Jennifer Lyon Bell makes porn with a humanistic approach, designed to get viewers to identify with the characters, not just watch them. She combines the visual quality of art films with erotica. Her ethos is that the former could be sexier and the latter just plain better. Also, she doesn’t think porn should be for men or women (or that we differ much in how we respond to it). Read the rest of this entry »

I first heard of Lisa Carver in the late 1980s, when we were both about 19 or 20. Performing under the name Lisa Suckdog in shows that involved screeching, screaming, pissing, and violence, she was often spoken of in the same breath with notorious scum-rocker G.G. Allin, Read the rest of this entry »

Our best shot at understanding the foundation of obscenity law is through watching Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror film, The Evil Dead. In it, a group of (who else?) students stay (where else?) at a cabin in the woods. Amidst the jokes and sexual tension, they uncover a book of demonic spells and rites. Read the rest of this entry »

Vice interviews author Edmund White. The conversation covers porn, the perfect man, “gay-lit,” and a lot more.

“No one tries to figure out how someone ended up straight, though it takes just as much explaining as being gay. All etiological arguments are reactionary from the start.”

I was waiting for her.

I’d found the only room I could afford near the Prado in a pension that was being run as a transvestite brothel. Read the rest of this entry »

Artist Jason Novak brings us his tale “Depressing Sex: An essay in pictures.”

Enjoy: Read the rest of this entry »

This past Saturday, December 17th marked the 9^th year of the annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. SF Bay Guardian looks back at the history of the San Francisco born tradition.

“It’s become a high holy day of whores. The one day that we all remember the real victims, not these made up situations. A lot of them are not victims, but people like to think we are.”

“We don’t know why porn stars should not teach children, why it’s OK to watch porn but not be in it, why we should have to hide our involvement in pornography, or why we should be ashamed of it. These arguments apply, in differing degrees, to sex itself.”

At The Advocate, Conner Habib reflects on the “outing” of teacher Kevin Hogan as a former gay porn performer, articulates the cloudy nature of public conversations about porn in our society, and argues that Hogan’s potential firing should be a “shared responsibility.”

The New York Times recently ran an article about an Egyptian blogger named Aliaa Magda Elmahdy who posted a naked photo of herself on her blog, to the distress and disgust of her fellow Egyptians (liberals and conservatives alike). Read the rest of this entry »

“In its breadth, depth and frank embrace of sexuality as, what Vernacchio calls, a ‘force for good’ — even for teenagers — this sex-ed class may well be the only one of its kind in the United States.”

A NY Times Magazine article on the state of sex education highlights a Philadelphia Quaker Friends high school teacher’s comprehensive approach to teaching sex ed. With Mr. Vernacchio’s emphasis on pleasure as well as emotional complexities, acknowledgment of gender biases, and lessons on female ejaculation, this looks like possibly the best course ever.

(Via Feministing)

In 2010, in New Orleans, thousands of Saints fans danced wildly in the streets in black and gold jerseys and ribbons, blowing horns and smacking tambourines. I commuted from LA to New Orleans to dance at Penthouse Club during the playoffs and arrived to work early to watch the game at the bar with the other dancers. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes Means Yes has a conversation with Jaclyn Friedman about What You Really Really Want: A Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide To Sex And Safety. Topics include the book’s writing exercises, flexisexuality, fetishization and communication, and parenting.

“…You can’t become free of influences. You can only become aware of them, and choose which you want to give more energy and attention to. Similarly, as parents, I don’t suppose you can ever not influence your kids. You can only be thoughtful about what kind of influence you’re being. And even that, imperfectly. Because you’re a collection of influences yourself.”

(Via Feministing)

Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s new book Outdated: How Dating is Ruining Your Love Life takes a deep look at how the hell do you balance your feminist ideals with the archaic power dynamics that dating forces us to engage in and how skewed gender politics and damaging messaging are getting in the way of men and women finding real love. Read the rest of this entry »

The horrifying crisis unfolding at Penn State reminds us, yet again, of the carelessness of language used when we write about sexual violence.

In an AP article printed in the New York Times the headline reads, “2 Top Officials Step Down Amid Penn State Sex Scandal.” In countless other articles across far too many publications, journalists have also used the phrase “sex scandal” to refer to Penn State’s former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, allegedly raping and otherwise sexually abusing at least eight young boys.

A sex scandal is when, for example, a politician has an extramarital affair with a young female intern or when an evangelist preacher has an extramarital affair with a young masseur or another politician has a history of visiting escorts. In any such situation, there is (consensual) sex involved and the circumstances within which that sex was had are scandalous.

When we are talking about rape, sexual abuse, or sexual assault, and/or when these terrible acts of sexual violence occur between adults and children, we are talking about scandals of sexual violence. They are rape scandals, sexual abuse scandals, or sexual assault scandals but they are not sex scandals. Sex is consensual. Rape, sexual abuse, and sexual assault, as well as violent sexual acts forced upon children by adults are not consensual. Read the rest of this entry »

July 24, 2011. Kelebohile Nkhereanye and Renee Boyd confidently walk up a flight of stairs inside Brooklyn’s Municipal Building City Hall that sweltering Sunday morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Sugar,

Ever since I was small girl of about six, I have delighted in the idea of growth. And I don’t mean spiritual or emotional or mental growth. I mean literal growth. The idea of expansion has always excited me. Read the rest of this entry »

From Today’s Daily Rumpus email (to read entire Daily Rumpuses you need to subscribe):

“A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star.” So begins Glen Duncan’s review of Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Zone One. What does he mean? Can the porn star be an intellectual? What if an intellectual is dating another intellectual who is also a porn star? Let’s change the language and see how it sounds, “A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a poor black woman.” “A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating someone sexy who can’t read.”

Whoever is opposite the intellectual is not an intellectual as the genre novel is not a literary novel. Read the rest of this entry »

A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star, right?  Well that’s what New York Times book reviewer Glen Duncan thinks.

In his Sunday Book Review of Colson Whitehead’s complex new zombie novel, Zone One, Duncan sets the parallel between dating porn stars and what he initially perceives as slumming in genre fiction, and lets the rest of the review ride on the back of this comparison.  While he’s busy offending sex workers, he also speculates that readers attracted to the story for its post-apocalyptic zombie tale will encounter so many big words as to be morally affronted.  Duncan praises the book and comes around to the idea of intellectually stimulating genre fiction, but never quite comes around to the idea of sex workers as intellectually stimulating people, concluding of his imaginary couple only that, “they look pretty good together.”

The piece came to our attention via a witty retort by Savvy stripper and staff writer over at Tits and Sass, Bubbles (whose thoughts on this issue you can read here):

“The images were graphic – they showed genitals and countless sex positions – but they were also artistic, and tasteful.”

BBC takes a closer look at The Joy of Sex forty years after its publication. The piece examines how publishers sought to avoid obscenity charges by using hand-drawn illustrations rather than photographs, focusing on creating quality artwork, and including ancient pictures as “foils” to offset the explicitness of the illustrations. We also get a glimpse of the couple who ended up serving as the main models for the many positions.

As it happens, Adrianna Luna and I grew up in the same neighborhood. We had mutual friends and, from time to time, we’d run into each other. A few months ago, I learned she started performing in porn and I was curious. Read the rest of this entry »

“To be clear: this isn’t about sexual repression; it’s about the sorry state of sexual expression. When did we forget how to talk dirty? Sexting transcripts are criminally boring. Craigslist ads read like chimp-generated remixes of the same five words. Is it the Internet? Why are Americans so bad at writing and speaking the thing they love thinking about and doing? You can measure a civilization’s cultural capital by how it encodes its basest operations. By that yardstick, we’re broke.”

Calling for a return to “the golden age of dirty talk,” this Awl piece introduces us to a 17^th century pamphlet dubbed The Academy of Pleasure and reflects on the value of euphemisms.

Having spent much of his working life as an editor, 38-year-old British writer-director Andrew Haigh knows very well the way that disparate scenes can be woven together to form a complex, unified whole. All that’s required is a critical eye to determine how the pieces fit together. Read the rest of this entry »

“I asked Crane what becoming a writer has meant to her personally. ‘When you’ve become so seasoned at shutting down your feelings because your survival depends on it, you need a crowbar to excavate them. Writing is the crucible.’”

Rumpus contributor Melissa Petro profiles Rumpus columnist Antonia Crane for Bitch Magazine. You can find all of Antonia’s Rumpus writing here.

What are the implications of female characters in comics for women?

This article ponders the question: who are today’s superheroines aimed to please? Laura Hudson describes how often contemporary comics claim their portrayals of women are sexually liberating, while they are instead undermining women.

This is an especially interesting cultural dissection when contrasted with Lisa Simpson, the literary backbone of the beloved Simpson family. The Atlantic‘s article, “A Visual History of Literature References On ‘The Simpsons”, selects from the impressive collection of literary references on the Lisa Simpson Book Club tumblr.

“The focal point for the cultural awareness of The Simpsons is, of course, Lisa, precocious bookworm and perennial conscience of the family, who laments that she’s destined for a life without friends or, even worse, a life confined to ‘grown up nerds like Gore Vidal, and even he’s kissed more boys than I have.’”

“Did I ever think I’d be taking my top off for rent money? No. I was in my mid-30s and had never danced before…”

Lawyer-turned-stripper “Carla” shares her story of dancing to recover from law school debt, and a little about the women that worked alongside her.

Rumpus contributor Anna Pulley is doling out advice as a sex columnist for Chicago newspaper RedEye. We love weekly offerings of wisdom here at the Rumpus, and thus, highly recommend the column. Check it out. This week’s topic is on how to be dominant in the bedroom (“Ultimately, the best way to learn anything is to just f**king do it.”)

Sativa January’s story, “The Phlebotomist” is about love, marriage and swingers, published on Our Stories, an online journal that publishes the best fiction on the web. Here’s an excerpt:

“But as Linda ripened and cured, marriage did something: It made her dowdy. Hetero. Almost loyal. She did, actually, now adore the way men, particularly Ed, could unfold before her without meeting her eye, as he faced away, blinking ahead at the road, or the television, or at the bottles of Jameson on the bar. She knew that as long as he didn’t have to look at her, he’d give her his past, and let her roam his face for truth.”

This is what I expected: Jay and I were meeting to talk about the one thing that is harder to talk about than sex: not wanting to have sex. Ever. Read the rest of this entry »

John Lingan wrote an essay, “Salvation for Civilians: Porn as a Way of Life,” for The Point. He discusses the contemporary debate surrounding porn—which should not be confused with the “keeping sex sacrosanct.” Instead there’s a focus on the internet as the medium through which porn makes its way to viewers and critiquing the “greater societal reality that porn is everywhere.” And who, according to Lingan, embodies this contemporary dialogue more than Rumpus contributor Zak Smith?

“For Smith, porn offers a different vision of what it means to live well. In We Did Porn, he chronicles his seamless transition from elite-mainstream art functions to the so-called alt-porn industry, which features tattooed and pierced actors and boasts more conceptual creativity, if not purpose, than standard hardcore.”

I remember clearly the first time my best friend Chelsea and I decided to play at prostitution. Read the rest of this entry »