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About a month ago, Kitty Stryker wrote a piece for the Good Vibrations Magazine, I Never Called it Rape: Addressing Abuse in BDSM Communities, in which she opened up a really important topic. It’s one that’s been simmering for a while and now that it’s come up in such a public way, there’s been a lot of different responses. There’s been the predictable set of comments, both on the Good Vibrations Magazine and on Fetlife (a social networking site for the BDSM crowd).
Some folks are making excuses for doms who assault their subs, some people are asking why people who have been assaulted don’t report it, and a few are trying to find ways to make room for both BDSM and rape …
Continue reading BDSM & Rape: What Now?
Psychology Today posted a piece by someone with a PhD in computational neuroscience and someone with a PhD in biologically inspired models of machine learning, which apparently qualifies them to make some remarkable statements about gender, sexuality, and relationships. They seem to prefer making some remarkably reductionist and essentialist claims about how sex works, along with the usual sweeping statements. That might work well in the computer lab, but that’s hardly how people work in the real world.
So I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that their recent piece Why Feminism is the Anti-Viagra is more of the same. Their thesis centers on the idea that “gender equality inhibits arousal”. To support this, they offer a few bits of evidence:
- many women have
…
Continue reading When Scientists Don’t Understand Sex: Feminism, Dominance, and Arousal
I’ve been really intrigued by the comments on my post last week, Consent and Public Disgrace. Some folks found that it helped them unpack some of the issue of consent. Others pointed out (rightfully, I think) that the question of what forms of sexuality are permitted in public spaces is deeply influenced by privilege. Homophobia, for example, prompts plenty of people to use the “I don’t care what gays do, as long as it’s private” argument, even when male-female couples do many of the same things without any backlash.
Not surprisingly, some people argued that the walking a woman around in public, nude or tied up, or that having a woman on the ground drinking out of a dog bowl isn’t sexual. Personally, …
Continue reading The Nuances of Consent: More Thoughts About Public Disgrace
Another really interesting research project came through my RSS feed today. Here’s the text from the survey landing page. Check it out and pass it on!
As a student at Goddard College I am gathering stories from individuals who have experienced sexual trauma and have, either successfully or unsuccessfully, intentionally used BDSM to cope with, treat, or otherwise re-direct their emotions around the issue. BDSM is a compound acronym referring to Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism and Masochism among other variants in sexual exploration. For the purposes of this survey it is the term used to account for all “alternative” sexual practices related to the mentioned activities.
This interview is being administered under the assumption that you, as the interviewee, have at some point …
Continue reading Call for Participants: Research on BDSM and Its Effects on Trauma and Shame
As anyone who’s been a regular reader of my stuff will know, I’m a big fan of consent. Of course, very few people will come out and say that they’re not. But for me, consent is one of the three supports for sex-positivity, the other two being pleasure and well-being. I firmly believe that the only important measure of a sexual experience or relationship is whether the participants’ consent, pleasure, and well-being are attended to.
I’m also a big fan of sexual fantasy. I think that there’s no such thing as an inherently dangerous or bad fantasy. The kinds of questions that I think are important are: How do you feel about your fantasies? Do they support your sex life? Do they get …
Continue reading Consent and Public Disgrace
The Leather Archives & Museum is an amazing organization. They collect, preserve, and exhibit the histories of the BDSM and leather communities. A lot of the ephemera, artwork, films and literature produced by communities of erotic affiliation gets lost or destroyed and the LAM is doing a huge service to these communities and to sexology by preserving them.
I just received a press release calling for people to document their “alternative” sexual practices as part of their collection. They’re especially interested in hearing from people who don’t identify as part of or participate in the BDSM communities. Check out the call for participants below and get in touch with Clarisse if you want to be part of this project.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Clarisse Thorn…
Continue reading Call for Participants: Documenting Alternative Sexualities with the Leather Archives & Museum
This showed up in my RSS feed today. Please forward widely!
Call for Submissions: Lesbian BDSM Erotica Anthology [Title Forthcoming]
To be published by Cleis Press in fall 2011
Editor Sinclair Sexsmith is looking for hot, sexy, well-written stories about kinky sex between queer women, from bondage scenarios to power play to role play to sadism and masochism to sensation play, for a new anthology of lesbian BDSM erotica. Looking for characters with a range of age, race, sexual experience, gender identity and gender expression: butch, femme, genderqueer, gender-non-conforming, dapper, and others will all be considered. Cis women, trans women, and genderqueer characters who identify with the lesbian community are welcome. Stories should have strong literary voice, characters, tension, and rising action. All characters must …
Continue reading Call for Submissions: Lesbian BDSM Erotica
Folsom St. Fair was yesterday. It’s the biggest kink/leather/BDSM event anywhere and as often happens, the weather gods smiled on the pervs. The sun was out, but it was just enough to make the skin on the men glisten with sweat.
But I digress.
Every year, a few people get their knickers in a twist about the event, saying that all that open sexuality is dangerous, scary, and harmful to teh kiddiez. And yeah, it’s not a kid-friendly event. Unlike many people, I don’t think that children need to be protected from sexuality. I think that they deserve to be protected from adult sexuality because children and adolescents need the room to be sexual beings as children and adolescents. We let 5-year-olds play tee ball, …
Continue reading Why Folsom St. Fair is Fun, Sexy and Important
From Lee Harrington’s LJ
Spirit of Desire: Personal Journeys in Sacred Kink
In 2009, Lee Harrington’s “Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond” opened up the dialogue around altered states of consciousness, sexuality with intent, sex magic, and BDSM and its intersections with faith to an audience hungry for information. Now, it’s time to tell your stories.
Have you experienced catharsis, ordeals, transformation or a rite of passage in your erotic edge experiences? Do your perceive your consensual slavery as an ascetic path, find depth in your fear play, or dance in delight at the end of a lash? Do your fetish objects hold actual power? Does your connection to the divine manifest through your kink, engaging you through possession in or through …
Continue reading Call for Submissions: Spirit of Desire: Personal Journeys in Sacred Kink
One of the most common pieces of advice that you’ll ever hear about sex is “communicate with your partner(s)”. And while that sounds good, it can be difficult to follow. Almost everyone has ways in which talking about sex brings up challenges. Perhaps you don’t have the language to ask for what you want. Or you’re worried about how your partner might react. Or that if you ask for what you want, it will mean something about you. Or you fear rejection. Or that you feel shame for your desires. Or maybe, simply that you’ve had unpleasant experiences when you’ve tried talking about sex and that makes it harder to bring up again.
If we want to develop happy sex lives, we need to be …
Continue reading Yes/No/Maybe Lists
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