Ice-Age Porn

One of the oldest and most famous depictions of the sexualized female body is The Venus of Willendorf. Dating back to 22,000 BCE, the Venus of Willendorf is a limestone carving about four inches high of a naked woman with oversized breasts, hips, belly, and vulva, tiny little arms and no feet. No one has any ideas what her purpose is. Having no feet, she can’t stand up, and she’s not flat so it doesn’t seem like she’s meant to be sitting on the prehistoric version of a knick-knack shelf. She’s carved from a type of limestone not local to the area she was discovered, and evidence suggests she was designed to be held and carried around. The Willendorf Venus was the first of many similar statuettes to have been discovered, all are a similar size, all feature prominent breasts, butts and vulvas.

Scientists and art historians love to argue about the purpose of these statues, now called the Venus Figurines, often with little evidence to support their theories. The generally accepted mainstream interpretation is that they are fertility symbols of some sort, or at least that’s what I learned in my college art history class, and I bet you did too. Continue reading

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Eros the Bittersweet

I asked my gf to talk to me about the erotic and she handed me Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet. It was perfect, actually, and allowed me to think about the erotic as a combination of love and frustration, something I wouldn’t have gotten to on my own because I hate to be frustrated.

The title is a reference to Sappho, who called eros bitter sweet. Despite a long career in lesbian letters, I’d neglected to read Sappho or even learn anything about her at all until Em first read her aloud to me during one of our early dates at the Brooklyn library. As luck (or the Dewey Decimal System) would have it, the Russians (my fave) and Greeks (hers) were in the same aisle on opposing shelves. It was perfect, we spent the afternoon trying to seduce the other through our favorite authors. Continue reading

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God Loves the Gays

That’s what they always said on Pride day in my hometown, San Francisco. Summer weather in San Francisco is awful, but the last Sunday in June is always glorious.

My girlfriend and everyone I know is in New York today, marching down 5th avenue with a couple thousand other lesbians. I’m at home in Philly working on the book. It’s 88 degrees in our apartment, the a/c has been tripping the breaker so I’ve foregone it in favor of the fan. I’m wearing my working-at-home attire, a thrifted black slip and stringy hair, the attire of work-at-home femmes everywhere.

The maintenance guy came by to see if he could figure out the circuit issue. He was gracious, hardly commenting on the small research library on female orgasm that’s spread across our living room floor. He brought his daughter–she was maybe 10 or 12, sporting a cast on her arm, presumably a sports injury? She had an air of masculinity that said budding lesbian. Oh I know, I know! I shouldn’t speculate about the sexuality of adolescents! Her voice, though, it was deeper than his. What else is it though, that makes a twelve-year-old girl sports curious? Her walk, the way she carried herself, a little budding butch. At twelve I carried a purse, wore eyeshadow, wielded a curling iron. Where the hell does gender come from, anyway? Continue reading

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Writing About Orgasms

I’m finally getting close to being finished with a new book, A Woman’s Guide to Sexual Ecstasy. It will be published by Seal Press in January of next year.

I was teaching and commuting between Philly and Brooklyn too much last semester to finish writing it when I should have. Now I’m stuck in the house all summer writing when everyone else is out playing in the sun. Remind me to never have a book due at the end of the summer again.

Anyway, currently I’m writing about orgasms. Here’s the thing. For women, sexual arousal is complex and just as tied to our mental state as a physical one. One reason pharmaceutical companies have yet to come up with a satisfying female-centric substitute for Viagra has much to do with the way we experience the state of being “turned on.” In men, unless something is wrong, arousal leads to erection. Popular pharmaceutical treatments for erectile dysfunction work by relaxing the smooth muscle tissue that surrounds major arteries in the penis. This in turn allows more blood to flow to the penis, creating a firm erection. Erections provide visual feedback, a man looks down, sees that he has a hard on, and thinks “I want to have sex.” Continue reading

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So far 2011 is reminding me alot of 1991

Holly Hughes sent me this rant last week and it’s so awesome I had to share it. It’s also posted on Velvetpark

By Holly Hughes

So far 2011 is reminding me alot of 1991.

Twenty years ago, a series of spectacles of full blown sexual abuse in all its variations erupted in NYC and on the national stage. A couple of the highlights: The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, which turned into the public trial of Anita Hill. The stories were creepy and awful, the boss who continually makes lewd jokes, and men, these jokes, the pubic hair on the coke, it’s not sexy. Hate to break it to you. It’s not a turn on. I will channel my inner Whitney and become Every woman in the world and say: It’s not a turn on. For us.

It’s a humiliation. Which apparently is a turn on for you.

Then there were several awful rapes in NYC area. Like the high school football team that brutally raped a disabled woman, gang raped her, raped her with a frigging baseball bat. A baseball bat. She was out numbered, she wouldn’t have been able to protect herself, even if she hadn’t been developmently disabled.

The horror didn’t stop there, of course, the young men got turned into the real victims by their hometown and the woman was villified and it was just too much. It was so too much that for a brief moment women got over their deep and abiding distrust and dislike of each other that is the residue of sexism, of deep misogyny throughout our culture; so sickening that it prevents us from doing anything about our own situation because we despise the members of our class, and yes, I hate women too. Continue reading

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The Dangers of Brunch

Have you read The Ethical Slut? It’s the bible of the polyamory set written by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. It’s a classic and a must-read if you want to date, or even just sleep, around.

I read it years ago and definitely tried adopting all the self-empowerment principles contained within but I never really got good at it. I agree on a philosophical level that love is for sharing but the only time I’ve managed multiple girlfriends is when I’m just casually dating. And by casually dating I mean blindly getting into relationships with people I just wanted to sleep with. My downfall is brunch. Do not go to brunch with someone you sleep with if you want to remain single. I know most people will tell you the rule for keeping things casual is no spending the night. But we’re lesbians, gimme a break, it’s hard enough not to move in together immediately let alone pull your knickers on at 4 a.m. and call a cab. If you don’t want to get involved don’t succumb to the lure of eggs benedict. Continue reading

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Is it Sex?

I like when lovers write to me. Not love letters, those are usually terrible. I like to look at four-letter-words and know that someone was thinking about me as they were writing them. Reading is a sex act. Think about it: it’s an exchange of arousal, of fluids (ink) between writer and reader. Because of the impossibility of representing physical sensation in language, a writer creates a new type of sensation. And the reader gets off on it, is immersed in it actually. It’s no less a sex act than covering naked girls in cake batter at Splosh parties. Continue reading

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Costello and Tagliapietra

I noticed designers Jeffery Costello and Robert Tagliapietra themselves before I saw their designs. A 2005 photo of the flannel clad, hairy bear couple in Vogue magazine caught my queer eye. Gay male designers are nothing new in fashion, but bears in Vogue, oh my.

Known for their skilled draping and carefully constructed pieces that seem effortless on the body, the pair built their reputation on dresses in delicate fabrics with French seams and fine tailoring

In bear culture I’d be a Goldilocks. The label means exactly what you’d think — a femme who hangs with bears. I especially love hanging out at the Lone Star, the San Francisco bear bar (“Where the crowd never thins out,” is its affectionate tag line). As it turns out, being dressed by bears is nearly as good as drinking with them. Costello and Tagliapietra’s dreamy designs are as lovely as a mid-Summer beer bust. And their biography — life-partners taught the craft of dressmaking by their respective grandmothers — is almost more adorable than I can stand. Continue reading

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Dear Diana: Lesbian Emotions

How can one avoid lesbian relationships that are hard work emotionally? Is there even such a thing as a committed lesbian relationship that isn’t hard work emotionally?

Listen, there’s no way to be intimately involved with another person and not have some kind of expectations of them. And if you have expectations you risk being disappointed.

Having an open dialogue about your relationship helps. Just being open to communicating helps. But actually learning some real communication skills is the key to making it work. You can’t use “I’m communicating with you” as an excuse to tell your girlfriend how much she sucks.

Here’s something I just learned. Sometimes people just need to say something negative. She might not even believe it herself. She might have a little shiver of neurosis or fear, and she’ll vocalize it. Maybe she’s feeling bad so she wants you to feel bad too. OK, that sucks. But if you decide not to retaliate it will suck a lot less. Continue reading

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Dear Diana: Jackie Chan

Is it weird that last night I dreamed I was Jackie Chan and I was having phenomenal sex with the hottest woman EVER? Btw, I’m not a J.C. fan.

Last night I dreamed I was evacuating a menagerie of cute fluffy animals from the back of a white van in order to save them from a serial killer. Someone suggested I might be a plushie, but I’m really not a fan of cute fluffy animals.

Got a question? Ask it here.

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