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.At some point in high school I decided to rebel against my not-particularly stringent, but still sort of Catholic upbringing by proclaiming myself a Pagan Goddess-Worshipper. . I wasn’t exactly sure what Pagan Goddess-Worshippers were into but it seemed very sexy and exotic, which suited my teenage self just fine. I read some books and adopted the myth of prehistoric matriarchal societies where fertility, childbearing, and the female body were revered. Some of this I took from two important books by archaelogist Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess and The Civilization of the Goddess. Being in high school I wasn’t exactly the most careful scholar and I’m sure I made up plenty of details on my own.

Somehow the Venus of Willendorf figured prominently in my belief system. That little statue was, as far as I was concerned, proof that the patriarchy was a relatively modern invention, and that in pre-historical societies women were worshipped. It all sounded pretty good, and as an identity the Goddess worshipping thing went well with my penchant for flowy skirts and toe rings. Also, anytime you want to make a case for mainstream beauty ideals being a creation of mainstream media, you can point to the Venus of Willendorf and her nearly total roundness. Poor little Venus, everyone’s got an opinion about her. The matriarchists claim she’s a Goddess, the art historians have suggested she’s a fertility symbol, and some researchers have proposed that Venus is a product of women creating self-affirming representations of themselves like an ice-age Vagina Monologues.

So far about two hundred Venus figurines have been discovered, all showing signs of being handled and passed around. They were portable, exchangeable and possibly collectible. The majority of them are naked though a few wear clothing of some sort, and a couple, found in the Russian site of Kostienki, are wearing what looks like restraints. One figurine is wearing a breast-accentuating chest harness and another seems to have her hands bound together at the wrist. Given that these sculptures were dug up in the frozen tundra, it’s not likely that the clothing depicted was functional in any way, it’s probably stone-age lingerie. Which brings me to the disconcerting fact that for all my teenage enthusiasm about ancient matriarchal culture, Venus of Willendorf and the rest of the Venus figurines were probably just pre-historic pornography. Cavemen were holding them up with one hand while spanking their Paleolithic penises with the other. Of all the theories out there, this is the one that the evidence actually points to.

According to Cynthia Eller in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future there’s no more evidence for ancient matriarchy then there is for Santa Claus. I hate to admit it, but it looks like we’re been seen as sex objects for two million years.

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.

I read Daniil Kharms to her, specifically the one where Gogol and Pushkin keep tripping over each other. I think it’s delightful, though admittedly not traditionally romantic.

Em, being Em, meaning practically a troubadour, picked the love poems of Sappho. Specifically Fragment 31, which I now understand to be her most famous love poem. I have to confess I didn’t really get the allure at the time. I hate to sound plebian, but the fragments thing was lost on me. What’s the use of reading half a poem? Don’t worry, I’ve since come around about Sappho and classical poetry in general even though Em still turns her nose up at Russian absurdism.

Anyway, Anne Carson got me thinking about the pleasure/pain principle and the erotic. We’re used to discussing pleasure/pain as a physiological response, there are plenty of discourses on sadomasochistic desire, the transcendent experience of physical pain/ecstasy, altered states, etc. But if you ask me, eroticizing emotional pain is way more hardcore.

In 31, Sappho looks at her love object from afar, the girl is talking to a man and Sappho is in some sort of erotic agony. She feels “almost dead.” It’s seriously painful to read.

Here’s Carson’s translation, which for the record is more beautiful than any translation I’d previously read:

He seems to me equal to the gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing — oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me

no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead — or almost
I seem to me.

But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty…

OK, so poor Sappho, I mean, ouch. Greener than grass? Almost dead? Sounds awful. She is sick with love, dying of ecstasy. She certainly doesn’t seem jealous, though Carson says that’s a common misinterpretation. Forget it, that’s not jealousy. It’s more like she is in some kind of religious fervor. It seems pretty obvious to me that she’s getting off on it.

We get the concept of eroticism from the Greek myth of Eros. Eros was the god of love and sexual desire. Typically depicted as wreaking havoc with his pointed arrows–shooting them willy-nilly into unsuspecting bystanders–Eros was apparently a mischievous little prick. He wounded everyone unscrupulously–the catch being that some arrows caused their target to feel desire and some caused indifference. Thanks to Eros, everyone was always running around in some painful yet delicious state of unrequited love.

Hence Sappho calling him bitter sweet.

Eros as a concept is most easily explained as the drive for sexual and romantic love. The Greeks had a thought or two about it. The Symposium, has the meaning and purpose of eros as it’s central subject. Freud conflated eros with libido, and Bataille described it as a psychological quest–a higher pursuit than simple sex.  Then again, Bataille was so freaky he got kicked out of the Surrealists. Imagine being too weird for the Surrealists. Bataille got especially hot for the idea of beheading. He even volunteered to be beheaded but he couldn’t find anyone willing to do it. It’s probably a good thing he didn’t have the internets.

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?

It has taken a few weeks to get back into a rhythm but today I finished a 6,000 word treatise on genitalia. Em is sending me pics from the dyke march. My favorite so far, a woman I don’t know holding a sign in memory of Cheryl Burke-a poet, a badass, a femme dyke–who we lost a week ago to complications from her cancer treatment. I love Cheryl very, very much. We all do. I miss her. I love her. I wish she was still here. I love the sign, like she’s a fallen sister who marches on.

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.”

For women it’s a more circuitous process. Even when our bodies exhibit signs of what would presumably be arousal: vasocongestion, engorged labia and clitoris, and vaginal lubrication, we may not actually be in the mood for sex. We need more than ready genitals to desire and go through with masturbation or intercourse.

Interestingly, Viagra and similar drugs has been show to have a similar effect on women as in men, namely increasing blood flow to the genitals. However, increased blood flow did not correlate with female test subjects reporting that they wanted sex. In fact, in some cases women didn’t register any sort of recognizable “turned on” feeling.

Reading the medical literature and studying abstracts from clinical trials, it’s easy to see how little doctors and researchers understand about our sexual response. In one study I read, a doctor was quoted as saying, “Women who are not aroused can still perform.” Perform? Yikes! Rapey, much?

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.

For a brief moment, there was a feminist direct action group, WAC, and what brought us together was our combined horror and outrage, our inability to stomach how pervasive this crap was. And our knowledge that men were just not there for us. I’m not saying that every man was participating in or condoning this crap, but I didn’t see any guys who understood that every woman in this country works in a goddam hostile work environment.

And of course if you have privilege of some sort, you might be insulated from the worst of it. You might not get a baseball bat shoved up your ass, just have to put up with the pubic hair jokes. You might not have to worry about getting raped when you clean up the shit skid marks of some millionaire, you might not get deported if you lose your job but you might still be worrying about losing your job.

WAC was wacky, I won’t bore you with the lament, but for a brief, all too brief moment, we came together with a shared sense of outrage. Wondering if it will happen again.

Can’t tell… But it feels like a moment when the women I talk to in person on line, in person are really really so pissed off that we are almost ready to get over our own self hatred and come together. We are sick of the media that can’t distinguish between rape and consensual adulterous sex; that thinks we are just a bunch of prudes who aren’t worried about the “big” or “real” issues.

I’m sorry, but living in a fucking sexist culture really gets in the way of saving the whales, or growing my own vegetables, or whatever the hell else you define as important.

Of course the environment, corporative greed, the endless war, yes. All important.

But I work just a wee bit better when I’m not afraid. When I think that women can conduct themselves in their lives and not worry about harassment, or rape and continual humiliation. Wow, I’m so much more on my game when I feel like I’m not going to hear about a woman getting raped…

Here’s the deal folks, there’s certain basic things that are required for humans and if they are not there, THERE IS NO BIGGER ISSUE. If you have to put up with sexist harassment at work or get fired, perhaps deported. THERE IS NO BIGGER ISSUE. If you work on social justice but continually find yourselves betrayed by progressive politicians who are misogynist pigs, THE BIG ISSUES TAKE A BACK SEAT. I don’t hold my breath on this. I don’t have a lot of hope in this really…. But I am not infrequently and pleasantly surprised.

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.

You love brunch. We all do. It’s how you get away with drinking before noon. But it’s also the cause of what I like to call the accidental lesbian relationship.

Accidental lesbian relationships are extra tricky to get out of because you spend most of the time you’re in one denying it and by the time you admit you want out you’ve already adopted a dresser drawer at her place.

Here’s how it happens: you go out to the club on a Saturday night and you meet a cute stranger. She’s got a swagger; she’s quick with her Zippo when you pull out your pack of Capris and by then end of the night she’s charmed her way into your pants and the two of you are locked in a bathroom stall doing some kind of mostly naked vertical yoga positions. The club closes and you’re still mid-makeout so you reassemble your outfit and hairdo and stumble home with her. That’s the fun part. Then suddenly it’s Sunday around noon and what else is there to do besides go to brunch? You each convince yourselves that you’ll say goodbye afterward but a couple of mimosas cloud your judgment and you end up back at her place for another round. Six weeks later you’re still saying you aren’t girlfriends. But when was the last time you spent the night at home?

Even the sex parties I’ve been to, and I’ve been to plenty of them, have always seemed more like couple events than places to hook-up. In my experience the people who get it on at sex parties show up with their partners and settle in to getting it on while everyone else stands around chatting. I don’t know a single dyke who’s even met anyone at a sex party. Lesbian sex parties are fun. They are fabulous social events. They usually have a great snack table and they give you an excuse to wear your underwear in public. But they aren’t good places to have casual sex. Lesbian casual sex, if there actually is such a thing, only takes place in the bathroom at the bar while everyone else stands outside pounding on the door because they have to pee.

My first relationship got upended mid-stream when my girlfriend went away to school. Naively, we tried to keep the love alive, but quickly realized that our passion for each other was mostly sexual. So, we did what most modern romantics would do. We had phone sex, dirty email sex, and explicit instant message sessions.

She could send the most startlingly graphic letters to me without inhibition. She was born to be a great epistolary lover–an academic. French literature! She was very good at breaking down complex thoughts and explaining them in plain language. An attribute that drove me nuts during non-sexual conversation because I always felt like she took the magic out of everything. But as a long-distance lover, it was hot. Her writing lacked flowery details making it less distracting and better suited to it’s purpose—to get me off. She was able to create such an organic build in intensity on the page, that once while reading a particularly long letter, I came. Right there at my desk. I swear. Startled, I looked up from my screen and confessed what had happened to the coworker who sat across from me. He never emailed me again.

Like most of us, my introduction to sex was in books. Mainly, cheesy bestsellers I stole from my parents room. But thinking back, my very first literary JO material was an epic Shakespeare poem “The Rape of Lucrece” in which the beautiful and chaste Lucrece is ravished by one of her husbands men. The next morning she gets vows of revenge from all the knights before killing herself by plunging a knife into her breast.

The words themselves held such erotic power that later I would picture those dirty passages, the actual words, and not the sex act.

It was the same way with my ex’s dirty emails. Words would linger in my mind. I’d picture a glowing screen with a four-letter word in sharp contrast. Dirty words are full of potential and when strung together to describe a sex act they invoke a sense memory, your brain fills in what it needs to. Physical acts may leave a lingering mark but can’t be recreated. The written word can be revisited. This why we read trashy novels and dog-ear favorite passages. I save dirty emails in a folder and revisit them when I want inspiration. It makes me so happy to see the word “fuck” written out on the page.

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.

The team recently paired up with UNIQLO, the Japanese retailer famed for its basics. The collaboration is stunning. I swear it’s nearly perfect. The dresses are made of slinky jersey, a famously clingy fabric that I wasn’t sure I could pull off, but these pieces are cut so that swaths of fabric wrap breasts and hips in a flattering, touchable, subtly sexy way. This collection makes a curvaceous bod look perfectly elegant.

The UNIQLO collection features 14 unique designs in a muted palette of blue, gray, rose, tan and yellow. Everything in the collection retails for $29.50-$39.50, a tiny fraction what you’d pay for their RTW line.

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.

If you retaliate, you’ll each say things you don’t really mean, then you’ll go over them for hours, and even once it’s all straightened out you’ll resent having spent so much time on it. You know how that goes, you stayed up all night fighting, you’re bleary eyed at work, and you start thinking your relationship is an emotional sinkhole.

Instead, why not let her have her doubts? Because you know you have yours too and it doesn’t mean you don’t want to be with her. The emotional work is easier when you both stop constantly protecting yourselves from each other.

Learn how to keep yourself from getting caught up in a negative thinking loop. The more you think negative things, the more your body responds will all sorts of stress hormones. The next thing you know you’re stuck in a cycle of anxiety you think is all her fault when really it’s a physiological process you created all by yourself.

Remember that the other person is as vulnerable as you are, and forgive them when they hurt you. There’s a difference between a bad, abusive relationship and a basically good relationship between two people who don’t know how to let their guard down. If you think the relationship you are in is basically good, then just relax a little and learn to let some things go.

Got a question? http://www.formspring.me/dianacage

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.

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