From the Archive: Unbound
It’s always been ground glass, scraping against my insides. I imagine a light held to the place where I open would illuminate a mess of torn flesh, throbbing red-wet.
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Posts Tagged: bdsm
The Psychiatrist and the Butch
My dad, a psychiatrist, wants to write a sex book.
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The Fluidity of Language and Identity: Melissa Faliveno’s Tomboyland
When was the first time you remember seeing yourself in a book you were reading?
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A Chorus of Voices: Talking with Melissa Faliveno
Melissa Faliveno discusses her debut essay collection, TOMBOYLAND.
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Soft Parts
What appealed to me most about furry culture was how it created a space for softness to be worn on the outside.
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On Love and Dogs: Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
Greenwell tells his story on the narrator’s terms, and that makes all the difference.
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The Spot You’re Standing In: A Conversation with Chris Dennis
Chris Dennis discusses his debut story collection, HERE IS WHAT YOU DO.
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Rumpus Exclusive: “Field Medicine”
I didn’t belong on this planet. This kind of place could not be my home.
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The Mania of Queer Desire: In Praise of Fever Ray’s Plunge
I remember driving a bird mad once.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #169: Saskia Vogel
“Understanding that you can have what you desire can be healing and transformative.”
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #160: Kimberly Dark
“We are all in bed with Daddy. Gendered expectations are part of our DNA.”
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Sharp and Twisty and Complicated: Talking with Melanie Abrams
Melanie Abrams discusses her debut novel, PLAYING, and a forthcoming novel, MEADOWLARK.
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Death, Satan, and Cats: A Conversation with Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine discusses his newest novel, The Angel of History, surviving the AIDS epidemic, and the role of religion in his life and writing.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Kirsten Irving
The pressure to prove ourselves can have a distorting effect, causing us to doubt our instincts in favor of following others we perceive to be experts or “genuine.”
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: E. A. Longfellow
The way I think about my writing is similar to the way I think about my kink—both have to do with history and the ethics around appropriation.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Jennifer Gilbert
Trauma steals meaning and expression. BDSM and writing create them.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Nicole Guappone
I am an emerging writer and fairly young kinkster. The letters on my keyboard are just starting to fade; the leather of my cuffs is just starting to crack.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Sassafras Lowrey
I discovered leather nearly fifteen years ago, at eighteen, right around the time I started writing.
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When Marketing Trumps Truth
This is how gay-male-identifying, biological women become straight chicks. Investigative journalism morphs into emotional memoir.
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FUNNY WOMEN #137: Press Release for Zeitgeisty Book
Nothing will ever be ordinary again.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Carina Finn
BDSM, like writing, can be so self-serious. By letting go of my formal commitment to both, I found ways to release my expectations, and as a result, let them back into my life in healthier and more fulfilling ways.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Erica Mena
Poems and rope that make me plumb my depths and stretch my limits of my poetic language: that’s the worthwhile project.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Dale Corvino
There’s a connection between the longings of the characters I develop in my fiction and my urge to dominate.
...moreJames Deen and the Myth of Concrete Consent
In the final months of a nearly six-year BDSM relationship—the most satisfying relationship of my life—a line was crossed. My Master (a stripper and porn star at the time) violated my safe word, and I knew in that instant that it was the beginning of the end. Without warning he had confiscated my magic passport, […]
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A Dominant in Lust, Love, and Heartbreak
Being a dominant top in love means an ache—for someone to tend to, to take care of, to steer and supervise, to shape and to set free.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Tina Horn
I would go so far as to say that the entire reason I write is to detect all the irony that language allows and twist it around the truth like razor wire and ivy. That’s how I like my truth: twisted.
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(K)ink: Writing While Deviant: Michael Broder
If I am a sub poet, is poetry as a genre my dom? Is the particular poem I’m working on my dom?
...moreCriminalizing Kink in the UK: The 50 Shades Effect
Last month I reached out to LA-based expat Anna Span, an English porn producer (and one-time Liberal Democrat candidate) who awhile back, fought the UK’s ban on showing female ejaculation in porn—and won! I was anxious to hear her take on the recent crackdown on sadomasochistic practices in adult films, specifically whether “BDSM-themed art porn” […]
...moreThought Crimes, Sexual Fantasies, and “The Cannibal Cop”
Years ago when I worked at a house of domination in NYC’s Chelsea district, there were a handful of clients who were memorable for breaking up the run-of-the-mill fetish (foot worship, spanking, bondage, role playing, repeat) monotony. One was a dude I never saw, but only heard about whenever one of the few Mistresses capable […]
...moreBeyond Vanilla
Natasha Gornik’s photographs of people involved in New York’s BDSM scene capture the honesty and community that are essential to practicing kink. Check out her work here, and read about it on her blog.
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