lesbian

Best Lesbian Romance 2011

mandy — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Best Lesbian Romance 2011 is just that: some of the best lesbian-themed romantic short stories you’ll read this year. Beyond just lesbian romance, this interesting compilation seems to center around variety. Set in a variety of locales, covering various relationship stages, drawn from various cultures and subcultures, and even drawing upon various genres, the stories in this collection leave virtually no stone unturned as far as variety is concerned.

Locations shift from the Slovenian countryside to a Magdalene laundry in Ireland, from a small community theater to a bingo parlor, from a grocery store to a werewolf pack’s hunting grounds, bringing with the change of place, a change in culture and subculture that leaves the reader pleasantly disconnected from it all. Characters detail everything from the first stirrings of teenage love to the subtler romance of a long-established relationship made new by pretense, the feelings we remember and the ones we relatively younger lesbians hope to some day experience. They’ll make you laugh, cry, sigh, and even wish you grew fangs at the turn of the new moon.

So, variety is covered. Diversity, however, seems to have gone missing. Although the demographic characteristics of some of the characters is anyone’s guess, the impression given is that the characters are overwhelmingly of the Caucasian persuasion and generally able-bodied, even if a few are four-legged part of the time. I don’t know if that’s acceptable in 2011. I’ll give the editor the benefit of the doubt and assume that there weren’t many submissions from women of color or the differently-abled, but a compilation without diversity seems a bit too limited.

I’m torn. I loved the stories and greatly enjoyed reading them. Radclyffe did a great job of picking some wonderful, exciting, intriguing, well-written entries. But I want more. I want women of color. I want women who find love that transcends physical limitations, the kinds so many of us experience in our daily lives. (Sorry, but turning into a werewolf doesn’t count if the woman you love is also a werewolf.) I want a compilation that leaves as few of us out as possible, that allows most, if not all, of us to see ourselves and sigh just a little bit at the memories of our own loves. I don’t think that’s wanting too much.

Written by: Melinda Barton, April 6th 2011

Best Lesbian Erotica 2011

gwen — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Kathleen Warnock

Cleis Press

As the title indicates, Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 is a compilation of short erotic fiction from a variety of authors, both established and obscure. What the title fails to express is that this is not just yet another compilation of middle-of-the-road lesbian erotica. This edition, unlike others before it, centers on lesbian outsiders, the ones whose radical gender bending and subversive sexuality sometimes makes the rest of us just a little bit squeamish.

The history of lesbian feminism has been filled, unfortunately, with a bit too much self-righteous policing of lesbian gender expression and sexuality, a sometimes defensive response to the pressure we feel to reject heteronormativity while being just enough like the heterosexuals to be “acceptable.” Of course, many a put-upon femme can tell you of the pressures to be identifiably lesbian and very much “unacceptable.” While I am quite the middle-of-the-road, vanilla sort of lesbian, I think it’s about damned time, really, that we lesbian feminists get over ourselves and embrace how very diverse we Sapphic types can be and how very different our community is from the heterosexual majority.

For me, reading Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 was most definitively a “getting over myself” moment. Some of the stories fit right in to what I consider erotic, mainly because I could identify myself or, at least, my type, in the characters. Most were foreign to me. The characters and settings were recognizable enough in type. I have, after all, been a member of the lesbian community for nearly two decades now. But what distance there is between having observed and having experienced! Reading stories written from the perspective of those who blur the lines between genders and push the boundaries of human sexuality put my own gender identity and sexuality in a strange sort of perspective. It was, admittedly, a bit discomfiting at times but overall, rather enjoyable.

Ultimately, while most of the stories in the compilation are well written and structured and quite creative, I think that whether a reader enjoys them will depend a great deal on what she brings to the reading. For the lesbian outsider often excluded from such compilations, this one will surely be a welcome opportunity to find her fantasies expressed and her identity reflected in a way that is too seldom encountered in mainstream lesbian fiction. The insiders will be taking a journey in a strange land with the occasional rest stop in familiar territory. An open mind will be as vital on this expedition as a good map.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 28th 2011

Elena Undone

gwen — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nicole Conn

Wolf Films

When I discovered that the director of Elena Undone was the same Nicole Conn who’d directed Claire of the Moon, I was a bit nervous. Claire of the Moon was one of the first lesbian films I ever watched and, as such, it was extraordinarily exciting on first viewing. As age and experience caught up with me and I watched the film again from the perspective of someone who’d studied film, I was disappointed. It was, I think, a bit like watching popular 1980s sitcoms as an adult and realizing how very cheesy my childhood had been. Fortunately, my expectations for Elena Undone were proven wrong… very, very wrong.

Elena Undone is the story of Peyton (the stunning Traci Dinwiddie) and Elena (the also stunning Necar Zadegan), one a famous lesbian writer, the other a presumably heterosexual, married photographer. As this is a lesbian film and not real life, presumptive heterosexuality is no barrier to lesbian love. Romance, of course, ensues when the two encounter one another at a meeting for potential adoptive parents and meet again at a session run by a love guru named Tyler (the hilarious Sam Harris), who is all on board with a potential Sapphic dalliance for his presumably straight friend Elena. Because this is a lesbian film, the voice of lesbian pragmatism asserts itself in the form of Peyton’s friend and neighbor Wave (the gorgeous and hilarious Mary Wells), who reminds Peyton frequently that the pursuit of heterosexual women isn’t exactly healthy or realistic.

The film starts a bit slowly and intersperses the main story with interludes from love guru Tyler. At the first interlude, I found myself inwardly groaning, but that soon gave way to a real enjoyment of Tyler’s pontifications. Once the rhythm of the film was set, it was incredible. The first kiss between our two protagonists, which broke the record for longest movie kiss, reflected an incredible on-screen chemistry between Dinwiddie and Zadegan, a chemistry made even more intense during the love scenes. With the exception of the Dinwiddie and Zadegan pairing, the brightest spots in the film were the moments between Wells and Dinwiddie. It may be my undying love for redheads and slightly unhealthy obsession with various UK accents talking, but I can’t help thinking that the only thing that could have made the film better was more Mary Wells.

Overall, with great acting and incredible visuals, Elena Undone is a much welcome addition to the lesbian film canon, one I intend to watch repeatedly and share with as many friends as possible, starting with you. So, go watch it already. You can thank me later.

Written by: Melinda Barton, February 24th 2011

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

brittany — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kay Whitlock, Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie

Beacon Press

In their near-exhaustive catalogue of violence, discrimination, and systematic abuse of LGBT people in the United States, Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock outline the specific ways that the criminalization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people has perpetuated inequalities not only based on sexual identity but also within the complex interplay of race, class, and gender. While many leading texts in LGBT studies have argued that the policing of gender leads to toxic consequences for all members of society, this book reveals just how pervasive such policing of gender is and just how complicit we are in maintaining these systems of inequality. Most centrally, Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock argue that decriminalizing queerness has been sidelined by efforts to merely remove legal sanctions—a problem that fails to address the basic assumptions of queer deviance at play in our legal system.

Queer (In)Justice dispenses a legal history of LGBT oppression that spans hundreds of years, beginning with a sweeping review of the history of gender policing—indigenous abuse, constructions of African people as hypersexual, “contaminating” immigrant bodies, and even Biblical ideas about sodomy—and moving through a range of topics that collectively provide the most complete picture of LGBT criminalization I have ever encountered. Addressing queer criminal archetypes (e.g., the queer killer, sexually degraded predator, disease spreader, and queer security threat) early in the book, the authors then move to three stellar chapters on legal policing of gender in clubs and public spaces, courtroom battles about queer identity (where gender bending and violence are discursively linked), and, finally, the queering of prisons. This last chapter on prisons provides a haunting account of prison guards ignoring sexual identity-based violence, refusing care for HIV/AIDS prisoners, and constructing queer inmates as perverse. The authors conclude (in one of only a few hopeful moments of the book) that anti-police-brutality, the building of safe communities, prison solidarity, and community organizing must occur in order to tease apart the conflation of queerness and criminality.

At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities. The authors argue, essentially, that cases like Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena are not isolated incidents of violent, hateful oppression, but rather, engendered by the very system that supposedly protects queer subjects. From senseless police brutality to justifying death penalty sentences based on sexual identity, from the fetishization of “lesbian killer” Aileen Wuornos to prison guards who allow continued sexual assault against “willing” gay men in prison, hatred of queerness exists at the heart of our criminal justice system. The question becomes: What legal, discursive, social, and institutional changes can we enact that more radically and permanently divides queerness from criminality? What stories must we tell (or learn) to communicate and understand the histories of violence lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people have endured? And, finally, what kind of queer justice should we seek?

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 12th 2011

My Normal

priyanka — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Irving Schwartz

When artists use the word 'normal' to title their work, they usually mean to imply that they’re going to show us something arguably abnormal. In the case of My Normal, the fringe behavior in question is BDSM: bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism. This kind of sexuality involves one or more people in positions of power, who inflict pain or humiliation on a subordinate or subordinates.

But really, how does that differ from most marriages these days? (Just kidding.)

Writers Renee Garzon and Adam Sales believe they’re doing something revelatory with this story about a lesbian dominatrix who dreams of simultaneously enjoying a monogamous relationship, a lucrative career in BDSM and artistic freedom as a filmmaker; but who can’t seem to juggle all her balls at once. “The various controversial scenes and subjects touched upon in this film were ones Renee and Adam knew well from (firsthand) experience,” the film’s Web site explains. “They were greatly inspired by the underground NYC (New York City) scenes that are often spoken about but rarely seen.”

Unfortunately for them, we have seen these things before in movies and television. Other than a rather shocking description of a client getting a dildo lodged in his anus and subsequently requiring hospitalization, which is spoken of but not seen, there’s very little 'controversial' or 'underground' material exposed. Movies like Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Secretary, as well as television shows like Sex and the City and The L Word have taken us here before.

And it is highly problematic for a movie, which by its very nature occupies a visual medium, to spend more time talking about allegedly abnormal behavior instead of showing it. (Not that I’m clamoring for a glimpse at a dildo-obstructed anus…) The film is dialogue-driven and uses very little cinematic language to tell its story, which is at best contrived and at worst insincere. Actor interactions begin with lines about back story rather than words of familiarity, the kinds of things people who see each other every day say to one another naturally. Amateurish direction and editing employ clumsy establishing shots and empty transitions. The actors look great—too glossy to be representing the vulgar side of NYC as chronic recreational drug-users—but are generally stiff and awkward in their delivery. Ty Jones, who plays a drug dealer/would-be screenwriter, gives the most natural performance of the film (he’s definitely one to watch out for in more mainstream—and by that I mean expensive—cinema).

Perhaps this subject matter is better served by pornography or documentary, each of which would be a little of both. My Normal feels a little too… well, normal. Check out this film if you’re looking for a gentle introduction to BDSM. If you’re in the know, skip it.

Written by: Rachel Moehl, January 28th 2011

Gay, Straight and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation

mandy — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Simon LeVay

Oxford University Press

I recently had the pleasure of participating, as a feminist blogger, in a survey about the Feminist Blogosphere. Name? Age? Sex (or "gender," as she put it)? These were not difficult questions (for me) to answer. But when she asked me to identify my sexual orientation, I paused... and then I stumbled. “I’m straight, right?” I asked myself. I’m a woman married to a man. If sexuality is either one of two, possibly three, things, then quite obviously I am a heterosexual. But as Gore Vidal sharply put it: “Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories—fag and straight.”

The fact that I lead a heteronormative life means that I am “normal,” “average,” and “healthy,” doesn’t it? And as I have been leading a universally accepted lifestyle, I am afforded the privilege of thinking of sexuality—not as something that forms the core of one’s identity—but rather as something within a spectrum, and something that enhances one’s identity. When homosexuals have demanded the right to be so-called Lesbians and Gays as part of a movement of identity distinction and defense of their acceptability, I have often thought that, in actuality, said lesbians and gays are no different from me, just people with sexualities that fall elsewhere on the spectrum. But according to the neurologist Simon LeVay, heteros and homos are different on neurological, hormonal, and genetic levels.

May Simon LeVay’s overview of the science of sexuality, which he was instrumental in founding, Gay, Straight and the Reason Why, be admitted into the pantheon of sexual discourse housing Michel Foucault, Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, et al.—though he is in disagreement with many queer theorists having identified, as he claims, the scientific reasons for human homosexuality. Disputing the Kinsey scale and its seven categories, for instance, LeVay points out that most “non-heterosexual men are homosexual; few say that they are roughly equally attracted to both sexes.” However, he also points out that pathology doesn’t enter into “who we love”: “There’s nothing wrong with gay people,” he writes in his introduction. “I’m gay myself, and happy to be so. There are some differences between us and the rest of humanity, certainly, as I’ll discuss in this book. Some of these differences are trivial, and some may influence people’s lives in interesting ways…”

I really enjoyed reading this book. Surprised? I was. In the first place, I struggle to understand science. But LeVay has written this text with laypeople like me in mind. Technical terms are italicized when first employed and subsequently defined in a comprehensive glossary at the back of the book. Hence, reading about neurons and genes and hormones was like reading a recipe for shortbread cookies. While my literary academic background in sexuality and queer theory came in handy and my prior interest kept me engaged, I do believe this book is appropriate for anybody with rudimentary knowledge of sexuality and a genuine interest in understanding it.

One practical dilemma arises were society to apply LeVay’s finding—that homosexuality results in part from a size discrepancy in a cluster of nerves found in the hypothalamus—to everyday life: we’d need “new rules.” If most men, for instance, are heterosexual, but those who aren’t have a smaller than normal INAH3, then could homosexuality and its physical cause be considered a disability? Are homosexuals, with their observed differences from heterosexuals, disadvantaged because of this physical abnormality/disability (not taking into account the social stigma against homosexuality, whatever its root)? And what about people with normal INAH3 who exhibit homosexual longings or tendencies? What is our science? “All mental traits, including sexual orientation, have some durable representation in the brain,” LeVay reports. I find Ashley Judd, and not Angelina Jolie, sexually attractive. Can an explanation for that be found in my brain, or is it beyond pathology and part of the aforementioned “who we love” question? Can sexuality have a spiritual component?

LeVay’s discussion of gender is problematic for queer theory enthusiasts like me. While he concludes that gender traits are a “kaleidoscopic blend” amongst homosexuals, his science contradicts often this notion. He affirms that gay men are on average more “feminine” by their own account, and lesbian women more “masculine” by their own account, than their straight counterparts. This plays into the reductive Freudian (among other) expectation that human sexual relationships must consist of symbiotic masculine and feminine parts. Furthermore, there is evidence that suggests homosexuals have different anatomical makeup than heterosexuals. LeVay does not shy away from using potentially pejorative language: “…lesbians who identify as ‘butch’ have a higher (more male-like) waist-hip ratio than do straight women, whereas lesbians who identify as ‘femme’ have the same ratio as straight women. Because the waist-hip ratio rises if people become overweight, this difference does not necessarily represent a constitutional difference between butch and femme lesbians: It could simply be that butch lesbians have less interest in dieting or maintaining a ‘feminine’ profile.”

Gay, Straight and the Reason Why is full of these types of observations, the things we’re thinking about when we ponder about our human differences, but are often afraid to say aloud; and I give LeVay a lot of credit for his candor. Ultimately, his observations and those of his colleagues detailed herein make our eliminating the language and expectation of gender seem far, far away. But I appreciate good, thorough, critical discourse such as that which can be launched with documented research of this kind. I hope this text finds its way into many graduate seminars across many areas of study: from science to literature and film, and more!

Written by: Rachel Moehl, January 1st 2011

Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies

tina — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Edited by R. Gay

Cleis Press

Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting to like Girl Crush. I wasn’t expecting well written girl-on-girl erotica. I wasn’t expecting to have my breath taken away.

My first crush was Elizabeth; she was my assigned seventh grade science lab partner. She was so beautiful that I was embarrassed to sit by her. I spent the whole semester in awe, watching her when she wasn’t looking, trying to talk to her, longing to touch her. I was smitten. I dreamed about being her friend, holding her hand, going to sleepovers together, and kissing her. I wanted to be just like her: beautiful, mysterious, alluring, and anything else she wanted me to be. She was the one constant in my sexual awakening; the girl I always had a crush on and the more I learned about what I wanted, the more I wanted her.

I never expected to see those feelings in print, but the stories in Girl Crush capture that extraordinary mix of longing and awe that comprise a crush on a girl. These writers know exactly what it is to be consumed by desire, to be overtaken by lust and envy. The characters experience the held breath, the tentative gesture, the sidelong glances, the profound hope that somehow, you will get to see this girl naked. These stories do not disappoint; the girls do get naked. The sex is wonderfully explicit and the details show that this is not just about sex, it’s about wish fulfillment. The hottest dreams made real, getting to do what you’d only imagined.

If you’ve ever had a girl crush, these stories will grab you and not let you go until you’ve turned the last page. Whether you’ve wanted a friend, a colleague, or a customer, this collection has a story for everyone. It’s a sexy reader for those still lusting from afar and a wash of memory for those lucky enough to have had their dreams come to fruition. If you’re like me, you’ll close the book just long enough to reopen it at the beginning.

As for Elizabeth, no, I never got to kiss her. We keep in touch and twenty-five years later, I’m still hoping to see her naked.

Written by: Melissa Ruiz, December 28th 2010

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature

farhana — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley

Duke University Press

Tinsley’s fascinating study of “women loving women” examines their colonial and postcolonial experiences in Dutch, French, and English-speaking areas of the Caribbean. This volume, in the Perverse Modernities series by Duke University Press, takes its title from the writing of Trinidad-born poet-novelist Dionne Brand, whose cane-cutter character Elizete uses the phrase “thiefing sugar” to describe her feelings for another woman, Verlia. The metaphor refers to the time when slaves could be whipped for selling sugar from the plantations for any reason; it embodies both transgression and forbidden pleasure. Tinsley points out that using the term is “stealing language itself” to evoke a “transformative desire” to change the status of women and challenge the injustices of society.

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature incorporates black, queer, and feminist theory into its analysis. It draws on literature, history, geography, anthropology, economics, and linguistics to paint a colorful, multilayered portrait of Caribbean women. Texts from Suriname, Jamaica, Haiti, Martinique, and Trinidad (along with occasional references to Cuba, Grenada, Aruba, the Bahamas, and elsewhere in the region) are used to explore the history of sexuality and the complications of Creole traditions. Tinsley begins with love songs sung by black working-class women to their female lovers, along with accounts of birthday parties and erotic dances and religious ceremonies, as well as messages exchanged in the symbolic language of flowers, to show the intricacies of gender identities in the West Indies.

In succeeding chapters she turns to Luminous Isle, an autobiographical novel by the white Jamaican woman writer Eliot Bliss, then to the erotic poems written in the 1920s by Haitian poet Ida Faubert, Mayotte Capécia’s novel I Am a Martinican Woman, Jamaican writer Michelle Cliff’s novel, No Telephone to Heaven, and, finally, Dionne Brand’s poetry collection No Language Is Neutral, in order to trace “their poetics of decolonization” and to point out how these texts suggest reconfiguring gender history to acknowledge the strength and beauty of Afro-Caribbean woman-identified women. Tinsley’s brilliant, sensitive explications, her frequent references to artworks from the area, and her descriptions of lush landscapes make reading her work a delight and a surprise.

However, I do wish that she had studied more than one Hispanic writer, Fidel Castro’s niece Mariela Castro Espín. But I understand that bringing in a substantial number of texts in Spanish would have enlarged her project’s boundaries to perhaps unmanageable proportions. Several references to U.S. interventions in Grenada also left me wanting more information on the effects of North American activities in the region. I hope that Tinsley herself or one of her readers will expand on the groundbreaking work she has done in this book. I highly recommend it to a cosmopolitan audience.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, December 3rd 2010

Best Lesbian Erotica 2010

gita — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Kathleen Warnock

Cleis Press

The photo on this anthology’s cover, of two near identical women in rapturous embrace serves to convey the collection’s reoccurring theme: sex with one’s doppelganger. While the majority of stories in this collection do not adhere to this theme, two of the most unusual tales in this collection do. As one would assume, the stories within this collection often veer outside of the clichéd, cookie-cutter lesbian erotica setups. While many of the traditional ingredients are here, this anthology manages to put them together in new ways, offering a bit of variance for those familiar with the typical erotica set up who are perhaps looking for some new spins. We can thank the selectors of the stories, the musical group Betty (most recently of The L Word fame), for choosing works that stray off of the usual path.

While there are many tales that adhere to the butch/femme setup, the outcome differs in many of the tales with femmes being the dominant party (oddly, the butch/femme tales are also almost exclusively told from the butch’s point of view.) Among the most stimulating and heartfelt of the stories including the butch/femme dynamic, is “Bloodties,” by Alex Tucci in which a young butch finds relief from her grief at a funeral by having a steamy sex session with her second cousin in a church bathroom. Tucci delivers stimulating sexual description while combining genuine plot and character development—attributes not always found in steamy erotica. In “Shameless,” writers Kymberlyn Reed and Anais Morten surprisingly include heterosexual men in their tale. However the two lesbian characters do not engage in heterosexual sex with the two men. Instead, they are allowed to drool over the two while they engage in sex. Later on, the lesbian couple uses their strap-ons on the two men, convincing them into such a position by offering it as their only means of sexual release. This creative setup offers an interesting spin on the heterosexual male fetishization of lesbian sex.

Among the collection’s most unique tales are the two that adhere to the cover’s theme, tales that I did not find to be sexually arousing, but instead intellectually stimulating. In “Self-Reflection,” by Tobi Hill-Meyer, a female to male pre-op transsexual runs into her time traveling post-op self and gives new meaning to the phrase “having sex with yourself.” My favorite, and the most literary tale in the collection, is “Uppercasing,” by Charlie Anders. It tells the story of a near identity-less girl who travels to San Francisco to find herself. Instead, she finds an arrogant artist, with the same name who proceeds to transform her into her double. The strange sexual situations that unfold between the two are undercut with such statements as: “I’ve always wanted to see the look in my own face when someone fists me…And now I can.”

While the sex that occurs between the two serves to only be the stuff of humiliation and rampant narcissism, the tale offers an interesting lament on the concepts of identity and ego. I was unsure as to why this story was in an erotica collection, but I found its strange theme to be one that stayed with me weeks after I finished reading the collection, and finding well crafted writing amidst a book of erotica was a pleasant surprise.

Overall, this collection succeeds in offering up unusual and eclectic tales that are a nice diversion from the standard erotica that gets dull much too quickly. While the unusual tales may be too far out to be stimulating for some, there is most likely at least one story to get your motor racing.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, November 23rd 2010

Lesbian Lust: Erotic Stories

payal — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Sacchi Green

Cleis Press

The stories featured in Sacchi Green’s edited collection of lesbian erotica are intensely sexual. As the name of the volume, Lesbian Lust, implies, each of the stories focus on the deep sensual and sexual desires of the characters featured in them. The narratives are varied in their settings, characterizations, and kinds of sex offered for the reader’s (and their companions’) interest. As Green writes in her introduction to the volume, “Variety is also the spice of lust.”

Many of the stories are not for the faint of heart; there are few typically “vanilla” sex acts and story lines included in Lesbian Lust. This said, the volume presents a wonderfully wide-ranging assortment of active, desiring lesbian subjects who are in charge of their own sexuality, whether they play out their own fantasies or submit at their own will to the desires of their partner(s). The stories are kink-friendly and as one might imagine of a collection written by and for lesbians, sex- and woman-positive. Overall, this was my favorite aspect of the collection of stories. Even if any one story didn’t fall within my own particular set of turn-ons, I appreciated reading the entire group of stories for their collective interest in portraying lesbians in powerful positions, engaging one another in both playful and serious emotional, psychological, and/or physical situations.

Perhaps my favorite story of the collection, “The Office Grind” by R.G. Emanuelle, brings sex to the boardroom as Casey secretly tends to Nina, company Vice President, while Nina participates in a business meeting with her pompous and oblivious male co-workers. The story is simultaneously sexy and funny, and makes the introduction of cunnilingus to the workday seem a brilliant idea to chase away the staid boredom all too typical of a desk job, especially for a female executive who is used to being treated as a second-class citizen both by her boss and her subordinates. “The Office Grind” turns on its head the conventional voyeuristic tale of men getting off on watching lesbians having sex, emphasizing Nina’s business and sexual power in the face of her ignorant co-workers. Using wordplay to drive the story home, “The Office Grind” brings a whole new meaning to the terms “powerpoint” and “working lunch.”

I highly recommend this story, and the Lesbian Lust collection as a whole to the reader looking for multi-layered tales of sex, romance, and power in all sorts of lesbian relationships.

Written by: Stefanie Snider, November 18th 2010

Best Lesbian Romance 2010

payal — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Radclyffe

Cleis Press

This is a light, sweet collection of short stories featuring women in love with women. I'm thoroughly impressed by the diversity of the stories' characters. Each story is very different from the next. I read about the lives of queer teenagers, figure skater dykes, gay cattle ranchers, and butches racing their cars.

There were women of different ages, races, and personalities. There was even a story with vampires and shapeshifters. Some characters were traveling. Others were looking back on their lives, or starting new ones.

I felt thoroughly entertained and sometimes moved by these stories. My only issue was the lack of development in some narratives. I wasn't sure if some authors originally included more writing to begin with, or if details were edited out later by Best Lesbian Romance 2010 editor Radclyffe in order to save space. In any case, I would have liked to feel more attached to some of the characters. For example, what happened to the lesbian couple who attended the social dance together? The ending only hints to a big scene taking place and isolation to follow.

The authors' writing styles vary. Some are humorous, while others are straightforward. Many of them follow their emotions as they willingly receive what comes to them. While one author would make me laugh, another would easily make me sentimental. For example, my heart skipped a beat when a woman's car tipped over during a suspenseful race.

If variety is the spice of life, then this book is certainly spicy. Speaking of spice of a different nature; there isn't much to be had here. Details of bedroom intimacy are limited and polite. However, this is a romance collection, not an erotica collection. Those seeking heavier scenes should look elsewhere. If you're looking for heartwarming and fun stories about lesbian love, however, you won't be disappointed!

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, November 15th 2010

Voices of Witness Africa

andrea — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Cynthia Black

Claiming the Blessing

Voices of Witness Africa honors the truth and plight of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Anglicans in Africa, who have often been excommunicated by the Anglican Church. This is an admirable task for the producers of this film, since their target audience is Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of bishops which happens once every ten years. The producers must work not to overly offend the church bishops that they are trying to win over. However, this tension to represent various sides of the issue leaves the film with a sense of having been diluted to be palpable.

Producer/director Cynthia Black, an Episcopal priest herself, conceived of the thirty minute film after a successful response to the first Voices Of Witness film released in 2006, which featured LGBT Episcopalians from the Los Angeles area and was premiered during the General Episcopalian Convention in Columbus, Ohio. A short preview of Voices of Witness Africa was shown twice at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, supposedly to a standing-room-only audience.

Interviews range from LGBT people who are afraid to show their faces and sitting in shadow to retired Anglican Reverends who dare to openly support the cause—all offer an explosive and potentially deeply moving perspective. I saw pain in their eyes—pain from the persecution within their culture, their families, and yes, the church that they love. I kept waiting for the pain to be expressed. It never really was and, in that, the film itself doesn’t feel to match the bravery and courage of the individuals that it is featuring, who are in many cases risking life imprisonment and even death to tell their stories.

This movie feels like a tentative first step into the stormy waters of a growing advocacy for the Church to become more progressive or risk perpetuating the sense that it is living in the dark ages. You can feel in the people interviewed how their love for a God that is lovingly accepting of them and a church that represents that acceptance is what drives them to talk about it.

The film proceeds at a dizzying pace with a frenetic quality that makes it difficult to really be moved by the poignancy of what is being shared in only thirty minutes. More time for the stories to unfold of these fascinating, inspiring, and bright souls and more shots of the individuals in their daily lives would have enlivened the experience. The DVD includes a twenty-seven page study guide with suggested exercises for discussion groups and a full movie transcript—which seems excessive given the short length of the film itself.

Although this is undoubtedly a film made by Anglicans featuring Anglicans for Anglicans, this doesn’t mean that those of us who are not practicing Anglicans (or even Christians) won’t be touched by the experiences and perspectives of the film. Yet, we also may not feel as compelled by the desire to win over a church that has not kept its promises to listen to their suffering and persecuted parishioners. Instead we may wonder—isn’t it time to go beyond just an advocacy for “open listening” from the Church, and to demand sweeping change and progressive reformation that could pressure the political and judiciary systems to end the persecution of LGBT parishioners?

Written by: Jillian Vriend, November 3rd 2010

Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform)

payal — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Géza von Radványi

Wolfe Video

Manuela von Meinhardis despondently lays flowers on the grave of her mother. It is Prussia in 1910, and as an orphaned teenager, she isn’t left with many options.

Manuela’s aunt takes her to a convent, which is described as a citadel by the Headmistress, Sister Superior. “Poverty is an honor,” she barks at Manuela upon the girl’s arrival. “Get used to tragic blows—you are being trained to be the future mother of soldiers.” The militaristic attitude of Prussian culture is shown in various manners throughout the film: the girls march in formation to enter the convent, they eat in a mess hall, and they regard Sister Superior as their sergeant. Superior tells the students that the values of the school align with those of Prussian women: children, church, and kitchen. The convent is not a scholarly institution; the female students are being trained to serve man, God, and country.

A source of kindness and hope that the girls experience is in the form of Fraeulein von Bernburg. Sister Superior and the teacher von Bernburg are respectful to each other, although they are clearly at odds with each other. Superior welcomes rigidity, rules, and repercussions, while Fraeulein favors empathy and guidance. After a minor disagreement about student behavior, Superior predicts that she and von Bernburg’s paths will inevitably part some day. She fails to realize how quickly that day will arrive.

Manuela is in a new environment and still grieving the loss of her recently deceased mother, so it is easy to see why she gravitates towards Fraeulein von Bernburg. Not only is the teacher beautiful and kind; she genuinely cares about Manuela and wants her to thrive. But the relationship between the teacher and student is not destined to be gentle or effortless. Within the confines of the convent, feelings of repression, jealousy, and sexual curiosity stew among the girls and the all-female staff. This combination turns into a powder keg of sorts, with Manuela and her teacher directly at the center.

The relationship between the two is fraught with angst and drama, but it’s a relationship worth remembering. Despite the fact that the feelings between Manuela and her teacher are not accepted by the society in which they live, both women have a clear conscience about their actions—a lesson that should be noted by anyone, regardless of the culture or time period.

At first I doubted that I would enjoy the film. Honestly, I thought, will I care about a movie that takes place in a pre-World War I Prussian convent that is in German and barely qualifies as being rated PG? However, I was pleasantly surprised at the emotions I found myself experiencing throughout the course of the film: sadness, curiosity, and joy were just a few. And I was genuinely interested in the plight of the characters. The actions of the women at the convent reminded me that people always seem to fulfill roles that help them to cope with difficult situations. Sister Superior was the ailing but brutal general, commanding the troops. Fraeulein von Bernberg was the mother figure, offering tender support and comfort to the girls. One student even took on the role of class clown. Her morale-raising antics caused me to laugh out loud each time she took the screen.

Mädchen in Uniform offers viewers an honest and beautiful look at the relationships between women who are all at different, yet equally trying times in their lives. Its message rings true even fifty years after the original release.

Written by: Rachel Scheib, October 28th 2010

We Have To Stop Now

barbara — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Robyn Dettman

Dynakit Productions

We Have To Stop Now is freakin’ hilarious, excruciating, and perfect. You have to watch it. Convention dictates that I now tell you why.

It all started in 1994 when I watched the Out There Comedy Special on Comedy Central while I was in college. Suzanne Westenhoefer had a ten minute stand up set on that one-off queer comedy show, and I was hooked. So when I saw her name on this blog’s list of review items, followed by the words “lesbian” and “comedy tv series,” I requested that I be the one to review it. I was Lady Request, the Grand Duchess of Request Land, in the country of Requestshire. It soon arrived in the mail and I decided to watch it in bed one Saturday morning with my lovely wife Sarah. She asked, “What’s it about?” and I didn’t know. I told her about seeing “Suzanne Westenhoefer” and “lesbian comedy tv series” and the requesting, and said that was as far as I’d gotten. So I grabbed the leaflet that came with the DVD, and realised it was about a lesbian couple who are both psychotherapists, who are splitting up in couples therapy after a very long relationship, with the added complication that they’ve just written a bestselling relationship manual together. Delightful breakfast viewing, I assured her, and pressed play.

Despite the excruciating premise, this show is hysterical. Cathy DeBuono, who’s new to us but whom we gather is very well known to our fellow lesbians across the Atlantic (particularly for a couple of films she’s produced and starred in that are getting rave reviews, that we also now plan to check out), commands the small screen with some serious intensity. Jill Bennett plays her highly-strung and emotionally hyper-literate partner with the comic foil stylings needed to balance things out. The couple could be any couple, queer or not, therapists or not. Their quirks, foibles, habits, and anxieties were heightened enough to reassure us we had nothing to worry about, but had that grain of truth that made us recognise ourselves and the kinds of things we argue about as well. Suzanne Westenhoefer plays their wonderfully incredulous therapist. During their sessions, her facial expressions alone should have had her running to supervision—the acting in the silences is some of the best I’ve seen on screen from all three main performers (on a par with hit British series The Royle Family—our gift to you). The fourth character is a mooching stoner sister-in-law of doom who never shuts up, so I can’t assess Ann Noble’s ability in this area. But I can certainly vouch for her writing skills—she wrote the whole thing and it’s absolutely brilliant.

There’s a lot of stuff going on, despite the series being so brief (only six episodes in season one). There are many surreal tangents, creative stretchings of coincidence and reality (there ought to be be an entropy meter in the corner of the screen) and a real life deus ex machina or two.

I’m a pay-per-view web series virgin, but, like my early forays into sexuality, I’m curious enough to try it. Twenty-four dollars sounds like a lot for the privilege of watching one show (although the second series has sixteen episodes), but it’s cheaper than a monthly cable subscription, so you might want to consider it. If you’d rather delay your gratification, you can buy each season on DVD after it’s finished airing.

You should definitely do one or the other though, or you’re missing out. It’s beautifully produced, very funny, scathingly well written and observed, and I highly recommend it.

Written by: Chella Quint, October 9th 2010

Orgasmic: Erotica for Women

mandy — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

By Rachel Kramer Bussel

Cleis Press

I remember flipping quickly through the pages of my friends’ romance novels in high school looking for the juicy parts. The sexy parts. I had been told the books would be like "porn for women," so I assumed there would be something pornographic in the material. Alas, as soon as I found a creamy white thigh slipping out of a slit in a skirt, it was magically the next morning and the characters were talking... again. So, I gave up. Fortunately, Orgasmic addresses the need of female-oriented erotic literature more directly.

Admittedly, as an adult well grounded in societal norms, it was difficult to take Orgasmic seriously when I opened it with a friend over margaritas at a Mexican restaurant. The collection of stories found in the book contain, though not intentionally, some humorous material. However, while some of the dialogue (or the words authors come up with for sexual anatomy) makes for solid comedy, other stories are not to be taken so lightly.

Do not, for example, read Dusty Horn's “Share” while on a plane (trust me). Unless you’re a veteran member of the mile high club or know how to take care of business in tight places, public spaces are not the right place to read this story. Dusty writes a truly erotic lesbian adventure that is both cervically and cerebrally stimulating. What makes this story stand out from a few of its neighbors is that it is really well written, and really sexy.

Take this line about her double-ended toy for example, “A tug of war—I pull on the dick with my hand and counter clench around the bulb with my pussy wall. Where do you think you’re going?” Dusty does not stop there with her toy-inspired escapades; there is dildo pistol whipping, dildo sucking, fucking, jerking, and on... and on.

Lolita Lopez’s “The Chair” is also eye wideningly kinky, and may inspire you to take a more mechanical approach to your sex life. “Hurdles,” by Rowan Elizabeth, is nearly a how-to guide. While her methods for getting off on oral may not work for you, there’s still a great lesson to be learned about communicating with your partner about what you need to get it done.

Perhaps some of the clichés and silly references to the fins on Cadillacs looking like dicks are part of Orgasmic's charm. Sometimes sex is funny. Sometimes the things that turn us on are funny. Some might say, “different strokes for different folks.” Orgasmic is, indeed, full of a lot of strokes. If one story makes you laugh, try the next; that one might just get the job done.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, September 20th 2010