femme

Best Lesbian Erotica 2010

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

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

Mangos with Chili (7/11/2010)

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Bluestockings

New York, New York

I was thrilled to be able to attend a special Mangos with Chili show on Sunday night at Bluestockings in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I was thrilled not just because I consider the founders, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Galette, dear amig@s, nor because dear amig@s of mine have performed under the spicy sweet banner, pero because the center is queer, trans, and gender nonconforming artists of color. Sunday night, people packed the bookstore and activist center to bear witness to the words and work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Victor Tobar, Ignacio Rivera, and Jai Dulani.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha opened the floor reading a piece from a memoir she’s working on about her life as a queer femme from Sri Lanka and creating community. Victor Tobar, in a series of stunning spoken word pieces, brought us to the Bronx and Brooklyn, and explored struggling against gentrification in those streets, what those streets demand of of their queer brown children, and how those children grow into adults, not easily, but wrapped in memories that constrain and free.

Brooklyn Black Boricua Ignacio Rivera used words to redefine the body as an answer to negative socialization and abuse and, in doing so, reclaimed kinky sexuality in his own terms. Rivera forced the listeners to confront our histories of violence and our daily interactions with it above and underground.

Jai Dulani closed the circle by presenting a film he has been working on regarding Caster Semenya entitled Caster Semenya: Wrong is Not Her Name. The film, through the use of news clips, looks at the invasive scrutiny Semenya’s gender underwent following her win in the women’s world 800-meter race. Dulani shows how race and gender biases collided and the history of the white, male, heteronormative gaze on the bodies of those who claim “woman.”

The artists in this Mangos with Chili performance reveal a breadth of talent fed by real life experiences rooted in personal struggles and continued survival. Some of their work will make you uncomfortable because of its frankness and raw reality, pero for many it will feel like someone opened the curtains in a dark secret room you were sitting alone in, let the sun in, and then threw a party.

It was all love.

Please follow Mangos with Chili as they decide their next tour and please follow all of the amazing artists. Arte, poesia y imagen can change the world.

Cross-posted at VivirLatino

Video credit: Sins Invalid

Written by: Maegan La Mala Ortiz, July 20th 2010

Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edited by Tristan Taormino

Cleis Press

So, I sometimes forget that reading erotica and looking at BDSM queer porn in the library of an Ivy League university is not necessarily standard practice. Lucky for me, I go to Brown, where I’m concentrating in Gender and Sexuality studies, and have somehow managed to legitimize studying sex manuals with postmodern theory in order to (supposedly, so they say) get a degree next year. Along with my academic studies and personal intrigues, I am also active with various events and groups on campus explicitly related to sexuality, so am known on campus for… well, let’s just say, when I pulled out Tristan Taormino’s Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica in the middle of the bustling Science Library lobby during the mad rush of studying for midterms, I got simply passing (mostly jealous) chuckles from friends venturing down into the depths of the stacks with unread textbooks in their arms.

This exciting collection of twenty-three stories is edited by author, director, and educator Tristan Taormino, and is a part of the Best Lesbian Erotica series, which has won three Lambda Awards. Cleis Press, who published the book, focuses on queer sexualities, putting out various sex guides, gender/queer theory texts, and works of fiction.

As the publisher notes, Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica is about “dispelling myths, realizing fantasies, and delivering outstanding writing with distinct contributor voices.” In the introduction, Taormino expresses the desire to “queer gender throughout the spectrum,” viewing gender as multilayered, constantly changing, and problematizing the reductionist and prescriptive discourses around butch/femme identities:

Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heels, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s performance and it’s not. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.

The stories focus on the separation and convergence of the personal and the political, the body and fantasy, and address some examples of what really goes on in bed between self-identified butches and femmes. As a new reader of butch/femme lesbian erotica, I was surprised about the diversity of relationships, identities and desires, and found that while some of it was a real turn-on for me, others not so much. But that is okay. In the end, the appeal of the collection is about the confidence and attitude that exudes from the authors as they own their own identity expressions, desires, and pursuits of pleasure.

Written by: Abigail Chance, April 26th 2010