It turns out that the lovely porn star Drew Deveaux – who just won Heartthrob of the Year at the Feminist Porn Awards – is out & trans.
How fucking cool.
Category: s.e.x.
Help for Nina Hartley
Posted by – April 11, 2011
Our lovely friend Nina Hartley is having an upcoming surgery and needs some recovery time she can’t afford alone. Friends have set up a website helping her gather the funds to manage it all.
If you’re a fan, do help her out by donating.
Sex Educator Uninvted by OSU
Posted by – January 20, 2011
Award-winning author, columnist, sex educator, and filmmaker Tristan Taormino was set to be the keynote speaker at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex conference, scheduled for February 15-16, 2011. Yesterday, she was uninvited by a university representative, who cited her resume and website as the reason.
On October 28, 2010, organizers of the OSU Modern Sex conference booked Taormino to give the keynote talk; they confirmed the date and agreed to fees, and Tristan’s management received a first draft of the contract on November 1. That contract was incomplete and sent back to OSU for revisions. As with many negotiations, the contract was pending as all the paperwork got done, but in late December, OSU again confirmed Tristan’s appearance and conference organizers told her manager to purchase airline tickets, for which OSU would reimburse her.
On Tuesday, January 18, 2011, Steven Leider, Director of the Office of LGBT Outreach and Services contacted Colten Tognazzini, Tristan Taormino’s manager, to say that the conference had come up short on funding. Tognazzini told him that since the travel was booked and the time reserved, they could work with whatever budget they did have. Leider said that would not be possible: “We have to cancel Ms. Taormino’s appearance due to a lack of funding. It has been decided that OSU cannot pay Ms. Taormino with general fee dollars, because of the content of her resume and website.” At OSU, ‘general fee dollars’ include taxpayer dollars given to the University by the Oregon State Legislature to defray various costs. They differ from ‘student activity dollars,’ which are part of every student’s tuition and help fund student groups and activities.
Taormino’s resume includes her seven books on sex and relationships, the 18 anthologies she has edited, numerous television appearances from CNN to The Discovery Channel, and her award-winning adult films. She was a columnist for The Village Voice for nearly ten years and has given more than 75 lectures at top colleges and universities including Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, NYU and Columbia. Her website, puckerup.com , includes sex education information, advice, and information about the films she directs for Vivid Entertainment, one of the largest adult companies in the country. More
Myths of Male Orgasm
Posted by – December 26, 2010
Why not link to a post about male orgasm for Boxing Day? Too much eggnog & so too drunk to fcuk, as as the Dead Kennedys used to sing… or maybe that itch isn’t getting scratched in the ways it needs to.
I will add one other “myth” about male sexuality that I find most people don’t realize: plenty of heterosexual men want less sex than their female partners. Lots of them need trust, and love, and commitment to get turned on and to get off.
That is, as Sarah Sloane points out, we all tend to think of ourselves as gendered sexually, when mostly we’re just individuals with different hormone levels, libidos, attitudes about sexuality, ways that we use/desire sexuality, intimacy & orgasm (which are, of course, three different things, & do not always exist together). Some attitudes & aptitudes are encourage more in men and women, and vice versa, but all of us should expect not to live up the “superhero” versions of our sexualities as presented by – well, porn, Cosmo, romance novels, etc.
Sex Survey: Women, Trans
Posted by – December 15, 2010
Here’s an interesting survey that is trans friendly and asks good questions. I took it.
Welcome Jezebels
Posted by – October 17, 2010
Welcome to anyone who’s coming over from my post on Jezebel and the F*cking While Feminist series that’s been happening over there all weekend.
The comments posted over there did make me want to clarify a few things:
I was talking about celibacy & monogamy as ways to be feminist *in addition to* being slutty, liking casual sex, BDSM, or whatever else you do that turns you on. What upsets me is that sometimes it seems like you somehow can’t be seen as a sex positive feminist if you don’t like those things, as if choosing to be monogamous or celibate or being vanilla perforce means you’re denying your sexuality. It doesn’t. Sometimes it just means you’re not fucking anyone right now.
I can certainly see how my “just anyone” might imply slut shaming, but I certainly didn’t intend that. Some sluts are picky. Some aren’t. However you like it.
My starting point is safe, sane & consensual. Perhaps I should have made that clear. That would imply:
(1) I was talking about a willing vulnerability, or choosing to be vulnerable, with someone you trust;
(2) imagining turning someone into a sweaty, exhausted mess who WANTED to be turned into a sweaty exhausted mess by you;
(3) it doesn’t matter whether or not you actually could do that (is there anyone in the world who could seduce anyone?!); I was trying to get at the powerful feeling you have when you imagine you could, &
(4) the implication that imagining fucking someone automatically implies either ogling or rape kind of blew me away. I’m talking about something that’s going on in your head and which you are exactly not broadcasting, sharing, or indulging.
In a sense what I was getting at is that acknowledging your own desire and feeling empowered by it is entirely feminist, whether or not you’re actually indulging that desire with anyone but yourself.
(& Thanks, CollegeBookworm & a few others, for getting it.)
(Not) F*cking While Feminist
Posted by – October 17, 2010
Sometimes I get the feeling that being either celibate or monogamous is somehow not feminist & that bugs the hell out of me. Joan or Arc was celibate after all; the whole idea of feminism, I thought, was to value your autonomy and power as a woman – and sometimes that means choosing NOT to share your sexuality and vulnerability because doing so might make you feel less than. In other words: I find it far more feminist to get myself to my 5th orgasm than to have mediocre sex with someone who can’t seem to figure out what to do with a clitoris, and I worry, when it comes to young women, that people believe you can’t be feminist if you’re not fucking anyone but yourself.
I’ve rarely liked one night stands or casual sex of whatever kind. More power to you if you do; it’s probably a lot easier to get off with someone else. The hottest sex I’ve had throughout my life is with someone I’ve got a deep simpatico with, an intense connection, and that doesn’t necessarily mean someone I can have meaningful conversation with; sometimes it’s just there, in the charge that comes every time your eyes meet.
I hate the idea of some patriarchal Christian Cult of Prudery owning celibacy; those were the guys who put Joan of Arc to death, after all. But to me there’s a huge difference between repressing your sexual desire because Your Daddy Says So (whether that Daddy is the Big Man in the Sky or your actual father) and acknowledging your desire but not necessarily doing anything with it. Being able to enjoy your sexual self even when you’re not fucking is the feminist bit – it’s about having desire, celebrating desire, your power and hotness and vulnerability. It’s that feeling of power-in-reverse, walking around with the inscrutability of Mona Lisa, knowing, as you run around doing your mundane errands or going to classes that you could turn anyone you choose into a sweaty, exhausted, happy mess.
That doesn’t mean sluts don’t rock. They do. Sometimes, though, you’re the only one in your life whose worth your effort.
Choosing being the keyword.
It’s that other story about Catherine the Great’s sexual predilections that always appealed to me: she had her ladies in waiting “try out” potential lovers for her so she didn’t waste her time with a dud. (& It’s my best guess that it was one of the duds who started the horse rumor.) She wouldn’t fuck just anyone. Most of us don’t have ladies in waiting to serve this useful function, however, so instead, maybe, we just choose to be picky.
Bye Bi
Posted by – September 23, 2010
I almost missed it, but happy Celebrate Bisexuality day!
(Honestly, shouldn’t bisexuals get two days?)
Mismatched Libidos, Redux
Posted by – July 26, 2010
There’s been a lot of this going around, so maybe, in fits & starts, people are getting more used to the idea of even talking about mismatched libidos. I do workshops on the topic at Dark Odyssey and other sex-positive places, and I’ve always found Dan Savage’s “leave” a little harsh. That said, one of the things I always mentioned in my workshops is that if sex is the top of your priority list, & you want a lot of it, or certain kinds of it, don’t bother torturing anyone who has a lower libido/less adventurous style. That is, if there’s anywhere that compromise is going to be key, sex is is it, & if you’re not wiling to compromise, and even occasionally stand on top of your libido, then Savage’s advice is exactly right.
But most of us can compromise pretty significantly with sex if we’re having a lot of other itches scratched. Where the line is between self-denial and reasonable compromise is tricky no matter the issue, and while I know they might take away my High Libido Club card for this, sometimes there are things that are more important than sex. (& Sometimes, there aren’t, which is often the part the low libido types don’t understand.)
Passing Pat Dye
Posted by – July 12, 2010
Skip the Makeup has a good blog post up about Pat Dye, the 31 year old who has allegedly pursued and seduced a 15 year old girl.
That’s the huge problem: not the gender, but the age gap. Impersonating a minor to have sex with a minor is criminal.
Being trans or clocked for the gender you’re not is not a crime, or immoral, or anything like that.
So maybe let’s keep the two things entirely separate, okay?
This Just In: Women Like Sex
Posted by – July 8, 2010
It’s probably not news for women between the ages of 27 & 45, but a new study shows we like sex more often than at other ages. The only sucky bit is that they felt the need to tie it to reproduction, which I think is bullshit (like most evolutionary psychology), and the evidence doesn’t point that way:
Compared to older or younger women, RE women are more willing to engage in sex after knowing a partner for either one month, one week or one evening. Controlling for the number of children the women had, or whether they consciously desired to have a child, did not change the results.
Obviously if it were about “expedited reproduction” – women willing to have sex to get pregnant – then women who’ve already had a child, or children, wouldn’t be part of this group, right? They’ve have scratched the itch these researchers say is engendering the more sexual behavior. I’d suggest, instead, that being on the descending side of the estrogen slide probably has more to do with it; if there’s anything testosterone is sure to do, it’s increase libido. & Maybe, who knows? It just takes women a while to figure out how to have (maybe even multiple) orgasms.
Can I just say that I find it depressing, if not hysterical, when researchers have to find out why women like sex? Do we ever ask that about men? People who like sex like sex because it feels fantastic, relieves stress, helps you feel good about yourself, exorcises demons – any or all of the above. It’s got beans to do with babies.
Ethics, Schmethics
Posted by – June 21, 2010
Alice Dreger, recently disliked by those in the trans (for defending Michael Bailey) and intersex communities (for being for the “DSD” diagnosis), has at least said, in print, in both Psychology Today and The Hastings Center Report, that maybe using a vibrator on a young girl’s clitoris is completely unacceptable.
Here more specifically is, apparently, what is happening: At annual visits after the surgery, while a parent watches, Poppas touches the daughter’s surgically shortened clitoris with a cotton-tip applicator and/or with a “vibratory device,” and the girl is asked to report to Poppas how strongly she feels him touching her clitoris. Using the vibrator, he also touches her on her inner thigh, her labia minora, and the introitus of her vagina, asking her to report, on a scale of 0 (no sensation) to 5 (maximum), how strongly she feels the touch. Yang, Felsen, and Poppas also report a “capillary perfusion testing,” which means a physician or nurse pushes a finger nail on the girl’s clitoris to see if the blood goes away and comes back, a sign of healthy tissue. Poppas has indicated in this article and elsewhere that ideally he seeks to conduct annual exams with these girls. He intends to chart the development of their sexual sensation over time.
If this were requested reconstructive surgery, or absolutely necessary surgery that treated a dire medical condition, maybe this wouldnt’ seem to fucked up. But these are surgeries conducted on girls whose clitorises are viewed as “too big.” That’s all. Just “too big.” They worry that girls with big clitorises will somehow – I don’t know, that they’ll be socially traumatized, but all I can think is: it’s probably just more likely that they’ll have orgasms, & we certainly can’t have that
One time I asked a surgeon who does these surgeries if he had any idea how women actually reach orgasm. What did he actually know, scientifically, about the functional physiology of the adult clitoris? He looked at me blankly, and then said, “But we’re working on children.” As if they were never going to grow up.
Or, as Courtney on the MHB forums put it, maybe this article should be called When Ken Zucker calls you out for being a sicko, you’ve know you’re screwed.
Genital Algorithm
Posted by – June 17, 2010
In an attempt to get rid of the weenie waggers & masturbaters, people are trying to develop tech that would help scan for human penises when people are in chat rooms.
The idea, of course, is for people to avoid the penises.
The service may add software that can quickly scan video to determine if a penis is being shown. And users that are consistently quickly skipped over (presumably because they are exposing themselves or otherwise being disgusting) can be flagged as well. With those and other changes Chatroulette may be able to put people who actually want to talk to each other in touch much more often.
Some websites, and some users, no doubt, will want the tech to find the penises. Gay porn sites comes to mind, say.
But what this might mean for trans people? On the internet, everyone knows if you have a penis (or not)?
Guest Author: The Tyranny of “Happily Ever After”
Posted by – June 5, 2010
Kimberly Kael, a regular poster to our forums, wrote this recently & I thought it really stood repeating:
Here’s a question that has been bothering me lately and that I’ve been trying to put into words: does the social emphasis on happily ever after as the canonical goal for relationships do more harm than good?
Sometimes the notion of true love feels like the platonic ideals of male and female – it serves as an interesting point of reference but taken too seriously it becomes a source of frustration because none of us can really live up to the implied expectations. That’s not to say there isn’t merit in aspiring to a durable relationship. I’m sure it’s been reinforced in many ways. There are relationships that look perfect and effortless from the outside. There are times in our lives when we’ve had that kind of connection and we want to hang onto it forever.
Of course there are also good economic and emotional reasons to encourage stability by giving people an incentive not to split at the first sign of trouble. Indeed, I’ve never been in a rewarding relationship that didn’t involve working through rough spots. On the other hand, how many people fall into the trap of expecting love to be free of these kinds of challenges? I guess that’s a notion most of us take with a grain of salt by the time we get a little experience in balancing the needs of a partnership.
What’s more insidious is that society encourages us to make a lot of explicit or implied promises about the distant future that we simply may not be able to keep without making ourselves and everyone around us miserable. That sets unrealistic expectations for everyone involved, which evolve into a sense of entitlement: “Where’s my happily ever after?” It seems fundamentally implausible that so many relationships end in divorce and yet when people wind up there it seems to come as a complete surprise. They have no backup plan and only an incomplete set of life skills beyond those specialized for the role they played in the relationship.
At the root of it all is that unlike the male/female dichotomy there’s no spectrum implied by a single point. Where are the other archetypal relationships? Okay, so there’s the affair. The one-night stand. But is there anything else that doesn’t have a strong negative connotation?
I’ve personally been talking to an old friend about this idea a lot as she’s been unhappy recently & wondering if the source of her frustration was her relationship or the compromises it implies. That is, she wasn’t necessarily unhappy with her partner himself, but unhappy at the kind of compromises she’s made due to being in a relationship at all, with anyone. Her “pattern” – if she has one – is one of serial monogamy: relationships of several years that end when the compromise:satifaction ratio starts to fall short.
As someone who once was poly – although initially somewhat unwillingly & eventually quite happily – I’m not sure why we persist in believing that one person can be all that we need emotionally, sexually, romantically. We often expect someone (1) we have good sex with, (2) get all tingly around, (3) whose conversation & company we enjoy, and (4) with whom we can build a life, a home, a family. It’s kind of a lot, no? I remember many years ago, before meeting Betty, at feeling astonished I could manage even two of those with the same person in a short period of time — but over a lifetime? In speaking with more & more poly people, and perusing Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up
I know, for someone like me, no one really bats an eyebrow if I mention missing having a male husband. Betty & everyone else knows I intended to be in a relationship with a man. So while Betty & I are still happy as two peas in a pod, there are days when what I’ve lost, and what I miss, is pretty acute. I don’t suspect I will ever stop missing having a male husband, even if the missing grows less acute and less chronic over time. As someone who has always had strong emotional relationships with men – the adoptive “older brothers” I talked about in She’s Not the Man – I miss some kind of masculine energy in my life (and not just sexually, you big perverts). This stuff is gendered because I’m the partner of a person who transitioned from within our marriage, but it strikes me that there are about a million things that a person might miss, or need, over time.
Too Hot To Work
Posted by – June 2, 2010
It’s going to be easy for women to hate on this lady, but she is in some ways the perfect case study when it comes to women & looks & employment. She’s suing Citigroup for firing her for being too hot.
Power to her.
When you read stuff like this, you have to wonder: do they just think they’re untouchable? Or do they not understand what’s offensive about saying stuff like this? Honestly, I don’t know.
Chasers!
Posted by – May 27, 2010
So Matt Lauer had an affair with a trans woman who is “related to” Whitney Houston, and a guy writes to Dan Savage to find out where he can have sex with a trans woman who isn’t a sex worker.
Really, where do you start? With anyone calling an African American woman a “soulfood side piece”?
But Dan Savage seems to be actively compensating for the times he hasn’t been as hip to trans stuff as he should have been. At least.
(thanks to DonnaT for both stories)
Bud Light Wheat Beer Ads
Posted by – April 11, 2010
Have people seen these ads? The whole premise is that Bug Light met Wheat and they hooked up. So now they’re not just selling beer by telling you that you’ll get laid if you drink beer, but that your beer is even getting laid.
sheesh.
“Lesbian” Strippers in SF
Posted by – March 29, 2010
Only Republicans would go to a bondage strip club in San Francisco and spend $2k to see strippers pretend to be lesbians when most people just go to the parks, movies, and bars to see actual lesbians make out in public.
Happy 100th Anniversary, Die Transvestiten
Posted by – March 20, 2010
It’s been a hundred years since Magnus Hirschfeld published The Transvestites. The earliest bibliographic entries Ray Blanchard tracked down are these:
Die Transvestiten – Eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb [Transvestites – A Study of the Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress], Pulvermacher, Berlin, 1910.
Co-authored with Max Tilke: Die Transvestiten – Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb [Transvestites – The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress], Illustrierter Teil, Pulvermacher, Berlin, 1912.
How cool is that? I couldn’t help but think that Virginia Prince died only last year, at the age of 96. Imagine, she was born only a few years after that book was published, when the idea of anyone being “out” about crossdressing was – to borrow from Hirschfeld’s language – verboten.
It’s hard to imagine what might have been, if the Nazis had not destroyed Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sex.
Porn Is Good?
Posted by – March 13, 2010
Milton Diamond, who is otherwise best known for being the person who exposed John Money’s failed “experiement” that was the life of David Reimer, has a new article in The Scientists on the cultural, societal value of porn.
Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women. There is no doubt that some people have claimed to suffer adverse effects from exposure to pornography—just look at testimony from women’s shelters, divorce courts and other venues. But there is no evidence it was the cause of the claimed abuse or harm.
I’ve always been a fan – mostly because I grew up in a family where we were born fully dressed, and where no one was going to show me photos of what a vagina actually looked like (which, if you’re a woman, is hard to see for yourself). It can also be a useful instruction manual that’s actually fun to watch.
That said, I know there are plenty of feminists, and non-feminists, who hate porn and will only ever see the side of it that degrades women. I think of it more like comedy – sure, a lot of it’s lousy and mean-spirited and serves no cultural function, but the cultural function it does serve can’t really be fulfilled in any other way.
Read more: Porn: Good for us?
