sex positive

Modern Day Asian Sex Slavery: The Musical (2/18/11)

brittany — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Long Beach, California

Each year CSULB has Sex Positive Week, presented by various feminist and queer student groups. Mariko Passion, activist, artist, and out and proud sex worker, kicked off the week of festivities with her one-woman show, Modern Day Asian Sex Slavery: The Musical.

Passion is a champion of what she refers to as the Whore Revolution, a phrase coined by fellow activist Emi Koyama. According to Koyama, the Whore Revolution begins with the acknowledgment that not all sex work is voluntary or safe and it aspires to create a world in which they are. After getting to know Passion a bit and attending an event thrown by the Sex Workers Outreach Program in Los Angeles (SWOP-LA), it has been brought to my attention that there is an entire generation of young women who do not feel victimized by their work. There are literally thousands of women who are not ashamed of how they make their money. These are women who are passionate, empowered, intelligent, and fighting for the most basic of human rights. As Jessie Nicole, director or SWOP-LA told me at an event earlier this month, sex workers see their work as just that—work. The average person doesn’t have to worry about being beaten, raped, or robbed while at the office and sex workers don’t want to have to worry about these things either.

Passion began her one woman show explaining to the audience that she starts each session with a massage. Straddling a pink Hello Kitty body pillow, Passion described how she uses her small hands to rub and coax her client into a safe, submissive state. This quiet before the storm also assists her in preparing to be intimate. According to Passion, eighty-five percent of the time she is not sexually attracted to the men she services and her sensual, slow massage enables her to “establish a genuine connection” while getting in the mood.

Her show was off to a strong start but was interrupted by various technical glitches and a few awkward on-stage costume changes that resulted in the audience getting a glimpse of Passion’s goods. It was obvious that Passion, who is Chinese and Japanese, hoped to tell the story of the plight of the Asian sex worker and the many ridiculous sound bits and pop culture tidbits she’s been reduced to. As a matter of fact, one of the most compelling moments of Passion’s show was when it appeared as if she broke away from the script, cursing, saying how much the infamous scene from Full Metal Jacket fucked with her childhood, how often she heard, “Me so horny, me love you long time.” As a virginal child completely unaware of sex work, it proved a rude introduction to the stereotypes Asian women must deal with.

Using old news clips and radio broadcasts, music, slides, and songs, it was an admiral attempt to cover decade’s worth of racism and sexual politics stemming from the Vietnam War, but it simply seemed like Passion didn’t have enough time to tell the story that was in her heart. Though entertaining and containing flashes of genius (traipsing around stage using a pink dildo as a mic and singing a dirty version of “I Enjoy Being a Girl"), we’ll have to call this a precocious work in progress with a lot of potential.

Photo courtesy of Stefan Agregado, photographer and photo editor at The Daily 49er.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, February 28th 2011

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

Nirvana of Pussy: A Conversation with Tucker Max

brittany — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Tucker Max

All I wanted to know was if Tucker Max was for real. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, he is. Explaining that if he has learned anything over the past five years, it is that people are fucking stupid, clearly the infamous Tucker Max was extraordinarily candid when we talked about his new book Assholes Finish First. His candor was particularly astounding, as he knew I was a writer for Elevate Difference, a site with a mission to advance political and social justice, while Max is embodiment of all things politically incorrect. He is particularly known throughout the feminist community for his drunken antics with women, which I personally believe have been consistently misconstrued, and this was my chance to find out if I was right.

Perhaps it was the simple fact that I was dared to read Max’s first book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell that so quickly brought me into his fold, or the fact that reading it made me feel like a subversive sex-positive feminist. More than anything, it was my curiosity about the man behind the controversial books that made this book reviewer seek out the infamous sex writer.

Speaking on the phone, before I even got through my introduction, Max jumped in to explain that his work is not a commentary on male sexuality, but simply writing about his real life. He is a man with some seemingly outrageous stories to tell and us aspiring sexologists should make no further assumptions. Fair enough.

Max believes that we are a society still “too prudish and buttoned-up” to teach sex education properly. He quickly conceded that the next generation of sex ed will largely center on porn and work like his own, and even Tucker Max finds this “shameful.” The fact that anyone is learning about sex from his books and not from school or their parents is truly shocking. Thankfully (or not), virgins across America are turning to Tucker Max for their intellectual and physical sexual education. The fact that thirty-year-olds with no sexual experience and barely-eighteen-year-olds all reach out to him as a sexual celebrity and a familiar person to take their virginity—literally—is surprising, even to Tucker.

Assholes Finish First is Max’s follow-up to the best-selling I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and it takes so-called “fratire” to a new level. Dividing the book into his pre- and post-fame lives—a decision that emerged as he was writing and friends (the familiar Nils and Bunny to fans) noted a clearly different tenor between these stories—gives a new richness to his work. Because these are tales from only one man, the juxtaposition honestly showcases how fame can change one’s life, especially when compared with examples of other celebrity works.

The book’s bonus section contains stories from the women Max has slept with, written from their own perspectives. He knew this would appeal to his female audience—about half his readership. It also gives a different level of credence to his body of work, because as readers we finally get to hear someone else’s side of his stories—something I wondered a lot about and am sure others have as well. Oddly enough, the accounts from both sides line up more often than not.

What is most striking to me in his post-fame stories is Max’s cognizance about the state of his own life. Most people don’t spend their days writing about themselves; they don’t have that kind of time for self-reflection. Max takes this opportunity and really looks at himself as an outsider. He is in the midst of the common transition from playboy to family man but often documents it as an outside observer. Perhaps most interesting, it is not his own words that encapsulate his feelings about the state of his life but those of his friend (which he does include in the book).

We talked about this quite a bit on the phone. Fame has brought him to this so-called “nirvana of pussy.” The ladies come to him, and they come in droves. What he emphasized was how his life is in transition, from living out his teenage dreams of endless sexual conquests to his adult aspirations for a relationship. He stated outright that, “I don’t know how to live a committed, monogamous relationship, but I want to. Living the life every nineteen-year-old guy wants,” he told me he is now “moving out of it...not fully in either phase.”

More striking was the confession that this “nirvana of pussy” was the “complete opposite” of what he expected. Max’s lesson is an obvious but universal one, even in a book about gratuitous sex: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. He qualified this, saying that it would be “totally disingenuous” to whine about it now. This is what he wanted. The fact that the lived reality was not the same as the dream is a fact of life that needs to be swallowed hard.

After I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell sold over 1.5 million copies, he had unique creative freedom with editors and publishers on the second book, Assholes Finish First. This was why he felt he could include abortion so explicitly, even using the phrase “baby killer.” Though he did not appreciate my take that his story about unintended pregnancy is a PSA for condom use, he did agree he was more actively spelling out advice in his vignette than he usually does. “[I’m] so tired of idiots taking the wrong thing out of what I write,” he said. Lots of sex does not mean lots of unsafe sex. It just means lots of sex.

A big secret: He can quote Betty Freidan. Under her definition, Max is a self-declared feminist. So why the incessant anger from the feminist community? He believes he is often labeled a misogynist because he doesn’t worship all things female. He also thinks “extremeophiles,” those who see all porn as rape, had a large role in much of this labeling. Max estimates that twenty-five percent of his readership is comprised of self-identified feminists, with women as half of his overall readership.

To him, the reality is that that he “makes fun of people,” at-large. Not women, not men, just people that he thinks suck. “Sometimes a woman can be a bitch or a guy can be a shithead, [and they] need [to be called out],” he told me. According to Max, calling someone a slut has nothing to do with his or her sexual experience. It is the power of the label itself. When he’s using such a label, he doesn’t know the reality of that individual’s life. He’s doing it just to get a rise out of someone, because he can.

His most vehement reaction to my series of questions on feminism was around what I see as a common thread in his books, the Madonna-whore dichotomy. Max sees the entire dichotomy as “bullshit” and says it just doesn’t apply to his work.

As our conversation wound down, we talked about his wide readership. Ranging from sixteen-year-olds, who view him as a demigod, to fifty-year-olds reliving their glory days, what makes Tucker Max so appealing? In his eyes, he is simply “objectively funny [and] painfully, authentically raw,” something we don’t see much in media, if at all. He “exists outside the machine.” It shows.

The book launch I attended was at a West Village dive bar, up the stairs in the back, and totally public. Max has no sanctioned book reviews on the jacket of a follow-up to a New York Times bestseller. His Cinderella tale of success—of having his manuscript rejected by every publisher, to building an audience through his blog, and gaining the leverage to write the exact book he wanted—was one of the first, though in the blog-to-book world, has become commonplace. Central to his wide readership, he claims, is his balance between self-indulgence and corporate appeal. He is attempting to create the best art that he can while resonating with his wide audience. Yes, Assholes Finish First is art.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 16th 2010

Hide Your Face(book) in Shame: Facebook and The Censorship of Female Sexuality

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Self Serve

A lot can happen in ten minutes. You can make your morning commute to work. You can do twenty sit-ups. You can have an orgasm. If you are business owners Molly Adler and Matie Fricker of Albuquerque's Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center, ten minutes can be all the time you need to inform people about the hazards of labiaplasty.

Also known as female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS), labiaplasty is a controversial elective medical procedure that involves the surgical re-shaping of labia in order to make a woman's vulva look more “appealing.” A 2007 statement about FCGS, issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), read as follows: "Women should be informed about the lack of data supporting the efficacy of these procedures and their potential complications, including infection, altered sensation, dyspareunia, adhesions, and scarring."

In true sex-positive, DIY spirit, Adler and Fricker, along with Alee Ross-Raymond, put together a YouTube video called You Don't Need Labiaplasty. According to Matie Fricker:

“We created a video that included pictures of vulvas from Betty Dodson’s genital art gallery. So many women have body dysmorphia, and seeing unedited photos of healthy diverse genitalia is important. The video also included an impassioned plea to love your body. We had posted two versions of the video on YouTube. One of the video's start screens had Molly’s face on it, and [the other] was a full frontal vulva in an unaroused state. The video with the vulva on it got ten times as many hits.

“I posted the video on our Facebook page with the vulva because it was clear from our experience on YouTube that people wanted to see the female body. I posted the video on our Facebook page and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Many women thanked us and confessed to insecurities they had long carried.

“One of the comments was negative. Of our 1,300+ fans we lost one. I spoke to Molly about it the next day... and we decided we were going to post our next status update asking what our community felt was appropriate. The only people who saw the video were people who had self-selected to be our fans. We had decided we would ask our fans what they wanted to see and adjust accordingly.”

Before the women could act on their decision, Self Serve’s page and all of their administrative pages had been removed from Facebook.

Molly Adler sent off a message to a representative in Facebook's User Operations department seeking the reactivation of all accounts. On August 2, 2010 Adler was told that all of the personal accounts belong to Self Serve administrators were reactivated, but that the Self Serve page itself would not be reinstated due to terms of use violation.

Would Facebook have banned the Self Serve account had it not used that screen shot, but still used images of vulvas throughout the video? Would Facebook have banned the account had the video been posted completely devoid of any genital images? Why does Facebook consider a vague notion of safety and an honest discussion about the very real hazards of female genital modification to be at odds with one another?

These questions are not just “what-ifs.” Sadly, they're also rhetorical. At the time of this writing—over a month after the banning of Self Serve's page—the administrators of the Self Serve account never heard got a reply to their last e-mail, and their account is still suspended.

Self Serve isn't the only women-owned sexuality boutique to have its Facebook page banned. Chicago's Early2Bed also lost their page. E2B founder Searah Deysach started her feminist sex shop in 2001 because she “love[s] sex toys and wanted to create a safe space for people to buy and explore them.” Deysach started a company Facebook page about two years ago. According to Deysach, while it existed, the page was warmly received with around 500 followers.

And then one day, the Early2Bed Facebook page simply disappeared. “No specific reason was given so I read the rules and the only thing we could have possibly violated was the obscenity clause, but we had... nothing more 'obscene' than the other sex shops that have pages.”

Like Self Serve, E2B was notified about the account's banning by email. Like the owners of Self Serve, Deysach contacted Facebook to find out what could be done. Unlike Self Serve, however, no reasons were given for the E2B account disappearance. Deysach went on to say that she has received “no responses to our many emails.”

So what's the deal with Facebook? Why are they so freaked out by lady parts and the sex-positive women who seek to celebrate them?

In order to get some sort of answer out of Facebook regarding their position on this issue, I went to the source itself—specifically, to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and to the Facebook Principles. Please keep in mind that Facebook claims that the former is “derived” from the latter.

Section 3 of the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, labeled “Safety,” states: “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” Here, Facebook lumps sex and violence together, putting them on par with one another. Not only that, but they are apparently also willing to consider nudity synonymous with pornography. Herein lies one of the (many) problems.

Section 4 reads as follows: “If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.” That's all well and good, but how can a former user get permission to create a new account when representatives stop responding to their emails?

Further along, section 4.5 states that no one under the age of thirteen can have a Facebook account. How can Facebook hide behind the argument of “safety” as a justification for censoring images of women's genitalia? The United States is the company’s biggest market. By age thirteen, most children educated in U.S. public schools are already learning sex education. Granted, it's likely an “abstinence-only” curriculum, but children are still being exposed to anatomical representations of the human genitals by that point in their lives. Furthermore, Facebook has its own “Safety Center,” including a sub-section labeled “Safety For Parents.” The information provided includes ways that an account's privacy settings can be modified to block those profiles that users do not want to see.

Section 5 is “Protecting Other People's Rights.” SRR Secs. 5.3 and 5.4 state that “We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. If we remove your content for infringing someone else's copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal.” I find the language of this section particularly contentious, as it seems that “protection of other people's rights” in the Facebook world extends only to the possibility of intellectual property infringement; it has nothing to do with the right to free speech. In fact, it doesn't just seem that way; it is that way.

Let's move on to selections from the unintentional hilarity that is “The Facebook Principles.” From Principle 3, “Free Flow of Information”: "People should have the freedom to access all of the information made available to them by others. People should also have practical tools that make it easy, quick, and efficient to share and access this information."

Yes, they should. But when people are denied access to that information by: a. dictating what is acceptable speech; and then b. banning accounts belonging to individuals or organizations who try to share important information that you have nonetheless deemed “unacceptable,” a company proves itself to be stunningly ignorant and embarrassingly hypocritical all at once.

From Principle 7, “Fundamental Service”: "People should be able to use Facebook for free to establish a presence, connect with others, and share information with them. Every Person should be able to use the Facebook Service regardless of his or her level of participation or contribution."

Unless Facebook deems that the information you're trying to share is “pornographic” rather than, y'know, informative (not to mention supported by the American medical establishment), in which case you get the boot.

From Prinicple 8, “Common Welfare”: "The rights and responsibilities of Facebook and the People that use it should be described in a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which should not be inconsistent with these Principles."

It would be nice were this the case, but sadly, it's not. The SRR is inconsistent with the supposed Facebook Principles. You can try to spin it otherwise, but the proof is in right there online, plain as day for everyone with the most basic critical analytical skills to evaluate.

From Principle 9, “Transparent Process”: "Facebook should publicly make available information about its purpose, plans, policies, and operations. Facebook should have a town hall process of notice and comment and a system of voting to encourage input and discourse on amendments to these Principles or to the Rights and Responsibilities." Facebook will not, however, respond to e-mail pleas from otherwise conscientious users with noble intentions and loads of supporters.

It was extraordinarily savvy of Facebook's PR team/bevy of lawyers/Department of Cognitive Dissonance to start pretty much every sentence of its "Facebook Principles" with the phrase "People should have..." Yes, people (and groups and organizations and businesses, et al) should have all of those things Facebook has delineated among their supposed principles. But a quick perusal of the SRR, combined with the reality of their actions in relation to supposedly "objectionable" content, clearly indicates that this is simply not the case. It's as though they're saying, "You totally should have these things–but you don't. And you won't. Because we're not gonna let you."

The larger question is this: How do sex-positive individuals, businesses, and organizations combat this sort of societal resistance to–and censorship of–female sexuality?

In response, Molly Adler and Matie Fricker at Self Serve told me, “We can continue to try following the rules, terms etc., and challenging this notion that all sexual information and all images of the human body are obscene. That notion is obscene! The more space and voice sex positive feminists are given to speak for shame-free, guilt-free positive sexuality, the more perhaps our culture will steer in that direction.”

Searah Deysach added, “We need to continue to be vocal and fight censorship when we can! We need to band together to be a louder voice. We need to keep promoting sex positive imagery and ideas wherever we can. Facebook is huge, but there are lots of other venues out there.”

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, September 3rd 2010

Sex Appeal: Six Ethical Principles for the 21st Century

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Paul Abramson

Oxford University Press

Sex Appeal flows in an intuitive series of ideas and expresses thoughts that may be obvious, but seem to be seldom practiced. The six logical principles regarding sex for our era outlined in Paul Abramson’s book are not only interesting, but vital to a peaceful coexistence.

If you tried to make a personal guideline for sex using the golden rule, you might get a summation of Abramson’s leading principals: do no harm, celebrate sex, be careful, know yourself, speak up and speak out, and throw no stones. Doing no harm, according to the author, reaches beyond avoiding sexual violence and demands honesty between sexual partners. Abramson encourages readers to be honest with their partners about their history and their expectations. What better way to avoid the spread of STIs and the cliche (but true) image of teenage girls everywhere crying into their pillows, “But he said he loved me.” Every chapter in the book refers back to this idea and seems to spin on an axis around it.

To disarm readers who may assume Abramson is an advocate of having no sex, the author has included an entire chapter encouraging readers to celebrate the act. He argues, though, that the catch to celebrating sex may mean abstaining. For some, that could mean waiting until a certain age, or for others, avoiding it within a certain relationship. The author argues that to really enjoy the amazing experience of intercourse, one has to be mature enough to handle it, which, of course, brings us back to “do no harm,” but also leads into the next idea.

Be careful. When it comes to sex, you don’t even need your mom to tell you this one. Until people are practicing “do no harm” like it’s their job, orgasming comes second to playing safe. So in addition to not hurting others, we don’t hurt ourselves, and the best way to do that is to know ourselves.

“Speak Up and Speak Out” as well as “Throw No Stones” both pull out of the genitals and move into the brain. There’s a lot to understand about sex, Abramson points out, that goes beyond how to do it. These two chapters discuss fairness, protecting oneself and others, ways to avoid or deal with sexual abuse, and harnessing judgment and stigmas around sex—especially as they’re expressed in the US.

While it’s unlikely to happen, the book should probably be part of the curriculum of every high school sex ed class. Occasionally, explanations seem to drag on and some analogies comparing sex to soccer go just a little too far, but the points are valid, clear, and important. Much of what Abramson discusses in this short book may seem blatant to a sexually active adult, but to a young person, the insights (or at least the lessons attached to them) could be huge.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, April 29th 2010

Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex

admin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Claire Cavanah, Rachel Venning

Avery Books

If you’re looking for a book about anything and everything related to sex, look no further than Moregasm. It starts with the basics—getting to know the lay of the land on a woman’s body. It moves on to a thorough discussion of orgasms, masturbation, and toys; a chapter on men; an exploration of what can turn you on; a how-to on sex with the hand or mouth; penis-in-vagina intercourse; safe sex practices; and a question and answer section. Each chapter also has its own Q&A more specifically related to the topic of that chapter.

With its bright colors, pictures and diagrams on almost every page, and clear language, it’s informative, and also very easy—even fun!—to read. It assumes you know nothing and gives general information that’s easy to follow, but it also has some suggestions for how to spice things up and take things to the next level if you’re no longer a novice.

One of the best sections of this book is the chapter entitled “Love Thyself,” and discusses orgasms, masturbation, and sex toys. It’s not exactly a surprise that this chapter has the most information, seeing as how the book is Babeland’s guide to sex and Babeland is all about sex toys and self-love. Another chapter choc-full of information was “Getting Off: By Hand, By Mouth.” These chapters were my favorites because they had great information with detailed diagrams, but the book has a little something for almost everyone, whether you’re looking to try BDSM or anal sex, or just getting started with a vibrator.

I will say that this book probably doesn’t have a lot for you if you’re a sex expert. It can bring you back to basics, but if you’ve been there, done that with everything sex-related, it won’t offer much in the way of new information. Overall, though, it’s informative and engaging. This is definitely a book I’ll recommend to my friends and keep handy so I can refer to it periodically.

Written by: frau sally benz, March 18th 2010

The Line

admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Directed by Nancy Schwartzman

This documentary, which clocks in at just twenty-four minutes, will continue to haunt you long after it ends. The Line is Nancy Schwartzman’s wonderfully brave effort to interrogate the circumstances of a sexual assault she endured while living aboard. Because she is not a “perfect victim” (the incident happened after she willingly went home with a guy, as opposed to having been raped by a stranger), she soon finds that this leaves her no recourse in the eyes of law.

What’s more, Schwartzman’s sense of herself as a sex-positive feminist, an identity she had long embraced, was severely shaken. What becomes clear, however, is that it isn’t Nancy who has a problem: it’s the misogynist sexual rules of a culture that beckons a woman’s sexual confidence on the one hand and beats it into submission on the other that are really to blame. Images of bikini-clad twenty-somethings doing keg stands while a crowd of young men look on only make her point further (need I mention Jersey Shore?)

Rendered as a kind of visual personal essay, Schwartzman frames her story with a chorus of voices—family, friends, advocates, legal counsel—who, though sympathetic, cannot give her the answer she seeks: where is the line of consent in which a sexual encounter goes from wanted to unwanted? Schwartzman makes two important realizations on which the whole story of trying to understand the why and how of her date rape pivots: the line is as personal as it is real.

Empowered and motivated to own her line of consent and let her rapist know he crossed it, Schwartzman arranges a meeting with him and records their conversation in what is a truly staggering few minutes of film. The Line is not a film you merely watch and put back on the shelf. Schwartzman has made sure of that by using it as a platform from which to promote conversation, debate, and outreach about the constellation of sex, power, pleasure, and consent. As she says, “The Line is a film. The Line is a movement. The Line is up to you.”

Written by: Heather Brown, February 18th 2010

SexIs: Sex and All Things Sexual

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:05:00 +0000

Eden Fantasies

There are an abundance of websites about sex, gender, and pleasure that range from academic, theoretical discussions to medical descriptions to sexual how-to guides, and I was admittedly skeptical of SexIs, a sex-positive community devoted to “sex and all things sexual” started by online sex toy company Eden Fantasies.

Updated weekly by a diverse collection of writers (including Feminist Review founder Mandy Van Deven), SexIs features a variety of articles about aging, disabilities, kink, fetishes, politics, anatomy, "green" sex toys, contraceptives, and body image for just about everyone—including lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, straight people, transgendered folks, and those who choose not to self-identify sexually. As a Brown University undergraduate student, I was particularly interested in the excerpt from Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer about Sam Benjamin, a ’99 alumnus who used his education to become what he describes as a “filthy but good-hearted pornographer.” In his biography, Benjamin explains his attempt to make sex positive films; however, in practice, this led to no lucrative end. In other articles, Benjamin reviews sex and women-positive projects, such as the film Rough Sex by Tristan Taormino, the only self-declared mainstream feminist pornographer.

SexIs is just one of many virtual community spaces Eden Fantasies has developed; they also have a section with interviews, a blog, and interactive forums. The content of the site reminds me of a gender-neutral discussion group I participate in called FemSex that facilitates learning and provides a safe-space that encourages individuals to gain knowledge, make self-aware decisions, explore available options, and validate their own experiences. While the SexIs' attempt to be an all-inclusive portal may seem too overwhelming or superficial to some, in the end, it creates an open space to delve into the full fluid spectrum of human sexuality. Although I question their consumerist intentions, the site is a positive space for people to learn, debate, and share ideas and experiences about pleasure.

Written by: Abigail Chance, December 3rd 2009

Steam

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Directed by Kyle Schickner

Wolfe

Steam is not a complicated film, in spite of the pseudo-complicated lives of its characters. It traces the trajectories of three female characters for a short while, seeming to span roughly six months, give or take a season. Laurie (Ally Sheedy), a divorced and bitter single mother; Doris (Ruby Dee), an elderly recent widow; and Elizabeth (Kate Siegel), a college student with a burgeoning lesbian sexual identity are brought together by chance to a sweaty respite: the steam room of their local health club.

Strangers to one another at first, they come to share small pieces of themselves as they bask in the heat, for those moments free to drop their burdens at the door and let their troubles pour out of them with their sweat. They are expunged, cleansed, baptized by the steam. The second time this flat visual metaphor is used, we were tired of it. By the fifteenth time, we were just plain annoyed. Steam from a sewer grate as Laurie shares what may be the first kiss since her divorce; steam from a bubbling pot as Doris prepares dinner for the new man in her life; steam from her cold breath mingling with her date’s lazy cigarette smoke as Elizabeth meets up with Niala (Reshma Shetty) on their first night together. Replace steam with a bottle of wine or a vibrator and Schickner may have been onto something more poetic.

Outside the steam room, we go deeper into each woman’s personal life through rotating vignettes that follow a predictable pattern. First we meet the characters as they are: disempowered and just existing, without agency. Things seem to improve for each for each of them, then quickly become much worse in sync, until each woman comes back around to find herself again at a new equilibrium. Ready to face the next challenge, they will overcome with their newly acquired storybook feminist outlook. The film narrowly imagines what a woman’s “drama” can be like, offering only tropes in the place of true complexity. To follow one character only and really develop her, or to condense the full length into a short piece would have generated the tension Schickner tries to create with overly broad strokes. The film should be driven by its narrative, but this contrived narrative is weak and can’t live up to its own expectations fully.

Steam puts forth some strong messages by way of its women: queer, sex-positive, and age-positive themes that are always welcome and so often lacking from today’s big budget blockbusters. Chelsea Handler holds what’s left of the film together by a thread with her bit supporting role, providing comic relief as the wise-cracking counterpart to Sheedy’s self-deprecating Laurie. Steam is like a sauna, nice at first but if you stay in too long you might start to get prickly and irritated, or just really tired.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, Nic Vetter, October 18th 2009