Robert, a 25-year-old investment manager from Massachusetts, trims his pubes with an electric razor—“the kind that barbers use for shaving heads,” he says. Just as he prefers a woman to be groomed when he performs oral sex (“the less hair, the better”), he imagines girls don’t want a bush in their mouths either.

How downright egalitarian.

Still, if genitals unframed by pubic hair are your thing, this decade’s for you.

Still, that’s hardly what’s interesting to me about this column. First off, he said it a few years ago, & Savage has been sucking a  little less on trans issues. He is, in my opinion, someone who could have been an amazing ally if he weren’t shouted at every second he said something stupid (but not necessarily hateful). He is, in my opinion, one of the people we lost with the overuse of the word transphobic, a la Christine Burns.

But what’s more interesting to me is the way this article paints him as something like a conservative. Really… Dan Savage? But yes: he’s always been pro nuclear family, that’s for sure. He’s opinionated in ways only ex-Catholics can be (she says, securely seated in her glass house). But that idea that someone could be considered conservative even as they suggest that perhaps nonmonogamy should be on the table for heterosexual marriage kind of blows my mind. I don’t disagree. I think in plenty of cases, nonmonogamy makes perfect sense. I’ve been learning a lot more about it – not just from friends who practice it, but from Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up as well, and I was in a relationship during my 20s that wasn’t monogamous. But still: I sorta kinda love the idea of Savage being seen as conservative because he is advocating nonmonogamy in order to preserve marriages, because being married/partnered for life is a conservative value whether you’re gay or kinky or not.

And that’s the kind of thing that makes my feminist hackles rise.

Because Coontz – who Oppenheimer mentions and quotes – has said elsewhere that in happy marriages, both people benefit. But in unhappy marriages, men continue to benefit, but women do much, much worse in terms of their health. Even a miserable wife feeds her husband vegetables, she once cleverly concluded in her Marriage, A History. (It’s a great book, absolutely 100% worth reading.)

So the idea of preserving a marriage simply because preserving marriage is what you’re supposed to do strikes me as kind of wrong-headed and — well, sexist. It’s not like Savage will have been the first gay man to give out sexist advice unthinkingly, but it’s still a surprise.

I know there are a lot of people who think it should be that way, or who think that maybe that’s for the best. Most of us don’t like abortion. All of us, actually.I’ve never, ever met anyone who is “pro abortion”.

The deciding factor for me was that women who had money and means have always gotten abortions. It’s the poor women who can’t. Morality should not be bought so dearly. If women can get abortions quickly and easily, they get first term abortions. The more expensive and the further away the clinic, the more likely they will get 2nd term abortions. The more birth control they have access to, the more likely they won’t get pregnant.

It’s not really that hard to understand. Most of us don’t want to see second term abortions because the mother’s health is at risk and the whole conversation about when life starts gets more complicated. But you can’t force people to only get 1st term abortions if they don’t provide them with the means to do so.

Keep abortion legal and safe (which means keeping it local and inexpensive).

Kate Bornstein (@KateBornstein), author and editor of many books including Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, which just won a Lambda Literary Award! 

Patrick Califia (@PatrickCalifia), world-renowned writer, activist, and sex radical, author of dozens of books including Speaking Sex to Power: The Politics of Queer Sex

S. Bear Bergman (@SBearBergman), co-editor of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation and author of Butch is a Noun and The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, which just went into its second printing

Ivan Coyote (@IvanCoyote), author of Missed Her and one of my personal faves, Closer to Spiderman, who is currently touring all over Canada

Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl, currently at work on a new book

Laura Antoniou (@lantoniou), author of the groundbreaking series The Marketplace, which was the first SM erotica series featuring a transman as the romantic hero. She wrote a story especially for this book all about Chris Parker!

Helen Boyd (@helen_of_boyd), author of She’s Not the Man I Married and My Husband Betty

Sandra McDonald, author of the Lambda Literary Award winner, Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories

Rachel Kramer Bussel (@Raquelita), queen of erotica whose latest anthology is Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex

Toni Amato, co-editor of Pinned Down by Pronouns and frequent Best Lesbian Erotica contributor

Gina de Vries, genderqueer femme, Paisan pervert, writer, performer, cultural worker, activist, editor of Becoming: Young Ideas on Gender, Identity, and Sexuality

Rahne Alexander (@foucauldian_ho), musician, multimedia artist, guitarist and vocalist in the bands The Oops and The Degenerettes

Giselle Renarde (@GiselleRenarde), erotica writer and editor of Future Histories: Transgendered Sci-Fi Erotica

Alicia E. Goranson, playwright, screenwriter, and author of Supervillianz

Rachel K. Zall, poet, performing artist, activist and author of The Oxygen Catastrophe

Tobi Hill-Meyer (@Tobitastic), activist, filmmaker, writer, and Feminist Porn Award winner

Shawna Virago, singer/songwriter and activist

Andrea Zanin (@sexgeekAZ), organizer, educator, and writer

Sinclair Sexsmith (@mrsexsmith), creator of The Sugarbutch Chronicles and frequent Best Lesbian Erotica contributor

Skian McGuire, one of my favorite erotica writers ever

Arden Hill, writer and poet

Anna Watson, writer and creator of The Femme Bibliography Project

 

It comes out in October but you can pre-order it now. There’s more info in TT’s blogpost about it if you’re not yet convinced (but honestly, with a list like that, you really should be!)

My name is Krysta Kolbe, I work with Dr. Cory R. Scherer, we are a research team from Penn State University who are interested in learning about how bisexuals react to infidelity. This survey is being conducted for research purposes. There is a lot of research that has been done on how heterosexual and homosexuals react to potential infidelity but practically none concerning bisexuals and we are asking your help by please sharing the survey at the link below with your bisexual associates, friends, co-workers, students, and loved ones. Participants will be asked to think about their reactions to infidelity and give some demographic information. Also understand that they will be asked to answer some questions about their attitudes and themselves. It should take no more than five minutes to complete the questionnaire. You must be 18 years of age or older to participate. Your participation in this research is confidential. Feel free to share the link below with any and all bisexual individuals who want to participate in the survey. Thank you for your help in the quest to better understand ourselves through science!

You can contact me at klk5177@psu.edu or Dr. Scherer at crs15@psu.edu with questions, complaints or concerns about this research. You can stop at any time. You do not have to answer any questions you do not want to answer.

Take the survey!

Sexting, I fear, falls into a gray area for most (monogamous) couples. Maybe that’s the kind of thing more people should talk about. Honestly, the whole thing just makes me a little more tired and a little more sad.

Still, it’s not like he voted against his politics. I prefer liars over hypocrites, but maybe that’s just me. That is, there’s a huge difference for me in guys who vote against civil rights for LGBTQ people who then go off seeking out anonymous same sex sex in public bathrooms. Just sayin’.

So, politicians: don’t lie. As a general rule, it’s kind of up there with don’t invade Russia in winter.

I’ve been researching some for a class I’m teaching next year on sexuality, and was reading a few things about autosexuality, and I wondered, with all those songs about sex, are there any about self-pleasure? These are the few I thought of. And no, “Turning Japanese” doesn’t count; I never bought that argument & The Vapors have said it wasn’t, too. “Dancing with Myself” doesn’t count either (because it’s about a Japanese disco) and even Berry’s “Dingaling” seems more about his bits than about what he’s doing with them. So, others? There are certainly references to masturbation – like in Prince’s “Darling Nikki” – but that isn’t what the song is actually about.

Interesting that the only ones I could come up with are written/performed by women, no? I wouldn’t have expected that.

For the record, masturbation & autosexuality aren’t the same thing. Masturbation is a way to practice autosexuality, but plenty of people who are other kinds of -sexuals also masturbate. Hope that helps. I had to add the Jack Off Jill version of The Divinyls because — well, they’ve got the whole idea built into their name.

Still, I prefer places like Babeland and The Tool Shed because it was the woman-friendly stores that made this all possible in the first place.