifiers of women. You need to be aware that refusing to be involved with any man who watches porn is going to seriously limit your dating opportunities -- and is likely going to rule out a fair number of men who might otherwise be great for you. You need to be aware that asking someone to limit what they do and don't watch when they're not with you is likely to come across as insecure and controlling... even to people who share your basic tastes. And you need to be aware that since there's so much shame and stigma around porn, a lot of men aren't going to feel comfortable standing up for their right and desire to watch it, and you may not get a straight answer about it. You might want to think about whether there's a better way to deal with your insecurities than asking your potential partners to never even look at erotic photos or videos of other women.

"And if, after all of that, you're still opposed to porn, to the point where you're not willing to be involved with someone who ever watches it -- then yes, you need to spell that out early in a relationship. But you need to be aware that you're asking for a lot. And you need to not take the moral high ground about it."

Being a feminist means, among other things, recognizing people's right to sexual autonomy. Women's and men's. If you're going to deal with your bad feelings about porn by expecting your partners to forgo a private sexual activity that doesn't involve you in any way, you need to consider whether that's really consistent with your feminism.

New Fishnet Story: "For Loki"

We had a few more rounds and then went to Room 8. The room had no sink to wash the dirt from my nails. Not even a toilet. Just a bottle of disinfectant lotion on the nightstand along with a roll of paper towels. The wastebasket overflowed.

She asked me what I wanted.

"My dog back."

"What?"

"I need to be held, and then I want to smack your ass."

She told me the price and I paid it. Keeping the big bills out of view.

*

That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: For Loki, by Devin Hansen. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

Can Watching Porn Be Cheating?

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to not watch porn?

There was a recent letter to Scarleteen, the sex advice and information site for teenagers and young people. In this letter, the querant was upset because her boyfriend (a) watched porn, and (b) would soon be going on a road trip with his buddies in which he might be getting lap dances. The querant was upset about this -- partly because she was a feminist who thought these activities were sexist, and partly because it triggered insecurities about her own body and made her feel inadequate.

Scarleteen's reply? Feminism doesn't automatically mean you're anti-porn -- there's a wide range of feminist views about pornography -- and enjoying porn doesn't automatically make you sexist. When it comes to the details of your relationship and the agreements you make about sexual activity outside it -- from porn/ lap dances/ other sexual entertainment to flat-out non-monogamy -- you need to decide what would be your ideal, what would be on your "absolutely not" list, and what you're willing to compromise on. And you need to recognize that your partner has as much right to their version of this list as you do to yours -- and then see if you can negotiate a common ground.

Which sounds perfectly reasonable at first.

And then I started thinking about it.

Normally I adore Scarleteen, and recommend them unreservedly as a source of sex info and advice. And I feel a bit churlish calling them out on this one, since I found out about it because they were kind enough to link to me in their "wide range of feminist views of porn" section. If their advice had been about almost any other form of sexual activity, I would have been right there with them. And when it comes to the lap dances, I think their perspective is valid.

But when it comes to porn, I think they missed the boat.

I'm going to go out on a limb here:

I don't think anyone has the right to expect their partner not to watch porn.

Why not? Well, let me put it this way. Do people have the right to expect their partners not to masturbate? Or, for that matter, do people have the right to expect their partners not to watch reality TV or read true crime? On their own time, when they don't have any obligations and their partner isn't around?

And if not -- then why on earth would anyone have the right to expect their partner not to watch porn?

Even in a very close, seriously committed relationship, people have some basic rights to privacy and autonomy. What they do all by themselves, on their own time, in ways that don't have any significant impact on anybody else -- that is entirely their own damn business. Trying to regulate your partner's porn watching is like trying to regulate what they read, what movies they watch, what art they see. No -- it's not like that. It is that. That is exactly what it is. The fact that the content of the writing or the movies or the art is sexual is irrelevant. Trying to regulate your partner's cultural pleasures is like trying to regulate their imagination. And that's just as true of pornographic cultural pleasures -- and the sexual imagination.

There are some obvious exceptions. If your partner's porn-watching is seriously affecting your sex life? If their porn is making them dissatisfied with you, or is creating unreasonable expectations about what sex and bodies are supposed to be like? If they're watching porn to the exclusion of having sex with you? Or if they're watching porn so much that it's interfering with their personal or professional life, or is making them spend themselves into serious financial trouble? That's different.

But "I feel threatened and insecure when my partner watches porn, therefore I have the right to expect them to stop"? I don't see it. I mean, would it be reasonable to expect your partner not to watch "American Idol" because it made you feel threatened and insecure about your own singing ability? Even if your partner loved your singing, and made that clear in word and deed, and continued singing with you as much as they ever did?

And if not -- then why is porn any different?

If you feel insecure and bad about your body and your sexuality -- I completely sympathize. I've been there, I'm still there sometimes, and it sucks. But there are better ways of dealing with that insecurity and inadequacy than expecting your partner to forgo private, independent activities that don't involve anyone else, and that have nothing to do with you. There are reasonable compromises that we can ask of our partners in our relationships. This is not one of them.

(Follow-up to this piece appears tomorrow.)

New Fishnet Story: "Three"

I bring him home from a show on a Friday night. Through the blacklights and a filter of beer and tequila, he’s friendly and vibrant, his skin a canvas of tattoos and piercings. I have already drunk too much by the time I meet him, but he stays with me after the show, walking night-noisy streets at my shoulder and laughing over coffee until I’m sober enough to drive. He’s from out of town, staying at a hotel with friends, so I take him back to my messy apartment and we push the clean laundry off the bed and finish a bottle of wine and fuck like two people who know they’ll never have to find out whether it’s a mistake or not.

*

Thus begins the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: Three, by Leftarrow. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "In the Stacks"

There could have been better places to do it. I knew that. Sure. I know a lot of things, but processing information is always a little bit harder when you’re pressed up against a shelf in the stacks with a girl making sure you stay there, all curves slotting into your own curves like a fucking puzzle piece, all black hair and mint gum and hands rough and chapped from the cold wind outside.

*

Thus begins the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: In the Stacks, by Sunny Moraine. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Forgetting"

"What are you doing, you bad boy?"

It was a situation in which a slip of the tongue was par for the course. So he pretended he'd misheard the first time.

"Oh, Greg," she repeated. The sound was not much more than a breeze from her lips.

He was about to say, "You mean Tom."

But then she said: "Greg, you're such a flirt. You know I'm crazy about you, don't you."

*

That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: Forgetting, by A. Silenus. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "The Quotidian Nightmare"

He thought of Marco's lip ring grazing her clit and his tan hands gripping her thighs. He thought of Lakshmi flushed with the freshness of the scene, all too willing to let Marco squeeze her breasts and pinch her nipples as much as he liked while he fucked her, sticking his dick in her deep -- undoubtedly deeper than John could go, as middling in size as he was. He thought of Marco's lean fingers in her mouth and his teeth catching her earlobe, of his cock pressing into the exact same space John's was pressing, of his cum filling her, and at that moment he shocked himself by muttering, "Fuck yes, I want him to fuck you, be a whore, fuck you right up like a whore," and coming -- like a collision, like a detonation, like a suicide in reverse.

*

That's an excerpt from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: The Quotidian Nightmare, by Rachael S. Kight. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

All Boy-Boy Action

Please note: This piece includes some references to my personal sex life, and specifically to my tastes in porn. Family members and others who don't want to read about that, please don't. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

The topic for today's sermon:

Women who like gay male porn.

And people who are surprised by this.

We'll start with the facts: There are some women who like gay male porn. I'm one of them. And I'm not the only one. Look at the widespread phenomenon of slash fanfic: erotic fiction about fictional characters, typically about two or more male characters, and typically written by and for straight women. (Kirk/Spock, anyone? Or are you more of a Snape/Draco girl?) And it isn't just written porn: there are women who like gay male porn videos, photos, comics. There's even an entire genre of Japanese comics and graphic novels, yaoi, devoted to gay male love and/or sex stories created for a female audience. (If you're one of these gay- porn- lovin' women, btw -- please speak up in the comments! I know more or less what I get out of gay male porn, but I'd love to hear what you get out of it.)

It's true that this desire hasn't been reflected very much in the video porn industry -- and video porn is what a lot of people default to when they think about "porn." But "women don't like gay porn" isn't a very good explanation for this. (Some better ones: Women on average are more interested in written porn than videos. And the video porn industry can be idiots sometimes: they're terrified of putting something on screen that might turn off straight guys; they largely ignore the potential of the women's market; and even when they try to cater to women's tastes in porn, they tend to get it laughably wrong.)

So those are the facts: Some women like gay male porn. Enough so that there are entire porn genres that cater to it.

And yet, many people seem deeply surprised by this. Many people assume that this phenomenon doesn't exist, and will ponder the question of why women don't like gay porn when so many guys love the girl-girl stuff And many people are entirely baffled when they hear about women who like all boy-boy action, wondering, "What on earth do they get out of it?"

So if you're surprised by the fact that some women like to watch/ read about two men doing it, let me ask you this:

Are you surprised by the fact that some men like to watch/ read about two women doing it?

"Girl-girl action" is so common in heterosexual video porn, it's not even considered a fetish. It's a completely standard menu item, like fucking and sucking. As for all girl-girl videos, they're all over the "hetero" porn market like a cheap suit. And nobody seems the least bit surprised by any of this.

So if you're puzzled by why some women are into porn with two guys, ask yourself: Why are some men -- indeed, a whole lotta men -- so excited by porn with two girls?

The answers vary, of course. Some men like girl-girl porn because they're not attracted to men. Some are actively turned off by the sight of men; others really just prefer to look at women. They get off on femaleness -- and they like to see a lot of it, undiluted by the maleness that they're just not that into.

Well, that's true for some women, too. Some women like gay porn because they're hot for guys, not girls, and guys are who they want to look at/ read about. They want to enjoy maleness, and male sexuality. And even those of us who appreciate both women and men in our porn sometimes like to enjoy just one or the other. I, for one, like lots of different kinds of porn -- but one of them is definitely the kind that's all about hard cocks and hard muscles. Undiluted by soft breasts and pussies.

Moving on: Some men like girl-girl porn because they like the fantasy of a three-way (or four-way, or five-way, or whatever) that includes them. They like to watch two (or more) women do it because then they can project themselves into the scene. They like to look at all this delightful female pulchritude... and then imagine themselves as the center of it all.

Well, that's true for some women, too. Some women like to watch/ read about two or more guys... so they can imagine themselves as the center of a whole lot of hot male attention. The delicious meat in a Kirk/Spock sandwich, if you will.

And some men like girl-girl porn for the exact opposite reason: they like the alien-ness, the difference, of women, and of lesbians. They don't want to project themselves into the scenario at all. They see women as excitingly mysterious, exotic even. They see lesbians in particular as enticingly out of reach. And they don't want that mysterious allure tainted by the quotidian familiarity of men.

And again, that's true for some women, too. For some women, gay male porn is alien, exotic. Forbidden fruit, even. It's like the key to the secret garden; a keyhole peep into a world we're not supposed to see.

I've read other explanations for why women like boy-boy porn -- explanations as varied as the women themselves. Some women like the fact that gay porn features seriously good-looking guys, while straight porn all too often succumbs to the "ugly guys with big dicks" phenomenon. Some like kinky porn, and they've found gay kinky porn to be harder and kinkier. Some like kinky porn with male tops, but aren't comfortable watching women they don't know get beaten and humiliated. Some like to watch intense butt-sex, and gay porn has plenty to spare. Etc. Etc. Etc. (And yes, for the record: The reasons some men like to watch girl-girl porn are wildly varied as well.)

I'm not sure what my point is here. I think my point is just this:

Yes, Virginia, some women like boy-boy porn. Exclusively, primarily, or as one of many porny varieties. And this fact is entirely unsurprising. Or it should be. The fact that some women like boy-boy porn should be no more surprising that the fact that some men -- okay, lots of men -- like girl-girl porn.

And if our culture took female sexual desire seriously, nobody would blink an eye at it.

Greta's Radio/ Podcast Interview with Jeff Farias

If you're a podcast fan, check out my radio/ podcast interview with Jeff Farias on The Jeff Farias Show. We talk about the atheist movement, atheist philosophies of death and the meaning of life, dirty comics, and more. Enjoy!

Penitence as a Perpetual Motion Machine

"I'm here to see Sister Catherine."

"Yes. It's nice to see you again, Mary. Please have a seat. Catherine has just finished up with another -- visitor. Why don't we take care of business now. She'll be with you in a moment."

Mary Elizabeth nods. She hands the woman behind the desk four hundred dollars in cash, and sits, keeping her coat on and her purse clutched in her lap. She tries not to look at the lobby: the garish red and black decor, the velveteen curtains tied back with steel chains, the worn spot on the black leather sofa. It makes it harder for her to think of this the way she needs to think of it. She sits, and stares at her knuckles gripping the handle of her purse, and waits.

"Mary Elizabeth. Please come in."

Catherine has stepped into the lobby. She is dressed, as always for their meetings, in a modified modern habit: the knee-length gray dress, the heavy hose and sensible shoes, the small, unimposing wimple. She has carefully wiped all traces of makeup from her face.

She takes Mary Elizabeth by the hand, and leads her to the now-familiar room, the one fitted up like a schoolroom. An office or rectory would have been better, but this was the closest they had.

"Sit down, Mary. We have to have a difficult conversation."

*

Thus begins the latest story on Fishnet, the erotic fiction magazine I edit. And this one is written by me: Penitence as a Perpetual Motion Machine, by yours truly, Greta Christina. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.)

Please note: This is not a nice story. This story contains content that some people may find disturbing, including references to non-consensual sex. If you don't like that sort of thing, please don't read this story. But if you're a sick fuck like me -- enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Interview With A Porn Star"

I was used to having sex with women minutes after being introduced. As actors we tried to keep a sense of humor and fun about the situation. It was professional, not sexy. That’s why they call it acting. You’ve just got to sell it for the camera. But the interview with Daphne was sexy. She was beautiful and intelligent and I was seismically attracted her. I swear, if someone had said, “Decide right now, based on the little you know, if you want to marry her” I would have said Yes.

*

That's a sample from the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: Interview With A Porn Star, by Daniel Burnell. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

Greta Reading at Perverts Put Out, "He Is Risen" Edition, 3/13

Hi, all! On Saturday March 13, I'm going to be reading at Perverts Put Out, the San Francisco sex reading series of song and story. This is the "He Is Risen" edition of PPO, celebrating sex and sacrilege, and I'm tickled pink to be part of it.

Perverts Put Out!, San Francisco's long-running pansexual performance series, has featured stellar line-ups of truly twisted, mega-talented artistes... and even an occasional naked mayoral candidate.

For the He Is Risen edition, Perverts Put Out will celebrate all things religious, putting the erection back in resurrection. A splendid sex-and-spirituality time is guaranteed for all.

Performers will include Jane Cassell, Sherilyn Connelly, Gina de Vries, Thomas Roche, horehound stillpoint, Juba Kalamka, and Greta Christina, all presided over by Dr. Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard.

Perverts Put Out: The He Is Risen Edition
Saturday, March 13
7:30 pm
CounterPULSE
1310 Mission Street, San Francisco (at 9th St., near Civic Center BART)
$10-15 sliding scale, no-one turned away

New Fishnet Story: "Piggy"

It was wet in that alley. There'd been so much rain that everything was damp, all the time. Most of what had got soaked during the previous night's downpour stayed soggy enough, even without the drizzle. Even without me there, leaking my -- well -- I'm getting ahead of myself.

Daddy likes me dirty. That is, she likes getting me dirty. That night we were headed to a party: Daddy was in her dress leathers, hair buzzed so close to her scalp it was practically just a stain, jawline severe and set. I assumed she was packing, but didn't go examining: I always got in trouble if Daddy caught me searching out the bulge of her cock; she said it wasn't ladylike.

I was clothed as requested: white slip, sheer white stockings, body barely covered. No earrings, no makeup, face scrubbed. No bra, even, so my period-heavy tits swung almost painfully beneath the sheer material of the slip. She told me to wear nothing that would present "any obstacle" to her -- so, no panties. In deference to it being the beginning (and thus the heaviest part) of my period, I wore a tampon, string clipped a bit so as not to be so obvious. I planned to remove it surreptitiously once we got to wherever we were going.

*

Thus begins the latest story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing: Piggy, by Jen Cross. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

The Learned Fetish

Please note: This piece discusses my personal sex life and sexual fantasies, in a whole lot of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read about that stuff -- you really don't read this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Can fetishes be acquired?

There's a truism among many people who think and write about sex. It goes roughly like this: Sexual desires, including sexual fetishes, are developed early in life. And they don't really change much. They can't be changed by social pressure or changing conditions or the personal wish to get rid of them, and they aren't subject to the whims of fashion. Not even fashions in porn. Porn caters to existing fetishes and desires -- not the other way around.

I've been thinking about this truism. And I'm coming to the conclusion that it isn't necessarily true.

Here's my problem with this truism:

I have, in recent months and years, acquired some fetishes that I never had before.

Now, these aren't full-blown fetishes in the standard sense. They aren't a necessary component of my sexual arousal and satisfaction. I'm perfectly capable of enjoying sex without engaging in them or thinking about them; I'm perfectly capable of enjoying masturbation without fantasizing about them. (I do think that core sexual desires, such as being gay or more deeply rooted fetishes, aren't very malleable; and unless it's a fetish that non-consensually hurts other people, I don't see any reason to try.)

But my new interests are fetishes in the less-standard sense. They occupy a significant portion of my erotic imagination. (Translated: I think about them a lot when I whack off.) I deliberately search for them in my porn, and fixate on them when I'm -- ahem -- enjoying my porn. And the sight or thought of them often sexually excites me, even if they're not coming up in a sexual context.

Specifically -- I know my readers, you don't want to hear about this in the abstract, you want the dirty lascivious details, and I'm happy to oblige -- I've acquired fetishes for many of the classic tropes of modern spanking porn. Hairbrushes. Belts. Schoolgirl uniforms. Helpless victims being spanked by cruel authority figures. Tears; i.e.. people, especially women, being spanked until they cry. (That's a rich and strange topic, btw: one that deserves its own post and will get one soon.)

I've always enjoyed these objects and outfits and tropes. But in the past, they were only a few among many that I eroticized. They weren't even at the top of the list. Some were high on that list... but they weren't at the top. They are now.

Now, the fetish for spanking itself... that's a lot closer to a classic fetish for me. It's not an absolutely necessary component of my sexual arousal and pleasure. But while it's not absolutely necessary, it's pretty darned central. I think about spanking a lot. If I go for too long without it, I get cranky. A majority of my masturbation fantasies involve spanking to at least some extent. (I switch around a lot in my mind -- from bottom to top, from girls to boys, from participant to voyeur, from cruel force to cheerful consent -- but it's a good bet that if I'm having a sex fantasy, somebody somewhere is getting spanked.) When I look for porn -- porn purely to get myself off, not porn to expand my erotic horizons or satisfy my yen for literate sex writing -- I generally look for spanking porn. And most of this has been true for most of my life.

But these specific spanking tropes? Not so much. They're definitely an acquired taste. A learned fetish.

There's little doubt in my mind where these fetishes were acquired. I watch a fair amount of standard modern spanking porn. (Mostly on SpankingTube -- it's free, and I'm broke.) These images are well-worn standards of standard modern spanking porn, cliches even, and I see them a lot. So my lizard hindbrain connects them with sex and orgasm generally; and my more complex and twisted human libido associates them with the erotic imagery it's already aroused by. Duh.

But it's still a little puzzling. After all, there are other standard tropes of modern spanking porn that haven't grabbed my libido at all. I'm obsessed with hairbrushes and belts... but I'm pretty "Meh" about leather paddles and floggers that you'd get at a sex shop. (I like them fine in person, mind you; I just don't fetishize them in my fantasies or my porn.) Schoolgirl uniforms and maidservant costumes send my libido up a tree... but trashy tramp-slut outfits just seem obvious and clumsy to me. I'm fascinated by helpless victims getting spanked against their will by cruel authority figures... but I'm a lot less interested in smart-mouthed brats getting righteously punished for their own good. I love white panties and black lace panties and boy-cut panties that curve up over the bottom of the butt... but I find thongs boring to the point of actual turn-off.

And I am almost entirely uninterested in standard female-dom/ male-submissive spanking porn. (Although part of that may be that femdom porn mostly caters to a male audience, and little attention is paid to seeing that the male submissive is reasonably attractive. If I'm going to fantasize about dominating a guy, and if I'm going to watch porn to spark those fantasies, I want the guy to be easy on the eyes. Or at least, not actually off-putting. But I digress.)

I guess to some extent, even my acquired fetishes still feed into the old ones. My newfound obsession with hairbrushes and belts feeds straight into my long-standing fetish for reality: for porn and fantasies that seem like they could easily be happening in an everyday sex life. My newfound obsession with white panties feeds straight into my long-standing fetish for the moment of the reveal, the moment -- drawn out as long as possible -- when a clothed erogenous zone is unclothed and put on display. My newfound obsession with shy, frightened schoolgirls caned by a sadistic schoolmaster/ mistress feeds straight into my long-standing fetish for the abuse of power. (Which may explain why the righteous punishment of brats doesn't do it for me. For a punishment fantasy to work for me, there always has to be a fucked-up element of "I'm using my power over you to satisfy my perverse whims" underlying the pretense of "I'm disciplining you for your own good.")

I am a bit conflicted about this. (Naturally. I swear, I'm not this conflicted and overthinking about my sex life all the time. I just don't usually bother to write think pieces about aspects of my sexuality that I'm completely comfortable with. It lacks dramatic tension.) On the one hand, I'm not crazy about my personal libido being shaped to this degree by commercial video porn. Commercial video porn is all too often a quagmire of conventionality, misinformation, body fascism, and cliche piled on cliche piled on cliche. Even in low-budget, micro-marketed niche porn like spanking porn. Sometimes especially so. For the same reasons that I don't want my tastes in food shaped by the mainstream food industry, I don't want my tastes in sex shaped by the mainstream porn industry. Like I wrote in my recent piece on the ubiquity of pubic hair shaving, it bugs me no end that commercial porn has become a primary trendsetting influence on sexual culture. It's just not a very good one.

But I do enjoy the degree to which my libido is malleable. It makes me feel open to new experiences. For the same reasons that I like learning about new music instead of just listening to the stuff I liked in my twenties, I like learning about new sexual fetishes instead of just enjoying the ones I liked in my twenties. And if I decide that I don't like how my libido is being shaped by conventional spanking porn, I can always turn it off. (The porn, I mean -- not my libido.)

Anyway. It doesn't ultimately matter; I'm fine with this however it turns out. But as always, I'm curious, and I'm nosy. So I'm wondering: Does anyone else have this experience? Has anyone else acquired new sexual fetishes later in life? And if so, have your newly-acquired fetishes mostly fed into existing ones... or have they opened up entirely different erotic avenues? Nosy minds want to know.

Porn, Relationships, and What It's Reasonable to Ask For

When you're beginning a relationship, is it reasonable to ask your partner not to watch porn?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column here about porn. I was writing in response to an advice column by Scarleteen, an answer to a letter from a young woman who was upset because her boyfriend watched porn. I posed the question, "In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner not to watch porn?" And I concluded that it was not. I concluded that people have the right to watch whatever they want when they're by themselves and on their own time, and that asking a partner not to watch porn is no more defensible then asking them not to watch reality TV or read true crime. I concluded that trying to regulate your partner's private cultural pleasures -- pornographic or otherwise -- is like trying to regulate their imagination.

But some readers thought I'd misread Scarleteen's advice. They said Scarleteen's point wasn't that people have the right to ask their existing partners not to watch porn... but rather that if someone objects to porn, they should spell that out at the beginning of a relationship. And on re-reading the Scarleteen column, I think they're right. In my defense, the situation I was writing about was, in fact, the situation described in the letter -- dealing with an existing partner who watched porn, and trying to decide what to say to them. But I do think I misread Scarleteen's intention in their response, and for that, I apologize.

So now I'm going to address the position Scarleteen took: that people who object to porn and are beginning to date someone should spell out their position early, and should state clearly that they don't want to be involved with someone who watches it.

And I'm basically going to stand by my original position.

Which is that this is an unreasonable, overly controlling thing for an adult to ask another adult.

*

That's an excerpt from my new piece on the Blowfish Blog, Porn, Relationships, and What It's Reasonable to Ask For. To find out why I think it's unreasonable to ask your partner not to watch porn on their own private time -- even early on in a relationship -- read the rest of the piece. (And if you're inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Greta Appearing at Wicked Grounds Kinky Comic Carnival, Sat. 1/30

Come say hi and mingle with kinky comics creators! As editrix of the Best Erotic Comics series, I'm going to be appearing at the Wicked Grounds Kinky Comic Carnival, this Saturday, Jan. 30, along with Justin Hall, Tristan Crane, Ted Naifeh, Storm, and Serena Valentino. Wicked Grounds is the San Francisco’s first and only kink cafe and boutique, and it's located in the beautiful and historic South of Market district, at 289 8th Street near the fabled Folsom Street. (FYI, the event is from 2-5... but I'll be cutting out at 4, so if you want to say Hi, show up by 4.)

Here's some more details:

Wicked Grounds invites you to join us for an afternoon social that you do not want to miss, a gathering of local artists, writers and comic creators coming together at San Francisco's first and only Kink Cafe, Wicked Grounds, located at 289 8th Street @ Folsom in San Francisco at 2:00 PM, Saturday January 30th.

So please join Justin Hall, Tristan Crane, Ted Naifeh, Storm, Greta Christina, Serena Valentino, and the lovelies at Wicked Grounds, to have a cup of tea or coffee as well as some of their other scrumptious offering while you sample our creative wares Saturday, Jan 30th. We will all have an assortment of our work available for purchase, and we will of course be available to sign them, that is, if you fancy that sort of thing.

Justin Hall is an award-winning comic book creator best known for his series True Travel Tales, Glamazonia the Uncanny Super Tranny, and the gay porn Hard To Swallow Comics. His work has appeared in the Houghton Miflin Best American Comics, Boy Trouble, Best Erotic Comics, and the S.F. Bay Guardian, among others.

STORM is a San Francisco based writer, artist, oracle & doll shaman. He sells funny books at the Isotope Comic Book Lounge & reads X-Men Tarot at Swankety Swank. His one of a kind art dolls and mini-comic Princess Witch Boy are for sale at etsy.com. STORM believes that in a perfect world, Iman would have played Ororo Munroe in the movies. Visit his blog.

Serena Valentino has been weaving tales that combine mythos and guile for the past ten years with her work on the comic book series GloomCookie and Nightmares & Fairy Tales published with SLG Publishing. Nightmares & Fairy Tales: 1140 Rue Royale has earned her critical acclaim in both the comic and horror domain, where she is known for her unique style of storytelling, bringing her readers into exquisitely frightening worlds filled with terror, beauty and extraordinary female protagonists. Among her other projects, Serena is currently writing a horror screenplay with writer/director Phil Flores (of the Butcher Brothers), as well as three new graphic novels, Enchanted, Blackbird the Pirate Queen and Hells Café and has writtena novel for young adults for Disney Press based on the Wicked Queen from Snow White entitled Fairest of All, now available in all major bookstores. Visit her website.

Tristan Crane is a San Francisco based writer and photographer. Tristan's writing has appeared in the recent 'Comic book Tattoo' project from Image comics, his first book 'How Loathsome' was released in 2004 to many reviews and general muttering; a second graphic novel, 'InVisible' with artist Rhea Silvan was published by Seven Seas early in 2009. As a photographer, Tristan specializes in erotic portraiture, bondage sessions, documentary-style photojournalism, and enjoys collaborating with a wildly diverse cast of models.

Greta Christina... oh, you know who I am. But here's my bio for this event: Greta Christina is editor of the annual "Best Erotic Comics" series, published by Last Gasp Books and Comics, where she has worked for seven years. She has been writing about sex since 1989, and has had sex writing appear in numerous magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including Ms., Penthouse, On Our Backs, AlterNet, and three volumes of "Best American Erotica." She blogs about sex, atheism, politics, and other polite dinner- table topics at the cleverly- named Greta Christina's Blog.

After making a name for himself drawing Serena Valentino's Gloomcookie in 1999, TED NAIFEH went on to produce several popular all ages comics. The spooky adventure series Courtney Crumrin follows a grumpy little girl whose great uncle Aloysius draws her into a dark world of witchcraft and creatures that go bump in the night. Courtney Crumrin has been optioned by Dreamworks to be made into a motion picture. Polly and the Pirates tells the tale of prim and proper Polly Pringle, who gets kidnapped by pirates, only to discover her own natural, possibly inherited propensity for swashbuckling. Ted also lent his artistic skills to a comic adaptation of the videogame Death Junior, about a little boy whose father is the Grim Reaper. More importantly, Ted co-wrote and illustrated How Loathsome with Tristan Crane. A stylish, sexy exploration of the alternative lifestyle underground of San Francisco, How Loathsome explores gender, community, and how they affect identity. Currently, Ted is illustrating The Good Neighbors, an urban fantasy YA graphic novel series by New York Times best-selling author Holly Black, about a teenage girl who realizes that she’s half faerie. Volume 3 of the series will appear in October, 2010.

Hope to see you there!

Can Watching Porn Be Cheating?

In a monogamous relationship, is it reasonable to expect your partner to not watch porn?

There was a recent letter to Scarleteen, the sex advice and information site for teenagers and young people. In this letter, the querant was upset because her boyfriend (a) watched porn, and (b) would soon be going on a road trip with his buddies in which he might be getting lap dances. The querant was upset about this -- partly because she was a feminist who thought these activities were sexist, and partly because it triggered insecurities about her own body and made her feel inadequate.

Scarleteen's reply? Feminism doesn't automatically mean you're anti-porn -- there's a wide range of feminist views about pornography -- and enjoying porn doesn't automatically make you sexist. When it comes to the details of your relationship and the agreements you make about sexual activity outside it -- from porn/ lap dances/ other sexual entertainment to flat-out non-monogamy -- you need to decide what would be your ideal, what would be on your "absolutely not" list, and what you're willing to compromise on. And you need to recognize that your partner has as much right to their version of this list as you do to yours -- and then see if you can negotiate a common ground.

Which sounds perfectly reasonable at first.

And then I started thinking about it.

*

Thus begins my latest piece on the Blowfish Blog, Can Watching Porn Be Cheating? To find out why I think watching porn doesn't fall into the category of "sexual practices you can reasonably expect your partner to give up," read the rest of the piece. (And if you're inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Greta Reading at Perverts Put Out, Sat. 1/9

I'm going to be doing a reading tomorrow (Saturday) at the San Francisco sex reading series of song and story, Perverts Put Out. It'll be me plus Meliza Bañales, Sherilyn Connelly, Stephen Elliot, Nabil Hijazi and TedPro, Philip Huang, Kirk Read, Lori Selke, and our genteel hostess Simon Sheppard. It's at CounterPulse, 1310 Mission Street (at 9th), near the Civic Center BART station in the beautiful and historic South of Market district of San Francisco. Sliding scale of $10-$15. Start time is 7:30, and it tends to fill up and begin more or less on time, so don't arrive fashionably late. If you're in San Francisco, come by and say howdy!

New Fishnet Story: "High Noon"

"Doctor by day, dominatrix by night." I can see the headline, the tacky picture of a discipline queen, whip in one hand, stethoscope in the other. After all, why not? I'm good at my day job. People undress at my command everyday, passive and grateful. "Whatever you say, doctor," they say, "You're the doctor, you tell me." "Thank you, doctor," they generally say sincerely afterwards, "that was a thorough exam all right." I have them bending over and spreading for me all day. Why not take it to the night, spice it up? Probably make more money without the insurance hassles. The doctor was definitely IN. In charge, in control, in the mood.

*

That's an excerpt from a new story on Fishnet, the online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing. It's titled High Noon, by Mollie Shannon. To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

All Boy-Boy Action

(Note: This piece discusses my personal sexuality and tastes in porn. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.)

The topic for today's sermon:

Women who like gay male porn.

And people who are surprised by this.

We'll start with the facts: There are some women who like gay male porn. I'm one of them. And I'm not the only one. Look at the widespread phenomenon of slash fanfic: erotic fiction about fictional characters, typically about two or more male characters, and typically written by and for straight women. (Kirk/Spock, anyone? Or are you more of a Snape/Draco girl?) And it isn't just written porn: there are women who like gay male porn videos, photos, comics. There's even an entire genre of Japanese comics and graphic novels, yaoi, devoted to gay male love and/or sex stories created for a female audience. (If you're one of these gay- porn- lovin' women, btw -- please speak up in the comments! I know more or less what I get out of gay male porn, but I'd love to hear what you get out of it.)

It's true that this desire hasn't been reflected very much in the video porn industry -- and video porn is what a lot of people default to when they think about "porn." But "women don't like gay porn" isn't a very good explanation for this. (Some better ones: Women on average are more interested in written porn than videos. And the video porn industry can be idiots sometimes: they're terrified of putting something on screen that might turn off straight guys; they largely ignore the potential of the women's market; and even when they try to cater to women's tastes in porn, they tend to get it laughably wrong.)

So those are the facts: Some women like gay male porn. Enough so that there are entire porn genres that cater to it.

*

Thus begins my new piece on the Blowfish Blog, All Boy-Boy Action. To find out why gay male porn is so appealing to some women -- and why this fact should be entirely unsurprising -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Anything Can Happen"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Anything Can Happen, by Olivia London, and here's the teaser:

He had a craggy face, prematurely lined, no doubt from hard living. He was wiry but muscular, like he could jump a fence, chase a rabbit and skin it for dinner, no charge. I wondered what he’d look like naked. Then I wondered why I was so sex-obsessed.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Boilermaker"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Boilermaker, by Alison Tyler, and here's the teaser:

Two bottles of something cold and two shots with the beer -- rear booth. No words. Not at first. Then, "Your father drank boilermakers."

Parker nodded.

"He could put them away." Parker fingered the lighter in his pocket. He could feel the belt around his waist. So when Clint touched the buckle under the table, he shivered.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "El Salvador Will Win"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled El Salvador Will Win, by Howard Jackson, and here's the teaser:

As she rode him, she found her voice. A stream of Spanish tumbled from her lips, rising and falling with her excitement. Josh could have concentrated to pick out words or phrases, but he was happy to let the cascade of language stay foreign, exotic, mysterious. For all he knew, she was telling him her life story -- her role in the civil war, her pain, her loss, her redemption in the arms of a kind stranger. But, truthfully, he didn't want to know. Knowing so little was part of what made the whole adventure feel like an adventure.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Member Patient Satisfaction"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Member Patient Satisfaction, by Hew Wolff, and here's the teaser:

I take a big breath for her and suddenly I'm hit by a scent of ginger and cardamom. I swear it's coming from a few drops of sweat right between those magnificent tits I'm trying not to look at. I don't know whether to report my new symptoms of dizziness and tachycardia.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Spider Lines"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Spider Lines, by Timothy Morgan, and here's the teaser:

My wife and I took our time undressing her. I'd like to tell you how strong my hands were and how the girl trembled beneath my touch. But no. My hands shook. My fingertips were cold.

I stood behind her, my face pressed against her neck -- kissing her, smelling her, holding back the nibbling and the biting that soon would know no restraint. Her hair on my cheek. Her skin warm against my lips, which were cold as my fingertips.

If I were making this up, I'd say she smelled like flowers -- jasmine or hyacinth or even roses. But I'm not, and she didn't. She smelled like you or I smell on any given summer day -- a hint of soap -- the ghost of an early morning shower -- and flesh. Flesh and sweat.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

Nom, Nom, Nom: Susie Bright's "Bitten"

Please note: This piece discusses my personal sex fantasies and my tastes in erotica. Family members and others who don't want to read that stuff, please don't read this. This review was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

This, for me, is the true test of good porn.

If porn gets me off because it hits my particular erotic buttons... well, that's not much of a test. I can, for instance, get off watching almost any spanking videos, almost regardless of whether they're any good. I can get off watching some of the grainiest, cheesiest videos that SpankingTube has to offer. Where's the sport in that?

The true test is this: Can it get me off, even though it doesn't hit my particular erotic buttons? Can it get me off, even if it's the actual antithesis of my erotic buttons? Can it get me to feel what the writer finds erotic about this kind of sex -- and what the characters find erotic about this kind of sex -- even if it's the last thing in the world that would occur to me to think about when I'm whacking off?

"Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories" is that kind of book.

I should explain. Constant readers might think that a porn anthology subtitled "Dark Erotic Stories" would hit my buttons like a five- year- old in an elevator. Constant readers, in this case, would be wrong. Yes, I like dark porn. But "dark" isn't the only theme of "Bitten," or even the main theme. The main theme is... I guess you'd have to say Gothic. The stories aren't just dark: they're serious. They're obsessive. They're not particularly funny. And most of them are about the supernatural.

And supernatural porn is really not my thing. (No, not because I'm an atheist.) As constant readers may know, my number one fetish in porn is believability. When I read a dirty story, I want to feel like it might really have happened, like it might really be happening right now. That's what gives me that immediacy, that feeling of being projected headlong into someone else's sweaty skin. So porn about magic, about incubuses, about ghosts, about sex with the devil... it doesn't usually do it for me. (Except for the Snape fantasies. That's different. I can't explain why. Shut up, that's why.)

But I found "Bitten" almost completely compelling. Like, "reading it raptly until two in the morning, then masturbating as quietly as I can because I don't want to wake my partner but won't be able to fall asleep with these stories in my head until I do" compelling.

Why?

Because that's what good porn does.

Good porn -- like the porn in "Bitten" -- gets you feeling what the characters are feeling. Even if what they're feeling, and doing, is physically impossible. Good porn can get you inside the skin of someone who has the Devil's cock shoved into their mouth, through their body, and out through their anus ("Get Thee Behind Me, Satan," by Ernie Conrick). Good porn can get you inside the skin of a bar vamp who seduces men and steals their souls ("The Devil's Invisible Scissors," by Sera Gamble). Good porn can get you inside the skin of someone getting ravished by a shape-shifting incubus that can take the form of water and smoke ("The Unfamiliar," by Allison Lawless -- probably my favorite story in the book). Good porn can expand your libido, make it larger and richer, fill it with images and ideas that might never have occurred to you before but that you now can't shake.

And Susie Bright has a unique eye for good porn.

I should tell you right now, in my official "conflict of interest" alert: I have no objectivity at all when it comes to Susie Bright. We've known each other for decades: she's a colleague and mentor and friend, and I can't review her work the way I would with just any old erotica editor.

But part of the reason she's a colleague and mentor and friend is that I have such strong admiration for her editorial vision. We don't always agree -- her definition of "erotica" is often pretty broad and loose, whereas I prefer my porn to be pretty straightforwardly porny -- but Susie has an almost unerring eye for stories that display first-rate writing, a unique voice, and a vivid sexual imagination.

And that eye was wide open with the stories in "Bitten." They are unique. They are exceptionally well written. And to call them "vivid" is a grotesque understatement. Lore Sjoberg once wrote that iced mocha "makes me happy to be alive, in the literal sense that it forcibly alters my brain chemistry." These stories forcibly altered my brain chemistry. It was like being violated, in the best possible way. It was like a masochistic fantasy in which a pitiless, unnervingly perceptive top forces me against my will, not just to do shameful and terrible things, but to want them.

Of course, I have one or two complaints. I almost always do. Like any anthology, some of the stories are better than others. "Historical Inaccuracies" by Julia Talbot was fine but didn't do anything for me, and while I very much enjoyed Anne Tourney's "The Resurrection Rose," I though it needed some trimming: the concept of the perverted libidinous flower was neat and hot, but it was too much of the same idea for too long. But unlike many erotica anthologies where the stories range from "Meh" to "Good," the stories in "Bitten" range from "Good" to "Fucking awesome." I'm not sure that even qualifies as a criticism.

My other complaint is not so much a complaint as it is a consumer advisory. The stories in "Bitten" are excellent... but I couldn't devour them at one sitting, the way I usually do with erotica anthologies. A few at a time was enough. The intensity, the passion, the seriousness, the other-worldliness… if I read too many in one sitting, it would all get to be much. Like a RenFayre nerd who never gets out of character, and never shuts up about it. Reading "Bitten" would be a wild, fantastical trip into imaginary sexual worlds for a few stories… and then, with just one more story, it would suddenly get cloying. I needed a good dose of raunchy humor or a plain old fuck story as a palate cleanser. It was like a strong, sweet, strangely-spiced dessert: a few bites was lovely, but if I ate a whole meal of it, I'd get sick of it. For me, this was a book best read in small doses, spread out over a few nights.

But again, that's really not a criticism of the book, so much as an advisory on the best way to enjoy it. And if your tastes are different from mine, if supernatural Gothic porn is your very bestest favorite, you may gobble up this strange dessert like peanuts. If you like dark, spooky erotic fiction, you need to run to your nearest bookseller and buy this book right now. And if you don't much care for dark, spooky erotic fiction but you're curious to see what the fuss is about, I can't recommend a better place to start.

Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories. Edited by Susie Bright. Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-0-8118-6425-1. Paperback. $16.95.

New Fishnet Story: "Waiting for a Train"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Waiting for a Train, by Lauren P. Burka, and here's the teaser:

He held out his hand. We left our luggage on the platform and found a grassy spot behind the station. I was painfully conscious of how much more I knew than the last time I'd had him, and how little it was going to matter. He took me on my back, wrapping a hand tight around my mouth, letting me chew on the flesh. I absorbed his heat into me. He made no sound when he came. He never did. I couldn’t even tell.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Catherine's Wheel"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Catherine's Wheel, by Severin Rossetti, and here's the teaser:

When David plucked up the courage to open his eyes he saw that Catherine was back at the easel again, resuming her work, cold and professional, as if her treatment of him had been nothing out of the ordinary. She resumed her low unconscious growl of concentration: a growl punctuated every so often by a shudder that ran through her body before she continued her work. He knew that his cock was erect before him, but he fought the impulse to look down, not wanting to see the alien object protruding from it.

Please note: This story contains content that some people may find disturbing, including borderline consent and extreme SM activity. If you're not interested in reading stories with this type of content, please don't read this story. If you are, and you want to read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Doing the Math"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Doing the Math, by Jeremy Edwards, and here's the teaser:

And though it's hours to go until midnight, these two are on each other as if they were only a few minutes away from the privacy of their bedroom. They stroke and pet while juggling drinks and canapes in the depths of Jacqueline's sofa. They discreetly goose each other at the sideboard, and they sit half in and half out of each other's laps at the Scrabble table. Lips go to ears, and toes to calves. All the while, they’re alert and gregarious, and they relish the tension of being in public and yet being intensely horny.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

New Fishnet Story: "Open Chords"

Fishnet has a new story up! The online erotic fiction magazine I'm editing, Fishnet, has a new story up for you to enjoy. It's titled Open Chords, by Craig J. Sorensen, and here's the teaser:

It’s in a dive of a bar that I find Johnny Tyger. What a stupid stage name. His ridiculously long and thick digits form chords in the most awkward ways. And yet, as I watch him play, I lose sight entirely of the vivid discussion, an emerging and innovative system for rating oral sex performances, that my girlfriends are engaged in.

To read more, read the rest of the story. (Not for anyone under 18.) Enjoy!

"Straight Porn Will Make You Gay": The Delusion of Sex-Negativity

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about the newly notorious Republican politico Michael Schwartz, who recently opined that straight porn makes you gay -- and that telling young boys "straight porn makes you gay" is a fabulous way to keep them from being interested in straight porn. And it's about the profound level of reality- denying delusion involved in this sort of reflexively sex-negative propaganda.

It's titled "Straight Porn Will Make You Gay": The Delusion of Sex-Negativity, and here's the teaser:

What I'm finding truly fascinating is the profound futility, to the point of delusion, of the ultimate purpose behind Schwartz's bizarre connection between straight porn and homosexuality.

Schwartz's ultimate point wasn't "Straight porn makes you gay." I'm not even sure he believes that himself. (In fact, he backpedaled from it just a few sentences later in his speech, saying, "If it [porn] doesn't turn you homosexual, it at least renders you less capable of loving your wife.") His ultimate point wasn't that. His ultimate point was, "Teaching ten- year- old boys that straight porn makes them gay is a great way to keep them away from porn." His point was that ten- and eleven- year- old boys are profoundly grossed-out by homosexuality... and therefore, telling them that porn will make them gay is a nifty way to make them not want porn.

To me, that's the money quote. Not the one about how all porn is really gay porn. To me, the money quote is, quote: "If you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he's going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he'll lose interest. That's the last thing he wants."

So here's what I want to know.

Does Michael Schwartz truly believe that you can keep pre- and early- pubescent straight boys from being interested in pictures of naked women, just by telling them it'll make them gay?

To read more about sex-negativity and self- delusion, read the rest of the piece. (And if you're inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog as well -- they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!